CHAPTER 7
To Seem Confident, You Must Be Seen as Warm
by Margarita Mayo
Why are there so few women in leadership roles? As we’ve read throughout the book, one frequently cited reason has to do with confidence—whether that reason is accurate or not. For instance, in a 2012 study my colleagues and I found that women tend to rate their abilities accurately, while men tend to be overconfident about theirs.1 Thus, one argument goes, women are less confident than men, which hurts their chances of promotion.
Previous studies have measured how women see themselves. But my research collaborators, Laura Guillen of ESMT and Natalia Karelaia of INSEAD, and I wanted to know how outside perceivers such as bosses, subordinates, and colleagues rate women’s confidence, and what influences those ratings.
Psychology professor Susan Fiske of Princeton University and her colleagues have shown that people seem to universally use two dimensions to judge others: competence and warmth.2 We decided to test for both of those factors in addition to confidence. As a proxy for the likelihood of being promoted, we also tested for influence, on the theory that people who are seen as influential are more likely to move up to leadership roles.
We conducted a study analyzing the judgments that colleagues made regarding the competence and warmth of 236 engineers working in project teams at a multinational software development company. As part of their performance assessment, the engineers were confidentially evaluated online by their supervisor, peers, and collaborators on competence and warmth. A total of 810 raters provided the evaluation. A year later, we collected a second wave of data on the same 236 engineers about their apparent confidence at work and their influence in the organization. This time, a total of 1,236 raters provided information.
Our study shows that men are seen as confident if they are seen as competent, but women are seen as confident only if they come across as both competent and warm. Women must be seen as warm in order to capitalize on their competence and be seen as confident and influential at work; competent men are seen as confident and influential whether they are warm or not.
In other words, for male engineers, competence and perceived confidence go hand in hand. The more competent male engineers are, the more confident they are seen as being (and vice versa). The more confident they are seen as being, the more influence they have in the organization, regardless of whether others like them. It seems that warmth is irrelevant to men appearing confident and influential, at least when they are performing a typically male job like engineering.
For women, in the absence of warmth there was virtually no relationship between competence and confidence ratings. When women were seen as both warm and competent, they were also seen as more confident—and thus more influential. Competent but less-affable female engineers were evaluated by their colleagues as less confident in their professional roles. These female engineers were, in turn, less influential within the organization. In sum, women’s professional performance is not evaluated independent from their personal warmth.
Personal experience and empirical research suggest that it’s not enough for women to be merely as gregarious, easygoing, sociable, and helpful as men. To get credit for being warm—and to have their other strengths recognized—they might need to be even more so. (See the sidebar “How to Convey Warmth.”)
I still remember my first performance evaluation as an assistant lecturer: I was told to be more “nurturing.” I had gone to just as many social events as the men had, had been just as gregarious with my students. But women are simply expected to show more warmth. Studies show, for example, that women’s performance reviews contain nearly twice as much language about being warm, empathetic, helpful, and dedicated to others.3
HOW TO CONVEY WARMTH
by Heidi Grant
Many people think they project warmth but in fact don’t. Fortunately there are some very simple things you can do to convey warmth when interacting with others.
First, maintain eye contact, particularly when other people are talking. A lot of us know that eye contact is important for looking confident. But actually, when other people are talking, it’s critical that you look at them because that’s a clear signal of interest.
I know a lot of people who don’t do this. Even though they are listening, they’ll let their eyes wander around the room, and that gives a very clear signal that they’re not listening.
It’s also important to nod when someone is talking. That’s another subtle way to indicate that you’re paying attention and that you’re understanding what someone is saying. It’s strange when you get into a conversation with someone who doesn’t nod. You immediately feel frostiness and tension. You may not be able to put your finger on what it is, but what you’re sensing is that lack of affirmation, that lack of a signal that says, “Hey, I’m paying attention to you. I’m listening to you and I understand.”
Affirmations, in general, are very important. That’s a word that people associate with Saturday Night Live character Stuart Smalley or saying, “I like myself.” But affirmations are really just simple expressions that we use to say things like, “Well, that must have been difficult for you” or “Oh, I understand,” asking questions about a person, or asking them to talk about themselves. These are all are indicators of warmth.
It’s important not only to try to do more of these things but also to ask people you trust to tell you whether or not you do them. One thing I found again and again is that often I’d talk to people about these behaviors and they’d say, “Oh, yeah, I do that.” And then often, if it’s a friend of mine, I can say, “No, you actually don’t. That’s why I’m telling you that this is something you need to do more of.”
Ask people who you trust to tell you the truth. “Do I give off signals that indicate that I’m not listening?” They might tell you, “Yeah, if I didn’t know you better, I would think you were kind of a jerk.” They’ve come to know over time that you actually are warmer than you appear. But you really want to make sure you are appearing as warm as you are. That’s why it’s so important to focus on particular behaviors that we know actually send the right signals.
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Heidi Grant, PhD, is a senior scientist at the Neuroleadership Institute and the associate director for the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. She is the author of the best-selling Nine Things Successful People Do Differently (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). Her most recent book is No One Understands You and What to Do About It (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), which has been featured in national and international media. Follow her on Twitter @heidgrantphd.
Adapted from “Understand How People See You” on HBR IdeaCast (podcast), April 16, 2015
Our study suggests that if women are to succeed in a biased world, encouraging them to be more confident is not enough. To get credit for having confidence and competence, and to have the influence in their organizations that they want to have, women must go out of their way to be seen as warm.
My colleagues and I wish this weren’t the case. We wish women and men could both be evaluated on merit. But as our research shows, we seem to be a long way off from that reality.
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Margarita Mayo is a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at IE Business School in Madrid. She was featured on the Thinkers50 Radar as one of 30 thought leaders to watch in 2017. She is the author of Yours Truly: Staying Authentic in Leadership and Life.
NOTES
1. Margarita Mayo et al., “Aligning or Inflating Your Leadership Self-Image? Longitudinal Study of Responses to Peer Feedback in MBA Teams,” Academy of Management Learning & Education 11, no. 4 (2012): 631–652.
2. Susan T. Fiske, Amy J. C. Cuddy, and Peter Glick, “Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Warmth and Competence,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 2 (2006): 77–83.
3. Shelley Correll and Caroline Simard, “Research: Vague Feedback Is Holding Women Back,” hbr.org, April 29, 2016 (product #H02UUL).
Adapted from “To Seem Confident, Women Have to Be Seen as Warm” on hbr.org, July 8, 2016 (product #H03036)