A Discussion with Claire Shipman and Katty Kay

so thank you all for coming we are very very fortunate to have Katie K and Claire Shipman here to talk about their book the confidence code and we're also very fortunate to have our own Alondra Nelson helped to moderate this and there'll be questions and answers afterwards let me just say a couple of things I think of this is it's obviously an incredibly important problem set of problems nationally and globally that is how do we make a world in which women feel and are able to succeed if you think of most of the issues in the world they can be linked back very quickly to the opportunities for women and this is something that we've taken very seriously here at Columbia both in our own structure as an institution and in our efforts to try to engage with these issues around the world to have two of the leading journalists in the world to talk about this their own careers of course very very successful and to come together and to write this book to try to understand why it is that on so many facts it looks like there ought to be parity in success in the world and leadership and all kinds of ways and yet there's not and to try to understand that is a really really important effort and we want to be part of it so caddy KO courses the anchor for BBC World News America and she has covered wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan and Iraq she's a regular guest on programs like Meet the Press has travel lived around the world and was at Oxford study studying Modern Languages Claire Shipman is really our own as an alumna of the institution also a trustee received her undergraduate and graduate a degree in Russian studies a contributor to Good Morning America World News Tonight and other national broadcasts news she has built up an extraordinary journalistic record of very very significant interviews with significant people served as the White House correspondent for NBC News and 10 years at CNN where she covered the fall of the Soviet Union and as part of the Moscow Bureau Alondra Nelson is our Dean of Social Sciences in the Faculty Arts and Sciences a professor of sociology and Gender Studies her interest range from science and technology to medicine and health and social movements so thank you all for being here thank you so thank you all for coming to join us for this conversation this evening Thank You president Bollinger for that introduction and to Clare and Katie welcome and thank you very much so I wanted to begin with the title of the book which is the confidence code the science and art of self assurance what women should know so what is the confidence code and are you thinking about tomorrow from the language of computing are you recommending that we break the code or write the code well I think I think a little bit of both I think that we we think women need to crack the code to learn the code because we we set out to discover whether in fact there is a code and we found that there are some things we can learn about confidence and that many of us don't know but along the way and I would say it was well into our research where we realized that the confidence may in fact not look the same way for everybody that there may be a way that women need to take this code and transform it a little bit for ourselves so I would say both we called it the science and the art of self assurance because confidence is part science we discovered it is partly genetic there are some people who you know those slightly annoying people who seem to kind of drift through life and everything seems to go swimmingly and they never shirk at any challenge they may be born more confident they may actually have in their DNA genes which predispose them to being confident so there's a scientific element to confidence but there is also an art and that is the interpretation as Claire were suggesting of how you manifest your confidence and I think sometimes for women that can mean something different from that image of confidence being kind of bravado and swagger and the person that dominates every meeting which perhaps is what we had thought confidence was when we set out to write the book and then discovered it was something else so you make a pretty compelling argument in the book that there's a confidence gap between men and women so what's the argument or what's the how do you support this do you want to share a build but how you support that and how it manifests itself in the world this gap well we you know originally caddy and I came we were left with this nagging thought from a different book we wrote five years ago called Womenomics and here was really about women in the workplace and and a lot of very interesting data there but there was one piece of the puzzle that we walked away with and we hadn't really been able to address it in the book and that was the fact that so many of the most successful articulate smart brilliant women we had interviewed would say things to us like I'm about to get a promotion but I don't think I'm qualified my boss wants me to do this I don't think I'm ready we would hear the f-word a lot fraud and a lot more than we thought we would from the the women who on the face of it were just incredibly successful and confident and so we well know clay used to say she was just in the right place at the right time right place at the right if you've ever been sick exactly it's so true I went so we stood we thought what is this just something women talk about or is there data and we were frankly surprised to find that there is a lot of data yeah it's pretty compelling the evidence that there is a gap in confidence among women in the professional space much less in our relationships we actually are as confident if not more confident than men when it comes to our friendships when it comes to our role as mothers when it comes to our marriages and our relationships but when we get into that professional world hewlett-packard has done work on this women will apply for a promotion when they have a hundred percent of the skills necessary for the job men are happy to apply for the same promotion when they have 60 percent of the skills because they figure guess what they'll learn the rest when they get there Columbia has done work on there's something called honest overconfidence which suggests that men tend to overestimate their abilities by something like 30% women tend to underestimate their abilities and that's really what the confidence gap is it's that women's perception of their abilities skews lower than their actual abilities and we need to shift that needle to bring it in line with reality one of the most interesting people we interviewed is a he's a scientist and he studies confidence in rats at Cold Spring