Tales from the Twenty-Five Percent - A Rumination on Gender and Leadership
Security Industry Specialists
Innovative Management - Tailored Solutions
By Shannon McCaffrey, Senior Director of Special Operations
I recently hosted an informal round table with a group of female employees hailing from various positions and ranks within SIS. I was curious as to their personal stories and plans for their future. I wanted to know what led them to the security industry and the perspectives formed during this journey. The women were candid and pragmatic, appreciative of the opportunity in a field none of them originally thought they would work in, but also occasionally frustrated at the challenges that seem to be uniquely experienced by women in the workplace.? Possibly even to a higher degree by those employed in male-dominated industries.
My motivation in gathering these women wasn’t just a friendly lunch. I had recently read an article shared by a colleague highlighting a phenomenon called the “sisterhood ceiling” that sees women preventing – both blatantly and subconsciously – other women from advancing in the workplace. This article had my colleague and me reeling…were we contributing to a situation that resulted in a less than 1:4 female to male industry ratio? I didn’t want to chalk this up to simplistic conclusions or banal generalizations and felt compelled to hear from other women directly about their experiences. And, more importantly, I had a deep desire to own my responsibility as a female leader in this organization.
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Anecdotally we accept that differing perspectives foster more innovative and dynamic solutions. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc. and it's subsidiary Google, has said “A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone”. This is not just earnest idealism. A?2019 study?by McKinsey found that gender-diverse companies were 25% percent more likely to outperform their national industry median, and?ethnically diverse companies were 36% more likely to outperform.??
Yet the security industry continues to trend with only 25% of the workforce being women.??
Perceptions on security work certainly account for some of the skew. None of the women I spoke with had planned on a career in security. They assumed themselves to be ill-equipped and unqualified for what they believed the job to be (“chasing bad guys”, “brandishing weapons”). They thought the work was purely physical and were more inclined toward jobs where they could contribute analytically. It wasn’t until they joined SIS that they learned that security work offered vast opportunities and was far from one-dimensional.
While misconceived internalizations and inhibitions like these certainly contribute, they are only part of the problem. Broader factors like gender-based social constructs, hidden bias, and few industry role models also play a part. For this reason, we as leaders, directors, managers, watch commanders, supervisors, and leads - regardless of gender - have an imperative to foster an environment that not only encourages and develops female talent but acknowledges any unconscious bias that we or teams we lead may have.?
The Likability Paradox
My parents were committed to raising my brother and me with the same expectations, values, and standards. We were both enrolled in sports, had similar chores, and one Halloween, were even outfitted in the same wacky DIY clown costume consisting of a “shirt” made from white bed sheets amateurly painted with red and blue polka dots, face paint of deep rouge cheeks and black noses, and a five and dime plastic top hat.? Our similar upbringing was intended to ingrain in each of us a sense of equal worth, ability, and opportunity.
Even so, I still remember hearing – and believing - at a young age that good girls were nice, helpful, and amenable.? My brother, meanwhile, had considerable latitude for bold, assertive, and brash behavior.??
Today, women leaders continue to battle socially defined gender roles.
When women take charge, others often view them as competent but unlikeable. Women who choose more passive approaches are liked but less respected as leaders. This very situation came up for me not too long ago when a female manager in a different division asked me to mentor her.? She told me, “I know there are people that don’t like you, but you get stuff done around here”.??
My reaction was involuntary and immediate: “Who doesn’t like me?? WHY don’t they like me?”? The little girl inside me gut-wrenchingly reacted to this profound failure of not being liked, but curiously, completely overlooked the second and very positive part of the statement that I get things done.??
Why is it that women leaders are seen to be competent or likable but rarely both?
Personality critiques are not just an issue for women in leadership but extend to all levels of women in the workplace.?
Fortune Magazine published an article several years ago, “The abrasiveness trap: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews”.? The authors studied 248 performance reviews conducted by 180 people, 105 by men, and 75 by women. The reviews were from 28 different companies, ranging from large tech corporations to mid-size and smaller organizations.??
The findings were startling; of the 248 reviews, 177 (71%) contained critical feedback, but interestingly, the critical feedback was not evenly distributed by gender. 58.9% of the reviews received by men contained critical feedback while 87.9% of the reviews received by women contained critical feedback.? Nearly 9 out of 10 reviews on women had critical feedback!
