When Women Lead

Julia Boorstin (2022).?When women lead: What they achieve, why they succeed, and how we can learn from them.?Avid Reader Press

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9?A cultural inflection point came with the 2013 publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

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9?women were creating and leading some of the most disruptive and innovative businesses I covered

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10-11?Rent the Runway founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman … focus … on operations

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12?I am choosing to focus this book on the startup world … female founders face more barriers to building companies that could have a massive effect on the world … we can all learn from them

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15?the research helped me take typical, seemingly inimitable women leaders and understand them as new, imitable archetypes … These women … add value to both industry and society

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15-16?women … have a tendency to be more considerate of data in their risk assessment.?They are also more likely to include varied perspectives in decision making and as a result are better at empathizing with both colleagues and customers … these women frequently focus on achieving a greater purpose beyond profits, and are more likely to pursue social and environmental goals with a heightened sense of gratitude

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18?my research helped me distinguish fair criticism about my performance from unfair criticism relating to my gender

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20?women build smart teams by embracing a growth mindset and welcoming varied perspectives

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20?underestimated characteristics – quietness and vulnerability – can provide a major leadership advantage

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20?data are driving companies and investors to embrace diversity and change

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20?I’m optimistic that these women and … their leadership qualities – will make the business world a more equitable place

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21?We need these new approaches now more than ever

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25-26?Venture capital firms … invest in startups beginning at the earliest stages of their life cycles – those first checks are called a seed round.?Then, through Series A, B, and C rounds of fundraising

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26-27?Women earn 82 cents for every dollar men earn and Black women earn 63 cents for every dollar white men earn … Between 2011 and 2020, startups with solely female founders secured an average of 3 percent of all venture capital funding globally.?During the pandemic, that percentage declined … The statistics are even more stunning for non-white founders … both male and female

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33-34?pattern matching, the process by which people try to predict future outcomes based on past patterns … But the instinct to find the familiar thing can create an echo chamber in which funding repeatedly goes to a group of homogeneous ideas and leaders … venture capitalists rely heavily on affinity and social connections to make their decisions … “the need to be plugged into certain networks can disadvantage entrepreneurs who aren’t white men.”?

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36?Cuyana’s brand: their motto would be “fewer, better things” and the products would be the antithesis of fast fashion

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38?An estimated $15 billion was spent in the United States on weddings in 2021

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40?If venture capital investing teams were more diverse, the leadership of funded startups would be more diverse, too

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42?VC firms with diverse representation – both gender and race – are more likely to be among the top-performing funds

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43?male and female entrepreneurs are simply asked different types of questions

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43?Female founders “prefer to provide realistic projections of market opportunity and growth trajectory, while their male counterparts tend to overpromise, which has become what most investors expect to hear,”

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45?many layers of unconscious bias at play

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46?All Raise found in its analysis of 2018 PitchBook data that after completing a Series B round, a greater percentage of female founders than male founders (67 percent to 64 percent) go on to raise a Series C … Pam Kostka … “At that point, the economics of her business have taken over … and the merits of the business speak for itself …”

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47?Fiscal responsibility is a common trait among female entrepreneurs

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47-48?2007 … McKinsey & Company … study found that companies with three or more women in top management functions outperformed those without that level of female representation … According to a Harvard Business Review study … “Female directors tend to be less conformist and more likely to express their independent views than male directors,”

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49?A dozen years after the original study, a new report from McKinsey found that … racially diverse teams … are 24 percent more likely to deliver above-average profits

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49?In 2018, Boston Consulting Group studied 350 early-stage companies in a mentorship program and found that women-owned startups deliver twice as much per dollar invested.?Yet the average startup founded or cofounded by women received … less than half … the average male-founded company received

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49?according to a Kauffman Fellows study … [racially] diverse executive teams … a 65 percent higher return than the all-white teams’ returns

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49?Sonya Perkins … “A diverse point of view is much more helpful for a diverse market.”

