our mediocre employee thinks we’re not promoting her because of sexism

A reader writes:

I’m hoping for some guidance on dealing with an employee who is convinced she isn’t advancing because she’s a woman, but it’s truly due to her putting in barely adequate effort and believing that advancement comes from checking off boxes and “time served.”

We’re in a creative niche industry that’s fairly evenly split between men and women, although the larger industry that we’re a part of is still very male-dominated. Our company is a small privately owned company (under 50 people), roughly evenly split, with women at all levels, including in leadership.

I’m a woman in the top level of our company and am involved in deciding who is ready to be promoted to the next level. We have a list of hard skills that people need to master at each level to advance, but there are also less easily quantifiable soft skill components, which get more important as people advance (we do have a list and try to give guidance on how to develop these, but it’s impossible to say someone has “mastered” creativity or client interaction, for example). The other more senior women and I regularly try to coach younger employees on strategies for dealing with the sexism that we unfortunately still deal with outside of the company, but in 20 years, there have been very few examples I have ever seen or heard about inside of it — and the few that have come up have been addressed immediately.

One employee, Mia, has been saying she earned a promotion because she “checks all the boxes” on the hard skill list and she doesn’t like doing the soft skills, so they’re not important — and because of those things, the only possible reason she’s being held back is because she’s a woman. An accurate analysis is that she adequately performs most of the hard skills for her current level but never excels at any of them, hasn’t proven any ability in the next level’s hard skills, and is terrible at all of the soft skills (she’s gotten this feedback). Her “proof” of sexism holding her back is that a male employee who was hired a few months after her (and has been amazing in almost all of the skills) has received a promotion. (We don’t necessarily have a set number of positions at each level; we generally promote when we feel people are ready and take on more work to allow for the growth.) It’s also worth noting that Mia did a different role for the first year and was almost fired from that, so technically she has been in the same role as this man for less time, but she doesn’t think that matters. Two other women who have been hired since Mia are doing really well and are more realistically likely to step up before she does, assuming they continue their current trajectories. Overall, I’m flummoxed because her take on this seems to show a remarkable lack of self-awareness on her part.

Mia is still an asset in her current role, although she’s becoming toxic about the situation around other employees, so I’m not sure how much longer we’ll feel that way.

Do you have any suggestions on how to convey this is a performance issue that has nothing to do with her being a woman? I’m a little worried she’ll try to file a discrimination lawsuit if she leaves (it feels unfounded, but I don’t know much about the law).

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

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