Why is it so hard for women to advance their careers? What unhealthy patterns do many women fall into?
In How Women Rise, Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith explain 12 limiting habits that prevent women from being their best selves. We’ve divided these 12 habits into four main thought patterns.
Read below for a brief How Women Rise book overview.
How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith
Many women feel barred from advancing their careers but can’t identify the barriers holding them back. In the How Women Rise book, Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith argue that these barriers seem invisible because they’re self-inflicted and uniquely female. The barriers arise due to women’s overly self-critical mindset—the product of their desire to meet the rigid gender expectations placed on them by society and to avoid the backlash that occurs when they don’t. This mindset causes most women to develop at least one of 12 common habits that limit their professional success. To break free of these self-inflicted limitations, women must recognize and deconstruct their detrimental thoughts and behaviors.
Sally Helgesen is an author, speaker, and coach specializing in women’s leadership. She’s a member of the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, which honors thinkers whose work has majorly impacted the world of business and management. Some of Helgesen’s popular books include The Female Advantage, The Web of Inclusion, and Rising Together—the follow-up to How Women Rise.
Marshall Goldsmith is an author, business educator, and executive coach. Like Helgesen, he’s been inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame. He’s also the best-selling author of Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
Pattern #1: Selling Yourself Short
Helgesen and Goldsmith explain that women tend to sell themselves short. This is because society praises modest women while viewing ambitious women as arrogant or brash. This rigid line between acceptable and unacceptable causes women to develop binary thinking—a woman is either a good person who is humble and modest, or she’s a selfish person who brings attention to her goals and achievements. Their attempts to meet the “humble and modest” standard result in detrimental behavior such as downplaying their goals and achievements.
Behavior: Downplaying Goals and Achievements
The authors explain that women who sell themselves short tend to minimize their accomplishments and downplay their goals. They don’t bring attention to the work they’ve done, they have a hard time accepting praise, and they neglect sharing their goals with others to avoid appearing overly ambitious.
This harms their ability to progress in their careers because superiors overlook them in favor of employees who may be less successful but are more vocal about their goals and accomplishments. The authors note that to progress in their careers, women must be able to advocate for themselves so people see why they’re credible and deserving of promotion. Further, they must be able to express what they want in order to get it—if a woman never tells her boss she wants to move up the corporate ladder, she’ll likely be overshadowed by someone who does.
Pattern #2: Pleasing Others
Helgesen and Goldsmith explain that women tend to focus too much on pleasing others. This is because society tells women to be caretakers—they must be empathetic and accommodating of others at all times. Women who focus on themselves and leverage individual opportunities risk being seen as selfish and manipulative. This causes them to neglect their own needs and desires, overlook opportunities for growth, and struggle to find effective solutions to problems.
Helgesen and Goldsmith discuss two main detrimental behaviors that result from the desire to please others.
Behavior #1: Over-Accommodating
The authors explain that women’s desire to constantly please others often causes them to be over-accommodating. They may downplay their own emotions in an attempt to seem “professional” and not overwhelm men, but this causes them to lack authenticity. People who lack authenticity struggle to win people’s trust and inspire them, which can make it more difficult to progress in their careers.
Women may also struggle to make practical decisions if they’re overly focused on making everyone happy. For instance, they may struggle to say “no,” which causes them to stretch themselves too thin and makes them susceptible to manipulation. They may also struggle to solve problems because they’re more focused on pleasing everyone involved than finding sustainable solutions.
For example, there may be an employee on the team who repeatedly shows up late and produces unsatisfactory work despite support and warnings. The most effective solution for the company both financially and productivity-wise would be to fire the offending employee and hire someone who meets their standards. However, if the employee is popular, a female leader who’s concerned about upsetting her other employees may struggle to fire them.
Finally, Helgesen and Goldsmith say that women tend to hyper-focus on the job they’re currently doing out of loyalty to their coworkers, boss, and organization, rather than striving for the job they want. This prevents them from honing skills and taking steps toward their ideal future and instead keeps them trapped where they are. For example, a writer may have worked under her current editor for five years and have a close relationship with her. She knows her editor relies on her to keep the magazine afloat. As a result, she spends so much time trying to produce stories for her editor that she never dedicates time to her true goal of being a fiction writer.
Behavior #2: Failing to Utilize Social Networks
The authors explain that women tend to excel at building social networks but may struggle to make effective use of them. This is because using contacts to advance their careers and asking others for help makes women feel manipulative and selfish. However, utilizing contacts is a crucial component of advancing your career—asking others for support helps you accomplish immediate tasks and can also help you take steps toward long-term goals.
For example, if you ask a coworker to put you in touch with their editor friend, you might receive input that helps you write a killer report. And moving forward, staying in touch with the editor might give you insights that will help you accomplish career goals like becoming a full-time writer.
Pattern #3: Perfectionism
Helgesen and Goldsmith explain that women tend to strive for perfection because success boosts their confidence and society views failure as disgraceful. Further, because women are less recognized for their accomplishments than men, they feel they need to go above and beyond to be seen as successful. However, these attitudes cause women to overwork themselves, experience negative emotions, damage relationships, and focus on details that may not be important in the long term.
Helgesen and Goldsmith discuss two main detrimental behaviors that result from perfectionism.
