Triangulation

  • “It’s hard for me. I’m not good at confrontation.” (Paula, nurse)
  • “I don’t like confrontation. I allowed a coworker to intimidate me.” (Laurie, manager in the travel industry)
  • “I’m a wimp! I would let conflict slide and then come around, behind the scenes, and do that passive-aggressive thing. That’s not good.” (Sheri, technology manager)
  • “It’s difficult because you don’t want to make somebody angry.” (Claire, nurse)
  • Paula summed it up best for this group of women: “We weren’t raised that way [to be direct and confrontational]. We were told that women didn’t do that . . . you were to be seen and not heard.” “Seen and not heard”—I remember being told this when I was growing up, along with “girls are sugar and spice and everything nice.” I remember thinking that I had to avoid confrontation because it could damage a relationship—or, as Claire said, “make somebody angry.”   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Women Are Better Leaders Than Men

    New research conducted by the leadership consultancy Zenger Folkman and authored by Bob Sherwin shows women scored higher than men on twelve of sixteen leadership competencies at all levels of management, including the executive level. So why is it that, worldwide, only 3–4 percent of CEOs are women? Two key reasons why women continue to experience a glass ceiling at senior levels are

    • The persistence of negative stereotypes about deficiencies in women’s leadership capabilities despite more and more data showing the inaccuracy of these stereotypes.
    • Second-generation bias, defined by Debra Kolb and Jessica Porter in their new book, Negotiating at Work, as, “an organization’s policies and practices that appeared gender neutral [but] could have unintended but differential impacts on different groups of men and women.”
    The good news is that data from recent research about the value that women bring to organizations is adding up, and we can use this data as a chisel to chip away at negative stereotypes and invisible structural barriers.  

    About This Study

    The sample for the Zenger Folkman study included the 360-degree feedback data for 16,000 leaders in a wide variety of industries. Two-thirds of the leaders in the study were male and one-third female. All participants had feedback from their managers, direct reports, and peers.  

    Research Findings

    Women scored higher than men on twelve of sixteen leadership competencies measured by the 360-degree feedback assessment, and ten of these differences were statistically significant. One surprise in the findings was that while most people polled by the researchers assumed that women would excel in the nurturing competencies (developing others, inspiring and motivating others, relationship building, collaboration, and teamwork), in fact, these were not the strongest scores for the women. The largest positive differences for women were in taking initiative, displaying integrity and honesty, and driving for results. Women also outperformed men in the nurturing competencies, but their strongest scores were in getting tasks done and delivering results—counter to some negative stereotypes about women leaders. These results held up across functions usually considered traditionally male, such as sales, legal, engineering, IT, and R and D. The study’s author notes, “Only in facilities management and maintenance do [women] not do well.” Also, the higher the women rose to the executive level, the more positively they were perceived. I think it is significant that this last finding is based on feedback from people who actually knew and worked with the leaders. In contrast, the “likeability” literature, reviewed in my previous blogs, seems to show conflicting results when women advance, but that research is based on hypothetical leaders described in case studies and may not be as meaningful as the findings reported here.  

    How to Chip Away at Negative Stereotypes

    1. Be informed. Keep a file of articles with research showing positive findings about women in organizations. In addition to the information reported here about women being better leaders, I have written in previous blogs about other positive research findings, including
      1. Men are more confident, but women are more competent.
      2. When women lead, performance improves.
      3. Start-ups led by women are more likely to succeed.
      4. Innovative firms with more women in top management are more profitable.
      5. Companies with more gender balance have more revenue.
    2. Inform others. Circulate articles reporting positive data on women that challenge existing stereotypes and help make the case for promoting women. Make sure to include your boss on the list you send information to, and bring it up with her or him from time to time. This can help your boss justify fighting for an opportunity for you behind closed doors.
    3. Join with others. Join with other women and men who want to identify the second-generation bias in the policies and practices in your organization and raise them up for scrutiny and change. Second-generation bias, as described by Kolb and Porter, is unintentional and invisible, but can create significant barriers for women and other nondominant groups. You can work with others to make biases visible and open a pathway to change.
    Negative gender-based stereotypes and second-generation bias are deeply entrenched, but we can chip away at the barriers they create if we are persistent and informed.]]>

