There was quite an outpouring of support and criticism when last week LeanIn.org, the organisation that sprouted from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s eponymous (and much-debated) book, launched its campaign to ban the word ‘bossy’.
The group called its effort a “public service campaign to ensure that girls grow up with the confidence and support they need to become leaders.”
But, ban an entire word from the lexicon? Is it really the right way to go? Or should we be teaching our children the difference between bossy and being the boss? Several LinkedIn Influencers weighed in on the topic, including Sandberg and LeanIn.org’s president. Here’s what some of them had to say.
Rachel Schall Thomas, president at LeanIn.org; Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook
“Ban Bossy has sparked a conversation online and offline — with girls sharing their leadership aspirations, mothers and fathers celebrating their daughters’ potential and women sharing their own bossy stories,” wrote Thomas and Sandberg in their post The Other B-Word. “Why does this have so much resonance? Because almost every woman we know has a ‘bossy story’.”
Thomas and Sandberg wrote that they, too, were called bossy as girls. “Decades later, the word still stings, and we remember the sentiments it evoked: Keep your voice down. Don’t raise your hand. Don’t take the lead. If you do, people won’t like you,” they wrote. “This is not just about a single word. The stereotypes behind the word “bossy” are deep rooted and discouraging.”
The pair wrote that boys are expected to be assertive and confident, while girls are expected to be kind and nurturing. “We encourage boys to lead and reward them when they do. When girls lead, however, we disapprove — and our language communicates that disapproval clearly.” “As girls become women, the childhood b-word — ‘bossy’ — is replaced by the b-word adult women face — along with ‘aggressive,’ ‘angry,’ and ‘too ambitious.’ The words change, but their impact doesn’t,” they wrote. “Women are less well liked when they lead, and all of us are affected. The bossy stereotype contributes to the dearth of leadership we face in every industry and every government.”
Adam Grant, professor at Wharton School of Business
“Many girls want to lead, only to be discouraged by criticism for taking the reins. By launching a campaign to ban the word ‘bossy’, Sheryl Sandberg is planting important seeds for many more women to become leaders. For these seeds to blossom, we need to understand the behaviours that lead people to brand girls as bossy,” wrote Grant in his post Why Girls Get Called Bossy and How to Avoid It.
Grant explained: “Girls get pegged as bossy when they order people around. Yet we don’t label every girl who issues commands and exercises authority as bossy,” he wrote. “To make sense of bossiness, we need to tease apart two fundamental aspects of social hierarchy that are often lumped together: power and status. Power lies in holding a formal position of authority or controlling important resources. Status involves being respected or admired.”
So how does this play into the Ban Bossy campaign? Several studies offer insight, he wrote. “When young women get called bossy, it’s often because they’re trying to exercise power without status. It’s not a problem that they’re being dominant; the backlash arises because they’re overstepping their status,” wrote Grant.
If that’s the case, then banning bossy might not be the right or only move — instead, it might be more about discouraging certain behaviour, he wrote. “If we want girls to receive positive reinforcement for early acts of leadership, let’s discourage bossy behaviour along with banning bossy labels.” He wrote that this means teaching them to do things that earn admiration before they assert their authority.
Some ‘bossy’ acts fail the test of executive leadership skills, wrote Grant. “Great leaders begin by earning status through their contributions, and only then assert their authority.”
Jennifer Merritt, Editor of BBC Capital
“It sounds empowering: Ban the term bossy to help push girls and young women into pursuing leadership roles,” wrote Merritt in her post Don’t Ban Bossy. “But I just can’t get behind the movement.”
Why not support banning a term that discourages young women? “Bossy exists and it isn’t pretty and it should be called out and corrected. It should also, if possible, be harnessed and perhaps turned into the leadership traits COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg… hopes girls will develop,” wrote Merritt.
When her four-year-old daughter asks “if the people who work for me ‘have to do what you tell them to do’,” Merritt wrote, “I am quick to make the distinction: I don’t boss people around, I include them and treat them nicely (the grown-up term would be ‘with respect’). I’m not stubborn when one of my ideas doesn’t pan out, and I seek their input.”
“I look at my daughter and see a little girl with an awful lot of potential. And I see an awful lot of bossy. I’m keen to foster the former and diminish the latter. But I can’t do that without the word bossy in my vocabulary,” wrote Merritt. She would rather her daughter has a firm grasp of the difference between taking charge and being bossy “so that if another child calls her bossy one day, she can smile and just ignore the comment, knowing she’s got a good idea — and she’s going for it.”
Another reason not to ban bossy, wrote Merritt, is to teach children to let negative words and phrases ‘roll off’ you, wrote Merritt. “What about that old saying, ‘I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you’?”
Via: BBC
Image source: bbc
