Doonesbury Celebrates Women’s Contributions to Work Groups via Thought Diversity and Emotional Intelligence
-* How have you seen women’s Emotional Intelligence applied in the workplace?
Deborah Gruenfeld
Deborah Gruenfeld is a social psychologist and professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, who co-directs its Executive Program for Women Leaders.
Her research focuses on power and group behavior, and she notes that power can corrupt without conscious awareness.
She notes that power can disinhibit behavior by reducing concern for the social consequences of one’s actions, and by strengthening the link between personal wishes and acts that fulfill these desires.
Her recent work demonstrates that power leads to an action-orientation, limits the ability to take another’s perspective, and increases the tendency to view others as a “means to an end.”
This talk reviews her research and its practical implications, such as non-verbal behaviors that anyone can adopt to increase the impression of being a powerful individual.
-*How have you seen powerful non-verbal behavior trump the content of an argument?
©Kathryn Welds
Larissa Tiedens
Larissa Tiedens of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Emily Zitek of Cornell, assert that “we produce hierarchies to make our lives easier cognitively… (so we) like them more.”
They conducted a series of studies, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, to investigate organizational structure preferences and their impact on organizational performance. They suggest that organizational design should be determined by organizational objectives rather than allegiance to the ideal of “equality” in all situations.
Emily Zitek
Tiedens and Zitek demonstrated that there was a negative correlation between remembering and liking hierarchies; that is, people didn’t like what they couldn’t easily remember, and they liked what they could remember.
They observed that participants had difficulty understanding and learning symmetric organizational relationships, in which people could give orders to peers and receive orders from these same peers.
Their final experiment determined that participants more quickly memorized hierarchies in which men were at the top, and surmised that male hierarchies are more familiar and expected than other types of social structures.
As with the other experiments, the subjects were more likely to express a preference for the structure they learned the quickest.
Tiedens and Zitek conclude that people generally understand, learn, and like hierarchies more than egalitarian relationships because they are predictable and familiar.
If firms eliminate hierarchies, Tiedens suggests making explicit specific role because “people need a way of organizing information, including information about relationships among people. You need a way to enhance people’s ability to understand what the organization is and how individuals operate within it.”
-*Which organizational hierarchies do you find most memorable? Which are most attractive to you?
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More business promotions were awarded to women who display assertive, confident, and “aggressive” behaviors and who reduce these characteristics depending on the social circumstance through “self-monitoring”, according to Olivia Mandy O’Neill of George Mason University and Charles O’Reilly of Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Olivia Mandy O’Neill
Charles O’Reil
Related research findings discuss “impression management” and “self-monitoring” skills for women to mitigate the impact of subtle factors that impede career advancement.
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Lucy Sanders
Lucy Sanders of National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT) reports the organization’s research, underscoring the value of encouraging today’s students in pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers:
• The current unemployment rate in the U.S. is 7.9%, but for computing-related occupations it’s less than half of that (3.5%)
• The number of African Americans and Latinos employed in computing-related jobs should be double what it is today, given their proportional participation in the US workforce
• Across all STEM careers, tech jobs are growing fastest and have the second-highest starting salaries
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2020, there will be nearly 1.4 million computing-related jobs added to the U.S. workforce.
With the existing pipeline of students, however, we’ll be able to fill only 30% of these jobs with computing graduates.
NCWIT offers the following tools:
• Counselors for Computing (C4C) Pathway Cards help connect students’ interest with next steps toward IT and computing careers. C4C is a project of the NCWIT K-12 Alliance, made possible by the Merck Company Foundation and Google.
• A job-search tool at the NCWIT website, powered by Indeed.com, lets people search for computing-related jobs within NCWIT member organizations — including large companies, startups, universities, and non-profits all around the country.
• Top 10 Ways Successful Technical Women Increase Their Visibility includes ten things that highly successful women say they do in order to increase their visibility throughout the company, industry, and technical community.
-* What “best practices” have you seen to increase professional employment among diverse employees?
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Selena Rezvani
Selena Rezvani points to research documenting women’s tendency to negotiate for salaries, promotions – and even task-sharing in relationships, less often than men in Pushback: How Smart Women Ask–and Stand Up–for What They Want
Her book offers guidelines to speak up assertively while developing the resilience and “thick skins” many in sales have mastered.
These recommendations echo those suggested in research studies and popular articles, and perhaps more Machiavellian, realistic, and perhaps disconcerting come from one of her endorsers, Stanford University Graduate School of Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
He analyzes individual power dynamics in corporate hierarchies, and offers recommendations to acquire and use power in Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t
In Rezvani’s book, Pfeffer notes that “Power is about 20% conferred and 80% taken.
Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who ask, negotiate, and push.
For women—or men—to get what they deserve, they must get over the platitudes and attitudes that hold them back.”
Pfeffer debunks the hopeful idea that the world is fair and just, and counsels those seeking to have the power to “get things done” to promote themselves, avoid giving up or delegating power, but instead, give up the wish to be well-liked.
Because the work world is not fair, Pfeffer says that intelligence, performance, and likeability alone are not the most important factors in advancing in an organization.
Instead, he argues that ambition, energy, and focus drive key power behaviors:
Useful skills in acquiring power are:
Although power is valuable to enable execution and results, there are downsides and “prices to pay” for having and using power.
