#107 - Liz Hilton Segel - Senior Partner of McKinsey North America

I think literally every single person in an organization needs to go through the journey of what it feels like to not feel included. It has to make a personal commitment to see the world through the person's eyes.

Thank you so much for having me on the show.

So look, I joined McKinsey out of college. I am a born and raised New Yorker. I am the child of two PhDs in psychology. My mother was a professor of graduate student psychology, and my father was a senior executive in business. So I found that coming to McKinsey was an opportunity to make businesses more successful but also to understand how people work and how you can help them achieve their full potential.

My sisters were much older than I was growing up. One of my sisters was 10 years older. She had a good friend in college who was an investment banker, so I had it in my head starting at about middle school that I wanted to be an investment banker. But when I got to college, I had the opportunity to run the newspaper, so I would go to class occasionally but mostly focus on running the business, which was the newspaper. And through that experience, I learned a little bit about what management consulting was and thought that might be a nice way to begin my career in business.

Right, I had no idea. I had no idea. I was pretty much focused on the couple of years before business school, and here I am about 30 years later and still loving it.

You have an opportunity to learn from so many amazing executives. The whole thing about consulting is that you're partnering with another person to help them achieve something that they think might be both amazing and maybe impossible. And so through my career, starting even my first year out of college all the way through now, you get to work with leaders who really teach you something about how to mobilize people to great things. So you have the joy of achieving things together, but also the constant learning from others. I have always loved that.

You learn a little bit about how people inspire others, how they give them a sense of belief, or how they give them a sense of their own strengths that make people take risks or try things they wouldn't otherwise try. So it's fun to see others lead and to learn from that.

Yeah, you know, look, I think it stemmed from a couple different places. Certainly, it partially stemmed from my own experience. I have been the person who was the only woman in a business meeting of men. And the firm has, through our Women in the Workplace research, done quite a lot of analysis around the topic of what does it feel like to be an 'only' and what is that unique experience. So there were certainly times when I felt as if my own experience set or my own inclinations were not necessarily welcome, even though they were quite relevant to the question at hand. I can remember being in one client situation where we were having a conversation about a business looking at a digital grocery experience, and I finally just literally said out loud, 'Folks, I think I'm the only person in this room that actually does the weekly grocery shopping, so let me give you my point of view on what would actually be great to have in that experience and what probably wouldn't be that great.' So that sense of feeling that a discussion would benefit from a diversity of perspectives and not always feeling like those perspectives were valued—that's part of it. There was another experience I had in the context of my daughter's school, where one of the students gave a speech about whether or not she felt she was able to be her full self in a certain context. It happened to be at a camp, and she realized that her performance wasn't at its full potential because she didn't personally feel comfortable. Her reflection on that experience made her realize that maybe she wasn't being her full self at school, and that might actually be having a consequence on her schoolwork. As I listened to this relatively young person give this speech, it dawned on me—wondering how many of the folks in my work environment don't feel that they can do their best work because they are not necessarily able to bring their whole self to work. When you really think about that—does a person feel comfortable being who they are and what they bring, and that sense of 'I belong and I am welcomed for who I am'—there's such an amazing correlation to a person's creativity, to a person's willingness to take risks, to a person's willingness to go the extra mile. That's part of what makes me feel so strongly that I'm happy we're on the journey, but I think there's a lot more that we can do to really ensure that everyone feels a true sense of bringing their best self to work, and then through that, the best work comes out.

Yeah, look, I mean, the diversity side of the question—literally, is there a presence in your organization of people of historically underrepresented groups—is certainly a part of it. This Women in the Workplace survey that I mentioned would suggest that on the questions specifically of women in the workplace, we are seeing positive advancements. An example might be at entry level—you might now have about 47 percent of entry-level employees are now women, which is up five percent in the last five or six years. In the C-suite, it's now at 21 percent, which would be a gain of about 22 percent over the last five or six years. So look, we're making progress, but what you see is that even in that very first promotion, between entry level and manager level, companies will already lose out. So the diversity side—the presence side—does require real persistence and a willingness to look at the numbers in an active way. On the inclusion side, I think it is much more personal. I think literally every single person in an organization needs to go through the journey of what it feels like to not feel included. It has to make a personal commitment to see the world through the person's eyes and to really understand people. I have tried my best to just get to know people personally, because I feel like if you know them personally, it makes such a difference in terms of being able to welcome their ideas, to give them the space to maybe suggest a change that they feel might be unwelcomed. I think the responsibility of leaders is to create an expectation that we are going to look to be more inclusive, but the reality is every individual person needs to go through that journey for themselves and to find their own ways to make a connection with a much broader group of folks in their organization.

Yeah, you know, look, this has been an area that's always been a passion point for me. Since I was young, certainly since high school, it was very clear to me how important certain very basic parts of well-being are. I've always been an eight-hour-a-night sleeper—even back in high school, people would joke about it. And certainly I saw that as I came into my professional life—that the basics of sleep and exercise and food are so critical to how a person performs. My take was that if at any time I saw somebody struggling at work—which might manifest itself in yelling in a high-tense situation, or might manifest itself in tears—almost always what's behind either the tears or the anger is some fundamental need, whether it's sleep or exercise or community or eating, that's just not being met. They're overwhelmed by their responsibilities. This has always been something I cared about, but more recently, with kids in high school and college, just the prevalence of mental health issues among 18-to-24-year-olds is extraordinary. And since McKinsey hires so many people that are just out of college for their first job, it's been very much top of mind for me—how do we embrace really supporting people both in mental health, behavioral health, and overall mental well-being? The context of COVID has just amplified it. The CDC came out and said that about 41 percent of American adults are struggling with mental health issues—I think that's about 75 percent for young adults 18 to 24. There's no question that as a leader of any organization, but certainly in business, we have to take this on. We have to decide that there is a modern way of leading that really helps people take care of themselves. In the context of COVID, the same survey I mentioned earlier, Women in the Workplace, we found that 54 percent of senior women have described themselves as chronically exhausted during this time, and about 2 million women are thinking of leaving the workforce. The sense of urgency—not just about productivity, meaning are you getting the best out of your employees, but also are you ensuring that you will continue to have a diverse population and the set of leaders, particularly among women—we just need to take this on. It can be everything from pure positive elements of well-being—sleep, exercise, proper eating habits, being with family and friends—all the way to really severe issues around anxiety, depression, substance abuse. It doesn't make a difference where you are on the spectrum. The whole idea that as a leader in a modern organization today you can provide support to your colleagues that brings out the best in them—in my mind, that is the responsibility of all leaders today.

