Transcript- What To Do When Your Employee Asks for a Raise

The Cooperation Curse and The Take Charge Tax –…

by Angela McConnell

(Edited for length and clarity)

Intro

Welcome. We are here today to talk about the cooperation curse and the take charge tax. So what do I mean by that? You're going to find out really soon, but first, who is this woman that is talking to us that has described herself as an excited geek to be here tonight?

I worked in information technology and application development for over 20 years, close to 25. I’m really familiar with working in a male-dominated industry and some of the challenges that we face there. Also have a passion for helping other women figure out that landscape.

This is how much of a geek I am. I'm actually on 171-day Wordle streak right now. Every morning, part of my routine is to get up and do the Wordle. So that probably tells you an awful lot about me. I am excited to be here, and we are going to jump into this content.

Understanding Natural Behavioural Tendencies & Patterns

I'm going to start with understanding our natural tendencies. As a coach, I spend a lot of time helping people understand what these natural patterns are, what their natural tendencies are. You're probably aware of some of them, but you may not have a language to really wrap around, what is it?

What does intimidating mean? What are the behaviours that lead people to think that about me? Or what does be more assertive mean in this context when I've watched other women be assertive and get punished for it? What exactly is that supposed to mean here?

What I want to do is break down what some of these patterns are in terms of how I think about behavioural patterns so that we have a common language to start with, and then we'll do a real deep dive into take charge and cooperative.

What Natural Behaviour Traits Look Like

These natural behaviour traits, and this comes from a tool that I use called the Natural Behaviour Discovery from DNA Behaviour. Essentially, you want to think about these as your core natural preferences. They get wired into our personalities when we are very young, between three and six years old. So, they're very ingrained patterns.

They are our natural pattern, but they don't account for any learned behaviour that we may have. And there's no good or bad of these patterns. You can certainly choose to run, to behave in a way that is not your natural pattern. But you want to think of this as kind of a spectrum.

People high outgoing, for instance, are going to be very communicative, very expressive and tend to like to be around other people and get energy that way. People high reserved are going to be more serious, usually more quiet, usually recharge on their own.

When we're looking at high patient, they tend to be very relational. They’re very approachable, accepting and empathetic, and really focused on relationship building and maintaining relationships. Where people high fast-paced tend to be very rational, very task-focused, and very bottom-line-results oriented and they tend to be more results-focused than relational.

High planned people are very accurate in detail. They appreciate schedules and a lot of detail. And then people high spontaneous tend to be more generalists. They speak and think in generalities and tend to improvise a lot more. They don't love to follow plans.

I'm going to skip over take charge and cooperative because that's where we're going to spend the rest of the evening. So, you'll hear more about that. People high trusting tend to take things at face value more. They’ll have an easier time sharing information. I like to say you start with trust with those folks but you can lose it over time.

Where people high skeptical really like to have the information for themselves. They like to keep control of information, ask the really difficult questions, approach things with a bit of skepticism, and are very exacting about getting things right.

With high pioneering people, they like to start new things and then drive, drive to get those things done. If we have a goal, we're going to drive to get that goal. They’re somewhat competitive, and very determined to get things to happen.

People high content like more of a steady balance. They spread their time and energy out among different things and they have a community bucket and a work bucket. They tend have a bit better life balance, or at least they appreciate it. They might not succeed in doing it better, but their pattern is they'd rather have it, where high pioneers drive really hard for life balance.

People that are high in risk taking take bold action, and they’re more tolerant when the coin is in the air, and there's a possibility they don't understand what the outcome might be. Whereas people high cautious, think through all of the contingencies and have a plan.

They'll take an action, but only after they've really thought it through, and they’re happier when the coin lands. Even if it lands on the side that they weren't hoping, at least they know which side it landed on. Then they can put their plan in play.

Then we have creative and anchored. High creatives tend to be very original. They do things in a new way. If you give them a problem to solve, they're the start-with-a-blank-piece-of-paper people.

