I will never forget my first interview in the financial sector.

The employment agency said I would only interview with the woman who could potentially become my boss, but during the meeting, a tall, broad-shouldered man opened her office door as he knocked and asked to steal me for a second. He walked me across the hall into what appeared to be a broom closet and asked me if I had plans to have kids soon.

I stuttered, “No, sir.” He said, “Good, cuz the last thing we need around here is another mother.”

I said nothing.

I got the job.

I soon learned that the man who had pulled me into the broom closet was the president of the firm. It was the sixth company he had captained in 10 years. I'll call him Rich.

My new role was going smoothly, but a few months in, my team hit a snag on a major project and missed a deadline. I scheduled a meeting with Rich, in his office, to discuss.

As I sat across from him, projecting my assessment over the expanse of his mahogany desk, I tried not to be distracted by the array of medals and plaques on display behind him. Framed between trophy cases of leadership awards, Rich seemed preoccupied, scrolling through his phone.

I continued, explaining how the project became delayed and how I thought we could get back on track. I was about to wrap up with an apology, but the moment I said the words “I'm sorry,” he cut me off.

“Stop. Stop right there.” Rich was suddenly riveted.

I waited in silence.

“Never apologize. Never let anyone hear you say you're sorry. You wanna get ahead? You'll never hear me say I'm sorry.”

“What if…you make a mistake?” I ventured.

“Then, you know that. Not everyone needs to know that.”

I was, again, at a loss for words.

I had been taught that accountability was key to leadership. But what did I know? I was conscious of the fact that I was new to this sector, in my mid-twenties, and learning the ropes. Maybe I was being naïve. Idealistic.

“We're good here,” he dismissed me.

We only saw Rich a couple of days a week. He spent most of his time in his Malibu house, flying in for a day or two, then flying back. When he was in the office, I attempted to get questions answered around key projects, but his answers were often confusing. I would follow up with directors, who would roll their eyes and confirm that the information he gave me was incorrect. I didn't want to risk pushing back, though. I had seen him yell at employees, slam his fist on desks, and hang up the phone mid-conversation over disagreements. I wasn't going to invite that.

But his behavior had a flipside: When Rich wasn't yelling, he was charismatic. He appeared charmingly above the mundane and beyond reproach. He seemed so completely convinced of his every move that it was hard to think of him as anything but an authority figure. It felt impossible to question him.

A couple of years into my employment, the rumors started: The organization was in trouble, and investors were desperately looking for a buyer. Rich had stopped his semi-regular visits from SoCal, and we weren't hearing from him.

We were rudderless, anxious, without leadership when we needed it most. Our drift in limbo went on for months.

One morning an HR rep greeted me at my desk. We had been acquired. The purchasing company had already made an initial round of cuts. My job was temporarily safe, but my boss's was not.

The rep walked me to my boss's office. She had been given two hours and a cardboard box. I flashed back to my interview for the role, when Rich had said, “The last thing we need around here is another mother.” I didn't know at the time that my boss was one of two mothers in the organization.

“I have a lot of people to meet with today, so you'll need to walk your supervisor to her car, get her badge from her, and bring it back.”

I didn't know what to say. My soon-to-be-former boss had taken a chance on me, the nonprofit kid with no experience in finance, and now I was going to escort her to the parking garage and retrieve her badge.

I accompanied her through the office as she said her goodbyes. Other co-workers were also packing up, teary-eyed, blindsided. As we passed Rich's office, I spotted the top of his head. He was in for the first time in months, sequestered in his office with the door closed.

After everyone from the first round of cuts had left, Rich emerged. He announced that our business would be absorbed into a new parent company, and they were still deciding on a second round. He addressed a few details of the transition, then delivered his closing statement: “And finally, I wanted to say, don't worry about me. I'll be fine. The wife and I have a European junket planned. And when we get back I'll be taking the helm at a different firm.”

The business had failed under Rich's watch. We had lost co-workers with no notice, and we didn't know if our own jobs were safe. But Rich had managed to ride his charisma into a seventh executive-level role.

Was that what leadership material looked like?

