In this installment of our “Ask a Coach” video series, Torch Coach Veronica Matthews answers this question from one of our Curiouser newsletter readers:
Watch the video below to find out Veronica’s tips.
Revenue spirals, industry shifts, and legislative changes can have unexpected ripple effects on your career advancement. In this HBR article, learn how to identify worst-case scenarios, establish your non-negotiables, and prioritize your well-being, in a six-step plan to prepare you for any career setback.
In today’s highly competitive business environment, building high-performance teams capable of innovation and exceptional results is a critical goal for leading companies. Effective leadership, as the driving force behind team alignment and inspiration, is essential for the success of high-performance teams. This Entrepreneur article, dives into the five key qualities that many of today’s leaders share.
While seeking others’ approval is natural and can offer short-term rewards, an excessive need for validation can undermine your self-worth, diminish how others perceive you, and hinder your leadership potential. This Fast Company article, examines the four ways you can stop people-pleasing, while staying true to your authentic self.
This article was featured in Torch’s newsletter, Curiouser. Each month, we deliver the latest research, stories, questions, and insights about the art and science of coaching to your inbox. Sign-up and join a community of people who are passionate about growth, learning, and leadership.
Do more with less. Make sure your programs scale. You’ve got to be able to show the ROI.
If you’re an HR or L&D leader, chances are you’ve heard these directives before. And in this coming year, chances are that you’ll be trying to do all of this with your leadership development programs. According to recent research from Gartner, driving leader and manager effectiveness is the top priority for HR leaders in 2024.
When it comes to leadership development, the path to scale often looks the same: You try to find inexpensive solutions that touch every employee – for instance, a one-time leadership training.
The problem: these scaled solutions often don’t provide lasting behavior change or organizational ROI. Which you probably also know. But what are you supposed to do instead?
In recent years, coaching has gained traction as a tool that drives sustainable behavior change. And now, new Torch research shows that the effect of coaching extends beyond the individual being coached to their team, and the broader organization, creating a virtuous cycle of positive change. This is known as the coaching ripple effect. Put simply: The coaching ripple effect offers a more strategic, sustainable, and effective path to scale leadership development. It means not everyone has to get a coach to feel the benefits.
What do those benefits look like? Here are three takeaways from the research:
Though empirical evidence is exciting, the ripple effect also makes sense based on what we know from behavioral science. When managers become better leaders, they inspire changes in the people around them. Those workers feel more valued, recognized, and listened to. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those workers are then more likely to stay at their jobs, boost their performance, and increase the chances that they’ll be promoted. If you’ve ever reported to a manager who started to change for the better, this might be an experience you recognize having, too.
Our research also underlines an important caveat: Coaching is a powerful tool, but it’s not a workplace panacea. To unlock its positive impact, senior leaders must also build a culture that rewards positive leadership behaviors – like active listening, asking questions, promoting inclusivity, and giving actionable, empathetic feedback. This means taking a close look at policies, practices, and systems, both formal and informal.
Are you excited about the possibility of the ripple effect, but unsure of how to start a coaching program? The best part about coaching, and building a supportive culture, is that you can start wherever you are: with one person, or multiple people. You can start with a program already in place, or with the seeds of an idea for what one could look like. Coaching is a tool that’s designed to meet you and your organization where you are, help you reach your own unique goals, and create ripples of positive change along the way.
What are the secrets to being truly happy at work and in life? In this video interview from HBR’s New World of Work series, bestselling author and Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks discusses the pathology of being addicted to work and offers concrete, actionable advice for becoming happier.
Today’s talent demands more of employers, and learning is at the top of their list. Research shows that 74% of workers don’t feel they’re achieving their full potential due to a lack of development opportunities. This article examines how companies can create a culture of not only learning but of high performance too.
In this modern, rapidly changing work environment, authentic leadership has become a crucial element for success. This article delves into key aspects of authentic leadership, such as embracing continuous learning, balancing candor with kindness in feedback, and understanding intergenerational dynamics in the workplace.
This article was featured in Torch’s newsletter, Curiouser. Each month, we deliver the latest research, stories, questions, and insights about the art and science of coaching to your inbox. Sign-up and join a community of people who are passionate about growth, learning, and leadership.
Whether we’re at a conference, hosting a webinar, or in a 1:1 meeting, one of the questions we hear most from L&D, HR and talent leaders is: how do I get executive buy-in from a coaching program?
We know it can be challenging to convince senior leaders to invest in coaching, especially if they’ve never experienced it before. To get you started, we have some tips – from our coaches, of course.
What have you seen work to get executive buy-in? We’d love to hear from you (feel free to email [email protected]). We’ll share your responses in an upcoming edition of Curiouser.
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This article was featured in Torch’s newsletter, Curiouser. Each month, we deliver the latest research, stories, questions, and insights about the art and science of coaching to your inbox. Sign-up and join a community of people who are passionate about growth, learning, and leadership.
