|
Nearly
all of us feel at odds with the organizations we work
for at one time or another. Many who don’t fit in with
the corporate culture choose to assimilate or leave.
In
everyday interactions people face choices: to remain silent
or speak up, to ignore an offensive comment or challenge
it, to comply with stereotypical expectations or challenge
them, to pass as an insider or stand out as an outsider.
Whatever the motivation, when people remain silent—even
as observers—in response to demeaning interactions, their
silence reinforces existing patterns of power and exclusion.
And people do remain silent—often not by conscious choice
but because they feel that they have no choice. They feel that their survival in the organization requires
that they not speak up.
It
isn't surprising that so many people respond this way.
When people feel threatened, they tend to become defensive,
their creativity shuts down, and they think they have
no options. In many face-to-face interactions, people
do not have time to step back and consider anything beyond
instinctive responses. And often instincts and fear point
to silence. In short, when we do not clearly see that
we have reasonable and doable options, we can feel victimized by circumstances and helpless
to do anything about them.
Yet,
in these moments, we may face an opportunities to break
negative cycles of inaction and consciously pursue alternatives
that will improve the workplace.
Martha,
an employee at a company I researched for my book, Tempered
Radicals, was faced with this kind of test. During
a compensation meeting, a recurring bias was evident that
nobody else seemed to notice. She had seen this dynamic
before, but this time she felt it was so blatant and consequential
that she could not let it persist.
A
man and a woman who held comparable jobs were being considered
for promotions. Executives sometimes found the man's aggressiveness
less than endearing, but they accepted it because he was
charming with clients, who loved him. The woman was equally
good, equally accomplished, and equally loved by her clients,
though far less aggressive. The woman noticed after a
while that she wasn’t being offered the same opportunities
as her male counterpart and decided to talk more about
her accomplishments so that colleagues would notice.
During
this particular compensation meeting, the participants
not only tolerated the man's aggressiveness and self-promotion
but discussed how his behavior would make him very successful.
In the same meeting, the same people castigated the woman's
efforts to shed light on her own accomplishments and labeled
her as self-promoting. Martha recalled how she brought
the issue to the fore: “I
finally said, ‘Look, I just find it odd that he is arrogant
and all you do is laugh about it and think it's fine.
And she, who no one would describe as nearly as arrogant—you
say she's self-promoting if she says one word on her own
behalf.’ I
said, ‘I don't understand. Please explain this. They both
have clients loving them. Why does he get such high marks
and she is not getting any recognition? She probably works
harder.’”
Martha
named
the issue then corrected
the encounter by pointing to the underlying double standards
in her colleagues' assessments. She left no room for doubt:
"I had to say it. No one wants to address this sort
of thing, but in this case, I had to say it."
Martha
was usually not this direct in her challenges, and often
she chose not to say anything. But she saw this interaction
as a particularly good opportunity to raise awareness
among her colleagues about double standards that she herself
experienced.
In
this instance, the demonstration of double standards was
pretty blatant. But sometimes biases are so deeply embedded
in normal practice that they are not evident and it seems
that you are creating the issue by raising it. In such
cases, you risk being seen as a troublemaker or complainer,
particularly if you are perceived as one who has been
wronged or are otherwise personally implicated in the
latent issue. Women who speak up about harassment, for
example, are often accused of causing the problem because
they provoked the behavior or simply because they have
a "chip on their shoulder."
In situations in which you are personally invested
in an issue it can be very effective for a third party
to step in and raise the concerns as a neutral witness.
Find a coworker who is sympathetic to the situation and
will discuss the situation as the neutral witness.
You
have the choice to step forward and take action—to be
among the many individuals working toward positive change.
See
WomensMedia's
Latest Articles. You may also be interested
in Nancy Clark's ezine article Double
Standards in the Workplace.
Debra
E. Meyerson is the author of Tempered Radicals
- How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work,
published by Harvard Business School Press, 2001, and
co-author of the widely circulated "Modest Manifesto for
Shattering the Glass Ceiling," Harvard Business Review,
Jan. 2000. She is associate professor at Stanford’s
School of Education and faculty at Stanford’s Graduate
School of Business. Debra is currently on leave, but can
be reached at debmeyerson@earthlink.net.
|
Gender
in Business: 