Chapter 8: Leading Change for Women; Women as Leaders

Chapter 8: Leading Change for Women; Women as Leaders

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In this Chapter, Dr. Travis discusses the importance of developing leadership skills for women. She opens with the statement that one cannot leave leadership to luck: an individual must be noticed, be visible and prepared for opportunities. She then lists her formal leadership training experiences summarizes data gathered about these programs by Dr. Shine Chung and others confirming that they make a difference in helping women advance into leadership roles. She notes that the Office of Women Faculty Programs has money to send a number of women and some minority men to leadership programs each year. Next, Dr. Travis explains how her leadership training expanded her own skill set. She talks about how the training at Rice University trained her to deal with conflict situations that arose in 2003, when she was Chair of the Faculty Senate. She again stresses that leadership training gives women tools to navigate complex institutions, to self-promote, and to not only know the leadership theory, but to implement ideas.

Dr. Travis next tells a story about a nasty incident that arose during a meeting when men verbally and personally attacked her. She speaks about how shocked she felt and how her training enabled her to handle the situation. She observes that scientists are very accustomed to handling criticism and even attack when it comes to their work and data. But the skill set for handling personal attacks is different.

Dr. Travis next stresses that women must be prepared for opportunities and they must actually take them and not believe that they are not qualified. Dr. Travis defines the “imposter syndrome” that plagues women and discusses the fact that men and women are still perceived differently and that there is a much narrower band of acceptable behaviors for women in professional situations.

Next Dr. Travis turns to the qualities that women bring to organizations when they serve in leadership positions. She talks about women’s instinctive listening and collaboration skills, resulting in a different leadership style. She explains why this is needed (noting that the Sandusky sexual abuse scandal at Penn. State would not have occurred had women been involved).

Dr. Travis explains that complex problems require different points of view coming together to find solutions and that women bring valuable perspectives to the table. She also cites the importance of women as role models and the fact that women patients and the great numbers of women who serve in caregiving roles can connect to women in leadership positions. She describes a survey of research articles placed in journals: articles with women in the list of authors tend to be placed in higher impact journals.

Identifier

TravisEL_02_20140325_C08

Publication Date

3-25-2014

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - The AdministratorThe Administrator Professional Path Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Religion Diversity Issues Professional Practice Diversity at MD Anderson Leadership Mentoring Women and Minorities at Work On Leadership On Mentoring Women and Diverse Populations in Healthcare and Institutions

Transcript

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I have several directions I wanted to go, but maybe the first one is to know that you yourself have done quite a lot of leadership training programs, and I wondered if you could comment on that, you know, intentionally taking on training for leadership positions instead of kind of leaving it to luck, or lack of luck, as it were. (laughs)

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Leaving it to luck. Leaving it to luck usually doesn’t work.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Yes.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

And I think it is a mistake, if you will, that a lot of women make. We think it’s a meritocracy, I think, as we said yesterday, but you have to pick your head up and you have to be noticed, and you have to be visible, and you have to be prepared. Luck favors the prepared mind, is, I think, the saying. So it’s not all about luck. It’s about being ready when something becomes available, an opportunity to submit your CV, your letter, your résumé for that position. And part of it is, I think, getting training, getting real didactic and hands-on training on leadership. I started—we had a program here in the early nineties that was with Rice University. There was an executive development program. I probably have it somewhere around here. [inaudible]. That was the first thing, if I remember correctly, that I did. I attended the AAMC Mid-Career Development Workshop for Women, specifically. I did that. I went to the ELAM, the Executive Leadership for Academic Medicine, which specifically prepares women for leadership positions, and I’m talking about department chair all the way up to deans. They have helped place deans in a number of institutions. Recently, an individual from our own organization, Dr. Shine Chang, and her colleague, Dr. Deborah Howitzer, have analyzed data from all of these programs. The AAMC has an early career and a mid-career program for women, and then the ELAM. The question they asked was, does this have any impact on careers. They haven’t published the data yet, but the answer is, yes, it does. Yes, it does. And I can’t cite the data because I haven’t—I’ve heard it but I haven’t seen it. So these programs work, which is one of the reasons that—so every year, I have money in my budget to send four women to both the early and mid-career, I send four women to the Aspiring Leaders Workshop, and I send them to—there’s a workshop specific for minority career development, so I send our minority women to that, but I also last year sent some men as well.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Interesting, yes.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

I had the funds in my budget, and the way we do this is I pay registration from my office. It’s part of my budget every year. You know, it’s a line item in the budget. The departments pay expenses and any other expenses, travel, etc. That way, the department has to get in the game. The chair, you know, knows what’s happening and has skin in the game, and, in fact, the chair now is the one who has to nominate the woman and write the letter for them to be considered for these programs.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Interesting, because that is creating shared responsibility for chairing—

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Yes, it is.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

