I want to return to a theme we’ve talked about on this show a couple of times in the past, and that is the disparity and sel- confidence, or self-promotion or whatever you want to call it between men and women entrepreneurs.
I was thinking about this this past week as I once again got ghosted by a female entrepreneur who was supposed to be a guest on the show.
Now, for the record, I only have anecdotal information. But in the now three-plus years that I’ve been doing this show, I have never been ghosted in a conversation about appearing on the show or been ghosted, really in any way by any male entrepreneurs.
But I have been several times by women entrepreneurs. I’ve had lots of conversation with potential women, entrepreneur guests, where it’s clear, they’re very reluctant to be on the show. We have an introductory chat, but we never managed to get the interview on the calendar. They don’t get back to me they scheduled but they cancel at the last minute, or they say they’re just too busy.
Too busy to talk to the media for a few minutes, too busy for free publicity, or the chance for free to showcase your business and your story.
Now, understand we’re talking about entrepreneurs here. And that’s a pretty unique mindset or set of personalities, however you want to look at it. But I’ve not had a single male. Well, that’s not quite true — I had one — a venture capitalist– tell me that now was not a good time. He didn’t say no, he just said he had too much going on at the moment.
So the disparity between male and female entrepreneurs has been really striking to me.
What the heck’s going on here? Clearly, either women lack confidence, or they fear or are apprehensive about the spotlight. Or don’t think it’s important to self-promote? I’m not sure what’s going on here.
So I did some research and came across a pretty interesting study by the Women of Influence, out of Canada. And it suggests that at least part of the problem is the underlying fear of negative consequences.
The study documented that this really is a thing. They’ve even given it a name: the Tall Poppy Syndrome. The term started out in Australia, and referred to anybody who stood out too much. The idea being you want a nice uniform field of poppies. So a poppy that gets too tall needs to be cut down. And since then, it’s kind of been taken at least in North America to be used by women advocate, to refer to highly successful women who get cut down.
Anyway, in this Tall Poppy Syndrome study, which surveyed more than 1500 high-performing women, more than 87% of them felt that their successes had been undermined in some way in the workplace, either by their boss or by their peers.
And note: this study only looked at undermining that took place in the workplace. It did NOTlook at all the other places that women can be undermined for their success. And as someone who has personally experienced this, I believe this undercutting is even more painful and memorable because work can just be work but if you have you’re undermined by little digs, or comments or things that you hear through the grapevine, things that you’re not invited to, whether it’s your spouse, it’s your family members, neighbors, people at your church, your friends, this kind of undercutting that happens in the workplace happens everywhere.
The undercutting really, I think you’ll start to see, is really about our society in general and women standing out. It’s not about just the workplace.
I think it’s like putting your fingers on a hot stove and you get burned. You do it a few times and get burned — you feel intense shame, you feel pain, and you stop trying to stand out.
And I have to tell you that I personally, on a number of occasions, have found myself downplaying a success, because I was trying not to be a tall poppy.
Interestingly, in this study — and again, I have to say it personally jives with my own experiences — men and women were found to be equally guilty in the undercutting.
The most common reasons that high performing women were cut down? The highest ranking one was jealousy. Second, were sexual or gender stereotypes, meaning women should be seen and not heard – that kind of thing. They need to be hard-working, but put their family first. And the third reason was feelings of insecurity or inadequacy on the part of the person doing the cutting.
As you can see, most of the cutting down that happened at work is more about the person doing the cutting than about the high achiever. But, you know, that doesn’t make it any less painful. It doesn’t make the digs, the ignoring, the behind the back gossiping and negative watercooler talk any less painful.
I think this is really tough to overcome. How do you fix someone else’s jealousy or feelings of inadequacy? That’s a big one.
I guess one thing that can be done is for managers to receive more awareness training of ways that maybe they unwittingly, or even willingly permit or tolerate some of this activity, in the hopes that it will slowly change our culture over time.
As for gender or sexual stereotypes, those are slowly changing over time, as my daughter reassures me. But this, too, has been very slow and difficult.
Just look at the national debate in the US that’s raging about abortion. It is clear there is still a very large segment of the population in the US who believe women should have less rights and they do not have the right to control their bodies.
People can go on and on about “right to life,” but if you take that whole thing towards its logical end, I don’t see how you get anywhere except women are less, at least in some key ways.
The implication clearly is: women are intended to bear and raise children, and that it’s their sacred duty to do so. And it’s their duty to raise the next generation of women to do more child raising and to raise strong boys who can rule the world, which is the rightful order of the world, apparently for many.
So what can we high-performaing, high-aspiring women do at a personal level to combat some of that pain? That knee jerk reaction to lay low and not make waves?
Well, one thing I found helpful and really well-done is a blog on a site called Refinery29. I love the name, but I don’t know why it’s called that.
Anyway, the female author wrote a blog about her experience trying 30 different things to boost her self-confidence. She polled all of her women friends and colleagues and asked them for their best tips for things that had helped them boost their confidence.
I can tell you that hers is kind of a wild list. I gotta say: I need to know some of her friends! On the list were things like trying naked yoga, daily affirmations, stand up comedy and skydiving.
You can try some of the things on this list, or just for funsies, you could even do your own poll of your friends and colleagues and come up with your own list to try.
I think the key is to keep trying different things until you find things that work for you. You know, it, I thought it was interesting– but really probably not surprising — that all 30 of these things can pretty much be put into two buckets: (1) continue to do things that are out of your comfort zone; and (2) do things to better identify and control negative thought patterns.
Doing things out of your comfort zone definitely builds confidence, even if you aren’t very good at it with every activity you do. You know, you have overcome the uncertainty, the speed bump that makes you think, “Ah, no, I’m not sure I want to do that.” Well, once you do that, you know, you can do it, you did do it, you live to tell about it.
Second, there is so much research out there that shows that this the cycle of negative thoughts that we often have, and that swirl around in our brains — often without our thinking about it, really do affect our reality.
Thinking becomes reality. And it is possible to change your negative thoughts, your lack of self confidence, your self doubt, and substitute those thoughts with something more positive.
I’ve already tried a bunch of things on this lady’s list (no, I haven’t managed the naked yoga thing yet!). And the blogger found as I did the daily affirmations do really help.
Now I have all these ridiculous post it notes all over my office and my house, d my friends tease me about them. But it’s good-natured teasing — as long as I don’t feel like they’re cutting me down. And if they do, they don’t get invited back.
And the post it notes fall off from time to time, and so that’s my signal that it’s time to change it to a new mantra, and I just put a new affirmation up. So that way as I walk through the house (I work from home), I am reminded to think more positive thoughts about life and about myself.
Another one that worked for me. And this is super easy. It was surprisingly not on the Refinery 29 lady’s list, but came from another friend. And that was to simply smile more often.
A customer service rep is driving you crazy? Smile. Make yourself smile, find the humor in it. You read something in the news that upsets you? Turn it off, find a funny cartoon and smile.
Just try it. It might work for you, too!