Behavior #1: Unrealistic Expectations
In pursuit of perfection, women tend to develop unrealistically high expectations for themselves, which impedes their progress in numerous ways. First, unrealistically high expectations cause high levels of stress and strong negative emotions when those expectations aren’t met. Overly high expectations also cause women to hyper-focus on small details in pursuit of perfection, which can prevent them from reaching their big-picture goals. Perfectionists tend to avoid taking risks due to their fear of failure, which can disrupt their ability to advance their careers—as the authors point out, risk-taking is a sought-after leadership quality because it enhances innovation.
Perfectionism may also damage perfectionists’ reputations and relationships. First, they often have unrealistically high expectations of others as well as themselves, which may cause people to become resentful. Second, their high expectations constantly stress them out, which also stresses out the people around them.
Behavior #2: Inability to Prepare for the Future
The authors explain that women’s tendency to focus on perfection often causes them to focus so much on the present that they neglect to plan for the future.
First, perfectionist women often want to achieve mastery at their current positions to feel and be seen by others as capable. However, spending so much time being perfect at their current position often prevents them from spending time planning and acquiring the skills necessary to progress to the next step in their careers.
Further, some women are so focused on mastery and their personal performance that they neglect to build their social network. As we learned previously, having strong connections is crucial for career advancement.
Pattern #4: Overthinking
Helgesen and Goldsmith explain that women tend to absorb a broader range of information at a time than men do. However, this ability causes women to overthink things—they get caught up in hyper-analyzing past situations and focusing on details of present situations that may not be that important. This often prevents them from advancing their careers because it causes them to get stuck in a negative mindset (due to feelings like regret), struggle to find effective solutions, and lose their ability to focus and be present.
Helgesen and Goldsmith discuss two main detrimental behaviors that result from overthinking.
Behavior #1: Losing Track of What’s Important
The authors explain that women are more vigilant of the smaller details of relationships and other people’s feelings. While this improves their leadership abilities by allowing them to better understand people, it can also undermine them.
First, being overly focused on other people can cause you to lose your concentration and act ineffectively. For example, if you’re in a meeting and you’re focused on why the person next to you keeps frowning, you’re more likely to miss important information.
Second, being overly focused on other people can make you feel insecure and reduce the confidence you need to be effective. For example, you might start to think that the person next to you is frowning because of something you did. This insecurity might prevent you from speaking up and asking questions during the meeting—you’ll then leave the meeting confused, which will decrease your work quality.
Behavior #2: Dwelling on the Past
The authors explain that another negative effect of overthinking is dwelling on regretful past situations, trying to figure out what went wrong, rather than moving on. Dwelling on the past holds women back for two main reasons.
First, it causes them to be highly self-critical and engage in negative self-talk, which lowers their self-esteem and confidence. Second, it prevents them from making changes to overcome the original issue—dissecting the situation feels productive, but it just causes you more pain and delays you from taking action to change the behaviors that got you here in the first place.
Tips For Overcoming Detrimental Behaviors
Helgesen and Goldsmith provide three main tips to help women effectively overcome the four main thought patterns and accompanying behaviors discussed previously. First, they must start small by working to change one behavior at a time. Second, they must recruit a support system to help them progress. Third, they must refrain from being self-critical.
Tip #1: Start Small
The authors explain that effectively changing your behavior requires you to take things one step at a time. If you try to make too many changes at once, you’ll see fast results but be much more likely to relapse into bad behavior.
To start small, identify the thought pattern that’s most prevalent and detrimental for you—you’ll focus on this one area at first. Next, select one specific behavior you experience due to that thought pattern and choose one solution to that behavior that you can start implementing. For example, if perfectionism is the most detrimental thought pattern for you, you might want to begin by preventing yourself from setting unrealistic expectations. You can start by learning to prioritize certain tasks and details over others.
Tip #2: Get Help
The authors explain that another important way to create sustainable behavioral change is to recruit a support system to encourage you, provide you with feedback, and hold you accountable.
They explain that your support system can come in many forms. For example, you can hire a professional coach or ask friends, family, or bosses to support you. Alternatively, team up with someone who also needs help so you can provide each other with mutual support.
There are numerous ways you can use your support system. For example, you may want to request that your supporters let you know whenever they notice the behavior you want to overcome. Alternatively, you could ask them to help brainstorm strategies to overcome the negative behaviors. You may also want to schedule regular meetings where they ask you questions to hold you accountable for your progress—for example, “What are your current priorities? Can you release any commitments that aren’t helping you progress toward your goals?”
Tip #3: Stop Judgment
The authors argue that one of the most important factors in making progress is refraining from self-criticism and judgment. When women judge their progress or focus on their mistakes, they’re more likely to end up dwelling on the past and inhibiting further progress. The authors make a few recommendations to help you overcome self-judgment.
1. Forgive yourself for mistakes by letting go of binary thinking. Rather than believing that flaws and mistakes make you a bad person, acknowledge that no one is perfect and we’re all continuously working to improve ourselves. Accept your mistakes and move on.
2. Focus on changing the future rather than the past. When asking for advice, request that your support system provide you with tips to improve future behavior rather than critique what you did wrong in the past. This will help you avoid dwelling on the past and being self-critical.
3. Don’t judge others. Judging others doesn’t provide you with any benefits. Instead, it expresses negativity towards others and expends energy that you should put toward self-improvement instead.
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Here's what you'll find in our full How Women Rise summary:
- The limiting mindset many women develop that stunts their careers
- The four thought patterns that women need to break free from
- Why striving for perfectionism is asking for failure
