Why are women expected to ‘man up’ to make it to the top?

It has often been said that a man looking at a job description where he possesses half the required skills and experience will talk himself into applying, whereas a woman will talk herself out of it.

I was recently fortunate to have some coaching and my (female) coach told me not to listen to the inner voice which us females tend to have, telling me that I’m not good enough.  It certainly rang true in my case but when I recounted this to my partner, he made a good point in that some men also do this. This really got me thinking; ‘negative self-talk’ does appear to be a female trait but there must be plenty of men who also feel the effects of ‘impostor syndrome’ and similar? I imagine for these men it is doubly hard within the workplace, especially in senior roles and competitive environments where often the expectation is to be tough and strong and to basically ‘man up’.

Why are we making it harder than it needs to be, placing unrealistic and outdated expectations on how senior leaders should act?

In my experience, most men and women in powerful positions tend not to doubt themselves, or at least not show that they do so. They act with confidence which quite often comes across as arrogance, sometimes even aggression. Perhaps we have all been conditioned to think this is the way we have to act if we want to be successful, blindly following this unspoken code of behaviour, but what if this doesn’t come naturally, appears phony, or worse, makes us feel extremely uncomfortable and doesn’t fit with our values or the type of person we really are?

Why is holding back emotions in the workplace seen as a strength…and demonstrating empathy and compassion viewed as a weakness?

In her book ‘Work like a Woman’ Mary Portas talks at length about the ‘Alpha Culture’ which still seems to dominate our workplace. If you’ve not read it, I would recommend it, as well as her follow up podcast of the same name: http://www.maryportas.com/podcast. Before you think it, it’s not man-bashing but does shine a light on the modern workplace and gives a really interesting perspective on the possibility of there being another way…

I once worked for a woman who made it known that she deliberately adopted what were seen as typical male characteristics such as aggression and confrontation and deliberately disguised her “feminine qualities”. She believed that this was how she had managed to get ahead in her career. The problem was that she was mistaking fear for respect – not such a brilliant role model for junior female staff! However, thankfully times have changed and I believe we all need to challenge what we consider makes someone powerful and what it means to be a leader now. We should be looking to make cultural changes so that the next generation, male and female, can progress in their careers without the fear of trying to live up to an outdated idea of what ‘powerful’ looks like or endure the mental exhaustion attempting this often takes.

Take a closer look…

Think about whether you really want to be involved in a business where the women (and probably many of the men) you employ feel they need to put on a macho act, which doesn’t play a part in any other aspect of their life, just to get ahead or else stagnate in their role.

The effect of treating your people well by letting them be their authentic selves at work has a way of trickling down, not just throughout the organisation but to customers too.

Your customer base is likely to be made up of a significant percentage of females (on-line retailers, for example, tend to sell to many more women than men). In an ideal world this requires diversity at all levels, particularly in leadership, in order to speak to your customer base.

Another anecdote from my time in the corporate world was where the HR team were described as ‘part-time and female centric’ by the (you guessed it) ‘male-centric’ senior management team. This was not meant as a compliment. On hearing this I felt utter despair – what hope is there when this alpha male culture dominates and this sort of speak is still openly being bandied about?

This is why I am keen on empowering the workforce, to let all employees know that it is ok to let their authentic selves shine through, that they have progression opportunities without having to pretend they have no emotions or feel they are not permitted to act with kindness and compassion at work. It strikes me as very odd that the characteristics we see as positive and which we are judged on in society seem to go out of the window when it comes to powerful positions in business!

Culture shift

Demonstrating emotions such as empathy at work should never be seen as a weakness but as a sign of true authenticity. Coupled with resilience, this can be a very powerful force and shows a depth of emotional intelligence that just doesn’t exist in the leadership of many businesses. It doesn’t mean that difficult situations cannot be addressed but they can be approached in a different way. It’s about allowing employees to trust their instincts and behave with decency instead of instilling the fear of god into them, forcing them to act in a certain way as their only means of getting ahead. This means setting an example at the very top and demonstrating and owning vulnerability; not something that comes naturally to most leaders. This is a topic that is addressed very well by local (Norwich) business owners Emily Groves and Rebecca Lewis Smith in their ‘Culture Awesome’ podcast https://www.cultureawesome.co.uk/.

This is just part of the more ‘human’, inclusive and diverse culture which I believe all employers should be striving for.

In her podcast, Mary Portas, who has been in business a number of years, talks about kindness being underrated. At a crossroads in her life a few years back, she had a bit of an epiphany, realising that she didn’t need to adhere to the learned codes of behaviour she had been following all her working life, where she had felt she needed to play the game just to survive. I love that she has moved with the times and no longer feels the need to conform to the macho stereotype of a “person in power”.

Mary has since used her experience to implement new ideas for a modern workplace. Her prediction is that kindness will become a new initiative in business, where the realisation is at last made that it actually has a positive effect on the bottom line (for example, better retention levels and engagement with staff and customers alike).

In an era of businesses becoming more accountable for practices such as their environmental impact and CSR, perhaps they too will begin to recognise that an inclusive culture, where their senior people feel free to act authentically with no fear of having to conform to outdated codes of behaviour, rubs off on customers and the brand as a whole. It has the same if not wider benefits as the usual CSR stuff that many businesses have been doing for years.

Maybe businesses will start to measure themselves by these qualities instead of the usual performance indicators?

Well, as Jacinda Ardern has recently introduced her so-called ‘wellbeing budget’ to the whole of NZ using metrics other than simply financial growth in an attempt to sustain the country’s stability and morale, it could only be a matter of time for similar measures to become more common in business…watch this space!