Beware the “superstar bias,” the “rainmaker bias” and the “myth of the creative genius.”
In the wake of the #MeToo national reckoning over workplace sexual harassment in the past year, more than 201 powerful men have lost jobs or major roles.
But far from the number and the severity of the revelations of sexual misconduct at the highest levels that continue to roll out with regularity, perhaps the most shocking aspect of the #MeToo moment is just how long leaders allowed these alleged abusive behaviors to go on without repercussion. Cultures of silence sprang up around alleged abusers as leadership, dismissed or looked the other way as allegations arose, creating poisonous and destructive environments.
Witness the late Arnold Kopelson. Before he joined the CBS board of directors in 2007, a friend of Kopelson’s told him that then-CBS CEO Les Moonves, had sexually assaulted her in 1999, according to an internal CBS investigation. Kopelson waved away the incident as trivial, saying that, “we all did that.” Kopelson, a producer who died in October, was one of Moonves’ staunchest supporters, even as more women publicly accused Moonves of abuse. “I don’t care of 30 more women come forward and allege this kind of stuff,” he said. “Les is our leader and it wouldn’t change my opinion of him.”
Moonves later lost his job among #MeToo revelations.
Kopelson’s perspective is instructive. He and other members of the board were willing to turn a blind eye to accusers and a damning internal investigation rather than oust someone they viewed as an invaluable — and profitable — hitmaker. It’s something we came to call “superstar bias” in our recent comprehensive Better Life Lab report on the factors that drive sexual harassment across all sectors of the economy.
We found that not only is sexual harassment is severe, pervasive and troublingly unresolved, but that it is systemic and persists in virtually every sector, from female-dominated to male-dominated environments, and from low-wage and precarious jobs to high-wage professions.
And while sexual harassment is driven in all sectors by gender and power imbalances, it is also fueled by powerful — and false — narratives. In male-dominated, high-wage professions like technology, media, politics, law, finance and entertainment, common myths that enable so many to ignore or tolerate sexual harassment and abuse include the “superstar bias,” “the rainmaker bias,” and “the myth of the creative genius.”
The false narratives are fed by the belief that CBS could never survive without Moonves, or that only Harvey Weinstein is brilliant enough to produce award-winning movies. Creative geniuses, according to the mythology, need creative license to say and do whatever they want, for the sake of the generation of new, innovative ideas, or in service of artistic inspiration and vision. Think of Picasso and how generations minimized his abusive treatment of women as somehow owing to his “artistic temperament.”
The legal profession has long grappled with a troubling and persistent talent drain of women: Although women have made up about half of all law school graduating classes for more than two decades, women make up only 19% of equity partners in top law firms.
Sexual harassment and the “rainmaker” partnership structure of law firms, where equity partners bring in business, protect their friends and clients, make big bucks and are often seen as untouchable, are a big reason why. The American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession reports that one-half to two-thirds of women lawyers experienced or observed sexual harassment — not only by colleagues and bosses, but by judges, clients, court personnel, and other lawyers — but that few make reports, and those that do are often silenced by out-of-court settlements or mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts.
Further, women who’ve made complaints, especially against a rainmaker, are often asked to leave a firm, or, if they stay, are seen as a “pariah,” writes Wendy S. Lazar in the New York Law Journal. “Often, other associates or partners do not want to work with them, their billable time drops off, and often they begin to fail at the firms that they had previously succeeded at.” Both are factors not only in keeping targets of sexual harassment silent, but in damaging careers or policing them out of the profession.
So what can boards of directors and those in power do?
Read more of my piece in Directors & Boards magazine here