Every one of us has experienced the profound impact of pivotal moments in our lives – those turning points that shape our identity, propel us forward, and open doors to new opportunities. From the exhilarating first day of school to the nerve-wracking step into the professional world, these “moments that matter” hold the potential for immense growth and transformation. These moments that matter keep cropping up as we live our lives, and with the right approach, they can be harnessed to accelerate behavior change and organizational transformation through coaching.
Moments that matter are critical crossroads where change and growth intersect. These junctures mark transitions in our personal and professional journeys that demand new skills, introduce uncertainties, and open doors to uncharted territories. Think about how you felt on the first day of school– a mix of excitement and apprehension while you sat on the precipice of growth. Fast-forward to entering the workforce, where every promotion, role transition, or organizational restructure mirrors those same emotions and opportunities for learning.
Coaching takes center stage as a catalyst for transformation within these moments of change. Coaching supports transformation not just at the individual level but for the entire organization. Organizational transitions like restructuring can increase attrition and put engagement at risk. Coaching addresses these risks directly: Providing coaching to employees during moments that matter signals that the organization is committed to their growth, making it more likely they’ll stay, and stay productive and engaged.
Coaching during moments that matter also holds the key to unlocking accelerated behavior change. As individuals, we often face challenges during these transitions that can shake our confidence and test our capabilities. A coach is a trusted advisor, providing the tools to navigate uncertainties and develop new skills. Research into the coaching ripple effect suggests these new skills ladder up to powerful organizational outcomes like increased engagement, retention, and productivity.
Are you ready to unlock your organization’s potential during the moments that matter most? Learn more about moments that matter and how to build them into your people strategy from our new guide.
*ChatGPT aided in the creation of this post
In this installment of our “Ask a Coach” video series, Torch Coach, Ranjini Rao, answers this question from one of our Curiouser newsletter readers:
Watch the video below to find out Ranjini’s three ways to get employees excited about coaching.
Whether you’ve gone on a long vacation, or had a busy few weeks at work, sometimes life can intervene with coaching. In those moments – whether you’re feeling a sense of overwhelm, burnout, or inertia – it might feel hard to get back to the work.
We asked our coaches: what are their strategies for re-engaging with coachees if it has been a while since they connected? And if you’re a coaching participant: how can you get motivated again after a break? Read more to learn their three best practices, and the ways you can take action.
Torch Executive Coach Monica Anderson says she re-engages them by “inviting them back, and communicating something of value they expressed at the last coaching session.” Like Anderson, Executive Coach Karuna Thomas often starts re-engaging by reminding a participant about the progress they’ve made, and the success and wins they’ve had so far. She also brings up inspiring moments they’ve had during sessions.
Torch Executive Coach Rafal Szaniawski’s instinct in the face of disengagement is curiosity, which he uses as a tool for reconnection. He asks “if there’s anything I can help with to make the small step in resuming our partnership.” Anderson does this too, asking them if all is well or how they’re doing.
Thomas makes sure to reiterate her role “as their accountability partner, and ask for their input on additional ways I can support them achieving their goals,” she says. Similarly, Szaniawski tells them that “I’m there for them” even acknowledging the reality that this can be a tricky time of year. He also shares “that sometimes the most challenging yet rewarding thing to do in the middle of work overload is to pause for 45 minutes and rediscover themselves and what can help them go forward.”
At the beginning of a coaching engagement, Thomas makes sure to clarify her coachee’s MAP. This stands for Motivation, Ability and Prompt, and comes from BJ Fogg’s framework for behavior change. “Anytime there’s a roadblock, I ask which attribute is coming in their way of pursuing coaching,” she says. For individuals, following this framework can be a great way to reassess what’s motivating you, what might be holding you back, and how to move forward.
Szaniawski encourages participants to tap into their objectives, and the discoveries they may have made before they took a break. What kind of life did you envision for yourself? Who did you want to become? In other words – it’s all about traveling back in time to remember your past self. What did that person want? Why did that person want to start coaching? A bonus if you took some notes on this, or if you can ask your coach to share those notes.
Coaches are humans, too. They know what it’s like to get busy, overwhelmed and distracted. And know that they’re here to help you get re-motivated, to help you get back in touch with your past self, and even to see if maybe, during that pause, you learned something new about yourself. This, Anderson says, is often what she wants to know. “I’m interested to assess where the client is, and if past learnings and practices have landed” or inspired new insights.
BONUS: During these summer months, something I’ve done to stay engaged is begin walking sessions with my coach. We both call in to the meeting, and we’re able to enjoy the fresh air while we discuss my progress, barriers, and aspirations.
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This article was featured in Torch’s newsletter, Curiouser. Each month, we deliver the latest research, stories, questions, and insights about the art and science of coaching to your inbox. Sign-up and join a community of people who are passionate about growth, learning, and leadership.
Hot off the presses, Torch Executive Coach Brandy Simula wrote for Newsweek about how to manage the transition from individual contributor to people leader. A few of her key lessons: recognizing that you’re not just moving into a new role, but a new identity; developing a set of values, along with your vision, and prioritizing building relationships. But there’s much more, and we’d recommend reading the whole piece.
