{"id":856,"date":"2021-08-05T21:19:49","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T21:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/?p=856"},"modified":"2021-08-05T21:19:49","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T21:19:49","slug":"discussion-questions-week-of-8-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/2021\/08\/05\/discussion-questions-week-of-8-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussion Questions Week of 8\/2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Response to #1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cResearch: Vague Feedback is Holding Women Back<\/a>,\u201d Shelley J. Correll and Caroline Simard identify a major problem in the employee performance evaluation process that is making it harder for women to advance into upper-level management roles. The authors are associated with the VMWare Women\u2019s Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford University, where they conducted a study of performance evaluations at several high-tech companies. They found a noticeable difference between the way men and women received feedback on their performance. It turns out, men receive much more specific and detailed information about their performance than women, who tend to receive feedback in more general and vague ways. The authors hypothesize that because men receive critical and concrete feedback, they can make specific and measurable adjustments that demonstrate improvement. In contrast, because women tend to receive vague feedback along the lines of \u201cpeople like working with you\u201d or \u201cyou had a great year,\u201d they do not have a chance to make adjustments that will demonstrate improvements in performance. Additionally, when women did receive specific feedback, it tended to relate to their communications style rather than ways to develop technical expertise that would help them advance. I found it interesting that nowhere in the article did it state that male reviewers were more likely to give these types of biased performance reviews, which I took to mean that female managers are also perpetuating the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result of these findings, Correll and Simard make several recommendations to help managers give better feedback to women and level the playing field, such as setting a goal to discuss three specific business outcomes with each employee, avoiding vague language and praise, and striving to write reviews of the same length for all employees. In sum, providing actionable feedback is the key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Correll and Simard article supports Alison Wynn\u2019s article in a couple of ways. Because Wynn\u2019s article provides only a high-level overview of areas in the employee life cycle where organizations can improve gender equality, she does not go into depth in any specific area. The Correll and Simard article provides a rationale for making improvements to the performance evaluation process as well as recommendations for how to go about doing it. Correll and Simard can also devote more space to defining a \u201cvague\u201d evaluation and the ramifications. I found the link to the supporting article to be an effective way for Wynn to offer more details to readers who wanted them, without detracting from her overall goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Response to #2<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cIndividual Change Won\u2019t Create Gender Equality in Organizations,\u201d Alison Wynn explores an issue that I have questioned for some time. Can we expect organizations to bear the burden of changing the people who work there? Or should an organization focus on the changing things it can control, like policies and processes? Based on her research studies, she argues that organizations are more likely to create change by focusing on the organization itself. After reading her article, I would say I definitely agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wynn is targeting executives and leaders of organizations with this message. When she writes: \u201cThe executives in my sample trended toward two primary explanations for inequality: placing responsibility on individual men and\/or women, and blaming the larger society,\u201d she not only reveals her intended audience but also raises an important point. When people get asked about a complex problem, they often talk in a way to justify or rationalize why the problem exists instead of talking about ways to fix it. In a way, this type of reaction is a defense of the status quo and deflects the issue away from the responsible parties. If there\u2019s any group that has the power to change the status quo in an organization, it\u2019s the organization\u2019s leaders. So I\u2019m glad to see her directly address them in this way. Additionally, the framework for change that she recommends offers very practical advice that is not too difficult or disruptive for executives to implement. In a way, she is saying that a lot of small changes can result in a big improvement in gender equality overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Response to #1 In \u201cResearch: Vague Feedback is Holding Women Back,\u201d Shelley J. Correll and Caroline Simard identify a major problem in the employee performance evaluation process that is making it harder for women to advance into upper-level management roles. The authors are associated with the VMWare Women\u2019s Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford University, where … Continue reading “Discussion Questions Week of 8\/2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[24,75,74],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ksoakes.expressions.syr.edu\/wrt205summer2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}