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How to Develop Your Personal Brand (And Live Up to It)

What adjectives would you use to describe yourself? Would your coworkers, friends and families use the same terms?

Pamela Stepp, who teaches leadership assessment at Cornell’s ILR School, joined eCornell’s Chris Wofford for a WebCast focusing on how to develop a personal leadership brand and ensure that you continue to live up it.

Wofford: I’m very excited to have you here with us, Pamela.

Stepp: Thank you Chris, and thanks to everyone who is tuning in. This is all about you.

I want to start by asking everyone watching to think about who you are as a professional and who you want to be.

I’m going to walk you through the steps to create your own personal leadership brand and then help you come up with a story that you can tell that will demonstrate that brand.

Wofford: That sounds great. I think our audience will really get something out of this. Where should we start?

Stepp: Power is very important to consider when you are developing your personal leadership brand. You need to think about how you present yourself powerfully in an organization and how to recognize if someone is powerful or powerless. A good way to start thinking about this is to choose a person—this could be anybody in the world—who you think is powerful. Think about the characteristics of that person and what helps them be powerful and write down this person’s leadership brand in one sentence.

Chris, let’s use you for an example. Who did you think of?

Wofford: The first person that came to my mind was Bob Dylan. And the adjectives I used to describe him were mysterious, direct, and honest.

Stepp: Isn’t that amazing how fast you could come up with these clear traits? Let’s turn to the audience members. Someone has chosen Oprah Winfrey, saying she is credible, empathetic, driven, and relatable. Does that sound like Oprah? I certainly think so. Another has chosen Barack Obama and described him as gentle, straightforward, and clear-speaking. So we can see that it’s quite easy to identify the personal brands of well-known leaders.

Now let’s move on to thinking about our own personal branding. What makes you different? What adjectives would you choose to describe this brand called “you”?

Wofford: Wow, the answers from our viewers are coming in very quickly. Maureen says she’s organized. Darius, passionate. Marcelo, accountable. Rebeka says she’s driven and has great attention to detail. Carol says she leads and inspires.

Stepp: I can see more results are still coming in, but now I want you to come up with your most noteworthy traits and values. It’s important to remember that your values change at different stages in your life, so I want you to come up with examples of your current value, either personal or professional.

Wofford: Some of the answers coming in include curiosity, family, integrity, honesty, kindness, empathy. These are great examples from our audience.

Stepp: Yes they are. Now I’m going to give you an example of two short descriptions of the leadership brand that I use. I teach at universities and business schools all over the world and one of the brands that I use—and I want people to let me know if I’m living up to this —is that I want to be known for being a knowledgeable and inclusive leadership educator who demonstrates her passion for the subject and genuinely cares about helping her participants or students to grow into the best leaders that they can be.

So that’s the personal brand I have when I’m giving these sorts of talks. I had a different brand when I was a full time businesswoman as the managing director at the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies. There, I wanted to be known for being a knowledgeable and open-minded business leader who used her confidence, determination, and networking ability to help the center grow into a more global organization.

So that’s how I’ve used my values to create personal branding.

Wofford: Pamela, I’m just going to play devil’s advocate for a moment and ask what the point is in using these words to describe yourself. In your case, you say you’re inclusive, knowledgeable, and dedicated to making sure that people get results out of your talks. Isn’t this just an example of putting your best foot forward? Does it really help one’s leadership ability to go through this sort of exercise?

Stepp: It does, and that’s because once you’ve established your leadership brand, you want to live up to it. It helps keep things clear in your mind and remind you whether or not you’re living up to the way you’ve described yourself and the way you want others to see you. Does that answer your question?

Wofford: It does. You’re saying we’re always a work in progress and that developing a personal brand helps bring focus to our careers and our professional lives.

Stepp: That’s right. It helps us focus on the traits that we want to be known for. Some examples coming in from the audience include inspirational, politically savvy, collaborative, innovative, results driven, strategic.

Then you start to refine those and work toward finding your identity by combining those descriptors. For example, “I’m a strategic innovator who gets things done.” You want to construct your leadership brand statement by putting everything together, all those adjectives and values.

Then you need to start asking other people what they think your brand is because it will surprise you. Make your brand identity real by checking in with others around you. Are you living up to that brand? That’s the beauty of having a defined leadership brand. You can always check in to make sure you are living up to it.

Wofford: So is your recommendation to go to other people and ask them how they’d describe you?

Stepp: Absolutely. You’ve got to keep reminding yourself of your brand and keep asking others if you’re living up to it. For example, I teach undergrads at the university because I want to prepare 20 year olds for leadership and because I want to know that generation. I started writing about being an inclusive leader and when I get evaluations back at the end of the semester, I can see that inclusion is my highest score. That really inspires me to keep working on that and to make sure everybody participates, to make sure I’m including international students who maybe aren’t speaking English all that well, making sure that there aren’t gender imbalances in who I reach. The point is, you can gain confidence if you learn that you are living up to your brand. And if you’re not living up to it, you have to know that. My brand is the yardstick by which I measure myself.

Wofford: We invite you to take a minute and see if you can come up with your own personal brand statement. Don’t overthink it. This is just an exercise and something that hopefully you’ll continue to work on.

OK, we have some responses. Deborah says “I’m a mentor. Helping others is what I enjoy best.” Steve has a great one: “I’m an innovator who pushes the creative envelope by inspiring others to do the same.” Crystal says, “I’m an innovative, compassionate, and knowledgeable leader with a desire to help others become the best that they can possibly be.” I think people are getting there, right Pamela?

Stepp: Yes, you are all doing a great job. These are good examples of leadership brand statements. You can refine and change them, but they shouldn’t be long diatribes. It should just be a paragraph, so these are really well done.

Once you have that brand, it’s time to think about storytelling. It’s always helpful to demonstrate your brand through stories, whether you’re standing up in front of an audience or if you’re at a cocktail party or even just with your friends. When done well, a compelling story can inspire our beliefs and our motivation to reach a goal. So I recommend that you all think of a story that you enjoy telling and think about how you can use that in the workplace.

I also want you to think about nonverbal power. When you walk into a room, you want to stand up straight and have good eye contact.With nonverbal power, you want to express competence. You want to express trustworthiness, dynamism, energy. When you talk, you want to be sure to think about using a proper voice, making eye contact and scanning the whole room.

Another huge thing is that when you are speaking with someone, you need to take the effort to learn their name, maintain eye contact, and make them feel you are focused on them. I’ve always found that amongst the people that I admire, their leadership ability is to make you feel like you’re the only person in the room.

Wofford: Pamela, thanks so much for joining us. I’m excited to get my storytelling ability dialed in and I hope that those in the audience will start working on their personal leadership brand one-sentence mantras as well.

Stepp: Thanks so much for having me.

 

Want to hear more? This interview is based on Pamela Stepp’s live eCornell WebSeries event, How to Develop a Personal Leadership Brand. Subscribe now to gain access to a recording of this event and other Women in Leadership topics. 

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Women in Leadership Program Enrolls 1,000 Students

eCornell’s Women in Leadership certificate program has reached a major milestone, enrolling 1,000 students since it launched in January 2017.

Authored by Dyson School professor Deborah Streeter, the Women in Leadership certificate program identifies issues facing women in leadership positions and offers actionable strategies to address them.

Women hold just 5.2 percent of CEO positions at top companies and are underrepresented at every level of workplace leadership. They earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man makes; the gap is even wider for women of color.

“Every day at work, women must present a very public face of leadership, one which balances being powerful and effective with being ‘nice.’ There isn’t much room for error as they navigate the so-called double-bind,” Streeter said. “But while participating in the Women in Leadership certificate program, each woman has an intimate and confidential setting to apply the course content to her own life and context. This is a rare, private opportunity for reflection and personal career-building, separate from the professional environment they share with colleagues.”

