Why Our Perception of Black Leadership Matters

In the wake of the tragic killing of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement has put a spotlight on how organizational leaders address racial injustice.

A slew of executives from the likes of Reddit, CrossFit, Bon Appétit, and The Poetry Foundation have stepped down. Stakeholders—and in some cases, the exiting leaders—are demanding that organizations replace them with black executives.

Following an unprecedented 18-month mass exodus of CEOs stepping down for retirement, strategic change, or ethical infractions, this seems like a prime opportunity to promote black employees to positions of power to chip away at racial inequality in leadership.

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, cognitive biases will inevitably surface, and progress may be at risk.

The unemployment rate is above double-digits and the U.S. government is pushing the same economic recovery buttons as was done post-depression in the 1940s. The years ahead will be rough. This is problematic because our perception of leader performance is strongly tied to organizational performance.

As the years go by, it's likely that evaluations of newly appointed black leaders will be made with blinders on. This situation highlights three consistently surfacing challenges in the promotion of racial minority executives.

Glass Cliffs

The glass cliff theory suggests that black employees, compared to white employees, may be more likely to gain opportunities to lead when the likelihood of failure is high.

In such circumstances, regardless of the leader’s capabilities and decisions, the organization inevitably struggles and the leader is blamed. This perpetuates a cycle of non-promotion for presumed lack of talent.

This phenomenon may be even more likely given today’s context. To minimize this faulty assumption, leaders’ evaluations should be based on their decisions and behaviors, not their ability to turn water into wine.

Bold Moves

The bold moves theory suggests that decisions on who should lead are influenced by anticipated shareholder reaction. In this scenario, promoting the black candidate is more an impression management strategy than a business strategy.

This approach can be problematic if the organization settles for an unqualified candidate. Yes, society demands a sense of urgency. But slowing down and finding a good fit—in terms of abilities and race—is worth the wait.

The problem is that organizations are obsessed with finding leaders who have industry experience, even though research suggests that experience has less impact on performance than people think. Because the system has artificially limited the pool of black candidates, this deference for experience makes the pool unnecessarily smaller.

Specific to high-level leaders, it’s time to look for black leaders more broadly. Strategic thinking and management acumen are not industry-bound. Further, in order to fill the pipeline at lower levels of the organization, it’s time to get serious about implementing technology—artificial intelligence and machine learning, simulations, and the like—to help tease out cognitive biases.

Corporate Saviors

The corporate savior theory highlights that black leaders tend to experience tokenism. As tokens, black leaders struggle because they are highly visible and experience intense scrutiny. Putting a magnifying glass over black leaders can be problematic because it instigates exponential pressure to perform, which can cause them to make decisions they wouldn’t otherwise make.

Regardless of the organizational outcome, the backlash is negative. When black leaders succeed it is a cause de célèbre, which incorrectly positions the success as an anomaly. When black leaders fail, the most common reaction is to put back into place a more “traditional” (i.e., white) leader.

As the movement progresses and more black leaders are promoted, it is important to be cautious about how performance is interpreted.

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Going Forward

As of today, there are only four black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Promoting black leaders would chip away at the incredibly lopsided race imbalance in leadership. It would also ensure that leadership is more aligned with demographic and societal trends.

Moving in this direction is long overdue, and to make it a truly lasting change, let us not forget the backdrop.

Newly appointed black leaders are not only being asked to lead during a crisis but act as a signal of newly formed organizational values of racial equality, all while being put under an intense microscope.

The willingness to step up during such circumstances in and of itself is an act of true leadership, regardless of organizational profitability.

This blog entry is based on an op-ed article published in Business Insider.