Drawing on the last three years at Ceresa, over a decade of experience with McKinsey & Co, academic research, hundreds of interviews, and thousands of data points on Ceresa participants, we’ve identified the five pillars behind the success and impact of our approach, applicable in our program and in a variety of other learning and leadership settings.

This approach is especially critical to diversifying leadership – grounded in research on the needs of women and other underrepresented groups in the workplace and beyond. 

Research has shown self-awareness to be the trait most highly correlated with executive success, yet rarely is it used in leadership searches or performance evaluations. Being aware of one’s strengths, one’s weaknesses, and one’s effect on others, is critical to effectively leading others.

During the research phase of launching Ceresa, from over 200 interviews, 80% of leaders who had experience serving as a mentor expressed frustration with the process. A common refrain was about the awkward coffee date, “People ask to meet for a coffee, but show up without really knowing what questions they have.” These people, seeking mentorship, have not thought through their needs, goals, or questions – and rarely go on to research the mentor to help refine their specific questions.  Therefore, they are not sending their questions in advance to give the mentor time to reflect on relevant experience and thoughts.

It is for this reason that the first two months of Ceresa is not mentoring.  Instead, the first two months are dedicated to holistic self-reflection, guided by a trained executive coach. Assessments and 360 feedback are used to refine perceptions of strengths and identification of blind-spots, culminating in life visioning, and specific goal-setting. Even this “self-awareness” module can be transformative for many participants.  Approximately 75% of participants say they have never been asked or given themselves permission to address the prompt, “what is it you want to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Furthermore, we see a decline in women’s aspirations to leadership in the early to mid-career period. Among new employees, 43% of women aspire to reach top management compared to 34% of men. However, after two years of experience, the number for women drops to 16%, while it remains at 34% for men. A necessary (but not sufficient) aspect of boosting and sustaining aspirations, is to ground employees in their longer-term vision and their “why.” That is one reason Ceresa participants complete the “wild and precious life” vision exercise.

It’s simple – preparation, self-awareness, and intentionality are critical to maximizing impact from any training or leadership program. Additionally, programs with integrated technology platforms can provide accountability around the self-work and transparency for both mentee and mentor.

 Within Ceresa, we track the specific goals of our participants. This data reveals a clear need for support across a broad range of holistic topics. For the first 150 participants in Ceresa’s program, the most common category of goals is “balance, wellness and meaning” – how people find the space to thrive across their whole being. The second category is career advancement – both near term career goals and long-term planning. The third category is communications and confidence. Beyond this, there is also a range of personal relationships and professional skills where emerging leaders are seeking support.

When we contrast this with the topics on which people typically receive feedback, there is a significant misalignment. We see this in the 360 feedback each participant gets as part of the Ceresa program, where 48% of feedback from colleagues is on communications and confidence. When we drill down to specific pieces of feedback (over 2000 items of feedback), we see that 15% are about women’s operating style. Examples include: “you are too unfriendly,”;  “you could be more approachable,”; or “you are too direct.” 

By contrast, only 3% of feedback touches on career advancement, 9% on balance, and there is no mention at all of support or advice around challenges with personal, family, or community relationships.

Research shows that while women tend to receive mentoring focused on their operating style, men receive more career-oriented guidance. As part of performance reviews, women are described as “too aggressive” — 3 times more than men. Overall, women receive 1.4 times more critical subjective feedback compared with their male peers. Women also tend to receive more vague feedback. A Stanford study found 60% of men receive feedback tied to specific business performance drivers compared with 40% of women, helping make stronger cases for promotion for men.

At Ceresa, we recognize individuals as whole people. Their ability to show up as their best selves at work depends on them being able to meet their demands and desires outside of the work setting.

This is especially true for women, who more often than not face the “double burden” or “second shift.” Multiple research studies have found that women shoulder the lion’s share of household and career work and the associated mental load, even in dual-income heterosexual households – and even where women are the primary breadwinners. Furthermore, women are penalized in their careers for starting families – considered by 40% of people to be less devoted to their work.

These challenges translate into a “broken rung” for women at the first-time manager level, with only 72 women being promoted for every 100 of their male peers (despite almost even gender representation at entry-level positions). This starts a cascade effect such that there are fewer women available at VP levels for promotion to C-suite. Addressing the whole-person needs during this crucial mid-career period is critical to enabling more diverse leaders to thrive.