Harbor there are apparently confident and unconfident right yes we did not know this when we set up but there are and he said he the way he views it he tried to just boil it down to the most basic level he said his view is that confidence should serve as a sort of barometer or a navigation tool for our lives and it should be ideally as accurately tuned as possible and in law is in line with our abilities as possible and what we came to see is that for women is just routinely off we're just not estimating our abilities accurately most of the time and that can lead you can imagine over the course of a career if you're not if you don't think you're ready for a promotion you don't think the papers are ready to be turned in you know right exactly you're not ready you're not ready yeah yeah so what do you think the origins are for the gap I mean there's the art and the science maybe it's a little bit genetics maybe it's our rat nature we did one we did a lot of research for this book we interviewed dozens of psychologists and neuroscientists and people in the business world and one of the bookend studies that we came across was one done by a professor in the University of Milan in Italy a guy called Zach s T's Zack s T's put a group of men and women in front of something called a spatial awareness test it's it looks a bit like a 3d Rubik's Cube and he asked them to solve a whole load of problems he found when he did this test that the women scored much less well than the men so he went back over the answers and he also found when he looked into it that what was happening was that the women were skipping questions a lot more often than the men were he went back to the group and he said ok no more skipping you all have to answer all of the questions when the women had to answer all of the questions guess what happened they did just as well as the men did they had chosen to skip the questions because they didn't want to risk getting them wrong and to some extent that became a metaphor for us about the confidence gap if you skip the questions in life you are not going to score as well as you could do and when we asked Zach s T's so why is this why knowing that they would get lower scores why did the women choose to skip the questions he said it was that there's this fear of failure they didn't want to risk answering something that they weren't a hundred percent sure they were going to get right and that that research was so critical for us because it came at about the same time that we finally literally after I think it took us a year to define confidence okay I don't think anybody in academia will be surprised that when Cathy and I set out to get a definition for confidence that it wasn't that easy but when this was first clusterings have a lot of different opinions about her beliefs the one we walked away with in the end came from a professor at Ohio State and he said to us look at its most basic confidence is the stuff that turns our thoughts into action in effect it greases the wheels for action and we've never thought about it like that I mean I think we thought more about confidence is just a little more closely related to self-esteem a feeling something that makes us feel good but for women especially that action component is very important because as we will discuss later but women are we're really good at thinking and we think and we think and we think and sometimes we overthink but sometimes we pause before we act and I think again the skipping the questions that tie taking risks we also found that the action the the process of acting of taking a risk may be failing struggling and eventually mastering something that's the process that creates confidence so it's really almost a virtuous circle it gives you know you act you build confidence and you know it all leads to and comes back to action so you're suggesting that confidence is a part in action is that the only origin of it I mean are there other places are there things about the family about the socialization of girls or there were there other theories for the origins of yeah of course that there are ways we nurture girls and boys from a very young age that tends to be different not just us as parents but it happens in elementary schools there's we encourage inadvertently I think girls to be more perfectionist and to take fewer risk and to screw up less I mean what busy teacher in a classroom doesn't want to know that they can rely on some group to color in the lines and be respectful and be quiet and not screw up and raise their hands when they've perfectly formulated the question or the answer and because girls have some brain capacities that make it easier for them to do that we are very good at Reading Room's and we have high EQ we're empathetic like that we do it more naturally and then we get rewarded for doing it because we get praised for doing it what a good girl you are and then we Karen it sets off a circle and there's nothing wrong with being good except for when it means that we are holding ourselves back and keeping our voices quiet and when we get out into the real world you have to be able to rock the boat a little bit so I think you know it's a combination of fact as there are lots of things that go into starting at a young age into feeding a process that tends to lead to this confidence gap well we should also say that we did find as Katie mentioned that there is a good bit of science behind confidence that there's some there's genetics there we didn't think we decided we would dive into the science thinking we've got to do it everybody's talking about what's genetic what's not interest science than they're trying to personality let's look at it but I don't we did not think we were gonna find that confidence is genetic and almost everybody we talked to agreed that some portion of confidence is in fact hereditary the estimate they estimate between 25 to 50 percent now is there a confidence gene that men have and women don't that's what we we were worried about no there's not but there are a number of genes now that scientists once the scientists at NIH who's been studying monkeys for 20 years or other scientists out in Los Angeles who's worked on oxytocin I mean that there's a number of G and that have a certain variant that is that contributes to confidence depending on what variety of that gene you have in their genes that affect the neurotransmitters in our brain that control serotonin for example or dopamine or oxytocin and that's only mean that's what we know right now I'm sure all the scientists in this room know in another two years we will know a lot more than we know now but that was striking to us to discover that some people probably are born with a more natural basis for calm