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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from House Top

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Speaker 1: Works not Color. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Kristen and I'm Caroline, and this is our fourth and

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Speaker 1: final episode in our special series on the book lean In,

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Speaker 1: Women Work In the Will to Lead by Facebook CEO CHERYLS. Sandberg,

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Speaker 1: and we hope that you have enjoyed the series so far. Caroline,

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Speaker 1: do you feel like a more empowered career woman now?

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Speaker 1: I yes. Researching for these episodes, in a combination with

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Speaker 1: reading lean In, I feel more educated about career matters.

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Speaker 1: But more than that, I have been so excited to

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Speaker 1: see people's feedback. Yeah. Like, you know, the minute we

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Speaker 1: published the episode on negotiating salaries, for instance, we got

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Speaker 1: this flood of feedback, particularly on Facebook, from women being like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, thank you, or wow, I wish i'd

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Speaker 1: known this two years ago, and so do I Exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's been It has definitely been fun interacting with people

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Speaker 1: and hearing about these experiences that a lot of us share.

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Speaker 1: So for this final installment, we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: the word bossy because with our first episode in this series,

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Speaker 1: we started at the threshold of the workplace with salary

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Speaker 1: negotiation and now hopefully we've taken you through to the

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Speaker 1: corner office. Congratulations, we're all powerful women in beautiful pants

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Speaker 1: suits from Jay Crew. And let's talk about bossy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I and I have no shame in saying it was

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Speaker 1: an incredibly bossy child. Oh yeah, yeah, and I I.

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Speaker 1: You know, we're going to get into the connotations of

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Speaker 1: this word and what we really mean when we say it,

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Speaker 1: and maybe what we should say instead of bossy. But no,

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Speaker 1: I have no shame. I I was a bossy child

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Speaker 1: in every negative sense of that word, and so negative

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Speaker 1: sense in terms of not being fun to play with. I.

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Speaker 1: I was an only child. Um, so I tended to

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Speaker 1: get very like, you go do that, and and don't

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Speaker 1: do that. I want to do that, and no you can't.

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Speaker 1: You can't play with that because that's mine, And then

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Speaker 1: we're yeah, yeah, that was very I tended to boss

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Speaker 1: kids around. Yeah, I have my boss the streaks. I

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Speaker 1: think partially due to homeschooling, because I was really used

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Speaker 1: to self directed learning. So with a group of Simon's

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Speaker 1: in college, for instance, I really wasn't a big fan

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Speaker 1: of them and prefer to just kind of lay out

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Speaker 1: my own plan and forge ahead and people would like

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Speaker 1: to follow along. Then great. Yeah, well you know what

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Speaker 1: It's interesting though, like as I mean talking about moving

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Speaker 1: from an elementary school setting to a college setting, you know,

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Speaker 1: and then into the workplaces, whereas we're talking about today,

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Speaker 1: you know, I really kind of feel like I've taken

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Speaker 1: my bossy childhood brat tendencies and kind of transition those

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Speaker 1: into the workplace. And I feel like, you know, the

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Speaker 1: past few jobs I've had, I've been able to, for instance,

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Speaker 1: like go to meetings and actually help not delegate because

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Speaker 1: I'm not a boss one day, but you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: actually help focus meetings and things like that. It sounds

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Speaker 1: like you assert yourself. Yes, I am able to be assertive. Um.

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Speaker 1: And that the thing is the fact that assertiveness and

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Speaker 1: bossing nous can essentially be sort of the same thing.

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Speaker 1: We just obviously treat bossy as a much more negative term. Um.

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Speaker 1: But let's dig into how gender it is. Because we

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Speaker 1: felt like bossing this was a good place to end

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Speaker 1: things because it's almost exclusively used as a pejorative for

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Speaker 1: authoritative women, because as we've talked about in this sear

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Speaker 1: yas before, women are constantly being socially penalized for being

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Speaker 1: assertive and thus being called just bossy or another B

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Speaker 1: word exactly, And that's one of the reasons why, for instance,

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Speaker 1: I think it's so great that Tina Fey called her

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Speaker 1: book bossy pants, which I think is also a job

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Speaker 1: at this gendering of bossy. Well, so where did our

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Speaker 1: our use of the word bossy and boss even come from.