Blog: There’s an idea that’s been making its rounds: that the reason for the dip in workforce productivity is because people are working remotely. This piece challenges that idea, arguing that the way we’ve historically measured productivity – how long someone spends at work – has never told us what we want to know – what outcomes they’re delivering on. What’s part of the solution to the productivity problem? Managers “need to step up to the plate”, by clarifying goals, asking better questions, and developing trust with their employees.
When we think about the essential skills for leaders, it’s often the big ones that come to mind: setting a vision, being strategic, having executive presence. But the small skills – like being able to engage in meaningful small talk, or accurately evaluating whether or not someone likes you – can matter just as much. Two recent podcasts – one from the Atlantic, and the other from Hidden Brain – dive into these capabilities, why they can be hard, and how to get better.
This article was featured in Torch’s newsletter, Curiouser. Each month, we deliver the latest research, stories, questions, and insights about the art and science of coaching to your inbox. Sign-up and join a community of people who are passionate about growth, learning, and leadership.
The feeling started when Vanessa Tennyson was five-years-old. That was when Tennyson first knew something was different.
The feeling grew and grew until Tennyson, who was assigned male at birth, became interested in wearing women’s clothing. As a teenager, Tennyson remembers scanning the Sears catalog, imagining what it would be like to wear the dresses pictured on the glossy pages. But “I knew if I got caught it would be bad,” says Tennyson, who today identifies as a transgender woman. “So I suppressed it, got married, and had kids.” The feeling didn’t go away.
Then, around 2012, Tennyson read a story that changed her life. It was about a closeted transgender woman who requested in her will that she be buried as a woman because it would be the only time she’d get to be her true self.
“That hit me like a ton of bricks,” Tennyson told me. At the time, Tennyson was running her own firm, and still suppressing what she knew was her real identity. So she found a therapist, started taking hormones, and never looked back. As she began to transition, Tennyson’s firm bought her out, which she suspected was “because they were uncomfortable with who I was.” The buy-out propelled Tennyson into another transition: figuring out what she would do next. She spent six months “sitting in a lot of rage” about her circumstances, until she had a revelation that illuminated the path forward.
“I was getting caught up in whether people accepted or rejected me – but the only thing I could control is me,” she told me. “All I can do is show up as my best self, my authentic self.”
Today, helping members of the LGBTQIA+ community get comfortable with expressing who they are – and letting go of their desire to please or placate others – is a focus for her as an executive coach. It’s something many of the other queer-identifying executive coaches I spoke to said they work on with their clients. And it’s a focus that not only has benefits for the individuals they work with, but for their organizations, too.
For instance, research suggests that belonging is the top driver of employee engagement. Whether or not you feel like you can be yourself, and be accepted for who you are, is a big part of whether or not you feel like you belong. Employee engagement, in turn, is linked to increased revenue, productivity, and performance.
Tennyson has also done research connecting employees’ comfort in being themselves at work with business outcomes. Her research, published in 2021, found men who were out of the closet were 30% more engaged and productive than those who were closeted. “This makes sense when you think of all the energy required to manage who you are when you show up to work, and in particular how many audiences you are trying to manage that identity with,” she says.
Many members of the LGBTQIA + community are faced with the question of how much of their identities they want to bring into the workplace. But in today’s legislative environment, where states across the country are passing or considering bills to target LGBTQIA+ rights, and the Human Rights Campaign recently declared a state of emergency for the community, this question is harder than ever to answer. According to research from Indeed, more than one in four LGBTQIA+ employees aren’t comfortable being out at work, and the majority believe they may have been discriminated against because of their identity – getting passed over for promotion (60%) or being targeted for a performance improvement plan (57%). Thirty-eight percent of trans-identifying employees feel they need to hide their identity at work. 65% are worried about new legislation, and how it could impact their lives and work.
“It’s a huge challenge coaching around these issues right now,” says Brandy Simula, an executive coach who also identifies as queer. “Folks are feeling significantly under attack, sometimes working for employers who are scaling back their resourcing of LGBTQ benefits. They’re wondering: is it more dangerous to be out? Do I need to go in the closet to get a job, because of what we’re seeing happening with layoffs? There’s a lot of pain and grief happening for folks in the workplace right now, different from what I’ve seen in the last 10 years.”
Unlike individuals with other underrepresented identities that are clearly visible (such as different racial groups), members of this community can, at least superficially, have a choice as to how visible they want to make their identity to the outside world. And yet, if they sense that being ‘out’ about who they truly are will set them up for discrimination or harassment, it’s not a real choice.
How, then, to reckon with this reality? How does someone decide whether or not it’s safe to be who they are, or who they want to show up as in the first place?
For executive coach Steve Disselhorst, one of the first steps is encouraging his queer-identifying clients to get curious about “which part of their identity is holding them back” at work. “For example, for a gay man that was previously bullied by men, being in a board meeting or a leadership meeting could be a trigger. So it’s about helping them identify – what part of this story do you want to hold onto? What do you want to let go of? Who do you want to become? This is the story of what happened to you in the past. But is it true in this board room?”
