The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (8 page)

It really is harder to take yourself seriously when the people around you don’t. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a role here. Remember how the one boy in the science-project group spoke twice as much as all three girls combined? We’ve all run into men who hog the stage—but who lets them? If you don’t feel heard, pay attention to how you may contribute to this dynamic: Do you use the more traditionally female mode of communication, which is to defer and wait your turn? That’s fine to do when the stakes are low. But there are situations where in order to be heard you have to forgo the usual rules, starting with the belief that you always have to follow the rules.

It’s not enough, for example, to raise your hand. You have to
keep
it raised, even if it means not doing what you’re told—a lesson Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says she learned, ironically after delivering a speech to employees on why there are so few female leaders. Shortly after her talk Sandberg was approached by a young woman who said her big take-away was that she needed to keep her hand up. The employee went on to explain that after her talk Sandberg said she would take two more questions. Once she did, the employee put her hand down and noticed that all the other women put their hands down too, only to watch as Sandberg continued to take more questions—all from men who kept their hands up.

If you want to be heard, you’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone in other ways too. Impostor syndrome or no impostor syndrome,
you’re probably not comfortable tooting your own horn. You can have all the confidence in the world and still be reluctant to self-promote out of a steadfast belief that a person’s work should speak for itself. It doesn’t. Men understand this, which is why they’re more comfortable tooting their horn, no matter how small the instrument.

My work has brought me in touch with scores of highly successful female partners in major law firms. On more than one occasion I’ve watched them collectively roll their eyes over their male colleagues’ willingness to submit minor activity updates to the firm’s internal newsletter. Said one attorney, “Some of these guys think nothing of publicizing little things like that they went to a Rotary Club breakfast. Unless I was the keynote speaker, I’d be embarrassed to broadcast something so uneventful.”

Whether you think it’s “right” or “trivial” is irrelevant. What matters is that while you keep your nose to the grindstone banking on others paying attention, these guys are busy keeping their name in front of people in a position to help further their career. If you’re not naturally gifted at self-promotion, don’t worry; like any skill, it can be acquired. Read a book, take a class, or hire a coach. I know it’s hard to talk about how great you are, especially when you’re not convinced yourself. But it’s a heck of a lot harder to get noticed if you keep your own accomplishments a closely guarded secret. If you’re not telling your story, who will?

Similarly, don’t make the mistake of simply assuming that doing a good job means you’ll automatically be noticed and rewarded. You won’t. It’s true that Dee Dee Myers did not get the raise she was due. But at least she
asked
—something economist Linda Babcock and her colleagues discovered women often fail to do. After digging deeper into why the starting salaries of male master’s degree students were on average almost four thousand dollars more than women’s, they found that eight times as many men asked for more money. Put another way, 93 percent of the women accepted the first offer.

Men “always seem to go for the biggest brownie on the plate,” says Myers, adding, “What’s more, they expect the other guys (and sometimes the gals) to do the same.” And if you think four thousand dollars is not that big a deal, think again. As Babcock and Sara Laschever point out in their aptly titled book,
Women Don’t Ask
, over the course of a career the financial consequences of even a relatively small initial difference can cause you to eventually forfeit at least one million dollars in income. Say the authors, “This is a massive loss for a one-time negotiation—for avoiding what is usually no more than five minutes of discomfort.”

It is true that when your work, your voice, or your job is considered less significant, it complicates your ability to recognize—never mind
appreciate
—what you have to offer. On the other hand, you can’t expect other people to value your work if you don’t. In a literal sense, valuing yourself means making sure you have the information you need to attach the proper value to your expertise and labor.

Once you have the information you need, remember that valuing yourself means raising your hand—and keeping it raised. It’s about knowing what you want and deserve and going for it. As you assess your current situation:

If you want more money, more staff, a promotion, to work from home, to get your art onto a gallery wall, or for someone to mentor you, then there’s only one way to get it: A-S-K. Obviously, just because you ask for something doesn’t mean you’ll get it. But as opera diva Beverly Sills once said, “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” Or, as is often required, if you don’t
retry
.

The pioneering congresswoman Shirley Chisholm once said, “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl.’ ” Diversity experts Rita Hardiman and Bailey Jackson point out two other truisms about stereotyping. Namely, the group with more power always does the naming, and the naming group either denies the existence of a given trait or behavior in their group or, when they do admit to it, the trait or behavior is renamed in positive terms.
¹⁵

You know the drill: He’s commanding; you’re bossy. He’s assertive; you’re a bitch. He’s persistent; you’re pushy. He’s decisive; you’re impulsive. He’s blowing off steam; you’re hysterical. He’s carefully weighing his options; you can’t make up your mind.

