There’s a multitude of research, articles, and talks about gender inequality, but there’s a subtler side that is most often overlooked. It’s not strictly gender based, but is usually tied with gender traits. It doesn’t hit you on the head and isn’t a horror story to pin up on a wall. It’s so subtle it’s taken me >10 years as a Program Manager to put a finger on.
“There isn’t one right way to do something”–but there’s a most rewarded way of getting things done.
As a Program Manager, I’m in the middle of most discussions; my job is to facilitate decision-making. Individual contributor/manager/team culture usually falls along the spectrum of:
- Guns blazing and loud, or
- Listen and mediate, then act
Typically women will gather more information before acting; men act (specifically: verbalize) faster. Guns-blazing behavior is more easily recognized, and therefore usually rewarded more at performance review time. In reality, both behaviors are good and bad depending on the situation, but guns-blazing translates to easier bonuses and quicker promos, which add up over your career lifetime.
Example: facilitating discussion
There’s a meeting to discuss whether to push a software build with your eng leads, QA, program managers, but there’s issues this week.
- Scenario A: Joe immediately says “We can’t push this week, we’ve got A, B, and C problem we need to solve first.” Joe must be on top of it since he spoke first to summarize A B and C, and is pulling it together.
- Scenario B: Jill is just as informed as Joe, but paused for a second, then asked “Normally we push weekly, but there’s some problems. What’s everyone’s opinions? Is it solvable by Friday?”
It’s amazing how a meeting can set out on a different path based on what the first action in the meeting is.
- Outcome of A: Joe’s method hasn’t facilitated a resolution; he’s just summarized a problem. His statement implies that a fix this week isn’t advisable. The team decides to hold the release.
- Outcome of B: Jill’s method encourages discussion, getting the team involved by asking open-ended questions. The team comes up with a plan to fix bugs, QA agrees to test late, and the push proceeds that week.
Ironically, although B is the better outcome from Jill, it’s often employees like Joe who are seen as the decisive ones.
Example: exhaustion to submission
When decisions need to be made, everyone has points they want to make. Frank says, “There’s a schedule risk with option A. It isn’t staffed right, we don’t know if leadership is on board–” Joe interrupts “But it doesn’t matter, strategically we’re ok with the risk since A is the best part to use.” And so the round-table of interruptions continues.
Usually the person who’s the loudest is seen as the influential decision maker. It’s a tactic that exhausts everyone into submission or frustration. It’ll force a decision–maybe not the best one-and won’t cultivate a sustainable team culture over months and years.
Quite often the people trying to facilitate a decision sans blood bath are women, and if there’s strong personalities in the room, they get interrupted and resign to silence. Over the long haul, it adds to the impression others have of you.
The wrong assumption is that you’re decisive only if you talk loud and interrupt. There are people who aren’t pushy but who absolutely have strong convictions, and their method is to guide the team to an unbiased decision.
Example: 911 responder
Joe’s always on it and always responds to emails with a 3min turnaround time. At 11pm, he responds to an email, and others then chime in with bits and pieces of disjointed info through the night.
At 9am the next day, the team meets to discuss the email. The issue didn’t get resolved any faster by working late into the night; it would’ve been resolved at the 9am standup anyways. Joe didn’t help things along, but perception is that he’s dependable, always on it, and “resolved” the issue.
In most cases it’s a non-issue to begin with, or it really needs everyone involved for a quick chat rather than after-hours partial discussions.
Many times I’ve seen more men online late at night and weekends since they’re not the primary caregiver.
Example: In absence of proof, they assume you’re not working on it.
Suppose Joe and Frank are talking, and Joe says “speaking of the ABC system, do you know if Jill’s looking into the uptime requirements?” Frank replies, “I don’t know, but I’ll take the action to look into the requirements.”
Frank made the implied assumption that no one, not even Jill, is working on it, and Frank’s taking initiative. I’ve noticed women phrase things more like “I’ll ask Jill,” making the implied assumption that Jill’s on it already. In the worst cases, I’ve seen Frank actually begin Jill’s task, creating confusion among the team on who’s taking the lead on what.
The point
No one of those examples is a smoking gun for gender biases or personality biases, and it’s by no means an exhaustive list of how impressions get engrained. The presence of one of these examples also doesn’t mean there is a bias. But, when biases do exist, it can be a slow-eating disease that others pick up on: the seemingly “ineffective” person is forgot on on emails and in meetings and they’re not looped into tasks under their responsibility purview, so they must be an ineffective worker. Thus starts a self-selecting spiral.
Over the years I’ve seen louder, more aggressive women “make it” since they can live sustainably in this culture. I’ve seen women work much harder to reach the same respect and reputation. I’ve seen great women fade away due to exhaustion fighting the norm. In all fairness, I’ve seen terrible women (terrible workers) hold a job just because they’re women.
There’s many ways to solve issues, and many behaviors that Get Things Done–we need to respect all of them. It’s more sustainable for teams and a company over the long haul.
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