High anchored people are practical and very experience based. When you ask them to solve a problem, they’ll look to see who's already solved this problem, and what's the best way to solve it. It may not occur to high creatives to even look for a template until they're 90% through. Then they’ll think, "Oh, have I done this before? Maybe I've done this before."

I know that was a really quick overview. But the idea here is to give you some sense of all of how these behaviour traits play together, how they influence how people experience us, and how we show up.

The Natural Behaviour Trait Scale (with Examples!)

There is also kind of a scale for these patterns and how they show up. When you take this discovery that I use, the closer your score is to 50, the easier it is for you to flex your behavioural trait.

For example, if you scored 52 on outgoing, that means you tend toward outgoing. But it's pretty easy for you to flex toward reserved when you want. Or on the opposite side, if you scored 48 in reserved, it's pretty easy for you to flex towards outgoing.

But the stronger your score, the harder it is to move to the other side. You can still do it. It just takes a lot more energy, intention and effort to do it. Usually when you're doing that kind of flex, it's exhausting.

If you're either working with somebody that's got a different trait, and you feel drained when you talk to them, they've probably got a trait that's opposite yours. Or if you’re doing an activity that's opposite to a strength of yours, particularly the further away that score goes from 50, the more energy it takes to try to do the other trait.

What you're seeing here is a representation of my scores. I tend to be a tad on the reserved side, but I can be more outgoing. That's a pretty easy flex for me. I tend to be kind of in the middle of fast-paced and patient. So that’s relational and rational, task focused.

I tend a little bit toward results focused, but kind of in the middle on that. I am way over on the spontaneous side. So, all my high-planned friends and project managers, they hate me because what they hear from me is I change my mind all the time and refuse to follow a plan. We'll talk about where I am on take charge in a little bit.

I'm in the middle on skeptical and trusting. So, it's very easy for me to dive in, be the skeptic in the room and play devil's advocate. But I can also lean over, take things at face value and be more trusting.

I tend toward a little bit more of the content side than the pioneering side. I like to have a little bit more balance, a little bit of steadiness. I don't drive super hard toward goals, but I do tend to be really high on that creative.

Meaning I will start with a blank piece of paper, and it’ll occur to me 90% through the project, that I’ve probably already done something like this. I’ll think, “This seems really familiar. Let me go and look”, and I’ll find I've already created that document we need right now.

But today what we're talking about is this one element, take charge and cooperative. And the reason that we picked this to really highlight and focus on, is because this seems to be a power dynamic and trait that gets us in trouble or confounds us in male-dominated industries. I won't say it gets us in trouble, but it's one that confuses where we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to do.

We're going to talk about this pattern that is somewhat hidden, that nobody teaches us, about high cooperation, and high take charge. What's your natural pattern? I'm going to describe here a pattern and see if this sounds like you.

Are You High Cooperative? (with Examples!)

People that are high cooperative prefer to follow agendas rather than set them. They’re really good at getting people to agree on things and seeking consensus.
They’re fairly diplomatic about the way they say things, group-oriented and very good at reading, "Hey, is everybody following along? Is everybody getting this?"

They’re really great team players and they also really appreciate harmony. They don't like a lot of conflict, so they’ll do whatever they can to help maintain a sense of harmony in the group.

Who feels like that might be where your natural pattern is? Can you just give me a, that's me, in the chat, if this sounds like you might be on that more cooperative continuum. Who wishes they were on that side? Are there any, I wishes, out there, I wish I could be more like that?

Are You High Take Charge? (with Examples!)

People that are high take charge like to have authority and make decisions. They’re very self-reliant, they're the “just point me in the direction and let me go do it and stop trying to tell me how, just let me go”.

They also tend to be fairly direct about the way they say things. When they have something to say, there's not a lot of sugar-coating of it. There's just a, this is it, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm feeling, this is my two cents.
They like to have input in decisions and discussion. So, they like to help make those decisions and/or have some input into a decision if there is some sort of decision to be made.

