070: Debugging Meritocracy

On this episode, we’re talking about research with Lori Mackenzie. Lori is the Executive Director of Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research as well as the Co-Founder of the new Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. She advises diversity and inclusion efforts at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and teaches executive education. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, BBC, and San Francisco Chronicle. In fact, she was one of the 100 women who was interviewed for the 2018 documentary bias. Lori holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Her main focus of work is at the Clayman Institute which was founded to produce research that motivates gender equality. In her interview, Lori touches on the Paradox of Meritocracy, which is how we as individual managers opened the doors to be more bias. The Paradox of Meritocracy has created the conversation about how to debug meritocracy and the way that bias will make the performance of men look better for the same level of performance, disadvantaging women and people of color. She emphasizes the importance of providing individuals with tools so that change will actually happen. She also touches on the coping strategy with good news. Research states that women who self monitor are more successful than even the most assertive men. This means being able to move fluidly between a warm and welcoming approach and a direct assertive approach. Lori recommends to stay curious and try to understand what would be effective and how we can create change. The best way to do that? Take a growth mindset approach in your everyday life.