Yeah, I mean, so look, one thing we started during COVID was a very simple thing—which is every Wednesday, early in the morning in at least the U.S. time zone, a one-question survey goes out. Sometimes it's two or three questions, but it always starts with 'How are you?' And you have the opportunity to answer: great, good, okay, bad, or terrible. What that does is it allows us to get an automatic pulse every week of how everyone is doing. Then we have the benefit of knowing that both by geography or by practice area, and also by role, by tenure in the organization—we also know things like whether they're a dual-career family, whether they're parents, what their own context is. That has been extremely helpful in getting a sense of how people are doing over time and what we can do as leaders to intervene or provide more support. Another thing we're doing is talking about the idea that well-being and maintaining one's well-being is a skill. We teach a lot of skills—we teach problem-solving skills, communication skills—McKinsey prides itself on its learning culture and professional development culture. But the whole idea that well-being is a skill, and a skill that we value because we think it's something that enables you to bring your best—you might work really hard and then say to yourself, 'Now is a moment for rest and recovery, because if I rest and recover, then I'm going to be even better the next time I'm at it.' The third thing is really equipping our managers and leaders with the understanding of how to engage a colleague in a conversation about how they're doing. One of the things I think is most sad is when a colleague doesn't feel comfortable raising their own personal concerns with their manager. I talked internally about a situation many years ago when I was a new manager, and someone came to me and told me that he had not been able to finish his assignment. I was completely focused on the assignment and trying to help him understand what to do. What I completely missed was that he was actually having a breakdown—he suffered from manic depression and was going through an episode. About two days later they came to me and told me what was happening for him, and I think now—how embarrassed I am and how sad I am that I didn't stop at the moment he said to me he wasn't able to get the assignment done. I didn't look at him and say, 'Hey, how are you? What's happening for you right now?' to just give him the chance and the space to explain. So if there's anything I can do to help another new manager or leader know to ask, know to take a pause, not to get so focused just on the assignment but also to really look at the person they're there to support—if I've done that for one person, I'll feel better.

Yeah. I think what happens is you don't want to ask how the person is because you think maybe that's too personal. And part of what I think is changing about leadership—I described this also to the senior team at McKinsey once. Sometimes I feel like my life is like a curtain on the stage, you know, like you're at the ballet—and that curtain's up, and behind the curtain is all the stuff that's actually happening in my life, which could include like the dishwasher needs to get fixed, something needs to happen with one of my kids, something else is happening with my mother. There's a series of things that are happening in my life that are actually really quite important to me and need to get done, but they all live behind the curtain. And then in front of the curtain is all the things that everyone assumes is what I'm focused on—all the things that are happening in my professional life that are relatively visible to people. I think the more that in a modern style of leadership people can give at least a little bit of a glimpse of what's behind the curtain, it makes it more reasonable and understandable for colleagues that are younger in the organization to see that everybody's just trying to juggle all these different things and we're doing the best we can. The more we can connect with each other just as people, I think the better we'll all be.

You know, it's interesting. Prior to the pandemic, companies were already talking about fear of economic recession or depression—these words were being used prior to the pandemic. And we should take a look at 2008 to see what was the difference between companies that thrived coming out of the 2008 economic disruption versus those that didn't. What's interesting when you look at that is that it is all different versions of putting your foot on the accelerator—whether it's getting on top of opportunities to expand margins, or launching new products, or new M&A. Companies that thrived were absolutely on the offensive. One of the reasons why I think that's interesting is because 2020 has been so exhausting, and we have been sprinting a marathon, whatever expression you want to use. As leaders, trying to figure out how can you continue to be on the offensive going into 2021, recognizing that you need to make sure that you are nurturing the well-being of your full organization. One of the analogies I've used internally is talking about the concept of a HIIT workout—high-intensity interval training. Just the idea that we have to figure out ways to push very hard when that's what's needed, but then make sure there are moments for rest and recovery. What has been so tricky for most of our folks is finding the way to step away from the Zoom, step away from the conference call, step away from the email, and really make sure you're giving yourself enough breaks during the day. I don't think there's going to be any way for companies to grow and expand and respond to what's happening in our overall economy if they're not able to create that sense of renewal in their own organization and to create a culture that really respects that need for renewal.

I think we will. I mean, there's so many changes in terms of consumer trends and behaviors. If you take the really basic cleaning and hygiene space, or if you take the magnitude of the pivot of purchasing via digital patterns, or the magnitude of the pivot of what's happening in terms of video communication—I think there's so many places where new businesses can thrive coming out of the experience that we've all shared over the past year.

Oh, well, you can find me on LinkedIn, and for McKinsey you can always go to mckinsey.com. We have an endless stream of new insights to share almost every day.