Who feels like they're maybe on that side of the spectrum? Yep, I'm definitely on that side too. Anybody wish they could be on that side, wish they were on that side?

Determining if You’re Cooperative or Take Charge

We're going to do this little exercise, if you want to just grab a piece of paper and build this little chart for yourself. We'll start filling it in, and we'll start to see how this curse, and how the tax plays out.
Do you think that you fall out more on that cooperative side or more on the take charge side?

For me, I've got to check on the take charge, because that's the side that I fall out on. And this chart, we'll start talking about, not just where your natural pattern is, but some other things as we continue along.

The Cooperation Curse Case Study: Robyn

What is this cooperation curse she speaks of? Let's find out. I'm going to tell you a story about my friend Robyn.

Robyn was the office mom in this organization that we worked together in. She was loved by everybody, and always knew what special events were coming up for people. She was really easy to get along with, she made sure that everybody was happy in the organization and getting along well.

She was good at recognizing other people, getting people excited about things together, and making sure that everybody was okay with the directions that we were going on things. Everybody loved her.

Can you think of somebody that's like that? Or do you know somebody like that? She was really great, and everybody really liked her. So that doesn't sound like a curse. That sounds amazing, right?

Here's the curse part though. She had streamlined a specific process, since this organization kept doing one-off things, and it was taking a ton of time to support. She had the group agree to certain standards, but someone in the organization didn't adhere to that.

She didn't want to make a scene and say, "No, you can't do this one-off thing." Instead, she took on hours and hours of work that she wasn't getting credit for. No one understood that the decision not to follow the new process was causing extra hours.

It made her seem like she was slow at her other work, nobody understood what it was that was taking up all of her time, since she wasn't confronting the fact these processes weren't being followed.

When a leadership position came up where she could step into being a key player, she was overlooked for that position because she wasn't seen as a leader, as confident enough, or as somebody who would stand up to do what she needed to do.

What makes matters worse, the person that they did put in charge of leading these meetings had none of the qualifications that she had. They picked somebody who probably should never have been put in charge of something like that, but Robyn was seen as too nice, too accommodating to be in this leadership position in a meeting.

So, the curse was everybody loves you, and we don't think you're going to make a very good leader. Does that sound familiar to any of you, unfortunately?

The Take Charge Tax Case Study: Nikki

Let's talk then about the take charge curse. What happens on the other side of that? Now I'm going to tell you a story about me.

I was hired to work at an organization, and there was a project that was a bit stuck. I went in, figured out and diagnosed where the problem was, helped create a new process to get work moved between two organizations. I set new boundaries with the teams. And we started getting better results.

I streamlined the work and reduced everybody's frustration, a bunch of rework on our side, and saved a bunch of money because there was more direct communication. Things were flowing better. I was getting great results. I was getting great reviews. The customer team was happy, our team was happy.

I'm high fiving myself thinking, "Fantastic, this is amazing. I'm doing amazing work. Everybody sees that I'm doing amazing work. Clearly this is going to lead to amazing things for me."

Womp, womp.

So, I say to my boss at the end of the year, "Hey, I've solved this problem. What do I need to do to get promoted? You know, I'm looking for the next opportunity."
And his response was, "Yeah, I can't promote you. There's no spot open."
So, I said, "Okay."

I do another year of problem solving, still getting great results and doing all of the things. I go back the next year and I say, "You don't need to promote me. I get it. There is no place for you to put me, just give me a new problem to solve."

And his answer was, "I don't have a new problem for you to solve, just go do the thing that you're doing." Then, he took a male colleague, gave him a huge new project that I actually had a certification in being able to do. This guy had no idea what this project was.

Not only did I not get the opportunity, but I got told that they didn't even want my help with it. I couldn't even volunteer to help bring him up to speed on things or give him some advice.

The third year that I went and pushed for, "Hey, I need something,". My boss said, "Okay, well, then you need to leave my team. If you want something other than what you're getting here, "you're just going to have to leave my team."

Because I was seen as a threat to him, because that directness, that amount of take charge, that kind of result, all he could see was, she wants my job and if I do anything, she's going to get enough experience to get it.