feel Andra this is when Claire had the brilliant idea that she and I should have our genes tested writing this book and I kind of in a slightly sort of distracted moment said yeah that's fine whatever Claire let's do it and it's totally easy to get your genes tested they send you a little packet and you spit into a tube and then you send that tube off by FedEx and then you spend two weeks sweating while you wait for the results and it's a bit like waiting for your SAT results but this is your whole personality that's on the line here and what happens if your genes come back and they're not the genes you expect it or you're not perfect which of course we should have been able to control our genes naturally and we spent two weeks and finally the neuroscientist came back with our results and neither Claire nor I are predisposed to confidence we're actually basket cases pretty much on the genetic front and we've sort of looked at each other we're either puzzled and thought well what do we do with this information in terms of the book yeah and I think what it made us realize was that although the numbers are right that it's something like 25 to 50 percent genetic there's a whole big chunk that isn't yes and that's what psychologists call volitional the choices that you make in life and Claire and I have become confident people but we've done it despite our genes we've done it because of the confident the choices that we have made that's increased our to a confident right and I'm just gonna say that and there's of course it's it's so complex I mean the interaction of society and our upbringing in the genes and all of that together and so we're boiling it down here but but it is true that the other part of the science we found so compelling is what Kathy was just talking about which is that brain plasticity and so when you're talking about volitional or our ability to affect things now what's so exciting about the science is you can see that happening right you can see the way we can rewire our brains to some extent with the studies they've done with PTSD and meditation and the ability to shrink your amygdala with the fear center of your brain with just basic cognitive behavioral therapy techniques it's really exciting I'm glad you raised that because I was going to mention that that you raised the issue of blame brain plasticity in the book in part because it you know there's the the genetic studies leave you sort of in a bit of a corner and you know how like you know I'm sort of stuck with this and you know I got my 25% confidence and you know what do I do with it cool into a hole what's fascinating about the book is that there's you offer a lot of sort of possibilities actually there's sort of we identified you identify the gap and then you say confidence can be built you know that like the brain our brains are plastic our behaviors are plastic so do you can you say a little bit about about how you build one builds confidence broadly speaking it kind of divides into two categories one is we need to act more which means being prepared to take risks go outside your comfort zone do things that you find hard for yourself because that's how you grow your confidence I read the news every evening two millions people around the world it doesn't actually challenge my confidence because I've done it so many times that I know I can do it inside my comfort zone I would be terrified of doing your job I would have no idea that I could do it the only way I would ever find out would be trying so it can be as simple as you go to a party there's an interesting looking stranger across the room you'd like to introduce yourself but you're worried you'll be rebuffed the only way you'll ever expand your confidence is by walking across the room and introducing yourself whether it's in your personal life in your professional life in your Emma Clive we grow our confidence by trying things that are difficult for us I'll talk about the app mode Claire can talk about the thinking less we I went recently to the White House I was invited to a meeting on on the Middle East on policy I walk into this meeting there are 14 men and two women as so often happens and the National Security Council and I walk in and I have that F feeling the fraud feeling that these are all SuperDuper experts and they all speak Arabic or Farsi and they know the policy inside-out and what am I doing there I'm only a generalist and really I shouldn't be there and they get beyond the presentation they get to the question-and-answer portion of this session and the men all race actually they don't even raise their hands they just jump in with questions and I'm sitting there thinking you know I really must ask a question there's only two women in a room and it would be you know a disgrace if one of us doesn't ask a question but if I do then I'll blush and I'll probably stumble and maybe I'll stutter and then I'll sweat and they'll all realize that I don't know what I'm talking about and all of this is going on in my head when of course actually would have been better to listen to the discussion that would be a lot more useful I would have learned a lot more eventually I forced myself to raise my hand and get the question out and the sky doesn't fall on my head and the earth doesn't swallow me whole and it wasn't the most intelligent question in the history questions but it wasn't the most stupid either and what I realized was that the next time I was in that situation I knew I could do it I had banked confidence I had tried something that was hard for me I had gone outside my comfort zone I had taken a risk and I had succeeded I'd overcome the hurdles that's how you grow confidence you take risks and you keep going and you overcome hurdles and you master something and I think for women it's the risk-taking is especially important because we you know as caddy talked about earlier we girls and young women often find themselves becoming perfectionist when they don't didn't even set out to be that but that usually means we're we're not learning to take risks and fail and so and the other thing we found is that although the genetics don't say anything about gender differences in confidence that there is a lot of interesting research now about the way our brains work male and female brains and there are some important differences I'm sure there are a lot of different opinions about how critical those differences are but suffice it to say for example it's it's been studied for years the fact that women tend to ruminate more than men do think and think and overthink and testosterone I should say has a heavy influence on the brain in terms of risk-taking women don't have as much testosterone but but the rumination is is really key and