Leaders, Reply All!
You know how every once in a while, generally the day after you’ve decided to end a subscription, you open a magazine and it’s just full of the most amazing content--information that makes perfect sense and can immediately be put to use at work or at home. Of course, then there are those magazines and newspapers that you can’t do without as they feature something useful everyday--my Wall Street Journal!
On October 24, Carol Hymowitz’s regular column In the Lead ran "Too Many Women Fall for Stereotypes of Selves, Study Says." Hymowitz thinks this may explain why so few women become leaders in law firms and corporate organizations, despite the fact that women now make-up 50% of law and business school graduating classes. It has absolutely nothing to do with their leadership style, Hymowitz writes, rather, it has everything to do with the fact that many women internalize the stereotypes men may have of them as less effective leaders.
In support of her contention, Hymowitz references a recent report by Catalyst (http://www.catalyst.org/), a research organization devoted to expanded work opportunities for women. Catalyst asked nearly 300 executives of both genders the effectiveness of male and female leaders on 10 different leadership behaviors. Both men and women were ranked nearly equal on team building, mentoring, consulting and networking skills. Women were given higher marks on supporting and rewarding skills. However, men ranked themselves as superior to women at problem-solving, inspiring, delegating, and "influencing upward."
Of particular concern, Hymowitz notes, is how sex-role stereotypes may influence performance ratings, especially of female leaders. She provides anecdotal evidence of negative performance ratings issued to women who were not perceived as "supportive mentors," while non-supportive men were not harshly judged at all.
Hymowitz closes by writing, "women have to push themselves and one another to stop believing they don’t have what it takes to be great leaders, and to stand up to men who believe they don’t."
That was Tuesday. Here’s the second column worth noting. On October 26, Jared Sandberg’s regular column, Cubicle Culture, ran "Never A Safe Feature, ’Reply to All’ Falls Into The Wrong Hands." The column goes to great lengths to describe the frustratingly large number of "Reply to All" e-mails that circulate through many organizations today. The real value of this column? Sandberg recommends Microsoft alter its software so that whenever a user hits the "Reply to All" button, a dialogue box would pop up containing the question: "Are you really sure you want to send this to everyone in the company?" The user would have only two choices: No
or Cancel.
I’m all for it! Seems to me this one little dialogue box could put an end to a whole lot of unnecessary e-mail, and maybe more importantly, help ensure that some of us don’t embarrass ourselves by sending an e-mail intended for one recipient to hundreds if not thousands of others.
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