I asked Sheryl Sandberg what advice she would give to senior managers who are keen to really level off the diversity gap at the top? What really makes a difference in her experience as COO of Facebook Meta and also as the Founder of the Lean In Foundation? 

“I love that question. Because if things are really going to change it is the majority group at the top who will have to change it. And in any culture in the world that is still largely non-minority men, in America, white men, in other parts of the world, not necessarily.  

To change the dynamic they can do a couple of things. One is, we need to recognise that their mentorship needs to be explicit. If you are a man at the top, you need to go out of your way to find the women and the women of colour that you can mentor. I've talked to so many men about this. And they say that when they do that it is absolutely such a rewarding experience. I think even before that, you need to recognise why you're doing it. For too long we've told people this is the right thing to do. That's great, and it certainly is the right thing to do. But what managers are really motivated by is the smart thing to do for your company and that means recognising that diversity of thought is necessary to make the best decisions. And you get to diversity of thought by having diversity of backgrounds and making sure people feel comfortable sharing their diverse thoughts.

A diverse leadership group leads to better results, better products that speak to more people, better managers. We see in our survey data from Lean In that female managers are more focused on helping people through difficult times, female managers are more focused on helping people at times of COVID for instance, and everyone cares about that – particularly now!. And so if you recognise that this is good for your business, that it's the smart thing to do. I think you then have the motivation to put in the effort to get it done.”

Diversity, Sandberg stresses, is not just a nice to have – it makes for a more successful company. In the latest Lean In research they found that senior women in an organisation are 68% more likely to mentor and look after younger women of colour and other more diverse folks within the organisation than men at the same level. Diversity is not just about race but also about age, socio-economic background, neurodiversity and sexuality. The study proves that when older, more senior  women leave organisations, a lot of that kind of informal mentoring and support goes and diversity suffers. 

That leads us on to Sheryl’s own departure from Meta. I asked if she could tell us her motivation for moving on?  “So I did decide after 14 years to leave my my day job as COO of Meta. You know, when I took this job, 15 years ago, Dave, my late husband and I, he said to me, you can't do this, you can't leave Google and go to Facebook, unless you think you can do this role for five years.  I thought about it and then I got a chance to spend a little bit of time with Mark [Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder].  Mark then was 23 years old, living in a studio, not a one bedroom, but a real studio apartment, with a mattress on the floor, which is why we always met at my house after that! But I thought when we first met: I can work for this person, I think for five years. And you know, these are jobs that have a life cycle. And I'm really proud of a lot of the things we've done at Meta, proud of the products we made, the investments we made. But 14 years into a five year job, it's time for me to write the next chapter of my life.”

What is she planning to do next? “You asked about my foundation and my passion for doing work for women. It is as alive and robust as ever, and I am glad in the next chapter of my life, to have more time and space for that passion. The idea is to mentor women and support women and sponsor women, and have everyone recognise that they need at least 30% women on their boards, if possible 50% - that really is the basis of diversity. So representation of women at the highest level and supporting and mentoring women to get them there.”

Over the years Sheryl’s Lean In Foundation has made huge efforts to change the zeitgeist around female leaders, why is that so important? “Well girls are called bossy, not boys. Women are told they're too aggressive, where as men are not. And when in our culture you say things like: She's ambitious, that has like a little bit of a negative…. But when you say: He's ambitious, he’s trying to do well for his company… it’s positive. It is important in the diversity conversation to inform people about bias and systemic barriers that women, and particularly women of colour, face. And of course women in later years hit problems too. I see often that do not get the mentorship and sponsorship men do because people in power tend to mentor and sponsor people like them. You know, if you are a white man who plays golf, you are actually more likely to mentor a white man. So that means since there are more white men in the hierarchy it means people of colour and it means women and it means particularly women of colour don't get as much mentorship and sponsorship as they should. So what helps in boosting diversity is saying to men, you should mentor women and women of colour.”

Since the publication of her book, Lean In, a decade ago, she has established 66,000 Lean In circles in 178 countries, where women support and encourage other women. “That kind of peer mentorship is so important. I believe women should have 30%, 50% yes even 60% or 70% of the top jobs. And I believe mentoring is the way to get there. “

So why does she think the number of female CEOs is so slow to shift? “So every year Lean In my foundation and McKinsey and Company, global consulting firm, releases an annual Women in the Workplace report, which we believe at this point is the largest of its kind. And we've released it for eight years. And what it shows is, we're not really getting that much further. When LeanIn was first published, 5% of Fortune 500 CEO jobs went to women. Today we have eight. We are seeing modest gains in the pipeline, mostly in senior leadership, we've gotten representation of women at the SVP level to 28%. But not progress at the very, very, very top. One of the things that report has been very good at highlighting is why. The critical missing piece for women is what we call the broken rung, which is the first promotion to manager. That is the first time women fall behind. Women and men are coming into the workforce in equal numbers, they're getting those entry level jobs. But that is where the bifurcation starts and when men start pulling ahead of women, and particularly women of colour. It’s all about that first promotion to manager. That makes sense, because what the research tells us is that men are hired and promoted for their skills and their abilities. Women are hired and promoted for their experience. We believe Men can do it, so we give them a shot. Women? Not so much. You can't prove you're a manager until you're a manager and we don’t promote women on potential in the way we do men, and the data shows that. 

But the data also shows that the day to day experiences of women of colour are not improving. And that is a very serious issue. Women of colour face frequent microaggressions. Today in this report, as they did in 2019, when we first started deeply looking at this, they're more likely to experience disrespectful and othering in behaviour. This happens to 5% of white women, that's too many. It happens to 11% of Asian women, 13% of Latinos and 18% of black women. So you can see that this is a problem women face more than men, but really women of colour are facing in an overwhelming way. So we are focused, we are focused on the discrimination on women of colour. And we are focused on that first critical, broken run, where women do not get started on the path to the C suite.”

Copyright Eleanor Mills, The Inclusion Edit