By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
How often do you truly take credit for your accomplishments on big projects? According to a new article published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, for women working in male-dominated environments, the answer might be “not often enough.”
The research, carried out by Michelle C. Haynes, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Madeline E. Heilman, New York University, suggests that when paired with male colleagues, women tend to give credit for success to men on the team. The reason, they suggest, is because women expect to perform worse than men on stereotypically male tasks (like making management decisions), and when the team generates success, they figure it must be because the work was carried by their male peers. Haynes and Heilman explain:
“Most high status, high power, professional positions are thought to require agentic characteristics for success, characteristics that are congruent with the male stereotype but incongruent with the female stereotype. As a result of this perceived “lack of fit,” men are generally expected to perform successfully in these types of roles; women are expected to be less likely to do so.”
The team performed a similar study in 2005, and this study corroborated those results and went further. The two determined that this wasn’t simply a case of women being “modest” and giving credit to any team-mate, rather than draw attention to themselves. After all, in another test, when women were paired with female colleagues, they didn’t give their partner credit for the team’s success.
It was only when they were working with men that women assumed success was their team-mate’s doing. Given that the professional workforce is dominated by men, especially higher tiers of the corporate ladder, that amounts to a lot of credit handed over to men, when they didn’t necessarily deserve it. It also suggests that there a lot of women not taking credit for excellent work, performance that could lead to bigger responsibilities, promotions, and salaries.
Next time you attribute the success of a project to someone else’s prowess, it is perhaps literally worth your while to stop and think about where that success really came from. Go ahead. Give yourself credit.
As Global Mobility is on the Rise, More Women Take the Lead
Managing ChangeAccording to a recent study by Mercer, the percentage of women assigned to international projects currently sits at 13 percent, a 3 percent increase from 2010. Mercer’s research suggests that 39 percent of companies say that employees with international experience are promoted more quickly, it is encouraging to see more women are being considered for international assignments, and subsequently accepting these roles.
The dialogue around international assignments and female expatriates has most recently been focused on the question of fairness – are women receiving equal opportunities to take advantage of the international experience that can positively impact their career trajectory? A study conducted by Catalyst last fall indicated that women, in fact, are not being equally considered for critical international experience that will enhance their career. Or, if they are chosen for an international assignment, women are most likely to receive smaller projects with small budgets and less corporate impact, compared to their male colleagues.
However, Mercer’s Global Mobility study results paint a different picture of women in international assignments. Historically, eligible women have been overlooked for international assignments due to assumptions about work-life balance constraints and the potential safety risks of sending females to work in different cultures where views of women – especially of women in dominant business roles – were not yet widely accepted. Now, 13 percent of all international assignments belong to women. This number might not feel very significant in the grand scheme of things, but is actually a solid indication that there is a very noticeable sea change taking place within the international business community.
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The Insider’s Guide to Getting Sponsored
Expert AnswersWant to get choice assignments? Want to make more money? Want to have a bigger impact? Get sponsored.
Only 13 percent of women leaders have sponsors according to data from the Center for Talent Innovation. How do the rest of us get the right sponsors? Sponsors are the people several levels up in the organization who have political clout and influence to get us promotions, the right assignments, and visibility. To get the inside scoop on how people really decide who they sponsor, I spoke with several people in leadership roles and those in HR who have the inside scoop on how this actually happens.
Five Factors That Drive Sponsorship
1. Consistent Results. We have to be great at what we do and we have to do it consistently. In order for sponsors to be willing to use their precious political capital on our behalf, they have to have confidence that we will deliver for them. “Demonstrate competence consistently. It’s what builds confidence and credibility” advises Chris Lowe, President of Food Service at Coca Cola North America. This is a necessary factor, but it’s not sufficient.
2. Communication of your personal brand. What is it that you’re great at and helps you stand out? This is not about fulfilling the job description. This is about us understanding the special spark or talent we have that creates value in an important way. Are you the person that is able to turn around client relationships? Are you the person that’s able to solve the toughest problems? Are you the visionary that is able to envision future trends like no one else? A great tool for doing that is using personal assessments (I recommend Strengthsfinders and Stand Out) in addition to feedback. Discover and articulate your personal brand in your performance review and career discussions.
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Lean In Circles: What Are They and Why Should You Join One?
