Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have HER Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. HER Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Y'all, today I have with us an incredible guest, Lareina Yee, who is senior partner at McKinsey and Company. And y'all, she is the co-author of this incredible book, The Broken Rung. We talk a lot about glass ceilings on this podcast, but today we're going to talk about where it starts at the bottom. So you're going to be blown away by today's guest.

Erica: She was McKinsey's first ever chief diversity officer, and she co-founded the Women in the Workplace annual study, which y'all, I use probably on a daily basis. So Lareina, so excited to have you here. Welcome to the podcast.

Lareina: Thank you. So excited to be here, Erica.

Erica: Oh my goodness. Well, before we dive into all things about The Broken Rung, because I am so pumped about this book, I want to hear just a little bit of a backstory on who you are and what got us to this point.

Lareina: Yeah. Well, I've been at McKinsey for almost twenty five years, and I've always been in our technology practice, thinking about all these new technologies and the way they affect how we work and live. I reached a personal professional milestone about twelve, thirteen years ago, when I made partner, and I was so excited. The promotion I was most excited about. And my sponsor, someone who opens doors and windows for me, sat down, and we had a congratulatory coffee.

Lareina: And he said, and I expected it to be like, you're so great, you're so great. But it wasn't. He said, I would like to know what now. And I said, what do you mean? I mean, I was elected partner. This is great. He said, no. What will you do greater than what you've already done? And I want you to think about that.

Lareina: And I went and thought about it, and I came back and I said, probably not what he was expecting, but I came back a couple weeks later and I said, I don't see women in my meetings anymore. I don't know what happened. In the executive room, I doubled the population. How is that possible? So I said, I would like to use McKinsey Analytics capabilities, the ability to change organizations, the ability to inspire leadership, to put some data around understanding why there are so few women at the top.

Erica: And here we are with this amazing, incredible book. And you guys, I really want to dive into this because I think a lot of emphasis gets put on the glass ceiling, like only women at the top, when really the problem starts at the bottom. I mean, that's what we're seeing, that women are losing that career momentum before it even really takes off. So Lareina, what are some of those reasons, number one, that you think this broken rung exists? And was there anything that surprised you when you started doing the research for the book?

Lareina: Well, just as you said, Erica, when I started this journey over a decade ago, I was looking at the top. That was my focal point. But when we would collect the data, we would put it on the whiteboards, we would paste interesting slides and data on the walls. It was scattered around. And while we were all looking at the top, when we started this in corporate America, about 19% of those at the executive leadership levels were women.

Lareina: And then all of a sudden, I looked at the very beginning of the talent pipeline, entry level. I was like, wait a second. Women are 57% of college graduates. They're 48% of the entry level in the corporate workforce. So they're in other forms of work, and that number drops down precipitously right away. And that's where all the big numbers are. That's where you've got the largest number of women, these talented women. And if you were talented enough to get a job, I just don't think very much happens two, three, five years into it such that systematically we would see fewer women get promoted.

Lareina: So here's the number. For every 100 men who get that first shot, that first advancement opportunity, the odds of advancement of women are 81. So for every 100, 81 women see that first promotion. And if you're a woman of color, if you're a Black woman, that number is 54. And in all my years of doing this research, this kind of side hustle passion project that's become probably one of the most important things I feel I can contribute, that number has basically stayed the same. It's kind of gone up, but then it's gone back down. So that's not good news.

Erica: No. And one of the things you talk about in your book, which really is kind of a fresh take, I haven't seen it in a lot of the work that I've examined, is this whole concept of experience capital. So talk to me. What is experience capital, and how can we get more of it?

Lareina: Well, we have to get more of it. That is the punchline. But let me roll it back to explain. We can kind of get really depressed and say, oh my gosh, those odds, that's an even steeper climb than I imagined. And what we decided to do, myself and two colleagues, we teamed up and said, let's not belabor the challenge. Let's look at solutions. No matter where you work, it's not going to be a level playing field. So what have we learned, and what do we see other amazing women doing to buck the odds? And one of the critical concepts is experience capital, which is 50% of your lifetime earnings comes from what you learn on the job.

Lareina: And this is good news, but with a twist, because that means the other 50% is what you got at school. And as I mentioned, women do really well in school. They often have higher GPAs, they're graduating at higher rates than men, they've kicked butt in school. But are they kicking butt in work? The numbers suggest we don't see women advancing. So we focus on this idea of what do you do with the other 50%. How do you be bold and early and build that experience capital? And this isn't just for getting a promotion and having the role that you want. This is actually far more at stake. This is about your long term financial viability, your long term health, and the ability for you to thrive over time. Why not be strategic about your career and think about every step as contributing to your overall success?

Erica: Yes. So when it comes to experience capital in the workplace, how do you get more of it? Do you just job hop? Are you role hopping? What are we doing here?

