Fear of criticism can make female leaders feel squeamish about building a public profile
The following contribution is from the Financial Times website and is written by ANJLI RAVAL who reports on boards, corporate governance, what happens inside the world’s biggest companies and the future of work.
She was previously a senior energy correspondent, covering oil and gas companies, OPEC energy policy and the global transition to cleaner fuels. Before joining the natural resources team, she was an editor and reporter in New York, writing about the US consumer economy. She has also worked in the New Delhi bureau and on the business, markets, commentary and analysis desks in London since joining the FT in 2009.
Women should not be penalised for promoting themselves
Fear of criticism can make female leaders apprehensive about creating a public profile
Ruth Handcock, chief executive of Octopus Money, can find herself in an awkward situation when she bumps into old acquaintances.
“Since I started building a new business, I can’t count the number of times I see an old friend or colleague and they say with a wink: ‘Yeah, I know what you’re doing – I’ve seen it on LinkedIn,’” she says.
Not-so-subtle hints about her willingness to promote herself and her work are one reason why many female leaders feel apprehensive when it comes to putting themselves out there in the public eye.
While not ill-intentioned, Handcock says, these attitudes can make senior women in particular uncomfortable with self-promotion and “afraid of being judged for showing off,” even when they have interesting insights or work to share.
As a journalist, it’s often harder to persuade senior female leaders to speak publicly or agree to be profiled than it is for male bosses.
This is partly because the few women in senior positions in companies get too many requests, but there are more.
Many senior women have said they would rather not put themselves in a vulnerable position, as they worry that the public, colleagues and investors will criticise them more harshly than their male counterparts. They are already seen as risk-takers and often punished more quickly for mistakes, leading to shorter tenures than male CEOs.
One potential interviewee I approached told me she had faced what she saw as unfair criticism in the press for her business decisions and did not want to put herself in the firing line again. Another would simply postpone an interview, saying it was not the “right” time.
Women often face conflicting demands at work
They may be judged for dressing too much or not caring enough about their appearance; for being too empathetic or not maternal enough; for being too ambitious or not focused enough on their career.
The pressure can be so overwhelming that many leave senior positions prematurely or fail to take advantage of opportunities at all. Connecting themselves or their work in a way that exposes them to the outside world can feel like self-inflicted trauma.
Handcock admits she was previously reticent to talk about herself, but now says she has “completely changed” her stance.
She believes that if a person’s mission or business is important enough, they should speak up. Increasing representation is also vital
“There are not enough female leaders in financial services, and even fewer coming from state education backgrounds,” she says. “I have a moral duty to show the next generation that ‘you can see and therefore you can be.’”
But many female business leaders don’t think so
Aliza Licht, a personal branding expert, says that the people she interacts with often feel like they “wouldn’t be taken seriously” if they sought publicity.
They are cautious about posting on social media, doing interviews or appearing on public forums because they want to avoid negative perceptions. “They don’t want to be seen as shallow. There is a stigma around personal branding,” Licht adds.
Some of this is cultural. For example, Americans are often praised for highlighting new fundraising rounds or job promotions, while in the UK people are more likely to consider it bragging.
“Tall poppy syndrome” is also present in other parts of the world
Where those who have achieved too much success or recognition are belittled by others.
For women it can be particularly difficult. A 2019 study found that women consistently give less favorable assessments of their own past performance and potential future ability than men with equal performance.
But if women don’t promote themselves, they’re likely to get little help. Jobs and praise often go to pale, stale, male options. Another recent study of recommendations for academic jobs, for example, found that female and ethnic minority candidates were less likely to be recommended for senior departments.
Licht says leaders don’t need to “shout accomplishments from the rooftops.”
No one wants to read endless, embarrassing posts from any executive about their achievements.
She suggests that a good way to self-promote is to start small – talking about specific topics or making occasional appearances that are relevant to your business.