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50?investors are missing enormous investment opportunities.?McKinsey … 2016, if women attained full gender equity, the United States could add up to $4.3 trillion in annual GDP in 2025

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53?Among businesses dedicated to achieving a social goal or impact, about half are founded by women.?In fact, women are 20 percent more likely than men to create ventures with a social or environmental purpose

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54?Most often, women are pursuing a purpose that involves helping the environment, which they tend to be far more concerned about than their male counterparts

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54-55?2016 … Laura Huang and … Matthew Lee … “Social impact framing reduces the discriminatory effects of gender bias,” … When warmth is seen as an asset in business (as it is in such purpose-driven companies), women benefit from the stereotype.?For once, a bias worked for women rather than against them

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55?Data show that women across all income brackets, cultures, and geographies donate to charity more than men do … women entrepreneurs are more likely to get funding if they emphasize their social mission

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57?[Christine Moseley] billions of pounds of edible produce are wasted on US farms every year because the fruit or vegetables don’t look unblemished … part of the 40 percent all food that goes to waste

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57-58?“Do you want my ugly produce?” … juices, sauces, or dried snacks … environmental impact … estimated to contribute as much as 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – nearly equal to all the emissions from India … a fifteen-billion-dollar-plus opportunity in the US alone.?It’s a resource efficiency problem

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58-59?businesses pursuing a social good tend to be at least as profitable as regular enterprises.?Indeed, in 2020 funds invested in public companies with an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) focus far outperformed traditional investments.?A focus on social impact also helps with recruitment … higher levels of workforce retention and … higher levels of innovation … 2019 Deloitte report … consumers are four to six times as likely to buy from, trust, and defend companies with a strong purpose

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59?Full Harvest … farmers … have increased their profits

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60?Miriam Rivera … “VCs pile onto markets that affect the one percent, and far too few are trying to figure out a better mousetrap for the ninety-nine percent.”

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62?[Sheena Allen] In 2018, she founded CapWay with the goal of offering financial services to the more than 7 million American households that don’t have a bank account

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64-65?[Shivani Siroya] She began to offer small loans to other small business owners … Not a single recipient failed to pay her back … It became clear to her that trust didn’t need to flow only from the lender to the lendee; it was a feedback loop … she renamed the company Tala … a new kind of credit score … calculated based on data from … the cell phone

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66?Women are typically the most reliable borrowers of microfinance loans … mutual trust works: more than 90 percent of Tala’s customers repay their loan and become recurring customers

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67-68?she calls this strategy radical trust … What’s good for Tala’s customer base is also good for Siroya’s management style.?Hundreds of studies support self-determination theory, the idea that if people feel that what they are doing is of their own volition, they’ll feel more motivation and passion at work, which will result in better performance … “servant leadership.” ?This management theory centers on the value of cooperating with colleagues and emphasizing stakeholders, humility, and lack of ego; when leaders prioritize and empower employees, the employees’ performance improves.?A 2005 study of CEOs found that those who adopt a philosophy of servant leadership have higher trust from their employees and generate higher trust in the organization … A 2019 study … found that its effects are stronger when implemented by women and are greatest when implemented within female-populated teams

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71?In 2014, she [Meena Sankaran] decided to start a company that would help people, so she made a list of the global issues where her expertise could have the most impact

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72?In 2015, the year she founded Ketos, nearly 21 million people in the United States relied on community water systems that did not meet basic health standards, and 14 percent of all water in the country was lost in leaks

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74?a connection between gratitude and leadership … Gratitude seems to be a force driving entrepreneurs to launch purpose-driven companies

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75?Gratitude has a particular effect that explains why it’s such a valuable leadership tool: it has been found to foster long-term thinking and reduce the drive for short-term gratification

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75?David DeSteno … the more grateful people were, the more patience they had

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77?[Julia] Collins had seen firsthand that restaurants’ inability to predict orders caused massive amounts of food to be discarded (the food and agriculture industry is responsible for a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions)

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78?at current rates of erosion, the earth has only about sixty years’ worth of farmable topsoil left

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79?Collins … “The median farm income last year in the US was negative fifteen hundred dollars …”

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79?“… creating generational wealth for the next generation of women and people of color …”

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83?A study at the University of Notre Dame found that people who live in extremely resource-poor environments can be highly innovative in different ways

