Where are all the female CEOs at?

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Andrea Palten: Hello I’m Andrea Palten and I’m the host of today’s episode. Today we’re speaking with the CEO of Talking Talent America. I’m super excited to do introduce this CEO to you, not only because this person is great at what they do, but because she’s female. As you already know, the vast majority of CEOs are male so in today’s episode we’ll be asking the burning question where are all the female CEOs at? So, Theresa hi, thank you so much for being here.

Teresa Hopke: Andrea, thanks for having me. I’m excited to talk about this topic.

Andrea Palten: Me too. So, tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now, and your path to becoming a CEO.

Teresa Hopke: Yeah. Well, I am currently the CEO of Talking Talents America’s division, so I started as the CEO about three years ago when we were acquired. The company I was with was acquired by Talking Talent. I was with a company called Life Meets Work and was the Senior Vice President of Sales and Client Relations there and started a coaching practice and women’s leadership practice that was then acquired. So, I came over in the role of CEO with that acquisition and have been doing that ever since. So, it’s not necessarily something I aspired to or thought about becoming as I was moving along but it’s been a really fun role to be in over the past three years.

Andrea Palten: What was the biggest surprise about being a CEO?

Teresa Hopke: How much it’s no different than the other leadership roles that I’ve had. So even though you’re in charge of the entire company or the entire division it’s really just like any other leadership role just a little bit more weight on your shoulders. But I think it probably seems scarier to people than it is. The leap from where you are to being a CEO seems like something really insurmountable but it’s really not as big of a leap, I think as most people think.

Andrea Palten: Alright, that’s good to know. So, I read this morning in The Wall Street Journal that about 6%, a little bit less than 6% of CEOs are women. So, to me, this is very curious because women currently own the majority of college degrees. Women make up around half the workforce, so why do so few of them occupy the Chief Executive job. What is your knowledge about that? How does this happen that there are so few of us in these seats?

Teresa Hopke: Yeah. Well, there’s no easy answer so let’s just start by saying that it’s very complex and very multi-layered. You hear a lot about and we’ve read a lot about the glass ceiling over the recent years and there is definitely something to that concept. But I think of it more as, and I think other people sometimes think of it as walls, not necessarily a ceiling that you hit, but these walls that you encounter along the way. I almost see it like a maze, trying to figure out where aren’t there walls that I can go through. Some of the laws that I’m talking about are things like the unconscious bias that’s in the workplace.

So, there really still is, despite all kinds of efforts to train people on the unconscious bias there still is a bias against promoting women. Really, it’s actually more around underestimating women I think, and overestimating men. So, really assuming that women were protecting them. Maybe they’re not quite ready for the role and we don’t want to put them in the deep end by themselves whereas we overestimate that a man is ready for an opportunity and let’s just throw him in the deep end and see if he can swim. So, it’s this protectionism of women that I think is maybe well intended sometimes but it actually is a bias that shows up in the workplace.

I think the other thing is that men oftentimes are promoted based on their potential whereas women are promoted based on their accomplishments. So, if you think about that you know even in my position if I was being promoted, based on the fact that I had been a CEO or that I had done the things that I need to do in this role, I probably wouldn’t be in this position right now. I was put in this role, based on what I had done but also my potential to grow in the role. So, if we don’t give women those opportunities based on potential then that’s going to limit them. So, I think that bias is one piece of it. Another thing is that there just aren’t a lot of women in the pipeline.

So, the pipeline, you may have heard of the leaky pipeline. There are lots of reasons that it leaks along the way, but the bottom line is that if women start opting out at the manager level and so you said there are all these women in the workforce now. But if they start opting out along the way or they fall out along the way then by the time we get to the place where you going to promote someone to CEO there aren’t a lot of women in the pipeline to pick from. So, the fact that more men are in the positions actually makes sense when you look at the pipeline. The reasons that people opt out or are very many, and we can talk more about what that is, but I think the third thing that probably contributes to this problem is just the unevenness of development. So, women aren’t developed at the same rate as men, given the same opportunities and so that also contributes to a lack of women in these roles.

