It’s never fun to receive negative workplace feedback. And for women, there’s the added complication of dealing with a particular category of feedback that can be especially difficult to know what to do with.
I call this personality based feedback. Perhaps you’re told to watch your tone, because someone thinks you’re too abrasive, bossy or emotional. Or perhaps you need to be more approachable, or you could soften your delivery.
The problem with feedback like this is that it tells you very little about what you actually did wrong.
If I yelled at a colleague, tell me I yelled. If I insulted someone, tell me what I said. If I repeatedly interrupted people in meetings, tell me that. Those are specific behaviours I can understand and change.
On the other hand, if someone tells me that people have concerns about my “tone”, things become considerably murkier. What was wrong with it? What should I have done differently? Was I rude, or simply direct? Did I behave badly, or did somebody dislike the way I disagreed with them?
The gender feedback gap
While many women report anecdotally that they have received personality based feedback at work, there’s also research to support the pattern.
One analysis of performance reviews from 28 technology companies found personality criticism in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women. Among men, it appeared in just two of 83. A much larger analysis of more than 23,000 performance reviews found women received 22 per cent more personality-based feedback than men.
The words used are revealing too. In the smaller study, women were described as abrasive, bossy, strident and aggressive. You’ll notice that these are all assessments of how someone is experienced by other people, rather than descriptions of a specific behaviour they can change.
Of course, women can behave badly at work. We can be rude, aggressive and terrible managers, just like our male counterparts. When that happens, it should be addressed. The bigger issue here is the additional judgement women seem to face about the kind of person they are while doing their jobs.
And “watch your tone” is only one version of it. Women can also find themselves being assessed on whether they are sufficiently warm, approachable or likeable. There are expectations around smiling and appearance, and commentary on whether a woman is too assertive or perhaps simply takes up a little too much space.
The extra work of being likeable
For many women, this creates an additional layer of work alongside the job itself. You’re doing the work, while also paying attention to how you’re being experienced by others while you do it.
It becomes particularly complicated for women in leadership roles, because many of the behaviours organisations expect from leaders require authority and assertiveness. Research suggests women can demonstrate those behaviours and be regarded as competent, while still paying a social penalty because they are considered less likeable. This is sometimes described as the competence-likeability double bind, if you’re interested in reading more on that particular phenomenon.
This also might explain why the advice that women need to be “pleasant” to get ahead in corporate life has persisted for so long. And pleasantness at work can encompass far more than the words you use.
There are expectations around smiling and appearing approachable. A large meta-analysis involving almost 60,000 people found women smile more than men on average, with the gap increasing in some situations when people knew they were being observed or were navigating socially tense situations (hello, workplace politics).
The research doesn’t tell us that women who fail to smile are penalised at work, but it does suggest is that smiling itself is gendered social behaviour, which we can reasonably assume carries over into the workplace.
Then there’s the matter of appearance. Women can also find themselves navigating expectations around how they dress and present themselves professionally, adding another dimension to how they’re assessed at work.
Put all of this together and you start to see the amount of monitoring that can sit around an otherwise ordinary working day for your average woman. Am I being too direct? Do I seem approachable? Should I soften this email? Did I come across as rude? Am I dressed appropriately? Should I smile more?
While none of this work appears in your job description, for many women, it can become part of doing the job.
Is there a link to corporate burnout?
It would be too simplistic to argue that these expectations explain why women end up burning out at work. The research doesn’t support that conclusion.
What we can say is that women experience greater emotional demands at work in terms of managing their behaviour and appearance, while certain forms of emotional labour are associated with burnout. Women also continue to do considerably more unpaid work outside their jobs, with recent research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics data putting the difference at around an hour a day minimum among people doing unpaid work, with more for parents of young children.
When you step back to look at the bigger picture, it’s no wonder so many women end up feeling exhausted by the load they’re carrying at work and at home (me included).
Give feedback people can actually use
So should we stop giving women difficult feedback? Absolutely not. Good managers need to address poor behaviour, regardless of who’s responsible for it.
However, they also need to be precise about what that behaviour really was. If someone yelled at a colleague, repeatedly interrupted people in meetings or made an insulting comment, say so. Explain what happened and why it was a problem, so the person has something concrete to reflect on and change.
“Watch your tone” doesn’t do that. Neither does “you’re abrasive”, “you need to be more approachable” or “you can come across as aggressive” without specific examples of the behaviour behind those assessments.
Given what we know about the gender gap in personality-based feedback, managers should be particularly careful about reaching for these descriptions when giving feedback to women.
First, stop and ask yourself what the employee did. Would you describe the same behaviour in the same way if a man had done it? Are you responding to something inappropriate, or are you uncomfortable with the way this particular person exercises authority or communicates? Do you not like the fact that they’re disagreeing with you, or correcting you when you’re wrong?
We all need to be self-aware at work
Self-awareness matters for all of us at work. As human beings, we all have a responsibility to understand how our behaviour affects the people around us. That being said, women shouldn’t have to spend their working lives trying to make themselves sufficiently pleasant and inoffensive while they do it.
We hear companies saying they want strong female leaders who can make difficult decisions and speak with authority. They might need to get a little more comfortable with how those women act and present themselves, and what they really sound like.
A small update to Track Changes On
Track Changes On and the social media content I’ve been making over the past few months started as a side project. I was interested in what was happening to work, particularly as AI started changing the conversation, and I wanted somewhere to talk about it.
I didn’t expect it to grow as quickly as it has. I also didn’t expect it to awaken a part of my career that I thought I’d left behind.
I started my professional life as a journalist. I loved finding interesting stories, or taking a complicated subject and making sense of it for someone else. Somewhere along the way, Track Changes On has brought me back to that.
I’d love to see how far I can take it. I want to do more original reporting and keep building Track Changes On into something that becomes a bigger part of what I do. In that spirit, I’ve switched on a paid subscription option from this week to anyone who is feeling generous and wants to offer some extra support to my project.
I’m not taking anything away from free subscribers. Supporters simply get a little more access and the chance to have a little more influence over what I cover.
So if you like what I’m doing and you’d like to help me keep building it, you can now become a paid supporter for $7 a month, roughly the price of a coffee, or $60 a year.
What do you get?
First, a more direct line into Track Changes On. Paid supporters can send me the workplace dilemmas, career questions, corporate absurdities and subjects you think deserve more attention. I’ll regularly choose submissions to respond to or explore through the newsletter, podcast and social content.
I’ll also run monthly supporter-only live chats and Q&As, where we can get into some of these conversations together.
And then there’s the Corporate Survivor option.
For $120 a year, you get everything above, plus something a little more personal. Tell me the thing about corporate life that drives you completely mad and I’ll turn it in one of my corporate themed mugs, designed specifically for you. I’ll create two concepts, you choose your favourite and I’ll have your one-off mug printed and sent to you.
And if you just want to keep reading and listening for free, please do. Nothing is disappearing behind a paywall. The main Track Changes On newsletter and podcast will stay free.
Paid subscriptions are simply a way for those of you who want to get a little closer to what I’m building to help me take it further, as I go down this new path in my career.
Things I’ve made (and you can buy)
If you enjoy my content and would like to support my work, here are a few things I’ve created.
🛒 Track Changes On Shop - Coffee mugs and drinkware for corporate rebels
📖 Do Give Up Your Day Job - Guide to corporate exits and transitions to self-employment