NetworkingThe messages in the book are a powerful call to action to do more than just read and move on. The author’s expressed hope at the end of the book is that women will not only keep talking about the ideas that she raises, but will form “Lean In Circles” to facilitate the dialogue.
We interviewed Gabriela Franco Parcella, chairman and CEO of Mellon Capital, on her progress in championing a Lean In Circle at her firm. She explained, “My feeling is that if we can help accelerate the learning curve for women, why not? It took me 18 years of working to learn some of the lessons described in the book. I would like other women to benefit from our experiences so that they can avoid mistakes that we have made.”
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Voice of Experience: Suzanne Muir, Global Client Partner, Capco
Voices of ExperienceAccording to Suzanne Muir, a Global Client Partner at Capco, a financial services consulting firm, women would benefit by reaching out to one another more often. “We don’t collaborate enough. I don’t see enough women keeping up with peers. Women need to stick together and I really encourage a lot of that.”
In fact, she is helping launch a new mentoring circle initiative at her firm. “We launched our executive women’s network about two years ago, and over time it’s really gelled into a great group of women at all levels. Now we want to add that mentoring component.”
Each circle will include a senior woman and nine to ten junior women with the goal of attracting and retaining high performers. “The junior women will lead and facilitate the circles and bring ideas and thought leadership forward to create their own community of interest. They are still looking for their best fit in their career, and giving them a sense of community will enable them to feel comfortable. I think that’s important.”
She continued, “Our future leaders are those women, and it’s incumbent on us to provide that path forward.”
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Go Ahead – Give Yourself Credit
Office PoliticsHow often do you truly take credit for your accomplishments on big projects? According to a new article published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, for women working in male-dominated environments, the answer might be “not often enough.”
The research, carried out by Michelle C. Haynes, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Madeline E. Heilman, New York University, suggests that when paired with male colleagues, women tend to give credit for success to men on the team. The reason, they suggest, is because women expect to perform worse than men on stereotypically male tasks (like making management decisions), and when the team generates success, they figure it must be because the work was carried by their male peers. Haynes and Heilman explain:
The team performed a similar study in 2005, and this study corroborated those results and went further. The two determined that this wasn’t simply a case of women being “modest” and giving credit to any team-mate, rather than draw attention to themselves. After all, in another test, when women were paired with female colleagues, they didn’t give their partner credit for the team’s success.
It was only when they were working with men that women assumed success was their team-mate’s doing. Given that the professional workforce is dominated by men, especially higher tiers of the corporate ladder, that amounts to a lot of credit handed over to men, when they didn’t necessarily deserve it. It also suggests that there a lot of women not taking credit for excellent work, performance that could lead to bigger responsibilities, promotions, and salaries.
Next time you attribute the success of a project to someone else’s prowess, it is perhaps literally worth your while to stop and think about where that success really came from. Go ahead. Give yourself credit.
Read more
Leaning Toward Support: Bringing Men Into the Movement
Men Who "Get It"“If men have taken the C-suite hostage, then Lean In presents with underlying symptoms the Stockholm syndrome,” writes James Allworth, in a recent Harvard Business Review blog post entitled “It’s Not Women Who Should Lean In, It’s Men Who Should Step Back.”
After reading Sheryl Sandberg’s controversial bestseller, Allworth asks that we examine closely the strategies of Lean In. He states that the book’s encouragement to women to be “more like men” is counterproductive in the workplace and in the world at large. He discusses Lean In’s example of a study of students in a surgery rotation which revealed that, when each individual was asked to self-evaluate, female students gave themselves lower scores than their male classmates did, despite faculty evaluations that showed the women outperformed the men.
The bottom line: Women outperformed the men. But Allworth highlights that Sandberg found fault with the women’s lack of confidence, urging them to “fake it until they make it,”
He then asks: “But is this really good advice?”
Allworth suggests that the breakdown in male students’ performance was directly linked to their swagger, that the ones more confident in their ability were less likely to “do the hard yards” in preparation. He asks that, contrary to Sandberg’s advice in Lean In which asks women to adopt habits of men, men explore what they can learn from women.
But will men “leaning back” really lead to equality at the top? What’s the magic formula to positive social change?
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Leadership: Gender Champions and Straight Allies Set Out to Change Wall Street
Industry Leaders, LeadershipLast week, I was lucky to attend the 3rd Annual Out on the Street conference, where 300 LGBT executives, along with some leaders who are straight allies, convened at Goldman Sachs. It was an excellent event that gave a platform to some amazing leaders to discuss their views on LGBT equality at work, workplace culture, and their role as allies to the LGBT constituents in their firms.