Selectively talking about your experience, the problems your company is tackling day-to-day, and the sector at large can demonstrate competent leadership and authority.
“It’s about shaping a narrative that is both graceful and appropriate… Talk about the problems you’re trying to solve – talk about the work, not necessarily about yourself,” she adds.
Self-promotion can be a pain, no matter who you are, especially if it doesn’t come naturally. But let’s think twice before penalizing female leaders just for speaking out.
Gender and Radical Candor: Why Gender Politics and Fear of Tears Make Radical Candor Hard for Men
The following contribution is from the Radical Candor® (Caring Personally while Challenging Directly) portal. The Radical Candor® approach (Caring Personally while Challenging Directly) can help you move from a command-and-control culture to a collaborative one. Developed by Kim Scott, Radical Candor is a communication framework for specific, sincere praise and kind, clear criticism.
I was recently talking to a physics teacher whose student didn’t know the quadratic equation. (I don’t remember it from high school algebra class either, but I’m not a physics major.)
Stunned and wondering how he’d gotten this far with such a gap in his knowledge, he told her he needed to learn it, immediately. Furious at the criticism, she criticized him harshly in her teacher rating.
At First, It Wasn’t a Gender Issue
The initial problem was that this young woman, like so many others, wasn’t used to criticism, a phenomenon that was explored very well in an article in The Atlantic, The Coddling of the American Mind.
But other colleagues, many of them well-meaning men trying to be sensitive to gender issues, somehow turned the breakup into a gender issue.
Telling a physics student that she needed to learn the quadratic equation became risky for the professor.
This situation was bad for the student who didn’t learn what she needed to know to succeed. And it was bad for all the female students this professor taught after her.
Understandably, he became more reluctant to critique the work of his female students than his male students.
But to grow in their field, these young women, like their male counterparts, needed his critique. The situation wasn’t much fun for the professor, either. Actual teaching — the reason he had chosen his profession — became risky.
This scenario illustrates two trends that, when taken together, are creating a perfect storm in higher education and are sweeping through every company where millennials work today.
One is the tendency not to criticize, or even expose, people to facts that might be perceived as “disturbing” from history, literature, or any other field.
Add to that gender politics, and learning takes a hit. Will the tone of the current “campus conversation” (or lack thereof) backfire and reduce mentoring and learning for women?
I’m focusing on gender in this article, but there are important parallels in race and any time relationships cross group boundaries.
The strange case of the quadratic equation is extreme, but there are milder examples every day, not just with college students, but with middle-aged people working at companies that pride themselves on being data-driven.
I was recently talking to a close friend who is an engineering leader about women in tech.
I suggested he ask a woman who works for him, a person whose career he has supported and nurtured for years, what she thought. He looked at me in genuine surprise. “I can’t talk to her about it! It’s too complicated,” he said.
This is coming from a man who is not only unbiased, but genuinely sensitive to bias and determined to root it out.
He picks up on things that even I don’t notice. So if he can’t have a radically honest conversation about gender issues with a woman who works for him, we’ve hit rock bottom.
The problem isn’t him or the woman who works for him. I know them both and I’m pretty sure the conversation would have gone well. But the hype around this issue has everyone walking on eggshells.
In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Elisabeth Kelan, a professor of leadership and organization at Essex Business School in the UK, says, “There’s this fear that if you give a woman honest feedback she’ll burst into tears, that women need to be protected. That’s not the case.”
A 2016 study reviewed in Harvard Business Review found that “vague feedback correlates with lower ratings on performance evaluations for women, but not for men. In other words, vague feedback may hold women back specifically.”
This is why it’s important for radically candid feedback to be specific and clear
The purpose of feedback is to let a person know what to do more of and what to do less of. If the feedback isn’t specific, there’s no way for the recipient to know how to improve their performance.
The HBR study found that women were nearly 15% more likely than men to receive vague feedback, and that feedback given to men was more often related to business results, while women more often received feedback about their communication styles.