The Confidence-Competence Trap

Despite making up 47 percent of the workforce and graduating from college at higher rates than men, women still represent only 29 percent of senior managers, 22 percent of executive-level leaders, and 6 percent of CEOs.¹ Numbers for leaders of color are even more dismal. Although 12 percent of the US population is Black, Black employees hold only 3.2 percent of the senior leadership roles at large companies in the US and 0.8 percent of all Fortune 500 CEO positions.² The percentage of CEOs of color has actually decreased since 2016.

The problem isn't just that organizations appear to favor white men as leaders; it's that they often favor incompetent white men. In his provocatively titled book, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It), psychologist and chief talent scientist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic analyzes thousands of 360-degree and multisource feedback evaluations. He finds that leaders like Rich are typical, not anomalous, because we are prone to mistake confidence in potential leaders for competence, especially in men. Additional studies find that highly talkative, charismatic, and even psychopathic individuals are more likely to be seen as leaders³ than those who demonstrate more subtle but proven leadership strengths, such as strategic thinking or taking initiative.⁴ Once these outwardly confident employees are promoted into leadership roles, though, they often prove ineffective.

Over-promoting stereotypically masculine traits, such as extraversion or bravado, means that we miss out on less gregarious individuals who may actually be better suited for leadership. Studies published in the Harvard Business Review found that women consistently outperform men in 17 of 19 core leadership skills, such as self-development and accountability, but still aren't seen, or promoted, as leaders.⁵

The result? Dissatisfied employees and misguided management.

Premuzic's studies find that most employees are dissatisfied with their managers, but most managers, especially male managers, see themselves as highly effective, with little awareness that their subordinates do not view them favorably. This perception gap, in itself, increases tension. In an interview with the Harvard Business Review, Premuzic notes, “Managers perform better when their self-views are in sync or aligned with other people's views on them, and they even do better when they see themselves in a more critical way than others see them.”⁶ He goes on to note that this is a particular area in which underestimated leaders are more likely to be in sync with their reports: “That's one area where women, again, have an advantage vis-à-vis men because they're more likely to be self-critical even if it is a sort of harsh and perfectionistic self-criticism that is harsher than (how) others see them.”

The confidence that opens the door to leadership for many can also be a blinder that blocks the self-reflection required to be an effective leader.

Prizing confidence also thins the tightrope that underestimated individuals have to walk to advance into leadership roles. As explored in chapter 2, employees of color who attempt to speak up are seen as “pushy,” women of color are at risk of being seen as too assertive, and women in general are seen as “talking too much,” even when speaking less than their male peers. While speaking up and embracing extraversion is essential to being seen as a leader, these same traits are seen as off-putting in underestimated individuals.

Beyond diversity of race and gender, overvaluing confidence and charisma means that we miss out on diverse leadership styles proven to be effective across all backgrounds. Introverts, for example, hold some of the most undervalued leadership potential.

A 2018 study from Yale reveals that less talkative employees, who are often overlooked as potential leaders, seem to understand their peers better than their more chatty co-workers do.⁷ Because introverts spend more time observing others and practicing reflection, they have a more accurate understanding of how people function in groups and what motivates them to work harder. Complementary studies find that introverts outperform extraverts in helping teams navigate conflicts and crises.⁸ Like Trevor in chapter 4, they have often logged hours analyzing the relationships among members of the team and are able to focus on meeting others' needs rather than making their own voices heard. Extraverts, on the other hand, are more likely to prolong conflict within teams and increase, rather than decrease, interpersonal tension.

Missing out on these underestimated skills impacts the bottom line; for example, the 17 leadership competencies in which women excel are also highly correlated with employee retention, customer satisfaction, profitability, sales, and engagement.

So, how do we move from rewarding the stereotypically charismatic to recognizing and promoting typically unsung leadership potential?

Transparency: Not Just for Pay

In GEN's employee survey, respondents are most likely to check the “I don't know” boxes for questions related to promotions and advancement. Among national respondents, 72 percent of employees state that they do not know what steps they would need to take to advance in their workplace.

Leaders also struggle to articulate the promotion process in their organizations. When reviewing companies' promotional practices, I rarely see written processes or criteria for advancing employees into leadership roles.

While transparency is often associated with pay, it also has a crucial role to play in developing inclusive leadership and promotional strategies. Not only do clear, transparent criteria let employees know what steps they need to take to advance, they also force decision-makers to look for typically undervalued competencies that will make someone effective in a leadership role.

