The Expectation of a Positive Outcome

My Newsweek subscription just expired. It expired, I'm not kidding about this, the week before the issue with the cover: "How Women Lead." Great. It's like they knew. "Jessica Gray in Los Angeles, CA just let her subscription lapse, move the women leaders issue up and get that on the stands. We need her $17.95."

I'm standing at the Ralph's checkout and debating, and despite the fact that it has Oprah on the cover *, I paid $3.95 for it. And, yes, I felt stupid about that, and yes, I'll be renewing my subscription now.

So, the articles are interesting enough, I guess. The whole oeuvre of the thing is a little "Wow! Women can do stuff!" but yeah, what'd I expect. There was a sidebar (LOVE sidebars) with the results of a study done by Fortune Magazine. Here's some highlights (or lowlights**) if you like.

Percentage of the workplace that's female: 46%
Percentage of MBA slots at top schools filled by women: 30%
Percentage of corporate officers: 16%
Percentage of women in both houses of Congress: 15%

And this one, that I'm remembering off the top of my head from a different source, and I'll check this later:
Percentage of women members in the DGA: 11%

So, wah, wah, we can vote, we can buy our own cars, we should shut it. Yeah, I know! My point is not that these statistics suck, we know they suck. But here's what I found interesting in connection with these facts. Toward the end of this section "Leadership for the 21st Century" (I guess implying that the ladies are getting ready to just take over at some point in the next 95 years) was an article w/ the head "Vote of Confidence."

In it, Rosabeth Moss Kanter discusses how confidence affects women’s decisions to lead, strive, etc. It's interesting, she gets into how sports engenders confidence, and Title IX was important for that with girls, blah, blah, I tuned out cause it's sports. But she gets to the point that as a professor she has to be sure to call on women as much as the men because men tend to raise their hand and talk until they find a point, whereas women tend to only raise their hands if they are positive they have something to bring to the debate. Her POV of this, as the professor, was that it was a bad thing.

But wasn't your first thought reading that, like, yeah, damn straight? There's integrity to only speaking when you're contributing and to keeping your piehole shut otherwise. But she goes on to point out that confidence comes from the "expectation of a positive outcome." And you're only going to get that by speaking, receiving the confirmation that it was worthwhile, and filing that info away for the next time you think of something worth voicing.

OK, so those of you not raising your hands? Yeah, you, the one in the back with something to contribute, but you're afraid the popular boys will make fun of you? Raise your hand.

Those of you waiting to speak until you have something to say? Good on you. But take that moment right before you do raise your hand, and remember it. Remember how you had that little thrill of fear and did it anyway, and apply that elsewhere. We’ll all benefit from it.

*Not a huge Oprah fan. All that yelling, man, it just gets to me.
**I'm thinking about getting low-lights this weekend! Good times.