Throughout the program’s five courses, women learn how to recognize and navigate gender dynamics in the workplace, advocate for themselves and their teams, and strengthen their emotional intelligence to stand out as a leader of men and women.

“Since completing the program, I am more cognizant of the way in which I speak. I avoid softening my message with apologetic words, and I am bolder when articulating my ideas. These courses empower female professionals to embrace leadership opportunities that once seemed too daunting,” said Laura Woodard Clark, corporate communications officer at P&S Surgical Hospital.

Upon completion of this certificate program, students receive a Women in Leadership Certificate from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

How to Recognize and Build Upon Your Talents

Worried that you’re just not cut out for entrepreneurship? Don’t be.

Gallup’s Entrepreneurial Profile 10 (EP10) assessment has outlined the top ten talents of entrepreneurs and each and every one of us has them within us.

As Mona Anita Olsen, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, puts it: “Entrepreneurship is for everyone.”

Olsen joined eCornell’s Chris Wofford to discuss the EP10 assessment and how it can be used to provide a better understanding of anyone’s entrepreneurial talents and how they can be put to use in any work setting. What follows is an abridged version of their conversation.

Olsen: At the School of Hotel Administration, we have been promoting entrepreneurship to students at all levels. That’s where the EP10 comes in.

We’ve provided the opportunity for all freshmen, transfers and masters students to take this assessment at no cost. They can then take the results and come to a session on how to actually analyze those results. The main motivation behind it is to plant a seed that entrepreneurship can be part of your journey no matter where you go – whether you’re trying to innovate within a corporation or starting your own venture.

Wofford: What exactly does the EP10 assess?

Olsen: When thinking about the EP10 and its application to entrepreneurship, I want to first make sure we’re on the same page about the word entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur organizes, manages and assumes risk. Entrepreneurship is the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with its risks in order to make a profit.

There are ten talents that the EP10 assesses: confidence, delegator, determination, disruptor, independence, knowledge, profitability, relationship, risk and selling.

This is an online assessment, not a test. It takes 20 to 30 minutes to complete and it costs $12, so it is not a huge investment in terms of time or money. You can take it anywhere and at the end you get an assessment of those ten talents and they will be ranked in order of your highest score. So this really helps you identify your greatest natural strengths.

Gallup has studied entrepreneurship for a long time and they came up with the unique talents that successful entrepreneurs possess. Remember, talents are different from personality traits and encompass attitudes, motives, cognition and values. Entrepreneurs have certain business outcomes that they’re trying to reach and Gallup tried to figure out how the talents impact those business outcomes.

Wofford: How did you first get involved with the EP10?

Olsen: I was in Omaha in December to get certified as an administrator for the EP10 and there was this question on the wall that really struck me: “What would happen if we studied what is right with people versus what is wrong with people?”

It really struck me that not only is strength-based education training really important, there are also a lot of links between happiness and and being more productive in the workforce. Leveraging your talents actually influences your performance.

Wofford: I’m curious about some of the terms. Take profitability, for instance. How do you assess that for someone who has not necessarily gone out and generated profits themselves? Similarly, a term like ‘risk’ can be perceived very differently.

Olsen: OK, let’s look at the talents and their definitions. Let’s start with confidence, which is defined as the ability to accurately know yourself and to understand others.

A delegator is someone who recognizes that they can’t do everything themselves. Personally, that’s something that I struggle with.

Determination is a term that people usually understand – you persevere through difficulties and seemingly insurmountable obstacles. You’ll note that entrepreneurs actually love obstacles. They love being able to get through those challenges.

A disruptor is someone who exhibits creativity and takes an idea or existing product and turns it into something better. A lot of people will use disruptor synonymously with innovator but they’re not the same. With a disruptor, we’re talking about the creativity to bring value to an existing idea or product.

Independence is doing whatever needs to be done to be successful in a venture. This is a talent that’s ranked highly for most entrepreneurs.

Knowledge means that you’re constantly searching for information that is relevant to growing your business. You see this in almost all of the students that take the assessment.

To your previous question, when we talk about profitability we’re talking about making decisions based on an observed or anticipated effect on profit. In other words, you’re always thinking about how your decisions are going to impact the bottom line.

Relationship is assessing social awareness and the ability to build beneficial relationships. Naturally connecting people.

Selling is the ability to be persuasive and really be a champion for pitching an idea.

Risk refers not to taking a risk, but rather how to manage risk. How to instinctively deal with high-risk situations.

Wofford: Most of those definitions are pretty intuitive, I guess.

Olsen: Yes, but you’re right that people might have their own definitions for these terms so it’s good to establish what they mean in this context.

Now, once you do the assessment you will essentially be given a top four. Your top four talents will be weighted and then it will basically align your results with one of three entrepreneurial styles.

So you’re either relational, strategic or activation oriented. The difference between those last two is that strategic is more about planning while activation is getting things done.

At the end of the assessment, you’ll get this full report that includes your top four talents and your entrepreneurial style. It goes through each of the different talents that you have and gives you scenarios in which you might actually use those talents in your work environment.

Wofford: If you don’t mind me asking, what were your results?

Olsen: In my case, I have the activation style. What’s great about the assessment is not just that it gives you your top four talents but that it also helps you identify some of the areas in which you are not as strong.

Wofford: OK, so let’s say I’ve just gotten back the results of my assessment. Now what?

Olsen: There are many different things you can do. The first thing I usually ask students to do is to map their talent. I ask them to draw an inner circle, where they put their top four talents. In the second circle, they identify the next three and then the bottom talents are put in the last outer circle.

Why is it important to do that? Well, first, it’s important to really look at yourself and sort of accept where you are before you decide what you might want to do with the results.

If you know your talents, when was the last time you used them? How many times do you use your top talents on any given day or week or month?

If you’re not using them, how would doing so impact your work? Would you be more effective in whatever role you’re in? If you are using these talents on a more routine basis, how can you consciously work toward putting these talents forward?

When you have your results, you can you ask yourself how you are going to use these talents in a team setting. Understanding yourself before getting into a group makes you a more effective group member and also enables you or the group leader to strategically think about how to use your talents.

Wofford: So this isn’t solely about self-improvement or self-understanding, there is a team benefit to this as well?

Olsen: Absolutely. You can actually use the results to make team maps, where you map out the top four talents of all your team members. This can be very helpful in a startup situation because you can look at the talents that are necessary to be successful as entrepreneurs and determine which ones your team is really strong at and how to take advantage of that. You can also identify areas that might prove to be blind spots for your team.

Wofford: If your team map results showed that nobody is prepared to delegate, that would obviously be a problem.

Olsen: Exactly. Going through these assessments can be a great team-building tool.

Wofford: A question from the audience came in that really jumped out at me. It asked whether you’re likely to see immediate changes in someone’s behavior after they’ve taken the assessment.

Olsen: I think it makes you more mindful of what you’re doing on a daily basis. In my case, I might think that maybe the reason someone responded to me in a certain way is because my risk tolerance is so high that I’m willing to push something forward even when I know there’s going to be pushback. It’s made me more mindful of how I come across to others.

Recognizing my talents also helps me to focus on the most effective ways for me to spend my time and how I can be the most productive by leveraging these very naturally-developed talents that I have.

Wofford: It must also help to expose some deficiencies so you know what sorts of things you need to improve upon.

Olsen: Absolutely. It’s only natural to spend some time thinking about the talent that you scored the lowest on, especially if the results were surprising. But it’s important to remember that it’s all relative. For example, you could actually be a very strong delegator but it’s just not as strong as the other nine talents. It’s human nature to focus on areas that need improvement. It is important to be aware of your weaknesses but you shouldn’t let them overshadow your strengths.

Wofford: We’re just about out of time – any parting words?

Olsen: First of all, if you haven’t taken the assessment yet, go to the Gallup site and take it. It’s only $12 and it will take you less than 30 minutes. Before you take it, I think it can be very helpful to predict your four top talents and then try to analyze how your assessment results either matched your expectations or surprised you.

