******** while female

*Insert your own descriptor here (bossy, loud, quiet, cold, emotional, soft, blunt, cautious etc.)

So I have a confession to make. I ‘suffer’ from the age old affliction of being ‘bossy’ while female. I’m opinionated, high energy, ambitious and like to lead and take charge – sue me.

Strangely enough – this sentence is one which has taken me the best part of a year of reflection (and quite a bit of self-coaching) to come to terms with. Which is weird right? Why would I not want to be these things? 

These things are all seen as strengths. How many times have you seen leaders praised for a take charge attitude, or for being pro-active? They are a huge part of who I am, the fundamentals of my personality and I’ve come to believe, they are my strengths so why would I want to change them? Why would I see them as weaknesses – problems to solve?

And do others feel this way? Is it just me? 

So I asked a few colleagues from various points in my career – do you ever feel like you need to change your personality to be successful? And no surprise, from my male colleagues the answer came back as a very clear NO (followed by quite a few questions about why I was asking) whereas the responses from female colleagues were a little more mixed. So where does this idea that we need to change who we are to be successful come from?

I could talk for hours about how the working world is a little obsessed with the idea of weaknesses – of understanding your weaknesses and undertaking development activities in order to improve. It’s an almost standard question in interviews – what is your greatest weakness? There are thousands of articles about strengths vs weaknesses in management, employee performance and engagement. The number of blogs and opinion pieces alone are too numerous to count. I could unpick employee performance reviews and wax lyrical about assimilation in the workplace and about how organisations want a cohesive company culture but none of these aspects are really relevant to understanding who I am in the workplace and why I feel I need to change.

These conversations and this question in particular led me to really take some time to reflect back on my career and to think about where this idea that my personality, that who I am, may be ‘wrong’ somehow. That who I am may not mesh with being successful.

The root of these questions in my own journey has one source – feedback! Or more specifically, bad feedback and by bad feedback – I don’t mean an awkwardly delivered feedback sandwich – I mean really personal feedback. Feedback that isn’t about an action or a behaviour, that isn’t specific and that hits at the core of who we are as a person. The kind of feedback that generates self-doubt, a feeling that you, as a person, are not enough – not good enough, not smart enough, not kind enough…. that kind of feedback.   

For me, the first time I experienced bad feedback that really stuck with me (or the first chink in my armour so to speak) was when I was studying for my A levels – specifically English Lit. I’ve always loved reading – it’s my escape from the world. So it’s the first day of class, it’s a new school and the texts are assigned for the year. To say I was keen would be an understatement – The Handmaids Tale, Duchess of Malfi, and Regeneration. They are books (and a play) which I still re-read to this day – well-worn copies with pride of place on my overstuffed bookcase. The Handmaid’s tale was assigned first and I dove in headfirst. 

We progress with classes and every week it is the same thing: read maybe two chapters out loud as a group and that’s it. After 4 weeks of this, I ask the teacher after class if I can have the assignment questions to get started on. She refuses as ‘we’ve not finished the book’. I explain, I’ve finished the book (by this time I’d read it three times). She refuses again – I go away confused but muddle on (but very, very bored).

Parent’s evening comes around and I sit there and have to listen to this teacher call me ‘overconfident’, ‘too smart for my own good’ and to tell me that in order to settle in at the school, I need to stop trying to ‘run ahead’ and I need to ‘work at the pace of others’. She actually says that it would be good if I didn’t try my best. Now don’t get me wrong – my very opinionated mother didn’t let this slide and within a week I was given all of my assignments and coursework tasks to get on with out of class but this has always stuck with me. Why was my excitement about the topic wrong? What was it about me that provoked this feedback?

This is just one example of this kind of toxic feedback – I could spend hours agonising over her motivation (but I think that would get very boring for anyone reading this!) but it was the way this feedback stuck with me that’s important. 20 years on and I can still remember those words, that feeling.

I’ve experienced this type of feedback sporadically through my career to date, from both males and females, which said I was ‘too much’ ‘too quick’, ‘too opinionated’, ‘too bossy’ and it seems like a number of my female colleagues have experienced the same feedback which is more about who we are rather than what we do. It’s the difference between receiving feedback like ‘try to listen more, speak less’ or ‘pay attention to the details more’ which are actions and specific giving you a concrete structure to improve on a weakness; and receiving feedback that says you are ‘too much’. Sorry – but too much what?

And this does seem to be a female thing. From speaking with colleagues, it was very telling that my male counterparts couldn’t empathise with this self-doubt, they hadn’t questioned themselves in this way. Don’t get me wrong, this is not an empirical study (and I’d be happy to hear from any colleague with thoughts on this topic) but anecdotally either more females experience ‘personal’ feedback or we internalise it more? Either way, the damage is the same. Could this be one of the roots of imposter syndrome? That is a question for more learned minds than mine…

So what have I learned from this deep dive into my psyche? 

1. One of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given (which kicked off a lot of this thought process) is you do not have to take on board all feedback given – pick and choose what you want to work on and ignore what is not useful. Be discerning and really think about how the feedback has made you feel. If it’s made you question who you are or made you feel less than – stick it in the bin!
2. Be tolerant. We are all human, have different ways of working and sometimes we don’t get along with everyone. That’s ok. And support each other – having a team around you (whether in work or outside) to reassure you, help fight the self-doubt gremlins and who accept you as who you are is an amazing thing. Don’t take it for granted and pay it forward.
3. Know yourself. Take the time to really think about how you are feeling and why. This is especially key if you are receiving this type of feedback regularly. Feedback shouldn’t be hard to receive – it shouldn’t make you feel like a failure and it shouldn’t make you doubt who you are. If it does, really think about why. Are you in the best place for you? I could have saved myself a lot of stress in a previous role if I had really looked at how I was feeling. I’m very lucky to be part of a team and an organisation which has given me the confidence and space to re-examine previous situations and to come out stronger.
4. OWN IT – be who you are, unapologetically. No one has the right to make you doubt who you are or make you feel bad for being yourself – so don’t let anyone take that power from you.

A colleague once sent me a thank you card and inside all it said was ‘keep being you’.  And THAT is the best advice I can give – it may take some time and it’s probably always going to be a work in progress but that’s ok – just keep being you!

This blog was first published for the Women's Staff Network, University of Wolverhampton in May 2021.