Tennyson uses other questions to challenge her clients’ beliefs about why they may be hiding parts of their identity: why do you care what other people think? Why is it important to you? Can you really do anything about it? The act of coming out, or being your true self, is one of “validation and not affirmation,” she reminds them. By being your true self, you’re validating yourself, not seeking affirmation from others.
One of the biggest lessons Simula has taken away is “how common it is for people to have an invisible identity.” In addition to identifying as queer, Simula also has an invisible disability. But here, she makes an important caveat: “Just because someone has an identity doesn’t mean it’s necessarily core to who they are, and that they want to show up that way at work.”
If it is something they want to make more visible, it’s important for them to sift through both conceptual and practical considerations. Conceptual questions Simula might walk her clients through include: Who am I? What really matters to me? How do I want to show up? Who do I want my employer to see or know me as? On the practical side, they might talk through whether someone will include that they volunteered for an LGBTQIA+ organization on their LinkedIn or resume, or what experiences they might talk about in interviews.
Simula also coaches leaders and managers who want to be allies to the community. Her guidance to them is three-fold:
The other side of that, of course, is what happens when communities are not erased. When individuals from previously unrecognized communities are given an opportunity to not only better understand who they are, but to show up, undivided, at work. Tennyson’s research asks us to consider “behavioral authenticity as a driver of corporate guidance and governance.”
In other words, as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community who can be honest about who she is at work, she then “has the privilege and difficulty of sitting in a space and saying, ‘why are we doing this?’” She can challenge the decisions her workplace is making because she is secure in who she is, and what matters to her. “Now,” she says. “I get to change the paradigm.”
What, or who, has had the greatest influence on who you are as a leader? How about the greatest influence on your ability to learn and grow at work?
If you’re like most people, you probably won’t cite that one-day leadership training you attended three years ago, or the online course you took. It’s more likely that the thing that has had the greatest impact on your behavior as a leader isn’t a thing at all, but a person–a coach, a mentor, a trusted manager.
This is borne out not just on a micro-level, but a macro one.
According to recent research conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, sponsored by Torch, leadership skills training is the most commonly used development method among the 665 organizational leaders surveyed. But only 35% of respondents rate skills training as extremely or very effective to achieving their desired results, compared to 60% for coaching.
The authors of this Harvard Business Review piece sum up the situation many organizations find themselves in: “Corporations are victims of the great training robbery,” they write. “American companies spend enormous amounts of money on employee training and education…but they are not getting a good return on their investment. For the most part, the learning doesn’t lead to better organizational performance, because people soon revert to their old ways of doing things.”
Fortunately, there’s a better way–one that improves organizational performance and makes people more likely to change their behavior. But before we get to the solution, it’s crucial to better understand the problem that this gap reveals: Why do organizations keep investing in training, if it’s widely acknowledged to be ineffective?
One contributor is our struggle to make decisions with long-term outcomes in mind. Most humans are programmed with present bias, or a tendency to choose a small gain in the present versus a larger reward in the future. A simple example of this is the decision to press snooze in the morning instead of going for a jog. You may get a few extra minutes of sleep, but that may not help you achieve your long-term fitness goals. Another contributor is something called status quo bias, which is our tendency to want to maintain what we have going, rather than opting for what can feel like a disruptive change. And finally, there’s the bandwagon effect, or our tendency to do something because we think others in our network are doing them, too.
For many organizational leaders, training offers all of these things: the promise of short-term gains, the ease of sticking to the status quo, and the feeling that you are following the path of other smart people. If your organization has always done leadership training, it doesn’t take any extra work to get buy-in to do it, so it might seem like you’re saving time (and it may feel right, because it’s the way you’ve always done things). It’s a scaled solution that appears to work while it’s happening or even in the few days after a great training session. It’s easy to think that it’s probably the right thing to do if everyone else is doing it.
The problem is that even the best training sessions aren’t designed to do what most organizations want them to do: enable leaders to learn, grow and sustainably change their behaviors. For one thing, virtual trainings or classes have anemic completion rates – generally between 5-15% – and even if they are completed, most participants forget about 75% of what they learn within six days.
Coaching, on the other hand, is a research-backed method for changing behavior – at the individual, team and organizational levels. We’ve found from our data at Torch that 100% of coaching participants changed in at least one way from their engagement, with the average participant changing in eight ways in the following categories:
Some of these changes can even predict whether someone stays at the organization or moves up: 94% of coaching participants changed in at least one way related to retention, and 89% changed in at least one way related to promotion. And when individuals are coached, their teams benefit. Research shows that direct reports of coached managers are more likely to be satisfied at work, stay, and commit to their organizations. At the organizational level, the International Coaching Federation has linked coaching to higher performance, higher retention, and higher engagement.
What makes coaching more effective than training? It boils down to three key characteristics:
There was a problem with a woman, and so the CEO of the company called Phyllis Reagin. A Torch executive coach and former Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Warner Brothers, Reagin is often called in to solve this particular kind of problem.
