The Idea in Brief
A star performer in one company will shine in another, right? Wrong. When stars switch firms, their performance actually dims, along with their new company’s market value, author Boris Groysberg argues. Everyone loses.
Except when the stars are women. According to Groysberg, talented women who switch firms maintain their stardom, and their new employer’s share price holds steady. Groysberg provides two explanations for this discrepancy:
- Unlike men, high-performing women build their success on portable, external relationships—with clients and other outside contacts.
- Women considering job changes weigh more factors then men do, especially cultural fit, values, and managerial style.
These strategies enable women to transition more successfully to new companies. And that has crucial implications for all professionals. By understanding successful women’s career strategies, women and men can strengthen their ability to shine in any setting.
The Idea in Practice
How Employees Can Shine in Any New Organization
Groysberg recommend these two strategies:
Strategy #1: Build an external network. Most male stars depend on the internal networks they cultivate. But women lack access to those crucial networks, for these reasons:
- Uneasy in-house bonds. Women face less-than-wholehearted acceptance in male-dominated workplaces. They also avoid forging close relationships with men for fear of giving the appearance of impropriety.
- Poor internal mentorship. Women receive inadequate access to internal mentors. Thus they miss out on a vital service mentoring provides: access to an internal network of relationships.
- Neglectful colleagues. The locker-room and sports-bar cultures characterizing mostly male workforces prevent females from forging strong bonds with males.
To counter these barriers, star women cultivate relationships with external constituencies, such as customers and former mentors, that are not dependent on their current company. When they change jobs, the external relationships that promote their success are not affected.
Strategy #2: Scrutinize prospective employers. Unlike men, who focus largely on compensation, women weigh broader considerations when thinking about a job change, favoring work cultures that emphasize:
- Receptivity to female talent
- Openness to individual styles, personalities, and approaches to work
- Impartial performance measurement systems
Star women who move to employers that offer these features are more likely to succeed than the typical male star who changes companies.
How Organizations Can Foster Star Performers
By paying close attention to female stars’ careers, organizations can do a better job of attracting top performers—female and male—who will continue to excel after they’re hired. Example:
Investment bank Lehman Brothers’ equity research department encourages female analysts to participate in recruiting. The department also rigorously pursues gender-blind policies in every facet of its operations. These practices screen out men uncomfortable in a culture where women can thrive and men can learn from them. In addition, the department refuses to prescribe one “right” way to be an analyst. So people can incorporate aspects of their personal identity, including gender, as they see fit.
This approach propelled the department from 15th in the Institutional Investor rankings in 1987 to 7th in 1988 and 4th in 1989. And many female stars left other investment banks’ research departments to join Lehman Brothers.
About four years ago, with the war for talent in high gear, my colleagues and I wrote an article in these pages warning managers of the risks in hiring star performers away from competitors. After studying the fortunes of more than 1,000 star stock analysts, we found that when a star switches companies, not only does his performance plunge, but so does the market value of his new company. What’s more, these players don’t tend to stay with their new organizations for very long, despite the generous pay packages that lured them in. Everybody loses out.
