Two months into Elon’s CEOship at Twitter, he put out a poll asking if he should resign as Twitter CEO. About 60% of the pollsters encouraged him to resign. Musk tweeted that he would resign as CEO as soon as he found someone foolish enough to take the job. In May 2023, he found that “foolish person”: Linda Yaccarino, who previously led global advertising at NBCUniversal. Think of the Twitter landscape at the time of her appointment: Twitter was said to not be doing too well, advertisers were fleeing, revenue was falling, there were layoffs and Elon said he wished to bring some of them back, Twitter earnings fell about 40%, Twitter Blue didn’t gain the traction it desired and more. Was Yaccarino in a position to take Twitter to greater heights? Or was it already in a downward spiral? Will the Twitter board support her vision?
If you’re a woman and you have broken the glass ceiling, congratulations! That glass ceiling is that invisible barrier that prevents you from getting any further ahead and doesn’t allow you to move to higher roles, simply because of your gender and because of implicit biases, rather than any substantial reason you couldn’t advance. Well, you’ve broken that and you’ve gotten ahead. Things have gotten easier, right? Now, it’s all smooth-sailing, right? Sorry, the picture still has a remaining runtime. There’s something else made of glass that needs to be broken. And that glass thing is a cliff.
In a Harvard Business Review study, a group of about 120 students were assigned an article with two scenarios of a supermarket chain doing well and doing badly. Both scenarios had the current CEO of that chain on the verge of replacement. Descriptions of a male and female candidate were provided and the students were asked to evaluate strengths in different areas, like communication, motivation, decisiveness, competitiveness and more and also, indicate preference for a CEO candidate. According to the results, when a company was doing well, about 70% of the students chose the male candidate to lead the successful company and about 60% of students chose the female candidate to lead the company in crisis.
This glass cliff actually means that when a company is in crisis mode, in terms of performance, it’s going to turn to a female leader to lead a sinking ship. And while that woman may feel, “Finally, I’ve made it!” and others may celebrate that there’s another female leader in the corporate world, what people may not know is that she’s being set up to fail. In many cases, she was, then, fired for being responsible for the company’s poor performance and replaced by a male. And, then, she’s fallaciously used as an example of why women make terrible leaders. That’s the glass cliff for you. So, women facing the glass cliff situation have to not just lead the company, but are expected to save the company. Also, there’s a PwC report from 2014 that while the number of female CEOs at large companies is growing, nearly 40% of them are forced out of office, compared to about 30% of males. Does the report from nearly 10 years ago still have validity here? And if so, are female leaders having to pay a risk tax?
It’s almost maternal or familial. Things are going terribly at home, you’re late for school, you can’t find your socks, who do you turn to? Mom, of course, if you’re a child of a heteros*xual couple! And if Mom, somehow, can’t find your socks, it’s not you that’s disorganized; how could Mom not know where things are? What’s wrong with her?
And it may be a lose-lose situation. If you accept the new position and you fail, you may not get a second chance and you’ll be branded a losing leader. And if the company succeeds under your leadership, there could be doubts in the future, when it comes to your capabilities, and you’ll have to keep proving yourself.
There are more Western examples than there are Indian ones. There’s a US department chain store called JC Penney, which named its first female CEO in its 116-year history, Jill Soltau in 2018. Sounds like a step forward right? Proof that diversity is winning? Unfortunately, not really. The enterprise was posting losses after losses every quarter and drowning in debt and in 2020, it filed for bankruptcy, with Jill Soltau being asked to step down in the same year. So, it becomes one step forward, two steps back.
Marissa Mayer was seven months pregnant, when she was appointed as CEO of Yahoo! in 2012 at a time when the company was losing significant market share to Google. She, reportedly, received a lot of backlash for her assumed inability to lead and raise a kid at the same time. She resigned in 2017, with the company’s performance continuing to fail and its performance attributed to her failure. So what? A company does badly and the CEO gets fired? Is that unusual? Maybe not, but the replacement was a male. So what? Males can’t replace females ever? Or maybe, Mayer was set up to fail. She was said to have received little to no support from management or the Board and with a lack of internal support, how could she truly soar?
This could be, because women are believed to be more democratic than assertive, which is a fallacy, so in a time of crisis, they’re given the reins. And what’s, kind of, sad is that many of these women just got done breaking the glass ceiling and now they’ve moved on to woefully experience the glass cliff.
So, wait, does that mean that no males get appointed as leaders in times of crisis? Does that mean that no females get appointed as leaders when the company is stable? According to a 2018 study, about 45% of female CEOs are more likely to get fired, compared to their male counterparts, even when the company is thriving. Furthermore, it’s possible that when a male is leading a company and the company does badly, it’s blamed on the incompetency of just that male or maybe, his lack of judgement. In the case of a female leading a company that’s doing badly and who gets dismissed, she may be construed as being emblematic of her whole gender, thus, locking out other women out of leadership spots or validating the unfounded claim that a male does leading better than a female.
So, as a woman, what could be done if you think you’re approaching a glass cliff? Maybe, the expectations are unrealistic, but, if you have feasible metrics, maybe there’s a way out. Or if you’re part of a company that you think is failing and you’re due to take the lead, you could outline a long-term solution, showcasing why you’re the right person for the job with the competency to rebuild through strategic development, smart decisions and having a team who could drive the company to success. In 2001, Xerox had bankruptcy looming large over the enterprise. And so, Anne Mulcahy was picked to save the company from collapse as the new CEO. Mulcahy needed to be decisive and innovative and so, she tried to stabilize Xerox’s financial situation, restructure operations and streamline costs. She was successful and so was the company. And then, she handpicked her successor, Ursula Burns, who was the first African-American female CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
And that would make you the person to pull a baby out of a burning building. But, maybe, just maybe, you could say no to a position. If you think the only way for that enterprise is down, if you think you can’t make the necessary change or if you feel you don’t want the risk of being the fall person, maybe the prudent move is rejecting the offer.
Or some people think that the action is good, but the intent is wrong, the principled stance should be saying no. Some people may feel because they’re being hired just because the company is in crisis mode or just because the company is in DEI mode, it’s better to say no to stick to your principles. But, as a thought exercise, if a really really rich person offered you a million bucks and told you they’re giving you that much money because they once ran over somebody and now they’re feeling guilty, so they’re giving away all their money, would you say no? Would the intent matter if the action ended up with you being a million dollars richer with no repercussions for you?
So, if you have a car driving up to a cliff, would you jump out at the last second? Would you swerve that car to avoid falling to your doom? Would you not get into the car at all? Are you up for the challenge or is the risk not worth it? That’s the cliffhanger.
