Today, I watched a TED Talk by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. Entitled “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders,” Sandberg gets into it, leading off with the bleak facts:
Of the 190 heads of state, nine are women.
Of all the people in parliament in the world, 13 percent are women.
In the corporate sector, women at the top, C0level jobs, board seats, tops out at 15, 16 percent.
Even non-profits aren’t immune: there, only 20% of the top posts are held by women.
Ugly as those numbers are, one of Sandberg’s explanations is infinitely more so:
What the data shows, above all else, is one thing, which is that success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women.
In other words, the more successful a woman, the less likable we perceive her to be. Sandberg cites one study that illustrates this phenomenon perfectly. In it, Columbia Biz School prof Frank Flynn and colleague Cameron Anderson at NYU offered their students a case study of a successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist named Heidi Roizen. But she was only called Heidi in the case study given to half their students; in the other, Heidi became Howard.
And guess what happened?
While the students rated Heidi and Howard equally competent, they liked Howard–but not Heidi. In fact, according to a synopsis of the study,
students felt Heidi was significantly less likable and worthy of being hired than Howard. Why? Students saw Heidi as more “selfish” than Howard.
Is it any wonder we don’t want anyone calling us ambitious?
Naturally, I was irked by this. Subsequent Googling led me to a post on Stanford University’s website, about a talk given by Deborah Gruenfeld, of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, to a group of high-level women execs and entrepreneurs at the Silicon Valley Thought Leadership Greenhouse program. Gruenfeld cited the same study, adding this disturbing little nugget:
And the more assertive a student found the female venture capitalist to be, the more they rejected her.
In each instance, when Sandberg and Gruenfeld spoke of the study’s results, they noted all the heads nodding in agreement in the audience. And, truth be told, had I been in either audience, my head would be bobbing with the rest of them.
Both Sandberg and Gruenfeld have good, positive points to make, helpful suggestions to offer. But it all makes me wonder something: as much as these negative perceptions might be a hindrance to our success in the workplace, how might the mixed messages (You can have it all! You can do anything you want! … But you won’t be liked if you’re too successful, and be careful not to come off as too ambitious) screw with our decision making? When we’re overwhelmed by our options, how much of the overwhelm is attributable to the options themselves, and how much has to do with our concerns over how we might be perceived were we to choose Option A versus Option B? How quickly are we landed right back at the altar of What Will People Think?
Of course, it’s not just what people think–it’s what they do (and who they hire). But you know what? There is actually a bright side hidden within the actual study. Sort of. Call it the I’m Not Sexist; Some of My Best Friends Are Women! effect:
Flynn and his colleagues ran another experiment on the relationship between the students’ familiarity with their peers and how they rated them. When raters didn’t really know their classmates, they responded just as the students in the Heidi/Howard experiment. More assertive men were seen as more hirable while more assertive women were seen as less hirable. But when students were more familiar with the person they were rating, the “backlash” vanished. Assertive men and women were seen as equally hirable. And more assertive women were more likely to be hired than their less assertive female peers (just like men).
Interesting. And heartening. As are Sandberg’s final words:
I have two children. I have a five year-old son and a two year-old daughter. I want my son to have a choice to contribute fully in the workforce or at home, and I want my daughter to have the choice to not just succeed, but to be liked for her accomplishments.
Like!
This is a great discussion and I have one more thing to add. Years ago, I ran the largest customer service training company in the country, Sommers Communication, Inc. The speakers who worked for us were equally divided men and women and together they presented over 2,500 seminars to audiences of about 100 people each.
I had an opportunity to watch every one of the 36 speakers we hired present the four-hour program to a live audience made up of about 50% men and 50% women. Without exception, our women speakers were rated lower on the evaluations than the men. Being as objective as possible, I spent months traveling watching each of our speakers present the program and here’s what I discovered.
After watching both the men and women present the program, I concluded that they were equally skilled. They were equally knowledgeable, equally likable and equally talented. However, the audience always … and I mean always rated the men higher than the women. I was dumbfounded.
The bigger problem was this. We rewarded our speakers based on the audience evaluations and after watching each speaker present the program, I was completely persuaded that the women were not being rated the same. I even looked at the evaluations closer and noticed that the lower scores were not just coming from the men … they were coming from both men and women. Go figure.
I can tell you without hesitation and years of experience that women are not treated the same as men in the world of public speaking. They have to work much harder to get the same results. It’s not fair and I don’t know why.
Here’s where I disagree with the study above. Our speakers were not rated on their likability, but on their ability. It does seem to me, based on my experience, that successful and talented women are perceived as less capable and potentially hirable by both men and women, but not less likable. Personally I find the idea of teaching women that you can either be likable or successful but not both ridiculous and inaccurate. I believe when we look deeper into this study, we’re going to find no correlation between likability and success.
Maybe we can explore this subject deeper in another discussion.
[…] Comments « The Likability Problem […]
I wish I would have seen this article 11 months ago, but I still have something to say.
I agree whole-heartily Bob. I’m currently working on a book about women in ministry, and I see the same issue with the many churches and denominations in this country. I approached this subject because, as you can probably guess, I have been one of the casualties of this inequitable phenomenon during my 25 years in ministry. You are right, it’s not fair and most of us do not know why, but I can tell you this. Most, if not all of the hostility that has been directed my way, has come from women. As I have been interviewing women in ministry across the country, I am hearing the same thing. This is not just a problem in corporate America!
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