A deeper dive reflected an even more shocking finding. The feedback in the women’s reviews contained an alarming level of negative character critiques (“pay attention to your tone”, “you need to step back”, “stop being so judgmental”) that were not seen in the male reviews.? These character criticisms were seen in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women but in only two of the 83 critical reviews received by men.? In other words, 75% of the women’s reviews contained character critiques while only 2% of the men’s reviews had them.
The women I round tabled with spoke of similar experiences. Several confided that when pushing concerns or suggestions to counterparts and leadership, they were often met with responses that marginalized the concern or disregarded the suggestion. “Why are you worrying about that?” was her supervisor’s response to an operational escalation by one woman. The tacit lesson? Either accept that her suggestion/concern is not worthwhile or take a stronger position and risk being perceived as overbearing, petty, or annoying.
The Consequence of Bias
Research shows us that we all possess bias. As psychologist and president emerita of Spelman College, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum has explained it, we absorb bias in the same way we breathe in smog – involuntarily and usually without any awareness.??
People will readily acknowledge that they are drawn to and favor others like themselves for friendships yet insist on an ability to shelve this inclination in the workplace. However, this preference for individuals from similar groups- or implicit bias - influences us, even when the bias itself is in direct conflict with our beliefs and values. Because they are unconscious, we are unaware of them and how they manifest in our actions and behaviors.?
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One of the women that joined my roundtable spoke about her first few months as a Security Specialist at SIS. She expressed deference and appreciation for her male trainer, even referring to him as a ‘mentor’. However, she went on to describe their interactions in which he opined on multiple occasions the various challenges and struggles that she would have to “watch out for [as a woman]” in her job.
Implicit bias not only impacts women and minority groups in the workplace. Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book “Blink” observed that less than 15% of American men are over six feet in height, yet almost 60% of corporate CEOs are over six feet tall. Even more striking, less than 4% of American men are over 6'2", yet more than 30% of corporate CEOs are over 6’2”. We can assume that corporate boards of directors are not specifying “a tall stature” in their criteria for CEO selection, and yet these numbers speak for themselves.
There are many actions we take that may be partial to one group, to the detriment of another, without even realizing we’re doing it. Only a deliberate and conscientious effort in recognizing and naming our internalized biases will enable us to replace negatively held associations with positive ones, and ultimately create teams and spaces where unconscious bias is minimized.??
This isn’t as daunting as it sounds. Both Google and Microsoft offer free online training that helps to explain and manage against unconscious bias. Testing your own unconscious bias is also an effective exercise. Project Implicit, a consortium of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington, created and maintain the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a free online bias test. The IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts (group types) and evaluations (perceptions).?
The ability to recognize our implicit biases is the starting point from where personal accountability can begin. And, with personal accountability, the conditions necessary for empathy and inclusivity are born.
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Leadership Reimagined
When the employee I spoke of before asked me to be her mentor, I was flattered and humbled but also taken by surprise. I was proud of my success but saw it as very specific and certainly not anything anyone else would want to emulate or be interested in learning from.?
However, that simple request became the catalyst that forced me to re-examine my responsibility to those around me. It was exactly the motivation I needed, and an existential self-audit ensued. I reflected on my personal journey that led me to a career in security, and the successes and failures experienced along the way.?
I considered the energy and time I allocated to developing talent and mentoring. I am acutely aware that the advocacy of my mentors and current and former leadership – both men and women – helped bring me to where I am today. I contemplated my approach to leadership and its relative impact on those with whom I closely work.??
And I thought of the women I sat and talked to and wondered where their journeys will lead them. I hope they will consider continuing to explore a career in security, but more importantly, I want them to recognize their potential and see a path forward in whatever they choose to do.
I know that with my position comes an obligation. As a female, I realize this burden is even more compelling. I am committed to the ongoing work needed to be a better manager and stronger leader; one that models an ideal and place where these women can one day see themselves - regardless of ratios.?
Owning my biases will be my first step.
Resources
Google Unconscious Bias Training?
Microsoft Unconscious Bias Training https://www.mslearning.microsoft.com/course/72169/launch
Project Implicit bias test (IAT)
Shannon joined SIS in 2015 after a career in project and supply chain management. Shannon is trained in both the TAPA FSR and TSR.