Julia Boorstin's new book: When Women Lead

I am proud that my very smart pal Julia Boorstin , a famous business correspondent on CNBC, has just published a book that both addresses one of her topics of passionate interest and showcases her skills as a journalist and superb network of commercial and non-commercial executives. Entitled When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them, the book is now widely available and enjoying good notices. The book benefits from interviews with over sixty female leaders, some of whom are well-known and some perhaps less so but who are also deserving of attention.

Julia and I sat down for an interview (over email!) that covered a broad waterfront, from the reasons for her interest in this subject, to her discoveries while reporting for the book, to her favorite research conversations, to the change she wishes to see in the world, and even to the personal topic of her renowned historian grandfather.

Enjoy!

What is the problem you’re aiming to address with this book???At least at a high level, the topic of female leadership seems to get a good deal of attention in the United States these days.??Is that observation wrong???Or is there a particular gap in the attention that you’re aiming to fill???Is there a gap in understanding paths to success and patterns of successful outcomes, for example???

The topic of female leadership may have gotten increased attention since Sheryl Sandberg released Lean In in 2013, but the reality is that the percentage of women who hold leadership positions remains tiny: 8.5% of the Fortune 500. And that small representation of leadership positions is consistent beyond the nation’s largest companies. Only?about two dozen?women who have founded companies have EVER taken them public. The percentage of venture capital that goes to female founders is actually in decline (2% in 2021, down from an average of 3% over the prior decade). And perhaps most important, the range of archetypes of female leadership are limited and much of the attention to female leaders in the tech world has been eaten up by a few high-profile failures–most notably, Elizabeth Holmes.

What is an example of a big surprise you had when researching this book???This is a topic that appears to have been important to you for some years, and in which you are (I believe) an expert by now.??But you have not done this kind of a project before, I believe.??So what, if anything, surprised you when meeting these women and when preparing the book?

I knew that the women who had defied the odds to succeed would be impressive, but what was surprising was to see all the ways they ignored convention and did things their own way–both in terms of leadership and in terms of strategy. One CEO, LanzaTech’s Jennifer Holmgren explained it to me like this: as a petite Colombian immigrant and a rare woman in the energy field, she already didn’t look or sound anything like CEOs. She figured she already didn’t fit the mold, so why did she have to fulfill any of the other expectations about how she would approach her business. Then there was also something else surprising about the data: just how unilaterally the different studies showed the financial advantages of diversity (both in terms of gender and race) in leadership. The data was not subtle. Study after study found that companies with more diversity outperformed. So I was surprised to find the divergence between the data and the lack of investment in the space.

What have you learned about the differences between founding entrepreneurs and professional CEOs? Or is it too case by case?

My book focuses on entrepreneurs but I also include CEOs of publicly traded companies (Jennifer Tejada) and the CEOs of two massive non-profits (Feeding America’s Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, who came from a career at Wal-Mart and CARE’s Michelle Nunn, whose background was in politics). The leadership skills and strategies women tend to possess are similar whether women are running startups or rising through the corporate ranks. They tend to take a more communal approach rather than a top-down management style. They are more likely to invest in mentorship and have more diverse teams (both in terms of gender and in terms of race). I can go on about skills such as empathy: women tend to have an “empathy advantage,” ranking higher on empathy tests and more likely to deploy it in leadership–but you’ll have to read more in my book! I write about all the valuable strategies that all sorts of female leaders tend to deploy– and how everyone can learn from them.

What does egalitarian success look like to you??

There’s been so much research about the way bias and pattern matching impact decision making, whether it’s around hiring, promotion, or investing. What I’d like to see is an increased use of data to strip out any potential bias. There are some notable companies (such as Pymetrics, which I write about in When Women Lead), which are providing alternatives to the use of resumes in hiring to ensure that people are hired and promoted based on potential rather than on experience. Various studies have found that resume-based hiring overemphasizes experiences that people have had access to because of their socioeconomic circumstances.

Your grandfather Daniel Boorstin was a famous historian.??Do you have any similar ambitions???Did his work inspire you at all?

His work has very much inspired me and he always encouraged me to be intellectually ambitious. I majored in history at Princeton and briefly considered pursuing a PhD. I love looking for themes and connections and telling the stories of big thinkers. Ultimately I find I’m deploying similar skills in journalism as I did in history–researching, writing, and pulling on threads. My grandfather wrote many books about outliers– Creators, Explorers, and Seekers–and American culture of course celebrates odds-defying leaders, which is really what my book, When Women Lead, is about.

With whom did you have the most fun talking???I’m not suggesting everyone else was dull!??But who was just a terrific delight to interview???

Interviewing?all?120 women for my book was an absolute delight. I conducted the vast majority of them on zoom during the pandemic and found myself welcomed into people’s homes with their pets and kids walking into the shot. The unique and unprecedented circumstances seemed to prompt reflection and stock-taking. I was particularly surprised by the frankness and humor that Dr. Toyin Ajayi and Irma Olguin Jr. shared when telling me their stories.

What non-obvious tropes, if any, do you think have just outlived their usefulness or should otherwise be discarded???

That there is a singular model for exemplary leadership. When I was a young reporter at Fortune Magazine the GE/Jack Welch model was celebrated and copied. Then there was a decade or so when the “move fast and break things” model touted by Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley was considered laudable. Now I hope we’re moving into yet another phase where there is no single model for good leadership.

Of which part of the book are you proudest??

I found great pleasure in discovering surprising takes on well-known people – comparing Gwyneth Paltrow to David Bowie was a fun one. I’m also proud of how the stories and individuals led me to research, and how I could interweave narratives and illustrative data.

Is there anything you wish you had been able to achieve with this book that you weren’t able to do???

I could have written hundreds of more pages about many more amazing leaders. I wish I’d had more space for more stories. And while my book is narrative, I think there’s potential for a parallel book to serve as a workbook of sorts, to help people apply the lessons from the women I feature in my book.

Can you give an example of a prescriptive measure or two that you would wish companies, government, executives, aspiring entrepreneurs (whomever you want) to follow?

Use data. The amount of bias is so pervasive the only way to overcome it is with thoughtful comprehensive systems that ensure that hiring and promotion are done equitably. I’ve also been impressed by the power of systems to draw the best ideas out of diverse teams. It would be valuable to examine traditional approaches to the likes of brainstorming sessions in which the loudest voices often dominate–processes to make sure everyone’s voices are heard, not just within a team but from across an organization can surface surprising and valuable solutions.