By Cyndi Wineinger
Over the years I’ve been repeatedly encouraged to find a niche of work that I do and to stick with it. “Be the best at one thing” is the standard these days in making money as a consultant, blogger, speaker, etc. The problem is that I love the full aspect of people development, selection, leadership and communication education, career direction, and coaching. What we at The Wineinger Company do may not be brilliantly “scalable” and worth millions, but there isn’t a day that we can’t see the impact on helping people.
For instance, I have been asked at least six times in the last few weeks about the issue of assertiveness for women. I get all excited to think through a new topic and share ideas of how to encourage people in their journey. So here I go on another tangent topic that I get excited about sharing.
Assertiveness for Women in Meetings (and notes for Men)
I think many assertiveness issues are the same for men and women and we can certainly learn from one another.
It is a fascinating topic. My work with people over the years through the Birkman Assessment shows that the difference in raw behavioral patterns between women and men is less than .2%. Yes.. You read that right. Decimal point. The number two. And a Percentage sign. On all 33 behavioral patterns Birkman measures.
One of the key measurements at which we look to understand assertiveness on the Birkman is the Authority score. It is a measure of verbal dominance. Defined as do you speak up (hi score) or keep your thoughts in your head (low score).
Assertiveness is a mix of behaviors and mental health. It can be defined as: attaining a balance between considering your own wants, needs, and goals with the wants, needs, and goals of other people. Aggressive people act in self-serving ways that lack respect for others; passive people act in ways that show no respect for themselves.
This is where the difference in men and women seem to show up in communications. Especially in meetings.
Here are my observations after 30 years of working way more often with men than with women.
- Women give up the floor. If a woman is interrupted when speaking, she often will let it happen. Do I have a real statistic on this? Yeah.. Watch the next meeting you attend that has over half of the room made up of men and a man is the highest rank in the room. I often have to stop the group and give the woman the space to say her piece after someone has innocently interrupted her.
- Women apologize. I’ve seen women who didn’t do a thing wrong say “I’m sorry”. It is a kind and respectful thing to say, but it doesn’t really help you garner the respect of those around you if you didn’t create the problem. Yes, you are sorry someone feels badly or something went wrong, but you don’t need to apologize.
- Women serve. I’ll never forget having a woman several levels up from me at P&G tell me to sit down and not “give away my power” when I was kindly pouring drinks at a meeting. I was actually offended by it. I grew up in the South and don’t think twice about filling an empty glass or getting coffee for people. As a young executive, I needed that advise. I needed to be at the table, not pouring drinks. Now that I am older, I can serve if I want to and still be taken seriously.
- Women get intimidated. I’m not saying that men don’t, but I’ve seen assertive women back down in meetings if they felt their idea was being overlooked. I coach women to write down their key points on a note in front of them before speaking. If you know the topic of the meeting in advance, write down your thoughts and bullet points in advance. When you get flustered just refer to your notes and keep going with confidence.
- Women get pitchy. As in their voice. Or shaky. Or breathy. Practice breathing slowly. Keep your voice “low and slow”. Use a parent voice. “Excuse……me…… I …. don’t …. Know if my idea is good. Regardless, I would appreciate you at least being courteous/ kind/ respectful/ open to hearing it.” You’ll have their attention.
- Women don’t share ideas. This is my biggest frustration. I tell the guys all the time “if you don’t have women in the room, you are missing 50% of your business’s ideas and input. Ladies, please share. You are so valuable. Feel free to say intro words like “I wonder if we tried, I wonder if anyone has looked at, I’m sure you considered, what did you find?….” You don’t have to sales pitch your ideas, you just have to share. You don’t have to be aggressive, you just have to share. This is the place to serve. Serve others by sharing your ideas.
A note to men:
- If you don’t have women on the team you are missing half of the universe. Lost ideas, perspectives, revenues, and opportunities. Open the door. Don’t have a ceiling. Have a plan to balance out the input. And by the way I know so many of you don’t operate with a glass ceiling in your business. My kudos and respect to you!!!
- Ask women to give their input. I recommend you ask everyone in the room for input, but especially the women.
- Give women feedback. Seek them out and give them input that helps them understand the dynamics in the room and ideas to help them grow.
- Don’t get triggered or activated if a woman gets emotional. We always pull through and don’t need you all freaked out as we get our thoughts together.
- Make space for us to still be female. My days in corporate America made me think the only way to be heard was to emulate the tough men and aggressive women. If you have to live with overly aggressive women, your business won’t be fun.
I can say after more years of being the minority gender in the room, I LOVE working with men. And I am so thankful for you guys who support women!
Check out our Leadership and Communication classes for ideas on training and coaching you and your organization.