Andrea Palten: Yeah. I want to talk more about the opt-out. Women are actually opting out. Why is this happening? Obviously, I want to talk about covert a little bit too. There’s been a drop of women, leaving managerial roles and getting out of that pipeline.

Teresa Hopke: Yeah.

Andrea Palten: Why is this happening, and why is it happening at such high numbers?

Teresa Hopke: Yeah. It’s so interesting because I mean if you think about the amount of time and energy that goes into women earning the degrees that they’re earning and then the choice to opt-out it’s a big choice. It’s not something that people take lightly and so actually half of the women who earn MBAs will drop out within a decade of earning their MBA. So, think about all of that investment that’s just going to the wayside because women are opting out. But the reasons that they opt out are also very layered. Sometimes they’re opting out because of family, and they’re in a culture where they just don’t see that it’s possible to have a family and to be able to move up in the way that they want.

Sometimes it’s because they’ve been penalized for taking maternity leave. I was talking to a leader in one organization in the past couple of years, that said these women and their career interruptions are really detrimental to our business. So, if you have a leader who sees your maternity leave as a career interruption that’s detrimental then you may not want to go down the path of trying to come back from that because that takes a lot of emotional investment to come back from that. Then, I think there’s this piece around the purpose-driven nature of women, that a lot of women don’t place an inherent value on money and levels and titles as much as men do. So, for a lot of women, it’s okay to walk away from that because they are more committed to their values and willing to give up their career trajectory for that.

Andrea Palten: Yeah. I just interviewed somebody that was coached by Talking Talent, and she has three children so three times maternity leave, and when she was pregnant with her first child, she was ready to quit the company. She’s a high-level senior ranking person as well and she was ready to leave. Then the company stepped in and said Hey, we’re going to give you coaching, we’re going to help you out. We’re going to get you through everything that you need. Your maternity leave, when you come back, we’ll set you up and she did the coaching, and she came back, and they even promoted her.

Then she got pregnant again, did the coaching again. She kept coming back and I asked her well, why didn’t you quit because you really weren’t ready to quit. She said it’s because they believed in me, and they gave me these tools and that’s all I needed. She ended up staying and now she’s in a senior position. So, to me, it’s just such a no-brainer. Keep your women, help them out and make sure you help them out and get them into this pipeline. It was a study from S&P Global Market Intelligence that set that public companies with female CEOs, they’re more profitable and they have better stock price performance. So, we’re seeing these metrics, we know the solutions, so why are they not happening?

Teresa Hopke: Well, I think it’s because it’s hard and people are busy, and doing hard work is not something that organizations are always willing to invest in because this isn’t an easy fix. It’s not as easy as saying we’ll just implement this app or implement this program and it’ll go away. It’s not just a programmatic fix, it’s not something you can check the box on. I mean this requires organizations to really make a culture change because we can’t just fix the women. If you go about trying to fix the women you’re going to end up in the same places, you were before. Maybe you’ll have a few more women in the pipeline but the leaks are still going to be there. You have to fix the leaks. You have to fix the culture that the women are in if we want to see any movement and that’s hard work. Culture change is hard work but it’s not that it can’t be done, I mean and it’s not that I think these organizations don’t believe in the data. I think that you see the data and they think yeah, I buy into that, but I just don’t really know how to fix it or what to do about it. So, that’s where we help organizations and individuals.

So, the story you just shared about the coachee who is moving through the ranks now because of that coaching. That could have been a very easy decision for her to opt out because when things are stressful and when the trajectory seems like it’s so uphill that I don’t have the emotional energy for it the easy decision is to opt-out because it’s probably going to be easier somewhere else is what most people think. But the problem is that if you take what you’re doing now, and you go to another organization most likely the same thing is going to happen there. The same habits, the same work style is still going to prevent you from being successful there. So, we have to help women with some of their own thinking, some of their own habits and we have to change the culture and the support that they have around them if we want to really make sure that we’re realizing the impact that the data shows us.

