Becoming a Leader
by Amy Bernstein, cohost of Women at Work
Maybe some people are born leaders. I certainly wasn’t one of them—a lesson I learned painfully a few years back when a work pal took me to task.
We’d just had a meeting, and I, as usual, had said absolutely nothing. The reason for my reticence was fear of ridicule. Meetings at my (mostly male) organization were like blood sport: Editors would shoot down each other’s ideas mercilessly (this was long before I came to HBR). I certainly wasn’t going to lay myself open to their barbs. And yet I knew I needed to raise my profile if I wanted to get ahead. I felt thwarted and miserable.
My friend knew all that when she marched into my office, shut the door, and let me have it: “You know a lot about that topic, and you should have been leading the conversation. Why were you so quiet? What are you waiting for—someone to give you permission to lead? Because that’s not going to happen.”
That was the gut punch I needed. She was right: I had to take responsibility for my stalled career, figure out how to deal with the reality of my workplace, and show up as a leader. But how?
It turns out that many women grapple with these same questions. In the years we’ve been producing Women at Work, the HBR podcast I cohost with Amy Gallo and Emily Caulfield (and, in the past, with Sarah Green Carmichael and Nicole Torres), listeners have shared their own stories of stagnation and frustration. They tell us how they struggle to be heard, get their proper credit, and be treated with respect. They ask for advice on dealing with the barriers women face at work, from unsupportive bosses to unfair policies. They want our help as they strive to emerge as leaders themselves. Our listeners are coping with the same biases and self-doubt that we hosts do, even at our different career stages. On Women at Work, we are just trying to help each other get where we want to go.
I wish this podcast had been around back when I was going through the agonizing growth process. Understanding that I wasn’t seen as a leader was painful. It wasn’t just that I didn’t grasp what leadership is—a way of moving through the world with vision, determination, and empathy. It was that I didn’t see myself as a leader, as the kind of person who can motivate and inspire others. So much of leadership is about visualizing ourselves in the role—and ensuring others do, too. That takes self-knowledge and conviction. As leadership consultant Muriel Maignan Wilkins has noted on the podcast (and says in chapter 5), we must confront the myth that “leadership looks one way, which is, quite frankly, the white masculine way.” There is no one right way to be a leader. You have to figure out who you are and what you stand for. But you also need to know that you want to lead. You have to “own it,” says Wilkins.
One of the biggest challenges to seeing ourselves (and having others see us) as leaders is the gap between who we believe we are and how the world expects us to behave. In chapter 4, Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, observes that while “the average woman isn’t underestimating herself as a leader, she has a slightly more nuanced challenge: She may not be confident that others value her contributions.” That’s a big one for me. Having sat through too many meetings where I was repeatedly interrupted and where my contributions were ignored until a man repeated them, it was easy for me to believe that my colleagues didn’t respect me. But once you understand that this kind of behavior is disgracefully common, you learn that it’s really not about you or your ideas. And it becomes easier to call people out on their bad behavior. On this point, Eurich’s advice—“To overcome the tendency to rely too heavily on others’ views, women can develop their own picture of who they are”—is pure gold.
Understanding that women start out at a disadvantage is vital to addressing it. We know that women don’t get the same treatment as men in the workplace: There’s ample evidence that they’re paid less, have fewer opportunities to develop and advance, are unfairly assessed in performance evaluations, and receive less actionable feedback. The list goes on. Many of the barriers lie in policy and process; bias is baked into the system and reinforced by unquestioning behavior and tradition.
Other forces are subtler and perhaps more confounding because they’re harder to pinpoint and address. Consider the double bind—the contradiction between what society expects of us as women on the one hand and leaders on the other. As women, we’re expected to be warm and nice, but as leaders we’re supposed to prove we’re tough and competent. We’re supposed to be caring yet demanding, collaborative yet authoritative, approachable yet distant, passionate yet unemotional. I admit I struggled with the constant balancing act. How could I be seen as an assertive, self-confident leader—one whose views matter—without coming off as domineering and unlikable?
This book looks at all of these issues and offers solutions for women—and those around them—to overcome them. Think of it as a crash course in leadership for women. It collects valuable tips, advice, and discussion in four key areas: finding your authentic self, showing your leadership potential, advocating for yourself, and supporting the women around you (even if you’re not a woman). It aims to help aspiring female leaders better understand what it means to live into leadership authentically, ensure that others see their potential, and speak up with confidence, all while navigating the biases and gendered assumptions around them.
Even now, years after that excruciating conversation about my leadership—or lack thereof—I am grateful to that coworker who scolded me after that meeting. She jolted me into consciousness about my own values and commitment to myself. It was brutal at the time, but it forced me to figure out who I am and who I want to be. And that is the first step to becoming a leader.