    Transknitting in Practice

    other daughter must have told her. “Why are they talking about me?” he asked. “Don’t I have a say about who talks about me? And besides, why does Patty care whether or not I’m sick after all this time?” “You don’t have a say, she doesn’t care, and,” I answered, “this isn’t about you.” “What do you mean ‘it’s not about me’?” he said. “I’m the one they’re talking about.” “They are transknitting,” I replied. “You are not the point. They are using information about you to do their mother-daughter relationship work. This is really not about you.” They were talking about Mike to connect, just as my mother and I talked about people we both knew to connect. There was no negative intention toward Mike. His daughters and their mother were engaging in one of the positive types of talk.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Sharing Gossip and Transknitting

    As the scene opens, Janice, the supervisor, is sitting alone at her desk. Her employee, Cynthia, approaches her.

    Cynthia is quite agitated as she explains to Janice, “I really need to talk to you about something. I have to ask you,” she says in a pleading tone, “please don’t tell anyone in the office. My husband just left me, and it was a surprise. I can barely deal with it. I’m barely functioning here,” she says, choking back tears. “On top of that,” she goes on, with her shoulders and head slowly drooping forward, “I just got back from the doctor and I have to have a hysterectomy!”

    “Oh my goodness,” exclaims Janice with a look of concern on her face as she reaches over to pat Cynthia on the arm. “I’m so sorry to hear this.”

    Cynthia goes on to explain about her need for privacy. “I really need to keep this quiet.” She looks Janice in the eyes pleadingly. “I don’t want people coming up to me. I can’t deal with it emotionally right now. It’s just too much. Is that all right?”

    “I understand completely,” Janice says.

    We next see Janice as she enters the lunchroom with a worried frown creasing her forehead. She is trying to maintain her resolve to keep quiet as she approaches two women waiting for her at a table for lunch. “Uhh!” is the sound of her resolve escaping as she loses the battle. “I just had a—you can’t say anything!” The two women agree. “Cynthia’s having a hard time, and I just want to, you know—this has to be confidential. But we really need to support her and to help her. She’s having problems in her marriage, and female problems, too. I can’t go into the details. I trust you two to keep this under wraps. I’m just saying something because we just really want to support her.”

    The two women agree, “Yes, of course!”

    After a quick lunch, Janice gets up to leave. After she leaves, one of her lunch partners, Andrea, gets up and goes over to another table with two women having lunch and sits down.

    Practically whispering, she asks, “Did you hear about Cynthia?”

    “No, what?” they say, leaning in with curiosity, glad to be sharing what is apparently a secret.

    “Yeah, she’s got some female problems and some marital issues. You have to keep it quiet, though. Don’t tell anybody where you heard this from. All right? You know, we just want to be there for her and make sure to support her.”

    The two women mumble their agreement, and they all get up and go their separate ways. One of them, Sandra, sees Cynthia in the hall and goes over to her. “Oh my gosh, Cynthia, I just heard,” says Sandra, as all the color drains from Cynthia’s face and her mouth sags open in surprise. “I’m so sorry about everything that’s going on! I’ve had two miscarriages myself, so I know what it’s like. And, you know, my husband and I were separated for a time.” Cynthia is mortified as it hits her that everyone knows, and she hides her face in her hands. “We were able, through counseling, to work it out, though, so don’t give up,” says Sandra.

    “Gotta run!” She hurries off, noticing that her supportive comments have not been well received and feeling a little bit hurt about it.

    Cynthia groans. The role-play ends.

    As I watched the role-play, I thought, “Yuck! Another role-play about gossip!” But when I asked the group to discuss what they had seen, an argument broke out about whether or not this role-play was about gossip. I was baffled. I could not understand what the argument was about, but the group quickly changed the subject and went on to discuss the other three role-plays that had been performed. I left the session still confused about that argument. An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Next Steps for Keeping Relationships Healthy

  • Practice the skill of mutual empathy. Identify a relationship, either inside or outside of work, where you have recently experienced some tension that was not discussed.
    1. Write down what you experienced (describe the behaviors you noticed) and what you felt (for example, surprise or discomfort).
    2. Ask the other person for a time to get together to talk something over. Tell her you are concerned that a misunderstanding might have happened. Tell her what you experienced and felt, and ask her what she experienced and felt.
    3. Listen deeply to each other and ask questions for understanding. Do not interrupt each other. Really listen.
  • Practice naming and negotiating. If a misunderstanding was developing in step 1 above, then name the friendship rules that may have been operating for you, and ask the other person how they compare to hers. Try to agree on new ones that will work better to meet the needs you both have.
  • Practice role hats. The next time you are going to a meeting with a woman who has a role different from yours (with either a level or a functional difference), ask a colleague to help you clarify the roles before the meeting. Write down the role hat you think you will wear and the one the other woman will wear in the upcoming meeting. Debrief with your colleague after the meeting. What did you notice about your expectations for the interaction? Continue this practice before the next few meetings to sharpen your skills.
  •   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Successful Boundary Management