Andrea Palten: Yeah. One thing you mentioned earlier was gender stereotypes. So, women are oftentimes seen as great team members, support type of staff, and so they end up going into support roles and not in the C-level or CEO roles. Without having to fix ourselves as women, we do have to do something about it. How can we change this narrative about these gender stereotypes, so we don’t fall into them?

Teresa Hopke: It’s hard because we’re actually societally groomed to think that men are more natural leaders from the time that they’re little. I have four children; I have two boys and two girls. And the difference that I see in the way people treat my girls and the way that they treat my boys and what they expect of the boys taking risks and leading things. My girls step into leadership roles because I’ve pushed them to do that, and they’re seen as bossy sometimes and they’re seen as risk-takers that sometimes other parents would be like you let them do that. Yeah, I let them take risks because I want to foster them in them. But from the time that children are little I think we have these two paths that are developed in them which is that women are supposed to be nice, they’re supposed to be caretakers. You’re not supposed to be bossy. You know you’re not supposed to be intimidating and men are supposed to step into these natural leadership roles. So, as women, I think the most important thing to do is to own the things that we have and that we bring to the table and not feel like we have to apologize for them.

So, I’m told oftentimes that I’m intimidating. So, on the one hand, I can think well that’s unfortunate, I don’t want people to view me in that way, and on the other hand, I think, well you know what that’s their problem if they find me intimidating because I’m not doing anything to intentionally intimidate people, I’m just trying to step into my leadership. So, there’s this, I think, fine line between changing who we are and owning who we are. A lot of women’s leadership programs will try to get women to hone the skills that are more masculine, that are more you know the things that make men successful. We need to sharpen those in women, you know, we need to teach them to be better negotiators, which actually women are better negotiators than men are according to research, but it’s looked upon as a negative when a woman negotiates. They actually get penalized for it.

So, some of these things that speaking your voice and being more confident we try to make sure that women are acting more like the men. But instead, I think we need to flip the script and have the ideal leadership prototype be more female. The research shows that the skills that women bring around collaboration, trust, well-being in the organization, those actually are better for all of us than the skills that men bring in their leadership position. So, I think we have some work to do there around our image of what an ideal leader is and making sure that women are owning the inherent skills that they bring.

Andrea Palten: So, I want to talk more about your children. Many of our listeners have children themselves and you mentioned that you’re helping your girls to take leadership roles and be more assertive. What are you teaching your boys?

Teresa Hopke: Great question. So, I have always taught my boys that they should be supportive of women and their sisters and just in general. I’ve taught them that there are tradeoffs, for me being in the position that I’m in. So, we talk a lot in our family about what my career does for our family. So, when my boys were little, they would see a lot of the other moms at school who were volunteering, and they stayed at home, and they kind of thought that was cool at first. So, we had a long conversation about what they get to do because I work. So, they get to go on vacations, they get to ski, they get to have the things that we have and live where we do because I work.

So, now as they’re older than the girls. As the girls were coming up and starting to have some of those same things around wanting me to be around more when I would go on a business trip my boys would say, now remember girls we get to do these great things because mom goes on this business trip. So, don’t make her feel bad about it. So, they’ve learned that we don’t have to feel guilty, we don’t have to make people feel bad about being career-driven. That I can be a really good mom and provide for my family and still be there but also to be able to understand that that’s kind of what comes with the territory of being in my position.

Andrea Palten: You know the bossy thing is just something that obviously as a woman has always bothered me and for the listeners, you’ve heard my accent. I’m actually from Germany and it’s interesting in America, when in the workplace, if I am people think of me as bossy sometimes as well and intimidating sometimes and they always say, oh it’s because she’s German. It’s almost like a woman has to have an excuse on why she’s the leader or she’s assertive. So, for me being an immigrant people are saying I’m German. If I was American, I know they would say it’s because I’m a woman and it’s just something, the stereotype, it’s just really difficult. So, as a woman, I want your opinion only here. As a woman do you take it down a notch, so you don’t become all bossy, or do you just stay as is and you’re acting the same as a man and people just need to deal with it?