The answer was that I did leave his team, but it took me three years to figure out what was happening. My hope is that as you start to see these patterns, you won't have to pay the three-year tax in your career to figure out that's what's happening.

I was still fairly young in my career, I didn't have a lot of tools for how to navigate that a little bit better and what else maybe could I have done. I think working with a coach would've been a huge help at that time, but I didn't do that.

Anybody wishes that, given these two stories what a cooperation curse looks like and what a take charge tax looks like, anybody wishes they could switch sides? Or did you change your mind about where you wish you were? Nobody wants the other side. Both are kind of crazy, right?

The Catch-22: What Society Expects From Women vs What Workplaces Expect From Leaders

It's a catch-22 for us. For women and for other marginalized people, we're in this catch-22 around the cooperation curse, or take charge tax. It doesn't matter which one you are, there's either a tax or a curse around it, right? There's some kind of price to pay for leaning into one of these strengths.

The catch-22 for us is that society expects that we're all, as women, highly cooperative, and we're good at taking direction from other people, we're good at accommodating, we're good at getting people on board with things, and that we're all very diplomatic.

But in the workplace, leaders are the ones that take charge, set direction and expectations, and the ones that communicate directly. Okay, I did those things, but I was still met with, she's not playing her gender norm. She's not being accommodating and waiting for her turn, right?

Just like Robyn did the things that society expects of her and was loved by everybody, but had to pay the price by not getting any leadership opportunities. So, this is where we sit, right? We are in this middle of, all right, what do we do? What do we do?

What If You Need to be Cooperative AND Take Charge?

What happens if you need to do both of these things? Because frankly, we all probably need to do a little bit of both, depending on where we are. We either need to lean into being take charge so that we're not overlooked, or we need to lean into being more cooperative, so that we're not seen as violating our gender norms. We're seen as doing what we're supposed to be doing.

I would love to hear your thoughts. What does this feel like to you when you're in this place? I'm sure most of you have experienced, maybe not exactly this story, but I see some stuff going on in chat, so I know that there's something going on.

Your Energy When You’re Stuck in the Catch-22

What does it feel like when you are in this place of “damned if you do, damned if you don't?” I pulled some thoughts together too for us, right? Frustrated, feeling like you're not enough, feeling shame, feeling like you're a victim, feeling confused, being passive aggressive about things, being actively aggressive about things, feeling hopeless, feeling like giving up, feeling disposable. Ugh, ugh!

Most of these words are either victim energy or anger energy, right? We go into this place of really low, low energy that's destructive energy. And so, as a victim, it's really hard to feel like you can do anything, like this just, this is happening to me. I have no power in this, I just have to take this abuse and there's nothing that I can really do. And so that is terrible. Nobody wants to feel like that.

If you move up an energetic chart, you get to anger. Stuff can get done when you're angry, when you're in that full on rage place, you make things happen, but there's also a cost to getting things done that way, and you leave a wake.

What we'll try to do is give you some tools other than, so one, recognizing this happens to most women, and it is a little bit of, you're caught in the middle. What you can do instead of being a victim, or instead of being super angry is to make a choice. We're going to talk about some ways that we can do that.

Corporate Culture: Cooperation or Take Charge?

Here's another couple of lines for your chart, right? We said you're either on the take charge side or the cooperative side. Society probably wants us all to be on the cooperative side. Corporate culture probably wants us all to be on the take charge side.

It depends though on where you are. In general, corporate culture expects leaders to be more take charge. What other expectations do we have? Because this doesn't seem to be enough, right?

Your role has expectations too. How much authority do you have in your role? Where are you on the org chart? Do you complete tasks by yourself, or through other people? Do you need to coordinate with other people? How much cooperation is required? How much handoff and diplomacy are required in the job that you have? Or do you have kind of a standalone do-it-yourself job?

When I think about stereotypically high take charge jobs, like a paramedic or a day trader, they have to make decisions right away. They can't get consensus; I have to make a decision about how I'm going to behave right now. So those tend to be high take charge type jobs.