    To be friends at work requires total transparency—you must be totally honest on both sides of the boundary. It cannot work to be the senior or the junior person if you cannot trust that what you are seeing is what you are getting. I explicitly name the role that I’m coming from—which hat I’m wearing—boss or friend. My friend can ask me which hat I’m wearing in any interaction. She can ask me to change hats. We are always clear about how the role hats are going to work. I am clear with her that when I have my boss hat on, I am speaking from my supervisor role, where I am responsible for the quality of her work—and I may not be happy with it. There may also be things going on in the company that I cannot discuss because of my role, and I will tell her that. We can also be good friends outside of work, as long as we stay clear about our hats. I have joked that I am friends with bosses and bosses of friends. A friendship may not survive if I have to discipline or fire her—but I’ve had good luck with that, so it’s not always a problem. “Total transparency”—this, along with the role hats tool, is the key to enable you to “switch the light on and off” to manage role boundaries and relationships at work.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    When a Friend Becomes the Boss

    I have two close women friends at work, and one of them—it was announced last week—now reports to me. I feel somewhat upset because I think she’s upset. I feel she used to look to me as a friend, and now it’s like, “Oh, gosh. You’re my boss!” She was instant-messaging me the day we found out. She was asking, “Did you know about this?” She came to my house Saturday. I mean, we’re friends! I would never, ever want to upset her by any means. And I was a little bit upset that she thought I would know about something like that and not tell her. There is trouble ahead for these two friends if they do not talk about how this change in their roles at work means their friendship expectations need to change. Kate will not be able to tell her friend everything about confidential information she will have as the boss. If the two women can name and negotiate their expectations for how they will deal with professional topics that come up versus when they are just being friends, they will be able to continue being close friends. If not, the consequences could be disastrous for them professionally or personally or both. A recent example of the kind of trouble Kate may be facing with her friend if they don’t learn to manage the changes in their roles comes from a new coaching client in my practice. This client, Stephanie, a white woman in her twenties who is a union executive, hired me as her coach because she was recently promoted and her good friend, a man, now reports to her. He is upset because he was not promoted, and she feels guilty and thinks she must prove her loyalty to him and their friendship. She has shown her loyalty by telling him information she now hears in her new position, and she has also pushed him into the limelight in some situations where she was supposed to be the one there. Her boss is disappointed in her and is now questioning whether she is willing, or able, to step into her new leadership role. He wants her to cut off the friendship with her colleague and distance herself from him. Stephanie feels stuck. Without the intervention of her coach, she might lose her promotion or damage the friendship or both—but neither needs to happen. Later in this chapter, we will take a look at the tool, role hats, that Stephanie is learning to use. But first, let’s consider some other ways that problems can develop when a friend becomes the boss.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Confusion for Bosses

    My women staff will come to me and say, “How’s your boyfriend?” They feel like a relationship with me should be all access, and I don’t want to set up a situation where I’m becoming this kind of friend with them—not just a friend but an intimate friend. We tell all. Then all of a sudden I’ve got to be the person who says, “Get that done. Get it done tonight.” Then that’s a betrayal of womanhood to assert my authority when it’s going to cost them something. In chapter 2, we considered the negative consequences for female bosses when they are too distant or aloof and do not meet the relational expectations of their female staff. Letitia, a white technology manager in her forties, explained the dilemma that Penny faces as the boss: “It’s as though they expect you to subordinate the boss-subordinate relationship to the woman-friend relationship. They would not ask that of a man.” What is the answer? Both scholars and about 25 percent of the women in this study propose that women learn to make a distinction between being friends and being friendly with women at work, especially when they are the boss. I would go a step further and say that it does not need to be an either/or option—that we can be both friends and friendly as the boss, but we need to be able to name whether we are the boss or a friend in any given interaction, with a clear understanding of how the relational rules or expectations are different in each situation. Kathy, a technology manager, explained how this approach works for her:

    I do have two women I was friends with before I was promoted to management. I think we do a wonderful job of saying, “All right, this is a professional conversation.” If it’s a professional conversation, they know there are some things I cannot talk about. And if it’s not a professional conversation anymore, we are also clear with each other about that.
    When Kathy says the women are clear about when they are having a professional conversation and when they are not, this means that she and her friends have specified where the boundaries are for each of them in a professional conversation. In other words, they have specified what they can and cannot talk about in their professional roles so that the expectations are clear. More details about a tool to accomplish this type of successful boundary management will be described later in this chapter. But before we go there, let’s take a look at a type of boundary confusion that can be particularly destructive if not handled well: when a friend becomes your boss.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    The Negative Side of Fluid Boundaries

    Confusion for Staff In the opening story of this chapter, Penny described one type of boundary confusion from a staff perspective when she told of women bosses who seem to expect personal disclosure that was then used against the disclosers. Her description included sharing of feelings in an all-woman space, where relationship matters, that was then used in a business or hierarchical space where “keeping score” is what matters. This felt to Penny like being tricked by her women bosses and left her wondering whom she could trust. Another example of boundary confusion from a staff perspective comes from a research participant in China. Jang, a human resources manager in her forties, explained that women bosses seem to use relationship as a standard for evaluating the performance of women employees:

    With women bosses, we talk about kids, husbands, vacations, fashion, and more emotional things. With men, we only talk about work. With a female leader, things don’t depend on your performance; they depend on your relationship with her and her feelings toward you. I’ve heard other women say they prefer working for a male boss because men are more fair and objective.
    It is worth noting that while Asian cultures are known to be more relationship based than is generally true in US culture, the Chinese participants in this study still ascribed key differences in boundary confusion to gender differences. It seems possible that both women’s friendship rules and feminine workplace values are being reflected in Jang’s statement. Both Ilena, in her twenties, and Angella, in her thirties, managers in Mexico, expressed similar sentiments about female bosses. They said that women are more difficult to work with than men because men are more task focused. Ilena also described another situation, from a staff perspective, where relationship expectations across role boundaries were confused because the boss didn’t manage them well. Ilena felt she had to pretend to be friends with a female boss because that is what the boss expected and the boss had more power. Ilena’s boss expected her to act like a friend, which included lots of self-disclosure and socializing outside of work. Once the woman moved to a different department, Ilena explained “I don’t have to be her friend anymore because she’s no longer my boss.” We can see in this case how the mixing of fluid boundaries and hierarchical status differences can create pressure for staff to fake a relationship when the awareness and skills for managing the boss-employee role boundary are absent. From a staff perspective, a lack of clarity about role boundaries, or the inability to name and negotiate them while staying in the relationship, means that women can experience disappointment or confusion about the behavior of women bosses. Female staff can feel tricked or pressured by women bosses or feel that their performance is being evaluated unfairly.  None of these outcomes needs to happen.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Next Steps for Supporting Women

  • Make a list that describes the characteristics of your ideal boss, in general. Then make a list that describes your ideal woman boss. Once you have your lists, compare them. What do you notice? What friendship rules might be operating for you with your ideal woman boss?
  • Be honest with yourself, and put a check mark by the statements below that apply to you. We have all participated in many of these behaviors at some point. Notice them as you go forward and challenge yourself to stop doing them. Have you ever
    • Laughed at a joke told by a man at the expense of a woman?
    • Assumed a woman got promoted because of whom she slept with?
    • Assumed a woman got a job because of a quota?
    • Talked about other women with men to be accepted as “one of the boys”?
    • Said another woman was too sensitive about gender issues?
    • Been more critical of women leaders than of men?
    • Said, “I hate working for women”?
    • Consciously undermined a woman leader?
  • Use the following scoring guide to reflect upon your answers:

    1–2 checks = You are relatively supportive of other women. 3–4 checks = You are somewhat less supportive of other women. 5+ checks = You have a strong tendency to not be supportive of other women.

    1. Notice your reflex to be critical or dismissive of other women, especially if they are successful. Ask a buddy to do this exercise with you. When you each notice the reflex to be critical or dismissive of other women, mark it down in a notebook or electronic notepad. Share your marks with each other weekly to help each other see patterns and raise your awareness.
      An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>