Lareina: You could be doing a lot of things. So there's not one way, but the first thing is to know that you want to acquire that. One of the places that takes you is the choice of your job, your choice of the company you work at, the choice of the roles you get. And underneath that, we spend time talking about the skills that matter as well. So the first tip we give, especially for people at the entry level, is choose a company, not just a job. Erica, if you and I both have the same job opportunities at three companies, and in this economy we would be so fortunate to have multiple job opportunities, we really would be. But I think what a woman typically does is say, oh, Erica, I am so grateful. And that's real, I am grateful, but now I have choice. So what are the questions you ask? Because it's more important to choose a company that has the right healthcare benefits, something really practical, a company that actually has women and has a record of advancing women, a company that helps women with internal training and programs that help you grow.

Lareina: There's this one woman who most recently has been the COO of Box, a big software company in the Valley, and she talks about her first job at IBM over thirty years ago. And why did she go to IBM? She went to IBM in frontline sales because it had the best learning and training program. And she talks about how they invested in her, and those skills are still relevant to her today. That's choosing a company, not just a job.

Erica: Yeah, there's a lot of IBM people where I live, actually. We have a big hub of it in Raleigh, North Carolina. Shout out for that. And all those IBM people, they never leave. So I don't know what IBM's doing on the inside, but they're doing a good job, that is for sure. And Lareina, I tell people this story. Early in my career, I was in fitness and wellness for a very large company, Verizon. Everybody knows them. But I was so pigeonholed, I had nowhere to go, and they pretty much told me, Erica, you've hit the top of your job and your pay grade, I don't know what you're going to do. And it was kind of left up to that, and I transitioned into human resources. And what was so cool is I ended up applying for all of these big name jobs, didn't get any callbacks, applied for a small company, and it was the best career move I could have possibly made, Lareina, because there was one person for HR. So I did all of the recruiting, I did all of the employer relations, I did all of the benefits. In a large company like Verizon, they have an entire benefits team, so if you're on that team, you're very limited. I share that story because a lot of people think it's so hard to get that experience capital. But do you have any strategies for choosing that company? Because I thought bigger the company, better the opportunity. What are the questions they should be asking?

Lareina: Well, Erica, I think your story is so emblematic. Maybe thirty years ago, you joined IBM and you stayed the whole time. Maybe for the same reputation company, you pivot to a smaller company. The most important thing to watch out for in your career is you are never at the very top of your game, no matter who the employer is. I don't know how old you were at that point, but you weren't at the top of your game.

Erica: There you go. Thirty.

Lareina: So much headroom. Decades of headroom. So in that instance, there are only a couple of options. One, you rotate to get into a different pool of opportunity within that company. Some companies are better at rotations. Some are better at lateral rotation. Or you leap. You take a risk and go to a different company. We see women telling us stories about going to a different company, either smaller, bigger, same size. I was with a bunch of SVPs in marketing, and they were feeling like there was no way they were going to get the big CMO job or the next role. Several of them went to smaller companies, or lateral companies, or even switched industries to get that next promotion. It wasn't that the place they were working wasn't a great place, but they felt themselves tapped out at the top. So sometimes there isn't space, and you have to make a new choice. Or sometimes you realize you've been passed over a couple of times, and that has real implications. Your wages are lower, or it's more stagnant than your peers. You're not seeing the mentors and sponsors who can help you pivot. In all cases, it doesn't mean leaving a company, but you should ask yourself those questions and then go on a couple of interviews and see what's out there. Worst comes worst, you stay where you are.

Erica: Yes, that's what I tell everybody. Take the interview. Just take it. You never know. Alright, you also talk about soft skills and hard skills. I want to know more about this, because as women, I think we're obviously glorified for how amazing our soft skills are. Women do better at empathy, we know this. But talk to me about why you decided to say these are just as important as hard skills, and what soft skills we should really be emphasizing.

Lareina: Well, a couple of things. One is, as both men and women progress up that corporate ladder, it's harder to get feedback. You don't get as much feedback. And by the time you're a senior executive, a senior manager, a VP, or an SVP, you've probably nailed the hard skills, the hard things like making your sales quota, or the coding you need to be a software engineer, or if you're the CFO, the controller and the accounting capabilities you need. All those kinds of hard skills, you've probably nailed, especially if you got promoted a few times. The soft skills become really important. How do you bring teams together? How do you listen to customers and integrate that across functions? How do you build bridges, not walls? We've heard again and again that women don't get as much feedback as men. We see this in our data. In particular, women don't get as much negative feedback. And you may say, wait, we don't want negative feedback, we want supportive feedback. But negative or constructive feedback is the best way to improve, because you don't know a blind spot unless someone tells you. And oftentimes those soft skills are some of those blind spots for anyone, but it feels like women aren't getting clued up in this enough.

