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“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

– John F. Kennedy

Leadership is the highest honor in the business world.

High-performing leaders are the prisms that expand the variety of talents and expertly inspire the greatest possible impact from each person on their teams. They invest in them, develop them, and help them achieve more than they imagined. They ignite a spark that helps them create something bigger than themselves. True leaders have accepted a vitally important mission.

Great leaders are inspiring visionaries. They develop and promote high performers who have a passion for delivering great results with integrity, teamwork, and grit. They give credit where credit is due and pay their success forward. Their greatest accomplishments are their teams, and it's pure joy to stand back and watch them excel. If leadership is the highest honor in the business world, then leading a team to high performance where everyone contributes their best is the Holy Grail that every great leader should aspire to achieve.

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The workplace is changing at an accelerated pace. Over the past 30 years, companies have been required to adapt to global competition, leaps in technology, more highly educated workers, emerging consumers, and innovations that have created unrestricted business opportunities. At the same time, more women and highly educated talent are entering the workplace than ever before, introducing new ways of thinking, leading, inspiring, and engaging to meet these new demands. The unmanaged sea change has created devastating effects on the workplace, placing women and this new high-performing talent squarely in the center of the war. These key groups are vulnerable, unprotected, and at risk because today's boards and executives are using a bottom-up, groundswell marketing strategy to manage the change, failing to lead their companies through one of the greatest transformations in business history. This has left companies at substantial risk for future lawsuits, failed brands, and underperforming teams, potentially costing shareholders billions of dollars each year. The overwhelming research and anecdotal evidence today suggest that the majority of companies are failing to tap into the exceptional talent already present within their walls. This is especially true for women, but also affects men. Pointing fingers at men has only exacerbated the separation of genders into silos of talent.

The answer is not pitting men and women against each other or continuing to encourage cultures where only the strong survive. For companies to adapt to the current market opportunities and to create a high-performing workplace that leverages the variety of talents already available, the company of the future must be equipped with the tools to integrate, inspire, and empower their teams.

Today's workplace and current leaders have not been adequately prepared for the influx of different talents, genders, and beliefs. Training on diversity and encouraging women to “Lean In” is only exacerbating the worst of situations and has resulted in overly competitive, “win at any cost” HR systems that tend to inaccurately identify and promote leaders unprepared to maximize the talent of these new, diverse teams.

Companies can shift away from their destructive practices, and instead maximize their teams, gain a competitive advantage in their industries, and achieve cultures in which inspired and engaged teams and leaders produce great results. Helping leaders identify why they're failing to foster high-performing teams and giving them simple steps that virtually assure high performance across their companies is my personal mission and the focus of this book.

First, a personal story to highlight the high stakes and to share a path toward a solution.

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My team and I were still elated after winning an industry award the prior month (our fourth) for our leadership in rebranding and remarketing our firm. By all measures, we were a high-performing team, delivering great work, supporting each other, supporting our fellow colleagues, and delivering highly acclaimed, world-renowned results. As a leader, it didn't get any better than this. The team was engaged and empowered and so was I. By all external measures, I was a high-performing leader, leading a high-performing team.

A few weeks later, my job was eliminated. No explanation. No warning.

My mind was reeling. I had never been out of a job before. I had worked countless hours each week, at a job I loved, with a team I loved, producing great results for the organization. Why now? I had so many questions.

After a year filled with a lot of prayer and soul searching, it all became clear, but I'll share that lesson with you later.

Over the course of my one-year noncompete, I continued to mentor men and women in the workplace – most of whom were high performers. Mentoring others from outside the workplace for the first time in my career gave me new insight and a fresh perspective. I found myself responding to their challenges by sharing similar experiences of navigating the pitfalls of corporate life and noticed that women and men have the same challenges. Each conflict we discussed involved a high performer and an overly aggressive manager, typically a higher-level executive or a peer on a quest for more power.

When I was immersed in the workplace, I would have encouraged my mentees to “Lean In” to their challenges and then provide solutions based on the wisdom found on those pages and in other books that advise top performers to simply play within the sandbox they are given. With the clarity of an outside perspective, my mentoring shifted to questioning why those who are targeted and undermined stay at companies that mistreat them. I wanted to empower my mentees to create change and to stand up for themselves, but they couldn't. These bullies were powerful and sat in some of the highest positions in their organizations. Perhaps it took so much time to notice this bullying behavior at the highest levels of the corporate world because, regardless of your level in the workplace, it's the norm – an accepted cultural behavior regarded as part of the “game.” From the outside, it simply mirrors a fifth grader bullying a first grader on an elementary school playground.

