Friendship

Where Are the Women in Technology?

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number of women in computer science has dropped off steeply in the last twenty years, while the technology industry has grown dramatically, and technology companies are complaining that they cannot find enough workers. Here are some interesting facts:

  • In 1985, women made up 37 percent of undergraduates majoring in computer sciences. In 2012, less than 18 percent were women, according to the National Science Foundation.
  • In 1990, 34 percent of those employed in computer occupations were women. By 2011, 27 percent were women, according to the US Census Bureau.
  • An editorial in the New York Times on October 25, 2014, shared that a 2008 report published by the Harvard Business Review found that women quit high-tech jobs at twice the rate of men.
  • At Microsoft, only 17 percent of the technological positions are occupied by women, which is average in the industry.
No one factor can explain the poor representation of women in technology, but the unwelcoming cultures and biases in many technology companies have to play a big part. Consider these challenges women face in technology environments:
  • Being the only woman on a team or in a meeting can get lonely.
  • Masculine workplace cultures often value or condone very combative and competitive behavior that is uncomfortable for many women.
  • Women often feel talked down to or are given subtle messages that they don’t belong in technology.
  • Some women feel their male bosses give credit to male peers for work they have done. They feel invisible.
There is a general cluelessness among many male leaders. The chief executive at Microsoft recently told a room full of professional women that they don’t need to ask for raises. They should just trust the system to be equitable, and they will get raises if their karma is good. Really? Where has he been? My niece recently graduated from engineering school where she was one of very few women. She now has her first job with a large aeronautics company, and she loves her job. She was crying when she called me one day recently. One of her male peers had said to her, “Forget about advancing here. Just look around. You’ll see that women don’t make it as engineers, and you won’t make it either.” She asked me, “Is it true?” This conversation with her broke my heart. A spate of recent articles have put a spotlight on the gender gap in technology companies. This attention is causing some of these companies to admit they need to change and become more welcoming to women. This is hopeful. Women are just as talented in math and science as men, and we want jobs that pay well like those in technology. What we need is the chance to work in environments where we can thrive. Let’s keep up the pressure for change.  ]]>

Can I Be Your Friend and Your Boss?

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I really like one of the women I supervise, and we have become friends. We’ve started socializing outside of work, and I really enjoy her company. Lately she has been coming in late and leaving early. I feel she is taking advantage of our friendship, but it is awkward for me. I don’t know what to say or how to say it. I am really uncomfortable with confrontation, and I don’t want to damage our friendship. What should I do? Gladys needs to learn to handle two challenges in this situation: (1) dealing with conflict or confrontation and (2) eliminating boundary confusion to have healthy relationships with coworkers as both a boss and a friend. Women in my research and my women clients frequently report these as common challenges.

Avoiding Conflict

Paula, a nurse who participated in my research on women’s relationships in the workplace, sums up the theme of avoiding conflict with friends as follows, “We weren’t raised that way [to be direct and confrontational]. We were told that women didn’t do that … you were to be seen and not heard.” “Seen and not heard”—I remember being told this when I was growing up. I thought I had to avoid confrontation because it could damage a relationship and was not “nice.” But I eventually realized that damage to the relationship was much more likely to occur by avoiding conflict and not dealing directly with differences. By letting bad feelings pile up, I was creating distance and mixed messages. Dealing directly with misunderstandings or hurt feelings and clearing them up actually makes relationships stronger. Many of us don’t have the skills to be direct, but excellent resources are available for learning these skills.

Boundary Confusion

Boundary confusion grows out of one of our strengths as women—we are often comfortable with having fluid boundaries and developing friendships with bosses and colleagues at work. Scholars agree that women tend to emphasize the fluid nature of the boundaries between personal life and work life. But fluid boundaries can also cause confusion. Scholars, and about 25 percent of the women in my research, propose that women bosses learn to distinguish between being friends and being friendly with other women at work. I would go a step further and say that this does not need to be an either/or option. We can be both friends and friendly as the boss, but we need to be able to name our role—boss or friend—in any given interaction. We also need to have a clear understanding of how the relational expectations differ for these two roles.

