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THE UNIQUE CHALLENGES OF BLACK LEADERS
Despite recent, highly visible drives to increase diversity in business, Black leadership remains rare at the general counsel level. And when people of color do reach a senior position, they are still too often held to a much higher standard than their white peers. But, driven by social justice movements and the demands of a younger demographic, are we finally seeing the beginning of real and long-lasting change? By David Lindsay
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EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
BUSINESSES THAT AVOID DIVERSITY DO so at their own peril, statistically speaking. In 2015, management and consulting business McKinsey & Company looked at financial management and top management and board of director data from 366 public companies in Canada, Latin America, the U.K. and the U.S. They found that businesses in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to outperform the financial medians in their national industry. The research also found that U.S. companies witnessed a 0.8% increase in earnings (before interest and taxes) for every 10% increase in senior executive leadership racial and ethnic diversity.
With stats such as these – just two of many documented business benefits of diversity – there is hope that more businesses will view the ascent of Black executives to senior leadership roles as necessary. Traditionally, progress for African Americans has come in fits and starts. But in a postGeorge Floyd world, are we on the precipice of change? Does corporate attention to social justice issues spell the end of the ‘need to be twice as good’ tendency that has kept so many Black corporate lawyers from top positions?
“There has been a lot of good talk,” says former UPS General Counsel and Chief Human Resources Officer Teri McClure, “but I’m not sure the numbers have changed the way we would want them to.” Covid has been an unfortunate, if in some ways understandable, impediment to corporations accelerating the types of initiatives that would propel more qualified Black candidates into the C-suite.
For Maria Green, former general counsel for Illinois Tool Works and Ingersoll Rand, much of the challenge rests in the assumption that a Black or minority candidate will have nothing in common with a CEO or other members of the C-suite.
“When I first went to Illinois Tool Works, the general counsel was white, male, 6’6”, blond, blueeyed, went to Choate, Princeton and Harvard Law – a blue blood as different from me as night and day,” says Green. “But we figured out pretty early on that we had a lot of similarities. We both had long commutes, we both liked to listen to ‘Morning Edition’, we both like opera.”
Building a relationship with the general counsel starting with shared interests helped in an organization where Green had few Black peers. “I was his direct replacement. He was always advocating for me, and I don’t think that was because I was African American, but because he saw a lot of himself in me.”
Appearing to be different from members of leadership can be a barrier, according to Green: “They look at you and they don’t see themselves.” By finding the common ground with the general counsel she would eventually replace at Illinois Tool Works, Green built a relationship of trust as both she and the general counsel realized that “what united us is a lot more important that what separated us.”
C-SUITE BLUES
Even once in position, Black general counsel often face very different expectations than their peers in the C-suite. Black lawyers can be made to feel they have to work harder to prove they deserve their position. Their weaknesses – whether real or perceived – may be judged more harshly. The consequences of mistakes can be more severe and have long-reaching repercussions, with Black general counsel given less leeway to learn from their failures than their white peers.
“There is less of a presumption of earned position,” says Teri McClure. “There is a harsher fallout when there is a failure, with an undertone of, ‘Prove to me you deserve to be here.’”
Maria Green agrees: “When white executives make a poor decision, there is a sense of ‘that didn’t work, let’s try something else.’ With Black executives, it can be the downfall of their career. One mistake will follow that person. White individuals can have a poor performance or a poor year and it doesn’t follow them.”
Arlene Roane, a Black executive who channeled her experiences from a career in management into Redhouse Performance Consulting, recognizes the same pattern.
“All too often, we make a mistake and it’s catastrophic,” she says. “Other people make a mistake and it’s called the learning experience.”
This treatment plays out over the course of a career, Roane explains: “The typical scenario may be where the white, straight male with high potential gets that lead in their career relatively early. So, they’re starting in a management development program and within five to seven years, they’re already at director or senior level director, and then within 10 years, they are VP.”
By contrast, “Maybe that BIPOC high-potential person is promoted within the first five to seven years, but then stays stuck at the director level. They’re not promoted to be the VP, the SVP, the EVP until another seven, eight, nine years. That is way too late in a career to develop the kind of exposure that is needed in order to compete with straight white talent at the C-level.”
Roane’s business specializes in diversity and inclusion work. She emphasizes the need to recognize the patterns that keep diverse employees from advancing in their careers. She notes that businesses tend to create additional hurdles for people of color in or seeking leadership roles. For example, she has been helping a company seeking to formalize a sponsorship program for Black executives. The risk with some programs is that they put the burden of work on the Black individuals. Explains Roane, “A Black executive who is seeking a mentorship to advance their career thinks, ‘I’ve got to put in all this extra effort in order to get the same promotion that [a white executive] is just going to get naturally. I have to go to these meetings, and I have to do all this development stuff.’”
