In her rise to the top at Xerox, Ursula Burns often found herself an outsider – Black and female. “My natural comfort is being the only or [one of] the few in a room,” the retired chief executive officer told CNBC earlier this year. “I became very good at playing in that space …. If I raised my hand in any meeting, almost surely, I was called on. You’re so different that, at least in open spaces, they can’t ignore you.”
Darden Business School Professor Laura Morgan Roberts cites Ms. Burns as a prime example of positive deviance. She deviated from the norm and that worked to her advantage.
Normally, of course, deviance is viewed negatively. But behavioural scientists are starting to pay attention to this intriguing reversal of perspective. “Positive deviance, in its essence, is about how we, as individuals and organizations, can go ahead and deviate from the norm, but do so in ways that are honourable or generative or both – that have positive impact and open the door to others to do the same,” Prof. Roberts said in a university white paper.
She notes women in a position to do so get there by excelling, usually overcoming more obstacles than men. And they must continue to excel. She believes minority status plus the ability to be highly effective is a potent combination that can accelerate your own career – by standing out – while also sending powerful messages about paying attention to the potential and ability of others from minority groups.
Positive deviance can be accentuated by dress. She says instead of emulating male style and apparel, women can bring their own personal flair to the workplace. They might wear bold colours, for example. Black women might embrace personal style with their hair in a way that goes against tradition, and which can seem risky. But Prof. Roberts insists it is important to lose the fear of standing out and being distinctive because that difference could work in your favour.
Women also need to consider using their visibility to speak truth to power. Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg – two young, female leaders – have used their voices to speak to the powers-that-be, even if that made them unpopular and subjected them to risk. But for organizations to change and other women to follow you, that challenging path should be considered.
Her final bit of advice: Be human. She points to athletes Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka who gave the world a lesson on the importance of self-care by revealing the personal struggles they had with anxiety and depression. Again, this was positive deviance, candidly prioritizing self-care.
She acknowledges positive deviance calls for some courage and confidence. The key, she advises, is to have clarity about your values: What you are prepared to stand for and where you are prepared to make certain trade-offs.
If that sounds daunting, CNBC correspondent Julia Boorstin, who has studied women who started successful companies so that she can better understand female leadership, says we all get scared and that’s a good thing. But, she adds, in her new book When Women Lead, “there’s a time when we can all benefit from letting go of fear and embracing self-confidence, even if it doesn’t feel entirely earned in that moment.” Keep in mind, however, that just as important as self-confidence is knowing when it is getting in the way and needs to be dialled down so you can listen openly to different views.
She believes it is critical that you understand your obstacles. For the female entrepreneurs she interviewed, a prime barrier was that women have never drawn more than 3 per cent of venture capital funding. Understanding the forces against you can be a valuable tool to circumnavigate them. “It is much harder to achieve equity when we don’t realize just how far from it we currently are. And it’s much harder to manage and neutralize double standards if you don’t see them,” she says.
Acknowledging the barriers is not a weakness, she adds. It’s preparation. She has thought a lot about the Serenity Prayer: Knowing which things she could control and which she couldn’t, and figuring out how to avoid spending time on the latter. “Yes, I should focus on things I can control – my attitude, my ability to persist in the face of discouragement – but I should also spend time trying to understand the things I can’t, such as someone’s reaction to me, and larger systems, such as entrenched sexism,” she says.
Nothing is more powerful, she argues, than women helping one another. Women will do better if they have other women around them. Ideally, women need to reach a point of critical mass – probably 30 per cent of leadership positions – so the power dynamic can shift and real change might come about. “The more women’s leadership models – communal, empathetic, vulnerable and purpose-driven – become part of the established canon, the more companies will gain,” she says.
There are contradictions in all that, of course – notably, standing out through positive deviance while wanting to stand out less by having more women in the room. But women deal with obstacles and contradictions every day in the workplace. These ideas may offer some room to manoeuvre.
Cannonballs
- The most important letter in DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – is the middle one, the Gallup organization argues. Its survey found fewer than three in 10 employees (28 per cent) strongly agree that their organization is fair to everyone. This is disturbing as it’s hard for a team or organization to be productive when unfair treatment is viewed as common.
- Physical offices are a place for conflict, says British entrepreneur and writer Julia Hobsbawm. They are a place to disagree, brainstorm, not be on the same page as others, to hang out and learn.
- Most organizations have raised “doing more with less to an art form,” says consultant Julie Giulioni. It’s therefore important to stop demonizing employees who are “quiet quitting” and instead focus our efforts on decoding what’s behind the phenomenon.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.
Harvey Schachter