Males are of course pigeonholed by stereotypes too. But careerwise, which side of these stereotypes would you rather be on? In a man’s career, being competitive, aggressive, high-achieving, and a workaholic—all hallmarks of a type A personality—are an asset, but these same characteristics are considered a career liability in you. This alone goes a long way in explaining why the impostor syndrome is prevalent among type A females but not type A males.
¹⁶

Even the rules for communication are different. Not only do you have to figure out what to say and how to say it, you also must worry about the
way you sound
saying it. If you speak in a decisive manner using a lower pitch and downward inflection, both of which are considered more characteristically masculine, you’re perceived as aggressive. But here’s the rub. Women who talk in a more conventionally feminine manner, using a higher pitch, softer volume, and upward inflection, are perceived as
less competent
.
¹⁷

Stereotypes matter because they are so easily internalized as the truth, which, as repeated studies have shown, can in turn affect behavior. The phenomenon is known as “stereotype threat,” and was first documented by Stanford researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson. Everyone knows females are lousy at math, right? Precisely because we all do “know” this supposed “fact,” merely informing female students prior to a math exam that the test is gender-neutral causes them to perform better. Telling female students the opposite, that the test had demonstrated gender
differences in the past, they performed substantially worse.
¹⁸
Stereotype threat comes into play in more subtle situations as well. The simple inclusion of a check box for gender on a math test causes women to perform worse than men.
¹⁹

There’s more. Separate studies found that compared with subjects who were not reminded of a negative stereotype, females who were prompted

Similar findings have been found based on race and class. When African American students were told they were being tested on verbal ability, it triggered racial stereotypes about intelligence, causing them to do worse than students who did not receive this information.
²⁴
Likewise, when students in France were reminded of their socioeconomic status, those from low-income groups performed more poorly than those from high-income groups.
²⁵

Stereotypes impair men’s performance as well. Men who were told that a test measured “social sensitivity,” on which “men do worse than women,” performed more poorly than those who were told the test measured “complex information processing.” In this same scenario, women’s performance did not differ.
²⁶

Stereotypes matter because even so-called positive stereotypes limit
us by falsely altering behavior. When a golf-putting test was framed as measuring “natural athletic ability,” African American students did better than white students. But when the test was positioned as testing “sports intelligence,” the opposite was true for both groups.
²⁷
Similarly, when reminded of their ethnic identity, Asian American women performed better on a math test than a control group. But when primed to think about their female identity, they did worse.
²⁸

Stereotypes matter because generations of women grew up having their self-perceptions shaped by stereotyped notions of men’s versus women’s work. It was not long ago that paid work options for females were largely confined to teacher, nurse, secretary, social worker, or domestic. If you grew up middle- or even working-class, you learned that a job was something to “fall back on” in case something happened to your future husband. If you were encouraged or even expected to get a degree, college was frequently seen as an end in itself, not necessarily a step toward something else. It was a place for you to become a well-rounded individual in order to attract a mate, who
was
expected to utilize his training.

If you are of this generation, any pride you feel about breaking into traditionally male roles may be complicated by a sense of not really belonging. One senior vice president who grew up assuming she’d go to college, marry, have a bunch of kids, and then settle into being a mother and homemaker told how her plans abruptly changed when her husband died before they’d had children. Suddenly forced to support herself, she took the only job available at the time as a secretary. Over the years she worked her way up to senior vice president. Yet even today the executive admits that there are moments when she looks in the mirror and thinks,
What am I doing here? This isn’t what I was supposed to be doing. You don’t belong here. You are such a fraud
.

Stereotypes matter because they continue to contribute to how the next generation of girls see themselves. Certainly a lot has changed for
girls growing up today. Barbie dumped Ken in 2004, and girls today are as likely to own a pirate, astronaut, or Hispanic presidential candidate Barbie as they are a princess or nurse Barbie. Ask them about their career aspirations, and most girls will tell you the sky’s the limit. And for the most part they’re right.

Dig deeper, though, and girls tell another story too. While 71 percent aspire to go to college full-time after high school, a survey by Girls Inc. revealed that more than a third believe most people think the most important thing for girls is to get married and have children.
²⁹
Girls today are also keenly aware of the intense pressure they feel, at ever younger ages, to fit a uniquely female model of success. Along with heightened expectations about physical perfection, being thin, and dressing “right,” stereotypes about girl’s needing to speak softly, not brag, and assume caretaker roles persist. “Society appears to be making some room for girls to transcend traditional expectations about abilities and aspirations, just as long as they also conform to conventional notions of femininity,” conclude the researchers.

Finally, stereotypes matter because although you may be playing on the same field as men, in a world that sees and treats powerful, successful women differently than it sees and treats powerful, successful men, the rules of the game are not the same—a double standard that played out on an international stage during the historic 2008 United States presidential primary election as two ambitious women battled for the number one and number two jobs in the country.