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83-84?jugaad, the Hindi word for “hack,” … means “finding a low-cost, intelligent solution to a problem by thinking constructively and differently about innovations and strategy.” … “assertive defiance,”

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85-86?Barbara Annis … men and women think and behave differently … Those differences should be sources of strength in an organization … women are likely to demonstrate … divergent, thinking … In contrast … the male brain is more likely to lean toward more “convergent” thinking

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86?Sierra Leone has the lowest average life expectancy in Africa: fifty-six years

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87?trust

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88?the United States … offered the shortest [medical] residency program

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88-89?despite the fact that women both create and consume so much health care, they lead only 19 percent of hospitals, and make up only 30 percent of the C-suites of health care companies and 13 percent of those companies’ CEOs

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89-90?The process of diagnosing mental illness and prescribing effective remedies has long bedevilled the health care industry

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90?[April Koh] came across a paper in the Lancet Psychiatry that identified the twenty-five variables that were most predictive of whether a particular antidepressant would work to treat a patient’s depression … Adam Chekroud

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96?Cambridge University found that women scored an average 10 points higher on an 80-point “Empathy Quotient” test than men did

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97?the research shows … men see the trees; women see the forest

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97?Boston … The two stakeholders with the most lobbying power, the insurers and the hospitals, have incentives that are at loggerheads: the former to provide the least care; the latter to provide the most care.?Neither necessarily has an incentive to provide the best care

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105?“The lack of funding for women’s disease in effect maintains women’s lower economic status,” a 2007 paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine stated

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105?the National Institutes of Health … It wasn’t until 2014 that the NIH conceded that there was an issue of male bias in preclinical trials

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111?The Oliver Wyman study … “women are more likely to find answers they need on their own after not being taken seriously by medical professionals.”

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111-112?A study published in Brain Structure and Function … for more complex tasks, though males are faster, females are more accurate and consistent

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114?Cityblock built its business to center on developing patient plans that incorporate both medical interventions and assistance with social services, to help pre-empt expensive emergency room visits … [Toyin] Ajayi … Cityblock hires directly from the communities it serves

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119?[Deidre Willette] ‘How do we make things better?’

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119?Carol Dweck … mindset theory … two types of mindsets: a “fixed mindset” is the belief that personal qualities such as intelligence and character are innate and immutable and cannot be improved on; a “growth mindset,” on the other hand, is the belief that through effort and experience, you can grow and change … 1970s … Studies have shown that reinforcing a growth mindset has a measurable positive impact on the brain’s inner workings

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120?a growth mindset is extraordinarily valuable in a corporate environment … At companies with a growth mindset culture, supervisors rated their employees as more innovative, collaborative, and committed to growing.?At those with a fixed mindset culture, they found frustration among employees

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121?no consistent relationships among gender, mindset, and intelligence

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122-123?Gail Becker … applied her own growth mindset to her hiring practices … Her employees’ growth mindset was put to the test … covid-19 pandemic … Becker believed that everyone on her team could adapt, and they did

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124?groups joined by newcomers … performed better … the mere presence of a stranger had caused the original group members to be more thoughtful about how they processed information … social sensitivity

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125?Another study, published in Science in 2010 … a group’s “collective intelligence” correlate to … three key markers.?The first marker was each member’s “social sensitivity” score … The second was conversational turn taking … The third marker … teams with more women outperformed teams with more men

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127-128?[Jennifer] Tejada … half the candidates are women or people of color … “… started the change at the very top … that’s when people really understand you mean business.” … breaking corporate silos and diversity proved to be a competitive advantage

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128?Diversity … is associated with “increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits,”

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129?female leaders … [are] more likely to have diverse teams

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132?align teams around transparent objectives and key results, or OKRs

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133?“… what does awesome look like, and how do we get there?”?WorkBoard … When teams fall short, leaders are trained to ask what the team learned instead of what went wrong

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134?Diverse teams produced better outcomes … because the experience of incorporation of diverse ideas felt harder … Bonita Banducci … when it came to problem solving and innovating, the experience of discomfort in a group dynamic was a feature, not a flaw

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135?women manage in a less hierarchical, more interactive, and more collaborative way … A 2017 Korn Ferry study … women “highly value the contribution of others, and moreover concede that they can’t single-handedly bend the future to their will.”