it can kill confidence my most embarrassing but now I'm used to sharing it see I've built my confidence sharing this anecdote rumination example came a couple of months ago when our book was coming out and I still working for ABC News tend to feel very guilty when I'm working on another project and I'm not working and I think everybody at unist email Diane Sawyer telling her this thing I'm working on is gonna be coming soon and I don't hear back from her and within two hours I'm obsessively thinking that she must be incredibly mad at me because I'm working on my book and I haven't been doing this and then within four hours having not heard back I'm ruminating about whether everybody at ABC News is actually mad at me at that point and they all do and then by the next day I think I should call my agent because I probably won't have a job anymore and another day or two and and it just and you can see how that I mean I couldn't get any work done it's interesting we the the fix for it is is fascinating though because there's so much research on just basic cognitive behavioral therapy techniques you can use to stop that and and for me this has been such a key because I'm a real obsessive thinker all you have to do is come up with any alternative explanation to whatever your is going on in your head and it will stop the process so just for example Diane Sawyer just got back from Africa of course she's not going to email me back tonight or the broadcast is in two hours or she usually emails me back on the weekends and what I love about this research is that it doesn't even have to be a reasonable explanation it's that you're giving yourself it does not it's it's anything will do because it stops yes the process and the research on this is fascinating and it and we have I mean both of us have been using this and it really is a difference between men and women I think that men do seem to be much better at letting things roll off their back they will have an upset or a criticism or something will go wrong will they'll have a Rao at work or with a friend and it suddenly just goes and we cling and we're like dogs with a burn you know we cling to it those little things yeah so there's so the confidence gap isn't part of perfectionism gap and part of the rumination gap there's a other sorts of things that are part of it that's interesting okay so I wanted to sow confidence I'm I'm compelled that it's a good thing talk about the difference between confidence and being bossy right so in recent weeks there was a study some behavioral science research from the new lab at Northeastern University they used 14 million student evaluation data points and surprise surprise women faculty members are more likely than their male counterparts to beacon called because called bossy a similar study of Technology workplaces found that women are more likely to be called aggressive and abrasive and their performance reviews so is there relationship between these studies would suggest that women in leadership roles or women you might say you are taking risks may be viewed in a negative light and your investigations of the confidence gap how do we is that part of this visit account in part for the gap actually right there a penalty for taking the risk there you know there are dozens of studies in academia and in corporate life that show that when women behave just as men do they tend to get penalized for it we men are seen as good leaders we are seen as overly aggressive or overly assertive and we wrestled with this a lot while we were writing the book and basically it was the question was do you have to be a jerk to be confident and that was kind of how it seems I think to a lot of women do we have to have that swagger and dominate every meeting and have that bravado and we interviewed for the book Christine Lagarde who is the first male head of the International Monetary Fund and she really helped us with this and her advice was the important thing for women and it doesn't totally get over the issue but the important thing for women is to be authentic and it's when women try to behave like men that we are particularly susceptible to being seen as a negative light and if you actually think about it it's very hard to be confident anyway when you're putting on somebody else's armor when you're when you're doing something that is not inherently natural to you or to your personality or behaving in a manner which is not natural to your personality you feel slightly out of place I mean you just do and we look the women in the audience who remember the 1980s when we wore hideous shoulder pads a little stream but and it just didn't work right I mean it was a terrible did not increase our and I think to some extent yeah I think about Christine Lagarde who is one of the most confident and competent and this is another issue we raised in there were competence and confidence women we interviewed and the thing that you would say about her is that she's very warm and accessible and there is something I think in the qualities that women bring to the table which makes us useful our ability to listen our ability to build consensus our ability to read rooms and and and have a strong emotional intelligence those are qualities we don't want to sacrifice in pursuit of behaving in a certain manner that's not really confidence confidence is just recognizing our abilities for what they are mean as Claire said you know bringing that needle in line with our actual abilities and when you do that you don't need to project a certain manner that seems foreign to yourself I will also say that I think Kerry and I have come to see as we've been we've talked to a lot of people since the book came out a lot of companies and enterprises and corporations and what's become clear to us although we you know we knew it as we ended the book but is that the the biggest challenge here is not that people people who control universities or corporations or whatever that they don't want things to change they do and they get this for all the right reasons but the we still have to broaden the definition of leadership and what it looks like and until that really happens you will have yes sometimes women might naturally operate in a more aggressive style that might be their authentic confidence they might be penalized women might naturally be a cop they might be more confident at listening and analyzing maybe they're gonna get passed over because they don't seem I mean and so until we really value and broaden what a leader looks like we are going to keep bumping into these things but I think the more transparent we can be in discussions like this and really talking about what it means we're educating people and that's the most useful thing we can