Helping my mentees “Lean In” to conflict with a superior most likely meant “Leaning In” to a 3:00 p.m. meeting with HR on a Friday. They lacked the influence to change the rules. I noticed that high performers, particularly high-potential leaders and women in general, appeared to be targeted 100% of the time. Women tended to have less insight into why their superiors were targeting them, which required more conversation around why they were marginalized, overlooked, bullied, or abused. Each woman had a hard time processing the reality that, in most cases, it wasn't their fault. The men, to their credit, had a much more innate sense of how to move forward, mostly by hitting the issue head-on. Unfortunately, that approach backfired for women.

After experiencing several of the same conversations, a recurring problem emerged. Despite a desire to hire highly qualified men and women, most organizations are not designed to promote, support, or identify high performers – especially among women. Dropping talented women into corporate environments, traditionally dominated by men, without a plan for high-performance, mixed-gender teams, has resulted in defensiveness and conflict, often derailing the most competent women and mitigating their value. Men have been held back and derailed by this conflict in the workplace as well, but, fortunately, are more likely to have the capacity to endure it. Women are often blindsided by such conflicts and end up blaming themselves. This unmanaged conflict has allowed the wrong leaders to find opportunity in the chaos, mastering the art of politics and maneuvering their way into once-coveted leadership positions. These “old world” leaders are now in higher positions, seeking to defend their turf and overpower any perceived competitors, failing to effectively lead the transformation as a result.

During one pivotal mentoring session, an up-and-coming female leader shared how she had been derailed by a senior manager one level above her. She felt that it was common knowledge within the organization that the senior manager had risen to the executive ranks because she knew how to navigate and eliminate her competition. This executive bullied and discredited anyone in her path. I had unfortunately crossed paths with this executive as well, and ultimately survived, but not without earning a few battle scars to prove it. I survived out of sheer grit and tenacity, never willing to give up.

I had just finished this mentoring conversation when our daughter, Lauren, came home from high school and shared how she had heard of a girl being bullied. The girl targeted by the bullies was a good person who had done nothing to provoke the incident, and my daughter had reached out to her in support. Lauren was captain of the cheer team, a role that could be used for good in these types of situations, and she didn't disappoint. It wasn't the first time she would help someone being bullied, and I suspect it won't be the last. I was so proud of this young woman and the leader she had become, and then my mind drifted to imagining her in the workplace. How was she, and all of her smart, talented friends, going to survive? The workplace is full of bullies. How would she effectively stand up to a bully in the workplace who could eliminate her position or undermine her career? She was showing signs of being a great leader, but would she encounter the same dysfunction I did? The high performers I continue to mentor, and the over 1,000 men and women I've mentored or instructed over the years, all experienced similar barriers that kept them from performing at their best.

The workplace is not ready for my daughter, her generation, or even this current generation of top performers. Something needed to change. As one of my mentors once told me, the answer lies in the root cause. So I set out on a journey to help my daughter, her friends, the high performers I had mentored, and those I have never met. Here is the irony in what I found:

Today's companies are in a war for talent, seeking to hire women and high performers who provide exponential performance impact in today's hypercompetitive global marketplace. Unfortunately, most executives and HR departments don't realize that many of the talented individuals who can maximize high performance in organizations – women, top performers, and inspiring leaders – are under siege in corporate America. The statistics for workplace bullying alone are staggering, with their direct or indirect impact extending to nearly 75% of the workplace. Turnover among female employees at some companies is as high as 27%, more than double the rate of 11% among men, even though record numbers of women are graduating from college and entering the workforce.¹ To date, the solution offered to tormented and derailed high performers and women is little more than encouragement to stay in a corporate game that is often rigged by the design of toxic leaders who aim to eliminate or sabotage the high performers who threaten their turf. The result? Companies are failing the very employees they are responsible to lead, losing the war for talent, compromising their bottom line, and degrading their brands.

A majority of companies today have failed to identify the reason for this war for talent in their organization and are weaker because of it. The root cause? The unidentified war on talent is inhibiting companies who want to win the war for talent. There is a better way.

War for Talent	Internal Challenge for Companies
Competing to recruit the top talent available.	Retaining top talent despite internal bullying, derailing by managers, and leadership that lacks accountability.
A shift to high performance seeks the right kind of talent and makes a company attractive to potential hires on the job market.	A shift to high performance helps retain top talent by empowering and promoting the best leaders and employees.

