The Science of Women’s Leadership | Alexis Kanda-Olmstead | TEDxCSU

[Music] so I have a riddle for you let's see if you can solve it it's not a super funny riddle so bear with me okay a father and son are in a horrible car crash and tragically the dad dies the son is rushed to the hospital as he's willed into the operating room the surgeon looks down and says stop I can't operate on this boy he is my son how can this be exactly the surgeon was his mother interesting if you got the riddle right you are among very very tiny few and a group of

200 ish undergrad students at Boston University only 14% got the riddle right had a group of youth aged 7 to 17 15% got the riddle right I got the riddle wrong in a woman's studies class as a feminist when I was at the University of Michigan why because the mind models that we have about doctors and Surgeons is that they are male and these mind models these things that we use to sort the barrage of information that comes through our senses they're neither good nor bad they just are but they're really powerful so powerful that

some of the answers that people gave included the dad maybe he was a robot in the car or maybe the dad was actually a father or a priest isn't that great I mean it's just wild even students whose mothers worked out of this outside of the home got the riddle wrong even students whose mothers were doctors got the riddle wrong that is the power of mind models and a riddle that I have been pondering since I was a young woman in high school is the riddle of women's leadership a riddle that confounds both men and

women and a riddle that's going to take all of us both men and women to solve when I was in high school I was a soccer player not particularly skilled but I played with a lot of heart I mean I left it all on the field and one day we were playing this team we came in as the underdogs and it started to rain which really puts a dampener on all the girls with the fancy soccer skills and I just emerged on the scene I was fantastic and I rallied my team and ultimately we won

and so at the next practice my soccer coach he commended me for what he called leadership skills which no one had really ever used on me and he gave me this poster it was this Nike poster with a swoosh on it that leader had this really inspiring set of words underneath and I hung it in my bedroom wall and I read it and I read it and even though my coach had told me I was a leader even though I had clearly demonstrated leadership skills and even though I was a co-captain on the team it

didn't feel right it didn't feel like me because just like the mind model of Surgeons the mind model that we have about leadership is highly gendered male and not just any male white males able-bodied males males who come from relatively privileged socioeconomic backgrounds males who look a lot like my husband actually we like them tall I mean I do about 6 feet maybe 6 - handsome actually that's that's proven to be true there's privilege around what we look like so it is any wonder that as a young girl when we take this model of leadership

that is so gendered I mean even the language we use around leadership they're bold and decisive they make tough decisions they tell people what to do is it any wonder that we experience dissonance not just ourselves but the rest of society I am a longtime leadership educator I have been at Colorado State University for almost 20 years and during that time I have taught leadership classes I have developed leadership curricula and I have participated in leadership studies and one study that was really fascinating was about ten years ago it was called the multi-institutional study of

leadership and that study was designed to figure out how best to develop the leadership capacity of college students and it went out to thousands of students across the country asking them how often do you do different leadership skills like collaborate communicate through conflict etc and I remember getting the reports back and I was intrigued to see that the women said that they were participating in these literate leadership skills and activities at a much higher rate than the male students and not only that they were reporting that they were using what our proven awesome leadership skills

much more than the male students and I thought oh my gosh this generation has got it figured out and then I started flipping through the report and I came across this concept called leader efficacy it's similar to self efficacy it's how much we believe in our ability to succeed as leaders it determines whether or not we pursue leadership positions it determines whether or not we persist through leadership challenges it determines whether or not we even see ourselves as leaders in the first place and on this construct it bottomed out compared to the men the women

were in the basement so what we had here were women who are reporting using leadership skills but didn't believe in themselves as being capable of success as leaders and then male students who were reporting know I don't really do these leadership skills but I I think I'm going to be an awesome leader women's lack of confidence is nothing new men's overconfidence is nothing new but I want to emphasize that these students they were young they were age 18 to 22 they had yet to step foot in a corporate boardroom they had yet to face the

conflicting demands that derail so many women the conflict of work and family they had yet for the most part to experience gender bias and gender discrimination and somehow they had learned not to believe in themselves as leaders Sheryl Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and she was one of the first to publicly name this phenomenon this hesitancy to lean in as she called it and the numbers support her assertions even though when make up half the population we're actually graduating in larger numbers than men even though women hold majority of professional level jobs

we are incredibly underrepresented as leaders in Fortune 500 companies which are the 500 most powerful companies in the nation if not the world women make up 4 percent of the CEOs women hold 19 percent of executive level jobs in our US Congress women hold 20 percent of elected positions even in female dominated professions like education we are outnumbered at the leadership level I have never had a high school principal or an elementary school principal or a middle school principal of my Keds be anything but a man and when I looked it up 30 percent of

high school principals in the u.s. are female that's it and while there are certainly external barriers at play and those are things that we must continue to push to change there are significant internal barriers as well and these internal barriers are the things that women like Sheryl Sandberg and women like myself are starting to speak up about and to challenge and I'm doing it in a bit of a creative way I've opened a school and I'm teaching women science the science of women's leadership I start out with neuroscience to explain fear because it turns out