Roane helps organizations take a better approach. She explains: “The breakthrough is when an organization re-examines mentoring and sponsorship and decides that the people who need to do the extra work are the sponsors themselves.”
Maria Green points out that white executives often do not recognize their own blind spots. “On the surface no one would believe [Black executives] are held to a different standard,” she says. “That’s where unconscious bias comes in.”
CEO SUPPORT FOR THE BLACK GC
Unconscious bias and so many other factors may make it difficult for Black general counsels to be treated like everyone else in the C-suite. But fulfillment in the role can and does happen. For Green, having a supportive CEO was the key.
Many Black general counsels may have had a similar recruiting experience as Teri McClure had with UPS: The company had a Black board member who emphasized the need for Black recruiting at a time with UPS was moving its headquarters to Atlanta – a majority-Black city. Green’s ascent to her first general counsel position, on the other hand, did not come with as much of a racial factor. “Did I feel I was held to a different standard? I didn’t, frankly,” she says. “At Illinois Tool Works, I had been there 18 years, so by the time I became the leader, I knew them well. I never felt that people believed I didn’t deserve to be there.” By the time Green went to Ingersoll Rand – a job she was recruited for – “I had been the general counsel at a larger company, so the feeling was, ‘you know what you are doing’.”
That said, there were the familiar microaggressions to face. “It is a phenomenon all Black leaders experience,” Green notes. “You’re in a meeting, you say something, it doesn’t get acknowledged. Five minutes later somebody else says the same thing, and all of the sudden it is the best idea anybody’s ever heard.” Frustrating as that is, it can be
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
countered by support from senior management. In Green’s case, she had the important backing of the top executive: “A CEO who would respond by saying, ‘wait a minute, that is a good idea – but Maria said it five minutes ago’.”
A conscientious CEO can do more than notice the challenges Black general counsels face – they can enact change from the top. Also important is the way younger people in an organization – talented new hires who may represent the exact opposite of the CEO in terms of power or authority – can influence change on a macro level. Teri McClure, the former UPS general counsel, points out that “There is social pressure coming from younger employees, even if not everyone in the C-suite is convinced.”
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s deaths and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests have helped push Black equity into a top-of-mind issue, although McClure rightfully hedges about momentum, as companies deal also with the fallout of the pandemic. “Covid has dampened companies’ activism,” she explains, while stressing there is hope organizations will pick up the charge as the pandemic subsides.
Many publicly traded corporations already cater to a younger investor/shareholder community that is more likely to base their support of a company on a broader range of measures than solely financial metrics. Such environmental, social and governance (ESG) measures cover a range of issues that includes diversity and inclusion. As a result, there is more pressure for those corporations to be seen as fair and equitable to communities, and employees, of color. “ESG has the attention of senior leadership and that has been helpful to Black general counsels,” McClure says.
“When you have Gen X employees, they want to know about diversity in recruiting,” says Green. “Everyone wants to say, ‘We are a diverse workplace.’ There is all the data showing diverse workplaces perform better than non-diverse. And everyone is focused on that, because there is so much competition for talent.”
McClure, Green, and Roane all agree on the need for corporations to cast a wider net and consider more diverse candidates – for general counsel or for any other senior role. And while a Black lawyer reaching the general counsel role may well have a lonely view in a C-suite that is likely to be majority white, doing so has benefits that go beyond personal fulfillment.
As Green found during her tenures at ITW and Ingersoll Rand, “having a diverse person in the department created more diversity. Leaders looking for new hires might say, ‘I don’t know any African American securities lawyers,’” she recalls, “and I would say, ‘well, I know one!’ The diverse lawyers of the departments I worked in would know other diverse lawyers.”
But she counsels that it’s important for a Black lawyer to consider carefully why they are being hired: “Don’t go anywhere to be window dressing. But, if there is no African American leadership, you can do more help on the inside than the outside. If you can, go there and be the difference.”
And why be the difference? Because, despite decades of efforts to ensure Black lawyers are not treated differently,
things have not significantly changed, and won’t until more people of color hold the general counsel role. “I started in a law firm 30+ years ago,” McClure notes. “My daughter started at a law firm last year, and she’s dealing with some of the same things I did.”
Black lawyers that have an opportunity to become general counsels and become the only Black person in a corporation’s C-suite have to step up, says McClure, “If we don’t commit to being the only person, nothing will change. I understand that people get tired of that, but it will continue to be necessary.”
— Teri McClure
Former UPS General Counsel