Teresa Hopke: I think that it’s important to pay attention to feedback. So, I think there’s a danger, and saying this is who I am and I’m not going to change at all. So, I’m bossy and that’s the way I’m going to be. I wouldn’t encourage my girls to do that and, in fact, one of my girls, they’re identical twins and one of them tends to be a little more on the leadership skills side is what we call it. We try not to call a bossy, but she has a little more leadership skill than the other and sometimes I tell her to tone it down just a notch because it can be a bit much. So, I don’t think it’s that we should just use it as an excuse to say, well, I can act however I want because I am supposed to be a confident woman. I think we have to pay attention to the impact we have on others. But I also don’t think we should apologize for who we are and for confidence. So, I think we have to check ourselves to say well when is it that. I’m overstepping my bounds, and when is it that it’s on the other person. It’s because you are insecure or because you’re intimidated by me or because you know there’s something else going on. It’s not just me.

Andrea Palten: Yeah. I want to change subjects a little bit. Since you are the US CEO of Talking Talent, and you help organizations with diversity and inclusion I want to talk about that the 6% of CEOs that are female that are out there. Nearly all of them are white. Why do you think that is?

Teresa Hopke: Oh, so many reasons. A lot of them have to do with the same reasons I gave you earlier around the leaky pipeline. But the pipeline is even leakier when it comes to combining the intersectionality of being a woman and being diverse. So, there are so many factors that contribute to that, I mean the lack of sponsorship is one big one. So, there are not as many people who are willing to put their careers on the line to sponsor someone who is so different from them. So, it’s enough of a difference to say well I’m going to sponsor a woman when I’m a white male. But then to say I’m going to sponsor a diverse woman, it’s so far from what I am comfortable with, and I know that a lot of white men aren’t willing to do that.

There are, of course, a lot that are, and those men are awesome when it comes to being able to help advance diverse women. But there are a lot who aren’t willing to and so that’s I think one big factor. Another factor is just the emotional tax on women of color who are constantly trying to show up and fit the mold. So, when you think of this idea of being your authentic self, and you know we’re just talking about that with if you have natural leadership skills or bossiness skill to show up and be who you are and step into that. Well, if you are diverse and you’re told that you’re supposed to have “executive presence” and that looks different for you based on your culture or who you are as a person.

You’re trying to step into that role and people are like well that’s not what executive presence looks like. That’s not what a female executive is supposed to do. That’s not what a CEO is supposed to do. So, you get to make the choice, do I want to conform, or do I want to authentically show up as who I am? A lot of times there is a penalty for showing up as who you are. So, that emotional tax that comes with making that decision every day about your authenticity and whether or not you’re going to show up I think it’s really exhausting and so I think a lot of women opt-out. They don’t even want to be in the pipeline and so I think that’s another big piece of this as well.

Andrea Palten: Yeah. What about the allies? There are a ton of allies listening. What can they do to help their female employees especially the people of color, fellow employees, help them stay in that pipeline?

Teresa Hopke: Yeah.

Andrea Palten: I’m not talking leaders, also may be peers.

Teresa Hopke: I think that making sure that we’re looking out for each other and giving each other opportunities to develop because, in the end, we all have to check ourselves on the similar to me bias. It’s really easy to want to work with people who are similar to us, and you and I have probably experienced that in our own careers. It’s just easier and in a world where everything is so fast-paced and so complicated, a lot of times we’re looking for easy. We just want things to be easy and so you can really default to putting people on opportunities, on projects that are similar to you because that’s what you know and it’s easier for you. So, to push ourselves to say well I’m going to be an ally by giving someone who isn’t similar to me an opportunity, who doesn’t look like me who doesn’t maybe show up in the same way as me.

