4 - Downsides of pursuing mastery - Sally Helgesen on her book – How Women Rise

Sally speaks about two phenomena which are often at play when it comes to feedback. She speaks about how women sometimes can take the developmental feedback to heart and start to question themselves in often unproductive ways. She also speaks about how men can often have double standards and for the same set of behaviours, they might have a different interpretation depending on the gender.

Sally speaks about how women often think about ambition slightly differently from men. She also goes onto to say that the paradigm of leadership has evolved over the last few decades that a lot more men today also have started looking at ambition in a holistic manner compared to a few decades back. However, she says – “women got there first”.

Sally speaks about the phenomenon where women, when given positive feedback, might unnecessarily divert it to other causes or shine the light on other team members without adequate acknowledgement of their role in the outcomes. She speaks about the downsides of this behavior.

Sally speaks about how women need to think about recognition and mastery to move forward in their career. She goes onto say that women often assume that recognition will “just happen” and when it doesn’t they often double down the rabbit hole of pursuing mastery which can come in the way of them being considered for roles with wider scope.

Sally speaks about how it is critical not just to build relationships but to leverage them in a non-transactional way. She goes on to say that a quid pro quo approach to asking for favours from others often doesn’t work and suggests a more nuanced approach here.

Sally speaks about how women often end up getting assessed for performance in their current role while men are seen for their potential. She says, this coupled with women often focusing on loyalty to the role often leads to a double whammy that keeps women stuck in their current place hampering their progress. She speaks about how we can avoid this phenomenon.

Sally speaks about the impact of COVID on men and women over the last several months. She goes on to discuss the short term and the long term implications. She speaks about some of the mindset shifts around remote and flexible work that have happened over the last several months and goes onto say that it might actually end up levelling the playing field for women.

Sally speaks about the notion of Executive Presence and how that plays out for men and women. She alludes to a piece of research that suggests that women on average end up speaking 20,000 words a day while men end up speaking around 7000 words a day. She discusses the implication of this on how men and women could think about Executive Presence.

Sally speak about how maternity is a point of leakage when it comes to women rising to the top. She also speaks about another place where there is often a lot of leakage. She speaks about how women leaders rise almost to the top but then they look at the person in the top job and have a discussion with themselves around whether it is worth it and often back off.

Sally speaks about the notion of women “changing the game” rather than “playing by the club rules”. She speaks about the transformation that has happened over the last several years.

Sally shares some insights for parents as we bring up our boys and girls. She specifically speaks about how we could get boys to listen more and girls to let go without being trapped by the quest for perfection which could be counter productive beyond a point.