We must end these gender policies…
Why gender bias makes radical candor difficult for women
Of course, political correctness and fear of tears aren’t the only problems. Gender bias is a fact of life, and it’s worth looking at how it drives women away from radical candor, which hurts them as well as the men they work with.
If gender politics make it difficult for men to be radically honest with women, gender bias makes it difficult for women to be radically honest with both men and women.
When women are penalized
Kieran Snyder, a linguist and co-founder of Textio, applied linguistic analysis to performance reviews and found that when women challenge men or women directly (which they must do to succeed), they are penalized for being “abrasive.”
To be sure, the “abrasive” label is given to women by other women and by men as well.
Snyder wrote an article about his findings for Fortune, which sparked some of the longest and most passionate email chains I’ve seen at several companies I advise. Another story about Snyder’s research was Fast Company’s number one leadership article in 2014. Why did this article strike such a chord?
Every professional woman I know has scores of stories of being called “abrasive” in some way or another or of not being liked for being too aggressive, and of paying the price professionally.
Let’s look at an abstract case and show why the “abrasive” label holds women back and contributes to fewer female leaders, even in organizations that start out 50-50 gender-balanced.
Take Snyder’s example of two colleagues who perform at the same high level:
“Jessica is very talented, but I wish she would be less abrasive. She comes off too aggressive.”
“Steve is smart and great to work with. He needs to learn to be a little more patient, but who isn’t?”
Radical Gender Candor
These comments will translate into performance ratings, and ratings will affect promotions. Suppose Jessica gets a slightly lower rating than Steve as a result of her alleged “abrasiveness.”
Maybe it’s not a big deal in a given quarter. But a series of lower grades will eventually cost Jessica a promotion. And even if the grades aren’t lower, selection for promotions and leadership roles depends on “likeability.”
When this type of bias manifests itself throughout an organization, the impact on female leadership is profound. Researchers ran a simulation of what happens to promotions over several years when the bias affects ratings only a little.
Women’s percentage drop in leadership positions
When gender bias accounts for just 5% of the difference in performance ratings, an organization that starts with 58% of entry-level positions held by women ends with just 29% of leadership positions held by women.
Of course, that’s only part of the story. Let’s look at what happens to Jessica personally over the course of her career, not just the leadership makeup of her company.
If she’s early in her career, she’ll probably get a promotion at some point despite her supposed “aggressiveness,” but she’s now a year or more “behind” Steve.
Fast forward another five to seven years
Now Steve is two levels ahead of Jessica. Since the salary increases steeply with each promotion, he may be getting paid a lot more than Jessica.
If Steve and Jessica are married with a child, guess whose career is more important to the family income and who is more likely to stay home from work when the baby is sick?
But that’s not even the worst case scenario for Jessica. Let’s imagine that Jessica takes the “abrasive” criticism to heart and stops questioning directly. She adjusts her behavior to be less effective at work. Instead of being “radically candid,” her criticism is always “ruinously empathetic” or “manipulatively insincere.”
This makes her less effective as a leader
So now, in addition to gender bias, there are real performance issues to deal with. In this case, Jessica is never going to get ahead.
Frustrated beyond measure and feeling like she must choose between being liked and being successful, she decides this isn’t a game worth playing and quits.
Some version of this has happened to literally every professional woman I know. We must stop this madness too.
Five Reasons We Don’t See More Women in Leadership
The following contribution corresponds to the Forbes portal and its author is Mila Smart Semeshkina, founder and CEO of Lectera.com and president of the Women’s Empowerment Council.
Women have made significant strides in recent years in terms of breaking the glass ceiling and reaching leadership positions.
However, there are still challenges women face that can make it difficult for them to become leaders. Based on my experience as a women’s coach for over 20 years, I have identified five main reasons why women often struggle to become leaders:
- Gender bias
One of the biggest barriers for women seeking le