The woman in question was Black. Senior leaders told Reagin they could see she had potential. But–and there was always a ‘but’–she was too aggressive.
“They wanted coaching to focus on helping her to be nicer,” Reagin recalls. This was an incongruous ask, Reagin says, because the organization was a high-profile entertainment company. “That’s a really tough business–rarely is anyone else being asked to ‘play nicer’ with others.”
In these cases, there are generally growth opportunities for the person being suggested for coaching–as there are for all of us. But when it comes to this criticism of Black women there’s usually a hidden motivation, one that may even be invisible to organizational leaders: “, ‘They aren’t like us and we want them to be like us so fix them,” Reagin told me. “Fix them to sound like what I think a leader should sound like.’”
It’s a barrier executive coaches, particularly coaches of underrepresented women, face frequently: they’re tasked with coaching a woman who is facing workplace barriers that, in many cases, are largely outside of her control. The barriers both reflect the unconscious biases of superiors and systemic racism that’s woven into practices and policies. How do coaches of underrepresented women navigate this tension between the individual and the systemic? And how can their insights help women to find power in a system often designed to take it away?
First, let’s look at what the current state of affairs looks like for women in the workplace. In a word, it’s patchy: while women are making some progress in ascending to leadership roles, only one in four C-Suite leaders is a woman, and only one in 20 is a woman of color, according to the McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2022 report. The gender pay gap has remained “relatively stable” for the past two decades, according to Pew Research. Women are still less likely to have the kinds of networks that help them get their next, better opportunities.
Reagin, who identifies as a Black woman, sees her role as helping the women she coaches find clarity–about the reality of their organizational environments, and that even inside those environments they still have power, agency, and choice. In the case of the music company, the goal was to help her coachee make a decision about what she wanted to deal with, and what she didn’t, at work. Reagin guided her through an exploration of what can be scary questions:
Many executive coaches of underrepresented women point to one strategy over all others: helping their underrepresented women clients to form strong relationships inside their organization. Not just with their manager and peers, but with other potential sponsors, mentors and champions.
Women of color especially are less likely to have friends and family who are executives or in senior leadership positions. Many are first time college graduates, or first time corporate employees, so their network can be limited. The key challenge Executive Coach Sophia Toh addresses with her clients is “how to build their network, and to seek out building authentic connections with mentors, sponsors and advisors.”
“Very rarely do I have women telling me that they don’t deserve job anymore,” says Toh. “They’ve already proven their capabilities. They know they’re good enough. , they’re wondering if they can make it because they can’t get into the bro’ club.”
Toh learned the importance of building a strong network from her days as an executive, investing hours in relationship-building to make sure others knew who she was “beyond just my label of Asian woman.” When systemic challenges arose, she leveraged those allies to support and advocate for her. What Toh did is something executive coach Karuna Thomas refers to as creating a personal board of directors (PBOD). Your PBOD should consist of people championing and advocating for your work at all levels of an organization, she says. In her practice, she sees women focused on trying to climb the ladder by getting more qualifications–another MBA, another master’s–but still getting turned down for a promotion. Case in point: Black women are the most educated demographic in the U.S., but it takes 3.6 years for black women to get promoted to a managerial position if she pursues it directly after college, compared to 2.1 years for a White woman. For underrepresented women, standards and expectations can shift, causing confusion about how they can actually progress to the next level. This is where their PBOD comes in.
Though managers can play a significant role in helping their direct reports advance, it’s important that women see them as part of a larger cohort–especially if their manager isn’t supportive. “If their manager isn’t having those conversations and isn’t an advocate, ‘who could be?’” says Reagin. “Who could I talk to cross-functionally who could give me a career stretch I won’t be offered otherwise? Or how do I put myself in rooms I’m not normally invited to?”
But ideally, managers are playing a key role in helping their direct reports to advance. And that starts with getting to know who they are as humans, building a foundation of trust and care.
“There are a lot of good managers who, out of politeness, are hesitant to show their curiosity to get to know their employees as individuals with unique backgrounds and needs, and bet on people who may have leadership styles different from theirs, ” Toh says. But this can create an unfortunate domino effect. If managers don’t carve out time for conversations to learn who their direct reports are outside of work, they don’t develop trusting relationships. Without trust, there’s no psychological safety, and their direct reports are less likely to get candid feedback they need to learn and grow.
Thomas recommends leaders use the three As to guide their management of underrepresented women–awareness, access and advocacy.
When Reagin was the head of diversity and inclusion at Warner Brothers, the most important individual-level change she saw in managers “was when they concentrated on relationships–connecting to people and seeing they have the same interests and motivations.”
To help the process along, Reagin used to host events for TV executives and film producers to introduce them to underrepresented talent. But the focus wasn’t on DEI–it was on having fun, on getting to know the others in the room as humans first. Suddenly, she saw more people being selected for top productions, and other projects blossoming.
Systemic change is critical for any organization that’s serious about advancing underrepresented women. “But it’s only as effective as the people who will drive it,” says Reagin.