Use a Tool Called Role Hats

Gladys can be the boss of her friend, and they can be friends outside of work. I say “outside of work” because it is important that Gladys’s other direct reports not see her showing favoritism in the work environment toward her friend. The key is for Gladys and her friend to learn how to discuss and negotiate their roles and relationship boundaries. Sharon, the CEO of a healthcare services organization, describes a useful tool called role hats: To be friends at work requires total transparency. I explicitly name the role that I’m coming from—boss or friend. And we are always clear about how the hats work—what I can and cannot talk about when I have my boss hat on and how I see my responsibilities. We can also be friends outside of work as long as we stay clear about our hats. The key, then, is to be explicit about your expectations. Gladys can let her friend know that as the boss she is responsible for managing the workload and morale of her department. Accordingly, her friend cannot come in late and leave early. Here are some steps she (and you) can take to clarify role boundaries at work:
  1. Start by sharing your desire to maintain your friendship and have a good work relationship as well.
  2. Name all the functional roles involved in the relationship, such as boss, friend, or colleague.
  3. Discuss each person’s needs in each role, and really listen to each other.
  4. Exchange suggestions for behaviors that could meet each person’s needs in each role.
  5. Establish ground rules for how you will alert each other to your use of a role hat, such as:
    1. Ask me which hat I’m wearing.
    2. Ask me to change hats any time, and I will tell you if I can and why (or why not).
Good relationships, both inside of work and outside, are important for our well-being, satisfaction, and success. Keeping them strong and healthy takes some effort, but it’s worth it!]]>

Are Women Better Decision Makers?

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recent article in the New York Times by Therese Huston says yes!—women are better decision makers in stressful situations. Huston cites research by several neuroscientists that shows that in low-stress situations, women and men make decisions about risk in similar ways. When stress is introduced, however, women bring some unique strengths to the table that result in better decisions. Here are some examples of the positive impact women have had:

  • Credit Suisse examined 2,400 global corporations from 2005 to 2011, which includes the years just before and after the financial crisis, and found that companies with at least one woman on their board outperformed comparable companies with all-male boards by 26 percent.
  • Several studies show that investments run by female hedge-fund managers outperformed those run by male managers.

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Why Confidence Matters for Women and How to Get More of It

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  • Doubted yourself and felt you didn’t deserve a promotion or success?
  • Felt you were a fraud or an imposter?
  • Blamed yourself when a project or exam did not go well?
  • Realized you had asked for less than you could have gotten in a negotiation?
  • Obsessed about being perfect as you researched, prepared, or copyedited your presentation?
  • Hesitated about putting yourself forward for a promotion or other opportunity?
    • If any of these thoughts, feelings, or actions are familiar, you are in good company. Scholars Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, in their Atlantic Monthly article, “The Confidence Gap,” summarize a large collection of research that shows the negative impact of women’s lack of confidence:
    • Men overestimate and women underestimate their readiness for promotions, their abilities, and their actual performance. Women apply for promotions only when they meet 100 percent of the qualifications. Men apply when they meet only 50 percent.
    • Men initiate salary negotiations four times more often than women do, and women ask for 30 percent less money when they do negotiate.
    • Women assume blame when things go wrong, and men blame external circumstances.
    • Women feel the pressure of perfectionism—which actually limits productivity—much more than men.

     What You Can Do to Overcome the Confidence Gap

    Though the confidence gap may seem daunting, you can overcome it. The following actions can help you increase your confidence in the workplace—and beyond:

    Develop a Support System

    Create and nurture a support system of people, women and men, who understand the gender dynamics related to confidence. Your support system should include people from your personal, professional, and organizational contexts who will challenge and encourage you to put yourself forward for opportunities that you may not feel you are qualified for, negotiate for higher salaries and fees, and stretch yourself to do “good enough” work rather than trying to be perfect. As an executive coach, I often push my female clients to ask for double the amount they were going to ask for—or for a significantly higher title than the one offered—and they often get it. And as we know, women have to “smile” while negotiating to avoid being seen as too assertive and, therefore, unlikeable.

    2. Be an Ally to Others and an Effective Boss

    Other women need you to challenge and encourage them to ask for more and to do “good enough” work. Male colleagues can also be important allies, and both male and female bosses need to help their female employees overcome the confidence gap. Many male bosses hesitate to tell female employees that they seem to lack confidence for fear of being seen as sexist. In fact, they may see a female employee as not being ready for a promotion if she doesn’t speak out in meetings when she may feel she is too junior to participate. Understanding gender dynamics can help bosses see that they need to use different approaches to support male and female staff. One of my coaching clients, a male CEO who has an all-female management team, does a great job of seeing the pattern and naming it. He pushes his female managers to apply for promotions they don’t think they are ready for and to face challenges that they hesitate to take on. They have responded to his encouragement and gone on to great success.