My challenge for all of you is to think about how you can use your talents at least once every single day. If you do that consistently over a week or two, will you see any results in your productivity or in your happiness or just in feeling like you’re very effective with the talents that you bring to the table?

Wofford: Mona, thank you so much. I also want to thank the audience and again, if you haven’t taken the assessment, go out there and do it!

Olsen: Thanks, Chris.

Want to hear more? This interview is based on Mona Anita Olsen’s live eCornell WebSeries event,The Entrepreneurial Profile: Buidling On Your Talents. Subscribe now gain access to a recording of this event and other Entrepreneurship topics.

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How to Manage Risk, Uncertainty and Opportunity (The Smart Way)

Having spent many years as a business consultant, Stephanie Thomas says she has “a long history with risk.” But although many people view risk as a negative thing, Thomas says that risk is more like the flip side of opportunity.

Now an economics lecturer at Cornell University’s ILR School, Thomas joined Chris Wofford to discuss the relationship between risk, uncertainty and opportunity as part of eCornell’s WebSeries.

An abridged version of her presentation follows.

Thomas: It’s important for people to realize that, risk isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Without risk, there’s no opportunity. If we never take a risk, we can’t really ever move forward to build, grow, develop and expand. So we have to take calculated risks but not stupid risks.

Wofford: To make sure we’re all on the same page, how do you define risk?

Thomas: Risk can take a variety of forms. There are four kinds of risks within the business setting: hazard risks, financial risks, operational risks and strategic risks.

The first, hazard risks, are usually the kinds of things that we think of when we hear the word ‘risk.’ This is the risk of something bad happening – natural disasters, floods, car accidents, those kinds of things.

Wofford: The risk there is not having prepared for them, right?

Thomas: Yes, and it’s really difficult to prepare for them because oftentimes they’re unanticipated. But when they do happen, they’re going to impact the business. Hazard risks are things that happen to the organization from the outside. Insurance, contingency planning and emergency preparedness plans can really mitigate hazard risks. So even though hazard risks are unanticipated, we usually have some pretty good mechanisms in place to deal with them.

Most organizations will also have protocols and policies in place to manage financial risks. These are things like fluctuations in interest rates, debt, asset losses or shrinkage if you’re in a retail environment. We all face these kinds of financial risks, but they’re typically well controlled and well understood as a part of routine discussion.

Then we can talk about the operational risks like supply chain issues and cost overruns. These are things that you might not plan for or take insurance out to mitigate against, but they’re still risks that are pretty well understood. If you have supply chain issues and can’t finish your product because something has happened to the person that you’re relying on – their truck broke down or they’re behind in production – this can really blow everything up.

But again, these kinds of risks are usually able to be managed pretty well. As an organization, you’re going to have a sense of what could go wrong and what you’re going to do to mitigate that situation.

Wofford: So that leaves the big category.

Thomas: Yes, the fun one. Strategic risks. Here we’re talking about things like customer retention. We’re talking about R&D projects. We’re talking about industry or sectorial issues and broader macroeconomic fluctuations. You’ve forecasted demand and it turned out that your forecasts were wrong and you have all this excess inventory. What are you going to do with it? Or you manufacture a toy and all of a sudden it becomes the “it” toy for the holidays and everybody is buying them and you haven’t produced enough to satisfy demand. What now?

These are examples of strategic risks and you really need to think about how they can potentially impinge on your strategy and what you’re going to do.

Wofford: So do you get everybody in the same room and sort of talk through these different possible scenarios and your responses to them?

Thomas: Absolutely. I’d like to turn to some real-life risk examples. When Apple did their R&D to create the iPhone, they didn’t really know for sure if it was going to be a success. It was a touch screen; it looked nothing like the flip phones or the clam shells of the day. It was a huge risk. But what was the upside? Well, it was enormous. The iPhone is now on its seventh generation and everybody has one.

To give another example, do you like to cook?

Wofford: Yes, a lot.

Thomas: Okay, let’s say that you’re making a new recipe for the first time. If it doesn’t turn out the way that you hope it does, what’s the downside?

Wofford: Well, I’d certainly be disappointed myself, and I could have unhappy guests. Worst case, someone gets ill.

Thomas: Let’s not even get into the getting ill part. Let’s just say it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to look or it doesn’t taste the way it’s supposed to taste. The downside is, well, you can’t eat it and you have to order take-out. This is relatively minor in the grand scheme of life. But the upside is you prepare something wonderful for your family, you’ve learned a new skill and you’ve added to your credentials as a chef.

Wofford: Right, it’s not a huge downside if we have to order pizza because I messed up dinner.

Thomas: It’s not catastrophic. But in some cases, the downside of strategic risk can be catastrophic. If we look at Exxon Valdez, if we look at Deepwater Horizon, those things have huge potential downsides in terms of not just money and resources but in terms of human life. So how we balance these risk-versus-reward situations depends on what’s at stake. Context is super important when we talk about managing these risks.

Wofford: When we think of risks, we sort of associate them with trying new things. But can you think of any examples in which it is better to stick to what you were doing? I ask because I’m from Rochester, New York, the home of Kodak. And that’s a company that willfully decided to neglect the burgeoning digital market to their peril.

Thomas: Again, I think it depends on the situation. In the case of Kodak, it was a strategic choice that they were the leader in what they do and wanted to focus on that core capacity. I certainly can’t speculate on the decision-making process, but if I had to guess, I would say that they felt that even with this new digital marketplace coming, there was still going to be a need for the old analog film. And there are still photographers and artists that use film even though the market has gone overwhelmingly digital.

Wofford: I know it depends on the situation, but typically, how do companies typically deal with risk, uncertainty and opportunity?

Thomas: I think that you need to take a holistic approach. There’s not necessarily one single correct answer but we can assign likelihoods to things. To go back to the cooking example: if you’re trying a new recipe, what is your level of cooking ability? Can you read a recipe? Do you know how to measure ingredients? If you’ve never cooked anything before, the downside for you is a lot more likely than if you’re an experienced cook. You need to really think about what those potential upsides and downsides are and how likely they are to happen.

The classic expression is “nothing risked, nothing gained.” If Apple had not taken the risk to move forward on their R&D project, they would have lost a lot. The iPhone really helped make Apple one of the world’s leading consumer brands.

There are a few common approaches that are used to address risk. The first one is to be like an ostrich and put your head in the sand and ignore it. Not a good idea. Ignoring everything around you is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

A second approach is to say, “Okay, so we know last quarter this happened. And the quarter before that, this happened. And two years ago this happened, so we’re going to predict what we’re going to do in the future based on historical information.” That often works, especially if you’re in a stable environment and producing a product or service that hasn’t changed in the last 10 to 15 years. In that situation, looking at history is going to help you predict the future.

But if you’re in the tech world, you certainly don’t want to look at what’s happened in the last five years to try to predict what’s going to happen in the next five. Things change too rapidly.
To tie it back to your Kodak example, they had been a leader for a number of years so they might have thought that what worked in the past was going to continue to work in the future.
It didn’t. Projecting the past into the future is like driving on the highway looking only in your rear view mirror. You’ve got some information — you know where you’ve been — but you’re still missing what’s in front of you.

Wofford: Let’s talk about the distinction between risk and uncertainty.

Thomas: The way I think about risk is that it is something that can be known. If I cross the street, there are certain inherent risks. With uncertainty, on the other hand, we have no way to quantify it. It’s the realm of unknown unknowns.

If it’s risk, we can manage it. We can manage hazard risk through insurance policies. We can manage financial risk through standard operating procedures and audit controls and generally accepted accounting principles and so on. But if it is truly uncertain, there’s really not much you can do. Uncertainty in my mind is a lot scarier than risk. If it’s true uncertainty, you’re not able to even articulate the array of possible outcomes.

Wofford: So we’ve made that distinction and we’ve talked about a couple of risk case studies. Do you have any advice for putting risk assessment into practice?

