This is the third post in a series of posts inspired by reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. In the previous post, I shared some of the statistics from Sandberg's book and other sources that show that women are underrepresented in leadership and technical roles. Even in fields where women dominate leadership positions, like human resources roles, they are underpaid compared to their male counterparts.
In this post, I'll share some notes from the book that may explain why this disparity persists.
Is it a confidence game?
One of the reasons Sandberg cites for women being underrepresented may be tied to a lack of confidence, or perhaps a surplus of confidence from their male counterparts.
"An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements. This difference has a huge ripple effect. Women need to shift from thinking 'I'm not ready to do that' to thinking 'I want to do that -- and I'll learn by doing it.'" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 62)
Sandberg goes on to share an anecdote from Cisco's then chief technology officer, Padmasree Warrior. The Huffington Post asked her, "What's the most important lesson you've learned from a mistake you've made in the past?" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 35)
Warrior responds,
"I said no to a lot of opportunities when I was just starting out because I thought, 'That's not what my degree is in' or 'I don't know about that domain.' In retrospect, at a certain point it's your ability to learn quickly and contribute quickly that matters. One of the things I tell people these days is that there is no perfect fit when you're looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 35)
Sandberg elaborates on the confidence issue, "self-doubt becomes a form of self-defense... We put ourselves down before others can." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 41)
I've been told throughout my career that I'm self-effacing, overly modest and too self-critical. I never recognized until reading these words that it could be a form of self-defense. Like Warrior, I've also held myself back from applying for roles I was interested in because I didn't think I was a perfect fit.
We do ourselves a disservice when we sell ourselves short and hold ourselves back due to a lack of confidence, thinking we can't learn some new thing quickly enough. I'm reminded of attending interview training when I worked at Microsoft. Confidence was one of the things that we were asked to assess as data supports to the idea that confidence is a predictor of employee effectiveness.
Confidence isn't fixed, fortunately. We can improve our self-efficacy through new achievements. The old saying that "Success breeds success," is true. As managers, we can help by encouraging our teams; reminding them that we believe in them; giving them more responsibility and increasingly challenging tasks; being there when they need help, and when the fail at something, helping them reflect on, learn from the failure, and move on. Too much focus on failures undermines confidence.
Self-doubt holds us all back, and Sandberg points to data indicating this is a bigger problem for women than for men, hence it contributes to the disparity in female representation in leadership and technical roles. In the next post in this series, I'll continue to exploring more of the reasons for this disparity.
If you need a little confidence boost, put on your headphones and crank this up.
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