How Can We Create Organizational Cultures that Welcome Women Who Lean In?

Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In urges women to take a seat at the table, raise our hands and use our voices. I completely agree.

And I think there is a larger question to be asked: What are women leaning into?

Organizations could hire the brightest and most experienced woman for their teams. Yet if the organizational culture isn’t prepared to welcome this type of diversity, the woman will leave. This is an expensive problem, since it costs 2.5-4 times someone’s salary to replace her. I don’t know many organizations that can afford this. Do you?

Think of it like a kidney operation vs. a carburetor replacement. To replace a carburetor, a mechanic with the right skills, tools and knowledge, can replace the carburetor without a hitch. A qualified doctor could have the skills, tools and knowledge to replace a kidney and fail. Why? Because the human body is a living, complex organism that can reject a kidney.

Organizations are also living, breathing organisms and ecosystems, full of complex people. As Drucker said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In other words, if the organizational culture is not ready for strategic changes, it’ll gobble up a change initiative despite the best planning and strategy.

So if organizational culture eats a change strategy for breakfast, imagine what culture will do to diversity?

I work with Fortune 500 companies and can’t tell you how many organizations are hemorrhaging top female talent because the organization doesn’t have a culture that embraces diversity of all kinds, including gender. These companies pay top dollar to recruit high performing women, yet the culture squashes gender diversity like a bug and the women leave for a better opportunity, sometimes for even less pay.

Organizational culture is created by values, attitudes and behaviors. What are the values the organization holds important? What are the attitudes that employees need to have around the values? And how do the employees, even at the top, behave around the values? If there is consistency and congruency, the organizational culture is aligned with its values. If there is inconsistency in the behaviors or attitudes, then the culture is misaligned, which causes friction, low morale and eventual attrition.

An example: often organizations recruit top female talent, urging them to break glass ceilings. Yet once the woman onboards into the organizational culture, there are informal norms that do not support the woman, such as little flex-time for parenting or taking care of aging family members, expectations to work 24/7 and travel regularly, inappropriate language that is condoned, and focus on results over everything else.

Now let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with a “burn ‘em and churn ‘em” culture, as long as the culture is aligned and everyone knows what to expect, which means that HR knows they’ll have high attrition and employees know they’ll earn big bucks for 2-3 years and then burn out. The problem is when an organization says one thing and does something else, such as when an organization says it wants women to lean in, but the informal norms don’t support the women that do.

Should women lean in? Absolutely. Only 19% of women are in the C-suite, which means that a majority of organizations are losing diversity of thought. The question though is: how can we create organizational cultures that welcome women who do lean in?