Maybe as a facilitator or a mediator, I need to be more cooperative. As a synchronized swimmer, I can't just go off and decide to do things in my own way. On a sports team, I can’t decide to play soccer a different way today when you're expecting me to be in a certain position.

Uncovering the Patterns So You Can Flex When Necessary

So, think about what your role in the organization requires of you? And in reality, most roles are not all take charge or all cooperative. Most roles are some sort of blend of both of these things. There are probably a few roles where you can either be all one, or the other, but most of our jobs that require us to interact with humans probably require some sort of blend.

Does your job role require more cooperation, more take charge, or some kind of blend of those two things? Then let's look at company culture.

Not only your role, but in the context of your organization: what traits does your company reward? Who gets promoted? What does that look like? How much do they value independent thinking and self-reliance, versus crowdsourcing decisions and gathering consensus before everything gets done?

Do your mission and vision statements lean more towards cooperation and team orientation, or do they lean more towards visionary and take charge? Do they actually live any of those values, or is it just a poster on the wall? Again, you know, a Wall Street culture could be seen as very take charge. A non-profit might be seen as more cooperative.

What I didn't realize and didn't say earlier is in my story, I had come from a consulting role to this new organization where they hired me. In consulting, it’s all about billable hours and driving results. So, I got rewarded for being take charge and self-reliant in that world. It was a very high take charge environment, solo results-driven environment in consulting.

What I didn't know when I started at this organization, was that this culture was a very cooperative, collaborative culture. They really prided themselves on everybody getting a seat at the table, getting a say, being very collaborative and building consensus.

Not only was I a threat to my boss and his position, I was also being counter-cultural without even knowing it. I'd come from a culture where the best I could be, was to drive to find a new way to solve a problem, add more value and get better results.

Then when I got to this culture, that was no longer rewarded. In fact, it was punished because I was stepping on too many toes, and I wasn't building enough consensus. What do you think about your company culture? Does your company culture tend to be more on that cooperative side, like mine was in my story, or does it tend to be more on that take charge side, or is it hard to tell?

Maybe it's a blend in your organization. Maybe your culture isn’t strong enough for you to tell.
I would love for you to tell us in chat as you kind of look at the chart that you've now filled out, how congruent are these?

Does anybody have four check boxes in one column? I think you’d have either four or three, right?
We're trying to uncover these patterns because it's an incredibly difficult line for us to walk, right? As women, it's hard to figure out, when should I be this, how should I be this, how should I be that?

These expectations exist whether we want them to or not. And they exist in every job, in every role, and we need to have the facility to choose how we're going to show up, and how we can engage with other people to have them help us.

Most of us need to do a little bit of both of this. It's not just sexism that determines where we're supposed to sit. It’s our role, our company culture.

I've talked a lot about the curse for women being too cooperative and the tax for women being too take charge because I think that we probably pay more for that than men do. But I also talked about behavioural patterns at the beginning.

I said that some of us tend toward more cooperation and some toward more take charge, but that goes for men too. I'm curious to get a count of the take charges versus the cooperatives, because I'm wondering if take charge women tend to be drawn more toward male-dominated industries.

There is just as many take charge women as there are take charge men, and there's just as many cooperative men as there are cooperative women.

I think what happens with them, I don't have any evidence except anecdotally, but I think what happens is they get extra credit for being cooperative. Because look how empathetic they are, and how willing they are to get consensus from people. So instead of it being a curse, they get extra credit for going against the gender norm of being high take charge.

Now, they probably pay a little bit on the, are they good enough leaders? Are they strong enough leaders? Unless they're really smart and they get to take charge woman to work with them, then take credit for her take chargedness, they're getting credit for their own cooperativeness.

I don't know if that's really true, but we all have these patterns. This isn't specific to women. We all have these patterns. Okay, Nikki, that was super depressing. Thanks for letting us know that we're stuck in this catch-22, and it sucks to be a woman, these expectations are all around us.