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Speaker 1: Let's look at the etymology. This is from Etymology online

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Speaker 1: in the fifteen forties. It meant swelling, projecting, and rounded.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I picture like a boss's stomach anyway,

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Speaker 1: and like a boss tweed stomach, right exactly. Well, so

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Speaker 1: that that's bossy. Where it's coming from that it's it's

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Speaker 1: swelling and projecting, and that's from the word boss, which

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Speaker 1: is actually from Dutch bass. I'm probably saying that wrong,

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Speaker 1: but B A A S, which is a master of

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Speaker 1: a Dutch ship. It's like a word a Dutch ship's captain.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of neat. Yeah. Um, Well, then fast forward

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Speaker 1: to two and we have meaning what we think of

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Speaker 1: today in terms of being domineering and fond of ordering

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Speaker 1: people about. And then it's also a common cow name.

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Speaker 1: So there we go. So maybe bossy instead of bessie.

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Speaker 1: But one thing I wasn't able to find though in

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Speaker 1: tracking the etymology of bossy is where it took this

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Speaker 1: turn from just being a person fond of ordering people

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Speaker 1: about to a woman in particular. Um, but these days,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's pretty commonly associated with women.

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Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that we hear too often

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Speaker 1: about bossy boys or bossy men. It's just oh, he's

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Speaker 1: the boss, who's the boss? Oh, he's the boss, who's bossy?

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Speaker 1: Well she's bossy? Yeah, I mean you might you might

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Speaker 1: hear bossy in relation to small young boys maybe, uh,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, you showed on here in relation to any

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Speaker 1: adult men. And that was brought up over and over

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Speaker 1: again by a lot of women who were critiquing the

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Speaker 1: use of the words, such as uh. Britain's Claire Balding,

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Speaker 1: who said you come across words all the time, that

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Speaker 1: her everyday sexism. She says, I was described as competently

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Speaker 1: bossy and bossily competent by a male journalist and I thought, gosh,

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Speaker 1: BOSSI has never used of a man. A man would

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Speaker 1: be called assertive or confident or quick or bright. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Over at the current conscious lawyer Kathleen J. Wou echoed that.

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Speaker 1: She said, one of the reasons women seemed to hit

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Speaker 1: a wall in their careers goes back to a word

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Speaker 1: they've heard consistently since elementary school. Bossy. There's something visceral

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Speaker 1: about that word. It's everything a little girl shouldn't be.

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Speaker 1: And her friends, parents, and teachers all scolded her when

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Speaker 1: they perceived she was being bossy. So side note, really us,

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Speaker 1: did your parents ever call you out for being bossy?

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Speaker 1: Do you remember knowing that bossy label? No? But I

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Speaker 1: think I don't know what made me hyper aware of it.

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Speaker 1: But I remember having a friend over, an elementary school

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Speaker 1: friend over, and we were playing in the front yard

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Speaker 1: and everything was going right. We were having a good

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Speaker 1: tim climbing trees and stuff. Uh, and I did something

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Speaker 1: and she got this look on her face, and I

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Speaker 1: was like, sorry if I'm being bossy, because I was

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Speaker 1: kind of. I don't know, I don't know. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how I became aware of it or who even

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Speaker 1: if people ever even described me that way, But I

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Speaker 1: described myself that way even as a kid. That's amazing

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Speaker 1: how we absorb those kinds of things as kids so

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Speaker 1: quickly without or even knowing it. To continue talking about

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Speaker 1: Kathleen Woo, she also wrote that um, a woman's success

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Speaker 1: often comes at the cost of not being very well

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Speaker 1: liked by men or by women, and she says that

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Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with the traditional women's

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Speaker 1: roles verse as traditional men's roles in society. That if

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Speaker 1: a woman transgresses, you know, and she does assert herself

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Speaker 1: at work or wherever, in the store wherever, she doesn't

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Speaker 1: actually get to be very well liked because of it,

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Speaker 1: whereas a man might be admired for it. And this

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Speaker 1: is something that Elizabeth Berger, who is the author of

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Speaker 1: Raising Kids with Character and she's also a psychiatrist, probably

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Speaker 1: would say traces all the way back to childhood, as

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Speaker 1: with the instance of you Caroline kind of internalizing that

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Speaker 1: bossy label because she was talking to Kathleen Debony with

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Speaker 1: a Daily Beast about Deboni's uh, supposedly bossy daughter, and

