Silenced and Sidelined. D Lynn D Arnold
like a victim, and take a stand.” That approach is too simple! When you are in an executive role surrounded by leadership complexity, it is a disservice to provide quick tips and advice that may work in specific examples but not all.
Confidence
Women in leadership will undoubtedly experience a dip—but this is not just about a loss of confidence. Yes, that happens when someone feels silenced, and I would argue that the women in my research described the loss as a symptom but not the whole of the experience. Kay and Shipman describe confidence as a matter of choice—it is volition. In their book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know, they describe confidence-building habits and how genetics may play a part.[1] Just as everything is not always about silencing, it is equally valid that everything is not always about confidence. When we are confident, we believe in our capability. There is a sense of trust or certainty in the truth of something.
I can be extremely confident in one area of my life and be lacking in another. In theory, confidence builds through repetition and encouragement. The more I write or speak on a topic; my confidence grows. The more I train for a marathon (so not me), my confidence in my stamina increases.
Sometimes we need an entire confidence makeover, and sometimes it is fine-tuning. I see a lot of young people entering the workforce and leadership with ingrained confidence. They have not had too many setbacks yet to question their ability. They charge forward with eagerness and confidence that is primarily based on the encouragement of others and their self-talk. When they hit that first setback, often they just need to rebuild in the area they experienced failure. Practice, training, or development is required.
When it comes to being an executive leader—who gets to practice? Unfortunately, rehearsal time is over! I do not know many executives who get a lot of do-overs if they say the wrong thing in a meeting or make the wrong high-stakes decision. Every choice is scrutinized, and every behavior matters. There is no test environment before you go live, and lower levels of leadership are not always preparing women for what they encounter in executive roles.[2]
The women in my research had varying degrees of confidence, and it did not always shift their experience when silenced. In fact, women with a strong sense of self-confidence were sometimes the hardest hit. They were stunned by silencing when it occurred and often did not know how to respond. Had someone just given them advice on increasing their confidence—it would have missed the mark. Sometimes all the confidence in the world will not save you from the curveballs of silencing.
Silencing is complex. When someone experiences viral silencing, they may feel victimized, bullied, and feel a dip in confidence. It is rarely just one of these things. It can be all three or more. What follows is a summary of what it is like to feel pervasively silenced. This describes the history of dozens of women I interviewed. I listened to over 100 hours of women describing their experience. From those interviews, I have captured a general summary. This description is intended to give insight into what it is like so that when you put down this book, you will have a better understanding.
This summary is not intended to represent every woman’s path, and some things are real for most but not all.
Her Profile
When a female leader feels silenced, she perceives herself as lacking in personal agency.
My sister is a successful real estate agent in Texas. She represents buyers and sellers in the transaction of property. Agency is a term suggesting that one can produce or act on behalf of self or others. As described in chapter 1, it includes an individual’s ability to make choices and then to make meaning from those available selections. One person may see few options in their circumstances, whereas another individual in that same situation may see multiple options. On a basic level, we are all our own agents. I can represent myself in any transaction I choose to be part of, or I can have someone be my agent.
Silenced female leaders often feel they are no longer entirely an agent of self when it comes to their leadership. Here are some examples of things I heard in interviews: An executive at a prestigious school district said, “I had nowhere to go. I mean nowhere.” A CEO of her own company put her silencing experience this way, “Being in situations where you can’t do anything about it; it’s such a helpless feeling.” A senior director in a nonprofit said this about her silencing, “I did not feel empowered in any way.”
This sensation is a paradox given the inherent authority in a senior leadership role. What does it really mean to be an executive yet feel like you have no options? How do women make sense of the sensation of being a leader but feel there are limited choices when it comes to decision making? From the outside, this rarely makes sense. However, for women in it—and for many of my readers—you know what this is like, and it is hard to explain, and exceptionally painful to experience.
Participants described the phenomenon of feeling silenced with various metaphors, which are figures of speech that go beyond pure intellect; they expand insight. If someone says, “I’m trying to run in quicksand,” it conjures up sensations. It suggests a new way of understanding the concept of feeling stuck. I once asked my CPA husband to respond to the running in quicksand metaphor with a quick reaction. Without overthinking it, he replied that he felt mucky and trapped. I believe that takes stuck or “I can’t seem to get anything accomplished,” to a different level. Different word choices create more profound understanding and empathy.
When I interviewed women about their experiences with silencing, I never asked them for a metaphor. I just asked them to tell me about a time they felt silenced in their leadership role. I would follow up their answers with a question to explain how it felt. The metaphors came without prompts.
The consistent theme across all metaphors was the perceived lack of agency; I am without choice!
The most used metaphors fell into three categories: (a) Fighting, War, Games, and Clubs, (b) Isolation and Death, (c) Body, Heart, and Soul. There were other metaphors used, but these three were consistent across multiple interviews. Let me share some examples.
Fight Club
As long as I have been an active member of the workforce, I have heard and at times used game or war metaphors to describe work. We talk about losing battles to win wars. Or we discuss what chess moves to make next. We are all guilty of saying things like, “play to win” or “fight fair.” It is often unconscious and a way to relate to both genders. Sports, games, and war analogies are laced throughout our English language.
The silenced female leader has taken her language and metaphor up a notch. Her descriptions go beyond the benign examples we find in everyday organizations or teams. She refers to her role or her organization as a game she cannot win. She will fight to feel heard, fight to get work accomplished, or fight to have an equal voice at the table. The concept of the “fight” is prevalent. Male dominance is named as a barrier to her success, and she may have to fight the “good-ol’-boys club.” Fighting to be heard suggests a struggle with voice, and when that fight reaches a certain threshold, women lose their sense of agency.
Isolation and Death
The second theme from the research is the metaphor of dying and isolation. Here, silenced women describe their organization, industry, or environment in multiple life-and-death terms. She may mention that when she is not fighting, it feels that she is being eaten alive, crushed, or strangled on the vine.
She may equate her silencing experience to suffocation, strangulation, drowning, or being out on a limb all alone. Each silencing encounter is described as a form of poison that slowly erodes her sense of self. Her language may include references to her heart, soul, mind, and body. She refers to heartbreak and bone-crushing pain. She protects herself by putting on a metaphoric armor, and she tries to develop a thick skin—this phenomenon of feeling silenced bleeds into all her domains.
Give a Little Bit of Heart and Soul