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The Confidence Myth
Why Women Undervalue Their Skills, and How to Get Over It
Helene Lerner
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eBook - ePub
The Confidence Myth
Why Women Undervalue Their Skills, and How to Get Over It
Helene Lerner
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About This Book
Not only do we need more female leaders at the top, but we need more women at all levels of business, government, and nonprofits to step up—there's no time to waste. The problem, says Helene Lerner, isn't so much that women lack confidence but that they misunderstand what confidence really is. True confidence isn't fearlessness; it's having the courage to jump in even when your knees are shaking. Any woman who waits until she feels 100 percent confident before offering a big idea or asking for a raise or promotion will never get anywhere. Drawing on her own and other female leaders' experiences, as well as on her survey of over 500 working women, Lerner lays out practical strategies for beating this confidence myth and overcoming obstacles like gender bias. The book features dozens of Confidence Sparks, simple but powerful exercises and techniques that can catapult anyone's career to the next level.
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1
Transform Fear by Stepping Up
MYTH
I canât tackle it now; Iâm not ready.
TRUTH
I can do it. What I donât know I will learn or delegate.
Our fears can prevent us from achieving great heights of success. They can distort reality and are often grounded in false beliefs, including erroneous messages due to gender prejudice. But when we step up and take action, we move through our fears.
Taking action in itself can bring up fear because we are moving outside our comfort zone. Thatâs okay because being challenged means we are growing. Confidence is the ability to step into uncharted territory and take the next right action, to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Giusy Buonfantino, president of North America Baby & Child Care at Kimberly-Clark, faced several challenges when she came to the United States from her native Italy. It was all new territory for her, but she never let fear hold her back. âI worked with a few men who didnât seem to understand my accent,â she confided. âWhat helped was for me to use hand signals to get my points across. Iâd put my hand up at a meeting to express my opinion.â1
Giusy didnât settle for the status quo, which solidified her position as an innovative thinker and a strong leader. Her advice to women is to keep offering suggestions: âI encourage women to share their unique ideas and not hold back. Voice your point of view. Donât be silent. Get your hand up in meetings,â she advises.
David Bidmead, global leader of multinational client service at Marsh, added, âWhen you leave your ego at the door and stop trying to be the smartest person in the room, your opinions and ideas will be more appropriately valued and appreciatedâ (and thatâs applicable to both genders). He told me that to be heard, women should offer insights regularly rather than only expressing the occasional opinion.
I followed that same valuable piece of advice early on in my career at the New York Times. I was asked to cover for a senior leader at a top-level meeting, which came as a surprise to me. Those directly above me were out in the field, so I was asked to stand in for them. This was my first significant interaction with top management and a big deal. I hadnât had time to prepare.
The meeting was on the executive floor. As I got off the elevator, I was nervous. But as David suggested, I parked my ego outside the door and walked in the room. I thought to myself, Just be of service. Offer your help when needed.
I listened carefully to what was being said. The men in the room were discussing a problem and I had an idea, so I spoke up. Admittedly, my voice was a little shaky, but they listened attentively. As a result of that experience, top management began viewing me as having leadership potential.
When the voice of fear is saying âhold back,â see it for what it is. Your fear may be grounded in a false belief about what will happen if you put yourself forward. With reflection, you might find that your fear has been stripped of its power and that stepping up doesnât seem as intimidating as before.
How we limit ourselves
As women, we encounter gender prejudices all the time. Sometimes we may even accept the biases we encounter as true, unaware that weâre doing so. For example, many of us have been brought up to play nice. We feel compelled not to rock the boat or appear confrontational, so we refrain from saying or doing what is necessary to get ahead.
But what if instead of trying to be nice, we respond authentically? What would that look like? For one, people would know where we really stand on the issues that are important to us. In addition, we would have more time to focus on making a difference and advancing our careers instead of trying to please other people.
The continually evolving workplace can be stressful and we need vigilance to monitor our thoughts and confront negative self-talk, what I call mad mind-chatter, that holds us back. I use this label because to think that we are not capable of achieving greater things is insane. In the Women and Confidence Survey we asked people what they would do to become more confident. Over half (58 percent) responded that they would âcounter negative mind-talk with more affirming thoughts.â We need to question the old ways of acting that limit us, and we need to adopt new behaviors.
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg says that we hold ourselves back by giving in to self-doubt and âlower[ing] our own expectations of what we can achieve.â She urges us to stop âpulling back when we should be leaning in.â2
Maybe you donât feel like you are ready to âlean in.â You still have a lot to learn, and for now, itâs better to stay on the sidelines. But no man or woman at any stage of his or her career is ever 100 percent prepared. That is the confidence myth. Now is the time to step up and question that negative belief that counsels you to hold back.
Jill Campbell, now COO of Cox Communications, was almost held back by mad mind-chatter that told her she was not ready to run a Fortune 500 company. When her first chance at the COO role came around, her self-doubt led her boss to think she didnât want the job. Jillâs âmoment of truthâ came when her boss told her he was giving someone else the position.
âWhen Pat Esser [my boss] suggested that I didnât want the COO position and appointed someone else instead, he could have thrown cold water all over me. I had no idea that I had been projecting self-doubt,â Jill shared.