And the leaders who drive it, while often well-intentioned, can struggle to move from awareness to action. Worse, they may not even know what the problem really is–like the executives at the entertainment company who assumed the problem was with the senior Black woman, rather than organizational culture. To paraphrase Taylor Swift, sometimes the problem is you.
But this, too, is where coaches can help. By helping leaders and managers see their biases in a safe environment and holding them accountable to address them, coaches like Reagin, Toh, and Thomas can create a ripple effect that extends beyond the individual to their teams, and to the entire organization, helping to create workplace systems that are inclusive and equitable for all.
At a recent tech company Black History Month fireside chat, Keshawn Hughes got a familiar question from an audience member. A Black attendee asked her: “What can I do to advance my career? What’s the average timeline for promotion and advancement?”
For Hughes, Torch executive coach, an International Coaching Federation certified neuro-coach, and a leadership consultant who serves in the top 1 percent of coaches with neuroscience expertise, she immediately thought of a statistic from a book she’d read recently. It’s about the ways in which Black and White women’s paths diverge on the path to establishing themselves professionally.
The statistic: It takes 2.1 years for White women to achieve a managerial position if she pursues it directly after college, versus 3.6 years for Black women. To her, it’s a stark illustration of how Black people are more likely to experience lags in career progression compared to White people with the same education and experience level.
Or even compared to White people with less education and experience. After all, Black women are the most educated demographic in the United States of America.
“Imagine the emotional, psychological, and physical toll this takes over time to try and succeed and not experience just acknowledgment, rewards, or recognition for your positive efforts,” Hughes reflects.
How then, in the context of systemic and cultural racism, does Hughes show up for her Black coachees? What are the unique challenges they face, and how is she helping them to overcome them? What does she wish managers of Black leaders knew? Below, Hughes reflects on these questions, sharing insights that should guide any organizational leader long after Black History Month concludes.
The Black leaders I’ve worked with want guidance on ways to effectively advance in their careers as they set boundaries, protect their energy, and navigate negative blowback.
Many are high achieving due to deeply ingrained cultural messages encouraging them to work twice as hard to get half as much and half as far. There is little room for error, mistakes, creativity, risk-taking, or wonder, which are qualities and experiences people need to grow and develop as leaders.
Options like quiet quitting seem unrealistic to Black workers who feel they must overperform to survive and maintain their current position. They are more likely to experience quiet firing or symptoms connected to it, like being excluded, micromanaged, heavily scrutinized, and overlooked for promotions and advancement opportunities.
There are inherent, implicit, and explicit expectations for Black people to work harder for less. This can activate career stagnation and survival-based responses to maintain the status quo and may sound like Black workers saying, “I’m just happy to have a job.” Or, “I’ll just keep my head down, work hard and maybe someday be acknowledged for my solid work ethic, commitment, and loyalty.”
Yet, Black women and men remain highly ambitious in spite of the obstacles they face.
One example is that Black people are often penalized for advertising their competence, abilities, and accomplishments at work. My coaching client set this as a direct goal to work on because, according to her, she struggles with verbally asserting her aspirations and goals beyond her current role. She says this is something that savvy people (especially men and White women) know how to do.
As a coach, it’s important for me to approach this challenge in a way that does not reinforce imposter syndrome, guilt, or not-enoughness in seeing herself as not savvy. There are unique biases she must navigate as a Black woman that her male and white female peers, colleagues, and counterparts do not deal with.
Here are three other strategies I’ve found work at the organizational level:
Black employees and leaders face significant levels of distress distinct from other groups of people. According to the American Psychological Association Stress in America Report, 56% of Black adults under the age of 35 are so stressed they can’t function, and 75% of Black adults said that the racial climate in the U.S. is a significant source of stress.
Since countless business leaders and organizations have pledged to make employee health and well-being a top priority, there must be awareness and active mitigation to address this. Black employee stress is not a singular problem to be addressed on an individual basis. It’s a collective challenge we must address together. Helping the most marginalized communities provides benefits across identity categories.
Want to hear more from Keshawn Hughes? Check out our recent conversation all about inclusive leadership development here.
What does it mean to be strategic at a time when the world–and work–is changing constantly? How do we equip leaders with the new skills they need to address our most significant challenges? What does the future of leadership development look like, and how is it already evolving?
If you’re like many people leaders, you’ve probably had questions like these on your mind over the past few years. Today, we’re expecting more from our leaders. We rely on them not only to drive revenue, growth, retention, engagement and productivity, but also to help us navigate our unpredictable and ambiguous world. We need them to be skilled relationship builders who inspire and enable others to reach their full potential.
With greater expectations of our leaders, leadership development programs are more important than ever. But for many organizations, those programs are stuck in the past. They develop a narrow set of skills, and leverage old, and often ineffective, ways of teaching them. It’s not surprising that 67% of executives say their leadership development programs don’t work, according to research from i4cp.
We think a lot about this problem at Torch, and especially this question: how should organizations adapt their leadership development strategies to make sure they’re driving business results?
A new Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report, sponsored by Torch, has an answer. The research explores how leadership development is evolving as a whole, and distills best practices from organizations that are achieving desired results from their programs.