do so you've talked to a lot of academics and written writing this book and you know that we like to make things very complicated so I'm just gonna have a sort of complicated question to a Columbia alumna and a parent of a Columbia a first-year student so you you might know that students faculty and administrators at Barnard are engaged in important conversations about whether transgender women women designated not designated when female at Birth should be admitted to this traditionally female college so I guess the question I wanted to get you to reckon with because the book provides advice for women is about just sort of think about the category of women and what woman encompasses and think about it as encompassing a variety of experiences and identities and with this in mind how should we think about the insights and tools that you provide in your book if we think about women as a kind of spectrum of experiences and identity well look I think that you know to some extent it's funny because we at one point we sat down with a group of who shall remain nameless but a group of very powerful male leaders in a certain field and they were looking to figure out how to change things that their their company and they were frustrated they hadn't been able to make changes and and what and when we were talking about some management changes that might help women there and and actually one of the women and one of the men talked about well we don't we don't want to be singled out as anything special we don't want these that's that sort of change and we said but the fact is when you're looking at at management changes that might help increase confidence in women you're actually looking at changes that will help everybody across a spectrum because there are there are men who are going to benefit from a different kind of feedback there are there may be women who don't need that and so in fact what we're talking about and what we've been talking about subsequently is just good management yeah for example and I think in the in the same way when we're looking at what how does one manifest confidence what will work for men or for women it's of course it's all on a spectrum we are generalizing really by need I mean some of it makes sense and the stereotypes often makes sense for women but I think when we look at a lot of this information is going to be useful to everybody it's not really men or women I mean don't you think yeah and I think the other thing I would say about confidence and we have found it with women is that women tend to feel a deficit of confidence particularly in situations in which they're in the minority much more so than when we're in groups of women now whatever minority you are in and if you're transgender you are in a minority much smaller minority it's going to impact your confidence but Claire and I are routinely on political panels where we are the only woman it doesn't feel great for your confidence so that wall of stereotype threat or whatever you want to call it impostor syndrome is is true for everyone who feels themselves in a minority great so another question I guess about what keeps staying on campus a bit what would you recommend for students and for young women across the spectrum in particular because you know the christine lagarde example is wonderful but she's christian oh so what about when she was little Christina card I mean her great story about a Christian I guard at the age of four used to babysit her younger siblings and she had proved yoots this experience to some of her confidence okay the fact that she was stretched and put in this position which my daughter Maya has babysat her siblings I don't think ever at the age of four right my even I would not have pushed it that far although it would've been cheap I mean that would be great and she does say that it was being put in a position where she was always made to believe that she could do things and so she was put in these positions of responsibility and she did I don't see one thing I would say and this is something we have looked at has been quite a lot of work has been done on this woman's are doing incredibly well as you all know academically with superstars right we are getting more degrees than men are we're getting more postgraduate degrees we're getting more PhDs than men are then we're getting into the professional world and something changes we aren't doing as well as that academic promise suggests we should do and I thought was that somewhere between the world of academia and this fabulous campus and the professional worlds you are about to enter the rules change and what serves you so well here is not necessarily what is going to get you ahead in the professional world I can tell you having been there for the last thirty years it's a much more political space you need to be able to talk about your successes promote yourself you need to be able to make alliances and networks you need to rock the boat being a good girl all the time is not going to get you ahead at work and I think equipping our young women in the actus I think it comes as a real shock for young women what happened I was a superstar and now I look at this professional space and I'm not sure I'm gonna get ahead in it and I think that's what happens somewhere the rules change and we don't play so well and the more we can equip our young women to realize that those rules are going to change and to realize what they're going to need to do the more we can help them get as far as they should good to go this is such a terrific opportunity for young women to experiment with risk-taking and failure and I know that sounds horribly frightening for all of the women in the audience because straight you know certainly if you're here you probably haven't failed that much but again yet you know that's what it is for young women to start to understand that failure is part of success and that this is the place where you can most learn with such freedom the lessons of taking a risk and taking a chance and doing things you don't know how to do very well because you are gonna be required to do that later in life so we just have a few more moments so the last question I wanted to ask about your partnership as collaborators though you've written over the last decade two books together the confidence code and women ah mcc's which you referred to and so I just wanted to ask you about that friendship that that you know that collaboration the kind of rich productive partnership you've had and how that's contributed to the work that you've been doing for others I don't know I'm not sure we would have gotten a book done I think Stephen Colbert joked with us at one point and said why did it take two of you to write over my new women