The importance of highly personalized learning environments is well documented in research on andragogy  (adult learning approaches). There are three critical aspects of personalization that we incorporate into Ceresa’s leadership philosophy.

Relevancy and Matching

Since the 1970s, one of the core tenets of any andragogical approach is being self-directed (contrasted with most teacher-led pedagogy), with the importance of being able to identify one’s own learning needs with help from teachers or peers. Knowing why you want to learn is important for these approaches – supporting the self-work approach Ceresa takes in combination with this self-directed learning.

Who you learn from is especially critical for employees in the mid-career period. The issues emerging during this time are very holistic, as we have already seen. Furthermore, the types of professional skills required at this stage are related to influence, strategic thinking, and taking initiative. These are not well suited to classroom settings, but require guidance from someone experienced in those areas, along with practice in real-time.

At Ceresa, we use over 70 data points on each participant to match them with a mentor. We consider professional setting (function, industry, company type), future aspirations, specific professional challenges, personal context, background, and challenges. We base this on self-identified needs of the participant, along with feedback from their executive coach about the ideal mentor match.

This personalization is a key reason why mentoring and coaching, in addition to traditional training, have a 3X higher impact on productivity than training alone.

Just-in-Time

Overarching learning goals constitute an important starting point for development, and the learning is more effective if the content is relevant to immediate perceived needs, real-time issues.  And it’s expected, 57% of adults now expect training to be just-in-time.  At Ceresa, we think about the “Big A” agenda, the most important goals that participants determine during their reflection phase, but also allow for “Small a” agenda items that come up month to month. One of the roles of our mentors is to make space to address immediate issues, but also ensure progress over time on the bigger goals.

Convenience

Being ready to learn is also a critical element of adult learning. Providing flexibility in the time of day, length of time and geographic location improves the ability of all individuals to learn at the best time for them, and also convenient to their life demands. This convenience is especially critical for employees who have higher demands for their time outside of work.

In Ceresa research of our community, learners prefer asynchronous, virtual formats (video, podcasts, articles) and convenient 1-on-1 sessions, 3-4 times more than live webinars or classrooms.

Two-thirds of women have never had access to mentoring. When women do have mentors, they are typically less senior than the mentors of their male colleagues. Additionally, women’s ability to procure mentors is also affected by typically having smaller networks and being less likely to use reciprocity as naturally as their male colleagues to develop relationships.

The dominance of men, especially white men, in C-level positions, means that finding senior leaders as mentors that have shared lived experience is very hard for women and other underrepresented groups.

Those with privileged access to influential leaders – whether through family connections, educational institutions, or ability to pay for expensive leadership programs – are at a strong advantage given the impact of mentoring and coaching on individual's careers (5X more promotions and pay raises, and 53% higher retention).

Therefore, providing access to mentoring and leadership support for all – no matter your gender, geography, race, other socio-economic factors – is critical to helping develop more diverse leadership. 

In the wake of #MeToo, we also know that men are less willing to spend time one-on-one with female colleagues, further damaging and limiting the access of women to mentoring from senior leaders. In 2019, 50% of male managers said they were uncomfortable interacting with women one-on-one (increased from 34% just one year prior).

At Ceresa, we’re committed to using 100% virtual access, removing geographic bias, optimizing for matching, and keeping prices significantly lower than other leadership programs. We also offer scholarships each year to support those with additional need for financial aid.

 The L&D industry has been somewhat lagging in the use of data to drive human-centered program design, to measure and report on impact, and to enable continuous improvement. In 2018, the number of L&D leaders feeling pressure to justify investment in L&D increased from 35% to 60%. And 58% of learning professionals are dissatisfied with the current learning measurement systems.

At Ceresa, we consider it critical not only to track impact and make improvements but to drive the essential personalization of effective leadership development.

 We use over 70 data points based on the individual’s self-assessments, vision and goal-setting, 360 feedback, and coaching input to match to a mentor and personalized learning journey content. We also take a rigorous, data, and research-driven approach to all aspects of program design.

Access to on-going and real-time data is also critical to adopting an agile approach – testing and refining over time, being comfortable with “beta” versions of programs to test and refine. Ceresa launched an initial cohort of 20 participants, collecting intensive quantitative and qualitative feedback, enabling changes before the second cohort of 40. This refinement continues – and is one of the reasons we can be quickly adapt to environments like those experienced during the COVID-19 crisis.