Overcoming bias in women's speech patterns

I once got feedback that I was “intimidating.” I took it to heart. I spent the next few years trying to be as approachable, warm, and agreeable as I could be. I assumed this was a character flaw that I needed to fix. But years later, I realized something: this feedback wasn’t about me. It was about the system - one that judges women more harshly and polices their personalities more than their performance. And the numbers back this up. 👇🏽 🎯 Women are 7x more likely to receive negative personality-based feedback than men. 🎯 56% of women have been called "unlikeable" in reviews (vs. 16% of men). 🎯 Harvard Business Review found that 76% of “aggressive” labels in one company’s reviews were given to women (vs. 24% to men). This Is the Leadership Double Bind: Speak up? You’re “too aggressive.” Stay quiet? You “lack confidence.” Show ambition? You’re “unlikeable.” Ask for a promotion? You’re “too pushy.” And here’s the kicker - it’s worst for high-performing women. This is why women... ↳  Hesitate to showcase ambition. ↳  Are reluctant to ask for opportunities. ↳  Are leaving workplaces faster than others. So, what can we do? Here are 3 ways we can start changing this narrative today: ✅ Check your language. Is the feedback about personality or performance? If you wouldn’t give the same critique to a man, please reconsider. ✅ Challenge vague feedback. “You need to be more confident” isn’t actionable. Women deserve the same clear, growth-oriented feedback as men. ✅ Support women’s ambition. If certain leadership traits (ex. being assertive) are seen as strengths in men, they should be seen as strengths in women too. Have you ever received unfair feedback? What’s one piece of feedback you’ve had to unlearn? 👇🏽 ♻️ Please share to help end unfair feedback. 🔔 Follow Bhavna Toor (She/Her) for more insights on conscious leadership. Source: Textio 'Language Bias in Feedback' Study, 2023 & 2024 #EndUnFairFeedback #IWD2025

Google's new AI coach, trained on Kim Scott's 'Radical Candor', just gave me some 𝘀𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 that I'm pretty sure Real Kim Scott would disagree with. Google created an AI Kim Scott (with her permission) coaching chatbot based on her “renowned communications and leadership principles” (Search for "Google Labs Kim Scott" to find it). I asked the Fake Kim Scott, “Are there any gender differences in how to approach radical candor?” Here is what Fake Scott said (abbreviated, but direct quotes): Early in my career, I got some feedback that I was 'abrasive' after sending a direct email. I thought I was just being clear, but it landed really poorly. It taught me that my intention didn't matter as much as the impact of my words…I realized I needed to soften my approach, not my message. It wasn't about being less direct, but about showing more personal care. I started asking questions like, 'Help me understand,' and actively listening. It shifted from perceived aggression to genuine helpfulness. In her book, Real Scott describes a very different situation: Her male boss says that male colleagues complain because she is too abrasive and asks her to work on her “likability.” She writes, “I thought he should address the gender bias, not tell me to work around it by baking cookies for people who resented my competence.” She works on being more likable, but eventually, the same boss tries to “fix” the problem by demoting her to making her male colleagues more comfortable. She quit three weeks later and found a better job. Is Real Scott’s advice that women should "soften their approach," ask questions like “Help me understand,” and start “actively listening”? NOPE! Her real advice to men:  • Give women the feedback they need. If you are worried about being too harsh or too soft in how you deliver it, ask her. • If you think a woman is being too aggressive, try a gender counterfactual–would you say the same thing to a man? Or, try being more specific about how the aggression manifests? If you can’t, it might be a biased response.  • Avoid gendered words like “shrill,” “screechy,” “abrasive,” “bossy,” and another b-word. • Never say “Be more likable.” Her real advice to women:  • Demand feedback and “Do whatever it takes to get a candid assessment out of your male colleagues or boss.” • Never stop challenging directly. • Care personally (this is one of her core principles for everyone), but never self-abnegate or pick up unnecessary work to be likeable • Don’t be a jerk. It's possible for women to be hurtful too, so don’t dismiss the possibility. Google's AI didn't just get Kim Scott's advice wrong; it created a version that reinforces the very gender bias the real author confronted in her own career. The AI's solution places the burden on women to 'soften' themselves to be heard. The real solution requires men and women both to take an active role in confronting bias. I hope Google appreciates this Radical Candor®🫠