The work that has been going on in the gender space for women to advance is now almost 20 years old in some firms, and I believe could benefit and learn from the workplace LGBT movement, which is less than 5 years old and is gaining lots of support.
In fact, our research from last year shows that LGBT women are likely to be more active within their firm’s women’s network, rather than their LGBT group, relating most strongly to the challenges of being a woman in a male dominated workplace.
This also resonated at the event, with a heavy majority of attendees being LGBT men. The women’s panel, called “The XX Factor,” reinforced that sexism, overt or otherwise, can stall careers more than any other factor. Kathy Levinson, Managing Director of Golden Seeds who is openly gay, remarked, “The silence can be deafening when I am with gay men, as there is no obligation to be verbal and visible about being LGBT. The discrimination that women feel, by being visible, well, I relate to that more.”
It is evident that the firms that are gaining the most ground have leaders who understand talent and human capital and are striving to create workplaces where everyone can thrive.
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Communicating What You Need for Career Success
Expert AnswersThe idea that women are holding themselves back in the corporate rat race has been getting a lot of press since Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s interview with 60-Minutes. While I certainly agree that there is more we as women can do to promote ourselves, we need to do more than acknowledge the problem and say we need to change it. We need to arm women with knowledge and skills so they can become successful early and often. I believe these efforts start with understanding why the problem is so challenging to overcome and what we can really do about it.
There are four underlying issues that hold women back:
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Emerging Manager Mandates Could Make a Difference for Women in Alternative Investments
Managing ChangeAs more and more investors take notice of research showing the outsized returns that women produce in the alternative investments industry, pension funds are becoming the source of a growing call for diversity. Investors want plans to better reflect the diversity of their constituency, and they are keen to take advantage of the outperformance of women managers compared to their male counterparts. In some states, this has led to an explicit or implied preference for women or minority owned or managed asset management firms, known as emerging manager mandates.
The move toward emerging manager mandates was discussed in Rothstein Kass’s recent report, “Women in Alternative Investments: Building Momentum in 2013 and Beyond.” The authors, Meredith Jones, Camille Asaro, Kelly Easterling, write that, although they are still somewhat rare, diversity guidelines are increasingly present at funds in some states. They write, “This is no doubt due to the fact that funds of funds can offer large pensions a way to achieve a meaningful investment that ‘moves the dial’ within their portfolio, without extensive due diligence on a host of single manager fund products.”
That’s not to say that the focus on emerging managers is new. Renae Griffin, Founder and CEO of RG & Associates, recalls the term from her days working in investor marketing and relations. “This term was being used in the early ‘90s,” she explained. “At first it referred to minority and women fund managers only, but the terms was expanded to include small managers.” Today, RG & Associates and others are beginning to refer to emerging managers as “diverse and small managers”
“The investment world is looking at the demographic shifts taking place domestically and ways to capitalize on it. We benefit by having diverse thought and diverse experiences that come from having more minority, women, and niche players in the industry,” Griffin continued. “There’s also a nimbleness in smaller firms’ expertise.”
But, she says, firms shouldn’t be deterred by the word “emerging.” She explained, “Just because we use the term ’emerging,’ it doesn’t necessarily mean they are new to the industry. Many of them have left larger firms and have years and years of experience managing billion dollar funds. They are the hidden talent that a lot of institutional investors are looking to attract and dispose of to reap those alpha generating rewards.”
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Ambitious People are a Little Happier and Live a Little Longer
Featured, Work-LifeIn a recent article in The Atlantic, writer Emily Esfahani Smith attempts to argue that ambition and relationships are mutually exclusive. She writes:
The notion that people can’t have a rewarding career and meaningful personal relationships is absurd. Certainly, there will always be choices to make when it comes to career advancement and personal commitments – but having those choices is what makes life worth living.
Smith goes on to write that people who really care about their relationships would be wise to give up ambitious dreams, and that people who pursue their ambitions are unhappy, destructive, and live shorter lives. She’s wrong. All in all, she attempts to use an erroneous and misleading argument to shame those who would pursue ambitious goals. In fact, the very study Smith cites to “prove” her argument says quite the opposite – people who are ambitious tend to be a little more satisfied in life and live longer.
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