How Thought Leaders Can Support Workload Fairness

Cartoon people collaborating.

Source: upklyak/Freepik

The previous two posts in this mini-series on “overwork tax,” which is often demanded from stigmatized employees focused on what individuals can do to protect themselves and on the responsibility of employers and managers to ensure workload equity. In this final installment, I highlight the role of thought leaders in supporting individuals with sound advice and developing fairer societal norms and healthier work cultures.

Thought leaders, whom I define as people with extensive expertise, reach, and a values-based vision, can impact the very essence of cultural and organizational norms. They can use their influence to either perpetuate the status quo, or to inspire new thinking and challenge entrenched biases. In application to cultural norms driving inequality in workplace experiences and opportunities, thought leaders make a difference through:

• The advice they provide to individuals.
• The influence on organizational and societal levels.

Sound Advice: One Size Does Not Fit All

When we as individuals struggle with work, it is natural to seek guidance in our earliest, family lessons. However, not everyone’s family can provide a helpful perspective. For example, for class migrants, the experience in jobs held by family members may not translate into very different jobs held by the migrant. My family worked with their hands, and the quality of their work spoke for itself. A vegetable garden either thrives or it does not. A seam is either straight or crooked. My father was a world-class mechanic; when 20 experts could not fix a deep-mine elevator, and he did, bragging was unnecessary—the result was obvious. But in corporate and academic environments, overdelivering without bragging did me—a multiply-stigmatized, immigrant, autistic, introverted, people-pleasing class migrant—more harm than good. Fixing organizations, while not unlike in logic to fixing machines, is much less visible and clearly attributable work, and can be much more easily claimed by others.

When the family and cultural wisdom come short of helping us, the typical next step is to seek advice via media or mentorship. However, the most well-meaning advice coming from the perspective of a drastically different position in life can backfire. The world is filled with double standards and different sets of rules; behaviors lauded in the more privileged can be punished in those with less power.

Specifically, when we look for tips on advancing our careers despite workplace bias, well-meaning mentors and advice columnists urge us to make up for any prejudice we face by overperforming and overdelivering. Some suggest “playing the game” and engaging in office politics. However, this advice does not take into account the well-documented double standards. For example, going above and beyond is appreciated and rewarded in men, and taken for granted in women. Research by Joan C. Williams and her colleagues demonstrates that proving oneself leads to promotions for men, while women remain stuck in the cycle of “prove it again.” And while men are often rewarded for workplace political behavior, women and those with less power are more likely to be punished.

What works for the more privileged does not work for the less privileged.

And yet, despite different standards and expectations applied to those with more and less societal power and prestige, one-size-fits-all advice proliferates, and most of it is provided from the perspective of privilege. Some groups speak louder.

In the U.K. and U.S., most journalists come from economically advantaged families. In addition, those with more means generally have more access to traditional media and can afford to market and advertise their views and understanding of life.

It is natural for people to extrapolate from their own experience when providing advice to others. Hence, many successful people look at behaviors they believe made them successful—such as overdelivering at work and engaging in organizational politics—and suggest that others do the same. The problem arises from their lack of awareness that social behaviors that work for men do not necessarily work for women, what works for the more privileged ethnic groups may not work for the less privileged, what works for non-disabled people may not work for disabled people, and what works for the neurotypical may not work for those targeted by neuroableism. One-size-fits-all advice that ignores double standards puts those with less privilege at a disadvantage and gaslights them into blaming themselves when it backfires or does not work.

Thought leaders aware of these differences can better support people from different walks of life if they:

• Research whether their advice might be made more or less applicable by double standards and intergroup differences in power and privilege.
• Fine-tune their advice by making it more contextual, specifying that it may not fit all, and clarifying their own positionality.
• Spotlight, amplify, and collaborate with thought leaders from stigmatized backgrounds who can provide a different perspective informed by their lived experience.

While helping individuals navigate the tricky terrain of inequalities and double standards is important, it is even more crucial and socially responsible to help create fairer environments. And responsible thought leadership has a major role to play in this work.

Societal and Cultural Responsibility

If you write advice columns or mentor CEOs, you can help create a more just world by challenging double standards. Fairness is incompatible with the system that expects people of color, people from modest backgrounds, older women, disabled people, and other targets of bias to keep overdelivering to “prove their worth.” It locks many of them in the cycle of “prove it again.”

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The business world and the larger society need to hear clear, consistent messaging about the equality of unconditional human worth and the importance of systems that evaluate performance in valid and objective ways. Just systems support the human dignity of all without extorting the overwork tax on the marginalized. Responsible thought leadership uses influence to promote change that addresses systemic causes of double standards, such as societal stereotypes or discriminatory organizational cultures. We can do better.

A version of this post is also published in Fast Company.