Without clear criteria, we are more prone to promote based on personality impressions, which are highly vulnerable to the confidence and charisma traps described earlier. We are also more likely to make the critical mistake of assuming that those who have performed well in their current role will perform well as leaders.

Multiple academic studies have found that organizations tend to promote based on what employees have done, without an evaluation of what they can do as leaders.⁹ High-performing contributors, for example, are often promoted into management, even though the skills it took to excel in their contributing roles bear little resemblance to the skills needed to manage others. Just because an employee was successful in one role does not mean that same employee will succeed in leading others in similar roles.

To ensure that you are promoting for leadership competencies, rather than confidence or unrelated past performance, use the following guidelines to develop—and communicate—clear, transparent criteria.

Revisit job descriptions—for every role. Job descriptions tend to be forgotten after the initial hiring process. The same competency-based descriptions and hiring tools discussed in chapter 6 can also lead to more effective promotion decisions. Of the organizations GEN has worked with, those that had the most diverse leadership teams also had the clearest definitions of each job level, including expected competencies and behaviors, all the way up through directors on the board. Defining the expected skills for each role leads decision-makers to focus on the competencies they should promote so that confidence doesn't stand in for competence. Employees also gain a clear understanding of the steps they need to take to be promoted.

When defining criteria, keep the following principles in mind:

• Beware of using titles in place of competencies. Using titles may disproportionately exclude underestimated groups who have been overlooked for leadership roles in the past or have been given leadership-related tasks, but never given the title. In addition, although someone may have had a leadership title in the past, it does not necessarily mean that the candidate has been vetted for leadership skills.
• Think of your business's future leadership needs. Competencies should account for skills that go beyond past performance to demonstrating the potential to lead businesses into the future. Can your leadership candidates understand an increasingly diverse employee and customer base? Have they shown skills, such as navigating complexity and facilitating conflict resolution, which are needed to lead a company through growth? Crafting competencies around adaptability can be more important than culture fit, which often becomes an anchor to the past rather than a catalyst to the future.

Communicate these criteria. While this seems like an obvious step, it can easily be overlooked. Your employees should have on-demand access to the competencies required for each role, and they should be reminded of them. Use one-on-ones, mentoring meetings, learning and development planning sessions, and performance evaluations to remind individuals aspiring to leadership what steps they need to take to advance. Intentionally including this information in meeting agendas helps guide ambitious employees and reminds managers of the skills they're looking for, by repeating them to employees.

You have set your criteria and communicated them, but how do you know what success looks like? What level of leadership diversity is good enough? The next step for achieving greater clarity: setting targets.

Which Came First: The Target or the Leader?

Quotas are complicated. In general, people are against them—until they're implemented.

The skepticism toward setting targets and quotas is understandable. Underestimated individuals can be stigmatized as diversity hires, undermining their credibility, even if they are highly qualified. Leaders often worry that setting quotas means they won't be able to fill roles if certain groups just are not adequately represented in the pipeline.

Despite these concerns, multiple case studies point to the same conclusion: over time, quotas work.

One of the earliest studies tracking the impact of quotas followed an amendment to India's self-governance act, the Panchyati Raj Act. The amendment, introduced in 1992, required at least 33.3 percent female representation in local village governments. Before this amendment was introduced, women held only 5 percent of government positions in India. Within 12 years, their share had risen to 40 percent. The quotas are no longer needed to maintain this more balanced representation.

Perhaps more important, this intervention changed people's perceptions of women as leaders.¹⁰ Before the amendment was put in place, women were perceived as ill-suited for leadership and politics. Villagers who had been exposed only to male chiefs were particularly likely to assess women as unfit for government and were not willing to vote for them.

In a landmark study, researchers were able to track sentiment surrounding female leaders before and after the quotas were implemented, village by village. Because some villages adopted the amendment before others, researchers were able to assess how much attitudes toward female leaders changed as a result of the quota, rather than through a natural evolution of attitudes that could occur over time.

Among the villages that were early adopters, those who were initially skeptical of both the quota and women leaders overcame their biases against both. Villagers who were exposed to female chiefs, via the quota, changed their opinions, rating female and male leaders equally. Some even stated that the female chiefs they had been exposed to were more effective than the male chiefs. Skeptics in other villages who had not been exposed to female leaders, however, remained staunchly opposed.