Thomas: I think that when coping with risk, particularly strategic risk, you really need to understand what it is that you do and what your customers expect. What is it about you that distinguishes you from your competitors? What is your strategy? You need to have a firm grip on these things in order to think about what is likely to happen in the future.

Do we want to go from making widgets to digital switches? Are we going to transition into that new area to cope with the new business environment or are we going to stay on track and continue to do what we’ve always done? Again, depending on the scenario and the environment that you operate in, both could be viable alternatives. But when you choose one path, you should be able to articulate a set of reasons as to why you made that decision. You need to understand the opportunities as well as the risks and make a calculated decision.

Wofford: Stephanie, thanks for that practical advice and thank you so much for joining me today.

Thomas: Thanks, Chris.

Want to hear more? This interview is based on Stephanie Thomas’ live eCornell WebSeries event,How to manage Risk, Uncertainty and Opportunity. Subscribe now gain access to a recording of this event and other Entrepreneurship topics.

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Can Pay Transparency Help Close the Gender Wage Gap?

Women may have more professional opportunities today than ever before in history but the unfortunate reality is that they still earn less than men on the whole, thanks to a persistent gender wage gap. The most commonly cited statistic in the gender pay gap discussion is that women earn 77 cents for every $1 earned by their male counterparts. But according to Stephanie Thomas, a lecturer at Cornell University’s ILR School who has spent 15 years researching the gender gap, there is more to that figure than meets the eye.

As part of eCornell’s webinar series, Thomas joined Chris Wofford to discuss the complexities of the gender wage gap and how employers can use transparent pay practices to help close it. Below is an abridged version of their conversation.

Wofford: I think everyone is probably familiar with the common figure that we all kick around, that women earn 77 cents to the dollar that men earn. Is there more to the story?

Thomas: That figure is part of the story, but it’s not the whole story. When we look at various explanatory factors and make appropriate comparisons, we see that the 23 cent gap really narrows. Yes, it’s a real number but it’s not necessarily reflective of the true gender pay gap when we measure things correctly.

Part of the reason that we have this 23 cent differential is due to the way we’re measuring the gap. If we look at all men versus all women, we see a large gap but that’s not necessarily the right comparison to make. We know that there are a lot of non-discriminatory factors that influence pay, like occupational choice, industry, labor market experience, and education — all those kinds of things. So when we lump everybody together and look at all men versus all women, and the only thing we account for is gender, we see that 23 cent gap. When we control for things like occupation, industry, labor market experience and union status, we see that the 23 cent gap really closes. When these factors are included, we get that gap down to about nine cents per dollar.

Wofford: If everything else has been accounted for, does that suggest that the nine cent difference is down to pure discrimination?

Thomas: It’s difficult to make an inference of discrimination. We first need to make sure that we’re comparing people properly, so we want to look at people who are in the same occupation, in the same industry, with the same labor market experience. Women tend to have less labor market experience than men, simply because of biology. Women are the ones that give birth and most women don’t want to give birth under their desk and go right back to work. So we take time off and that makes a difference in the labor force experience of men and women of the same age. When we account for all of those things, there’s about a nine cent gap left.

But there are some other factors that are a little more difficult to measure, that could explain that remaining nine cents. For example, women will, generally speaking, take a lower salary and a richer benefits package while men are more likely to take a higher salary and less benefits. Men also tend to prefer more risky compensation elements like stock options and bonuses. Women, on the other hand, tend to be a little more risk averse than their male counterparts.

We can also look at the role of caregiving responsibilities, whether that’s for children, disabled family members or elderly parents. In our society today, women still bear the brunt of those caregiving responsibilities. Whether that is right or wrong is a different conversation, but it’s still seen as a female thing to do. So if women are taking time off from work, or scaling back their hours, that can influence what we see in terms of the overall earnings numbers.

Wofford: Doesn’t negotiation also play an important role in this?

Thomas: Absolutely. Negotiation and compensation expectations are really important. There have been a variety of studies done on this. One of the most interesting asked people who had just finished their MBA what they thought a reasonable starting salary would be. Depending on how you look at the data, compensation expectations for women were anywhere from 25 to 50 percent lower than their male counterparts.

Wofford: Wow, that’s substantial.

Thomas: It is, and if women have lower expectations about what a reasonable pay package would look like, that can contribute to the disparity. We also know that women are only one-third as likely as men to engage in compensation negotiations. When they do negotiate, they’re just as successful but they’re only one-third as likely to start that conversation.

The last thing I want to bring up here that helps explain that nine cent differential is the difference in work hours. We know that men tend to work more hours per week than women. A lot of times those extra hours are paid as time-and-a-half overtime earnings, so if men are working more overtime, that alone can be enough to explain the difference in the amount on the paycheck. Even though you and I might be paid the same hourly rate, if you’re getting time and a half for overtime and I’m not, you’re going to have higher earnings than me.

Now, even if we account for caregiving, hours, the cash benefits tradeoff, and all those other things, there still may be some gap left over. I think it’s important to note that just because we can explain the gap in the aggregate doesn’t mean that there aren’t real cases of gender discrimination happening. We could have a zero differential in the aggregate but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s being paid fairly. If there are cases of gender discrimination, and unfortunately there are, it’s really more than just the impact on the woman herself. It’s really a family issue. It’s a societal issue. More than 7.3 million families are headed by single mothers. If they’re not earning as much as they should be, then that’s going to affect where they can live, access to education, and opportunities for their kids. It’s really much more than just paying the woman fairly. If women have less income, that’s going to affect the economy as a whole because they’re not going to be spending as much, which in turn has a dampening effect on GDP growth and macroeconomic issues.

Wofford: So actually, everyone would benefit if the gender gap was brought down to zero, not just women.

Thomas: Yes. People are starting to realize that the gender pay gap is more than just about the woman. It’s a family issue, a societal issue and a big macroeconomic issue.

Wofford: So how do we work on closing the gap?

Thomas: One thing that can help is pay transparency, which is something we are hearing a lot about these days. Why do we care so much about pay transparency right now? From my perspective, I think that there are two different sets of forces playing a role here. On the one hand, it’s sort of a logical extension of what we’re seeing in society as a whole. With the rise of social media, people are sharing more things about themselves. I’m a little bit older and I was raised with the idea that nice people don’t talk about politics, religion or money. But my 16-year-old niece just tells everybody everything about herself on social media. It’s very open, it’s not a big deal. I think that millennials don’t have the same kind of privacy concerns that Gen-Xers like me do.

I think this push toward pay transparency is also an extension of business trends and the rise of big data. Today, we’re collecting more information and we have better technology to process that information and generate insights. Organizations are shifting somewhat to more person-based jobs, rather than job title-based jobs. It used to be that job descriptions would include “other duties as assigned.” A lot of times now, the “other duties as assigned” is the job. It’s a combination of business and societal trends that are sort of causing this issue of transparency to rise to the surface.

Wofford: How do you go about showing pay transparency? I’ve never been in an environment where that was the case.

Thomas: Pay transparency means different things to different people. What I recommend for businesses is what I refer to as pay process transparency. What that means is really setting out a very well-defined, organized, clear set of expectations. If this is your job and this is how many years of experience you have, and these are your skills, abilities, talents, and qualifications, this is what the pay range is going to be.

Cornell has what I would call pay process transparency. Depending on the job family that you’re in, there are different grades – B, C, D and E – and a starting salary range. If you are in this particular job family at this particular grade, then your salary is going to be between here and here. In order to get to the next step or to earn the next pay increase, the criteria are laid out very clearly. Each employee knows what they have to do to get that next merit increase or bonus. Being transparent about your pay process is really providing employees with enough information to really understand how those pay decisions are made.

Wofford: This also tells an employee how much negotiation wiggle room they have, right?