Lareina: There's a great story of a woman who started in theater. She had this mindset that because she was in a creative industry, performing arts, it's okay to be disorganized, that's how creatives are. She wasn't even conscious of it. She goes on maternity leave, has this adorable baby, and if you have a baby under six months, you know your window to get out for a walk is very limited between feeding and changing diapers. She couldn't get out for the walk because she couldn't organize her things. She looked at her daughter and thought, this is not going to work. And she turned this around, became an expert in organization, ended up writing a book, ended up pivoting her career, ended up building a whole business helping women organize themselves better to succeed. That's a soft skill. You could take it into your own business, or you could use it to get promoted.

Erica: I love that. I always talk about, I have a keynote where I talk about confidence, and how your brain is malleable and you can change it. You may not think you're an organized person today, but you can learn to be one. You can learn to understand a P and L. You can be somebody who's good at finances. And I think we take ourselves out of the game sometimes because we say, well, numbers aren't my thing, I can't do math, or all the TikTok girl math videos are totally me so I'm just never going to touch it.

Lareina: Can we pause on that math piece? Because this is the whole point of experience capital. If you decided you weren't going to be a math major, fine, maybe you didn't take data science, computer science, or engineering in college. Why does that preclude you from being good at these skills and capabilities in the workplace today? Erica, it does not, which is why we have a whole chapter on how everyone can be a technologist. Everyone can be data driven. You can learn this. This is the whole point of experience capital. Learn it on the job. You are absolutely capable. Why would you limit your potential? These technology skills and quantitative skills are incredibly important for society and for jobs today.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what, it's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book, it's your roadmap to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you, because no one deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Erica: And they are cross industry, cross functional, I mean that's the thing, they apply everywhere. So it is key that you get them down. I'll tell you why we say those things, it's because we don't like doing it, and it's sometimes a little bit hard for some of us. And so we just say, I can't. But that is a lie.

Lareina: But that's a lie, and women can do hard things. All women and men can do hard things, but women do not shirk from challenge, and women show enormous resilience, that inner power. You just kind of have to flip your mindset to say, I can do it. Now, is it hard work? Will it feel uncomfortable to do those, to be a technologist, for example? Yes. But you know what's so cool? With AI, it's a lot easier now.

Erica: You do a lot of AI talk, and I wanted to tap in on that, because if you're talking about gaining experience capital, but you don't like being bad at things, if you're getting on the AI train, you really need to start now, because everybody's bad at it. Everybody has zero to one year of experience right now.

Lareina: Well, exactly. You are no more ahead or behind. It's only been two years since ChatGPT was released. And you know the best thing about the AI tools, from a consumer perspective? Imagine, I don't know very much about race car driving, but I do know that every time the race car goes around, there's a crew of people. There's a crew of people making sure you have the right wheels, everything's good, you need oil, whatever you need, that pit crew is there, and they are fast and they are focused. That's what AI is like. Imagine if you had a pit crew helping you organize things, learn things, augment your understanding of things with you all the time. That's not about the machine taking your job. That's about you using the machine and the capabilities to do your job and your life the way you want. If you could save an hour to a day, Erica, where would you put it?

Erica: I'll tell you. I got my first taste of that during COVID, when remote work for HR became a thing. I had an hour commute in the morning and an hour commute in the evening, and I launched an entire freaking business with that time. It's incredible what you can do.

Lareina: You can. Or maybe you invested in your health, you get more sleep. There are all types of ways you invest time. But the cool thing is these tools, the technology is very difficult to create, but it's not difficult to use. Any language, any skill level. I have three kids, and I might argue that my youngest, who's ten, may be more capable of using generative AI than the twenty two year olds. It's everyone. It is easy, so let it help you. And it will change jobs. So the sooner you figure that out, and one of the cool things is the technology can do a lot, but you know your job, you know your craft. So in some ways, you're the director of how it can change and where it's going to add value.

Erica: You're the director of the pit crew. Oh my goodness. Absolutely. Lareina, I want to take another left turn, but this one into motherhood, because your book was the first one I've seen where you argue that motherhood is an experience capital escalator. Like, it helps us get there, when most people are seeing it as a hindrance. People are scared to hire women who are about to have babies, because what if they go on maternity leave for three months? So talk to me about that.

Lareina: Yeah, we first wanted to debunk this idea that your career is over once you start having children. It's just not true. Now, if that's the road you take, you can certainly find someone where that happens, of course. But the idea is, book a round trip ticket. Book your ticket to parental leave, and then make sure you have a return ticket back to the workplace. And in coming back, certainly, it's not easy, and it's not easy to have a double shift at home. The vast majority of women tend to be primary caretakers of their family and all the household responsibilities, in addition to whether they are the primary or secondary breadwinner. So we know there's a double shift. But think about the multiplicative of the skills and capabilities you're learning, back to the soft stuff, the ability to multitask, the ability to do more things, the ability to be empathetic. You have to be very empathetic as a mother. How do all of those things increase the portfolio of your skills, versus just the job and the quarterly MBOs you're meeting? So there is some optimism on that. The other thing we know is women live longer than men, women often work longer, so you may have far more opportunities ahead of you than you imagine after you have kids. The other thing is, you just don't know what's around the corner. We have a story of an amazing woman, she was a high powered lawyer, done all the right things, she was in tech, and she decided to be a full time mom for three boys, raised them for fourteen years, and then took a reboarding program after that at LinkedIn, and is an executive there now.