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136?A growth mindset is enabled when humility is paired with confidence

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136?Tejada … “Nothing will drag the engagement of a team down more than a brilliant asshole … you’ve got to get rid of them,”

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137?In essence anyone, male or female, can reap the benefits of the stereotypically female way of managing teams

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145?Various studies have found that women are less inclined than men to rationalize unethical behavior … Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg … “cultural numbness.” … women appear to be more resistant to cultural numbness than men are

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146?two researchers in the United Kingdom … found that women were 63 percent more likely than men to be recruited into leadership roles that were already unstable, a phenomenon known as the “glass cliff” (the authors also found that women were, on average, more likely than men to pull organizations out of the ruts that they had inherited)

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151?women leaders have an advantage in scenarios that require the overturning of entrenched ways of doing business

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157?Hollywood.?It is the United States’ most powerful export

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160?[Reese] Witherspoon decided to start a business that could systemize and scale the creation of content for, by and about women

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165?The Old Guard … A Wrinkle in Time

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165?Lean Waithe … “The things that make us different, those are our superpowers”

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166 Crazy Rich Asians and The Last Black Man in San Francisco

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172?clothing designs cannot be copyrighted or trademarked

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172?Environmentalists have raised concerns about the fashion cycle’s massive adverse environmental effects.?In 2018, shoppers purchased about five times the amount of clothing as they did in 1980

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177?For a female CEO, being likable can be essential to success

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179?In 2017, MIT’s Sloan Management Review … revealed that stories originating from consumers, rather than corporate messaging, had driven an increase in purchase consideration by about a third

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181?in 1969, Lake Erie became so polluted that it caught on fire?

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187?Thanks to the new circular business models of Rent the Runway and The RealReal, fashion customers are less captive to the cadences of the fashion industry, and better able to minimize their impact on the environment

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189?[Katrina Lake] “I met lots of people who were not qualified to be an entrepreneur … Okay, well, if all these other people can do it, I can probably do it, too.”

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192?humility.?“Nobody wants to work for a founder that knows everything.”

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192?alleged sexual harassment of a founder by an investor is not unique … Such situations are, sadly, quite common

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193?Perhaps the most essential data: the products customers returned and why they had rejected them.?All that information is particularly valuable because customer preferences reflect real-world interactions with products – not the brand associations created by millions of dollars’ worth of marketing

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194?prioritizing customer feedback

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195?Lake said, “… We can show that inclusive marketing performs better than noninclusive marketing; showing a wider variety of body sizes actually does better.”?

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198?in 2020, the investment bank Cowen forecast 25 percent compound annual growth for the resale and rental market through 2028

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200?it was industry insiders who were most convinced that her idea would fail

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200 ?critical mass theory.?It’s the idea that when a historically underrepresented group reaches a “considerable minority” – somewhere between 20 and 30 percent – there is the opportunity for social movements to accomplish real change

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201?The critical mass of powerful women in the retail space … has created value, it has benefited the environment … Imagine if other industries had the same critical mass of female entrepreneurs disrupting the status quo

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203-204?Three researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands found that in stressful situations, when heart rates and cortisol levels run high, men pay less attention to the higher risks of losses and make bigger gambles for rewards than they typically would; women in stressful situations pursue smaller wins that are more attainable and have less downside … Women … have been found to be more likely to prepare for the worst because they’re typically less overconfident than men … There’s also evidence that when faced with negative news and in anticipation of negative outcomes, women respond more decisively than men do

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204-205?In October 2019 … the Global Health Security Index … released an exhaustive and alarming report about the global state of pandemic preparedness … As it turned out, all of those indicators were much less predictive than one single indicator that the researchers left out of the study entirely: the gender of each country’s leader

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207?when presented with the choice between saving their economies now and saving lives in the future, female leaders tended to the latter … separate studies of US states’ responses … women governors showed both more empathy and more confidence