Tip #1: Change Society or Corporate Culture

Is that it? No, that is not it. Let's talk now about some things that we can do about this place. What are some things that we can do about this? First, you can change society and corporate culture altogether.

I'm just kidding. Do not do this. Do not do this. This is not a recommendation, right?

Society and corporate culture are going to be extremely hard to change. Now, I'm not saying you can't play a part in it, but unless that’s your life's passion to try and change corporate culture, or societal expectations, please do not waste your time banging your head, hoping that society is going to change.

It's going to take an engaged group of people. If you want to be one of those people, fantastic. But starting a long-term movement is probably not a viable solution to your short-term goals.

It's a tip. It's a way you could do it, but probably not my most recommended tip.

Tip #2: Change Your Role or Company

The second one is probably a degree of difficulty less, but not without some difficulty, which is to change your role or to change your company.

So again, for most people, their job is not that flexible and/or choosing to leave their company is an endeavour, right?

How do you know that the culture that you're going to is any better than the culture that you're leaving?

You can start looking for roles where your take chargedness or your cooperativeness is appreciated, where making decisions, and being self-reliant is rewarded.

Or where gathering consensus and being group-oriented is rewarded. You can look for company cultures that celebrate the side that you naturally gravitate toward.

You can have conversations with people to say, "Hey, I went to this event, and I see this pattern now really clearly, here's where I think I fall on it.

I think that sometimes when you see me as intimidating, what you're seeing is me wanting to make decisions, being self-reliant and being pretty straightforward about the way I say things.

I understand that, maybe I can tweak how that works a little bit, but maybe part of what you're seeing is this natural pattern that I have. And it's not something that I'm choosing, it's how my brain works, it's how my brain is wired. So, I'm happy to have the conversation about that.

I think if you can let people know, "I really enjoy it when the whole project is handed over to me, and I get to make the decisions. I get to be on my own and be self-reliant in making things happen.

I really enjoy gathering consensus, and making sure that the whole group is doing what we need to do, finding harmony in the group, and helping other people feel appreciated in the group.

Those kinds of roles really light me up, and I would like to look for more opportunity in the organization for that."

Do you feel safe enough to have those conversations with your co-workers and leaders to let them know what you're looking for?

If not, can you find another role in your organization or outside your organization that values the skills or the tendencies that you have a little bit more? Or can you find a company culture that's more like that?

Tip #3: Flex Your Style

The third tip we're going to expand pretty high on this, and that's to flex your style. I'm going to give you a warning though with this tip. If you flex your style all the time, you are going to be exhausted and eventually burn out.

My tip fits on the line as flex your style, but the warning that goes with it is, choose when. Think about where or when on that spectrum.

We'll talk about how to flex your style coming up, but how many of you have been exhausted in a role even though it wasn't physically taxing?

When you feel exhausted, it's probably something that's requiring a big flex from you. Maybe you didn't even recognize what that was.

I had a job as a project manager. I told you at the beginning of this call that my top two traits are spontaneous and creative. Those are not awesome traits for a project manager. They are not.

I was exhausted all the time. I was good at it because I was very results focused, but I was exhausted.

When I got promoted to manage project managers, still in the project management field, it was great. A whole new light lit up in me because now somebody else was handling all that detail and I was managing their exceptions. I was great at that, and that was so much more fun.

This changed the way I thought about charisma, because you see charismatic people and think, how do they get that way? She broke down the formula, thinking about charisma as a combination of high warmth and high competence.

I'm going to draw the line for you that high warmth is like high cooperative, and high competence is like high take charge. It's the blend of warmth and competence that makes us highly charismatic.

When we're highly warm, but low on competence, then we're not taken very seriously. People like us, but we're not taken very seriously. When we are high competent but low on warmth, like take charge, we're seen as know-it-alls or maybe the B word that gets tossed around us a lot, but not very likable.