Erica: I love those stories.

Lareina: Right? And so you would say, well, what's the measure of success? And if I were to say it's an accelerator to her career, you would say, well, if she'd stayed the whole time, maybe she could be a CEO. But also, success isn't just the role, the job you have. Success is the total measure of your life. She's an amazing human, she's gotten to do everything she's wanted to do, she's worked, she's taken care of the kids, she's led nonprofit things in San Francisco. There's a huge rich tapestry of a career there. And I just feel like if we reframe this, it's going to net benefit us, with some moments of pain, some valleys for sure, but we're going to get to a better, a bigger place. Why not?

Erica: Oh my gosh, I love that you say success is the total measure of your entire life, because I think we so often hang it on a paycheck, a title, or a promotion. But what I would ask you is, if I'm a woman, and I speak from my experience ten years ago, I remember how scary it was to tell my employer I was pregnant. What kind of advice would you offer to women who are of childbearing age who think they might want to dip their toe in that water? How can they work with their employers so they also see it as that experience capital escalator?

Lareina: Well, a couple of things, and you probably pioneered a lot of this in HR, is overall benefits and programs, and the types of formal things HR does, is much more grouped now. Over the last decade, we see less differentiation, which is a good thing, between the HR policies and programs companies have. Now there will be exceptions, so someone listening is like, but that's not my company. Okay, so first of all, inform yourself, know exactly what type of benefits, what kind of support. The second thing is networks are really critical. As much as you can have x number of weeks paid, on your return, one of the most important things will be your networks, people who help open opportunities. And it's way ahead of the point of promotion. Here's a concrete example. At McKinsey, we travel a lot, to where the projects are, to clients. My first maternity leave, I was very junior, an associate, kind of the bottom of the ladder. I had started one nudge even lower, as a business analyst. It was a great job, amazing job. I had kids early, my first one, I wasn't even thirty. And most of the people were traveling out of town. So here's what a sponsor did for me. He said, I will help make sure the first project you have back from maternity leave is local. We're going to really try. It may not be in your most passionate expertise area, but let's just try and keep you in town. That's an opportunity that helped me come back, get myself a little more settled, rebuild. That's a network, that's not a policy the company has. That's when you say, look, what's the number one thing I need? I need an opportunity, and I need to stay local. That wasn't just my example, there are lots of examples you can apply to your life. So it's building a network, which starts before you go out on leave, letting people know you'll be back in six months or whatever it is, that you're really excited, then calling them a month before you come back, letting them know you're excited to be back, showing some enthusiasm, some of that entrepreneurial hustle, another soft skill we think is really important. And then, you know, what if it takes you a little bit longer? It definitely, with kids, took me longer to become partner. Absolutely. But the sum total of what I had was so much more, and I try to stay focused on that. Were other people who didn't have kids promoted faster than me? Yes. And I was excited for them, but still driven to keep going myself. It's okay.

Erica: And I think the key part here too is we all have our own grading system. What works and what is successful to you could be very different for me, very different for Sue and Jane and everybody else out there. But I've got to ask, because we're coming up on our time here, girl, what is the most powerful piece of advice you have gotten in your career, and how did it shape the way you navigate leadership today?

Lareina: I've gotten so much help, I'm just really grateful. I do think one powerful piece of advice has been, if you make a mistake, get up, get back up, try it again. And if you make that mistake again, step back up, try it again. And plus this concept of entrepreneurialism, which just sounds like a really fancy word for taking initiative. I think that courage, the ability to fail flat and then get back up and say, okay, how do we keep building, is something I hope women at all levels have, and I hope they have that feeling inside, but I also hope they're surrounded by people who reinforce it, because it's never a dance you do by yourself. You're always doing it with a boss, with peers, with people on your team. And when you're surrounded by a team that's also supporting you, it really helps.

Erica: Yes, I think that is so well said. Well, Lareina, the book, like I said, it's incredible. I read a ton of these books, and yours was the first one, I think I highlighted at least 79% of the pages, I think the words I did not highlight were like "and" and "its". So it is an incredible book. You and your co-authors did an amazing job. Thank you so much for doing the work here, because we are never going to be shattering ceilings if we can't even get off the floor of that broken rung. So thank you for the work you're doing. It was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much.

Lareina: Thank you.