Thomas: Yes, there’s a minimum and maximum. Sometimes you’ll see it presented in terms of a midpoint. Some organizations, particularly in the high tech sector, have decided to opt for non-negotiation policies. They know that men and women have different tendencies to engage in those conversations, so one of the ways that they’re addressing the gender pay gap is to say, “This is what we’re offering you. Take it or leave it, we’re not going to discuss it.”

Another element of pay transparency is what I refer to as pay disclosure. Whole Foods is a great example of this. At Whole
Foods, anybody can go in and say, “I want to see how much so-and-so is earning” or “I want to see what the CEO’s compensation package is.” Whole Foods has taken somewhat of a radical approach to this in that they’re making their payroll books open. Any employee can go in and look at any other employee’s pay. For the culture that Whole Foods has, this is a good strategy for them but for other organizations this may not be optimal. I think you have to figure out what’s appropriate for your organization and what fits with your culture.

The third example that I want to talk about is something that happened at Google, and this is what I call radical transparency. This was not something that Google put into place but rather something that Google employees did on their own. It started with a former Google employee who was concerned about some pay equity issues at Google. She created a Google spreadsheet and circulated it among some of her co-workers and said, “Put in your name and your salary and we’re going to see what the pay practices are.” It was voluntary disclosure on the part of the employees.

Wofford: What happened? How did the higher-ups respond?

Thomas: Well, they weren’t happy, but technically, there was nothing that could be done. It’s not illegal for employees to talk amongst themselves about their pay. Whether you’re unionized or not, the National Labor Relations Act gives employees the right to talk about compensation.

There was a lot of buy-in from the fellow Google employees and the spreadsheet revealed what the workers thought were some discrepancies that needed to be looked at. Now, just looking at a sheet of people’s names and pay rates is not going to tell you everything that you need to know. Just because you and I have the same job title doesn’t mean that we should have the exact same pay rate.

Wofford: What happened at Google as a result?

Thomas: Well, the employee departed the organization and the whole thing blew up in the news. It was ultimately resolved internally so I don’t know the details but I know Google did take a look at this issue. I hope that if there were real disparities that needed to be corrected, they were.

Wofford: Great, so we’ve seen several examples of pay transparency, radical and otherwise. What’s next? Are more companies thinking of transitioning to a transparent process?

Thomas: A lot of organizations are thinking about it. Before I came to Cornell, I spent 15 years in private consulting and one of the things that I specialized in was the statistical analysis of pay disparities. So we would be retained to go in and look at an organization’s data, understand how they paid people, and actually do a statistical analysis to identify those disparities. If we found disparities, we would report that information back to the organization and help them figure out what steps they needed to put into place, not only to correct the situation, but to prevent it from happening again.

Wofford: Would you advocate generally for this kind of transparency?

Thomas: I completely support pay process transparency. I think that it’s the right thing to do. I think it’s information that your employees are entitled to and should be provided. For some organizations, it’s probably not time yet, but it might be in the future. You have to understand your workforce, their needs and their wants. There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to this.

I think the bottom line is your employees are going to talk about pay. They’re going to have those conversations, whether you want them to or not. You can’t legally prevent them from doing it but what you can do is help manage them. By being open and providing this information up front, you can inform and direct those conversations. If you’re providing accurate information and people have an understanding of how those decisions are made, it can shut down the rumor mill.

Wofford: Stephanie, thank you for the conversation on these very important issues.

Thomas: Thank you, Chris.

Want to hear more? This interview is based on Stephanie Thomas’ live eCornell WebSeries event, The Gender Wage Gap: Causes, Consequences and the Way Forward. Subscribe now gain access to a recording of this event and other Human Resources topics.

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Ten Tips to Power Up Your Presence

Learn ten tips for how to power up your personal presence in the workplace and increase your awareness of the image you project.

Are you projecting your best self at work?

As anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of communication knows, our spoken words are only a small part of the messages we convey. From posture to eye contact and even what we wear, our nonverbal signals often carry more weight than what we say.

Angela Noble-Grange, a senior lecturer of management communication at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, recently joined eCornell’s Chris Wofford to share ten tips for how to power up your personal presence in the workplace and increase your awareness of the image you project. Below is an abridged version of her conversation.

#10 – STRAIGHTEN UP

How do you look when you’re in a meeting, or even if you’re sitting in an office cubicle? How do you look if you’re at a cocktail hour with your coworkers? Are you a sloucher or are you someone who sits up and looks like you’re ready to participate and engage with the people around you?

If you’re kind of slouching when you come into a meeting or you look like you need coffee or didn’t get enough sleep, you’re really signaling to people that you’re not ready to participate or engage. You want to look ready. People form their impressions of you based on how you present yourself.

If you’re in a cubicle, you might think, “Well, this is my office space, why should I have to change the way that I behave?” That’s obviously your call but if others can see you, you should at least know that you might be sending a signal to your coworkers that you’re just not as engaged.

It’s funny; when I mention standing straight or sitting straight in my class, you’ll see a lot of slouchers in the room immediately straighten up.

#9 – SPEAK UP

Are you one of those people who hears a lot of conversation going on in meetings but tends to not participate? Often times, you might talk yourself out of participating by thinking your idea is too out of the box, or that your question isn’t smart enough?

If you’re that person who doesn’t speak up, the simple remedy is to give yourself a goal. Maybe you can decide that once a week, or once a day, you’re going to make sure that your contribution is heard. Commit to speaking up during a meeting, even if it’s just to say that you agree with another person or that you want to build off of something that someone just said. Even if you don’t have something important to say, just expressing curiosity about someone else’s viewpoint will help. That may seem a little bit less threatening than coming up with something completely on the fly.

Remember, if you don’t say anything, someone else may say the same thing you were thinking, and you’ll really be kicking yourself.

#8 DON’T INTERRUPT ME

Is the culture at your company such that people interrupt each other all the time? But you were someone who was taught that it’s not polite to interrupt, so you need a way to get the floor back?

If this happens to you, I have a couple of phrases you might want to try. Of course, remember to say these things with a smile because a little charm can go a long way.

You might say, “I only need one more minute to finish”, with a nice smile directed at the person who interrupted you. Then take your moment, and maybe even gesture with your finger so they realize that you’re serious. The same phrase delivered with a different tone, with no smile and no gesture, might be perceived as a bit aggressive and you risk being labeled with the B-word, which often happens to those of us who are female.

The other phrase you might want to try is something like, “Oh, I love your enthusiasm for the topic. I just need a minute more and I’d be happy to hand the floor over to you.” Again, it’s not just the phrase. It’s the phrase combined with the right tone and a smile, and making sure that you are looking at the person who just interrupted you.

#7 CLAIM CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE

Let’s say someone takes credit for an idea that you just expressed a few minutes ago. How do you make sure that people know it was actually your idea? Sometimes you might just want to let it go but other times, particularly if this is happening often and it’s hurting you at work, you need a way to show that you are the one who had the idea.

Something like, “Oh, that’s the idea I just expressed a couple of moments ago,” or “I’m so glad to see that we are in agreement” often works. These phrases are non-confrontational but make the point. Another one is, “Thank you so much for reinforcing the point that I just made a moment ago.”

#6 SPEAK AUTHORITATIVELY

Are you someone who uses the words or phrases like “just, only, hopefully, I think, I believe” when you’re making statements? Do you say “I’m sorry” for things you really don’t need to be sorry about? Do you constantly seek validation from people?

When you use diminutive phrases before everything that you state, it takes away the value, the quality and the power behind what you’re trying to say.

For example, sometimes I’ll hear a student say, “I’m only a first year. I’m only a student. I’m just beginning to learn finance,” instead of, “I’m learning finance. I am a student.” or “I am a member of this team.” It can also be as simple as saying, “This is a great strategy” rather than, “This is a great strategy, right?”

Why does it matter? Deleting those diminutive phrases is all it takes to add a little more power to the statement that you’re making and increase your presence overall.