    3. Build Skills

    The good news is that showing confidence involves skills that can be learned. Classes in negotiation, presentation, meeting management, and feedback skills can help you feel and be perceived as more confident. A women’s leadership development program can teach you more about how to be successful in the business environment while leveraging your unique strengths as a woman. Scholar Richard Petty says, “Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action.” Don’t hesitate. Even in the face of self-doubt, which will always be lurking just under the surface for many of us, push yourself! Each success will build your confidence.]]>

    The Promise and Challenge of Mixed-Gender Teams

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    research recently published by MIT economists. In fact, the gender-balanced offices in the study produced 41 percent more revenue than single-sex workplaces.

    Why Higher Performance?

    The key to higher performance in this study is that the more highly productive teams were gender balanced. In other words, roughly equal numbers of women and men made up the teams rather than only token representatives. What might account for this higher performance?
    1. More voice for everyone. When there are roughly equal numbers of women and men on a team, both women and men will be more likely to get their ideas heard and influence the culture of the team.
    2. More perspectives. A diversity of perspectives is bound to result in better decisions and solutions, and help avoid groupthink. A recent Time magazine story by Sallie Krawcheck shows what can result from the absence of diversity in the workplace. Krawcheck tells her story of being fired from her position running Smith Barney at Citi during the financial crisis. The only woman in senior leadership at Citi, she was fired for diverging from the groupthink of the financial industry and daring to suggest that clients should be partly reimbursed for the losses caused by selling them high-risk products. Before she was fired, she would not have said that her approach to decision making was related to her gender. After she was fired, Krawcheck’s research helped her understand that women tend to be more risk averse and client-relationship focused—a value that the financial industry needed. The gender-balanced teams in the MIT study were probably able to leverage a diversity of perspectives and, therefore, showed superior results.
    3. More skills. A broader range of skills and experience is available in diverse teams, which could contribute to better results.

    Why Less Happiness?

    When the MIT research was released, a reporter from the Boston Globe called me and said, “I’m surprised! This study shows higher levels of trust, cooperation, and enjoyment of the workplace in single-sex offices. Shouldn’t this ‘social capital’ translate into higher productivity?” But it doesn’t. Feeling happier and more comfortable in single-sex offices does not produce higher performance. Working in gender-balanced teams produced more revenue but less enjoyment, or less happiness, in the workplace. “I’m not surprised,” I told her. And here’s why:
    1. Gender is a cultural difference, and communicating across cultural differences is not easy. Cross-cultural interactions take effort and are fraught with opportunities for misunderstanding. We also now understand that gender is a continuum with more than two variations on gender shaping our perspectives—and creating even more opportunities for misunderstanding.
    2. History can shape our interactions. Men often say they feel they have to “walk on eggshells” around women colleagues out of fear of saying something offensive. Women often say they feel they have to be more assertive than is comfortable for them to get their ideas heard and are then told they are hard to work with. This view that working with gender diversity takes more effort was recently confirmed by a male client who proudly described the gender-balanced team he had led for a state-wide change effort. He said, “We accomplished amazing things together because we were able to leverage our differences.” Then he said, “By the end we were all exhausted by the effort it took to work together—but it was worth it.”
    Do you have the skills to work cross-culturally? It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.]]>

    Four Tips for Thriving in the Workplace from Women CEOs

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    New York Times, Adam Bryant interviewed four women CEOs about how to thrive in the workplace. These leaders described “headwinds” or challenges they have faced as women leaders and tips for how to overcome them. Examples of their headwinds included

    • Receiving feedback during performance reviews that they dress too sternly or smile too much or too little—thereby making other people uncomfortable
    • Receiving promotions without adequate resources to do the job
    • Feeling they needed to downplay their accomplishments to fit in
    • Being underestimated or not given the benefit of the doubt
    Have you experienced any of these headwinds? If so, here are some tips from the CEOs about how to overcome them.

