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A new gender bias is in town, and it’s all about pushback. A study published earlier this year by Olenka Kacperczyk of the Imperial College Business School, Peter Younkin of the University of Oregon, and Vera Rocha of the Copenhagen Business School found that employees put in fewer hours and less discretionary effort when bosses were women. The research focused on start-ups of female founders, but the team suspected the findings would apply more broadly. To that end, they conducted an experiment recruiting virtual workers for a fictitious data analytics company. The task was to identify photos of executives, and when they were done, workers were asked to do extra photo coding.
Here's what they found. When male owners requested more work, the workers mostly said yes. However, the workers were likelier to decline when the owner was a woman. And if they agreed to take on more work, they did less for the female boss.
While the quality of the work did not differ, the amount completed did when the boss was a woman.
When asked why the workers would take on more work or not, researchers received answers such as it’s easier to push back with a woman and a female boss should understand family commitments. When it came to male bosses, however, workers assumed they had no choice, male bosses wouldn’t understand work-life balance, or they may be punished in the future if they didn’t perform the additional work.
While this is just one experiment, I suspect these biases constantly crop up. Have you seen them in play? Do you make the same assumptions? And what impact does this pushback bias have?
I hear many women struggle with priority setting, scope creep, and the imbalance that comes with taking too much on. Often this is coupled with a reluctance to delegate or an overly empathetic style that has women doing the work of those levels below them. When both factors combine, it’s the perfect storm. I call it the double pushback conundrum. Employees push back on you, and you don’t push back on others, creating an untenable situation. A proverbial dumping ground. Here’s what you can do about it.
Balancing authority with empathy as a leader is tricky. But it’s a skill set you need to hone to be successful today. If you are the manager receiving pushback on you, consider these tips:
Understand what the person has on their plate, and the time it takes to complete it. Bosses often get blamed for not knowing how long tasks take. This goes for work and personal priorities (to the extent the person is willing to share).
Assess whether the individual is spending time on the right priorities and realign and reprioritize as necessary. Focus discussions on how and when work gets done, not if it gets done.
Keep calm and create an open environment for the discussion. Encourage individuals to raise conversations early and often to avoid breaking point scenarios.
Make your expectations clear, and don’t be afraid to ask for what you need from the team. Your job is to make work manageable and problem-solve, but not the person picking up all the slack.
Invest time to regularly coach and give feedback to ramp up the capabilities of your team and continually assess if you have the team you need to achieve the priorities you are on the hook for.
When you need to pushback on your boss or colleagues, consider these tips:
Separate the person from the position. Someone may be more senior than you, but it doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate your priorities with them. It’s expected that you will do that. If you are the dumping ground, it’s probably because you let yourself be.
Determine if you fall prey to pushback bias by avoiding conversations with males or others or making assumptions that they will not understand your predicaments. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. You still need to have the conversation.
Stay calm, agreeable, and firm. Discuss your priorities and ask for help in reassessing them if you’re with your boss. Discuss how you add value and what is in the best interest of the larger goals now. If you’re with a colleague, share what you are expected to deliver and what people count on you for. Be sure to continue to build your credibility and deliver great work so that these conversations are about capacity and not capability.
Help figure out how the work can get accomplished by suggesting options that don’t include you. If you need to be included, negotiate the extent.
Raise conversations often by sharing your accomplishments and by sharing your priorities. Make it a habit to ensure people know your contributions and your limits.
The pushback game is a dance in any organization. Sometimes you’ll win, and sometimes you’ll lose. But it’s a skill you need to get great at to ensure you’re not always on the losing side. Let’s nip this bias in the bud by getting into the pushback game and ensuring that this vital conversation is normalized across the board.
What’s your experience with the pushback bias?
The ability to influence is a critical leadership skill, with or without authority. But in my work with high-potential female leaders, I have noticed a pattern. Many believe that formal authority through title or position is the sole source of influence. Positional power (I am the boss, and the more senior I am, the more I have) is an important source of influence, but it’s not the only source.
The problem with this mindset is that it holds many women back from engaging in behaviors that would give them more influence, which could lead to the formal positional power they seek.
