THE WAYMAKERS

A consultant urges businesspeople to embrace equity in the workplace.

In this powerful, passionate book, Frank laments the tendency of many executives to equate “niceness with fairness.” Instead, she writes, they should strive to be “waymakers”: leaders who “make a way for other people” to find real success. She draws on her personal experiences as a Black woman in corporate America and her subsequent leadership coaching role as she notes the many advantages of equitable workplaces. Early chapters concentrate on how to assess a company’s current culture and, in so doing, learn to face “hard truths.” Throughout, the author offers salient, sobering observations that are relevant to larger societal issues, as when she notes that “We look for signs of dissent before we look for signs of agreement, and as human nature would have it, we usually find exactly what we’re looking for.” Still, she reassures readers that “Anyone can be the kind of leader who makes a way for others, if they want to be.” Most importantly, Frank provides clear, concrete strategies and tools for her goal of waymaking, pointing out “four roadblocks that have the most profound effect on the underrepresented employee experience,” for example, and four positive “business and culture outcomes” that can result from fair and equitable practices. Frank’s convincing argument presents a well-balanced blend of big-picture thinking and granular, practical advice, with references to the works of others, including Malcolm Gladwell and Soraya Chemaly, and examples from her own experience and other sources. She makes a compelling case that a leader who’s sensitive to workplace equity issues is a better leader in other areas, since such sensitivity requires such things as transparency, collaboration, and humility. Frank also points out the larger goal of such a proactive executive: “If we make the system work better for marginalized talent, we make it work better for everyone.”

A timely and profound dissertation on equity and leadership.