Around this time last year I read an article about why women in Tech tend to get less funding than men do when they go out to pitch investors, and was astonished and appalled when I read that women tend to be extremely prepared, which comes across as “rehearsed”, while men tend to “wing-it” which somehow gets interpreted as being more able to “roll with the punches” and “confident”.
I found this so interesting that I started reading more about it and found that this same “winging-it” approach that a lot of male executives have is responsible for them speaking up more in meetings, getting more promotions, and making stronger professional networks for themselves. One study written about in The Atlantic found that women only apply for jobs when they feel 100% qualified, while men do so when they are only 50% qualified assuming they will learn on the job. In an effort to do everything perfectly, it seems a lot of us women have potentially been shortchanging ourselves: of time, money, and even opportunity.
So I decided going into 2015 that I was going to work like a man for the year and see what happened. What did this mean? Well, I did a lot more reading on what men and women do differently at work and distilled it to one main thing that I would try: consciously being less prepared. I starting prepping things about 20% less than I used to- presentations, meetings, pitches, etc. This was so against my nature that I actually would just force myself to do work in certain time periods so that I wouldn’t be able to micro-focus on things. Then I decided to not feel guilty about what thing I was neglecting/delegating/not doing to perfection.
Professionally speaking, it was a remarkable year for me. First, I was amazed at how much more receptive people were to my broad strokes presentations and how much credit for being creative I got with my “off the cuff” ideas. I discovered that even if I didn’t think I had “figured something out” before I meeting, I actually almost always knew what I was talking about… something that as I moved through the course of the year reinforced my confidence in a way that I believe led us (in part) to ask for more money for our work.
Further, this approach relived a lot of my anxiety about releasing the proposal/presentation to the world, or going to meetings. But more of all, this approach freed up a ton of my time to expand and build on my professional network, volunteer more and enjoy my personal time more.
However, the biggest change was the decision to not feel guilty about not putting in the extra 20% effort…It took a bit of time, but when I realized that my 80% was still pretty awesome and effective, that quickly went away.
Many of us take pride in our perfectionism, so it’s bizarre to think that preparedness doesn’t always work to our advantage… and yet, a look at our Presidential race this year and pin the tail on the candidates people ding for seeming “rehearsed” and “stiff” because they know their policy and those who have gained fans by being “off the cuff”.
Inspiration of the Week: Ghetto Tarot, a project from award-winning documentary photographer Alice Smeets and a group of Haitian artists known as Atis Rezistans. They recreated Tarot Cards from the Rider Waite deck in Haiti and the results are just amazing.
