Better Think Tanking #7
How To Boost Your Productivity
Martin and Nicole are editors of a think tank blog. Their boss complains that Nicole takes too long working with authors before publishing their posts. Martin thinks he’s faster because he’s more experienced. Both constantly monitor Nicole’s time and nag her to work faster, but Nicole’s attempts at speeding up make no difference.
One day, Martin and an author email back and forth about his text and the author is impossible: rude, dismissive, ignorant. He writes that his arguments were backed up (they aren’t) and that Martin just didn’t understand them (he does).
Annoyed, Martin notices: He had been signing all mails to this author with “Nicole.” Out of curiosity, he replies: “Hey this is Martin, I’m taking over this text for Nicole.” And the author? Responds promptly, thanking Martin for his helpful suggestions (“great questions!”).
When Martin tells Nicole, she says his encounter with the author was a regular experience for her. And they decide to start an experiment:
Switching names for two weeks - what would happen next?
While Martin was in hell, Nicole “had the most productive week of her career.” And he realized: The reason she took longer was that she had to convince authors to respect her.
The story of Nicole Hallberg and Martin R. Schneider is true, although we have to admit that they work in an employment service firm instead of a think tank. Having edited a blog or two, we can tell you this is part of the reality of working while female, young, or otherwise seen as less competent and deserving of respect.
Why not send emails as your young female colleague for a week, see for yourself and discover the secret to boosting everyone’s productivity?
Equality and Profit
We’re all for social justice and not the biggest friends of promoting gender equality for capitalist reasons. But the above story illustrates that productivity, profit, and inequalities are interlinked. In times of a global pandemic and related economic hardships, the quest for profit endangers progress towards equality.
My Confidence Matters’ report on how Covid has impacted work life through a gender lens shows: investing in gender makes sense economically. For instance, UK companies with a high number of women in their (management) teams have higher profit margins, higher revenue due to innovation, and make better business decisions. And they provide a range of recommendations that both big businesses and small thinks tanks should embrace.
Stop Telling People They Have Imposter Syndrome
“The impact of systemic racism, classism, xenophobia, and other biases was categorically absent when the concept of imposter syndrome was developed. (…) Even as we know it today, imposter syndrome puts the blame on individuals, without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts (…).”
Imposter syndrome means doubting your abilities or accomplishments and having a constant fear of being exposed as a fraud. It disproportionately affects high-achieving people.
While men and women may experience similar levels of doubt initially, those feelings tend to decline over time for white men, as their work is validated and they are surrounded by role models they can identify with. Women of color experience the opposite, as the answer to the question of who is deemed “professional” and receives validation for their work style and intelligence is culturally biased. They’re attested imposter syndrome and are sent to career training on how to overcome it. (Which is probably why almost all female colleagues know the “syndrome”, while many men never even have heard of it.)
Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey call to depathologize feelings of anxiety and discomfort in response to microaggressions and discrimination at work. They argue that it’s the daily battles with expectations and assumptions fed by stereotypes and racism that pull women down. And because “it’s the structures, stupid”, it is time to stop expecting women to fix themselves and start fixing the systems:
Stop automatically equating confidence - the way it is demonstrated by white male leaders - with competence.
Stop punishing women [of color] for lacking confidence or their way of expressing confidence. (Yes, it often feels like there’s no way to do it right, and both are punished in a heteronormative, patriarchal society.)
Overconfidence is inversely related to leadership talent - the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams and inspire people to set selfish goals aside. Help women [of color] reframe constructive self-doubt as helpful self-awareness.
Promote diverse leadership styles as well as racial, ethnic, and gender identities to smash the dominance of eurocentricity, masculinity, and heteronormativity.
Close The Entitlement Gap
“Social conditioning means that women feel less deserving than men, creating a gap of entitlement that’s directly impacting women’s careers.”
Giving imposter syndrome another positive spin, The Female Lead finds that it tends to increase commitment and drive. They also find that women are no less ambitious or skilled than men, but historic societal expectations, family mental load, and opaque corporate systems make women feel less entitled to and deserving of a career. In many situations, this means women don’t claim what’s rightfully theirs - in terms of pay raises, days off, credit for accomplishments, promotions, and more. And when they do, they are often punished because such behavior is judged negatively in women.
Researcher Terri Apter and her colleagues recommend several steps to close the gap. The most important: be aware of biases, don’t encourage those ‘less privileged’ to feel more confident but instead directly work to equalize opportunities.
Think Tank Intrapreneurship
Sarah had the chance to talk to a community of intrapreneurs about changing organizations from within at last week’s #OTTconference on ‘Think Tanks and Change’. Participants agreed: changing the world requires openness to change inside - and the latter can be hard work that needs a lot of personal resilience. It’s important to bring people on board and show that innovation is a positive sum game for all. Thanks to the Think Tank Lab for this opportunity and we’re hoping to continue the conversation with many of you soon.
What We Are Thinking About
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Shout out to Sofie and Sarah for sharing great content with us so that we can share it with you. Big thanks to Benjamin for reliable proofreads at short notice. (All remaining errors are our own.)
Soon, we will start having guest editors on the newsletter. So excited! Stay tuned.
Theresa & Sarah