were worse at all of those two to get this done if you each have 50% of the confidence we we certainly motivate each other and I think we realized very early on that we were going to work well together and that if so many people warned us against rights actually they said everyone to that don't do this with a friend your friendship will end it will be an utter devastating to each other again but we found that we we both put the work first if we actually managed to to keep to a large extent egos out of it and I think that's something else women are able to do well and it means that we can we can just get more done together and it's terrific and it's gosh it means our husbands don't have to listen to quite as much waiting for a chapter you kind of have to work on it it was a very good motivator get the ability right otherwise we'd have sat and stared out the window and you know made another cup of tea and never have got done yeah but it's I mean it to the point where we really we were so it was such a great experience the first time we really decided we wanted to work together again right and we do it again yes yeah something yes yeah wonderful so we have about 15 minutes for questions there's a microphones in the aisles here and president Bollinger is gonna help us with the QA so if you just stand up at the microphones and state your name and your question but let me begin with a question I'm I'm curious what you think about sort of the the social movements I mean you can think about this as you have in a very sophisticated way as the things that women need to do to increase their confidence and their success in their own terms and and then there's of course changing the world in which we all live and we've seen cycles in civil rights and passages of laws over time and I would say you know we're at not one of the stronger periods of real deep social movements to try to address the changes in society that need to happen in order for all kinds of greater equality across the board so I mean my view is you know we would benefit from a new civil rights movement for example so as you think about this from the angle that you've come what are your reflections on social movements to change the the world in which we're all living to make it a fair just they're more just world it would be Pollyannish to suggest that just by closing the confidence gap we could suddenly level the playing field between men and women we still know that there is not equal pay for equal work there is still a lamentable lack of maternity leave for women here in the United States there are things that need to be done that can only be done with jealousy there will not at an individual level but we need more women I think in positions of influence to affect those policies we need more than a fifth of the Senate to be women and if a lack of confidence is one of the things that is holding women back from getting to the top to affect those policy changes then it is something that is useful to address right it's not going to in and of itself level that playing field instantly I think that it um it's funny I do that because we get typically and and I know we'll have some questions but some of the questions we often get are about from from younger women especially who are so eager to learn and and often perfectionists and good at getting everything right you know how can i navigate my what if I'm going to be seen as too aggressive what if I'm going to do this what if I how do I act exactly the right way and I finally started saying and I and I think this is when you start to talk to younger women about the fact that it's not all going to work out you're probably going to ruffle some feathers and you're gonna have to do that to try to create change for the people coming behind you and and that that's actually been motivational I've seen that that people are kept people connect to that and I've also seen a lot more in the past year or two than when we at five years ago when we wrote Womenomics that women wanting to create change for other women older women wanting to create change wanting to really make something happen there's a lot more passion for that now and even come to the conclusion for my daughter who I mean I have to say she's nine years old and I for years I feel like I was hiding things from her about the way the world is because I realized I was embarrassed that there's not a female on that presidential placemat or that there's not and I didn't know I didn't really want to tell her and now I realized that actually I the more I can inspire her with the work we need to get done and some of the reality that she's feeling motivated by that too and so I think that I just think hey if we can use little things like talking about confidence and other things to get people engaged in yeah in the larger work so there's a site for time there's a cycle that plays out that's very interesting yes please my name is Jessica and I just want to start by thanking you I absolutely loved your book and I have found myself stepping up as I am right now more frequently since reading it so I want to say thank you for that this question comes from a woman who doesn't identify as nurturing and it gets called bossy more frequently than I would like I'm wondering if by calling attention when you say things like women are nurturing women are perceptive I'm not particularly perceptive I'm more analytical and so I'm wondering kind of those statements can be powerful in bringing you know attention to the issue but I'm wondering if you're finding that that could actually reinforce stereotypes in the workplace some of the the reasons we talk about women being perceptive and good at assimilating rooms and reading body language for example actually have a Genesis in brain differences between men and women that there are more neurons firing for example at any one time in a woman's brain than there are in a man's brain it's the kind of thing that makes us very good at multitasking it's on the flip side it's also the kind of thing that does lead to us ruminating more and more but it is a quality that makes us able to read people's emotions because we have these brain differences so I don't think that I think for too long the skills that women have that were seen as soft skills were slightly denigrated or not valued actually now what we are finding in the corporate world anyway is that those skills can be profitable skills can be incredibly valuable skills particularly when you have a mixture of leadership capacities when you have people some people who are good at Reading Room's some people are not good some people who are bossy some people who are less bossy what you want the ideal combination is a mixture it doesn't really matter