I’m going to make sure they have an opportunity and I’m going to go to bat for them. I’m going to make sure that you know I’m putting my career out there and my opportunities out there for them and speaking up on their behalf. So, I think you know that’s a big piece of being an ally The other thing is I don’t think this has been talked about a lot when allyship is brought up. But if we can all lean into being a little bit more human and authentic around who we are then it gives people who are in underrepresented populations a chance to do the same, So, if I can show up, in all of my authenticity and be my true self at work and be a little bit more open about it then other people are going to feel comfortable too. So, it’s being a culture carrier in that way so that you’re making it okay for people to be who they are and not have to cover who they are and not have to cover who they are.

Andrea Palten: I love that. The culture carrier, that’s really great. I want to end this episode with you giving some advice, maybe some coaching. I want to split it up between two groups. I want you to talk to women. What can we do as women to stay in the pipeline to be able to work our way up to where we want to go?  If that’s CEO, let that be the CEO. I also want to talk to organizations, what they can do. So, let’s start with women. What advice do you have for women if they want to be a CEO on the C-suite? How did they get there?

Teresa Hopke: Well, I mean most of the time when we’re giving women advice, we have 60-to-90-minute coaching sessions. So, I’ll try to cover as much as I can here in the next two or three minutes. But there are so many things that we tell women when it comes to their career journey and how to stay in it. One of the biggest things I think is this confidence piece. It’s just so interesting to me all the time the lack of confidence that women have compared to men. There’s a big program we did for a client where all of the women who were selected, they’re younger in their career, probably at the five-to-seven-year mark. Every one of them was the highest performer in their functional area. They all came to the program wondering why they were there, how they were selected, and saying that they did not see themselves as a high performer, their confidence wasn’t there.

So, these are the top of the top in their organization and yet they didn’t see themselves as that. So, helping women with this confidence piece. Women helping themselves with the confident piece. It’s that owning it, stepping into it, promoting yourself. I went to training back early in my career called Men and Women as Colleagues and one of the things I remember is that the statistic they were sharing is that men are more likely to make it up if they don’t know the answer whereas women will go to the confessional. So, if somebody asks me for the number on the report and I’m a man I will be like it’s about $8 million. As a woman I’ll be like, I don’t think I ran that number lately, let me look at it and get back to you I’m not sure what it is.

So, this idea is that we can just step into some of the unknown, some of the gray, and be confident about it. Just be rooted in it rather than thinking we have to be perfect and have all of the exact right answers and prove ourselves in order to take that next opportunity. Because that’s the other thing I would tell women is that we seem to be really risk-averse and it goes back to this grooming thing I told you about where you know from the beginning or not groomed to take a risk. If you are willing to take risks and advocate for yourself. There was one point in my career where the leader above me left and we had to hire that position, and we were interviewing for it. I didn’t think any of the candidates were great and so the chief HR officer asked me my opinion on the, and I said actually, I don’t think any of them can do anything that I can’t do, and I was offered the position later that day.

So, to just step into knowing I haven’t done that role, but you know what, those people weren’t any better than me. To promote yourself in that way and take that risk I didn’t have anything to lose by saying it. But I think oftentimes we think we can’t do that; we can’t promote ourselves. So, if we can do that, and just really own who we are I think that’s important. The last thing that I’ll say is support. It’s just so important that you have support from the people in your life who are going to influence you because there are going to be times along the way, where you’re going to tell someone, I’m stressed out. I don’t like this anymore and they’re going to say why do you do it? Why don’t you just quit? So, if those people in your life know here’s ultimately where I’m looking to go. Here are the good days versus the bad days, and they can be there for you to help support you through that then it’s less likely that they’re going to influence you to opt-out of the pipeline.

Andrea Palten: Oh yeah! It’s interesting. I never thought about it, but my husband has had stressful days at work I’ve had stressful days at work, and I’ve been told, many times to quit by friends. No one’s ever told my husband to quit. That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. Okay, I love that advice. Let’s take it over to the organizations, but before you give advice, I would like to ask you, can you talk to organizational leaders, CEOs, board members, maybe people that are listening that are in HR and they’re trying to get coaching. Why is it important to get females in the pipeline to become CEOs in the first place?