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Speaker 1: she said, actually labeling little girls as bossy is incredibly sexist,

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Speaker 1: because she says, the urge to push other people around

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Speaker 1: is deeply ingrained in human nature. But the same presentation

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Speaker 1: and a boy would be applauded as vivid and courageous

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Speaker 1: and does irving of praise. So we see this pattern

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Speaker 1: over and over again, whether it's on the schoolyard or

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Speaker 1: in the boardroom. Right. But what I like about Davini's

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Speaker 1: piece for The Daily Beast when she's referencing her quote

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Speaker 1: unquote bossy daughter, she does kind of admire her daughter

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Speaker 1: for her behavior. And so we're talking about how boys

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Speaker 1: would be admired for a behavior whereas girls would not.

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Speaker 1: But she talks about how, okay, okay, my daughter might

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Speaker 1: re a little demanding or bossy with her friends, but shoot,

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Speaker 1: she might become the next Hillary Clinton because she's simply

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Speaker 1: saying what she wants. I mean, because she's asserting herself. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because I think a kid could easily still do the

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Speaker 1: basic things of sharing and getting along. A lot of

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Speaker 1: times you put kids in a room, one of them

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Speaker 1: is going to emerge as the leader. And I wonder

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Speaker 1: if it happens to be a girl that emerges as

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Speaker 1: that person, if she's just knee jerk called bossy. Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: because you call someone bossy, there is that ingrained get

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Speaker 1: of connotation, you know. And I think it was I

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Speaker 1: think it was Daviny who who commented that, Hey, you

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Speaker 1: know some of those girls might take it and be

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Speaker 1: okay with it and still advance along that same assertive path,

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Speaker 1: but some might internalize that negativity and just shrink shrink

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Speaker 1: from it. Yeah, which is something that we certainly don't

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Speaker 1: need to do. And Cheryl Standberg and Lenan talks about

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Speaker 1: the insecurity regarding these fraught issues of success and likability

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Speaker 1: because a lot of times, like we're saying, they can

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Speaker 1: often be at odds for women in the workplace. Um

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Speaker 1: She stites a two thousand three Columbia Business School experiment

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Speaker 1: of a Heidi versus A Howard, which found that students

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Speaker 1: perceptions of a fictional business person profiled as either Heidi

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Speaker 1: or Howard changed drastically depending on the character's gender. Success

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Speaker 1: of lik ability strongly correlated only to Howard, whereas the

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Speaker 1: more successful Heidie got, the less students liked her, both

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Speaker 1: male and female students alike. Right, And the women in

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Speaker 1: these types of studies often get the negative descriptions like

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Speaker 1: she's not well liked by her peers, or we assume

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Speaker 1: she's too aggressive, not a team player, maybe a little political,

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Speaker 1: or she can't be trusted, or she's difficult, and so

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Speaker 1: Sandberg writes our stereotype of men holds that their providers

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Speaker 1: decisive and driven. Our stereotype of women holds that they

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Speaker 1: are caregivers, sensitive, and communal. So, like with the bossy thing,

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Speaker 1: if we view women as you know, transgressing normal social boundaries,

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Speaker 1: then they're difficult, whereas men are just you know, strong.

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Speaker 1: And so what do we do to avoid being disliked?

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Speaker 1: To avoid all of those admittedly unsavory titles such as,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't want to be told, well, listen,

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Speaker 1: you can't be trusted, Kristen, you're too difficult, you're a

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Speaker 1: bit political, to which I'd say, well, you've probably been

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Speaker 1: listening to my podcast. Um. But seriously, though, to avoid

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Speaker 1: being disliked a lot of times, we will temper our

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Speaker 1: professional goals. We're sort of undercut ourselves. And she quotes

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Speaker 1: in the book Ken Auletta from The New Yorker who said, quote,

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Speaker 1: self doubt becomes a form of self defense. And this

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Speaker 1: also seems to tie back into our episode on the

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Speaker 1: imposter syndrome and the fear in the workplace and how

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Speaker 1: that serves to hold us back from our potential in

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Speaker 1: that way. And this I'm sure only amplifies all of

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Speaker 1: those issues right. And she also quotes Deborah Gruenfeld, who's

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Speaker 1: a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at Stanford and

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Speaker 1: Greenfeld says, our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership

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Speaker 1: qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in

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Speaker 1: a double bind. When a woman does anything that's signals

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Speaker 1: she might not be nice first foremost, it creates a

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Speaker 1: negative impression and makes us uncomfortable. And the thing is,

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Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that Sandberg is trying to

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Speaker 1: say that in order to get ahead, you can't be nice,

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Speaker 1: even though there is that a whole business advice book

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Speaker 1: called Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. But I don't.