The research divides respondents–665 organizational leaders from across industries and around the world–into three categories: leaders, followers and laggards. This categorization is based on whether or not respondents reported that their leadership development program is delivering against desired results.
Here are four key takeaways from the research:
Of the dozens of challenging skills you’re expected to learn as a leader – empathy, emotional regulation, leading through uncertainty – there’s one that may seem deceptively straightforward: designing structure for your teams. Decades of research supports the idea that high-performing teams and organizations are helmed by leaders who set goals, expectations and timelines and hold individuals and teams accountable for their performance (all elements of how we define structure at Torch).
But what makes a leader great at providing structure is more complex than simply mastering the art of developing complicated Gantt charts, or providing quality feedback during a performance review (even though those are enviable skills, to be sure). The other qualities of structured leaders become clearer when we ask a basic question: what’s the point of designing structure for teams and individuals?
The surface-level answer: structure helps people stay aligned with team and organizational objectives, to execute their work faster and more effectively. Underneath this layer are others. Done well, creating structure also helps individuals find meaning in their work by connecting it to a larger purpose, and can build trust and strengthen relationships.
“The way we structure and design our team members’ work directly influences how meaningful it is,” writes Rachel Pacheco, the management author and Wharton Business School lecturer, in her book Bringing Up the Boss.
How are structure, meaning and purpose connected, exactly?
Pacheco cites organizational psychologist Richard Hackman’s five design choices that, when used to structure a job, can “increase the sense of purpose and fulfillment someone has in their job” along with increasing “their motivation and overall satisfaction at work.”
Those choices are:
The gist is that the more you can help design tasks and projects where individuals can do a variety of things, get feedback on the results and impact of their work, feel a sense of ownership over it, and see how it’s impacting the lives of others, the more engaged they’ll be. This sense of purpose and fulfillment may make it easier for them to find meaning in the work that they are doing.
Beyond these design features, Hackman’s research has also pointed to key conditions that support team effectiveness overall, emphasizing the importance of structure that encourages collaboration, and a clearly defined purpose that gives the work larger meaning.
Structure can also be a conduit for building trust. Teams where each member knows their role, what’s expected of them, and knows that they and others will be held accountable for their work, are teams where it’s easier to trust that your teammate will do what they say they’re going to do. And trust is a key ingredient for strengthening relationships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a focus on cultivating b relationships is one of the most important qualities of high-performing teams, according to recent research conducted by social psychologist Ron Friedman and the company Front.
Taken together, there’s a larger takeaway from all of this research: Designing structure for teams is about not only considering the inputs – the tasks, the timelines, the expectations – but also considering the desired outcomes: building trust, and helping team members discover a greater sense of meaning and purpose.
What are the consequences of neglecting these outcomes? Simply put – your people might try to find that sense of purpose and meaning elsewhere. Indeed, research has suggested that a sense of purpose is linked to retention. While that isn’t necessarily a problem on its own, ideally, your people would be able to find meaning and purpose both inside and outside of work.
A recent McKinsey study found that 70 percent of employees said their sense of purpose is mostly defined by their jobs, but only 15 percent of frontline managers and frontline employees agreed that they were living their purpose during their day-to-day work ( compared with 85 percent of executives and upper management). Nearly half of those employees disagreed with the statement. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said they wanted their employer to give them more opportunities to connect their work to a larger sense of purpose.
If you’d like to become a more structured leader, rest assured that you’re not alone. Indeed, structure is the most common learning goal among Torch coachees,(with 14 percent of users selecting it as a goal). As part of the Torch 360 assessment, a Torch coachee asks a set of coworkers to assess them on nine different leadership skills. When the analysis shows that a skill is a hidden strength, this means coworkers assessed the coachee as being ber in that skill than the coachee’s self-assessment. , Structure is also the most common hidden strength (24 percent of users) according to our 360 assessment data.
According to McKinsey, a key part of helping direct reports discover their own sense of meaning and purpose starts with sharing your sense of purpose with them, and cultivating an environment of psychological safety that allows them to feel comfortable sharing with you.
But perhaps you’re not clear on why you get up and do your work every day – what you find makes your work meaningful and creates a sense of day-to-day purpose. For those who are still figuring this out, intentional conversations with coaches, mentors, or trusted advisors can help you develop greater self-awareness, and even be inspired by the meaning that others have found in their work.
As a leader or manager, you can also create an environment that prioritizes building trusted relationships. That means modeling and encouraging behaviors like consistently expressing appreciation for the work teammates do, leaving time on team calls for check-ins on someone’s life outside of work, and, if possible, finding time to see teammates in real life.
When I first met Anne-Marie Slaughter, it felt like encountering a celebrity. This was 2013, a year after she published an article in the Atlantic – Why Women Still Can’t Have it All – which had gone viral. It described the challenges she faced trying to balance work and family as the Director of Policy Planning for then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and her epiphany about the stalled gender equality movement. Like many people, I’d devoured the article, pondering what it meant for my own life and career trajectory.