I have seen women hold back from speaking up, asserting a point of view, leading a conversation, or sharing an idea when more senior people are in the conversation. They are often surprised when they receive feedback that they are quiet, invisible, or not stepping up.
What is it with our hang-up with hierarchy? Effectively we are saying that only those in charge have the right to speak up. When I say it that way, it sounds ridiculous.
Does your hang-up with hierarchy prevent you from speaking up, sharing your insights, or leading the way when that’s precisely what you’re expected to do? Do you have a fear of putting yourself forward in front of authority? If so, try leveraging other sources of influence first. Build them up and show them off. The more you have, the larger the chance you will achieve the positional influence you seek.
Expertise and knowledge. This obvious source of influence is often underused for fear of overstepping bounds. Do you have deep expertise or knowledge of the topic at hand? You may be relied on for your qualifications, accomplishments, or education. One woman I coached realized she frequently knew more than those speaking and had finally had enough of being undermined. She worked on bringing her knowledge to the conversation, which subsequently made others defer to her more often. This fed her confidence to continue speaking up, upping her influence with customers and higher-ups.
Results and experience. This influence source is about leveraging your track record of results or experience in tackling problems or projects. How can you become a go-to or an invaluable resource on vexing issues? This is exactly what one woman realized was her superpower. She loved to take charge of the messiest projects. It didn’t matter what the subject was; she had the skills to create a strategy, mobilize a team and get stakeholders onside. She was a master change manager. This put her in arenas with seasoned people on important initiatives. What can you harness from your track record and experience more fully?
Information or insight. This source of influence comes from having information about what is happening inside, across, or outside the organization. Do you know things quicker than most, or because you connect the dots and synthesize information into meaningful insights? Learn from the woman who continually found new ways to tackle old problems. She applied insights from her legal background and kept on top of information changes to constantly offer new ways for her stakeholders to save money. She built a brand of innovative thinking which became a cornerstone of her promotion story.
Network and relationships. Having influence here is about who you know and how you can connect others to people, profit, or information. A woman I coached had a huge epiphany when she realized she had a better network than her seasoned leaders. She undervalued her deep connections and access to C-Suite potential customers, which was a key ingredient to moving up the ranks.
People and leadership. This source of influence is about your impact on people because of your leadership skills. Are you seen as a critical change agent or role model that others listen to? One coachee expressed her pride in easily attracting and developing team members. People wanted to work with and for her, while others struggled to maintain functioning teams. It is critical to have the team you need so you can focus on strategic initiatives that will propel you and the organization forward. Can you become known as someone people want to hitch their wagon to?
The women in these examples each realized they needed to leverage different forms of influence to be promoted and ultimately achieve the positional power they sought. To do that, they had to get over their hang-up with hierarchy. They had not to be afraid of the people in power positions and let their influence sources shine through.
Which sources of influence do you rely on most often and why? Could you over-rely on this source at the expense of developing others? Which other sources of influence would you benefit from? Understand which ones you have, which you need to build, and when to leverage each.
Trying to get noticed or promoted at work is a struggle at the best of times. Especially for women. But it’s become increasingly difficult for some with hybrid or work-from-home arrangements.
Many of the same career management principles apply whether you’re in the office regularly, work from a home office full-time, or anything in between. But proximity bias, or out of sight, out of mind, is undoubtedly a concern for those who work from home more frequently.
A study published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that more than two-thirds of supervisors of remote workers admit to considering remote workers more easily replaceable and that full-time remote work is detrimental to employees’ career objectives. Almost three-quarters of the managers said they would prefer all of their subordinates to work in the office. Yikes.
If you’re worried about your influence, profile, or exposure, hiding behind that computer on Zoom will not improve the situation. Try dialing up the strategies below instead. Create opportunities for deliberate conversations on these topics to stay top of mind.
1. Check-in: Otherwise known as the how am I – how are you chat? Hopefully, by now, most managers are asking their people this question. But I won’t take it for granted because there are many crappy people managers out there and lots with COVID empathy fatigue. Ask your boss how they are doing with everything. Model empathy and learn how they are navigating priorities. And don’t gloss over your answer when your boss asks you with a generic fine or busy. This is your chance to say what’s great by highlighting your successes. It’s also a chance to signal that the waterline is up to your nose and you’re in serious jeopardy of drowning. Be honest, create boundaries and negotiate priorities. Ensure you have the bandwidth for strategic projects, not just tactical ones.