If today's boards and C-suite leaders know that adding more women to the workplace, placing great leaders in key positions, and developing and promoting high performers are the three keys to designing a high-performance workplace, why are they allowing the undermining of these groups? After analyzing over 30 years of mentoring sessions with women and men, women in leadership programs that spanned the globe, and my own quest to become a high-performing leader, I found something both concerning and sobering: today's companies are not designed for high performance. In fact, they suppress and eliminate the true high performers and the most effective gender-balanced teams that have proved in multiple studies to inspire creativity, increase profits, and move companies to industry leadership. Today's bottom-up, groundswell strategy of adding more women and talent to the workplace is not working and has left many highly qualified women and men to find their own way through toxic and sometimes illegal barriers in the workplace.

It's time for a new approach that places the responsibility for creating gender-balanced, high-performing organizations squarely in the hands of the very individuals who are in positions of power and can make the change happen: the boards, executives, and leaders within organizations. We should no longer ask women, true leaders, and high performers to play a game they cannot win or be responsible for changing the rules of the game. Instead, they are the reason to change the game. The barriers they experience each and every day have reached staggering and epidemic proportions:

 75% of women have reported abuse in the workplace, and 70% of those have been retaliated against. Women can be exceptional leaders, yet only 1 in 5 women holds a C-suite role.

 High performers produce 200–500% more than an average employee, yet are targeted by imposter leaders almost 100% of the time, and are more likely than an average performer to leave organizations.

 According to Gallup, great leadership is the number-one determinant of a company's success, but less than 25% of leaders today are considered great. How are companies developing the other 75% of their leaders?

 Gallup also found that a staggering 35% of managers are actively engaged with their work. While 51% are simply not engaged with their work, an additional 14% are completely checked out, actively disengaged from their responsibilities.²

It's time to show boards, executives, women, and high performers how to create a high-performing workplace by recognizing the barriers, replacing them with more effectual attributes, and redesigning their workplace to create the potential for sustainable growth and industry leadership for years to come.

The good news: the boards and leaders of any company can use this step-by-step guide to attract and to retain top talent in the market, taking their innovation and profits to new heights. I'll show you the key that will unlock the high-performance potential of all employees so that companies can capitalize on new business opportunities and win their industry's war for talent.

Without a plan for high performance in place, these organizations will fail to reach new heights or to maximize their talent. Perhaps companies fail to achieve high performance because (1) they refuse to make the necessary changes or (2) they simply don't know how to effectively integrate high performers and women into their teams and to remove the barriers they face. My bet is on option two.

In fact, most CEOs and C-suite leaders strive to cultivate a high-performing organization, but they are mired in antiquated methods and infrastructures that prohibit them from reaching their own full potential. Organizations are hindered by individuals who are willing to undermine colleagues for the sake of advancing their own careers. Unfortunately, these self-serving individuals are good at playing the game, using a company's culture to their own advantage, at the expense of high performers and shareholders. Today's HR typically chalks these up as “personality conflicts,” never truly addressing the underlying and pervasive issue.

How do talented, high-performing individuals flourish and make an impact in this kind of workplace?

In order for highly talented women and men to succeed, companies must make a shift toward a high-performance system, making it possible for the right individuals to flourish and enabling teams to function at peak capacity. The power, influence, and responsibility for making this shift rests squarely on the board and current executive leaders. Here is the hard truth that competitive companies of the future need to face:

It's time for leaders to stop expecting change to come from the bottom of the organization.

Today's workplace is not designed for high performers to succeed, even if HR successfully recruits a talented and diverse workforce. Individuals who are primarily driven to achieve a title, rather than to produce excellent work, can navigate their way to management or leadership positions (let's call them imposters) by bullying their peers and blocking high performers, especially women, from advancing or achieving success. Imposters are primarily driven by their own personal and professional achievements, resorting to aggressive bullying tactics to defend their turf. Today's true high performers (those who are highly ethical and have integrity, intellect, drive, and great leadership traits while also competing externally) make it because of sheer grit and determination. Most of them do not.

If the imposters are the ones making it to the top and are not the true high performers, then workplaces today are not maximizing the potential of the true top performers and women today in leadership positions. What would it take for a company to make this shift to a culture and infrastructure system that allows high performers to succeed and for gender balance to become the norm while minimizing the harm caused by imposters? If companies want to retain excellent employees, to maximize profits, and to ensure that only the best performers advance to key leadership roles, including the C-suite, then what is the one thing that will make the shift possible?

It's time for leaders to stop expecting change to come from the bottom of the organization.

To make change happen, companies must adopt a top-down approach. The responsibility for making a shift to high performance rests solely on the current board and C-suite's shoulders, the same people who are responsible for creating the high-performing organization. In defining the roles and responsibilities involved in making this shift, we need to get a handle on the key players who can make this vitally important change happen.