whether they're men or women it just matters that you have that mixture so I think it's I I would tend to err on having been in the workforce for now thirty years and having spent a long time when I first entered the workforce thinking oh all those things that I'm good at relationship building communicating understanding people listening to people all of those things aren't really very valuable I think it's great that we can celebrate that they are valuable finally it's okay to say we're different but I think it's also important to understand that really what matters in any decision-making process whether it's in politics or in journalism and business or the military we're in sports is a mixture of opinions and and capacities and that's what we're aiming for so let me make a suggestion because I'm worried that we're going to run out of time and there are a number of people who would like to ask questions so I would suggest that you ask the question next person will take three or four and then you can decide how to answer them is that good I think that way we'll make sure that we allow people to hi my name is Susan Strasser I'm from the School of Public Health and uptown and my question is about our children I have two daughters ones 23 and ones 13 and my younger daughter said something years ago when she was about six that actually took my breath away and I thought I was doing things right I was and I was always working when the children were growing and trying to have that balance that work-life balance they saw me as a leader in my job I directed a country program I was getting my PhD and I thought I was showing them what women can do and be and what took my breath away was one day I went upstairs and got it one of my other daughters books brought it down for her to look at it and it was a book about Hillary Clinton and she said well who is this it was a story book about Hillary Clinton's like a biography and I said she's a woman I think might be president one day and she said but how can she be president she's a woman and this was a six year old girl who had a mother who had always been in the work world always in trying to be a leader in in her work and that really shocked me and that is such a young child could have that perception and and how do we change that thank you yes my name is Megan and I'm a graduate student in information and knowledge strategy so my question is I once applied for a job and it was very much centered on data analytics they asked me if I had experience working with pivot tables I understand pivot tables but I didn't and I kind of just said well I'm eager to learn and I told this to a male counterpart who told me well just YouTube it I would have told him I was an expert I was like well yeah maybe but I guess my question is for those of us who are coming out of school we may not have a lot of experience in the workforce how do we sell our potential to accomplish things that we know that we're capable of doing to people who expect that we've already done them thank you very much we take one more and then hi my name is Jacqueline I'm a visiting graduate student with semester at Columbia and I have a two-part question but it's very concrete the first part is we were told that there are two aspects and I know I'm totally being perfectionistic when I say this two aspects and one of them was to take more risks and that's what you were saying and then I kind of was waiting for the whole rest of the talk so to see what's the other aspect so that's the first part and the second part is I don't usually ask questions like I took a risk in doing this today because it feels like a risky day because I just started a new job today and I figure why not but my question is it seems from what you're saying that women are more accurate in being self reporters of their own confidence and that so that translates to me as women being more accurate so it's not that women are not confident enough it's that men are actually overconfident and I don't mean that as a joke I mean it as somebody who's studied like neuropsychology etc I was a psych majors and undergrad and so my question is instead of seeing that as a deficit is there a way we can change within leadership within the work world just the definition of you know what we think of as confidence so that you know a six-year-old doesn't say well she's a woman how can she be president great and we'll actually take one more so we make sure that we snick Dunkley work in the Arts and Sciences Department I'm actually curious about your research on if it's has actually came up on generational changes and challenges I am you know from Jamaica and you know pushing through from my mom's kind of experiences and breaking through certain barriers was a big deal but then when I came to America it was sort of there was still more to go so I'm just really curious about you know kind of what your research showed you want sort of pushing that envelope from a generational point of view so we got four questions what was the fifth question yeah so young six year old thinks well women can't be present a six year old I could say that I think having experienced that myself recently with my daughter it's a but it was now nine look it's you know they see more than just they see more than just their parents right so kids are smart I mean they look out and they see that you know why would why would any young girl necessarily assume a woman would be president we haven't had one right and so I think it's it's not necessarily I think we are incredibly important as role models but I think we have to be realistic about what else they're seeing in the world and and that's what when I was saying I think we can talk to them about it be transparent instead of trying to shove it under the carpet just lay it all out there and use that as a as a chance for conversation about what she might be able to do to change that it's hard to imagine something you haven't seen you know especially for a six-year-old question - I think now for the question - was about quote selling your potential in an interview and and how do you do that which is relate to the third one which was you know why do I want to be a jerk I'd rather you know if you tell me I'm accurate right yeah you know I think I'd rather be that than this right the question is on second bit of that whether women are being accurate you give women and men scientific reasoning quest quizzing men will routinely overestimate how well they've done women will routinely underestimate how well they've done they've actually done the same and that's the problem the problem is not the the problem is that we have plenty of ability and competence we just don't think we have as much competence and ability as we