And then came the announcement: She was going to become the new president at New America, the nonpartisan think tank where I worked.
During her first visit to the New America office, she surprised me by walking up to my cubicle – I was just a lowly junior staffer! – peppering me with questions, and seeming to genuinely care about my opinions. Over the next few years, she would become one of my mentors, nurturing my ambition and proving to be an inspiring example of leadership.
This was true even in times of crisis – like the one she faced in 2017 when an employee publicly accused her of firing him and his colleagues because of funder pressure. It challenged what she knew about leadership and changed her forever.
What spurred those changes? Part of it was the situation, and part of it was the people who surrounded her afterwards: a coach, trusted colleagues and board members – people who encouraged her to lean into the criticism and become a more receptive leader.
Her new book about the lessons of that 2017 crisis is called Renewal. As part of the Torch Lead By the Book leadership conversation series, I sat down with her to talk about what it means to lead from the edge and the center, the “constant unfolding” of leadership, and what we can learn from tracking our questions. Our edited conversation is below.
One of the themes that I emphasized in the whole idea of renewal is being able to look in the mirror and see yourself the way others see you. I thought of myself as a horizontal leader – in other words, somebody who minimized hierarchy and was inclusive. In fact, that’s not how many others at New America experienced my leadership. I was not letting myself be in a situation where I was listening as much as I was talking, where I was hearing not just what other people felt, but what they thought about where we might be able to go .
I’ve now come to think about leading more like a process of flattening the hierarchy where you can and recognizing that sometimes it will need to pop back up. It’s almost like taking an accordion and turning it on its side. So sometimes it’s up, and then sometimes you can flatten it.
Even when you have those participatory, less hierarchical spaces, you have to make a very deliberate effort to hear from those that are on the edge . People at the edge of the web are also at the bottom of the ladder. They are the people who often feel like they have the least power or the least connection. I’m not going to say I’ve mastered this, but at least I understand how to think about it and how to try to create settings in which that can work.
One step is to hold office hours, which I do regularly. Anyone can sign up. More formally, I have found that sharing power with someone who does not look like me has made a huge difference. The last thing is very deliberately to structure processes where you have managers and staff all on an equal plane. For us, that’s been our equity process, where with the guidance of a spectacular consultant, we’ve had equity trainings that are not your usual trainings. Staff break into groups of four or five, and you just have no idea who is going to be in that group – directors, junior policy analysts, people from central services. Everyone is learning together in a way that is much more equal.
The advice I got from a board member when New America was in crisis was, “run towards the criticism.” And I think about it still when I’m feeling defensive. I remind myself, ‘lean toward it, ask for it. Find ways to make it easy for people to tell you what they think.’
In those situations, I often use the technique of self-deprecating humor. So if I suspect that the people around me are thinking, ‘Oh, God, here she goes again,’ I’ll voice that: ‘So I’m sure you all are thinking X.’ And they may not be exactly thinking X. But it gives them the freedom to tell me more of what they’re really thinking. Honestly, I don’t know how you can lead if people aren’t telling you what they’re really thinking.
I’m not suggesting we define ourselves only in the eyes of others. But I am saying all of us know that we’ve got things we’ve got to work on. And where you feel the most defensive, that’s a good guide . I think you feel stronger and better rather than putting barricades up against something you know inside is right.
Yes, that is absolutely right. Some of the very best leaders I know are wonderfully self-deprecating in a way that does not undermine their gravitas. And I know a lot of people worry, particularly if you’re a woman, that you have to maintain a certain gravitas. But I think you can project confidence with the very ability to laugh at yourself.
I got that from John Gardner, who’s also written about renewal. He says the hostile person keeps asking ‘why are other people so unpleasant?’ If you keep asking, ‘Why won’t this person just agree with me?’ Or ‘why are people so unpleasant?’ and you find you’re asking this across multiple interactions, that’s telling you something about you, not about them.
I tend to be very high energy, and I want to do all sorts of things. And I love to transform places. As I moved from job to job, I found myself asking, ‘why aren’t other people as enthusiastic about changes as I am? Why don’t they see this great vision?’ Over time, I realized it wasn’t that people weren’t excited about change, it was that I was overloading them. One of my deficits is I don’t think through all the steps that are going to take to realize something. But if you’re somebody who’s trying to implement what you think I want, and I’m giving you the fourth idea of the month, you get burned out, you get exhausted.
It’s essentially spotting patterns. As you begin to identify your own reaction to other situations, you can start to realize, maybe it’s me.
I was talking to my husband and son the other day about a great conductor. On his deathbed, he said, “I think now I know a little something about Mozart.”
I thought, that’s exactly it. It is a constant unfolding. And part of that is you yourself aging, but also accreting experience and processing later experience in light of earlier experience. There’s always more to learn. I’m over 60 and I’m learning to lead collaboratively. When I started leading, it was much more important for me to project confidence, to be more in that masculine kind of image of what leadership is. It’s also because I was a younger woman, and I’m now older.
It’s a constant process of learning. If you’re not continuing to learn and grow, then it’s time to find something else to do.