#5 VERBAL AIR POLLUTION

It might sound weird but this is one of my pet peeves. What I’m talking about when I say “verbal air pollution” is the use of little words like “um.” That’s the worst one. But there are others –“like” and “you know” are two good examples. Basically it’s anything you’re saying that doesn’t mean anything. It’s those things we say when we’re trying to buy ourselves some time to think.

Usually, people are not comfortable with giving themselves time to think. They feel like they have to fill every single moment in a conversation with words. You don’t have to. Try to think about this one from the standpoint of the audience member. They’re trying not only to listen to you but also make sense out of what you’re saying. If you’re constantly rushing and filling every moment with speech, you’re making it harder on them.

Get comfortable with silence. Kill the “ums.” If you use them, ask one of your coworkers to catch you every single time. Make an agreement in which you will pay them a quarter or a dollar, depending on what you’re willing to part with, each time they catch you spewing verbal air pollution.

#4 THE HEAD NOD

You may have seen the person in a meeting who is just constantly nodding their head. Maybe you are that person. But this can cause mixed signals. For women, a head nod often means, “I’m encouraging you. I support you.” For men, a head nod often means, “I agree with you.”

So, can you imagine being in a room with mostly men, which is typically the type of room that I’m in, and you’re nodding your head and the whole time they’re thinking, “Wow, she agrees with everything that I say, isn’t that wonderful?” But really, all your trying to do is signal your support, not necessarily your agreement.

Now of course I’m not suggesting that each company should create a culture where we say, “Hey everybody, nodding your head signals encouragement, not agreement.” Nor am I suggesting that we should stop nodding our heads all together. What I’m saying is that this is something you might want to be aware of. Are you an excessive head nodder? Are you signalling to others that you agree with everything they say?

Because when you do that, strangely enough, you get people thinking that maybe you’re not all that powerful because you simply agree with everything. You just want to pay attention to it, to make sure it isn’t actually getting in the way of what you’re trying to get done.

#3 DRESS UP

That is, dress up a couple of levels beyond where you are in your company right now. As you’re interacting with your coworkers every day and you’re dressing just to the level of your coworkers, your boss, and your boss’s boss, will only see you at that level. But if you dress a couple of levels up, you’ll make it easier for the people who work at those higher levels to imagine you in that role.

You need to be mindful of how you dress because, somewhat unfortunately, we form impressions of one another based on how we show up at work. Of course, not every work environment has to be formal. It may be that you’re in a super casual environment. If you show up in a really nice dress suit at a tech job in Silicon Valley, they’ll think something is wrong with you. But still, when you show up in your casual clothes, are they pressed? Are they neat, do they match? There are ways to still look good and dress up even in a casual environment.

Everything we choose sends off messages. The way we say things, the way we act, and the way we dress actually do leave an impression on other people. It’s not just about what you do, it’s how you are perceived.

#2 DECLARE YOUR THOUGHTS

This one is aimed particularly at the younger generation and is meant to help them overcome what seems to be an unfortunate habit called “uptalk.” That is, ending with a high tone when you’re making a statement. Uptalk makes everything sound like a question. If you are an uptalker, you don’t “declare” your thoughts.

You can imagine how this would detract from your presence and the quality of what you’re saying. It makes you sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about, that you don’t believe it yourself. If you are an uptalker, you can use the same strategy I mentioned for ending verbal air pollution. Ask somebody point it out to you. In my teaching experience, I have found many people are completely unaware that they do this. I’m not even sure that they understand what I mean by it because it’s such a big part of their culture.

But as you move up the food chain in the corporate world or wherever you are, you’ll discover that people will notice that something is “off” and you need to get it under control. We need to own what we’re saying and be confident about it so that the people around us trust us. If they really believe that we believe it, then it’s okay for them to believe it.

#1 GET OUT THERE

My number one tip for giving off a more executive presence and being taken seriously at work is to simply “get out there.”

That means saying “yes” to every opportunity that you can get your hands on. A lot of people don’t do this because they’re nervous when they’re given an opportunity to do something they’ve never done before. I’ve noticed that this especially applies to women.

At my school, there used to be a golf tournament every year. I would sign up for it because I’m a golfer and when I would go, there would be all these guys and hardly any women. I would ask, “Where are the women students? Where are the women faculty? Why aren’t they here?”

The answer was that they voted themselves out of this experience. They thought they didn’t play golf well enough, or maybe they’d never played it before, and they didn’t want to embarrass themselves in front of recruiters who could possibly hire them.

The guys, on the other hand, took the opposite approach. A lot of them knew nothing about playing golf either but they saw this as an opportunity to get in front of a recruiter and have a few beers when it was all over. Who cares what happened on the golf course?

I’ve seen this time and time again with speaking opportunities. People say, “Well, I’ve never really done that before, so I don’t think I should.” Or they say, “There’s probably somebody here who’s better at it,” and so on. Too often, we vote ourselves out of incredible opportunities by saying no. You need to say yes. Don’t think about it. Just say yes.

If your boss asks you to do something, say yes now and figure out how to get it done later. This becomes an experience from which you can build and become more confident in similar experiences by simply taking on an experience that you’ve never done before. The more of this that you do, the more confident you will be when it comes to new things.

If you’re living an exciting and wonderful life, new opportunities will come before you all the time. Take them up. It will help not only your confidence but it will help with your executive presence as well.

 

Want to hear more? This article is based on Angela Noble-Grange’s live eCornell WebSeries event, Leadership Communication: Power Up Your Presence. Subscribe now to gain access to a recording of this event and other Women in Leadership topics. 

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Women are “Bossy” and Men are “Decisive”

What Gender Stereotypes Really Mean in the Workplace and How to Overcome Them

Susan Fleming is a senior lecturer at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, specializing in entrepreneurship and women in leadership. She’s a veteran of Wall Street and no stranger to the challenges that women run up against in the workforce.

As part of our Women in Leadership webcast series, Fleming sat down with eCornell’s Chris Wofford to discuss the difficult tightrope that women are expected to walk and to dish out advice for how best to navigate situations why gender biases may be at play.

Fleming: Today I’m going to talk about some of the biases and barriers women in leadership roles face as well as some strategies for overcoming them.

I find that when I kick off these presentations, it’s useful to share some information about the current status of women in leadership, at least in the US. Today, women make up just under 50 percent of the US workforce. They also make up more than 50 percent of managerial and professional positions — meaning mid-management and lower middle management positions.

One might logically think that if women are half the population, make up half the workforce and half of the managerial and professional positions, they must also make up half of the leadership positions. But I probably wouldn’t be giving a talk on this if that were the case.

I’m curious to see what our audience might know in terms of the representation of women in a few sectors of our society, the first being Congress, the second being law firm partners and the third being board directors and CEOs within the Standard & Poor’s 500.

Wofford: We’ve got the guesses coming in now. Looks like the audience thinks the percentage of current female Congressional representatives is around 10 percent.

Fleming: The correct answer is that, as of 2015, women made up about 20 percent of the Senate and 19 percent of the House. So when you think that women are half of the population, clearly things aren’t where you might expect them to be on that front.

I often get asked how the United States stacks up against other countries in this. There are 190 direct-election countries in the world and the United States is actually ranked 72nd. Just to give you a bit of context, we are just below Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Greece, and Kenya. And just above Kyrgyzstan and Slovakia.

We often hear our politicians say that we’re the greatest democracy on the planet. To me, democracy would include both genders.

Wofford: Indeed. Do you want to look at law firm partners next?

Fleming: It looks like for the most part, the audience poll is showing answers between 2 and 20 percent. They are pretty much on the mark there. Women account for just under 20 percent of law firm partners. In some ways, you might say there has been a significant increase back from 1995, when women were at about 13 percent. That is a huge increase but it’s a little disheartening with all of the change that you see in our society to only see it go from 13 percent to just under 20 during that time.

Wofford: How did our audience do in guessing the percentage of women in leadership positions within the S&P?