2. Task: Or the here’s what I’m working on conversation. Most people confuse this chat with project status updates or firefighting. You probably have way too many of those conversations, don’t you? Be sure you carve out time to highlight your wins, strengths, and accomplishments as you talk about your daily work. And don’t be so tactical. Ensure you’re communicating your work and wins within the context of higher-level goals to demonstrate your strategic capability. Provide qualitative or quantitative metrics when you can. I know what you’re doing. You’re sighing and thinking, that sounds like a lot of work. It takes practice, yes. But if you do this all along, it makes the end-of-year conversations a breeze.
3. Career: The here’s how I want to grow, stretch and advance conversation. This discussion is likely happening once a year at the end of the fiscal year when the organization forces managers to chat about careers while giving performance ratings and determining salary increases. What a horrible place to put this conversation. Instead, I suggest you seed this conversation throughout the year and give your manager notice that you want to talk regularly about growth projects, exposure opportunities, and real-time experiences. Also, give the heads up that you want to discuss your salary or other benefits. Don’t wait until the end of the year. Scrap the year-end development plan and replace it with an experience plan you action regularly.
4. Influence: This is the give me some insights to better influence stakeholders conversation. Getting things done at work is rarely easy all the time. Wouldn’t that be nice? You likely encounter difficult people, run up against roadblocks, and need to get certain people to say yes. Use conversations with your boss (and insightful others) to better understand the people you interact with. What does it take to be credible in their eyes, and what is your standing with them? What are their pressures, and what are they paying attention to? What’s the best (and worst) way to communicate with them? Build your influence by better responding to your important stakeholders.
5. Visibility: Known as the how can I build profile chat. To be seen above the fray, you must have exposure to the critical people and projects in your organization. Use this conversation to determine if higher-ups know your successes and capabilities. Do they know your aspirations and ways you can add more or different value than you are now? Can you get into different meetings or projects? Can you get help to prepare for an upcoming presentation that will paint you in great light? I know this conversation was hard before when we were all in the office together. But you must dial this one up right now.
6. Impact: Or the I’m looking for some feedback on how I am landing/perceived conversation. I hope you’re getting feedback on how you’re performing your job. If not, add that to the list. But that gives you tactical input on your duties and responsibilities. To advance, you need to know more than that. You need to understand how people perceive your capabilities and your potential. If you only get feedback on your current work, you might be stuck there for a long time. You need to talk about how you’re perceived, how you’re landing with important decision-makers, and if people see you as having what it takes to do something more or different. That’s a very different type of feedback that you must target.
I’m not suggesting you give up a hybrid or permanent work-from-home arrangement. They can be a thing of beauty. I am urging you, though, to dial up your proactive self-advocacy. Out of sight does not have to mean out of mind. Proximity bias is just as easily encountered by those sitting on different floors of the same office tower or in another city. And if you’re a people manager reading this, make these conversations routine with your teams, especially those you meet regularly over your computer screen.
What do you think of when you look at a muffin tin? Go ahead, get the image in your head. What images, associations, or memories come to mind? For me, it was the smell of my mom’s homemade baking. The kitchen filled up with the scent of oatmeal, bran, and butter. Fond memories of childhood, homecooked meals, canned and frozen produce from the farm and garden.
I used muffin tins when I was on maternity leave and when my daughter was young. I whipped up healthy modernized versions of the classics. Heart-healthy fats and shredded vegetables replaced the oily version of the Morning Glory Muffin past. What a great mom I am. But then I advanced at work, started traveling more, and the muffin tins got tossed aside. They were replaced with boxed granola bars…and guilt.
Once a symbol of nostalgia and comfort, the muffin tin had become a reminder of all the ways I was failing.
Both men and women feel guilt; however, numerous studies have found that women are prone to feelings of guilt across all age groups.