—for changing the culture.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Yes.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Yes. Now, what was your reason for using the department funds to send men to some of these programs?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Because it’s minority men only.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Because there’s so little that we are doing, and I talked with the provost, you know, and said, “What do you think?” He said, “Yes, if you have the money in your budget, let’s do it.” So it was a shared decision. I checked with him and said, “I think we should do this.” And, again, the departments were all in favor of it. They were very—the department chairs said, “Oh, absolutely,” and gave us a list of names.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Wow. That’s great.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Yes. So I expect we’ll continue to do that. It’s not my charge, that’s for sure, but—

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Right, but you can pick up that piece [inaudible] right now.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

I can pick up that piece, yes.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So I get a sense of what these programs are really capable of doing, what did you learn about yourself going through these leadership programs and what were the skill areas that you felt evolved as a result of that training?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Self-knowledge is a big one. (laughs) You know, identifying what your strengths and weaknesses were. You came out of that having full knowledge of that and then learning, being a better listener, realizing that not everybody always agrees with where you want to go, what your vision is, and being able to listen, and I mean truly listen and hear that input and then consider it, really seriously take it into consideration. So, yes, that’s a good point, and we need to think about that. To me, that was a big, big turning point. How to run, how to—I had already been doing things, like I was chair of our—for what was then the Promotion Tenure Committee, but it wasn’t called that then, but I was on the Faculty Classification Committee. So I had been in some leadership positions before I did these programs, but I think the Rice was the first one I did, and I think that—let’s see. I was Senate chair. So I was chair of the Senate 2002, 2003, which was after I did the Rice program, and that was really helpful in leading that. That group of rather—I mean, it was a group that everybody had—there were a lot of different ideas. There was some very senior faculty and some more junior faculty, and there were a lot of contentious issues that year, and it was learning how to manage those very disparate views around the table and trying to bring everybody to at least—you can’t always—everybody says you want to get consensus. I’m not sure that you always try for consensus. I think you try for getting people invested. But, sometime you just have make the decision if you are a leader. Bottom line comes down to not everybody may agree, and sometimes you just have to make a hard decision, and there were a few of those that were made that year. Again, I think it’s just knowing, try to ferret out what are the real issues that were then facing the faculty, and skill sets on navigating, things that women don’t do well and I talk about a lot. Women don’t self-promote. Now, that’s kind of—everybody goes, “Oh, you don’t want to self-promote.” Well, there are ways to do it so that it’s not offensive, and I think learning—there was some skill set learning, particularly in the mid-career development workshop. There was a lot of—there was theory, but there was actually “Then this is what you do about that.” This is what we see, and this is how I teach all the things I do to—that I do teach to women. It’s always about here’s the theory, you know, and here’s how you can implement this, because I think it’s important not to have just talk up here at the 50,000-foot level but bring it down to take home messages that they and that I could try and implement. It also taught me—there was one incident that happened when I was in my faculty or my academic department, and I won’t go into the particulars of it, but it was a pretty nasty situation, actually, and I was then—there was one other woman in the department besides me. I was a tenured professor by then. But basically the men were very vocal in a department chair meeting about something they were very unhappy about with me, and I felt that it was a—I felt that I was really under attack. I was shocked, I was really shocked by what happened, and I was really shaken by it, quite frankly. So this is where I think both these classes helped me, including ELAM. I came out of that and figured, “Okay, what am I going to do about it?” So I got each of them in my—I had them each talk with me individually and impressed upon them that, “Number one, if you ever have something you would like to talk to me about, talk to me about it in my office, see if we can’t reconcile this or solve our differences,” I said, “rather than ganging up.” And I went to each one of them and did it, and that never happened again. And I think that was something, you know, that I learned. I’m not sure what I would have done without those training programs, you know, because you feel basically under attack and victimized. And then how do you step back from that? How do you become not a victim, you know, and take control?

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Yes, I’m thinking of all the situations in which women are taken by surprise, basically, and never having been thrown into a situation like that, so literally learning on the job if you haven’t had some kind of discussion of scenarios and techniques for solving related things.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

And it wasn’t about science. I mean, I think we’re all—if you’re a scientist, part of what you do is you listen. You’re always going to get criticism. You send your grants in, they come back, they’re not funded, your papers come back, but it’s not always constructive, but mostly it’s meant to be constructive. Sometimes the tone of it doesn’t feel that way, and so you’re used to that because that’s our job. Our job as scientists is to, first of all, review our own work with a critical eye, but also review other people’s work, and I do that, you know. I review other people’s work when you send back, you have questions or recommendations or, “Maybe you should have done—have you tried this?” This was different than that. This was not about that. This was very personal, and it was—yeah. And you’re used to dealing with being in front of an audience, and sometimes somebody’s asking you questions, and sometimes they can get pretty—make statements that you’re like, “Really? They’re saying that in that way?” But you expect it there. You don’t expect it among colleagues.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Very difficult situation. Wow. Yes.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