    Four Tips for Thriving in the Workplace

    Tip #1: Take a stand about your performance. If you get performance feedback that focuses on personal attributes, behaviors, or appearance, and your performance results are strong, insist that your results be the focus. Here’s what one of the CEOs said to her boss, respectfully, early in her career when he told her people were uncomfortable with how sternly she dressed: “From this point on, I want you to judge me on my performance, not my appearance.” After that, he did. Tip #2: Toot your own horn. Self-promotion can be difficult for many women because we are socialized to “fit in” and not stand out, but we need to stand out to realize our potential in organizations. To get recognition from senior leaders, be prepared to strategically remind them of your experience and accomplishments. This can be helpful in meetings when you are having trouble being heard. As CEO Dara Richardson-Heron noted, women often mistake words for voice. In other words, it is not enough to be at the table and say something. For Richardson-Heron, voice means “having a track record of success and accomplishments” that you remind people about from time to time so they want to listen to you. You should also toot your own horn when being underestimated or overlooked for opportunities. One of my clients recently found that she needed to start systematically reminding the senior leaders in her company of her accomplishments and her career goals because they kept overlooking her when opportunities arose for promotions. She created a two-minute elevator speech about her strengths and accomplishments that she repeated frequently. She got promoted. Tip #3: Cultivate allies and sponsors. Women need both women and men to be their allies and sponsors. Conversations among decision makers about perceptions of our performance often take place in meetings or settings where we are not present. We need to let key people know our career goals and our accomplishments so that they can put in a good word for us when opportunities arise and help us get the benefit of the doubt when people are questioning our performance or when we have been asked to take on a role without proper resources. We can shape the narrative about how we are perceived if we keep key people informed about our talents and successes and if we let them know what support we need. Tip #4:  Be authentic. The pressure is strong to “fit in” to an organization’s leadership mold or to respond to feedback about being too harsh or too nice. The CEOs interviewed for the New York Times article and author Sylvia Ann Hewlett agree that an important part of having leadership presence is being authentic. Being nice, smiling, or leading collaboratively isn’t wrong if you are able to get results. As CEO Jenny Ming explained, you can make a tough decision and “still act on it in a nice way. Why not?”]]>

    Why We Need Friends at Work

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    New York Times recently agreed with the ancient writers that friendships bring out our better selves, radiating social and political benefits that we all need. A number of scholars have written about the way adult women’s friendships outside of work help us stay upright in the face of life’s challenges. Jean Baker Miller and Irene Pierce Stiver wrote about the benefits to women’s mental and emotional health that result from having the support of other women in the workplace. Yet many of my coaching clients have lost touch with their old friends. The demands of work and family do not leave time for friends outside of work. The pressures of advancing in their careers make them feel they need to keep some distance from other women at work with whom they may be competing for promotions, or whom they may supervise one day. I’ve heard countless stories about two women being friends as peers, but when one gets promoted, the friendship ends because they don’t know how to handle the change. I think we need strong friendships at work, and I believe we can build them and maintain them, even as we compete for promotions and become each other’s bosses. The key is that we need to learn how to talk about and negotiate our expectations of each other as our roles shift and change—both inside and outside of work. Many women have difficulty with these conversations, but talking gets easier with practice. Why do we need friendships at work?

    • To test out ideas and get feedback we trust
    • For sanity checks when confusing situations arise at work
    • To vent frustrations so we can release them and move on
    • To celebrate our successes
    • To know who we can count on for help in a crisis
    • To speak up for each other and to help get our voices heard in meetings
    • To get work done in an enjoyable atmosphere
    • To prop each other up when times are hard—both inside and outside of work
    Why do you need friendships at work? Let me know.  ]]>

    Don’t Discuss Friendship Rules

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  • “She should know what she did.”
  • “I shouldn’t have to say anything. She should be able to figure it out.”
  • “There isn’t any point in bringing it up because she would just get defensive.”
  • “I can’t trust her now so what’s the point?”
    • The taboo against discussion means that mismatched assumptions may not be discovered until damage has been done to the relationship. Vana, a Latina manager in the United States in her forties, explained,

    We never really stop and talk about what we expect from each other as friends. I know I would always help you out, but we never stop and say those things. We just, in our minds, expect it—and it’s our own fault that we get burned sometimes.

    It becomes even more imperative to be able to name and discuss our friendship rules in the workplace, where boundary and role confusion also enter the picture. We must learn to articulate and negotiate our friendship rules and develop relational courage so that we can stay present and in relationships when other women do not meet our expectations.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    How Friendly to Be When You Are the Boss

