Thriving in a Male-Dominated Workplace (HBR Women at Work Series) by Harvard Business Review

Author:Harvard Business Review
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2022-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

12

What to Do When People Doubt Your Expertise

A conversation with Raven Hoffman and Vanessa Bohns

Raven Hoffman, like a lot of us, is trying to figure out how to better persuade others. She works in the construction industry as a senior estimator at a tile and stone contractor.

Construction is one of the most male-dominated industries in the world. Raven has been in it for 20 years, thriving and with no plans to leave. But she’s been struggling with a new important part of her job: selling people she hasn’t met before on doing business with her and her company. Conversations and meetings she’s initiated haven’t consistently forged the sorts of trusting relationships that lead to contracts. But Raven is determined to become more persuasive with prospective and existing clients, as well as with longtime colleagues.

In this conversation, Women at Work cohost Amy Gallo speaks to Raven alongside Vanessa Bohns, a social psychologist, a professor at Cornell University, and the author of You Have More Influence Than You Think, to discuss advice for preempting people from doubting your expertise and establishing relationships that will extend your influence inside and outside your company.

AMY GALLO: Raven, where do you feel like you have influence, and where do you think you lack it in your work?

RAVEN HOFFMAN: I am fortunate. In the company I work for, the current ownership came on when their grandmother was running the company; they believe in hiring strong women. They believe in letting us do what we do best, and they listen within the company. Often it’s externally that my knowledge seems to be under question.

AMY: Is that with customers, with subcontractors?

RAVEN: Customers. Often I will call with an issue on a project to say, “I foresee this as an upcoming problem,” and the response I get is, “Hey, is your boss there? Can I talk to him about it?” Usually I transfer them over to him, and he laughs at them and says, “You need to talk to Raven. She knows what’s going on more than I do” and sends them back. But I think they’ve already disengaged from me as an authority who knows what she’s talking about.

AMY: Vanessa, in your research, you explore people’s perception of their influence and how that compares with reality. What did you hear in Raven’s answer that speaks to the common perceptions or misperceptions that women tend to have about their power to be persuasive?

VANESSA BOHNS: I definitely hear some elements of the way we use stereotypes to understand people we don’t know well. If we go into an interaction with someone, and we don’t know how to behave with this person or what we think of this person, stereotypes guide us in a way of thinking about them and how the interaction is going to go.

Unfortunately, in many places in the world, seeing a woman brings to mind the stereotype that they don’t have as much expertise, particularly if it’s in a field that tends to be male-dominated. On the other

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