My house is a disaster. I haven’t called my mother in weeks. Should I eat more vegan meals? I didn’t exercise again. Am I progressing in my career enough? My kids are getting too much screen time. I’m not taking enough time for myself. I am taking time for myself, and it feels selfish. I still haven’t responded to my team’s email.
And if you are a working parent, at home you feel guilty for not doing work. And when you’re at work, you feel guilty for not being at home. It’s a relentless, inescapable cycle of guilt.
Girls have been socialized to take care of the physical and emotional needs of others. This dynamic has been given a name: the human giver syndrome. The term, initially defined by Kate Manne, an associate professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, describes how women are more conditioned to believe they have a moral obligation to fulfill the needs of others at the expense of their own needs.
The resulting guilt and anxiety lead to physical and emotional exhaustion. Are you a human giver who has given so much that nothing is left in the pantry for yourself? Are you ready to tell yourself a different story—a story that you get to receive too?
Imagine you’re stuck in a long-running Zoom meeting. Your stomach is growling because you skipped lunch again to finish an urgent task. It’s the witching hour—kids fighting, dogs barking. You’re angry at your colleagues because they won’t stop talking. You’re angry because dinner will be late again. Your guilt sets in. Why didn’t I leave out the frozen chili that I made for hectic moments like this?
Your mind starts spinning out of control. You recall the perfect meals from your childhood. You hear the voice of an acquaintance who said, “Oh no, we have a hot meal on the table every night.” You tune back into the meeting and realize you missed a critical comment; go figure. You feel increased dread as the seconds tick on.
We’ve all been there many times. The guilt, shame, embarrassment, anger, resentment—take your pick, you’ve felt it. I sure have. Then I remind myself of a fellow working parent who told me to cut myself some slack and stop making things so hard. She shared a tip that could save not only a single night’s dinner but years of meal guilt. It was the muffin tin dinner.
The muffin tin returned! Could I rekindle my love with this kitchen staple? Reframe my resentment?
She told me to open the fridge and cupboard. Fill each hole in the pan with vegetables, fruit, protein, or dairy. Crackers or pita; dips or sauces. Leftovers, hot or cold. Anything goes. Save a hole at the top for a drink. A small glass, sippy cup, or juice box fits in perfectly. The last spot is for a yummy treat that must be eaten last. That’s the only rule.
Spread out a blanket and have an indoor picnic or place the tray on your kid’s lap for a midweek movie night or a pretend flight to an exciting destination of their choosing. Watch as they zigzag through the holes in the tin or follow an orderly path. There’s a personality test hidden in there somewhere, I’m sure. They will love it. My daughter is a teen and still asks for muffin tin dinner.
My colleague’s tip wasn’t just about making a quick dinner. It was about cutting myself some slack, seeing there was another way, lightening my mental load.
Muffin tin dinner was now a metaphor for all the small acts that helped me rewrite my stories of guilt. Tonight, I’m not failing; I’m exceeding expectations by doing something fun. (And healthy and easy and fast, but they don’t need to know that. They just know I’m awesome.)
The burnout and emotional exhaustion that women experience are about more than dinnertime struggles and will not be fixed with a single muffin tin dinner. Obviously. This story highlights a critical component to tackling this age-old guilt challenge: self-compassion. And self-compassion has been shown to have the most significant impact on our happiness, resilience, and ability to deal with stress. What stories do you tell yourself? Do you criticize and judge instead of having compassion for yourself? If you do, it’s okay; we all sometimes do. Try these ideas for reframing guilt and making your head and heart lighter.
When you feel guilt, you need to determine where it’s coming from. My meal-time guilt stemmed from not living up to my “home-made slow-cooked” childhood. Looking at the unused muffin tin not only triggered guilt, it also triggered anger some days. It conjured up images of the 1950s housewife in a shirtwaist dress and apron, donning triangle-shaped hair made immoveable by Spray Net. She made pot roasts in a Corningware casserole, Betty Crocker muffins, and martinis on demand for her husband when he got home. My association with the fondly remembered muffin tin turned sour and jaded. The muffin tin became a symbol of inequality. I needed to modernize the muffin tin because I needed to modernize motherhood for myself. That’s where my reframing began.