“I knew my stuff and I still got talked over.” The brutally honest truth about what it takes for women to command respect in the room. She had the deck. She had the metrics. She had the vision. Five minutes into the pitch, one of the VCs interrupted her. Then another tried to “reframe” her idea like it wasn’t already clear. By the end of the meeting, she had presented everything perfectly But walked out thinking: “Why didn’t they take me seriously?” That’s from someone I connected with right here. ⸻ Here’s the truth I wish someone had told her: Being great isn’t always enough. Especially if you don’t fit the default picture of what a “leader” looks like in that room. If you’ve already heard all the advice— ✔ “Be confident” ✔ “Own your space” ✔ “Know your worth” …yet you still struggle to command respect, it’s not because you’re doing something wrong. But you might be focusing in the wrong places. So here’s what I tell the women I work with: ⸻ ➤ ➤ ➤ 1. Stop Chasing Respect From the Wrong People If someone walks in with baked-in bias, you won’t argue your way into their respect. Don’t give their opinion more weight than it deserves. Seek out allies, not approval. ⸻ ➤ ➤ ➤ 2. Project What You Want Reflected Back Confidence isn’t a personality trait, it’s a practice. Watch how you speak, sit, pause, and pitch. Rehearse. Record. Refine. You don’t need to fake it, but you do need to train it. ⸻ ➤ ➤ ➤ 3. Don’t Borrow Someone Else’s Leadership Style You don’t have to “act like a guy” to lead like a boss. Command respect in a way that’s true to who you are, clear, calm, direct. Conviction is more powerful than volume. ⸻ ➤ ➤ ➤ 4. Use Power Moves (That Don’t Make You a Jerk) If someone cuts you off: “Hold on, I wasn’t finished.” If they go quiet: Let them sit in the silence. Authority is in the micro-behaviors. ⸻ ➤ ➤ ➤ 5. Build a Respect-First Circle If respect isn’t landing in the boardroom, start with one-on-one conversations, early hires, mentors. You get better at commanding respect by practicing where the stakes are lower, then scaling it. ⸻ Here’s the part I want you to remember: You’re not the problem. But you are the solution. If you’ve ever walked out of a room wondering why they didn’t take you seriously, don’t carry that as self-doubt. Carry it as a signal: It’s time to stop asking for respect and start expecting it. 👇 What’s ONE thing you’ve done that helped you go from being heard to being respected? ♻️ If this landed repost your network.

One of the biggest mistakes women make at work is how we speak. We go through school writing papers and exams but do very little to learn how to speak in meetings or give powerful presentations. Executive presence and presenting to others does take a specific skill set, but it's never too late to learn and not as hard as it may feel to you today. Early in my career I started a practice of choosing who I wanted to "sound like" when I spoke outloud. I listened carefully to their intonation and the words they chose. I also had mentors who taught me how present with gravitas and confidence. If I could waive a magic wand and delete the most common patterns of female speech in the workplace, the landscape of female leadership would look very different today. These are the basics you can learn: 1. Don’t raise your voice at the end of the sentence. It sounds like you are asking for a question or approval vs. making a statement 2. Start to say “ I recommend…” when you have a comment in a meeting vs. “I know this may be a dumb idea but….” 3. Get rid of all filler words in your sentences... “I just wanted to say” to “I want to say…” 4. We all say “um” when we are nervous. Next time pause, take a beat, embrace the nano second of silence it takes to find your next word without saying “um”. It may feel like an eternity of silence but i promise no one will ever notice. 5. Slow down your speech. I am notorious for speaking too fast, especially when I am nervous. 6. Take a video of yourself practicing your next conversation with your boss and watch it back. Practice in the mirror. Practice with a friend. Video yourself and watch it back. Let me know in the chat other tips and tricks you use to speak with gravitas. 

I speak with a lot of people about gender equality. Sometimes people ask if “things are better for …. women who’ve made it to the top, the next-generation women who grew up thinking they could be anything, women with elite credentials, etc." Unfortunately, research mostly shows that the answer is “no”--gender inequality is at play at every level of organizational life, from early career to the C-suite. For example, I listened to a very interesting webinar hosted by Russell Reynolds Associates about their research study: Time to Tell a Different Story. They used media as a proxy for public sentiments about CEOs and tracked 20,000 news articles, covering almost 750 CEOs across FTSE 100, S&P 500, and Euronext 100 companies. What they discovered is that, even at the CEO level, patterns of language describing and telling the story of women differs from those for men. Here is one pattern from their study: The media tend to use very different adjectives to describe women CEOs versus their male equivalents. Based on the proportion of mentions across media, men were twice as likely to be described as ‘innovators,’ whereas women were 72% more likely to be described as ‘inspirational.’   Research at the Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab also showed gendered, and often disadvantaging, language patterns in performance reviews. (https://lnkd.in/gG2zy8vX) So, it’s not just the media. These patterns reflect societal norms and can lead to disparate outcomes for strong performing women. What can you do? First, you can catch gendered language patterns. Here are a few: 1️⃣ Using more people-oriented skills for women and more task-oriented for men (see RRA research) 2️⃣ Using more doubt-casting language, such as “seems to” or “managed to”. For example, instead of saying “They produced outstanding results” using “They seemed to produce outstanding results. (Do a doubt-check. See this post I wrote: https://lnkd.in/g_655tc2) 3️⃣ Using or not using stand-out language. Notice if your industry or role has some terms that indicate stand-out impact. Then notice if you only use those words to describe certain kinds of people. 💡 🌟 Once you catch these patterns, then you can find ways to remove doubt, equally use task-oriented and people-oriented descriptors and try stand-out language for all top performers. While language often reflects societal norms and stereotypes, a strategic use of language can help set the conditions for folks to succeed. https://lnkd.in/gEJJRsXS #words #language #performancemanagement #media

