McKinsey leader steps down from charity board over controversial ‘glass cliff’ comments

One of McKinsey & Co’s most prominent partners, Sydney-based Chris Bradley, has resigned from his board role at Opportunity International Australia just days after the global consulting giant dumped him a leadership role at its high-profile research arm over online comments questioning the uphill battle female executives face in the workplace.

“Chris Bradley has offered to resign from the Board of Opportunity International Australia, and we have accepted his resignation,” the charity said in a post on its website on Thursday evening.

“For more than 25 years, Chris has passionately and ably supported our mission in empowering more than 10 million women and their families to lift themselves out of poverty with dignity.

“We are grateful for his support of our mission and thank him for his work as a Board member.”

McKinsey removed Bradley from his board role at the McKinsey Global Institute, its high-profile business and economic research unit, this week. Bradley remains a board member of Sydney-based conservative think tank, The Centre for Independent Studies and remains a senior partner at McKinsey.

The decision came after an internal review sparked by Bradley’s LinkedIn back-and-forth last month with one of the authors of a new book that discusses the workplace “glass cliff” for women. The comments were deleted and McKinsey previously distanced itself from Bradley’s remarks.

“Following our conduct review process, we have removed the partner from his leadership roles, including at the McKinsey Global Institute. His public comments fell well short of the standards we expect at our firm,” McKinsey spokesman Taylor Burns said. Bradley also served as a leader on some internal committees, Burns said.

The term glass cliff was coined by academics to describe the phenomenon in which female leaders are more likely to be offered chief executive officer jobs at struggling companies. Proponents of the theory say research shows that women are more likely to get an opportunity to be CEO when a company is in crisis or turnaround mode.

Bradley called the glass cliff “a very convenient way to always be a victim in the rain” in the deleted posts and generally questioned whether the concept even existed.

McKinsey has long sought to advance the conversation about challenges women face in the workplace.

Bradley also wrote in the recent LinkedIn exchange that “we once had a problem of female advancement to CEO, but now we have a new problem that the jobs they get are too hard? Is this actually a thing?”

Julia Carreon, a former Wall Street executive and co-author of the book Walking on Broken Glass: Navigating the Aftermath of the Glass Ceiling, commented on Bradley’s LinkedIn post, saying: “Aren’t people from McKinsey & Company supposed to know these things?

“I understand you ARE the establishment, but this is surprising.”

In response to Carreon, Bradley said: “I am not going to start researching glass cliffs as I don’t think it ranks in the top 1000 problems of the world.”

Bradley was defended by a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, Parnell Palme McGuinness, in a column for this publication.

“There are a couple of issues here. The first is the slavering cowardice of the management consultancy in responding to the incident by relieving a highly competent leader of a role he was demonstrably succeeding in because of what should have been a reasonably innocuous social media dispute,” she said.

“Another is whether the concept of the glass cliff is based on such rock-solid evidence that it is uncontestable.”

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.