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Speaker 1: I don't think that you have to sacrifice interpersonal warmth

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Speaker 1: in order to get a raise. It's just being more

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Speaker 1: cognizant perhaps of not sacrificing our chances of getting a

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Speaker 1: raise by wanting to be too nice. Does that make sense?

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Speaker 1: And so, transitioning completely off of what you were just

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Speaker 1: saying in her book, Lenan Sandberg does suggest that understanding

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Speaker 1: how to negotiate and get a seat at the table

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Speaker 1: by combining niceness with insistence um is probably the way

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Speaker 1: to go, and that often requires smiling frequently, she says,

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Speaker 1: expressing appreciation and concern, invoking common interests, emphasizing larger goals,

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Speaker 1: and approaching the negotiation as solving a problem as opposed

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Speaker 1: to taking a critical stance. And a lot of those

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Speaker 1: things echo what we said in our negotiation episode, where

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Speaker 1: you have to approach it slightly differently if you're a

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Speaker 1: woman as opposed to a man, and you know, make

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Speaker 1: the negotiation more about the good of the group as

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Speaker 1: a whole rather than just for yourself. Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: really appreciate that approach because kind of like the reason

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Speaker 1: why we titled the negotiation episode how to Negotiate like

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Speaker 1: a Woman. The solution to all of this stuff isn't

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Speaker 1: we'll just act like a man. You don't have to

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Speaker 1: sacrifice any any type of femininity that you might have,

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Speaker 1: or or niceness or or things like that. It's simply

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Speaker 1: reevaluating our approach dealing with fear issues, seems like, and

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Speaker 1: you know, coming at it from places of truth and authenticity,

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Speaker 1: because that what she's talking about in terms of smiling, frequently,

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Speaker 1: expressing appreciation and concern taking in general, more communal approaches

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Speaker 1: resonates a lot in my experience at work, because in

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Speaker 1: times when I might be working really really hard and

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Speaker 1: I'm very determined and I have a goal that i

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Speaker 1: want to accomplish, but it's a lot easier to accomplish

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Speaker 1: that if I'm smiling, even if it is fake sometimes

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Speaker 1: and not to you, the Caroline, I was gonna say, um, yeah, sure, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: we can do that topic. No, but do you know

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Speaker 1: what I mean? Because if there are times when, especially

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Speaker 1: if you're dealing with difficult manager or even a difficult

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Speaker 1: coworker that you don't have a close relationship with, where

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Speaker 1: you've gotta play nice. And I say play nice in

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Speaker 1: terms of the aspect of combining niceness with insistence. And

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Speaker 1: you know, when I first read this, I don't disagree

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Speaker 1: with Sandberg at all in this regard that you do

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Speaker 1: have to combine niceness with insistence, you know, smiling frequently,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. Um, My first instinct was like, well, that's obnoxious,

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Speaker 1: Like why should we have to do that, Like why

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Speaker 1: can't I just be direct? Which you know a lot

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Speaker 1: of times I just am, And I'm sure a lot

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Speaker 1: of times people are like, what's up her butt? But

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Speaker 1: I would rather be direct than like beat around the

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Speaker 1: bush and be overly polite. But the more I thought

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Speaker 1: about it, the more I was like, Okay, Okay, it's

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Speaker 1: not like it's just women who have to do this,

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Speaker 1: you know, Like I would be just as miffed if

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Speaker 1: a man walked up to me and was like, hey,

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Speaker 1: stop smacking your gum as a woman, you know, like that.