I benefited from a conversation early in motherhood with a mentor of mine. When I described my idyllic childhood with a stay-at-home mom, her guilt radar kicked in, and she reminded me that I learned many great lessons from my mom that have shaped me. If I decided to return to work, I would teach my daughter lessons too – not better ones, not worse ones, just different ones. That realization was transformative for me. I could honor and pass on many values and qualities from my upbringing and shape new ones.
Being a working mom can have positive impacts on children that outweigh the benefits of staying home. A Harvard study undertaken by Kathleen McGinn and her colleagues found that daughters of working mothers grew up to be more successful in the workplace than their peers. They earned more and were more likely to take on leadership roles. Sons of working moms were more likely to grow up making a more significant overall contribution to childcare and household chores. Furthermore, children under fourteen exposed to mothers who worked for at least a year grew up to hold more egalitarian gender views as adults. Remind yourself of the role model you are and the benefits that your children experience.
Guilt is an emotion we feel because we’re convinced we’ve caused harm. Guilt comes from many triggers: something you did (I ate the entire cake myself); something you didn’t do but wanted to (I forgot the school fundraiser again); something you think you did (Did my comments make him angry?); something you didn’t do as much as you could have (I should donate more to that charity; they send me so many blasted beautiful return address labels I will die before I use them all up—I know because I’ve done the math based on my average yearly mailing consumption); or something you receive instead of someone else (Janet’s been here much longer than I have, she deserves the promotion more than me). Check-in with your manager, partner, kids, parents, or friends about what you worry about. Are you really letting them down? Are the expectations you think they have of you aligned with the expectations you place on yourself? If not, reset expectations—yours or theirs. Make a plan to address or let it go and tell yourself what a great job you’re doing.
Guilt takes its toll on our mental health and our performance. It can also impact our family leading them to feel guilt too. Here’s some ways I have learned to reframe my thinking and avoid passing on the guilt. Instead of telling my daughter that I wished I didn’t have to go on a business trip, I tell her about all the exciting things I’ll do when I’m there and how I can’t wait to share them with her when I’m back. Instead of complaining about another networking event, I teach her the importance of getting to know people and making friends. Instead of lamenting how I missed yet another opportunity to volunteer at a school function, I helped her give the best darn presentation on her school project because that’s my strength. Instead of feeling shame over not having a hot homemade meal every night, we make the best 5-minute homemade granola bars with creative custom labels.
When guilt creeps in, catch it quickly with a gratitude reframe. My house is messy, but I’m grateful my family is healthy and happy. You missed that bake sale? Oh well, put the next one in your calendar and pick up cupcakes or donuts. Be grateful you remembered. Haven’t responded to your team’s request yet? Tell them you’re thankful for their work and their patience. Stop apologizing while you’re at it too. Late to the meeting? Don’t apologize; say thanks for your patience or nothing at all. No excuses, no apologies, no guilt—just gratitude.
The muffin tin is my metaphor for self-compassion. My love-hate-love journey with the trusty tin is a reminder to drop the guilt and give myself a break. What story do you need to reframe?
This article contains excerpts from chapter 7 (Lighten Up, Brain!) of Tammy’s book Reframe Your Story – Real Talk for Women Who Want to Let Go, Do Less and Be More—Together.
“I just want to keep learning.”
This is what I hear a lot from women when we talk about their career aspirations. Don’t get me wrong – learning is a great thing. In fact, it’s critical to growth at work and in life.
But I have had countless conversations with women who want to get another master’s degree or a PhD or take yet another course or certification. I suspect the long list of credentials makes us feel competent and confident.
But can too much learning be a bad thing? Can it become a crutch?
It absolutely can when learning for learning’s sake holds us back from going for it. When hiding behind more certificates and acronyms prevent us from gaining the real experience we need to ascent to higher levels and earn more.
Let’s first look at how education in general has paid off for women. And when I say, paid off, I’m talking about money. It is well documented that the return on investment from education is lower for women than it is for men. Here’s a few examples.
For the 11th year in a row, women earned a majority of doctoral degrees awarded at US universities in 2019 according to The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).