that women are afraid to lead and have really good reasons but they are afraid to lead and this fear starts young just last week I saw a number that caught my breath one in three girls are afraid to lead one in three girls that came out of llenan org well the brain on fear is a little messy for those of you who are not familiar prefrontal cortex which is our most highly evolved part of the brain starts to shut down and that survival in fact that reptilian brain that is all about running away laying on

the floor and playing dead you know fighting back that comes to the fore that make starts making all of the decisions and while there are fewer and fewer physical threats that we encounter in modern society psychological threats are quite real and that little reptilian brain can't tell the difference fear is fear so what's an example of a psychological threat public speaking doing TEDx talks can I just tell you how terrified everyone has been in the back here I mean I was meditating and chanting we're all terrified we know that people are more afraid of public

speaking than death Jerry Seinfeld the comedian even said that uh it's kind of hilarious at a funeral people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy there all these mind tricks to make you less afraid of public speaking like picturing everyone in the audience and their underwear which I'm totally not doing right now so what fears do women face when it comes to leadership well fears related to their identities specifically stereotypes about what it is to be female and what it is to be a female leader and for that I turn to another

science social psychology and the work of dr. Claude Steele who pioneered the study of stereotypes and their impact on performance stereotypes our mind models their generalizations they're very negative typically and what he found is that when someone with a stereotyped identity goes into a situation that brings that stereotype up they experience incredible fear it's called stereotype threat it causes us to become hyper-vigilant to second-guess ourselves to get stuck in our minds and at worst to choke so what are the stereotypes that women are facing that's a whole other TED talk I'll just do a couple

real quick so the stereotypes about women are that they're not quite as intelligent as men they're too emotional too soft the stereotypes about women leaders are on the other end of the spectrum they're pushy aggressive or worse you can't really win so when you take this idea of leadership for me to be a good leader to be sort of masculine I am a bad woman and if I am a good woman I am a bad leader it is an impossible dilemma and it causes enough fear in our brains for us to lean out stereotype threat

is like swimming with sharks not actual real sharks but the fear of sharks I personally am terrified of sharks I don't know about you but if you were raised during the 80s and your parents let you watch jaws you too probably have a healthy regard for sharks I was so terrified as a child that I would put my face mask on and look in the water before getting in and 30 years later I'm still afraid when I jump in the water whether it's a freshwater lake in Vermont or the deep end of the swimming pool

I feel it and heaven forbid I have to go to that you know near the actual real ocean which I had to when I honeymooned in Hawaii which as you know is surrounded by sharks so I did all this research about sharks how many fatalities in the last ten years it's very low for those of you are also afraid of sharks and I mustered all my courage and my husband was so sweet and he encouraged me and I went in about this deep which is all you have to do to snorkel and I made sure

he was with me because I figured a shark would much rather eat a 200-pound man than me and while he is tootling around and trying to point out the colorful fish I'm trying to hold really really still which is super hard when you're swimming and we are having completely different experiences in the same ocean and the same ocean we can say that is true for women who are in leadership positions or thinking about leadership positions they are having vastly different experiences what it looks like is hesitating to talk during meetings it looks like not raising

your hand for a challenging assignment not advocating for yourself for a promotion or a raise not applying for a job if you heard this this awesome doozy of a number women feel they have to have a hundred percent of the job qualifications before they apply men fifty percent so what if women weren't afraid to lead what if women were taught not only how to lead too but to believe in themselves as leaders well the beautiful thing about science is that in addition to using it to understand our world we can use it to change our

world and I have two strategies and they apply to both men and women the first is to focus on your values and I'm not being trite here values are as salient as your personal identity think about this people live and die for their values and the research on stereotype threat shows that if you focus on your values it's like a shield it's an identity shield it protects you in those threatening environments so I tell all women to reflect on their values before they do anything that scares you that's what I was doing in the back

reflecting on my values the second is to be brave to take small actions this is basic cognitive behavioral therapy take small actions dip your toe in the water snorkel with the fish see that it isn't filled actually with sharks they're a pretty little fish and you will become more and more brave and eventually you will be able to swim with sharks which I am able to do now granted they were nurse sharks and they were at the bottom of the ocean and those are like pet sharks but a shark is a shark nonetheless men same

thing focus on your values this conversation isn't about men versus women are women leaders better than male leaders this conversation is about diversity inclusion equality equity use those to guide your actions be like my soccer coach and blow woman's mind models of leadership by telling them that they are leaders blow the men's mind models too while you're at it feel like my husband and encouraged know that they are having women are having vastly different experiences than men hire women promote women give women raises put women in leadership positions and even better yet allow yourself to

be led by women and finally be brave because if we are going to dismantle these external barriers things like gender bias gender discrimination sexual harassment only you can do that only you can do that so use your values and be brave in those spaces this riddle of women's leadership is simple women already are leaders and they are incredible leaders the challenge the riddle is how do we get them to believe it and how do we get society to believe it and we do that by focusing on our values and by being brave thank you [Applause]

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