Stop Holding Yourself Back

Anne  Morriss; Robin J. Ely; Frances X. Frei

Article | Harvard Business Review | January – February 2011

Stop Holding Yourself Back

by Anne Morriss, Robin J. Ely and Frances X. Frei

Abstract

After working with hundreds of leaders in a wide variety of organizations and in countries all over the globe, the authors found one very clear pattern: when it comes to meeting their leadership potential, many people unintentionally get in their own way. Five barriers in particular tend to keep promising managers from becoming exceptional leaders: people overemphasize personal goals, protect their public image, turn their competitors into two-dimensional enemies, go it alone instead of soliciting support and advice, and wait for permission to lead. Troy, a customer service manager, endangered his job and his company's reputation by focusing on protecting his position, not helping his team; when a trusted friend advised him to change his behavior, the results were striking. Anita's insistence on sticking to the tough persona she'd created for herself caused her to ignore the more intuitive part of the leadership equation, with disastrous results—until she let go of the need to appear invulnerable and reached out to another manager. Jon, a personal trainer who had virtually no experience with either youth development programs or urban life, opened a highly successful gym for inner-city kids at risk; he refused to be daunted by his lack of expertise and decided to simply "go for it." As these and other examples from the authors' research demonstrate, being a leader means making an active decision to lead. Only then will the workforce-and society-benefit from the enormous amount of talent currently sitting on the bench.

Keywords: Transformation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Personal Characteristics;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Morriss, Anne, Robin J. Ely, and Frances X. Frei. "Stop Holding Yourself Back." Harvard Business Review 89, nos. 1-2 (January–February 2011).

When leaders and aspiring leaders seek out advice, they're often told to try harder. Dig deeper. Look in the mirror and own your natural-born strengths and fix any real or perceived career-limiting deficiencies.

We offer a different worldview. We argue that this popular leadership advice glosses over the most important thing you do as a leader: Build others up. Leadership isn’t about you. It’s about how effective you are at empowering other people—and making sure that this impact endures even in your absence. We show through inspiring stories from ancient Rome to Silicon Valley, the origins of great leadership are found, paradoxically, not in worrying about your own status and advancement, but in the unrelenting focus on other people’s potential.

Unleashed provides radical advice for the practice of leadership today. Showing how the boldest, most effective leaders use a special combination of trust, love, and belonging to create spaces where other people can excel, we offer practical, battle-tested tools—based on our work in companies such as Uber, Riot Games, and others—along with interviews and stories from our own personal experience to make these ideas come alive. This book is your indispensable guide for unleashing greatness in other people...and, ultimately, in yourself.

Article | Administrative Science Quarterly | March 2020

Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-family Narrative as a Social Defense Against 24/7 Work Culture

Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid

It is widely accepted that the conflict between women’s family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is incomplete: men also experience it and nevertheless advance; moreover, organizations’ effort to mitigate it through flexible work policies has not improved women’s advancement prospects and often hurts them. Hence this presumed remedy has the perverse effect of perpetuating the problem. Drawing on a case study of a professional service firm, we develop a multilevel theory to explain why organizations are caught in this conundrum. We present data suggesting that the work-family explanation has become a “hegemonic narrative”—a pervasive, status-quo-preserving story that prevails despite countervailing evidence. We then advance systems-psychodynamic theory to show how organizations use this narrative and attendant policies and practices as an unconscious “social defense” to help employees fend off anxieties raised by a 24/7 work culture and to protect organizationally powerful groups—in our case, men and the firm’s leaders—and in so doing sustain workplace inequality. Due to the social defense, two orthodoxies remain unchallenged—the necessity of long work hours and the inescapability of women’s stalled advancement. The result is that women’s thin representation at senior levels remains in place. We conclude by highlighting contributions to work-family, workplace inequality, and systems-psychodynamic theory.

Keywords: 24/7 work culture; hegemonic narrative; social defense; work-family conflict; systems-psychodynamic theory; Work-Life Balance; Personal Development and Career; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Organizational Culture;

Citation:

Padavic, Irene, Robin J. Ely, and Erin M. Reid. "Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-family Narrative as a Social Defense Against 24/7 Work Culture." Administrative Science Quarterly 65, no. 1 (March 2020): 61–111. View Details

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Ask people to explain why women remain so dramatically underrepresented in the senior ranks of most companies, and you will hear from the vast majority a lament that goes something like this: High-level jobs require extremely long hours, women's devotion to family makes it impossible to put in those hours, and so their careers inevitably suffer. Not so, say the authors, who spent 18 months working with a global consulting firm that wanted to know why it had so few women in positions of power. Although virtually every employee the authors interviewed related a form of the standard explanation, the firm's data told a different story. Women weren't being held back because of trouble balancing work and family; men, too, suffered from that problem and nevertheless advanced. Women were held back because they were encouraged to take accommodations, such as going part-time and shifting to internally facing roles, which derailed their careers. The real culprit in women's stalled advancement, the authors conclude, is a general culture of overwork that hurts both sexes and locks gender equality in place. To solve this problem, they argue, we must reconsider what we’re willing to allow the workplace to demand of all employees.

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Stop Holding Yourself Back

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