Other countries took note. In 2003, Norway legislated a 40 percent minimum representation of each sex on the corporate boards of public and (larger) private companies.¹¹ Follow-up research found that changing the balance at the top triggered more diverse retention downstream. Women stayed in the companies longer, and the share of female managers increased. Because women could see that there were opportunities for them if they stayed, they were less likely to move on.

A study of large corporations in the US found similar positive associations between an increase in the number of female board directors and rising percentages of female executives and managers.¹²

After Norway's quotas proved successful, Germany, France, Iceland, Italy, Austria, Spain, Sweden, and the UK all followed suit. Female representation on boards in these countries now ranges between 25 percent and 40 percent. In the US, where attitudes toward quotas are hostile, female representation stays stuck at 18 percent.¹³

In all of these cases, when quotas were first being implemented, stakeholders were opposed to them. Over time, as targets were met, attitudes toward both new leaders and quotas shifted. Hostility gave way to a new understanding that standards did not have to be lowered to meet representation targets. Instead, companies got the push they needed to expand their recruiting and retention efforts. In addition, companies that implemented quotas actually found that they led to more professional standards for board selection than they had had before.

As one male CEO and director from Norway described, “In my opinion, what happened in Norway when affirmative action was introduced was that the entire recruitment process of boards was sharpened. The requirements were clarified, the election committee's responsibility was acknowledged. And the focus on the composition of the boards in general was improved. With that law, the importance of the board was upgraded, and the composition of the board. That is positive. And it might also be because you don't have to go far back before you see that the recruitment to boards and board members was heavily influenced by a sort of networking mentality, and the close network that you belonged to yourself.”¹⁴

Some companies, and even entire states in the US, are starting to learn from this example, beginning to implement their own quotas. The success of these quotas, however, may be threatened by a too common mentality: the rule of the “One and Done.”

One Is Not Done

In September 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that required public companies headquartered in California to name at least one female director to their boards by the end of 2019. That was the part that grabbed the headlines.

The fine print caught my attention: The law further mandates that companies with five-member boards have at least two female directors by the end of 2021; corporations with six or more directors need at least three women. The penalties for failing to comply rise accordingly. I read this and breathed a sigh of relief.

Often when I hear about quotas, they stop at the “One and Done” rule. One woman and one person of color ascend to a board position or the executive suite, and inclusive leadership initiatives are declared successful.

For that individual, and for the organization, having just one can be worse than having none.

Data tracking more than 2,000 management teams across the mutual fund sector compared the performance of homogeneous teams and mixed-sex teams. The study concluded that homogeneity won out. At first, this seems like an alarming conclusion for anyone working on advancing diversity initiatives. A close look at the data reveals an important nuance: In teams that were considered mixed-sex, women represented a very small minority of the group. Because women represent approximately 10 percent of fund managers, there was often only one female representative on mixed-sex teams.¹⁵

When underestimated individuals are the only representative, or represent a small minority, they are treated as tokens, which limits how they are perceived. Rather than being seen as specialists in their discipline, they are seen as specialists in their identity. The female stockbroker becomes the specialist on being female, not on trading. The Black creative director is the specialist in being Black, not in creative direction.

If these individuals' contributions are not taken at face value, it limits how much value they can add to the performance of the group. Therefore, a 10-person mixed-sex group in the mutual fund study was actually performing more like a 9-person group, despite the qualifications and efforts of the sole female.

In Iris Bohnet's book, What Works: Gender Equality by Design, she summarizes her analysis of multiple studies on tokenism: Underestimated individuals are highly aware that they may be written off as a diversity representative. Not only does this make them self-conscious about the ways they may be perceived, they also become hesitant to open doors for others who share their background, for fear that it may be seen as race-based or gender-based favoritism. For women, this is often described as “Queen Bee syndrome,” a dynamic in which women who are “the only” feel the need to assimilate to the behaviors of their majority peers, rather than sponsor those of similar identities.

To overcome these dynamics, leadership groups must achieve a critical mass of underestimated individuals. Bohnet cites several studies which find that underestimated individuals stop being seen as stereotypes or tokens, and start being treated like individual experts or leaders, when there are more of them in a group.¹⁶ With a larger presence, the comment from the one Black person is no longer representative of what all Black people think. Advice from the sole woman to mitigate risks isn't written off as stereotypically feminine risk aversion.