Your competence at work is judged in seconds. Even when you over-deliver, you can be underestimated. Every day, false assumptions about you are made: — Polite = Weak — Older = Not agile — A foreign accent = Less capable — Introverted =  Not a strong leader — Woman =  Softer voice, less authority It's not just unfair. It's exhausting. So the question is: How do you beat biases without changing who you are? Here’s what I recommend: 𝟭. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 → Speak about impact, not effort. → Articulate your value proposition. →“Here’s the problems I solve. Here's how. Here’s the result."  If no one knows what you bring to the table, they won’t invite you to it. 𝟮. 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 Silent excellence is wasted potential. → Speak up when it feels risky. → Build real not just strategic relationships. → Share insights where people are paying attention. You don’t need to be loud. You need to be seen. 𝟯. 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 The traits that trigger assumptions? Those are your edge. → Introverted? That’s deep listening. → Accent? That’s global perspective. Don’t flatten yourself to fit. Distinguish yourself to lead. 𝟰. 𝗢𝘄𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 → Say “I recommend” not "I think.” → Hold eye contact. Take up space. → Act like your presence belongs (even when others haven’t caught up.) Confidence isn’t volume. It’s grounding. Bias is everywhere. But perception can be changed. Don't let other people's false assumptions define you. Do you agree? ➕ Follow Deena Priest for strategic career insights. 📌Join my newsletter to build a career grounded in progress, peace and pay.

As a woman's rights advocate, I hear this story constantly: A woman shares an idea in a meeting. It’s dismissed, ignored, or downplayed. Then a male colleague repeats it, sometimes verbatim. And suddenly, HE'S the visionary. DUDE!! He’s rewarded. HE'S THE MAN! She’s told to stay gracious. “Don’t rock the boat.” “Don’t make it awkward.” “Be a team player.” Let’s be crystal clear: THIS IS SEX DISCRIMINATION - It’s not about feelings. It’s about power. - If a man gets recognized for what a woman said first—that’s erasure. THIS IS USUALLY NOT ACCIDENTAL - Bias often wears a polite face. - Disregard disguised as “collaboration” is still appropriation. PROTECT YOURSELF BY DOCUMENTING IT - Keep records: emails, notes, timestamps, meeting recaps. - Document every instance where your work is repackaged. -Document every microaggression or gaslighting incident. - It’s not paranoia—it’s protection. If you’ve experienced this, you’re not imagining it. You're not being "too sensitive." And you’re definitely not alone. Women don’t need to be more confident. The system needs to stop stealing their voice.

🤔 “𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐞𝐭.” I recently had a conversation with a woman in tech, and she made this observation. It stuck with me—𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐨 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐫. In many rooms, women’s voices can seem quieter—not because they lack ideas or expertise, but because of systemic dynamics: 💬 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Women are often conditioned to tentative speech and action, conflict avoidance, and people-pleasing. 👥 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐬: Being one of the few women in the room can amplify feelings of hesitation.  🌟 𝐁𝐢𝐚𝐬: Sometimes, women’s contributions are undervalued, leading to fewer opportunities to speak up. But here’s the thing: When women do speak, they bring perspective, insight, and innovation to the table—often addressing gaps that others might overlook. So, what can we do? ✅ 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞: Leaders and peers can encourage and invite women to share their ideas.  ✅ 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐛𝐢𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬: Are we unconsciously interrupting, talking over, or dismissing voices?  ✅ 𝐀𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐲 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬: Celebrate and highlight contributions in meetings and beyond.  ✅ 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞: Support women in building confidence and visibility. This conversation reminded me how much we all benefit when every voice is heard. To all the women in tech and beyond: Your voice is powerful. Keep using it. To everyone else: Let’s make sure we’re listening. What strategies have you seen that help elevate voices in the workplace? I’d love to hear your thoughts! ⬇️  #womenintech #empowerment