actually have and we need to bring our perception of that ability in line with our honest ability that's all we really need to do it's quite simple and it's not that we want to pretend to be more confident than we are or pretend anything we don't want to fake it till we make it but we don't either want to routinely go around thinking we are worse than we are that is why men are going for promotions when they have 60% of the skill set and I think it was pivot theory which they were understanding and and saying that they could YouTube it because they actually realized they can you can do it too you understand plenty and you can learn the rest if you recognize your ability to learn and your intelligence and your experience and your skills and your competence you won't under your self and that's what we're trying to do in closing the confidence gap clear well look I think that I mean it's interesting we do get that question a lot about all right well well shouldn't we be trying to make men less confident and it shouldn't that be our focus really and then we don't have to cook and I guess maybe that's her next book we're not sure this is the point though I mean it does and actually all of the psychologists most of the psychologists who were academics that we interviewed didn't agree on very much it doesn't surprise you perhaps but the one thing they did agree on is that a little bit of overconfidence is better for all of us than a little bit of under confidence because it encourages us to take action I really want to give the chance to these three women to ask the questions but you have to do so very quickly because we promised that we would be done by 7:00 and over that but if you asked very quickly we'll try to get an answer for you please go ahead okay my question is sorry what recommendations do you have on building your confidence after failure so if you did raise your arm or your hand to ask a question and it was a dumb question how do you recover from yes please hello my name is Kelsey thank you for your talk today I'm a bit of a political junkie and so caddie my question is specifically for you and your daily or week to week experience in on political news shows I watch you and Meet the Press on occasion and Morning Joe more recently and as a not a daily but a regular Morning Joe watcher I'm frequently find myself feeling quite uncomfortable about the issue of confidence and it's very specifically gender focused and for those who watch the show you'll know that Joe Scarborough is absolutely the type that was born with every gene possible for confidence he's got so much of it and I'm sometimes uncomfortable with the way that he fills up the space on the show and everybody I'm just so curious to hear as as a member on various shows how do you feel if you're willing to share about that and what if anything do you you know apply any strategies when you're there on the scene thank you one more please quickly my question is a how do you differentiate between confidence and arrogance particularly coming across that way when navigating politics within an organization or navigating politics among other women there you go it's refile I won't take the Morning Joe question yeah I took that I took that for you I've only been on the show a couple of times so first of all coming back from failure I think that the in a the shortest answer is really to try to once you've suffered a little bit as we all need to do and we fail just to try to look at it as what what can you learn from it I mean what what are the lessons you can learn from what has just happened so that you can move on I mean the key is to try to as quickly as we can and Jim Valentini and I were talking about this earlier think about it as pivoting to your next experiment your next challenge and you take what information you have from that failure which was part of the learning process and and move on I can't remember the third question already arrogance arrogance yes well that was that is one of the key questions in our book right how are we confident without being jerks and I think it's it really has to do with I think authentic confidence and that is a real understanding of you know you you believe when you have confidence that is really based on the experiences that you had stockpiled and what you know you can do it then it's not bravado it's actually authentic confidence now of course there you know confidence there are many kinds of behavior that lie on top of confidence and some of the stuff caddy was talking about earlier about our ability to read a room our ability to get along with people I mean all of that there are ways of delivering information that are arrogant or not but pure confidence should not necessarily be arrogant you can I quickly before I off the Morning Joe one which I'm still mulling the generational question which the young lady asked can't we Clare and I when we brought the book out did a confidence assessment that is on our website the confidence code calm you're welcome to go and take it and we are feeding the information from that assessment back to the academics who came up with the assessment and won and they are still going through it all but one of the headlines is that for women confidence grows during the course of our lifetime much more than it does for men men seem to be have similar levels of confidence at the age of 55 to the age of 25 for women that's definitely an increase so there is a generational growth the Morning Joe question the show is called Morning Joe not morning anybody else and it is successful because in part because of the personality of the host I think television is an x-ray and it's very difficult to disguise who you are what you are and I go into those shows with things that I think are interesting to say or points of views that I have but it would be ridiculous for me to try to be something I'm not everyone in the audience would see it straight away so I think the way I cope with that show as I do with any of the shows I'm on it's just by saying the things and Claire I'm sure would agree on political panels saying the things you have to say I'm talking about what you know about and what you have opinions on and avoiding all of the things you don't have opinions on so Ken Kelly I said at the beginning you know Claire was our own and Londoner our own - because you're a parent and and we really appreciate that but these are three wonderful people and we would all be fortunate in life if we could be as good as they are thank you very much for being

Channel: Columbia University

Views: 10,048

Keywords: Claire Shipman (TV Personality), Katty Kay (Author)

Id: YJyhZPoylcw

Length: 58min 13sec (3493 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2015