Additional studies released by the National Academies of Sciences of the United States of America conclude that the greater the diversity in a group, the more likely a phenomenon called “stereotype dispersion.”¹⁷ This term describes a perception shift in which majority members of a group progress from seeing more difference between themselves and minority members of a group, to seeing less difference, when more of those minority members are present. This change in perception can decrease tensions and allow groups to collaborate more effectively, unlocking the full potential of collective intelligence discussed in chapter 3.

When I present this evidence to organizations, the next questions are usually, OK, so how many is enough? If our workforce is evenly split female and male, do we need to have 50 percent representation? What if the pipeline just isn't balanced this way? What do we do about minority ethnic groups that represent less than 10 percent of the workforce?

Reaching Critical Mass: The Art of Setting Targets

While there is not a “perfect” number, stereotypes have far less impact when minority groups represent at least one-third of a group.¹⁸ Once this threshold is met, underestimated individuals are more likely to be seen as credible, and they are less likely to adopt a scarcity mindset. Knowing there is room for “more than one” can make them feel free to sponsor others who look like them, and junior-level employees from underestimated backgrounds genuinely believe that there is room for them at the top.

For organizations that are facing unbalanced pipelines, this 33 percent target can seem out of reach. The advice I have for these organizations may sound counter to diversity goals: When possible, make your groups homogeneous. For example, if you need to split your leadership team into groups during an all-company meeting, don't attempt to maintain “mixed” groups if you will have just one underestimated individual in each group. If you're splitting thirty people into three groups, and you have three Black employees, do not put one Black employee in each of the three groups. You're better off having all three Black employees in a single group.

When I conduct workshops in majority-male environments, participants are often surprised when I end up grouping the women together. Without this intervention, however, they will be less likely to feel comfortable sharing their opinions honestly or having their contributions understood outside the frame of “the only.” Once like individuals are able to share their perspectives in a mini-group with others with shared identities, they can present their conclusions, as a group, in front of others, returning diverse perspectives to the larger conversation.

While you probably will not convert all quota-averse skeptics, the following steps can foster buy-in as you start to set targets.

Decide on, and communicate, a rationale behind the target numbers you choose. I've seen organizations use three different target-setting heuristics that increased acceptance:

• Pipeline-dependent. Set representation targets that are in line with the demographics of graduating classes in your field, or are representative of the estimated population proportions in your sector. This logic is difficult to argue with.
• Representative of the customer base. Set targets that mirror the population you are trying to serve. Including more decision-makers that are familiar with the life experiences of your customers increases your chances of tailoring product development and marketing to their preferences.
• Even representation at all levels of the business. If women represent 50 percent of entry-level employees, for example, set targets at management, executive, and C-suite levels to match.

Communicate targets as part of a comprehensive leadership strategy and timeline. This strategy should include methods for identifying, recruiting, and developing diverse talent, as well as dates for tracking progress. For example, Markon Solutions, a GEN-certified company, stated the following in their inclusive leadership strategy: “Markon aims to identify 10 underrepresented candidates of excellence for leadership positions by January 2021, recruit 5 of them into a leadership track by the end of 2021, and add 3 underrepresented individuals to our leadership team by June 2022.” This timeline was followed by the steps the company's current leadership team planned to take to reach these targets, including a mentorship matching program and a promotion-oriented training, education, and networking event series.

Stating the steps you will take to identify and develop leaders over the long term communicates that these individuals will be well-trained in leadership skills by the time they reach senior positions. This can help lessen “affirmative action” stigma by showing how thoroughly vetted and mentored these leaders are.

Once you have decided on your targets and communicated them, you may still be at a loss for exactly how to meet them. Just setting targets won't make your future leaders appear! To ensure you can meet your deadlines, start identifying talent early.

Identifying Leaders: Start at the Beginning

From the day entry-level employees join your company, you have a chance to identify future leaders.

One of the best ways to engage individuals with their own leadership potential is to encourage them to track their progress, starting early. Whether you facilitate this through frequent performance evaluations, mentorship and sponsorship meetings, or other one-on-ones, encourage junior-level underestimated employees to start tracking achievements. I urge my mentees to spend five minutes recording accomplishments at the end of each week in an achievement tracker. Capturing these small wins can demonstrate over time how they contributed to streamlining processes, making difficult decisions, or demonstrating other key leadership behaviors that should be promoted later.