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208?The relative success of female leaders in crisis extends beyond politics and public health.?Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman … pandemic responses … Again, women were rated as more effective in thirteen of the nineteen competencies, such as “takes initiative” and “learning agility.” … The results also revealed that employees with women bosses had higher levels of engagement.?Those employees cited communication, collaboration, and inspiration as the most important traits in their bosses’ leadership styles, all categories in which women rated higher … A survey … by McKinsey & Co in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis showed that women performed better in three areas that improve organizational performance: people development, role modeling, and participative decision making … Thomas Carlyle’s “Great Man” Theory

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209?when crises are the result of highly distributed social forces … Great Women tend to be more effective leaders

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210?In the early 1980s, an analysis of CARE’s impact revealed that investing in women had a multiplier effect on their families and achieved the most dramatic results for a nation’s economic and public health outcomes

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214?Claire Babineaux[-Fontenot] … “… you don’t look past people in need.”

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214?Empathy, as a key part of emotional intelligence, has been called “the sine qua non of all social effectiveness in working life”

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217?a 2019 study by researchers at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management found that early failure can actually drive later success

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219?CARE … the organization saw that the women they were helping seemed best equipped to find solutions

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219?When crises send traditional social structures into flux, it can present a chance to shift power dynamics

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221?pandemic … 2020 … Jeff Bezos announced a $100 million donation

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222?Feeding America … the nation’s largest food waste recovery organization

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222?academics have found that optimism can provide valuable sustenance

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223?Babineaux-Fontenot … leading with … an attitude of abundance … there are enough resources to share … (The concept of an “abundance mentality” was coined by Stephen Covey in his best seller The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.)

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223-224?researchers have found, a scarcity mindset impeded decision making … People with a scarcity mindset tend to allocate spending to urgent needs while ignoring other important things that have a future cost

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224?[Michelle] Nunn and [Claire] Babineaux-Fontenot … made the best decisions they could, then listened and learned from the people with the most context and then kept on iterating and learning and iterating

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229?[Caryn] Seidman-Becker … Babineaux-Fontenot … and Nunn … share the leadership traits of flexibility, empathy, and preparedness … those characteristics made them particularly well equipped to navigate an unforeseen and unprecedented crisis

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229-230?women … well equipped to lead companies through crises; they center on the notion of adaptability … In 2011, Harvard Business Review deemed adaptability to be “the new competitive advantage …”

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230?In 2016, Korn Ferry … found that … “If men acted like women in employing their emotional and social competencies, they would be substantially and distinctly more effective in their work.”

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230?according to research, many people prefer to have women in leadership positions when an organization is in turmoil or a crisis hits

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231?another study that found that women leaders are trusted more than men in times of turmoil: in February 2019, three professors published “A Female Leadership Trust Advantage in Times of Crisis: Under What Conditions?”

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231?positivity and reassurance

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232?it’s not that female leadership is necessarily better than male leadership; rather it’s that companies whose values and priorities are more evolved and inclusive tend to have female leaders

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232?pandemic … countries with a focus on egalitarianism, collectivism, and long-term policy making tended to be more successful in mitigating fatalities … the countries that prioritized them were more likely to be run by women.

????Female leaders didn’t fight covid better; the kinds of countries that elect female leaders did.?Women-led countries are more prepared for a disaster not necessarily because they’re led by women but because the cultures that elect women share the values of preparedness, empathy, and adaptability

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233?Eleanor Roosevelt … “A woman is like a tea bag.?You never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.”??Research shows that more than just revealing how strong women are, crises show that they are in fact stronger than their male counterparts.?And their presence may be a sign of a company’s resilience

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237?Of the countless sports that are played around the globe, there is only one in which men and women compete directly against each other on an individual basis: horse racing

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238?researchers concluded that in fact, low levels of participation in a category result in underestimation

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239?female scarcity in the C-suite is so acute that a study found that when a woman is appointed as CEO, there is three times as much media coverage of her as of male appointees.

