https://hbr.org/2019/05/why-self-awareness-isnt-doing-more-to-help-womens-careers
Self-awareness is a crucial and foundational leadership skill in the corporate world today. Leaders who have an understanding of who they are and have awareness of how they’re seen by others are more productive. They create a more effective work environment, are more confident, respected, and promotable. This is why a recent article in The Harvard Business Review, “Why Self-Awareness Isn’t Doing More to Help Women’s Careers” by Tasha Eurich Is important to highlight. It discusses the gender disparities that exist even in self-awareness. Research has shown that women possess a slight advantage over men in being self-aware. Women are also more aware of the importance self-awareness plays in the success of their careers. Despite this, women continue to be underrepresented in senior leadership roles and are paid less than men. Eurich, an organizational psychologist and researcher, addresses why this is with three self-awareness lessons.
Understanding these can help all leaders foster an environment for productivity. Since women make up such a large portion of the workforce their productivity is a key concern as well as creating equal representation in senior leadership roles. At EII Consulting we teach you how to tackle these problems. Understanding some of the challenges the women on your team face will prepare them and you for success. So let’s address the question: why isn’t self-awareness doing more to help women’s careers? What can you as a leader do to change that in your organization?
Lesson 1: Women Underestimate themselves. Women in leadership positions are often confident in their own abilities. However, their ability to correctly predict how others see them is often underestimated. In one study, Eurich mentions that when both men and women were asked to predict how their supervisor would rate their emotional intelligence, women’s predictions were three times lower than men’s. When in reality, women were rated slightly higher by their supervisors than men were.
As a leader you need to make sure to your female employees that you value them and what they bring to your organization. This is the most important tool in your belt: coaching and empowering your team to believe in themselves and make sure they know you believe in them!
Lesson 2: Women aren’t getting good feedback. Feedback is essential to learn, grow and develop self-awareness in order to create a productive work environment. Women ask for feedback equally to men but they are less likely to receive quality contributions and adjustments to their work. Researchers call this, “benevolent sexism” referring to women being shielded from difficult information. Male supervisors or co-workers may avoid giving women negative feedback because they don’t want to hurt or upset them. Whether positive or negative the feedback women get is often vague. As a leader vague feedback is the least effective strategy that will overall hurt your organization. In this case, employees cannot spot any direct that can either be improved or that are valued by the organization.
This is the other side of the Lesson one’s coin. Empowering and coaching you team mean being honest and vulnerable. Being willing to admit to and acknowledge mistakes or areas for improvement builds trust. Trust will build the effectiveness of the team and ultimately improve productivity. Why hide from the truth? It almost always comes out in the long run, and most of your team know them anyway! So make sure to address issues as soon as you see them, privately and confidentially
Lesson 3: Women tend to take feedback to heart. There are three types of information they use to form who they are. 1. How we see ourselves 2. How others see us 3. Comparisons we make with others. Men place more importance on how they see themselves and comparisons they make with others. Women place more importance on how others see them and tend to modify their self-views when given feedback. This creates the desire to rely on others approval and focus on insecurities or shortcomings
at work.
You might note how these lesson all overlap with one another. This is one of the reasons women need to be coached and empowered differently than men. They are not less skilled, they just focus on different aspects of their self-awareness. This is why we at EII Consulting use tools like this research or the Myers Briggs Type Indicator; never to put someone into a box; we use them to understand how to bring the best out in them!
Understanding Self-Awareness
It’s important as a leader to foster an environment where ALL employees, both men and women, are able to thrive and be productive in the way that best suits them. As a leader, the first step is understanding your own self-awareness by forming how you see yourself. Assess your strengths, aspirations, hobbies and values to paint a picture of yourself. Understanding your own personal preferences and styles will develop a stronger view of yourself and where you stand within your team. At EII Consulting, using our program, Leadership Insurance, will help you to understand what it means to effectively lead your organization with these unique issues of self-awareness in mind. Being a good leader is more about the technical and strategic skills you have. It’s about coaching and empowering the people you have on your team and most importantly, measuring how they are doing.
Leadership is a skill that takes time as it is learned and practiced. We can help you take measure of obstacles like these along the way in order to develop a deep understanding of yourself and your team.
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