Academic discusses the 'glass cliff' phenomenon in leadership

The academic who coined the term ‘the glass cliff’ says the phenomenon clearly still exists after a scandal involving an Australian partner of global consultancy giant McKinsey & Company.

McKinsey senior partner Chris Bradley was dumped from a leadership role at the firm’s research arm after he commented on networking site LinkedIn that the glass cliff was a “very convenient way to always be a victim in the rain”.

Speaking to host Samantha Selinger- Morris on The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald’s podcast The Morning Edition, gender equality expert Dr Michelle Ryan says questioning the existence of the glass cliff is an example of discrimination at play.

“So here we are, I guess 20-odd years later, and we’ve still got people questioning the phenomenon. So am I surprised? Not at all, it absolutely fits with the research,” Ryan said.

Ryan, now director of the Australian National University’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, coined the term with Professor Alexander Haslam in the UK in 2005. The glass cliff, Ryan said, describes a trend of women being appointed to leadership roles only, for example, at a time when a company is in crisis.

“Therefore their positions are risky and precarious,” Ryan said.

She pointed to Sussan Ley as an example. The now-retired MP was the Coalition’s first female leader, appointed to the position after the party’s crushing loss to Labor at the last federal election. She led for nine months.

“So sometimes we know that someone’s got to take the fall or ride out a difficult position, and we put women in those positions,” Ryan said.

Ley has rejected the glass cliff had anything to do with her appointment, writing an opinion piece for Women’s Agenda that “all too often women are left to clean up the mess” but she had earned her shot.

Click the player above to listen to the full episode, or read on for an edited extract of the conversation below.

Samantha Selinger-Morris: Like you said, it’s an established phenomenon, and I know that our mastheads, in addition to others, of course, have covered numerous very high-profile cases, right? We had Vanessa Hudson coming in as Qantas CEO and she had to sort of re-establish the airline’s reputation after it suffered horribly. Amanda Bardwell at Woolworths, Sussan Ley with the Liberal Party. I mean, examples abound. So I wanted to ask you if you were surprised, then, by Chris Bradley’s comments about this.

And beyond that, I guess, is there something perhaps unnerving about the fact that Bradley is a leader at a company, McKinsey, that has long sought to advance the particular conversation about challenges that women do face in the workplace? McKinsey published a Women in the Workplace study, compiled with Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In advocacy group, for more than a decade, and a 2020 report from McKinsey about women working in healthcare even references the term “glass cliff” when outlining hurdles by women of colour. So what say you, Michelle?

Dr Michelle Ryan: Yeah, so, I mean, I’m not sure it’s really my place to comment on Chris Bradley per se but I’m very happy to sort of talk in more generalities. And in terms of whether I’m surprised that people question the phenomenon, no. It’s part of the phenomenon itself, and it’s also part of the research. So actually, when we first uncovered the phenomenon way back in sort of, you know, 2003, 2004, 2005, when we were really starting to do this, we actually ran a study which was to look at how people responded to it and how they interpreted the phenomenon. So we did a study on the BBC, actually. So we, the BBC, wanted to run an article about the glass cliff. It was the first sort of media article ever about the glass cliff. I think it was 2004 maybe the article came out. And one of the things we did was we added a little survey at the end of it.

So when we looked at the responses to this survey, what was really interesting is that for women, it really resonated with them. It either resonated with their own experiences or resonated with what they saw out in the real world. And their interpretations of the phenomenon was very much in terms of how it was discriminatory, how it was problematic. So it might be, “Oh, it looks like women are being set up for failure”, or, “This is a real subtle form of discrimination”. But what was really interesting was that when men interpreted the phenomenon, their response to it was very, very different. So men were much more likely to say, “Oh no, no, it’s a benign phenomenon. It’s really just organisations doing their thing. They’re just looking for the best person for the job, or maybe they’re just trying to signal change, it’s not discrimination.” But what was really interesting was 50 per cent of the respondents, the male respondents, actually said, “I don’t think it exists”. Like, “I actually question the phenomenon itself”. So here we are, I guess 20-odd years later, and we’ve still got people questioning the phenomenon. So am I surprised? Not at all, it absolutely fits with the research.

For the story behind the headlines, listen to The Morning Edition, with a new episode live each weekday from 5am. You can find The Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere you listen to your podcasts.

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