????That attention is not positive – at least not to the investor class … Just as it would be financially smart to bet on female jockeys in hurdle races, studies indicate it would be smart to invest in companies with a newly installed female CEO on the day that a rush of media attention causes a stock to drop.?The punishment inflicted by the betting market after a female CEO is installed is transitory – and the potential rewards are highly durable

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241?[Jennifer Salem] Holmgren … If she could turn the main ingredient of pollution, carbon dioxide, into fuel, she would achieve the holy grail of environmentally sustainable energy

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242?Over age sixty, men’s confidence declines while women’s increases, according to a 2019 report in Harvard Business Review

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243?Holmgren … LanzaTech … “… You have to convince yourself that what you want to accomplish is more important than what scares you and holds you back.” … she discovered she could use her soft-spokenness to her advantage: “They have to lean in to listen to me, and so they have to pay attention.”

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245?There is one scenario in which women actually do tend to talk more than men: in more cooperative environments … the disparity disappeared when researchers told group participants that they had to arrive at a decision unanimously, rather than by majority rule

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247?The fact that she was underestimated in a male-dominated industry, Holmgren said, liberated her to think differently … “There are no expectations from me, right??If I fail, who cares??Nobody expected me to succeed.”

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247-248?the minimum standard … the confirmatory standard … competence … this dynamic is just as harmful toward other underrepresented groups in business, such as people of color

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253?The academic at the forefront of the study of vulnerability is … Brené Brown … three professors at the University of Mannheim in Germany … the expression of vulnerability … humanizes a person … the “beautiful mess effect.”

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258-259?In 2018, three University of Wisconsin professors published “Dancing on the Razor’s Edge: How Top-Level Women Leaders Manage the Paradoxical Tensions Between Agency and Communion,” identified key conflicts: women were expected to be both demanding and caring, authoritative and participative, self-advocating and other-serving, distant and approachable

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260?96 percent of professional women say that they can learn more from a leader who shows vulnerability than one who doesn’t, according to a study conducted by Ellevate Network and Berlin Cameron

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260-261?A study found that high levels of flattery increase CEOs’ overconfidence in their judgment and leadership capability … and that drives underperformance

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262-263?A study published in Harvard Business Review in 2018 found that self-confidence is distributed evenly between genders

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263?Women are also more likely than men to suffer from imposter syndrome … (To be clear: this is not a fault of women but rather the result of being faced with bias and chronically underestimated at work.)?… In some situations, however, the self-doubt women too frequently feel can be a valuable tool in decision making

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264?BCG … found that ambition is not an inherently male or female trait … any decline in women’s ambition was found to be due to corporate environments that didn’t support diversity

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265?ambition … can be nurtured or smothered by corporate environments

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270?Many studies have shown that women CEOs are treated much more harshly … than their male counterparts

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270?token theory.?The theory goes that numerical minorities draw enhanced attention, exaggerated stereotypes, and heightened scrutiny

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270-271?In a 2012 study called “Failure is Not an Option for Black Women,” … double jeopardy: there is even greater discrimination against those with multiple marginalized identities than those with just one marginalized identity

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273?Julie Wainwright … “There is a double standard, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”

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274?A study conducted by Fortune of about 250 employee performance reviews found that 71 percent of women and 2 percent of men had received negative feedback … The majority of feedback for women centered on “personality traits” rather than “workplace performance.”

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275?Martin Abel … has found that both male and female employees react more negatively to criticism if it comes from a female manager

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275?Victoria Brescoll and … Eric Luis Uhlmann outlined … in a 2008 report that revealed that women’s expressions of anger can decrease their status and perceived competence and even result in lower wages

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275-276?For women, emotions … are seen as a fixed, internal trait … while men’s expressions … are seen as a temporary response to external circumstances … The researchers found that women have to provide an external explanation for an emotional reaction to avoid suffering from a perceived loss of status or competence, whereas men have to give no reason at all

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276?researchers found that when women used humor in a mock presentation, participants were more likely to view it as disruptive, distracting, or masking their incapability, while men’s humor was seen as helpful … such behavior simply is not expected of women.?When they are in roles that don’t fit stereotypes, women leaders suffer from what psychologists call gender incongruity

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277?Women are expected to be not only more nurturing but also more ethical.?In 2020, a study published by the American Psychological Association … found that expectations of gender stereotypes can hurt male leaders, too

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278?[Kirsten Green] “… Males have been getting away with being male leaders, and females are expected to be female and male leaders at once.”?The bar is simply higher

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278?[Jenn] Hyman … “… a double whammy.?Yes, it’s harder to be a woman, it’s harder to raise money, it’s harder to get respect from your employees or investors.?And then in addition to that, I have to spend time talking about it, which takes away from my capabilities of doing my job.”

