First things first. There’s a laundry list of things that can hold women back at work, and they all come back to one thing: patriarchy.
From the motherhood penalty, to the gender pay gap, to the old boys club, gender discrimination is hardly a new discovery. And the onus shouldn’t be on women to correct the balance.
But according to authors Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith, joint writers of the book How Women Rise, “the behaviours that undermine women are often different to the behaviours that undermine men.” They clarify, “our focus on behaviours doesn’t mean we seek to blame women who have not risen as quickly as they would have liked or that we don’t appreciate the role external barriers play in keeping women stuck”. Instead, the book looks at what we can change on a personal level. Whether by design or by social conditioning, there are certain qualities that women tend to exhibit at work, and not all of them are productive.
Interestingly, the book notes, often the behaviours that serve us in the earlier stages of our careers are the exact same behaviours that hold us back further down the track. Why? Because the qualities that work in a junior role are often at odds with the qualities required in a leadership position. Taking direction well, for example, isn’t such a helpful quality when you’re supposed to be the person responsible for setting the course.
So if you’re a woman with leadership or developmental aspirations, these are the 12 behaviours that may be holding you back from that career progression…
1. Reluctance to claim your achievements
Always the first to share the credit with your collaborators, or put your success down to your team? You may worry about seeming narcissistic or unfair – but this can prevent you from owning your talents.
2. Expecting others to spontaneously notice and reward your contributions
If you don’t take the initiative and communicate what you’re doing, you run the risk of having your value go unnoticed and unappreciated.
3. Overvaluing expertise
Got a skills gap? Giving too much attention to filling it can distract you from focusing on connections and visibility – which often take you further than skills alone.
4. Building rather than leveraging relationships
Building a network is crucial – but only if you actually use it.
5. Failing to enlist allies from day one
Do you wait until you’ve done all your groundwork and finessed your project, before asking for help? You may find things move faster and more seamlessly if you enlist help from the very beginning.
6. Putting your job before your career
Loyalty and commitment to your team is great, but not if it prevents you from pursuing external opportunities that could take you further in the long run.
7. The perfection trap
With great risk comes great reward. But if you’re paralysed by a fear of failure, or unhappy with anything less than flawless, you may find you hold back and miss out on opportunities.
8. The disease to please
Certified people pleaser? If you’re so worried about letting people down that you can’t assert your boundaries or know when to say no, you may be doing yourself a major disservice.
9. Minimising
Australians love a self-deprecating joke, but if you’re regularly diminishing your own value and achievements, that narrative can rub off on those around you (as well as influencing that way you see yourself).
10. Too much
Over compensating for something? By offering too much information or too much background you lose clarity in your communications.
11. Ruminating
Regular self-assessment and critical reflection is a good practice, but wasting too much energy overanalysing your past performance, dissecting your mistakes, blaming yourself, and self-flagellating can prevent you from moving forwards in your career.
12. Letting your radar distract you
Sensitivity and empathy are excellent qualities in a leader, as long as you’re not so highly attuned to your environment and coworkers that you get side-tracked or derailed.