Group meetings provide another early opportunity to spot employees with meaningful ideas or a proactive approach. Without inclusive practices, though, underestimated individuals may not have the same opportunities to make an impression. As discussed earlier in the second chapter, employees of color and female employees are more likely to have their talking points interrupted or their ideas appropriated.

The following inclusive meeting behaviors can help ensure that a diverse range of voices are heard and recognized.

Invoke the participatory pause. When soliciting feedback on an important topic, ask for a one- to two-minute reflection period before anyone raises a hand to respond. Even in diverse groups, men respond to questions more quickly than women do and are more confident in their answers, even when they know less about a topic than their peers and are more likely to be incorrect in their answer.¹⁹ Because underestimated populations have been subject to “prove it again” biases that hold their answers to a higher standard, they may take longer to compose their responses before voicing their opinions.

Divide and confer. If a topic is being presented for feedback within a large group, provide time for participants to meet in subgroups (as small as pairs) first. Individuals who fear their opinions may not be welcome may feel more comfortable sharing with a peer or small group of peers first. Each subgroup should record their conclusions in a written format (such as a shared Google doc) before groups reconvene. This keeps this feedback from being buried once the larger group reunites. Organizations that practice this behavior report higher levels of collaboration, creativity, and productivity.

Provide lead time for review and space for open-ended feedback. Introverts' and internal processors' way of thinking through problems and presenting feedback runs counter to many workplace cultures. As we saw in chapter 4, they tend to consider all possibilities quietly before weighing in and often highlight the work of others ahead of their own. When given opportunities that honor how they perform, though, introverts—and their employers—can flourish. If possible, send materials or proposals out for review a day ahead of the meeting in which they will be discussed. In addition, solicit feedback through a survey that includes questions with open-ended responses, for these more introspective thinkers to document their feedback ahead of time.

The Application and the Nudge

Once you have started recognizing potential leaders, retaining them and recruiting them into the promotion process is key. To encourage engagement, create an open application process for promotions, encourage underestimated individuals to apply, and share why certain employees are promoted.

Open promotions to those who meet minimum requirements and select by the STAR method. When underestimated individuals tell me that they feel they have been passed over for a promotion, I ask if they received any feedback on why they weren't chosen. “I didn't even know the opportunity was available,” most of them tell me. Promotions that are not formally communicated and open to all are implicitly exclusive. When a promotion opportunity arises, announce it to the entire company and state what the minimum requirements are for the position, relying on the competency-based job descriptions noted earlier in this chapter. Then, use the same blind resume reviews, structured interview processes, and STAR-assessment methods from the hiring chapter to debias your decision-making and select the best person for the role.

Encourage underestimated individuals to apply. As noted earlier in this chapter, men are more likely to assess themselves as qualified for leadership roles than women are. This confidence makes them more likely to believe they are qualified for promotions and apply, even if they do not meet all the minimum criteria. Women are more likely to wait until they are 100 percent sure they have met all of the qualifications.²⁰

Encouraging all to apply, however, can have a big impact. Studies from the 2014 midterm elections give us an example of the success of the “nudge.” Even though women are as good at fundraising as men and stand the same odds—or even slightly better—of winning, they are less likely to run for office. Being asked to run, though, changes that. Whether it makes them believe that they're qualified or counters doubts that bias may count them out, nudging can get women to take the next step forward. While men are encouraged to run more often than their equally qualified female peers, when women are encouraged to run, they become as likely to run for office as their male peers.²¹

When a promotion application process opens, be intentional about going through your list of underestimated individuals to see who may have met the qualifications for next steps and encourage them to apply. This signals to underestimated individuals that their application will be taken seriously, boosting the participation of highly qualified but previously underrepresented candidates.

Share why a candidate was chosen for promotion. Employees rarely experience transparency concerning the reasons an individual was chosen for advancement, but sharing this rationale can increase trust in the process. If the individual promoted is from an underestimated background, this can also lessen any stigma framing the promotion as an affirmative action choice. Sharing a promoted individual's qualifications and achievements bolsters their credibility against possible bias.

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We are closing in on the end of part 2. As we move into the final chapter, we return to first impressions. If I were a new employee, starting my first day, when I came into your office, what would I see?