Pace, C. (2018). How women of color get to senior management. Harvard Business Review.
Corporations have not been good at promoting women of color to senior roles. Leadership advancement opportunities for Black women has been stagnant.
Pace (2018) conducted a study of twenty-three women of color in midlevel and upper-midlevel management positions at a Fortune 500 company as part of her dissertation. Through focus groups and interview sessions, she asked about the critical events in their advancement and the lessons they learned along the way.
1. Power and influence aspirations led them to make trade-offs to progress into leadership (i.e., working long hours). They had strong reasons for advancing into leadership.
2. Confidently seizing opportunities by promoting their capabilities and interests. They envisioned themselves as leaders and acquired new skills or moved out of their comfort zone into new roles.
3. Pursued management challenges with broader leadership responsibilities.
4. Cultivated influential mentors who included men as well as women of color to navigate their company’s leadership structure. Developing relationships with senior leaders in their company provided valuable opportunities.
Developing leadership pipelines for women of color include:
1. Educate managers about the challenges women of color face in the workplace, e.g., invisibility, hypervisibility, tokenism, questioned credibility, stereotypes, exclusion, etc. Managers can produce solutions to combat these challenges.
2. Integrate conversations on workplace biases into sponsorship programs and incorporate bias training in preparation
3. Identify disparities in assignments to ensure equal access to essential business experiences.
4. Information dissemination on career opportunities and networking connections to break down the barriers for advancement. How can a woman of color raise her hand for opportunities if she doesn’t know they exist?
5. Encourage women of color to shadow executives to demystify senior leadership. Orgs should encourage sponsorship to continue the relationship.
L2: Demonstrate the ability to assess complex organizational environments and achieve communicative goals.
L4: Apply communication-centered scholarship to strengthen communication effectiveness.
D1: Iteratively develop inter-professional leadership competencies.
D4: Be equipped to influence change.
Keywords: women of color, Black women leaders, leadership opportunities, management advancement, sponsorship, mentorship