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279?Ayah Bdeir … “… when there are these cases of misogyny or sexism … you just categorize it as that.” … Identifying a critical comment as reflecting bias enabled her to set it aside without allowing it to deplete her self-confidence

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280?A number of women … told me that seeing the data laid bare enabled them to prepare strategies … Joan Williams … calls awareness and mastery of double standards “gender judo” … “So savvy women learn that they must often do a masculine thing (which establishes their competence) in a feminine way (to defuse backlash).?“… Some female leaders have found success using metaphors to re-code behavior that is commonly associated with men.?For instance, some women leaders began referring to customer acquisition work as “gardening” instead of “hunting.”

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281?Thanks to [Mindy] Grossman et al., I’ve come to understand that fashion can be like armor; it makes me feel stronger and, indeed, more like myself

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285?how women … manage to flourish in such hostile environments … they tend to possess strong and secure identities outside of work

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286?Emory University professors found that the more children know about their family’s history – good or bad – the higher their self-esteem

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286-287?There is one particular nonprofessional identity I’ve noticed that many of the women in this book share: athlete … competitive athletics have been found to correlate with a range of benefits including better grades, enhanced leadership skills, and higher self-esteem … participating in sports when young enables women to earn more later in life … Perhaps most important is that playing sports encourages self-evaluation and the understanding that one’s individual performance can be adjusted and affected by one’s own work, not just external influence.?Serious athletes, studies found, more often develop the ability to take failure as feedback to make them stronger

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288?[Christine Hunsicker]?“You have to learn how to lose a game and come back stronger …” … she brings her employees together for “retrospectives” to analyze their performance systematically (Hunsicker intentionally does not call them post-mortems – after all, nobody died).?

????Academics have another name for what Hunsicker was doing: “after-event reviews.”

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288?Though on the surface it may seem as though sports are about competing with other people, in many ways, they are far more about competing with oneself

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289?A study by psychology and economics professors … found that self-competition is just as valuable as competition with others in boosting performance.?The professors who conducted the study found that if workplaces can be restructured to be about self-competition – or out-performing one’s past results – rather than competing against others, it would reduce gender inequities

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291?Any experience that provokes self-reflection and provides a strong identity is a powerful tool for women to combat bias and find inner strength

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292?Connecting with different parts of their identity strengthened the women’s immune system and helped immunize them against the negative pathogen of stereotype … if people feel strong in their sense of self, they can learn not to take criticism personally; they can separate criticisms that are irrelevant or unfair from good-faith critiques that provide opportunity for self-improvement

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292?It is when women decide how to define their own identities that they liberate themselves from expectations

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295?YPO … Young Presidents’ Organization

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296-297?Studies have shown that women in the prime years of their careers spend less time networking than their male counterparts do even though they know that it’s crucial for career development … There is something about traditional networking that simply has not worked for women

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299?[Carolyn] Childers … [Lindsay] Kaplan … In January 2019, they launched Chief, a company providing education and community to women executives at that level

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300?“core groups”; groups of ten women meet every month with an executive coach

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303?[Tiffany] Dufu launched The Cru

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306?a characteristic of female professionals: they tend to be reluctant to mix business and pleasure

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309?What helped women the most was the combination of being central in their networks and having an inner circle of one to three women … advice for women looking to advance: embrace randomness and diversify your network and inner circle

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310?There’s one more thing about the power of networks: they build resilience

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324?the most effective negotiators are women negotiating on behalf of someone other than themselves?

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329?“The easy route for me would have been to call up the other balding white men who’ve been successful,” [Ali] Partovi said

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330?“The core thesis for me is that if you have someone who has overcome a lot of adversity to get to where they are, it’s an attractive investment opportunity ...”

