Women need to talk it up in the workplace says behavioural expert

According to leading U.S Behavioral Scientist Shannon L. Goodson employees must learn to “toot their own horn” if they want a promotion or pay rise. Goodson, who spoke to Australian Women Online during a visit to Australia to promote her latest book The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance, says women in particular, are allowing the fear of self promotion to hold them back in the workplace.

Shannon L. Goodson has specialized in the influence of fear on the business-building activities of sales and non-sales professionals since 1978. She is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on sales call reluctance. She is also the author of the Job Seeking Index, a psychological test assessing attitudes towards networking for people searching for new positions.

Goodson’s studies of issues specific to women salespeople have been presented at scientific assemblies as varied as the Society of Applied Multivariate Research, The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and the European Congress of Cognitive Behavioral Psychology. Goodson has also published provocative articles, such as “Women Bosses from Hell” and “Women on the Fast Track: Our Own Worst Enemies?” co-authored with longtime colleague George W. Dudley.

After reading an article in a popular Australian publication a few years ago, Shannon L. Goodson launched a formal study of executive women in the U.S. who had already managed to successfully ascend the corporate ladder. The Australian article suggested that some women who have made their way to the top of the corporate ladder tend to pull the ladder up behind them. Goodson found some unexpected and troubling results from the U.S. study that seems to support the Australian experience.

Goodson’s research, presented at the annual convention of The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and to other professional groups, confirms the vital but often neglected role effective self-promotion plays in the salary and status disparities between men and women.

“The fear of self-promotion is limiting competent and deserving workers from being recognised for their contributions, prohibiting them from earning what they’re worth. Being able to draw appropriate attention to your contributions and competencies at work has become an important part of modern career management whether we like it or not, and it is something most women are still unwilling or unable to do as consistently as their male counterparts,” she said.

Shannon L. Goodson told Australian Women Online, “Women typically have bought into the old myth that if you work hard and keep your nose to the grind stone that you’ll be recognised and promoted. But it just doesn’t work that way anymore.”

In a 2008 study comparing 16,700 professional men with 11,745 professional women from thirty-four nations, Goodson and her colleagues found women to be overall more hesitant to network and less comfortable drawing attention to their skills, abilities and contributions than their male counterparts.

This study found that professional women in the UK, US and China are among the least reluctant to promote their interests, whereas women in New Zealand and Sweden are most timid, followed by Australian and Canadian women.

“In Australia one of the types of fears that we saw the most was a fear of being seen as pushy or intrusive,” Goodson said. “But a big part of building a successful career is making contacts and getting to know those people who are in influential positions when the opportunity arises.”

More often than not, when women do network they network only with other women and Goodson says this approach to network does have it’s problems. “You’re all fish in the same bowl,” she said. “Whilst I think it is great for women to support each other, we also need to branch out and network with those people who are in positions of power and influence. You’re not going to find a lot of these people in women’s networks because most of the people who hold these key positions are men. If you only network with women, you’re not going to be meeting the people you need to be meeting to achieve your goals.”

Another interesting thing that came out of the research is that some of the participants, men and women, actually stated a preference for working with a male boss. Goodson said, “When we asked them why some of the responses were quite interesting: back stabbing, gossip focused, not as supportive as men, crisis creators and drama queen were some of the comments.”

Shannon Goodson says although this perception of women in senior positions isn’t accurate, the reality is that although only a minority of women act out in this way, these are the women who stand out from the crowd. “I guess it is the negative behaviours that get the most press.”

Goodson added, “Women don’t have to have a personality make-over or turn into a male clone to be successful. It’s just a matter of being ethical, friendly and build those contacts – become a resource and help people and they’ll remember that.”

“Another problem women have and this applies in a lot of countries, is stage fright and what we call ‘yielder’. They hesitate to speak up in a meeting because many still cling to the myth that all self-promotion is socially unacceptable, un-lady like, and morally suspect.”

When I suggested to Goodson that perhaps the reason more women are hesitant to ‘toot their own horn’ is because typically women do tend to worry a lot more about how they are perceived by others than their male counterparts. Goodson revealed that she has actually struggled with stage fright in her own career. “This is a topic that is dear to me heart because I had terrible problems with stage fright and ‘yielder’ as well. I had to learn how to face my own fears and to overcome them.”

In her book, Shannon L. Goodson talks about the twelve ways in which these fears are expressed and how to overcome your fear of self-promotion so that you can ‘talk it up’ in the workplace.

The 12 Types of Sales Call Reluctance