It is unfair, but high-achieving women in positions of power to push people for better results are denigrated rather than lauded for their efforts.
“Ninety per cent of my executive coaching clients over the past 20 years have been women,” says Lawrence Polsky, managing partner at consulting firm PeopleNRG. “What I have found over the years is that the reason they are called bitchy or some version of that, by their team or colleagues, comes down to one thing: the perception of being ‘too’ assertive. Yes, being called bitchy can also be a way for employees to undermine a women leader they don’t like or are jealous of.”
Which can be a serious problem in an industry that is well-served by women in the CEO and president’s chair – like insurance.
However, Polsky said complaints about a boss’ behaviour could also be genuine concerns.
He surveyed professionals on their perceptions of bitchy bosses and found that 89 per cent said it reduced team productivity, while 87 per cent said they or someone on their team had left their job because of it.
Polsky came up with strategies to help women in roles which require assertiveness to change negative perceptions.
1. Make feedback a personal matter
“Carrie was asked to get coaching because her team wrote a letter to HR saying that she was terrorizing them and needed to be removed. She was shocked. I discovered that her feedback being perceived as overly aggressive. Her team worked in an open cubicle space. To be efficient she would pop into the cubicle and give feedback right there. In essence, she was giving her team feedback, in public. Employees were offended, hurt and embarrassed because they knew others could hear. They felt that constructive feedback was very personal and should only be shared in private, so their peers wouldn’t hear it.” (continued.)
#pb#
2. Try ‘side to side’
“In addition to location, body position is also important to consider when giving feedback. Have you ever noticed that men do things side by side? So to reduce the impression that you are overly aggressive, you might try sitting side to side with a man when discussing touchy subjects and not looking at him directly. Sometimes intense direct eye contact can be perceived as challenging, judgmental or aggressive.”
3. Know when to fight
“Susan, the new leader of a technology group, was a hard-driving doer. After a few months her team had disengaged. Without realizing it, her fast-moving, winning-focused approach had left her team reluctant to contribute. Whenever a new idea emerged from the team, she would debate it and try to win by taking their idea and making it better. The result was they felt insulted and micromanaged. Susan learned from this when it was important enough to fight to improve an idea, and when it was better to have her team's idea be the 'winning' idea.”
4. Share your heart
“A key turning point for Susan (the leader from the example above) was when she apologised to her team in a team meeting I was facilitating. I was personally moved when she spoke from her heart about how much she cared about her team, and was driven to make the team and everyone in it a success. So don't be afraid, in the privacy of your team, to open up and let them know what drives you and what makes you who you are.”
5. Don't overcompensate
“Paula was the only women on the management team in an engineering company. Her complaint was that she was being minimized and not being listened to. It turned out that Paula was overcompensating for the male culture. Knowing that the men were heard by being loud and overpowering each other's ideas, so she would do the same. Instead, she learned to ask a lot of questions, understand their point of view first – and then present her ideas, considering their needs and position. This doesn’t mean coddling your male colleagues. Rather, it’s about showing that you value other people’s point of view when presenting your own.”
6. Use the Ed Koch approach
“Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, would walk through the streets saying, ‘How am I doing?’ waiting for feedback from the people. All of the examples above used the Ed Koch Approach, but after the situation became a problem. It is far more effective to use the Ed Koch Approach before there is an issue, on an ongoing basis, creating an ongoing dialogue about how to be a better leader.”
