I thought I was going to HATE this @harvardbiz article: "How Women on Boards Navigate the Warmth-Competence Line."
I was right. 🧵
#womenonboards #womeninbusiness #femaledirectors #gender #stereotypes
hbr.org/2023/01/how-women-on-boards-navigate-the-warmth-competence-line?mkt_tok=NzAyLUNJSS01MDcAAAGJkydOavCskGsCwbJ08YetZamI023qpYd94oqhLqOqrcoEYTSI-gE8mj18M5Igft1Q3vXDQ18HlxQaWajBVSO7faUYkJlu3FM8O667grTqSiE
6 "tactics" for exerting influence are evaluated on a scale of leaning toward either "warm" or "competent." When you read the trait labels, however, you immediately see they fall into 2 *actual* categories:
Asking for permission, or apologizing for your existence.
Asking, connecting, asserting, qualifying, waiting + checking.
Not one single one of these* is "speaking your mind plainly because it's time women stop bending to + accommodating the 'expectations for their gender'."
(*you were going to say "asserting." In context, still nope.)
Then we get to the real kicker - a pitiful "call to (in)action" for companies: hire women as directors anyway, *~*despite their woeful inadequacies*~*.
🗣️Be more holistic!
🗣️Grade them on a curve!
🗣️They haven't had a fair shot!
⛳Expand beyond the golf course bias? No.
⛳Promote them appropriately so they reach the req. positions to qualify? No.
⛳Assume expertise given they're at the same table as you? No.
⛳Lose the pity party? No.
Just, "hey boys, invite your sister to play your video game."
Perpetuating performance politics, distributing useless "advice" on how not to offend anyone, and ending with this excruciating, self-congratulatory assertion that they've given "both sides" advice on how to play nice with each other is a far cry from what I hoped to read.
I would love to speak to any 1 of their 43 subjects and see if they signed off on this as a useful piece of literary insight?
Or are they just too tired of the bullshit to really engage any further? Monitoring your behavior + threading a needle with every sentence is exhausting.
All I can say is: do better, @HarvardBiz -- you had incredible potential to deliver insights, plus the opportunity for a narrative shift, with this kind of raw data on your hands.
Instead, this was disappointing fluff.