Yet the gender pay gap persists and women are underrepresented in senior roles.
In Canada, 73% of 25-34 year-old women had a tertiary qualification in 2020 compared to 56% of their male peers according to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.)
Yet the gender pay gap persists and women are underrepresented in senior roles.
In fact, among the 25-34 age group, women are more likely to have a tertiary degree than men in all 38 countries that are members of the OECD.
Yet the gender pay gap persists and women are underrepresented in senior roles.
We cannot educate ourselves out of the gender pay gap. We cannot educate ourselves into senior leadership roles.
Last year the Women’s National Law Center published a disheartening report. Women at all education levels experienced a wage gap. Women earn less whether they have no high school diploma, a high school diploma, or a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Moreover, when women earn a Bachelor’s degree, they still only make about what men with an Associate’s degree make ($61,341 and $61,100 respectively)—and men with only a high school degree but no college education typically make more than women with an Associate’s degree ($49,661 and $45,813 respectively).
Of course, education is valuable and necessary, and we won’t stop pursuing it. But more education is not leading to more pay or more senior leadership opportunities. So why do we continuously seek more and more formal learning as we work? And does it pay off in the long run?
The Hay Group highlighted learning for learning’s sake in its study focusing on performance and career paths and found that both high-performing men and women had a strong orientation toward achievement. However, for women it manifested more as a lifelong focus on continuous learning which did not necessarily lead to proactive career management: women were less deliberate in their career progressions than men and still had a way to go in driving specific efforts toward a goal. The study described the thought patterns of women as a generic desire to learn, grow and build capabilities. What’s needed instead, it argued, is a purposeful thought pattern: intentionally create opportunities to learn a specific skill and gain exact experience to earn a particular position. I wholeheartedly agree.
Do you think that if you just get a few more letters behind your name, you’ll get that big job? Do you believe that if you just take more courses, get another degree and do really good work you’ll be tapped on the shoulder? Are you certain that knowledge outweighs experience? If so, you may be plagued with the credential crutch.
Ask yourself these questions when considering your learning goals.
Do you need to learn a technical skill to do your job, keep your job or advance in your job?
Are there formal requirements or credentials that are keeping you from transferring into a new career?
Will your carefully considered personal vision be achieved with more formal learning?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then pass go, collect two hundred and register away.
How about these questions?
Is the course or certification a means to shore up confidence before taking on more responsibility?
Are the credentials required only to live up to your own high expectations?
Is the learning endeavor a way to put off really going after your goals?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask yourself: are the money, time and effort involved really worth it? Have you showcased the amazing talent and skills you already possess? Are you using learning as a crutch when you already have exactly what you need in that big brain of yours?
It’s time to toss the crutch and stand on our own merits. It’s time to go for the experiences that will truly make a difference to your career and advancement.
You can fill your head with knowledge, but until you apply it, it really means nothing. Gaining specific experience is what’s required to advance.
To this end I say, ditch the development plan! It’s time to make an experience plan.
Most people take stock at the end of the year and say, “What do I need to develop to get better at the job I’m doing?” Maybe it’s taking a course, reading some resources, or meeting with a mentor. Contrary to what you might think, these kinds of development plans do little for your future, little to become your future ideal self, little to challenge your sense of self and build your confidence. The readiness to take on new daunting tasks, projects or roles is built over time from continual small stretches. That builds confidence for what feels like bigger bolder stretches.
Think instead about an experience plan. What experiences do you need to have to truly grow and develop? What seasoned stakeholders do you need to interact with, what presentations do you need to make, what meetings do you have to get into, what projects do you need to be after? How can you get real-time learning that not only helps in your current role but builds capability for future roles? How can you gain experiences that fuel a love of stretching, instead of hiding behind a book or course in a comfortable zone of incremental learning?
Before you go on the lookout for your next course, certification or credential, first squeeze out all the development, insights and knowledge you already have.
Next remember that there are less credentialed, less experienced and less intelligent people than you out there doing it already.
Put down the crutch and make a run for it.
