Elissa Sangster, CEO of the Forté Foundation, always remembers seeing an executive recruiter tell a business audience how they steal people in leadership roles.
By asking a key question: Has your manager cared enough to sit down and talk to you about a career roadmap?
If the answer is no, that’s who the recruiter goes after, recalls Sangster, whose nonprofit works with the Fortune 500 and other leading companies, business schools, and universities to give women access to business education and opportunities. The recruiter can easily lure that person away by showing them three other employers that will offer a roadmap.
But when it comes to supporting employee performance, such a map is often sketchy at best. When Forté surveyed almost 1,500 female and male MBA alumni, their average level of agreement that they had a “documented career plan” was lukewarm—about three out of five.
For an employee, a written plan can build trust by creating transparency around career goals.
“It doesn’t have to be a legal document,” Sangster tells me from San Antonio, Texas. “But if you’re going to retain those people, telling them and having conversations around why they belong, what their value is to the company, what is it they need to do in order to take the next step in their career path, these are all important things.”
Some employers are highly transparent about timelines and outcomes. For example, waste disposal company Republic Services has a General Manager Accelerated Program designed to put MBAs with previous leadership experience in a GM role within two years.
When companies evaluate performance, Sangster believes they can also build trust by flipping the script—moving away from manager-led, top-down reviews. To that end, Forté does 360-degree reviews that see team members seek feedback from peers and previous employers, too.
Getting those different perspectives tends to yield a more holistic view, with an emphasis on leadership qualities rather than things like meeting deadlines, Sangster observes.
The 360-degree review also takes pressure off the relationship between manager and employee, who no longer has one person deciding their fate. “And yeah, you do trust because you had a hand in selecting who gave you that feedback.”
To help employees improve their performance via training and development, Sangster recommends looking to outside sources. “If everything is done under that cloche of what’s going on within an organization, the lens is going to be about, ‘How do you succeed at my company?’” she says. “It’s not going to be about your personalized development plan.”
Forté employees have free access to an online FranklinCovey hub with more than 40 professional development micro-courses. “Based on a 360, you can actually go in and curate a learning journey for your gaps,” Sangster says. Similarly, General Mills lets its people choose from a pre-vetted online “bank” of development programs.
That autonomy fosters trust, Sangster explains. “The company is saying, ‘We trust you to make wise decisions about how you spend your time in professional development.’”
People also need to trust that their employer isn’t out to get them. Here, Sangster suggests that managers consider using AI to eliminate biased language from performance reviews before sharing them with employees. Only one in three companies has a mechanism for surfacing biased evaluations or comments during reviews, McKinsey notes.
A recent report on language bias in performance feedback shows why such a tool is needed. High-performing women are much more likely than their male counterparts to get feedback that’s negative and about their personality—think “unlikable” and “difficult.”
Meanwhile, white and Asian men have a far greater chance of being positively stereotyped with terms such as “brilliant” and “genius.” As for Black and Hispanic/Latino employees, they’re significantly more likely to be called “emotional.” Sheesh.
“Do managers even really know that they do it?” asks Sangster, who thinks unconscious bias could play a role. In AI, she sees a chance to banish irrelevant and unhelpful feedback.
Sounds like the kind of thing that could be its forte.
Nick Rockel
nick.rockel@consultant.fortune.com
IN OTHER NEWS
Social call
Jamie Dimon wants young folks to put their trust in books, not in Facebook and TikTok. Calling social media apps a “total waste of time,” the JPMorgan Chase CEO told a Georgetown University audience to learn…and repeat, by reading and by talking to other people. Dimon might not have the most nuanced picture of social media, given that Gen Z turns to TikTok for career advice. But he also urged young people to focus on the facts and be open-minded when listening to others—advice that Americans of all ages could use right now.
From Russia, with lies
Wouldn’t you know it—Russian cyber actors are waging a disinformation war against the Harris-Walz campaign. So says Microsoft, whose Threat Analysis Center has watched such groups shift focus from the Republicans to the Democrats. Their favorite tool: fake videos like the recent one accusing Kamala Harris of involvement in a hit-and-run back in 2011. Expect more before election day, Microsoft warns, reckoning they’ll feature actors and AI-powered trickery. Not the fall blockbusters we were hoping for.
Candid camera
Where someone else might see a dystopia devoid of public trust, Larry Ellison sees a business opportunity. The founder of software titan Oracle sketched out a China-like surveillance society where people stay “on their best behavior”—thanks to cameras watching their every move. Ellison, whose company could profit from helping authorities to mine the resulting data, said law enforcement would also behave because it’s under video scrutiny. Sadly for George Floyd and others, that hasn’t always worked out so far.
Office perks
Looking to advance your career? RTO could be just the ticket. In a survey of 400 U.S.-based CEOs, more than eight out of 10 said they’d reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises, or promotions. Some bosses want to get to know staff in person before making such moves, Sydney Lake reports. But Cathryn Lavery, cofounder and CEO of retailer BestSelf Co., is having none of it. “The future of work is about flexibility, trust, and results—not about who spends the most time at a desk,” Lavery said.
TRUST EXERCISE
“If financial crime were a sector of the U.S. economy, it would be on par with the lodging and food services sector—with money laundering activity accounting for 3.1% of the national GDP in 2023.
Despite its substantial scale, financial crime remains largely a concealed epidemic, extending across jurisdictions and borders and underpinning many of society’s gravest crimes: elder financial exploitation, fraud scams, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing.
Research we have conducted finds that financial crime is an invasive drag on our economy. Our analysis shows that annual U.S. GDP growth would have been more than 0.5 percentage points higher if just fraud losses were reintegrated into the economy.”
Well, that puts things in perspective. We all know that financial crime is a problem, but Adena Friedman spells out its impact with some sobering numbers. The Chair and CEO of Nasdaq goes on to note that about 15% of U.S. households have fallen victim to scammers. For many, the average loss of $575 is a major blow to their financial health.
With trust in the global financial system at stake, criminals harness its complexity, Friedman warns. But there are three things we can do to fight back.
One, Friedman calls on regulators, law enforcement, banks, and other stakeholders worldwide to break out of their silos and collaborate, with an emphasis on real-life outcomes rather than mindless compliance. Two, to leave scammers with fewer places to hide, she wants the public and private sectors to get better at sharing information. Three, we should use AI and other advanced technology to spot the variety of footprints left by financial criminals.
In an age where collective responsibility often feels like a quaint notion, there’s a monetary incentive to pull together.