So I think they’re critical. I think that women have to be prepared for opportunities. Now what they have to do is they have to take them, because women are all too ready to say, just like I did, “Oh, I don’t think I’m qualified,” when, in fact, if you took the list and you checked all the boxes, they would check 90 percent of the boxes of qualifications for a certain position. So women are always afraid of—well, there’s a syndrome called the Imposter Syndrome, that somebody’s going to find me out, that I really don’t know what I’m talking about here, and I think that really plagues women. So one of the issues, how do you overcome that.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Does that still—is that still true today with women coming out?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Uh-huh.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Wow. Where do you think that comes from?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

I don’t know. I think it’s a function of still being socialized differently than men, and I think it’s a function of the culture, although decidedly different from in the sixties, when Gail Collins wrote the book. She wrote the book When Everything Changed and talks about how women couldn’t own property, couldn’t have credit cards in their name, couldn’t have a checking account in their name. That has changed, but we all know that there still exists perceptions of women and men, and women have a much narrower band of behavior, as we like to say. You know, if you’re too aggressive or if you’re seen as too aggressive, then you’re called some not nice words, and “bossy” seems to be the newest word that everybody’s talking about and how actually that’s good. But if you’re too nice or seen as too nice, then you don’t have the right stuff, if you will, for leadership. And yet that does not apply to the way men are viewed, so I think there are still these differences in the perceptions that women still fight all the time.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Now, given all that, and the differences in socialization and how women come to the challenge of leadership, are there some things that women bring to leadership roles because of their different socialization that an institution, patients, colleagues can really benefit from?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Yes. I think that women bring a lot to the table as leaders. One of the things, I think the strongest thing a woman brings to the table is the fact that we like to work with other people, we are collaborators by nature, we don’t think that it’s our way or the highway. I’m not saying that all men think that, but I think women instinctively listen, talk with others. I think it’s one of the—and the leadership style is very different. The leadership style is different. It’s more collaborative. And I think going forward that’s—not only going forward, what we need now, what we’ve needed for at least some number of years, is a more collaborative style of leadership, less hierarchical leadership style.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Why?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Why do I think we need that?

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Uh-huh.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

I think we always needed that, quite frankly. I mean, I can think of some incidents that—do you think it would have happened if—I’m thinking of the Penn State incident a couple years ago. Do you think that would have happened if there were women?

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Could you describe for the record what that is, just—

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

That was the abuse of boys by the coach, and everybody looked the other way. Do we think that would have happened if there were women, not on the board or in the boardroom? We can’t do the study, but I suspect perhaps not. So I think that that’s one thing, but I also think that, again, complex problems require different inputs, different ways of thinking, different ways of solving problems, and the more that’s on the table to choose from, the greater probability that you will come up with a solution that hopefully will work. I think women as leaders reflect our constituency. I mean, the population, first of all, in medicine and science, it’s the women who usually make the healthcare decisions for their families. Our patients, there’s a lot of women patients and minorities. And just like people like to choose people who look like themselves without realizing it, that they’re doing that, patients may, some of them, like having a doctor who looks like them.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I’ve been interviewing Lovell Jones [Oral History Interview], and, of course, he talks an awful lot about that.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Right, right, the need for—but there are also then, like I said yesterday, they’re role models. They signal to the community that you, too, can do this if you’re a woman or African American or Hispanic. You, too, can do this. And I think you don’t have to say anything, we just have to be, and being in that position speaks volumes.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I’m wondering—I mean, this is a slightly more focused question. Maybe your response would be the same. But, I mean, we’re talking in this institution on women who are clinicians or who are basic researchers or who are administrators who have chosen specifically to focus on healthcare.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Yes.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I mean, is there a particular impact of women being leaders in healthcare? I mean, certainly the constituency is a huge issue, but are there some other ways in which you feel women bring something unique to these kind of institutions?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Well, I know you want to focus the answer, but I think the answer is exactly the same regardless of what the industry is, if you will. I think it’s that we just bring a different viewpoint.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Yes.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

It’s a different viewpoint. There’s just a study, though, an interesting study that came out. It was in ecology, but it was a science, and they were looking at authorship on papers. The study was asking the question, if you have women as authors on papers, what are the impact factors of the journals these papers are published in. And interestingly, the papers that had more women on them had higher impact factors, in other words, being published in higher-impact journals, than the ones that didn’t.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Was there any speculation on why that was the case?

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Just, again, you know, bringing different expertise, different way of viewing.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

More complex way of handling the information.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

Yes.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Wow.

Elizabeth Travis, PhD:

More complex, yes. Yes, it was a very interesting—I thought it was a very interesting study.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

No kidding.

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Chapter 8: Leading Change for Women; Women as Leaders

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