Fleming: Well, two percent was the most popular answer and they pretty much nailed it. When it comes to S&P 500 CEOs, women make up 4.6 percent. Again, there has actually been huge progress mathematically on that. When I first started teaching this, it was one percent. On the board seat side, the answer is about 19 percent.

Wofford: So why are these numbers are so low?

Fleming: There are many complicated reasons. There’s no one thing. It can’t simply be ascribed to discrimination or bias or this idea that women want to have babies. There is a very complicated set of dynamics that are going on culturally and socially that are at play.

The one thing that I really want to focus on today in particular is gender bias and stereotyping.
Gender beliefs, probably more than most people realize, are incredibly powerful in shaping our culture, in shaping the business world, in shaping our behavior and the way that we go about our daily lives.

Part of the reason for that is that gender is the dominant basis for categorization, across virtually all social contexts. Just to give you an example, when you walk into a room of people you don’t know, the first thing that you categorize people on is gender. The next one could be race, it could be class, it could be age, and so on. But gender wins pretty much across the board in every culture.

Another thing that is very important for people to understand is that when you bring up the word stereotyping, and you start talking about bigotry, you get people very concerned and feeling defensive. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Most of this is unconscious. Stereotyping is a type of cognitive shortcut. So when we walk into that room, we don’t have the mental energy or time to differentiate everything about everyone in the room, yet we want to behave appropriately. So we use those cognitive shortcuts in order to guide our behavior.

The downside of stereotypes is that all of those associations that we make, while they might be right and they might be useful, they might also be wrong. So if you walk into a meeting assessing a woman, you might immediately associate feminine characteristics as being more communal and less aggressive. But perhaps the woman is more aggressive than you expected, so you’re reacting to her in a way that is different than you would react to her if she were a man. That’s where stereotypes get us in trouble.

Wofford: So even though these things sort of spring into mind subconsciously, they can still affect how you respond to a given situation?

Fleming: Right. I want to talk a little bit about the content of gender stereotypes, and I thought it could be fun to ask the audience to provide one word that’s a stereotypical description of a woman.

Wofford: Okay, let’s see what we got. The first three all say ‘emotional.’

Fleming: That always comes up but, wow, three in a row?

Wofford: Here come some more: controlling, nurturing, bitchy, soft, timid, communicative, sweet, nice, intelligent, weak, sensitive.

Fleming: Look, here we have “unassertive” and “bossy” right next to each other — that’s interesting.

I can see some more are continuing to roll in, but what you see is that many of the stereotypes fall into what we call communal characteristics. And then you see that people list all of these negative words that are applied to women when they violate that communal stereotype. That’s where you get bitchy, controlling, overly assertives.

Wofford: All of which would probably be considered assets for a male, right?

Fleming: For males, it would be an asset. So that’s kind of the content of gender stereotypes and they do change over time, but mostly you see the same answers.

The problem with stereotypes is not so much around description, it’s when they become prescriptive. Those prescriptive stereotypes are what give rise to the comments we saw in the chat box. Controlling, too assertive, pushy, those kinds of things.

We’ve just talked about typical stereotypes about women and men. When it comes to stereotypes about leaders, they tend to fall into the masculine category. Numerous studies across many different countries, different age groups, etc. have consistently demonstrated that when individuals think of the typical leader or manager, they think of a male. They think of those male characteristics. So when you see that aggressive male leader – confident, intelligent, decisive, exercising authority – the world feels right. In contrast, when you consider a female leader, you have inconsistent stereotypes being triggered.

A female leader is supposed to be strong and authoritative, know her stuff, hold her ground and speak her mind, but while doing that, she is simultaneously also supposed to come off as sweet, supportive, nice, communal, kind and gentle — all of those expectations of what an appropriate woman is supposed to be. As a woman who’s worked in the business world, that’s really hard to do simultaneously and the failure to do that triggers a lot of bad things for women leaders. That inconsistency contributes to prejudice against female leaders.

If the female leader is too communal, she’s seen as a poor leader and too weak. If they’re too agentic, they’re seen as competent but they’re unlikable and for women, likeability is a requirement for success. For men, it’s nice to be likeable but there’s a lot more leeway for a man than a woman to be likable and be tough.

That creates what we call the Double Bind, which is having to walk a tightrope between being simultaneously assertive and smart in order to be seen as competent while simultaneously being nice and warm in order to meet stereotypes of communality. The people that don’t navigate that tight rope well will be either labeled as an incompetent or as a bitch.

Wofford: It seems like a no-win situation.

Fleming: I like to use the Sarah Palin – Hillary Clinton illustration. The political media painted Clinton as the bitchy and unlikable one while Palin was the incompetent bimbo. So women in politics often get painted into one corner or the other.

There was a really funny clip recently on Jimmy Fallon where Hillary Clinton was on and he had her give a talk and he critiqued it by saying, “No, you’re being too loud.” “No, you’re being too quiet.” “Could you be a little less pushy?” or “You’ve gotta want it more.”

Wofford: You hear others say she should smile more.

Fleming: Right, exactly. Fallon said that too and then she smiled and he’s like, “Come on.” So, it was illustrating that Double Bind. It’s a funny clip.

The Double Bind is really important but I also want to touch on some other stereotypes about women’s competence. There are a lot of stereotypes about other things, around women’s commitment, around their credibility, around their organizational fit, but what I really want to touch on is competence.

Women are perceived to be generally less competent than men. The difference isn’t huge but it’s there and it will particularly show up when you’re dealing with male-type tasks. But it’s also true on gender-neutral tasks. In experimental studies where people are assessed doing a general neutral task, women will be assessed lower despite the exact same performance. That’s because there’s bias that they’re less competent.

There was a study in which an identical essay was put out but when you attached a woman’s name as the author, the essay was rated lower even though it was identical to the one bearing the man’s name.

Another barrier that women have to deal with is what we call shifting standards for evaluating men and women. Some researchers did a study on hiring for the position of police chief, which is a very male-typed position typically. They created two resumes, one that had more experience and one that had more education. They then pre-tested them with no names on them and they were evaluated as fairly equivalent. Then they put a woman’s name on the one with more education and a man’s name on the experience one. When they asked people which one they would pick, they picked the man and they justified their decision by saying he had more experience.

Then they flipped the names so that the woman’s resume had more experience and they still said they’d hire the man. Why? Because he had more education. That’s shifting the standards. Because of these unconscious biases, there is an answer they want to get to and they’ll change their perception of the facts in order to get to the answer that makes them comfortable.

Wofford: And these unconscious biases are something that we all have? Can they be overcome?

Fleming: We all have them. One of the things that I find really insidious is that people will use stereotypes to set expectations for themselves and guide their own behavior. Before anyone else can tell them they can’t do something, they’ve already said, “Well, I was really good at math and I’m interested in it, but women aren’t so good at math or computer science or whatever, so I don’t think I’m going to be good at that.” And so they don’t even try, they opt out into different tracks.

Everyone has biases. The goal is to be aware of them so that you can stop yourself from using them unfairly. I would ask you all to be particularly mindful of this when you’re in a context where you are hiring others or you’re evaluating people for promotion or you’re assessing who should get an opportunity in the workplace. You owe an extra level of attention to make sure you’re not using those stereotypes unconsciously.

And don’t apply stereotypes to yourself. When you’re considering career advancement, you might be unwittingly limiting your own opportunities.

Wofford: I think that’s great advice. Do you have any other pearls of wisdom you want to share before we run out of time?

Fleming: Just a couple other things. If you’re a woman, you need to develop a communication style that responds to the reality of the double bind. Truthfully, I don’t like giving this advice and I’d rather see every individual be authentic and be themselves. I’m a real kind of go-getter, I’m loud, I speak up a lot. I don’t like having to dial back and to sort of be less authentic but I have had to do that at times in order to advance.

