Most of us have experienced feeling overloaded and
burnt out because we say yes to too many things at work.
Now for women, that problem seems to be more pronounced and
the real question is how do we say no?
And more importantly, what kind of impact does
it have when we keep saying yes to things we you might not even really wanna do.
But more importantly,
doesn't actually lead to a career advancements or promotions.
Here to talk to us about That is Lisa Vesterlund, who is the co author of
a wonderful book titled The No Club, Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work.
She co-wrote the book along with Linda Babcock,
Brenda Preiser and Laurie Weingart.
And I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this Lisa, thank you so
much for joining us.
>> So thank you so much for having me on the show.
>> So I had the privilege of reading the book before it was out available for
others to buy.
And it came at a time when I personally was feeling a little overwhelmed.
Because I was finding myself saying yes to all sorts of things that,
it's like this pressure that I was putting on myself to say yes and
also a fear of what might happen if I say no.
And I wanna kind of get to the bottom of what inspired you and
your coauthors to write the book because you kind of got together and
you realized you had a similar problem.
All of you shared this similar problem with your workloads and so talk to me
a little bit about that before we get into what non promotional tasks are.
>> So about 12 years ago I and a group of my friends,
we all realized that we were sort of stuck at the same problem.
We were all overloaded with assignments and working really,
really hard and feeling like our career sort of had stalled.
So we started to meet and we formed what we call the No Club.
And part of the reason why we called it the No Club was that we realized that
the assignments that were keeping us so busy,
we're assignments that really weren't core to our jobs.
So, we sort of vowed to start saying no to all these assignments.
And the beginning of this club that we had was really focused on how do
we say no to things, how do we get our workloads under control.
And gradually we began to understand that it wasn't really just a problem that
we were having rather it was a problem that lots of women were having as well.
And when you were saying and that you had a hard time sort of saying no.
Part of the reason why we have a hard time saying no is that everybody expects us to
say yes.
So it's very hard to say no when everyone expects you to come forward with it yes.
>> Yeah, that's a good point.
And I think that's true, but
there's also a fear of what the consequences of saying no might be.
Is that something that you explored in your book?
So, did you find that workers, and I know that this is more focused on women,
although I think men can get a lot out of this book as well.
Did they feel that, maybe if I say no, that could actually lead to retaliation,
even if the work I'm being asked to do is not part of my core responsibilities.
>> No absolutely, so indeed it turns out that if a woman says no,
she is perceived very negatively, whereas a man who says no,
is not perceived negatively.
So, it is challenging for women to say no to these things because
the consequences of saying no can be quite severe.
They will be seen as not being a team player, they will be seen some of
the words that are attached to women who say no or even more severe.
So because of these collective expectations, it's hard for
women to sort of fix this problem on their own.
We tend to think that women are taking on all this work because they like it or
because they're really good at it.
But what we're finding is really that these expectations that we all hold of
them is what pushes them into this bind where they have to take on the work that
really isn't rewarded and isn't recognized by the organizations that they work for.
>> So let's get to the nature of that work and kind of define it.
So it's been dubbed in the book as non promotional tasks and
you kind of gave a brief definition of what that means, tasks that aren't
really related to what your core duties or your job description entails.
But can you give some examples of that to kinda help people understand what
you mean?
>> Yes, what we mean by non promotable tasks or tasks that are important to
the organizations but doesn't help advance your career.
So you could think of it as work that sort of helps out other employees in
the organizations.
It could be helping, if somebody is sick, it could help with
onboarding a new employee, It could be taking notes at a meeting.
So it's a lot of work that sort of keeps the wheels turning within
the organization, but tends to be not directly linked to the mission
of the organization, tends to be invisible.
And typically it's work that lots of people can do, not just you.
So it doesn't use your specialized skills,
which is why you get very little recognition for it.
>> And what are the ramifications of saying yes?
I mean we we think about the possible retaliation or
the ramifications of saying no.
But what kind of impact does it have on someone who continues to say yes to this
non promotable work?
