Becker's Hospital Review

31 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP Leadership lessons from Walgreens' CEO By Georgina Gonzalez R osalind Brewer, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, has broad business ex- perience, having held leadership roles at Starbucks, Walmart and Sam's Club. She is one of only two Black women running For- tune 500 companies. She sat down with the Harvard Business Review Dec. 9, 2021, to ex- plain her leadership strategy. Ms. Brewer said it took her stepping back to get ahead. When she started a previ- ous role at Walmart, Ms. Brewer said she initially took a less-senior position in- stead of a leadership position. She spent 90 days learning on the ground about re- tail, which ultimately aided greatly in her understanding of the business and its employees. When speaking on the loneliness of her po- sition as a Black woman in corporate leader- ship, she said she has always made it a point to bring her whole self to work and never hide any aspect of her identity or culture. "When I get in these settings I take advantage of an opportunity to learn and educate those around me," she said. Ms. Brewer also mentioned that she thinks companies have misplaced their focus on meeting diversity targets instead of really in- vesting in equity and inclusion. She also said she sees diversity as more than just racial, ethnic or gender differences but also differ- ences of thought and culture, and she thinks that putting together people with different perspectives empowers teams to solve chal- lenges together. "It's about creating these agile teams and putting them against the unique prob- lems to solve. And forcing them to re- late to each other and think about how to solve it," Ms. Brewer told the Harvard Business Review. She advised women in the corporate world trying to work their way up in male-domi- nated environments "to really do a personal self-evaluation on what you're passionate about and stick to it." n Female physicians earn $2M less than men over career, study suggests By Mackenzie Bean F emale physicians are paid less than male colleagues from the start of their careers and, over the course of a 40-year-career, earn an estimated $2 million less, according to a study published Dec. 6, 2021, in Health Affairs. Researchers analyzed self-reported salary data submitted to Doximity by 80,342 full-time physicians between 2014 and 2019. After controlling for factors such as specialty, experience and practice volume, researchers estimated that men earned an average adjusted gross income of $8.3 million over a simulated 40-year career, while women made $6.3 million, which equates to a 24.6 percent difference. This gender pay gap was largest among surgical specialties, with a $2.5 million difference. This gap has also likely widened amid the pandemic, as more women have left the workforce to take on child care or other household responsibilities, according to lead author Christopher Whaley, PhD, a health economist at the nonpartisan think tank RAND Corporation. "This is probably going to accelerate physician burnout," Dr. Whaley told The New York Times. "And so that's just going to further exacerbate these pay issues." Policy changes that affect younger physicians could help narrow this wage gap, he added. n One simple principle can help organizations achieve all-around gender balance By Georgina Gonzalez G ender equality often gets worse as you move up the hierarchy of a company, suggesting that many issues may lie in promotion and retention as opposed to hiring. The gender proportionality principle can be used to help remedy this, Harvard Business Review reported. The principle states that any level of an organization should aim to reach the gender balance of the level directly below. For instance, if female managers make up 35 percent and entry-level women make up 49 percent, the company should set a goal of getting to 49 percent female managers within an agreed time frame. Managers and heads can be presented with the gender breakdown of those going up for a promotion and given an explicit expectation of how their decision-making should allow the demographics to reflect the level below them. They can also then be asked to comply or explain their decision- making process if their choices deviate from the principle, keeping managers accountable. The principle can be implemented simply and easily across levels and departments. It can help demystify promotion and equity processes and en- courage diversification of the organization. n

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