Do you feel caught in this bind of needing or believing that you must be liked especially if you aspire to be or already are in a leadership position?
Look around your office, the team that you work with is it a majority male environment, if it is understand that this will set the standard of what ambition and leadership looks like.
As a woman working is such an environment it is like walking a career tightrope balancing yourself between trying to be true to who you are as a person, a manager, a leader versus what the environment wants you to be.
I struggle with this on a daily basis; I am naturally assertive, confident, I ask for what I want, I call out bullshit and the issue is that in my environment which is mostly male this is seen as aggressive behavior and often I am seen as less likeable. If I was a male displaying the same behaviors I would be a strong leader.
The assumption is that women leaders will be warm and fuzzy just as we are at home, the reality is warm and fuzzy only gets you so far.
Leaders have to be strong, assertive, confident, passionate, call out bullshit, stand for something, make unpopular decisions as well as be warm and fuzzy.
I used to care about how much I was liked, until I came to the realization that even if I was liked more than I am now, I still would never be offered the opportunities I have ambitions for, so I stopped caring if I was liked or not and started to focus on the results and how I made people feel.
At the end of the day I made the decision that my likeability factor was more about whether I liked myself at the end of the day based on the decisions I had taken more than if others did. Because if I made decisions, acted or behaved to please everyone else, they would be happy with me, but I would not be.
If you are a woman of color, in addition to likability add in conscious and unconscious bias and assumptions such as confidence, ability to perform and accents. We are seen as great workers but not leaders.
If a business struggles with an assertive white woman they will never accept a strong, confident assertive woman of color to lead. You just have to look at how many female leaders there are in Australia who lead large organizations who are women of color.
And if you do happen to make it into a leadership role, you are often the only woman at the table and certainly the only woman of color.
It is hard to be heard when you are the lone voice, if you had two or three others around you, the voices would be louder.
I remember a few years ago now, I made a stand and said no to a leader who was above me on the org chart. I was promptly told that I had no emotional intelligence, the message was delivered in an aggressive manner in both tone and body language. I remember sitting there, my heart racing, a huge lump in my throat, acting super confident. The reality is if a male had done the same thing, the conversation or discussion would have been very different, and his emotional intelligence would never have been questioned.
I have had many conversations with leaders about competence vs likeability. Many of you will not like what I am about to say next…. If you are a man likeability will trump your competence every day, you will be promoted, receive accolades, awards, simply because people like you.
If you are a woman you will face the double bind, you will be perceived as liked or competent, rarely will you get both. The minute you show any masculine behavior you will be unlikeable.
When I say masculine behavior, what I really mean is leadership behavior, exactly what you see in other male leaders.
We are in a lose lose situation and like many other women, I would rather be competent and not liked. Hence why I have given up on being “liked”.
If you expect me to be warm, nurturing, fuzzy and friendly because I am a woman, sure, ok… but at the same time to not expect me to make tough decisions, question and call out bullshit, be assertive, ambitious, flawed and honest is just lunacy. It simply makes no sense to see women as unlikeable because of these traits, which is exactly what we see in male leaders.
Now don’t get me wrong, if you are a mean person, male or female there is no room for you in leadership.
To truly change the work place we need to take the focus and language away from leaders must be likeable to leaders must be competent. It is in the competency and leadership we build likeability.
Of course, likeability is important, but so is competence and they should be connected not separate and then lets start holding men to the same standards.
And let’s be absolutely clear on how likeability is tested. It is not based on peer’s assessment of “he is a good bloke” because he plays golf, has a beer and never disagrees with you”. It is based on how people you have worked with them talk about them as a leader. Did they like being led by him/her, did they grow, did they learn, would they work for him/her again,
Now that I have got likeability off my chest, lets talk about women leaders not aspiring to lead like men, but like women.
The qualities I have described so far exist in both men and women, however the strength of diversity in business is bringing male and female leaders together because they are different. When you have a balance of the ying and the yang as such you balance the hard and soft powers and the result is balanced leadership teams who are very successful.
I stopped caring about if I was liked or not and focused more on what type of leader I am, being a woman of color in a leadership role leading like a woman. Because if I did a great job at leading and lead from the heart, I would be liked. I don’t need to think or behave like a man but I can have some of the male leadership traits and I shouldn’t be less likeable or have few opportunities because of this.