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Speaker 1: Obviously that's just a silly example and has nothing to

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Speaker 1: do with work. But like I mean, I think I

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Speaker 1: think being polite and being insistent but kind and friendly

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Speaker 1: is good advice for anybody in the workplace. Well, and

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Speaker 1: if your m O is that combination of niceness with

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Speaker 1: insistence that gives you maybe more leverage for those times

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Speaker 1: when you have to be firm and you have to

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Speaker 1: bulldoze a little bit and you have to be demanding. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because that does lay the foundation for people to think, Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: she's she's never been unfair or cruel or mean or

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Speaker 1: hardhearted to me. Um, so obviously this thing is important

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Speaker 1: and this is what she needs. Hopefully that would be

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Speaker 1: the well, and all of this would be undergirded by,

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Speaker 1: you know, a legacy of solid work. You know, that's

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Speaker 1: what always hopefully at the end of the day speaks

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Speaker 1: for itself, and then you have all of these other

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Speaker 1: things on top of it to tie it together. Because

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Speaker 1: work is so not just work. Yeah, you're you're juggling

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Speaker 1: a lot of personalities. And one thing that I tell

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Speaker 1: my father this all the time. I'm twenty nine, you know,

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Speaker 1: and I tell my father this all the time. I

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Speaker 1: just told him last weekend when we had dinner together.

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Speaker 1: I was, like, you told me when I was in

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Speaker 1: elementary school and I was doing group projects, and I'm

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Speaker 1: so angry because these other kids were not doing it right,

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Speaker 1: and they weren't, you know, putting in the same effort

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Speaker 1: that I was. You told me way back then that, sister,

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Speaker 1: this is life, and you're gonna have to get used

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Speaker 1: to it. And when you're a grown up and you

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Speaker 1: have a job, it's going to be even worse. You're

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Speaker 1: making such strong right now. I hope it's not always worse, No,

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Speaker 1: but you know what you mean. Yeah, Like advice like

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Speaker 1: that about dealing with other personalities, being open to dealing

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Speaker 1: with other personalities, and being flexible enough in your own

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Speaker 1: personality that you can approach maybe uncomfortable situations with a

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Speaker 1: smile and with kindness, you know that. I think that's

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Speaker 1: that's a good jumping off point for office relations. Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to toss something out there that might sound

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Speaker 1: a bit radical. I think maybe we should reclaim bossy. Interesting.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if there is a way at least two

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Speaker 1: sort of flip the script on it in a similar

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Speaker 1: way that women have reclaimed the B word that I

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Speaker 1: can't stay on this podcast, right, Yeah, I don't. I

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Speaker 1: don't disagree. I I wonder if we made a conscious

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Speaker 1: effort to when we wanted to call someone bossy, if

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Speaker 1: we made a conscious effort to replace it with a

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Speaker 1: word like assertive, and see how we felt in our

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Speaker 1: brains when we said that, because I think that would

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Speaker 1: be kind of like a personal test almost for how

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Speaker 1: we really meant it, Right, did we really mean that

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Speaker 1: as a positive? Like because you can say about someone

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Speaker 1: else she's she's assertive and it's a positive, you can

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Speaker 1: also mean it as a negative. I think bossy, on

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Speaker 1: the other hand, always has a negative connotation, So I

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Speaker 1: don't know, maybe replacing bossy with a word like assertive,

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Speaker 1: you can kind of judge. Wait, okay, maybe like check yourself,

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Speaker 1: how am I you sing this? I like that like

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Speaker 1: that thought experiment, and I think in real world terms too.

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Speaker 1: The more Sheryl Sandberg's we see, the more Tina Pha's

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Speaker 1: writing books called bossy Pants, the more outspoken, powerful, assertive

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Speaker 1: bossy women, the better it's going to be. Yeah. Hopefully

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Speaker 1: over time, Yeah, I mean I think, um, hopefully, decades

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Speaker 1: from now, it will seem silly that we talked about

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Speaker 1: the negative connotations of a word like bossy, and hopefully

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Speaker 1: people will be joking around calling each other bossy and

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Speaker 1: it won't be a negative thing. So we want to

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Speaker 1: hear from all of our bossy listeners out there. Mom

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Speaker 1: and Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can

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Speaker 1: send your letters. This does conclude our four part series

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Speaker 1: on lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. You can connect more

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Speaker 1: with Lenin Milenan Foundation at len In dot org or

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00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:05,840
Speaker 1: going to Facebook dot com slash lean in, or there's

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Speaker 1: a huge community of women talking about these kinds of

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00:21:09,119 --> 00:21:13,160
Speaker 1: workplace issues every single day, and of course share your

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Speaker 1: stories with us as well. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot

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Speaker 1: com is our email address, or you can also find

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Speaker 1: us on Facebook or tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast

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Speaker 1: and for kicks, you should check us out also on Instagram.

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