I think that one of the great ways to start to change the culture to allow more women into leadership positions is to get into the leadership positions to begin with. You’ve got to get that cycle going and if that means that you have to dial it back and maybe bite your tongue on occasion, that’s an okay thing to do in my view. Then over time, you can hopefully drive change by helping to make more women leaders.

Wofford: So there are compromises that still need to be made before we get to where we want to be?

Fleming: I’m a big fan of changing society, changing culture, changing perceptions and getting rid of stereotypes — but in the meantime, you also have to survive.

When I’m teaching MBAs and teaching undergraduates who are about to go into the workforce, I say to them, “This is your own personal choice. You have to read the environment and read the culture of the organization. But be mindful of how you’re being perceived and mindful that it will be different than the way a man is being perceived who’s doing the exact same thing. And you have to decide if you want to tone it down or not.” That’s their call.

Wofford: Thank you Susan, this has been great.

Fleming: Thanks for having me.

 

Want to hear more? This article is based on Susan Fleming’s live eCornell WebSeries event, Bias, Barriers and Strategies for Overcoming Them. Subscribe now to gain access to a recording of this event and other Women in Leadership topics. 

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Here’s What the “Glass Ceiling” Really Means for Women Leaders

Global studies have found that words traditionally defined as feminine in nature, such as expressive, reasonable and loyal, are the words that people most commonly list as the competencies they want to see in their leaders. But if people favor these ‘feminine’ leadership traits, why aren’t there are more female CEOs and board members? In the US, only around 16 percent of corporate board seats go to women, despite women currently holding between 50 to 60 percent of all graduate degrees in the country.

Allison Elias, a visiting assistant professor at Cornell University’s ILR School and expert on gender in the workplace, says the disparity is due in part to a disconnect between what is expected of women and what is expected of business leaders.

In a recent Women in Leadership Webcast hosted by eCornell, Elias suggests that traditionally assigned gender roles affect our perceptions of female leaders. Female leadership candidates have to contend with the often unconscious or unintentional discrimination of males in the hiring role. When a man interviews a woman for a leadership position, for example, his mind may wander to thoughts about her family life, leading him to wonder if she would need a more flexible work schedule than a male candidate.

“Perhaps that employer really wants to hire a woman. Perhaps he has even explicitly declared that he wants to make gender diversity a priority in his organization. But our brains automatically take these cognitive shortcuts,” Elias said.

Even when women achieve the highest positions within a company, they are often hit with what Elias refers to as the “likeability penalty.” Social science research shows that women who are more advanced in their careers are often found to be less likable, too power hungry or too aggressive.

“A lot of women remain in sort of a lose-lose situation. When they behave in a more aggressive or competitive way, they’re punished by being disliked. But if they exhibit traits that are more aligned with their gender role—being warm, supportive, and caring—they might be liked, but they might not necessarily be viewed as competent. Women are punished in a way men are not,” Elias says.

Women also have to contend with an American work culture that expects employees to put work as their first and only priority. Workplaces are too often “structured for a man who has someone to take care of the kids and domestic issues,” Elias said.

“It’s changing a bit, but this ideal worker norm kind of pervades a lot of traditional jobs and that’s a structural way that women face a barrier on their way to the top. A lot of times moving into leadership positions requires always being on, always being responsive to email, never missing days.”

She pointed to a study done by the consulting firm Bain and Company that found that 43 percent of women aspire to reach top management when they start a new job, but that number plunges to 16 percent after the women gain experience within the company. The study showed that women didn’t see themselves as “fitting in” at the workplace, with many of them citing that they weren’t willing to put work above everything else in their lives in order to move to the top.

While everyone is familiar with the concept of the glass ceiling, Elias and a number of other scholars say that the phrase might not be the best metaphor for what women face in the workplace. Instead, they advocate for the ‘labyrinth of leadership’ because all sorts of barriers can block a woman’s progress at different points within her career.

“The glass ceiling metaphor suggests that women are going to be able to ascend and be successful in the workplace until the very top. But when looking at why the talent pipeline doesn’t progress women to the top, the idea of a labyrinth can be more effective because there’s all sorts of barriers that come up at all sorts of points of a woman’s career that can deter her from being able to make it to the end,” Elias said.

 

Want to hear more? This article is based on Allison Elias’ live eCornell WebSeries event, Unlocking the Hidden Leadership Potential Inside Your Company. Subscribe now to gain access to a recording of this event and other Women in Leadership topics. 

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Which Job Offer Should You Choose? Here’s a Great Tool To Evaluate Compensation Packages.

What matters most to you when it comes to your job compensation package? How do you decide which job to select if presented with multiple job offers or considering leaving one employer for another? 

Different people have different needs. As a result, pay matters differently to different people. Some employees prefer flexibility over a higher base pay. Others prefer options that will offer more long-term benefits. 

This unique total job compensation calculator, developed by Professor Kevin Hallock, a faculty member and dean in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, can help guide you in your decision-making. You can compare different job offers and calculate their total rewards below. 

ACCESS THE JOB COMPENSATION CALCULATOR 

Feel free to put this tool to use on an individual level, to analyze your own offers, or within an organizational context, to design and evaluate competitive compensation systems. If you’re a manager or HR leader, you can use this tool to explore various types of rewards within the context of employee preferences and perceptions. Consider your organizational goals. What matters most to the talent you want to attract and retain? What components do they value most? 

This calculator is part of the curriculum in the Compensation Studies Certificate program developed by Cornell’s ILR School. If you’re an HR professional or  business leader, we invite you to learn more about this unique online program.

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Moving Beyond the Gig Economy: The Case for the Independent Worker

Workers in our growing gig economy are stuck in a regulatory grey area where they fit neither the standard legal definition of employee nor that of independent contractor. They don’t work for any specific employer; instead, they perform on-demand tasks for consumers of short duration (i.e., “a gig”), either hired directly or through a third party intermediary. In effect, gig workers work for themselves. The most well-known intermediaries today are online: ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft, the taxi app Curb, or food delivery service GrubHub. Sign up to be an Uber driver and you can make money on-demand and on your schedule—without the ties that normally bind employees. In between rides, Uber drivers aren’t on call and don’t have to give up other jobs in order to work gigs.

The Trade-Off

Intermediaries’ (Uber, Lyft, GrubHub et al) success rests on workers accepting more gigs more often, since most collect a percentage on each fare or fee. Yet gig workers face a trade-off as they engage more heavily with intermediaries. Since they don’t fit the category of employee, they aren’t protected by anti-discrimination laws and don’t qualify for benefits accorded to that status. They also can’t enter into customer agreements or negotiate their own rates. The result is a quiet violation of the social contract that’s been in place in the U.S. since the early 20th century. Namely, workers are willing to give up their time and some of their freedom in exchange for fair wages, treatment, and equal opportunities.

Enter the Independent Worker

This lack of clarity for workers also hurts the growth of intermediaries like Uber, who is facing federal class action lawsuits from drivers who allege the company is acting like an employer when it penalizes them for turning off the app or not picking up enough rides in a specified time period. Unfortunately, companies have only two options for classifying gig workers and neither fits. The most common sense solution? Differentiate a new, third category of employment: the independent worker. The idea, according to a 2015 discussion paper by The Hamilton Project, is to create an independent worker status that’s neutral compared to employee status—offering gig workers many of the same protections and benefits, while allowing intermediaries to pool workers to lower the costs of purchasing or providing insurance or other benefits without risking the relationship turning into that of employer/employee.

Fast forward into the future of the independent worker by joining eCornell for a live online roundtable discussion on September 18, 2017 with Seth Harris, former Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor and co-author of The Hamilton Project paper “A Proposal for Modernizing Labor Laws for Twenty-First-Century Work: The “Independent Worker,” alongside his Cornell University colleagues and experts in employment law. This webcast is included in a subscription to eCornell’s Human Resources WebSeries Channel, bringing Cornell’s expertise live and on-demand to HR professionals.