If we are neither warmth nor competence, I don't know, does that mean we get fired? That's a bad place to be. Don't go there. But when we have both a combination of warmth and competence, we hit that charisma zone where we are both likable and competent.

If you’re high take charge, you want to dial up warmth. So how do I do that? There are several ways, you can do that with the words that you use. So you can start to use more warmth words, words like connect, collaborate and together are highly warm words that help establish that feeling of working together.

You can vocalize more. You can smile when you say hello. You can try this on your own, pretend you're picking up a phone, and if you pretend to pick up a phone and say, "Hello," and then if you smile first, "Hello," you can hear a difference.

Even if you're not looking at the person, you can hear a difference between when you smile and when you don't. Other people can hear that difference too, even if they're not looking at you. Varying your pitch and pace can be very warm.

I'm sure you work with a lot of engineers, they-can-be-very-monotone-and-read-the-report-and-do-the-thing-and-if-you-don't-have-any-variation-in-your-vocality-then-people-start-to-drift-off-and-stop-listening-to-what-you're-saying-because-you're-giving-them-a-lot-of-really-good-information-but-you're-not-changing-your pitch-or-your-pace.

It's super boring to listen to, right? So, you want to start varying that pitch and pace. Another thing that you can do vocally is start mirroring other people around you.

If you're talking to people that are talking at a quick pace, you can speed your pace of speech up, or if they're talking a little bit slower, you can slow your pace down and match their pace a little bit or match their volume a little bit.

Other things that you can do, you can tilt your head, that's just a warm indicator that you're listening.

You can nod to keep people talking, or to show that you're hearing what they're saying.
You can raise your eyebrows. When we're excited about something or we're interested in something, a lot of times, our eyebrows will go up.

And then you can mirror physically. Now, I'm not suggesting that you do all these things and become a head-tilting bobblehead.

Don't do that, don't do that. But pick one. If you're really interested in dialing up warmth, pick one of these things in an exchange that you typically find yourself feeling too intimidating, or take charge in.

See if maybe tilting your head when someone's talking, slowing your pace down a little bit, or speeding your pace up a little bit changes the response that you're getting.

It's not jazz hands. Just try to remember one thing that you think would be easy for you to do and try that.

What if you're high cooperative? Then you want to dial up competence, right? We talked about how Robyn wasn't taken seriously. What do you do to dial up competence and be taken more seriously?

Again, with words, use more highly competent words. Brainstorming, effective, productive, expert, knowledge, percentage, words like that that express competence, you can use those.

You can lower your tone a bit. People that are high competent tend to have a lower tone. They tend to use more pausing, so you may pause a little bit more.

You can work on volume control. Sometimes people that are high cooperative, or nervous in a situation will tend to speak more quietly.

You want to be able to project your voice, and your volume. Sometimes you use the question inflection, so that when you're making statements, they sound like questions. Don't do that, right? Highly competent people don't use the question inflection.

Some body language things you can do to raise your confidence, power poses like the Amy Cuddy talk, being bigger in the room can help. I don’t recommend that you walk into a meeting like this, but if you're feeling intimidated going into a meeting, find a quiet place or a place like a bathroom that you can do that for a couple of minutes to feel more confident.

Steepling your hands. This is a competent body language gesture. Using explanatory gestures with your hands, showing your palms can be very highly competent.

The other thing that I also found fascinating, and all of this is from research that Vanessa Van Edwards did, is the distance between the bottom of your ear lobe and the top of your shoulder. It's not about sitting up ram-rod straight, but the more distance you have.

If I had done my entire presentation hunched forward, I would have come off as a lot less competent about what I'm talking about.

My words would be the same, but I’d look like I feel super uncomfortable, maybe intimidated or cold, but just by lowering my shoulders, there is a change in my voice because hunching does constrict your voice.

It's about keeping your shoulders down and relaxed so that you have this space, so that you're not turtling up. It's a biological thing when we're feeling nervous, to try to cover up. So, if you can, keep your shoulders down.

You can also do it with the distance between your torso and your arms. You can't see my torso right now, but if you've got your arms pinned to your side versus putting my arms on the chair armrest, it just looks different.