>> The consequences for women are very severe.
So what we're finding is that women in every single organization we've looked at
are doing more of this work than men.
If you are a TSA worker, supermarket clerk, architect, engineer,
working in academia, this is showing up everywhere and
it is showing up in hours that are much greater than most of us expect.
So we work with a professional services firm where we found that women were
spending 200 more hours per year on non promotable work than their male
colleagues.
So the ramifications are very severe, both in terms of pay and in terms of
advancement, but also in terms of sort of overall stress and loss of confidence.
We keep talking about how women are more burned out than men and
we sort of focus on the demands from the home.
But what we're seeing is that the demands from work are very excessive,
both because women either end up working many more hours to find room for
the non promotable work or that they end up with this imbalance where
they really don't get rewarded and recognized for their talents.
>> As I think about it, are there possible upsides to
saying yes to non promotable tasks for instance.
Maybe one positive outcome is as you say yes to these tasks
you show that you're dependable people can rely on you.
Are there ever any positive outcomes or positive benefits to saying yes to
work that isn't necessarily gonna get you promoted?
>> Absolutely, so that's a great question because everyone
has to do some non promotable work.
And in your organization,
there's going to be work that isn't anybody particular responsibility.
So everyone has to step up to do some non promotable work and if you do none,
you're likely to get fired.
The the concern is just that you don't want to do too much.
So saying yes, is beneficial to a certain extent.
It can also be beneficial because it can sort of connect you to other people.
It can give you skills that you then can use elsewhere for more promotable work.
The challenge is just that oftentimes when women start doing these non promotable
tasks, they don't just do them once.
It may help to do the holiday party once, but if you do it multiple times,
whatever skills you might acquire will have very strongly decreasing returns.
So there are benefits to saying yes to some non promotable work.
What we are seeing, however,
is that women are just saddled with far too much non promotable work.
And it really means that they never get the same opportunities for
demonstrating their skills within the organization.
And that's harmful to the women, but it's also harmful to the organizations who
presumably want to promote and advance the employees who are best at the work.
Rather than the ones who are sort of at least reluctant to help out and
take on the work that the organization really needs.
And really the negative ramifications aren't
limited to what women experience in the workplace.
It also has an impact on their personal lives as well.
Can you talk about that?
Yes, So, it has very negative consequences on on your work life.
So, I myself, I was working far far too many hours to try to
fit in all the non promotable work.
You know, when we started the club, I had young Children, and
I wanted to be a mother and a professional at the same time, but
the non promotable assignments I I was getting really meant that the only way I
could fit in all the work that I had to do was to get up really early in the morning,
We're really late at night and regrettably it took a serious toll on my health
because I was working so hard to keep up with all the demands on my time.
And I think my employer would have been better off if some of all the non
promotable work that I was doing had been distributed
more equally across the employees in the organization.
And, you know, you gave some examples of professionals like professional
careers that certainly experienced this in the workplace.
You know, most of those are white collar jobs.
Are your findings also applicable to individuals working in blue collar jobs,
whether it be in manufacturing,
maybe individuals working and let's say the service industry,
what what were your findings when it came to those types of jobs?
So so as I mentioned, this is a phenomenon that shows up everywhere.
Indeed, many of our examples are from white collar jobs, but
everywhere you look, you will see that women are taking on more of this work.
So a great example is looking at a study that was done on supermarket
clerks where the females tend to be put at the checkout line.
Whereas the males get the experience of working around the store.
And what that means is that the women don't get the same experience
around the store and can't get promoted later on.
If we look at T.
S. A. Workers, what we're seeing there is that women more than men
are put on pat downs, Which means that they once again,
it was sort of relegated to one particular task and don't get the experience
that helps them advance in any job that you are in women more than men are given
the assignment of helping new employees come in and get familiarized
women more than men are being asked to help new employees get situated.
And it takes time away from the core tests that they have, which means that they
will get promoted and compensated less than their male colleagues.