Is she a ‘Queen Bee?’ Or just a bad boss?
This is Working Together, a weekly series on equity in the workplace. Have ideas about what we should discuss next week? Let me know in the comments using #WorkingTogether or email me at caroline@linkedin.com.
Amy Gallo is no stranger to difficult coworkers.
A contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, Gallo is writing a book about how to deal with problem colleagues and navigate your own career. While conducting research for her book, she tried to avoid writing about one particular stereotypical difficult person, but it just kept coming up: The Queen Bee.
The reason for her reluctance? It’s challenging to describe the bias that fuels the stereotype in the first place. So-called Queen Bees are women who intentionally try and undermine other women at work. The theory goes that, because there are so few women in leadership positions across corporate America, many women feel the need to be unsupportive to other women to maintain their seat at the table.
And while most women feel as if they have experienced some version of this relationship in the office, how much this behavior is related to gender is up for debate.
“One of the challenges with ‘Queen Bee’ behavior is that it's not only a response to gender bias, it also violates our stereotypes about what women should do at work,” Gallo told me in an interview on LinkedIn News Live. “Our expectations are that other women should be caring and nurturing and they should watch out for the collective…. You rarely hear men criticized for not supporting junior men in their organization. They're just a bad boss. They don't get this ‘queen bee’ label.”
Marianne Cooper, a senior research scholar at Stanford University, has studied the phenomenon at length and says the behavior stems from cultural beliefs about how women are supposed to show up at work. There is an expectation that women will be more nurturing of colleagues. When that nurturing is absent, unconscious bias creeps in.
“Leadership is still very much seen as a masculine way of being in the world,” Cooper said. “And that sets women up to have to do more to be seen as a similarly competent leader.”
While disagreements are commonplace in most work settings, we tend to penalize women more for them. Research out of Washington State University found that bystanders have far more negative reactions to two women engaged in a heated argument versus two men in the same situation, Gallo said in our interview.
“The problem is when we see women [disagree] even in an organization that's predominantly women, we have a negative association,” she said. “So we start to label that as ‘Queen Bee’ or she's undermining women when it could just be what is typical behavior in an organization.”
For any of these stereotypes to go away, Stanford’s Cooper said it's essential that we do our best to identify our own gender biases and separate them from challenging relationships we may have at work. Research shows that minority groups — in this case, women — often believe they actually can’t be biased against their own group, said Cooper. So next time you find yourself feeling slighted by a female colleague at work, digging into why is critical.
“Usually, when you're having an issue at work … often it's just bad management,” said Cooper. “And bad management, unfortunately, is pervasive across corporate America.”
Check out my full conversation with Gallo and Cooper above.
What’s Working
No imposters here. Imposter syndrome — second guessing your achievements or feeling like a fraud — is too often described as something women and other minorities need to “fix” about themselves. Instead, we need to take a deeper look at how imposter syndrome is often a response to systemic racism and bias and fix cultures that allow those inequities to exist. [HBR]
When in doubt, ask. Research shows that men often feel uncomfortable discussing gender bias at work, but having uncomfortable conversations may be the key to progress. “One man who took the time to really ask about the experiences of his female colleagues reflected: ‘Once you put on that lens, you can’t take it off. The world never looks the same.’” [HBR]
What’s Not
Two years too many. Research suggests that it may take two full years for women’s employment to reach pre-pandemic levels, but there are things business leaders can do today to shorten that recovery period. Ensuring flexible workplace practices and offering reskilling opportunities for women who are reentering the workforce are two critical components. [Fortune]
Who’s Pushing Us Forward
Goodbye, Arne. Arne Sorenson, who built the Marriott hotel franchise into the world’s biggest, has died at age 62. Eleven months ago — when the pandemic’s full impact was still unclear — he posted a message to LinkedIn, speaking to his employees about pending layoffs. He cried. I wrote about how such a vulnerable act can help redefine our ideas about leadership, for the better.
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3yI have witnessed this first hand and it is not pleasant.
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3yCould a human queen bee really be a narcissist who is often called a drama queen? Relationships are complex and I think we tend to use the old model of sorting and ranking rather than to look at what is going on systemically.
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3yThere is a lot to unpack here. There are Queen Bees to be sure. (I wonder what the male version of the QB is?) And there are bad bosses--regardless of gender. Corporate culture, lack of genuine support and mentoring, unreasonable expectations that women place on themselves are all things that can contribute to a woman appearing to be "power hungry." We still do not have enough workplaces that value and support women as they rise through the ranks. This can leave leaders second guessing themselves and even the motives of other women around them. There needs to be true shifts in corporate culture not just lofty inclusion goals. Companies that invest in professional development opportunities that better prepare women for new roles will help these leaders learn how to delegate without fear and be open to ideas from other women. Then we can stop putting names like "queen bee" and "b**ch" on women and get down to the business of leading, which women do naturally.
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3yFascinating topic. The insightful comments indicate that there are multiple reasons for this behavior and multiple behaviors that may earn the label. To reduce toxic behaviors, we need clearly define them and promote policies and procedures that reduce them, as well as those that increase positive behaviors.
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3yI disagree with Queen Bee syndrome. It is not that women protect the seat at the table because it is limited: woman are protecting the men at the table. Women feel forced to become the “male” behavior at the table for self preservation to survive the seat. It’s hard to be the only female and remain a female. It’s okay to lead like a woman: true leadership is blind to gender, color and sexual orientation. Great leaders lead as humans and never waiver. All my conflicts with woman leaders where because they were not great leaders versus the Queen Bee syndrome. Thankfully, I have only had a small number of bad leaders in my career journey, but I did learn why they were bad and strive daily not to do what they do. Lead as a human with compassion for people, not as woman with compassion.