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    women tend to emphasize the fluid nature of the boundaries between personal life and work life. But fluid boundaries can also cause confusion. One research participant, Penny, an administrator in higher education, explained, “My female staff will come to me and say, ‘How’s your boyfriend?’ They feel like a relationship with me should be all access.” Penny wanted to be friendly but was afraid of undermining her authority as the boss. She wondered whether she should just keep a distance and stay aloof. In conducting research for my book on women’s relationships in organizations, New Rules for Women: Revolutionizing the Way Women Work Together, I found that women expect closer relationships with female bosses than with male bosses. Sheri, a technology manager, expressed it this way: I had a woman boss who was more task focused, and it made it harder for me to work for her. With a guy, I would have expected [a task focus], but I expected a little bit more of a relationship from her. It was all she could do to say, “How was your weekend?” That made it real uncomfortable for me. If a guy did that, it wouldn’t bother me as much. This difference in expectations means that when female bosses do not invest the time to be friendly with female employees, these employees may not be as motivated or productive as they could be. The good news is that our comfort with fluid relationship boundaries can contribute to our successes at building teams and highly productive workforces. The bad news is that fluid boundaries can cause confusion and damage relationships when not handled well. What is the answer? Scholars, and about 25 percent of the women in my research, propose that women bosses learn to distinguish between being friends and being friendly with other women at work. I would go a step further and say that this does not need to be an either/or option. We can be both friends and friendly as the boss, but we need to be able to name our role—boss or friend—in any given interaction. We also need to have a clear understanding of how the relational expectations differ for these two roles. Use a Tool Called Role Hats Women leaders can learn to manage role and relationship boundaries. We can be friendly and still be respected as the boss. We can even be the bosses of friends without damaging the relationship. The key is to learn how to discuss and negotiate our role and relationship boundaries. Sharon, the CEO of a healthcare services organization, applies a useful tool called role hats: To be friends at work requires total transparency. I explicitly name the role that I’m coming from—boss or friend. And we are always clear about how the hats work—what I can and cannot talk about when I have my boss hat on and how I see my responsibilities. We can also be friends outside of work as long as we stay clear about our hats. The key, then, is to be explicit about your expectations. We can be friendly and still be the boss, but we must be clear about what wearing the boss hat means to us, as well as make sure we understand our employees’ expectations of us. Here are some steps you can take to make this work:

    1. Name each person’s functional role, such as boss, friend, or colleague.
    2. Discuss each person’s needs in each role and really listen to one another.
    3. Exchange suggestions for behaviors that could meet each person’s needs in each role.
    4. Establish ground rules for how you will alert each other to your use of a role hat, such as:
      1. Ask me which hat I’m wearing.
      2. Ask me to change hats any time.
    5. Communicate honestly with each other whenever you cannot comply with a request and always explain why.
    Good relationships at work are important for our well-being, satisfaction, and success. Because many women expect more of a relationship from female bosses than from males, we need to learn to invest in relationships and to manage their boundaries when necessary. And we can do this.]]>

    Competing with a Friend for a Promotion: Can This Relationship Survive?

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    Other scholars have describedthese expectationsas relational images that develop early in life and are carried from one relationship to another, sometimes changing with new experiences. We don’t show up in the workplace as a blank slate. We carry with us all of the things we have learned, including our friendship rules and expectations. Men have friendship rules too, but because of differences in our gender socialization, theirs are not the same as ours. Women I talk with often marvel at the way men can disagree or compete at work and then go out for a beer together as though nothing happened, while women do not get over similar experiences with other women for a long time—if ever. What friendship rules could be making it harder for women to compete with a woman friend for a new job or promotion? My research validated the work of other scholars who describe a core of very common friendship rules. Not everyone has the same rules, and there will be variations for cultural differences. Below are the most commonly reported friendship rules:

    • Maintain unswerving loyalty.
    • Demonstrate trustworthiness.
    • Keep confidences.
    • Be a good listener.
    • Share gossip and air problems.
    • Provide self-disclosure.
    • Practice equality and acceptance, and refrain from disapproval.
    • Avoid discussion of the friendship rules.
    Could it be that it feels disloyal to compete with a woman friend for a job? Or could it be hard to face the possibility that you will no longer be equals after one of you gets the promotion? One thing is certain: if it is taboo to discuss friendship rules, our friendships will be at high risk for damage in competitive professional situations. Here are some tips for how you can both preserve relationships and compete with other women in the workplace. First, have a friendship-rules conversation. Include as many of these points as you can with your friend:
    1. Confirm that the friendship is important to you and you don’t want it to be damaged because you are both applying for the same job.
    2. Propose a friendship rule that you wish each other the best in pursuing the job.
    3. Suggest a friendship rule that whoever gets the job will have the full support of the other to be successful.
    4. Acknowledge to each other that applying for the position is not personal, it’s professional.
    Men compete with each other for jobs all the time and usually don’t take it personally. We can do this, too, women, if we are intentional and supportive in our relationships with each other. Let us know what has worked for you in competitive situations with a friend.]]>