You look more relaxed, and comfortable, and so you look more competent. Those are just a couple of things that you can do for my high take charge people. I'm not suggesting if you're high take charge that you walk into meetings with body language that makes you look less competent.

If you lean in to listen, then do you see how my shoulders go up as I lean in to listen? That's okay. When you go to respond, sit back, and put your shoulders down.

Does anybody see these lists of what I'm saying for high competence and high warmth as gendered? It feels this way because society is prescriptive about what men and women are supposed to be like.

If you see that this list has some gender norms in it, it's because these line up with some societal expectations, but it's not that men can't be highly warm and not very competent or the other way around. We do tend to assign high competence to men and high warmth to women.

But what I will say is that when people meet me, and I've done this, I would encourage you to try this if you're up for it.
The next time you're in one of those rooms with people that don't know you very well, when you get done with your five minutes or 10-minute impression, ask them,

"Based on our very small interaction together, can you describe me in three words?"

Most people describe me with words that are high competence words. Because that's how I'm wired, and that's how I show up. And I think it can be true that the way we're seen is opposite of what a gender norm is.

Even if the gendered expectation is that I'm more warm, I have to actually work on dialing up warmth. I have to be more intentional about that because most people, when they come across me, see me as higher competent.

Even in very short exchanges, you can think about how that shows up, and ask people. "I know this is kind of weird, but I watched this talk, and she gave us this assignment. "So can you describe me in three words based on our really short exchange?"

People will do it because you've asked them to do it and it's a little bit quirky. When the words come back, are they warmth words? Are they describing high warmth or are they describing high competence?

Choosing How & When to Flex Your Style

Given some of these tips that I’ve given you today, what's one thing that you can do today, tomorrow to either make a flex or to feel more congruent with your style and expectations of you?

It's hard to get this blend right. It's important to try to match your style to the moment. What does the moment require? Does it require you to step up and be more take charge?

Does it require a little bit more cooperation? What are the expectations of the people in your company, your job, your role, your corporate culture?

If your natural style runs counter-cultural to societal expectations, then you probably always run into this a little bit. But if you're working in a male-dominated industry and you're highly cooperative, then you run into it too.

To get the blend right, I would say, what's required in the moment? Be intentional, now that you see this pattern and you understand, okay, I can either lean toward cooperative or I can lean into my take charge, I can dial up warmth or I can dial up competence, getting that blend right now is a choice.

Here's the thing, not everybody's going to like you all of the time. You're not going to get this right all the time. And when you make an intentional choice, not everybody's going to like you.

And if they do, then maybe you're not being bold enough, maybe you're not being enough that you're going to get recognized.

The goal isn't to get everybody to like you all the time. The goal is about seeing the pattern, and being empowered to make a choice for yourself and how you show up. Our greatest power is the power to choose.

And so, my hope is that I have given you a view into this pattern that you might not have seen before, or that you might not have had language and tools around before.

You've seen the results of this pattern before, but have you actually seen that maybe this is part of what's driving the pattern?

I hope that you leave feeling empowered to make choices about how to take action and to choose how you want to show up. And if, and when, and how you might choose to flex or lean into your natural patterns. It is a choice.

If you're interested in understanding exactly where you fall, getting your actual score, where do I fall on this, how hard is it for me to flex?

Not just the take charge and cooperative traits, but all the other traits that I mentioned at the beginning of the program. Where am I on planned and spontaneous or on risk taking?

Or if you're interested in having me bring these patterns to your whole group so that everybody can start to understand them, you get this baseline language you can all use together, connect with me on LinkedIn, send me an email, go to my website, let me know that you saw me here at the WIMDI talk, and I have a special offer just for you.

I would love to have a conversation with you, about how I can help you understand what these patterns are for yourself, what your actual scores are, and how we might bring this to your team or your organization. I have had so much fun tonight explaining some of this to you. So, if you have questions, I am delighted to answer your questions now.

Thank you.