Could a gung-ho, risk-taking attitude at work be giving men a head start on the career-ladder? Trainer Byron Kalies looks at how women with a cautious nature may be disadvantaged in the interview process.
I am reluctant to write about one particular issue for HR: the differences between men and women. I have noticed that in many publications dealing with HR issues that are one step away from the ‘politically correct’ line, the writer often gets savaged.
However it is this sense of saying the wrong thing that is becoming a real problem in training rooms. It’s not that we deliberately try to discriminate – but mistakes happen. I’ve been castigated on a few occasions for not including a woman (or man) when I’ve split training sessions up for group work. There was a time when I was mortified and felt like such a sexist pig for failing to have the right mix. Luckily I’ve become far more comfortable admitting my mistakes.
So, what is this difference? It concerns interviewing and competition in the workplace. Interview training is something I’ve done a fair amount of and it never occurred to me that there could be potential problems for women. (“Why would you – being a man,” I hear.)
There is always competition in the workplace: If people acknowledge this then it is overt competition and often healthy; If they fail to acknowledge this then it is covert competition and invariably destructive. Individuals will compete to be the most popular, the least popular, the most productive, the least productive etc.
A psychologically interesting example of a potential problem occurred recently when a senior management role was advertised with a salary of £55,000 per annum. There were no women applicants. However, when the same post was re-advertised with a salary of £35,000 per annum the advertisers were overwhelmed with applications from women.
On a more day-to-day level I’ve started thinking about interviewing. There are some differences between men and women. (My disclaimer here – I know this doesn’t apply to everyone and people shouldn’t make assumptions, etc. I’m not saying it’s a good or bad thing – it’s just a thing.)
Men tend to be more aggressive and in a workplace situation this often shows itself as taking more risks than women. This has been established through a number of recent studies. Women tend to choose high probability, low payoff strategies. Men will often rush to a high-risk solution and take a chance in a ‘do or die’ gesture. The implications of this behaviour in assessments may well imply to (more often than not, predominately male) interviewers that the female lacks confidence or competence.
In a recent study, Fisher and Cox argue that this could well be the underlying reason women, on average, take longer to respond to questions. This can often indicate to interviewers a degree of indecisiveness. In fact they may well need to weigh up all the options. This will be compounded by the fact that women are generally less likely to take guesses than men. Under pressure, perhaps at an interview or in an assessment, men would be more inclined to have a stab at an answer. Women would tend to want to consider the situation and assess the risks. In a real work environment one would suppose these virtues of balance and control would be ideal. In the artificial assessment situation, however, this failure to respond quickly is often taken as an indicator of lack of confidence.
There is a lot more data behind this and numerous other factors. I feel it is, at the least, interesting and at worse, possibly discriminatory. It’s an area we, certainly I, have never considered before when training interviewees, or interviewers. Maybe I should.
* Reference: Fisher, M., and A. Cox ,Gender and programming contests: Mitigating exclusionary practices, Informatics in Education (2006)
One Response
Gender difference in 360 feedback ratings
An interesting article… A number of years ago I analysed differences between rater groups in a set of 360 feedback responses – it was a big sample (3,500 datasets) evenly split across genders (raters and recipients) and was a relatively homogenous group in terms of academic and professional background (a large firm of accountants). All rater groupings were consistent (men rating other men, women rating men, self assessments etc.) except for women rating other women – where overall ratings given were significantly lower. As well as being consistently lower the pattern of ratings also seemed to follow gender stereotypes – women rated other women less harshly (but still more severely than other pairings) on competencies such as Listening Skills and Interaction (stereotypically female attributes) and much more severely on typically ‘male’ attributes such as Goal Orientation, Assertiveness and Decision Making.
I did not conclude that I had proved female ‘cattiness’ towards other women! Instead I decided that a more likely explanation for this difference was that the business environment and the behaviours that are perceived to be desirable within it are still based upon behavioural characteristics that are more traditionally male than female. This would tie in with the observations about gender differences in interviews in this article. In self-assessments it would appear that females felt that they were adequately demonstrating these behaviours (as did their male raters) while their female colleagues did not.