success

Leadership Language

~ Susan Kelley ~ Leave a comment

Choose Your Words Wisely

Image courtesy of Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Two employees are asked to evaluate their work at their annual review. One describes their accomplishments as “outstanding,” noting that they have exceeded plan. The other gives a full report listing data points and gives the team credit for achieving success throughout the year.

Which employee was male and which was female?

Study after study shows us that as women, we tend to describe our abilities less favorably than our equally proficient male counterparts. We describe ourselves less often as as “proficient” or “skilled” on resumes and we display less confidence even on our resumes when we have similar degrees and certifications.

Scholars Exley and Kessler studied long and hard to reckon that women come in at nearly 13 points lower than men on willingness to brag about themselves. They do this even when they know they are exactly equal. How do we know? Well, Exley and Kessler offered up a straightforward math and science test with the same questions, and then asked men and women who got the same score how they thought they did. They asked them to rate themselves on a Likert scale. (On a scale of 1 to 100, how well do you think you did?) Women who got the same score ranked themselves on average 13 points lower. They continued to do this even when they knew the score they got.

Fascinating.

We just don’t seem to be all that comfortable saying, “Hey, I’m pretty good at stuff, and I have the score to prove it.”

A new study by Van Epps, Hart, and Schweitzer provides us with some great insight into how to overcome this tendency, and how to level the field a bit. We would be wise to learn it, and use it. It’s called “Dual Promotion.” And I’m here for it 100%.

Dual promotion is all about not just talking about our own capabilities, but elevating each other while we are at it. It turns out that women aren’t altogether good at bragging – we know that, we get that. (And yes, I know this is not universal. Some women show off, some are great in the limelight. Others are wallflowers and won’t say a kind word about themselves if paid a million. Right? Nothing is standard. Moving on.)

Dual promotion benefits more than just ourselves. Nice, right? There are three primary ways we can do this. The first is easy, and makes sense. If you have a team that you work with that helps get you to a goal or inspired you to get there, you give them a nod to the contribution they made to your success.

Allow me to demonstrate. My daughter studied classical vocal performance in undergrad. When she gave her senior recital, she gave a lovely thank-you speech at the conclusion and was sure to thank not only the musicians who accompanied her, but her student-friend who meticulously dedicated hours to arranging a Spanish folk song for her in operatic style that became her finale. This guy was not a part of the performance. He had already given his own concert, but she named him specifically and spoke about the fact that it was his talent that made her own talent shine brighter, then she went on to take several more bows. She made it clear that singing that song was her own thing. She made his music come alive. Without her voice, his arrangement was still folk music, but her operatic voice made a street song something it had never been before. And yet… you see how they both were vehicles for each other? She did not yield ground for her own achievement just because she acknowledged another person’s contribution to her arguably great success.

Another mechanism for dual promotion is complimenting a competitor. This happens often in sport. I am a triathlete, for example, and I find it very satisfying when, at the finish line, I can congratulate with total sincerity the person who has just crossed ahead of me whether by a slim or great margin. And I appreciate fully when they do the same. We are both out there trying to make the best of a tough sport, enduring challenges both within and without our control, and we are enjoying the results not just of a day’s work but of months and often years of training. It feels good to acknowledge that whatever came our way that day, we rose to greet the task. Professional athletes quite often give plaudits to their counterparts, admitting that it takes a lot of grit to get where they are, showing respect not only for the game but for the chops it takes to get there. The same should go for competitors in the market and in the workplace. When we have a colleague on a task or a competitor for a promotion or role, we do well to note that there are many factors that weave into who ends up at the finish first, both realistically and metaphorically.

The third and final dual promotion strategy is recognizing the field. By this I mean when we show our respect for the shoulders on which we stand. Think of an award recipient who shows clear respect for the other nominees. All those who admit “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” are likely not joking. It actually IS. Realistically, when our hat gets tossed in the ring for a prestigious award, it is a privilege and it feels good. To know you’ve gained the respect of someone or a group enough to be considered, let alone to win, feels pretty great. So the act of dual promotion in this instance is when we include by saying, “I’m honored to be among this great group of other people because it means that I, too, am pretty great.” “Look at me and how great I am…gee, I must be pretty great.”

Each of these forms of dual promotion puts us in the spotlight, but the best part is that it doesn’t leave others in the dark. It can feel amazing to allow ourselves to shine, especially if we recognize that it is totally, completely fair to do so. Not one of us got here alone, but we can remember that our shine is not dimmed by the success of others, nor should we promote their contributions over ours. We don’t have to break the rung of the ladder we just stood on, we can extend a hand to the person standing there and bring them along with us, if that is the path they both want and have earned. That’s no problem at all!