I recently attended a webinar by Lean In Canada called Elevating Gender Equality: A Conversation on How to be a Male Ally. The session was a bit slow to start, but by the end, I felt, dare I say, hopeful.
The panel was made up of four men that differed in age, racial background, leadership level, organization and sector. Yet they all shared a common goal – to take an active role in ensuring gender equality.
I was moved with how these men thought about their roles, how they shared a common mindset and how they offered practical tips that can be implemented immediately by anyone. I know that many of you are working on allyship in your organization too. Here is a summary of the conversation.
Each man opened the conversation by introducing their background and explaining what led them to becoming a public ally for women. I say public because there are many men who are great allies, quietly doing the work to sponsor women. The men I listened to have gone one step further. They are part of Lean In male allyship circles. They engage with others and have regular conversations to learn, to share and to make impact beyond individual relationships.
Why did they decide to take their allyship public?
Now I know what some of you might be thinking. They must have daughters, wives or sisters that drove their decisions. Many men get derided for pulling the ‘daughter card’. But you know what, we have to cut that out. I dedicated my book to my daughter. My mission is to make the world better for all our daughters. Women are not the only people who have this wish, who are driven to make change. Men get to care about this too. We need them to.
In fact, two of the men don’t have daughters at all. One was moved when he read a specific piece of research on the hardships that Asian women face with access to opportunities, hiring and pay equity. It shook him to the core. Another was interested in better understanding his blind spots while getting his MBA. He joined both a women in management group and an ally circle.
While they didn’t use these words explicitly, I got the distinct sense that these men understand that gender equality is the important work of leadership, period.
Here’s what I learned about their mindsets.
Don’t call yourself an ally. Ally is not a label you can give yourself - you earn it. It was clear these men weren’t out for recognition for themselves. They were putting in the work to take a stand. They were seeking to better themselves, evolve cultures and increase opportunities for women.
Make allyship active. It’s easy to have good intentions or think supportive thoughts. But until you act, it means nothing.
Shift to a systems perspective. Helping individuals is important and rewarding. But change requires an ongoing challenge of processes and systems too.
Recognize your voice matters. When you are silent, you reinforce the bad behaviors that limit opportunities for women.
Make equal, not identical. Being a sponsor and an ally is not about imposing your approach, your way, your style. It is about expanding definitions of leadership.
Eradicate the bro code. The biggest fear for men is facing backlash from breaking the bro code. As one of the men so poignantly said,
These are the practical tips that the men offered:
Start at home. Model behaviors at home by dividing up physical and more importantly emotional labor. Take the lead on planning, appointments, childcare. Be prepared to take a step back and prioritize the needs and goals of your partner too.
Get rid of “fit”. Challenge yourself to make your teams and organization better by adding to it, not making it the same.
Make yourself approachable. Let it be known that you are open and available for sponsorship opportunities. Get known for someone who makes time for developing current and future talent.
Listen and learn. One of the most valuable experiences for one of the allies was when he was approached by a young woman of color for a reverse mentoring relationship. The woman created space for the ally to ask questions he had never asked before, or knew to ask. This experience reinforced that working on equality was not about taking away identity.
Engage supporters. Talk to other males who are open or neutral and want to help, but don’t know how. Increasing awareness and engaging support over time will make change.
Get educated. Read, attend events, listen. Dive into the gender equality and equity stats, the biases and common stereotypes. Soak up the situations and implications that are real and happening all around you.
Just ask. Ask your female colleagues and direct reports proactively how you can support them and how you can show up for them. The men also urged women to not hold back from asking men to be their ally. Ask us to be on your side and to actively look out and stand up for you.
Give public credit. A simple thing we can all do immediately is give credit to women’s ideas and accomplishments in open meetings and closed-door conversations. Give women profile in forums where they are unknown.
#interruptheinterrupter. Don’t interrupt women during conversations and apologize when you do. And last, for goodness sake, interrupt others when they interrupt your female colleagues. Ensure they are heard.
Thank you, Astor, John, Jason and Brandon, for going public, for taking a stand and for being great leaders.
The role of male allyship has never been more important. Let me know what other mindsets and behaviors you’ve witnessed, experienced or inhabited.
