Focus on the Idea, Not the Person Behind It
Created by Garrett Knoll for the Noun Project
Tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Apple, and Google among others have made their gender statistics public, and the results have been disappointing – men comprise 70% of the workforce at Google, and 69% of Facebook employees are male. In a new series for the New York Times, Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant explain why women are sometimes reluctant to voice their thoughts and opinions in meetings where they are in the minority:
When a woman speaks in a professional setting, she walks a tightrope. Either she’s barely heard or she’s judged as too aggressive. When a man says virtually the same thing, heads nod in appreciate for his fine idea. As a result, women often decide that saying less is more.
They reinforce that the long term solution to this problem is to increase the number of women in leadership roles, so that people become more accustomed to women’s contributing and leading. But your organization can also start today with an easy solution:
Interrupt this gender bias. Just as orchestras that use blind auditions increase the number of women who are selected, organizations can increase women’s contributions by adopting practices that focus less on the speaker and more on the idea. For example, in innovation tournaments, employees submit suggestions and solutions to problems anonymously. Experts evaluate the proposals, give feedback to all participants and then implement the best plans.
Give everyone the floor.
