gender studies – The Leadership Professor

Another take on leadership, gender, and confidence from Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt, authors of the new book, Break Your Own Rules: How to Change the Patterns of Thinking that Block Women’s Paths to Power – and good advice for women and men seeking to increase their impact.

The book is a fascinating read – and a recommendation that women finally discard the rules that have traditionally guided their leadership (and have been seen as women’s “strengths”). Women are a mere 11% of senior leadership in corporate American, and that number hasn’t changed in 30 years. The authors suggest it’s time to think seriously about how to make that change happen.

Their advice: out with the old, please, and in with the new. Reframe the everyday beliefs that women bring about how to lead and do themselves in the workplace. For example:

Traditional approach: focus on others — New advice: take center stage

Traditional approach: seek approval — New advice: proceed until apprehended

Traditional approach: be modest — New advice: project personal power

Traditional approach: work harder — New advice: be politically savvy

Traditional approach: play it safe — New advice: play to win

Traditional approach: it’s all or nothing — New advice: it’s both-and

I’m not doing he book justice, but I want to get back to the confidence theme from my last post:

In a recent post of the HBR site, the authors assert they found – and “by a wide margin” – that the primary criticism men have about their female colleagues at work is that the women exhibit low self-confidence.

The authors concede this may partly be perception — men can interpret a willingness to share credit or defer judgment as a lack of confidence. But they also note that there is plenty of research that suggests women feel less self-assured at work. See yesterday’s blog post, for one example. Another is a 2011 workforce study by Europe’s Institute of Leadership and Management that reports:

Men were more confident across all age groups: 70% of the men reported high or very high levels of self-confidence, compared to 50% of the women

Half of women managers admitted feelings of self-doubt about their performance and career, 31% of men reported the same

Lack of confidence makes women more cautious in applying for jobs and promotions: 20% of men said they would apply despite only partially meeting its job description, compared to 14% of women.

The authors turned to their own data and identified four specific low-confidence behaviors cited by male and female managers alike:

Being overly modest. Men are more willing to take public credit for their successes. Women believe their accomplishments should speak for themselves. They may – or they may be overlooked by all the busy people around them.

Not asking. Not asking means you’ve lost the chance to get what you need. No more need be said on that one!

Blending in. The authors note that some women go to great lengths to avoid attention in the workplace. They want to do their work, stay professional, and wait to be appreciated. A perfect strategy for remaining invisible!

Remaining silent. Don’t speak up and you won’t get in the conversation – or the game.

The author’s conclusion: Career momentum is not just about adding job skills. It’s about changing everyday thinking and behaviors. Amen!

Glad I could bring you these helpful insights. I ask you to share them – and this blog site – with others interested in improving their leadership. I’d love to attract more readers – and I have plenty more to say about how to lead and how to lead for greater impact.

So how am I doing? I’m practicing the suggested new behaviors! Are you?

An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education confirms what those who have studied gender and leadership know from research — and what many women know from personal experience: women need to be able to see themselves in a role before they can succeed in it.

I assert the same is true for people of color and for first generation college graduates.

If people can’t believe at their core that folks like them can do whatever they are setting out to do, that tiny kernel of insecurity can gnaw at their self-confidence. And guess what? They may not be able to do what they fear they can’t. It’s a tacit, self-fulfilling prophecy.

The message to educators in all this is clear: teaching skills and knowledge is not enough. Quality education is identify work and personal development, and we short change our students – undergraduates, graduate students, and executive audiences – when we design programs assuming facts, figures, and models are enough. We do students no service either when we think we know why they don’t succeed or persist.

Look at what the researchers found.

Research from Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research in the October issue of the American Sociological Review found that women who begin college intending to become engineers are more likely than men to change their major and choose another career. The interesting gender twist: they do it for lack of confidence, not competence.

Women lack what the researchers call "professional role confidence" — a term that loosely describes the outcome of a complex self-assessment on whether a person feels s/he has the right stuff for success: the core intellectual skills, the right expertise for a given profession, and a fit in interests and values with the expectations of the field’s career path.

Women’s family plans and concerns about their math skills have been traditional explanations for their low representation in engineering. The researchers, however, found otherwise.

Women’s family plans had little bearing on their career planning once they entered engineering training. Surprisingly, men were more likely to leave engineering if they had plans to start a family.

Women’s views of their math abilities were not significant predictors of persistence toward an engineering degree or entrance into the field. "Once students matriculate into this math-intensive field, more complex, profession-specific self-assessments appear to replace math self-assessment as the driving social-psychological reasons for attrition," the researchers concluded.

The authors suggest their findings about professional-role confidence may be relevant in other fields. I know they are. That’s why mentors, role models, and caring sponsors are so important.