CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on the value of female leadership

CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on the value of female leadership
CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on the value of female leadership

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Companies led by women or with significant numbers of women on their boards outperform companies with less gender diversity at the top financially. Companies with female directors achieve a higher level of innovation. And when it comes to many of the key traits that make leaders effective — such as humility, empathy, self-awareness and self-control — women tend to outperform men.

Yet they continue to face a “broken rung” on the promotion ladder: for every 100 men promoted to managers, only 86 women are promoted. Women lead just 8% of Fortune 500 companies. Looking outside established businesses and into the startup space, women received just 2% of venture capital dollars in 2021.

Julia Boorstin, senior correspondent at CNBC, has covered business and technology for more than 20 years. During that time, she said, she was constantly struck by how many different female leaders she interviewed were leading their companies. In her new book, When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn From Them, she uncovers decades of data and more than 100 personal interviews to illustrate what women in leadership uniquely bring and why it matters.

Boorstin joined Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal to talk about the new book and what everyone—regardless of their gender—can gain by learning from and emulating female leadership. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.


Kai Rysdal: The statistics are there about women getting chunks — like single-digit percentages — of venture capital money, and about companies making more money when women are on the board or when women run those companies. When you started reporting on this book, how did you decide to go beyond that? Because the essence of this book is much more nuanced than just numbers.

Julia Borstin: Oh, it’s not just about the numbers. As a business reporter over the past 23 years, I have been able to interview literally thousands of people. And I’ve always been smitten with women. Yes, women are a tiny minority. Women currently represent about 8% of Fortune 500 CEOs. And as you mentioned, last year women provided 2% of all venture capital dollars. So women were the exception to the rule. But I also noticed that they lead and approach problem solving in different ways.

Rysdal: Play it a little. How do these women approach problem solving differently than male executives?

Burstin: So what I’ve found is that women are more likely to lead with empathy, they’re more likely to lead with vulnerability, and they’re also more likely to practice gratitude. And there was some really fascinating data that I found about how gratitude actually allows you to do longer-term planning and longer-term thinking. And of course, this is incredibly valuable if you run a company. And then, instead of top-down leadership with the boss telling you what to do, they’re more likely to bring in different perspectives from their teams.

Rysdal: Can we talk about Wall Street for a second? You say at one point in this book that women don’t look good as CEOs because they don’t often serve as CEOs. Therefore, investors and board members do not support them. This kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Burstin: One hundred percent! There is so much pattern matching data out there. And there’s a fascinating piece of research that I mentioned in the jockeys book. Both male and female jockeys actually compete against each other. And when the betting public – male and female – saw that women were particularly underrepresented in certain races, they assumed they wouldn’t do well in that category. And so there is this natural human bias to look for patterns. Investors are looking for the next Mark Zuckerberg, and when women leaders, when women CEOs don’t fit that mold, it doesn’t compute in people’s brains because that natural bias is so strong.

Rysdal: Okay. Look, let me get you off the data train here for a minute, okay? Because you did a lot of research for this book. It’s obvious and you’ve obviously mastered it. But the subjective question is why is that?

Burstin: You mean why are women so underrepresented in leadership?

Rysdal: Or turn it on its head. Why don’t men recognize this and take the hint?

Burstin: First, I think the pandemic has shed light on the importance of many of the characteristics that women are more likely to lead with. And I’m optimistic that this is a transformative moment for everyone – men and women – to understand the importance of finding their leadership strengths. And I think part of the problem is that there just haven’t been that many stories about what different kinds of leadership success look like. And I think having these other models — these other images of what leadership can and should look like — I think that’s going to be a key piece of that puzzle to get people to understand what the future of leadership might look like.

Rysdal: So I don’t, I don’t usually do that, but since you wrote about them in the book, I’m going to ask you about your kids. You have two boys, they are about 10, right? Give or take?

Burstin: One is 8 and the other is 11.

Rysdal: OK. They will grow up in a world that is different from the one you and I grew up in in terms of male and female roles, the way business is done. Do you think that by the time they are your age, the changes you talk about in this book will have happened?

Burstin: I am an optimist. I do it. And I write in the book that when I was 13, my mother told me that everything would be different and that when I grew up, men and women would be equal and I would have an equal chance of being a CEO or a senator or all these things. And I honestly think she’s wrong.

Rysdal: Well yes, because look around, right?

Burstin: yes But I think my boys will live in a different world. And I think having my boys hear from me about all these amazing women who are changing the world — not just making money, but changing the world — I think it’s a good thing for them to grow up with.

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