I work with a lot of female leaders, many of whom struggle with how to show up authentically as themselves and still get ahead. Many feel like they have to compromise parts of themselves to achieve professional success, and especially so if their work is in a traditionally more “masculine” field. There’s tons of great information out there about ways women can break the glass ceiling, close the gender pay gap, and “lean in” differently, but what many of these women forget is that, regardless of how “perfectly” they show up and walk the tightrope towards those goals, they’re still dependent on the behavior of others in power to get what they want. And unfortunately, power is disproportionately skewed towards men. And more unfortunately, unconscious bias thrives, especially for those with power and little self-awareness.
Decisions about your job are made at the discretion of your higher ups, and those people are still statistically likely to be men, especially the higher up in an organization you go. We know this. They just made a movie about this (have you seen “Bombshell” yet?!). While you’re hopefully not in a situation in which you’re being exploited to “earn” a promotion — and if you are, please seek the assistance of a trusted HR colleague, a therapist, a lawyer and/or others in positions of power — power differentials are real, and they show up all over the place, sometimes invisibly.
The tricky part about power (and privilege) is that people who have it tend not to notice how much of it they have or the impact of how they’re wielding it. “This is how we do it around here'“ and “we need to see you demonstrate the kind of leadership our company demands before we can move you up” are common examples. … But what’s the choice for a person in this situation? Fall in line or shut up, right? Well, that’s nice if falling in line is consistent with who you are and the skills you’re capable of developing, but it’s harder if “the kind of leadership our company demands” is actually code for “acting more like a white guy.”
I recently worked with a wonderful female executive who was clinging with dear life to her executive role and pushing as hard as she could for her position not to be restructured under one of her male colleagues. I could understand her reticence. Unfortunately, while she was strategizing and worrying about the security of her senior role, she became so stressed and overworked by the situation that her performance declined, which ultimately gave the other execs the rationale they needed to put her into a more structured position. This meant she would now be held accountable by her male colleague. Subtle and unintentionally marginalizing, but effective.
“Accountability” is an interesting word, because it’s used to imply different things. Sometimes people use it to mean setting expectations and measuring progress against stated goals — which is very reasonable and necessary in a workplace — but other times what people mean by it is that “I’m the boss and you need to do what I say.” Again, subtle. The boss does have the power to tell you what to do, but the assumption is that they will act with good faith discernment about what is appropriate and necessary to ask of you. When what the boss actually wants, though, is for you to fall in line in a way that makes their life easier (because it’s easier to deal with somebody who is less “sensitive” or “emotional” or is someone who “gets it,” for example), it damages relationships and exaggerates the power differential in a really problematic way.
So, if you’re a leader, what do you mean by holding your people “accountable”? … And here’s the harder question: Are you being honest with yourself about that? Are you really using your power as a way to measure your peoples’ performance against the organization’s goals, or are you using it for your own benefit? Altruism doesn’t always come naturally, but it’s necessary to lead organizations to success. America has checks and balances on power for a reason, and with hope, it will stay that way.
And if you’re trying to move up? Keep performing at your best, keep teaching about unconscious bias and the damage it does, and keep pushing for what you want.