Don’t fear dual promotion – it’s a fantastic way to be sure you are shining your own light, offering light to others, and being seen. Your warmth, consideration, and desire to grow will be apparent to all as a leadership and strength trait, and your honesty and sincerity will be apparent throughout.

No one lies a braggart, but nearly everyone likes a team leader. So go forth and promote – dual promote.

Source – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37561455/. Because I definitely want to dual promote the team that taught me what dual promotion is all about!

Dear Writers, Please Fail to Succeed

~ Susan Kelley ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a little focused on failure as the path to success lately. I think it is because my daughter is graduating from college and my son is graduating from high school, both in the same year, and both are sharply focused on what to do next. They are hyper-focused on the need to succeed, and I am spending more and more time reassuring them that there is more than one path to success, more than one definition of success, more than one way to measure success.

Allow me to meander a bit. We’ll focus on writing in a moment.

My daughter is a talented singer. She attended Ithaca College for vocal performance. That college is no joke for vocalists. Throughout high school, she experienced measurable success, though she tried to achieve more. As a college senior, though, she had a tough time with graduate school auditions and didn’t gain admission to the schools she wanted – she saw this as failure. My son is an actor. He attends a performing arts high school, he has been in more plays and musicals -both amateur and professional- than will fit on a resume. He was invited to audition for some of the top college conservatory programs on the east coast, only to be turned down time after time. He, like his sister, saw this as failure. My heart broke for both of them, like any mother’s would. They work so hard. They are so well-trained and educated. What happened? There is no simple answer. But instead of looking backward, the only way to look is ahead. What comes next? A plan to succeed. How to turn those downturns into something valuable.

Both kids now have separate paths ahead. My daughter is focused on a year of training and working with vocal students, looking into vocal health and perhaps a conducting MFA in another year. My son accepted an offer from a great college in New York not for theatre, but for film. Once he shifted his view, a whole new picture emerged. Actors are in movies, after all.

So on to writing…

I’ve written plenty of documentation that misses the mark. I have to go back to it and rethink, rework the process until it hits. I read the work of Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who articulated how important it is to feel insecure, to lose, to get things wrong. (I am far oversimplifying this but the gist is – you must fail.)

As people, to succeed, we have to embrace failure in order to succeed. Tech giant Jack Ma spoke at the World Economic Forum in 2018 about his failure when he applied for a job at KFC. 24 people applied for positions, 23 people were hired. He was not one. He applied to Harvard 10 times. He was not accepted. 10 times! Talk about really wanting something!  Failure hurts, indeed, but we learn from it. It’s normal and maybe we should see it as a little less detrimental and harmful if we can start to view it as part of our growth. (I still doubt that I would apply ten times, but…)

I recently read H. Jon Benjamin’s “Failure is an Option” while on a road trip. Seriously funny stuff, that book. Part memoir, part joke, the whole book had me in stitches. If the guy who blends Archer and Bob’s Burgers and landed in a big pot of wealthy can’t talk to you about failing, who else can? And he can write, too! As a writer, I respect that. I brought his thinking to my writing, and to my workplace. He may not be drafting technical manuals, but the point is still the same. You can reinvent text, yourself, your path, and your work. Failure IS an option. Just don’t flog yourself over it. Don’t make it a habit, unless you are a comedian, and then if you are, write a book about it and cash in on the whole life experience.

Henry Ford is thought to have said “failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.” And I’ve read that it took Dyson vacuums 5,127 prototypes in order to arrive at that amazing, ultra-successful 5,128th model that we are willing to pay a handsome fee for – all to have a great experience.

Workplaces that penalize failure wind up with low-talent, low-energy responsibility-shirkers. In technical writing, and in any kind of writing, it is taking a risk, being willing to innovate and develop new methods, new approaches, and new techniques that blazes a new path to truly dynamic customer experiences.

Our work is integral to our lives. Our successes are integral to our work. What we do defines who we are, whether that is our job, our home life, our sports or our pastimes. When there is opportunity in decision-making, there is risk and there is reward (unless there isn’t).

So, dear writers, break out the pen, not the safe pencil with the eraser, and make yourself uncomfortable. Mess it up. Then fix it. Then learn from it. Fail…to succeed.