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331?The reality is that entrepreneurship arises from an accumulation of experiences with teachers, colleagues, and patient bosses.?The problem of inequity and underrepresentation can’t be solved by distributing capital to young geniuses who come from all walks of life.?They will be solved only when the hiring pipeline into tech giants – and all companies – looks a lot more like the world at large.

????It makes me optimistic that someone with Partovi’s success has found that there’s more value in disrupting the status quo than protecting it

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332-333?Frida Polli … “The tools we use today to measure people’s likelihood of success in a job are both very inaccurate – not very predictive – and they’re extremely biased …” … Pymetrics, an AI-driven system to predict someone’s fit for a particular job

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334?Polli … “… We’ve been asking ‘Do you have the experience?’ when actually we should have been asking ‘Do you have the potential?’”

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334?This focus on “soft skills” is key to diversity … “… Pymetrix is not a diversity creation tool, it’s a performance-improving tool that also benefits diversity.”

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336?[Stephanie Lampkin] “… Business school teaches you that the ventures that succeed are those that fill a gap, an arbitrage opportunity …”

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337?the companies that had made grand statements in support of Black Lives Matter had an average of 20 percent fewer Black employees than those that didn’t

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342?Freada Kapor Klein … uses a particular metric … “distance traveled” – how many obstacles entrepreneurs have had to overcome, how far they’ve gotten, and how hard they have had to work to get there

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343-344?there is another factor that Kapor Capital looks for: startup concepts that originate from founders’ lived experience

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346?Bitwise expanded to … additional cities among the poorest in the US … to create well-paid tech jobs

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347?Networking programs … made zero difference in the number of Black women in management

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347?In 2016, they reported shocking statistics: 90 percent of the women had witnessed sexist behavior at conferences and company meetings

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348?A 2010 study … revealed … Organizations that presented themselves as meritocratic still favored men over equally well-performing women

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350?Josh Kopelman … First Round Capital … companies with a female founder performed 63 percent better than those with all-male founding teams

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352?there are not just moral reasons for embracing diversity but also compelling economic ones

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354?According to McKinsey’s calculation, gender equity could add trillions of dollars to the annual US GDP

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355?Indeed, when companies focus on data – dispassionate, unbiased, stereotype-free data – encouraging diversity naturally becomes a priority

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358?the women of 2018’s Black Panther

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359?Women tend to have an attention to context and an instinct to search for structural solutions rather than quicker but more temporary fixes.?They are more likely to seek out diverse perspectives and incorporate them into their decision making, and they tend to pursue purpose-driven companies and show vulnerability.?All of these things are conducive to successful leadership, yet are less often recognized as essential traits for a successful leader … those characteristics … were not innate … women had … created their powers

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360?there is no one type of leadership that always works

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360?there is a vast gulf between the traditional idea of good leadership and the traits that actually contribute to good leadership

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361?there is a more varied and counterintuitive set of leadership qualities that yield better results – for both women and men

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361?lots of different characteristics, particularly those traditionally thought to betray weakness, can in fact belie counterintuitive strengths

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361?These superpowers did have one crucial thing in common: not a single one of them is innate, bestowed at birth

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362?It’s actually the balance of self-confidence and humility that enables a growth mindset, which seems valuable for everyone

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363?Acknowledging a challenging situation is not admitting weakness or defeat.?In fact, it’s another form of preparation and a key step toward accomplishing meaningful change

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364-365?no one in this book became successful alone.?The most successful leaders are those who are able to draw the most out of their teams.?Study after study has found that the smartest teams are diverse, not just in terms of gender and race but also in their range of backgrounds and viewpoints

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365?The advantage of communal leadership … strategic collaboration … has everything to do with embracing the discomfort that can come when outsiders stimulate new perspectives

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366?partnership with men is not optional – it’s essential … in fact, collaboration between men and women has been found to be the most valuable pairing of perspectives

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366?look for ideas everywhere

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366?there’s massive goodwill to be gained from reminding people how much they’ve helped you

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367?Now … it seems that women understand that they’ll do better if they have other women around them

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369?None of the strategies in this book are the exclusive domain of women; there’s plenty of evidence that everyone could benefit from adopting the unexpected superpowers of women leaders?