DOUBLE STANDARD
Recovering from a mistake can be much tougher for women than for men,
Many women in management still struggle to move ahead. But a key reason for this widely discussed problem rarely gets discussed: Women’s workplace weaknesses are overplayed or punished excessively, while men’s shortcomings often are ignored, according to executive coaches, management consultants and academic researchers.
“If women make one mistake, their career growth gets stalled,” says Joelle Emerson, chief executive of Paradigm, a diversity and inclusion-strategy consultancy that has advised hundreds of U.S. companies. “Men are able to make multiple mistakes and not suffer career consequences.”
Harsher treatment of women’s serious mistakes may hurt their careers, recent research shows. Physician referrals to female surgeons plunged 54% following the death of a patient but didn’t drop for male surgeons, according to a 2017 Harvard working paper based on Medicare data covering 9,140 surgeons.
One female surgeon’s fatal outcome also generated fewer referrals to all women in her specialty. Male surgeons avoided such broad punishment because “men appear to be treated as individuals,” the paper said.
“The way we interpret people’s performance is going to be influenced by gender,” says study author Heather Sarsons, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
In corporate settings, experts blame men’s and women’s tendency to be more critical of women’s performance on a pervasive “double bind.” Women who act in stereotypically feminine ways, such as collaborating, aren’t viewed as strong leaders. But highly assertive women risk a backlash for not acting feminine enough.
As a result, women often have
to choose between being liked and being considered competent. Female CEOs who dominate office conversations, for instance, were seen as less suited for their role than talkative male counterparts, according to a study by Victoria Brescoll, an associate professor at Yale School of Management. Participants in the study read an article about a fictitious talkative or quiet chief, then rated his or her competency. The Goldilocks problem Lisa Mann, a veteran food-industry executive, says she has faced the double-bind dilemma multiple times in the past 10 years—even though her business results exceeded expectations during that period.
“I was criticized whichever way I went, no matter how strong or how soft,” Ms. Mann remembers. “I felt like Goldilocks.”
Soon after Ms. Mann gained her first executive post, for in-
stance, her supervisor said she was too nice because she ended staff meetings by asking, “What can I do to help you?”
Afew years later, another boss castigated Ms. Mann for not collaborating enough with senior executives. “Men’s different styles are more readily accepted,’’ says Ms. Mann, who now owns Think Marketing Advisors, a brand-consulting firm. “It’s an unconscious bias.”
Robin J. Ely, a Harvard University professor of business administration, noticed a similar pattern when she visited a biotech think tank in the fall of 2016. Female research scientists said their ideas got shot down quickly during team sessions if they lacked evidence to support a tiny aspect of their argument.
The women’s main complaint: “We are worried about making mistakes because it’s held against you,” Dr. Ely says. Yet
male scientists with flawed arguments were allowed to salvage their overall point, so female scientists offered promising ideas only privately, she says.
Some executive women cope with critiques they perceive as unfair by enlisting the help of powerful male allies in the company.
Several years ago, a West Coast investment banker took command of her employer’s Los Angeles office. Its profits improved after she took steps that improved associates’ morale, such as hosting celebratory lunches for work anniversaries, she says. But her boss’s boss disliked that approach, attacking her for focusing more on collegiality than on sales, she adds.
“You are so Kumbaya,” he told her, alluding to the popular folk song in a derogatory tone. She says she also heard that he bad-
mouthed her morale-building efforts behind her back. “No woman would have ever been supported in our firm with [this] kind of behavior,’’ the investment banker recalls. “I almost quit.”
Instead, she says she calmly raised her concerns with the firm’s CEO and his fellow executive committee members whom she knew well. The allmale committee later accepted her recommendation to retain a coach for her boss’s boss, who now has a global role in the company.
Coaching helped the executive. This summer, he put the investment banker on his new strategic-planning committee, where she is one of two women on the panel. Equally important, she continues, “I stayed true to myself.” More scrutiny Women in the corner office frequently faced greater scrutiny than men earlier in their careers, a 2017 study by Korn/Ferry International found. The executive recruitment firm analyzed 57 female leaders of big public and privately held companies.
Most were “challenge junkies,” says study co-author Jane Stevenson, who is vice chair of Korn/Ferry’s board and CEO services. They recognized their gender put them under a tougher lens, but focused on how to make it work.
“Their strong outcomes also made it hard for unfair attacks on their performance to stick,” she says.
Female chiefs aren’t immune from unjustified potshots, but they usually wield enough clout to curb them. In 2013, tech-industry executive Melissa Dyrdahl took command of Ella Health Inc., a startup provider of health-care services for women.
Ms. Dyrdahl says a man on her inherited management team disdained her industry inexperience and negotiated a partnership without her approval. She fired him for being disrespectful.