Often, the costs of power are not fully considered or anticipated by those who aspire to it, so Pfeffer usefully suggests the following drawbacks of power:
Kathleen Kelly Reardon
Pfeffer’s Stanford University colleague, Kathleen Kelly Rearson shares specific examples of skillful, modulated application of power in her book, It’s all Politics.
-*How do you ask for what you want at work?
-*What power tactics do you employ to influence your negotiation outcomes?
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©Kathryn Welds
A Dow Jones Venture Source study of 167,500 executives and 2,200 venture-backed companies funded between 1997 and 2011 showed that women helped lead more start-ups to success.
Women are less involved as founders and leaders of start-ups than men.
Just 1.3 percent of start-ups have a female founder, 6.5 percent have a female CEO, and 20 percent have one or more C-level female executives.
About 27 percent were in sales and marketing roles, and many as vice presidents.
Companies that have been acquired, went public or gained profitability have 7.1 percent of executive staff members are women.
In contrast, only about 3.1 percent executives are women at companies that failed, exited at a low valuation, or haven’t reached other milestones.
-*To what extent have you observed a correlation between gender balance in executive leadership and successful financial performance among new enterprises?
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Deborah Gruenfeld, formerly of Stanford Graduate School of Business, studied the impact of non-verbal behavior on perceptions of power.
Deborah Gruenfeld
She reported that people who “occupy space” are viewed as more dominant and powerful by others.
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She demonstrated that non-verbal behavior like erect, “space-occupying” postures and selective smiling affect the way the person executing these behavior feels about his or her personal power, competence, and mood.
“Power postures” affect secretion of hormones associated with dominance (testosterone) and stress (cortisol).
Effective leaders and recently promoted leaders show a hormone profile of high testosterone and low cortisol, indicating high dominance and low stress.
Individuals in low power role have low testosterone and high cortisol, and this trend is more common among women.
Posture can make a large difference in how people view themselves, how others see them, and their opportunities and outcomes.
Before a job interview or stressful interaction, a “big power posture” can increase confidence and performance.
-*What is your emotional response to people who assume a “big power posture” at work?
-*How do you feel when you occupy more space in professional settings?
©Kathryn Welds
Carol Kinsey Goman
Carol Kinsey Goman has integrated research on the impact of non-verbal behavior on workplace outcomes for women in two books:
The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help–or Hurt–How You Lead
The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work
She notes that all business leaders need to establish interpersonal warmth and likability balanced with authority, power, and credibility.
Women have been viewed as likeable, but lacking authority, so Goman suggests the following behavior changes:
• Focusing eye contact in business situations on the conversation partner’s forehead and eyes instead of eyes and mouth, which is more appropriate for social situations
• Limit the number of head tilts and head nods, which may signal empathy and encouragement, but may be interpreted as submissive and lacking authority
• Occupy space: Stand tall with erect posture and head, and a wider stance hold your head high. Claim territory with belongings.
• Keep your hands on your lap or on the conference table where they can be seen to limit nervous hand gestures such as rubbing hands, grabbing arms, touching neck, tossing hair, leaning forward.
o Show palms when indicating openness and inclusiveness
o “Steeple” fingers by touching fingertips with palms separated to indicate precision
o Turn hands palms-down to signal confidence and certainty
o Keep gestures at waist height or above. Drop the pitch at the end of each sentence to make an authoritative statement. Avoid raising tone at the end of a sentence when not asking a question, as this may be interpreted as uncertain or submissive.
• Smile selectively and appropriately to maintain both likeability and authority
• “Learn to interrupt,” advised former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. ”
Like occupying physical space, occupy “air-space.”
• Moderate emotional expressiveness, movement, and animation to signal authority and composure
• Cultivate a firm handshake, with palm-to-palm contact and that the web of your hand (the skin between your thumb and first finger) touching the web of the other person’s. Face the person squarely, look in the eyes, smile, and greet the person.
Goman stated that women generally excel at accurately read the body language of others, and this can be an advantage in intuitively grasping underlying issues in a meeting or during a negotiation.
-*How do you cultivate both credibility and likeability in work relationships?
See related posting on Olivia Fox Cabane’s discussion of non-verbal contributors to “charisma”
RELATED POST:
Deborah Gruenfeld‘s discussion of power non-verbal behaviors
©Kathryn Welds
Ann Winblad
Ann Winblad is one of the most prominent, yet low-profile venture capitalists and among a minority of women venture capitalists – about 11 percent of today’s VCs.
She co-founded Open Systems, an accounting software company in 1976, then co-founded Venture Capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, which invests more than $1 billion in software companies.
She offers recommendations for women and men investing in businesses, careers, and themselves:
• Seek risk and fail fast to enable rapid course-correction
• Strive to be more resilient than strong
• Adapt as quickly as possible
• Place greater value on learning from all sources over formal education
• Exercise intellectual curiosity and stamina
• Tolerate ambiguity and lack of experts during high-growth periods
• Look for possibility in the “half-full glass”
• State assumptions and build on those of others
• Cultivate honesty and transparency
-*Which of Winblad’s recommendations have you seen practiced by the most effective organizational leaders and entrepreneurs you know?
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Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary 