What “Women at Work” Listeners Want to Know About Money, Sponsorship, and More

Women at Work’s greatest asset is our devoted, responsive audience. When listeners tell us they want something, I pin their requests to the top of our show planning document. A piece of feedback that guided this past season’s production was “more actionable advice.”

It was an appealing challenge. Our hosts — Amy Bernstein, Nicole Torres, and Amy Gallo — love to share tips and draw out advice from the experts they interview. They enjoy wrestling with specific, personal questions women send us. And we’ve found that bringing our listeners into the conversation inspires other listeners to reach out with their own stories and dilemmas.

Three episodes in particular from our just-concluded fourth season continue to light up our inbox: “Let’s Talk About Money,” “Sponsorship: Defining the Relationship,” and “When You Work in a Male-Dominated Industry.” I circled back to some of our guests from those episodes and asked them to answer a few of the additional questions we’d received on their topic.

We’re already planning Season 5, and your questions will help us decide what we cover. What else do you need advice on? Email us: womenatwork@hbr.org.

The following questions and answers have been condensed and edited for clarity. 

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In this episode we discussed the tricky practicalities of salary disclosure and how to deal with the gut punch of learning a peer makes more than you do. One of our guests was Amelia Ransom, the senior director of engagement and diversity for the tax software company Avalara. She speaks from her experience as an HR executive in responding to these two questions about compensation and fair pay:

I was wondering how people handled employees that “oversell” themselves in an interview. I know the employer is partially at fault for not weeding through everything, but I truly believe some employees tell you all that you want to hear [and] overshoot their abilities… You hire them at a salary that you believe they deserve based upon what they sold themselves as. Well then after a few months on the job, you realize that they falsely advertised their skills, and now you see them being paid more than employees who can actually do more, are younger and have less experience, are capable of more, and are pushing to do more. 

Just something I am struggling with. When employee reviews come around, everybody is looking for a raise. It’s not like you can go backwards and offer less money now.

— CT

Amelia’s advice 

As a first step to resolving this issue, I urge you and your team to take a close look at your interview process as a whole. Personally, I’m not hiring anyone who tells me they “can do everything,” so if you’re hearing this sentiment during an interview it should automatically send up a red flag. Someone overshooting their skills during the interview process should be sussed out by precision questioning, examples of work, and references.

That said, no matter how fine-tuned your interview process is, you might end up hiring someone who isn’t delivering to your expectations. If this happens, there are a few steps you should take to resolve the matter.

First, truth yourself. Are your expectations in line? Are they reflected in the job description, or are they the unspoken expectations that nearly every role has? I’m inclined to say that in the situation you detail in your letter that there needs to be an honest dialogue with the individual about what they’re doing well and where you need them to pivot. It’s important that you’re specific in your dialogue and hold them accountable. If someone is in the wrong-level role, you can always relevel and pay accordingly. But this isn’t really about pay; it’s about honesty.

Finally, perhaps those “young” people you mention who are capable of more need to be up-leveled, but you’ve got a little ageism creeping in there …be careful.

It was peculiar timing that on the day I listened to this [episode], I found out that the two people I supervise actually make MORE money that I do. I certainly reacted in anger and still feel frustrated by knowing what they make. Is there a norm that supervisors generally make more money than those below them? Are there steps I should take to address this? Should I let it go?

— C. Cain   

Amelia’s advice 

It sounds like you found the podcast at the right time. I’m so glad you’re taking a breath and figuring out what you should do next.

You ask a good question — should supervisors always make more than their employees? I think this is usually the case, but the short answer is no. Ouch, I know, but hear me out…

Leaders aren’t necessarily hired or paid because they can build the widget. They’re being paid to ensure the widgets get built, which are two entirely different skill sets. Depending upon what your widget is (are you building the elusive part that seems to break on every McDonald’s shake machine?), the builder in that scenario might be more challenging to find in the marketplace and therefore command more salary.

Additionally, many companies now have two growth paths for employees — those that include managing and leading and those that allow folks to grow without managing folks (read: expert widget builders). This allows employees to focus on their area of expertise and drive deeper engagement and retention.

All of that said, I don’t know if this defines your situation or not, but you at least have some context as you begin to ask questions, which I highly recommend you do. Ask your manager if they are aware of the discrepancy and whether that’s intentional. Informing yourself is important. Just be careful not to draw a conclusion before you do so.

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Sponsorship is when someone influential in your organization advocates on your behalf to get you where you want to go. But the sponsor-protégé relationship isn’t always clear-cut. On the podcast, Rosalind Chow, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, talked about what sponsors really do and what the protégé’s role is. Here she continues to fill in the blanks of managing this sort of relationship:

One question I have that I don’t believe the episode addressed is how one goes about thanking their sponsor. Thanking someone for a regular favor, I find, can be an awkward encounter: Am I showing enough thanks? Am I thanking too much? Am I showing enough excitement about having been helped? 

— Claudia

Rosalind’s advice 

This is an interesting question! First, there’s no harm (as far as we know, based on the research) to expressing gratitude. If anything, people underestimate how meaningful it is to others to be thanked for their efforts, because most of us don’t get thanked a lot! So if a person notices that I’ve gone out of my way to help them and they go out of their way to acknowledge my help, that usually builds a stronger relationship between us.

Now, there is a possibility that if women thank others too much, especially for things that are truly rather inconsequential, then they run the risk of implying “I can’t do anything on my own without help.” So, one option is to thank the other person for providing the opportunity and discuss how you will or have already begun to execute and perform well, which means that they opened the door, but you’re the one doing the work.

The other way to interpret the question is, are there certain forms of sponsorship that are more worthy of appreciation than others? Again, giving thanks is always good, in my book. But taking the question at face value, I would suggest thinking about how much reputation your sponsor has put on the line for you. The more they had to actively insist on others’ consideration of your abilities, the more “costly” that sponsorship is, and thus, more valuable. If someone says positive things about you in general, that’s nice but not overly costly to them. But if they strategically introduce you to the other person and say, “This is the person I was telling you about! The one you should hire,” that’s a more active form of sponsorship that probably warrants a thank-you note.

It’s one thing to have a sponsor, but then what? It’s not always the smoothest ride; much of it is impacted by forces beyond your control, basically power struggles and office politics. What happens when your sponsor leaves the company and/or they get pushed out and you become collateral damage? 

— G. 

Rosalind’s advice 

This is a great question, too, and relates to something I alluded to in the podcast: You don’t want to have only one sponsor; like stocks, you need to diversify. The more senior you get, presumably, the more opportunity powerful people in the organization have to directly observe your talents, so you won’t be as reliant on your sponsor.

But sometimes you pick the wrong horse (or the wrong horse picks you). Depending on what your relationship is with your sponsor, you can ask them for help, and they can try transitioning you to another sponsor in the firm. You could also leave with your sponsor, assuming that they have found a position in another firm that you’d be interested in.

***

Women in male-dominated fields experience lots of stressors, both subtle and overt. As a result, many end up leaving the field altogether. But the ones who stay develop strategies to survive and to even challenge the status quo. In the podcast, Teresa Cardador, a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, talked about how to evaluate a company’s gender culture before you accept a job and how to stay true to your career goals when other people think they know what’s best for you. Here she offers advice on establishing credibility and receiving feedback in a male-dominated workplace:

I am a 30-something woman in a male-dominated environment. I find it is often assumed that I don’t know what I am talking about. However, in order to establish credibility, I feel I have to talk a lot or assert my credentials up front, which can come across as verbose, self-important, or domineering. My male coworkers don’t seem to have the same problem. How can women effectively establish credibility in new environments without playing into classic negative stereotypes of women who are too assertive? 

—  Rebecca 

Teresa’s advice 

Women often have to walk this fine line of proving competence through assertiveness, while not being seen as “too assertive.” As you note, males are assumed to be competent, so they don’t have to prove their credentials as much. They are also not penalized for assertive behavior. While there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for dealing with this, the research suggests that one technique that can work for women is to combine assertive behaviors with more stereotypically feminine behaviors, such as concern and participation.

Another tip is to focus on demonstrating good performance rather than asserting your credentials. In time, your good performance will speak for itself. You won’t feel the need to assert your credentials as much once you’ve proven to your colleagues that you do indeed know what you’re talking about.

I have a question about receiving feedback and how to tell whether the feedback you’re getting is driven by an actual need to adjust your approach or by gender bias (or both). For example, women are told more often than men that they are too aggressive, too intense, or that they need to adjust their tone. My female manager has passed on this feedback to me based on what she has heard from others on the team (I’m not sure who). 

As background, I am the most junior and the only woman on a team of men, and we work in the highly technical (and male-dominated) field of IT. I’m trying to figure out whether my “aggressive” approach is something I should work on, or whether this feedback is driven by men who aren’t used to a young woman acting assertively. 

I don’t want this to be something that holds me back from taking on more of a leadership role at my company, but at the same time I don’t think I should have to adjust my tone to accommodate the gender preferences of the men I work with.

— K. Rodriguez  

Teresa’s advice 

I often hear from women that they don’t know if they are receiving this type of feedback because they are a woman or because of something they are doing wrong. Since you can’t separate your gender from yourself, it can be hard to know if you are experiencing bias or a genuine need to adjust your approach. As you indicate, gender stereotypes prescribe that women should not be aggressive; and so when we do behave this way, we often get feedback that we need to soften our tone.

There are a few things you can do when you get this feedback. First, ask for specific instances of when you are seen as behaving aggressively. Try to gather as much information about what specific behaviors are linked to this impression. Second, and related, ask whether/how they see your behavior affecting your performance. Do they want you to soften your tone because it is legitimately undermining your effectiveness, or because they are uncomfortable with it? If it’s not the former, it’s probably the latter. Asking this question causes those giving you feedback to confront their personal biases if they can’t come up with any reason why your behavior is undermining your success.

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Do any of these situations ring true to you? Are there any other questions you’d like us to cover in future articles or episodes? We’d love to hear from you. Our email address, again, is womenatwork@hbr.org.

Amanda Kersey is an audio producer at Harvard Business Review and produces HBR’s Women at Work podcast.

What “Women at Work” Listeners Want to Know About Money, Sponsorship, and More

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