Have you seen this movie?
[Scene: Typical corporate meeting, vibe is intense. Six men and two women sit around a conference room table. Naturally, three of the men are named John.]
Man #1: I don't know how we're going to solve this. There just aren't enough people to staff the project.
Man #2: I've tried everything I can think of. No one has bandwidth. But disappointing the client is not an option.
[Man #3, Man #4, and Woman #1 nod in vigorous agreement.]
Woman #2: We could move some people from Project Green to the London---
Man #1, to Man #2: I agree, John. I can't see what we'd deprioritize.
Man #2: By God, John, the entire account is at risk!
[Group goes quiet for several minutes, deep in thought.]
Man #5: What if we dropped the Townsend account?
Man #1: We can't possibly drop the Townsend account!
[Group goes quiet again.]
Woman #2: If we moved people from Project Green, that would work, because---
Man #4: If we can't touch the Townsend account, maybe we could move some of the dates around?
Man #3, banging the table in front of him: HANG ON, I'VE GOT IT! WHAT IF WE MOVED SOME PEOPLE FROM PROJECT GREEN TO THE LONDON OFFICE?
Man #1: Wow!
Man #2: We can always count on you, John!
Man #6: I love it!
[general chorus of appreciation, fade to black]
What is idea annexation?
The other day I was on the Socially Responsible Business podcast with my old friend and fellow linguist Sharon Schneider, talking through some of the recent workplace communications research I've published. Sharon asked me: "Have you looked at what happens when a woman proposes an idea, no one hears her, and then five minutes later a man proposes the same thing and everyone celebrates his insight?"
What Sharon is describing is called idea annexation, and as she's pointing out, the behavior is stereotypically gendered. I hadn't looked at it with real data until this week!
Spotlighting vs. annexation
Before we look at the data, let's define two concepts: idea spotlighting and idea annexation.
Idea spotlighting can be a wonderful act of allyship. Let's say that Person #1 makes an observation that is ignored by the broader group. When Person #2 sees this happen, they use their voice to spotlight Person #1's contribution by resurfacing it with attribution. For instance, Person #2 might say things like:
- "Tonia suggested we move resources to the London office. I thought that was an interesting idea."
- "Tonia, you made a suggestion before about the London office, but the conversation went in another direction. Would you mind sharing it again?"
Idea annexation is a much less benevolent pattern. In these cases, Person #2 repeats an observation that was previously made by Person #1, but without attribution. It is not always intentional. However, while Person #1 was ignored, Person #2 is heard and credited for their contribution. And as Sharon suggested, idea annexation is stereotypically associated with gender: according to stereotype, Person #1 is a woman, and Person #2 is a man.
Is this behavior actually gendered the way stereotype suggests? To find out, I looked at:
- 30 hours of distributed meetings from 15 different teams, all with cameras on from all meeting attendees
- Meetings with 5-10 people in total, all dialing in
- Attendee groups with no more than 60% of any one gender or race among participants [note: I only had sufficient data to include men and women, no other genders]
Within these constraints, I wanted to know: How often does someone get credit for an observation that was previously made by someone else? Does this happen to some groups more than others?
Who takes credit for someone else's ideas?
Both spotlighting and annexation happen more than I was expecting. This set of meetings had 154 cases in total, just over 5 cases per hour.
39% of the time, when Person #2 repeats Person #1's observation, they explicitly give them the credit. But 61% of the time, Person #2 takes credit themselves. In other words, in a typical hour-long meeting, someone takes credit for someone else's idea at least three times!
Women resurface others' ideas slightly more often than men do, and women are somewhat more likely to give credit than men. But both men and women take credit more than they give it.
Who gets credit for their ideas?
As we saw above, both men and women take credit more than they give it. When it comes to who receives credit for their ideas, things look very different.
When repeating a comment that was originally someone else's, both men and women are significantly more likely to give credit to men than they are to women. Race and ethnicity didn't make a significant difference to these patterns in any direction.
When a man repeats a woman's ideas, he gives the woman credit 13% of the time. When a woman repeat another woman's ideas, she gives the woman credit 29% of the time. Women give credit to women slightly more often than men do, but not by much!
The net of this? Women, if you think your colleagues are constantly swooping in to restate your ideas without giving you credit, you're absolutely right. But the colleagues who do this aren't exclusively men. The call is coming from inside the house.
What do you think?
Thanks for reading!
Kieran
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