How Women (and Everyone Else) Can Rise
Academic workplaces can be extremely challenging for anyone in an under-represented group, whether that representation refers to race, socioeconomic background, gender, religion, sexual identity or other factors. I knew this before I began coaching faculty and academic leaders, but now that I’ve spent countless hours asking people — across disciplines and schools — what’s hard about their jobs, I have a better understanding of how workplace struggles map onto to categories of difference, and how those struggles can remain invisible.
Although we’ve developed a higher comfort level in the academy about discussing differences of all kinds, I’ve noticed, for example, that many women either don’t disclose gender-based challenges in the academic workplace, or when they do — often in a coaching setting — they tend to frame it as “just my problem.”
In this post and the one to follow, I’ll highlight two books that address common challenges that women face in professional settings, including higher education.
The first of these books — “How Women Rise,” by executive coaches Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith — discusses 12 learned habits that can hold women back in the workplace. These habits may be reinforced through cultural conditioning and other documented structural problems such as inequitable access to informal mentoring.
Although I tend to recommend this book specifically to women I coach, many of these self-limiting habits are things that can hold anyone back from a raise, promotion or job. The three habits I’ll highlight — perfectionism, overvaluing expertise and failing to enlist allies from day one — are not unique to women, and I’d even argue that these habits are reinforced by academic training and culture for everyone.
Perfectionism
Early in our academic training, we learn that it’s important to be right, to be precise and to avoid errors. The imperative to compete for fellowships, grants, jobs and various accolades also pushes us to hold ourselves to an extremely high level of excellence in everything we do. At what point, however, does a perfectionist mindset stop serving us?
Helgesen and Goldsmith list multiple ways in which perfectionism can derail a prospective leader. The leader risks burnout by constantly holding herself to impossible standards. She holds others to impossible standards and demotivates her colleagues, teams or students. The perfectionist leader also has trouble making decisions, terrified that she’ll make a mistake. As Helgesen has argued, leaders don’t get promoted for being perfect, but for other traits such as daring, vision and the ability to “let go” and delegate to others.
Overvaluing Expertise
In academia, expertise is everything. Or is it? There are a lot of world-class experts across higher ed who nonetheless feel stalled in their careers, whether that career trajectory means having a bigger impact on their field or moving up into administrative roles. I’ve talked with some of them. And they wonder: what am I doing wrong, or not doing? Often, as it turns out, they’re overlooking other powerful forms of professional currency, including cultivating “personal authority and charisma” (you may be an expert, but are you confidently signaling that?) and building a strategic professional network. As Helgesen and Goldsmith note, “your relationships comprise an ever-greater part of your value as you rise” (93).
Failing to Enlist Allies From Day One
I see this most often in leadership coaching. Somebody shows up two or three months into a new administrative role, and they are hitting their first real roadblocks. Too often, they are butting their heads against the wall entirely by themselves. This solo approach to problem-solving may have been their mode of doing research. It may also protect them against fears of appearing unknowledgeable or vulnerable. However, to burst through the wall, leaders need the goodwill and help of others, at all levels of the organization. “Allies are peers, colleagues, higher-ups, sponsors, direct reports, and internal and external fans who support your efforts to get where you want to go,” Helgesen and Goldsmith write (108). Allies may be especially critical for leaders, but anyone at a professional crossroads can use them, such as faculty who are new to an institution and those who’ve been recently promoted.
Which, if any, of these habits might be holding you back? Since these habits often spring from entrenched assumptions about what “success” means and the value of being a good worker bee, they can be difficult to change. If you recognize one of these habits in yourself and feel motivated to change it, consider reading the book and discussing what that change might mean for you with a trusted mentor, peer or coach.