Teresa Hopke: Well because having a diverse organization, an inclusive organization is proven to impact the bottom line. So, I mean any good CEO, any good leader knows that they are going to have a more successful organization if they have more diversity of thought, more diversity of perspective. There are a lot of customers right now who won’t even work with an organization if they don’t show up with diverse people. So, for our organization, if we go to a pitch with a client and we walk in with a bunch of men, white men at that, and the client has a diverse array of people sitting around the table it’s going to be a turnoff to them. That is the way that it is in with most of the organizations that are out there today. So, it makes business sense to it to make sure you’re investing and having a diverse pipeline, not just women, a diverse pipeline in general.

Andrea Palten: Yes. So now let’s talk about the recommendation you have for organizations. How do they get more women in that pipeline and how do they help them get to the C-suite?

Teresa Hopke: We’ve talked about one of them which is the development opportunities so making sure that women are given the same opportunities. I don’t mean just put in development programs which are important leadership development programs are important. But those day-to-day situations, on-the-job training where if I’m a white male I may grab the white male down the hall and ask him to come out for drinks with the client later with me.

1. I might feel uncomfortable having drinks or dinner with a woman. I hear that quite a bit or
2. I make assumptions that the woman down the hall has to go pick up her child or she wouldn’t want to go on this business trip.

So, I think we need to make sure that people aren’t making assumptions about what they think women want as opposed to what women really want and that they’re giving the right development. The other thing is creating a culture of support around caregiving and being family-friendly if we can normalize the playing field for everyone. So, it’s not just women needing support because they’re going to go on maternity leave, but we honor paternity leave as well and we get men in the game. Understanding the importance of being able to have a career and a family or a career and taking care of your elders. Making sure that this is a normal part of our culture so that women see it is possible to do both. I don’t have to opt-out when I decide I want to start a family. So, some of that is societal expectations and we need to teach women through leadership programs to let go of the guilt, to not be influenced by society.

I can remember being given articles about the impact of working parents on children, the negative impact that is, and being handed those. I can remember conversations about how noble it was that my sister-in-law gave up her career to stay home with their children after working so hard for an MBA. So, these societal pressures we have and the guilt, that we can choose to internalize or not and that’s where coaching is so great because providing that coaching to people, to women, to help them realize they don’t have to take those comments and make a decision to opt-out because of them. Just because I was told basically that I’m making a bad decision to have a career instead of staying home with my children doesn’t mean that I have to act on that or that I have to believe it. A lot of times, women need to hear that from our coaches before they will believe it and know that they can make other choices.

So, providing that coaching making sure that we’re helping women know what their options are is so important. I think you know this piece that we talked about with expectations of a leadership mold. So, changing that in our organizations. When we look at our leadership competencies it’s not just an exercise in what competencies do, we need and take the males at the top and try to emulate that. It’s really looking at what we want our culture to be in our organization. If we want it to be high trust, high collaboration, if we want to make sure that wellbeing and mental health or being cared for then guess who the best leaders are? Oftentimes they’re women and so making sure that we prioritize that, that we link rewards to that. Having bonuses based on how healthy and diverse your teams are really important to make sure that the culture supports that. I think the last thing that I would say is instead of trying to fix the women, fix your culture. Change your culture so that women can thrive and that your culture of diversity can thrive instead of catering your culture to what the norms of a white male culture have been throughout time.

Andrea Palten: Oh yes, such great advice. I love that. I’m going to ask you one last question since you are the CEO of Talking Talent. Can you please tell our listeners what Talking Talent can do for organizations?

Teresa Hopke: Yes, my pleasure. So, Talking Talent, our mission is to inspire inclusive cultures, where people and organizations can thrive. So, what we do is to help create strategies for changing that culture and creating a more diverse culture through diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy. Training leaders: we coach individuals and leaders. We do women’s leadership coaching, working parent coaching and so we are an organization that looks at the intersection of culture and individual behavior and helps to change that in order to help people and organizations thrive.

Andrea Palten: Amazing. Thank you so much Theresa for being here. We really appreciate your time.

Teresa Hopke: Yeah. Thank you. I’ve had a lot of fun talking with you.