The Public Intellectual: Susan Colantuono

One could say a public intellectual is someone who can speak about what they know because they know it well. The idea of a public intellectual has been in debate for quite some time now and can be defined subjectively. In this post, we will look at Susan Colantuono and while you may not be able to pronounce her last name, it is a name that is very well known; I would argue "well known" for her public intellect.

Susan Colantuono is the CEO and founder of Leading Women, a consulting firm that supports corporate initiatives to advance women and close the gender gap in leadership. She is the author of the book No Ceiling, No Walls: What women haven't been told about leadership. She also founded the Women’s Institute for Leadership at Bryant University.  She speaks around the world for a very high price and has consulted for a broad spectrum of organizations from higher education to manufacturing and even federal government agencies. Providence Business News named her Business Woman Ally/Mentor of the Year in 2008.

I discovered Colantuono online when I saw a link to her TED talk titled “The career advice you probably didn’t get”. In her speech she addresses an issue within gender management that she found over her years of consulting and management research. It’s a term many of us are familiar with, the gender gap. Colantuono says there is a missing 33% that is required to close the gender gap at the top of management. Her statistics say that 50% of women in management positions are stuck in middle management. They’re not at the bottom and they’re not at the top. Colantuono says that these are women who work really hard, are confident, get outstanding evaluations, have great team engagement and yet they are passed over again and again when it comes to higher management positions. She deems these qualities to be extremely important in leadership positions, but not quite enough. They encompass two of three important areas to excel in: using the greatness in you and engaging the greatness in others. What she says is missing here is skill, talent, and ability to further the organization to attain its goals. She says this missing component for women can be summed up in focusing on three criteria: where the organization is going, what its strategy is and what the financial targets are.

She says this is a problem because women are told to get mentors, but their mentors are not advising them in the right way. She references a global company executive that she had consulted.  He had been mentoring a man and a woman and he said that he helped the woman achieve confidence and he helped the man learn the business. She quotes him admitting that he hadn’t “realized he was treating them any differently”. Colantuono claims that women seeking to move up in leadership roles are advised to work on their personal qualities like negotiating, communicating, networking, speaking up and engaging teams. What mentors are not telling women is how to run the business, strategize for its future goals, and further its finances.

As mentioned in Stephan Mack’s essay, "The Supposed Decline of the Public Intellectual": 

Trained to it or not, all participants in self-government are duty-bound to prod, poke, and pester the powerful institutions that would shape their lives. And so if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling.

On that thought, we’ll take a moment here to debrief. Colantuono is definitely keeping the pot boiling. Most of us have been taught about the gender gap and the idea of the “glass ceiling” in the work force that prevents women from reaching high levels of management in business. However, in contemporary education we aren't taught that it's because women are stupid, which honestly sounds like that's what Colantuono is saying. Am I crazy or does it sound like she’s preaching that women are brought up to be friendly, great chatters and even better at arguing? Then predicting that if we were actually taught the knowledge required to run a business, then we would be just as successful as men.

I personally feel that if you are working in a certain field, then you should know a lot about it and even be an expert at your particular job. To me, that includes knowing why you do it—what the organization’s goals are, how to make it even better—strategizing to further the company, and how to stay there--having financial expertise. If you are working in a particular career, give it 110%, know what is going to make the organization successful and, in turn, you successful. But then again, between the two of us, Colantuono is the leadership expert. She is poking and prodding at the structure of institutions that are shaping nations. I know that her intentions are to further women and not to tell us we’re stupid, so I continue to listen to her ideas and she goes on to say:

We often come across women who have excellent business acumen, strategic and financial skills but they're not demonstrating it because they believe that what's important are the people skills.

Now that sounds better, we're not actually being called dumb! Colantuono says the strongest force against this dilemma is language. She advises women who have the ambition to move up the ladder to speak in terms of outcomes instead about their people and teams.

I agree, being a great leader does not mean talking about how well you lead.  It means leading. Speak about outcomes because impact is the mission.

Colantuono says that women should say yes to opportunities that navigate their career closer to the “heart of the business”, even if they don’t necessarily think their skill-set and experience pertain to that assignment.

It may be comical, but I’ve heard this idea recently on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Kim Richards was an actress that admitted to saying she could do anything a casting director ever asked her. For example, one movie required a character to be a great tennis player and Kim had never played tennis before. To get the gig, she said that she knew how to play, got it, and then learned to play tennis. Similarly, this is what Colantuono is talking about. She's not saying lie, but she's saying be confident that you can do it and grow from it. Don’t turn down opportunities because you haven’t done that particular work before, say yes and learn it. This can only further women to knowing the ins and outs of running a business, where it’s going, strategies, and finances.

In her conclusion to the issue of the 33%, she also holds boards of directors, CEOs, Human Resources, and managers (also known as mentors) responsible for closing the gap. Therefore, making it a collective group effort.

As Mack’s essay states, public intellectuals “discuss public philosophies and attitudes.” They “sometimes uncover implicit orientations and worldviews that, in turn, affect public decisions and actions.” Colantuono picks out what is missing in the advancement of many women in management. She points out how people are enforcing the issues and the attitudes of management that reflect the outcome of the 33%.

I read a response to Colantuono’s TED talk that was shared on the Leading Women blog site. It was from a woman who had been experiencing the exact treatment from her mentor that Colantuono spoke about. She said that after hearing the talk, she went to her mentor and asked him to teach her his job. She says that she’s hopeful that learning these areas will help her move up to where she wants to be. She concludes:

I've done a lot of presenting and I know presenters share concepts and ideas and never know if they impact people's lives. I'm hopeful that I will be one of your success stories very soon.

Well there you have it. Colantuono is affecting public decisions and actions. As Mack states, “The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.”

Overall, I think Colantuono has done some profound work here. I do, however, think that it is a little outdated. It may just be because I am in the Marshall School of business, for social entrepreneurship, the number two entrepreneurship school in the nation. I am taught to start everything from the very beginning with knowledge of what I am doing, where I see the organization going, strategies to get there, and an understanding of how to successfully do that financially. I’ll admit, I don’t excel in these areas as much as I do in, say, talking and negotiating, which do highly benefit me in broadcast journalism. However, I don’t think I would plan on leading an organization without a profound sense of these areas of expertise. Therefore, I am being taught not only how to approach a business career, but how to start and lead one.

I stumbled across an article on The Next Web titled "Are entrepreneurs finally closing the gender gap?". It pointed out that in recent generations, more and more males and females are becoming entrepreneurs. The ratio did reveal more men than women, but since 1997, female entrepreneurs have increased by 68%. In my opinion, this trend can be a huge aid in closing the gender gap. It eliminates this entire discussion on the process of filling in the missing 33% of women at the top. For women entrepreneurship is, if you will, a glass elevator straight to the top. 

In conclusion, Susan Colantuono has pointed out missing pieces in the gender gap that is truly still an evident issue. Her insight and advice are well researched and innovative and I believe, as a gender, females are a force and we are surely putting this movement for leadership into serious action.