âIt worked out fine because the new COO was a huge supporter of mine,â she went on. âHe helped me get a coach, and I started to handle the issues that stopped me from advancing. I was raised to be âniceâ and not to brag, to play down my abilities. When the COO position opened up again, I knew I could do it. I went to Pat and told him that I wanted to be next.â
Not surprisingly, the second time around Jill got the job. She did it by replacing her self-doubt with a more positive and honest appraisal of her abilities. When she believed in herself, she persuaded top management to do so as well.
Take inventory of your strengthsâactually make a list of them. Call to mind your current supervisor and previous managersâwhat else would they say about your strengths? Take this all in.
When you receive bad news, self-doubt can be the first place you go. In these stressful moments, spot your reactions and use your emotional intelligence to hold on to your sense of power. A few years back, I shared the stage with a senior leader whose company was undergoing a global reorganization. She modeled how to shake off limiting beliefs for over two hundred women attending when she talked about a job she was up for but didnât get.
âI got the news on Thursday that a coworker was promoted instead of me,â she revealed. âOf course I was upset, so much so that I took the afternoon off. For a few days, I was on the âpity pot.â I let myself get angry, sad, and fearful. But then I stepped back from my personal disappointment. I realized he was a better fit for that job than I was. It made sense to move him up,â she told us.
By showing her own struggle and explaining how she worked through it, this savvy leader gave the audience valuable insight into how to deal with upsets. She was able to assess the situation objectively and take action accordinglyâshe decided she needed to take her career in another direction and left the company a few months later.
I too have dealt with career upsets that have been difficult to handle, but by reaching out to my network, I was able to work through them. For example, when a strong supporter of mine unexpectedly did not come on board to fund one of my television shows, I was shocked. She delivered the news compassionately, saying we could revisit sponsorship next year, but I still felt so disappointedâI was barely able to get off the phone without my voice cracking.
I immediately called a friend who listened and supported me to move forward. I made many new business contacts that next year, but I also kept in touch with the sponsor. Sure enough, the following year she was on board again.
You may not always be able to remove yourself from the situation when you hear bad news. To deal with a disappointment on the spot, take a quick inventory of how you are feeling. Say your boss nixed your proposal without any explanation, and you know itâs a winner. He also indicated that he didnât want to talk about it further. Ask yourself: What am I feeling? Anger. Fear. Where am I feeling tension in my body? My jaw is clenched. I have stomach cramps. What action can I take that is in my best interest? Do nothing right now. When you have some distance from the incident, a next step might be to pitch your idea again down the road to your boss or to another manager. Brainstorm with a trusted colleague on how you might go about doing that. After you process the upset, move on.
Do you hold a negative belief that creates self-doubt and keeps you from thinking bigger? Perhaps a parent, teacher, close relative, or boss judged you harshly, and instead of questioning the comment, you believed it. In the Women and Confidence Survey, 54 percent of the respondents who reported that they did not feel confident in the workplace said that âhaving a leader who micromanages and disrespects meâ had inhibited their confidence. Neerja Bhatia, executive coach and founder of Rhythm of Success, advises us to stop identifying with the stressful judgments from our past. If we donât, what has happened will block us from getting what we want.
We must be vigilant and recognize our own mad mind-chatter, turning it around when it rears its ugly head. Regardless of what has happened before, know that you can start to change whatâs happening now.
How thinking small gets in the way of big breaks
Mad mind-chatter can make us believe that we may not be qualified for a job when we are quite capable of tackling itâthis mindset keeps us playing small. Why not aspire to something greater?
I was surprised by the stories of several senior leaders who admitted they didnât want to put themselves in the running for that next powerful position early on in their careers. All too many women seem to feel like they need to have a great number of skills in place to make a move, while men need far fewer skills to say yes. Youâve probably heard of the internal review at Hewlett-Packard a few years back that showed women within the company applied for open jobs only if they met 100 percent of the criteria listed; men, on the other hand, felt they needed to meet 60 percent of the requirements.3
Some women didnât take on higher positions until they received encouragement. Cathy Kinney, former president and coâchief operating officer of the New York Stock Exchange, said it was her bossâs belief in her abilities that persuaded her to take a leap. After being in the job for a few months, she questioned why she ever doubted her ability to do it. With smarts and passion, she ran the trading floor of over eight hundred people.
Another woman leader at a major consumer goods company shared this story: âWhen I had been at the company for two years, a position several levels higher became available, and I was asked to recommend people for the job. It didnât occur to me to put myself in the running. That night, the thought crossed my mind, Why not me? I submitted my name the next morning and got the job.â
Kathy Waller, chief financial officer of Coca-Cola, advises us to take action despite our fears. She says, âBelieve that you will do whatever it takes to be successful, even if you have to take a class or reach out to someone with more experience who can help you get up to speed.â
If you arenât feeling sure about stepping up (remember, our take on confidence includes feeling shaky but moving forward anyway), use your nervousness to your advantage. âNervous energy can help pull the greatness out of youâ it makes you overachieve,â says Jackie HernĂĄndez, COO of Telemundo. And as Debbie Storey, chief diversity officer of AT&T, put it, âMy knees have been shaking my whole career.â
When considering bigger jobs, let your prospective boss be the judge of whether or not youâre right for a positionâ you owe it to yourself to take a smart risk. âPeople donât walk into a job with all the tools they need,â Jackie reminds us.
Letâs bust the myth that âI donât have the skills needed to take that jobâ and realize the truth: âWhat I donât know I can learn or delegate.â Mobilize the support you need to take a bigger leapâpick one or two people you can call on for expertise and feedback,...