Nobody likes a smart, ambitious girl

In my junior year at Georgetown, I met up with a guy I went to elementary school with and hadn’t seen since sixth grade. He went to college in DC, too. We were friendly in school, but truthfully, my strongest memory of him was punching him in the fire drill line in second grade because he teased me for tripping (and then egged me on to hit him). 

We met on campus and climbed up to the roof of Village A to look out over the Potomac while we reminisced about the playground days. Then, he dropped this bomb: “I always thought you were pretty cool even though everyone made fun of you.”

…

Wait, what?

According to him, most of the ire from my classmates was in sixth grade because the teacher kept a poster of all the 100s people had in the class. For each 100 on a test, you would get a stamp. At 25 100s, he would buy you lunch from McDonald’s or Taco Bell. I had a lot of 100s – at least 25 more than the next closest student. I didn’t brag about my grades, but I did eat the tacos (a #3 soft taco supreme meal with Code Red Mt. Dew, to be exact).

I didn’t remember anyone making fun of me that year, and there is undoubtedly a benefit in not knowing (perhaps my liking gap works in reverse!). By the time I found out, I was already self-assured.

It’s well documented that ambitious women pay a social cost. When we first launched myYearbook, I learned that being a smart, ambitious girl could be a disadvantage. Whereas Dave’s classmates thought what he was doing was cool, some in my class said I was “making them look bad” or that I was a geek or loser. Many studies have shown that success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. Though the majority of people were supportive, it’s the minority's negative sentiment that sticks with you until you learn to ignore it and choose the right people. 

It’s difficult for me to talk about my achievements, and I’m not alone. Study after study has shown that women don’t like bragging or talking about their achievements.

Solving this would mean men and women could talk about their achievements and be treated the same way. That would be the best thing. Here are two ways to get closer to that ideal:

Be a Wingwoman or Wingman

In college, my friend and roommate Jessie would brag about myYearbook milestones. I would brag about her law school acceptances and summa cum laude brains. When she would bring up myYearbook, she made it OK for me to continue to talk about it – after all, someone else brought it up.

In the same way a “wingman,” may provide support and make it easier to approach a romantic interest in a bar, a wingman in a professional setting can help give the subject the courage to talk about their achievements. 

A classmate from college, Jonathan Jacobs, started a series on LinkedIn called #FridayFlowers. Every Friday, he highlights a person in his network to admire and praises their professional and personal achievements. This has two benefits: 1) his network gets to see the wonderful things the person he highlighted has done, and 2) it shows that Jonathan is great, too. The best people celebrate others.

You can be a wingman/wingwoman in meetings by being more aware. If you know a colleague has done something super cool but, for some reason, hasn’t mentioned it, bring it up for them. Similarly,  if you notice in a conversation that someone else previously mentioned an idea at the table but not correctly attributed in a later conversation, make a quick attribution like, “As Jessie said earlier…”

This method works – even better is amplifying. The women in the Obama administration frequently felt interrupted, and their ideas were not being heard, so they devised a plan. According to an NPR story on the strategy, “One woman would make a point in a meeting and, immediately, another woman would repeat the idea and commend it. And then, a third woman would chime in and move the idea forward. And voilà: The original idea gets said, repeated, supported, and amplified.”

Women are more likely to be talked over and less likely to speak about their achievements, but this issue affects everyone. Furthermore, research supports that “when you lift up a teammate by amplifying their idea, you can lift yourself up, too.” By celebrating others and making an effort to be a “wingman” in professional settings, everyone’s achievements are highlighted, and everyone benefits.

Surround yourself with the right people.

I titled this, “Nobody likes a smart, ambitious girl,” but that’s false. 

I do! My friends do!

At Wharton, the first friends I made I connected with because I loved what they shared in class discussions. All the WEMBA women were exceptionally bright and so cool to get to know.

When I first met Tiffany Xingyu Wang, CMO at OpenWeb and President and Co-founder of Oasis Consortium, it was a work call to discuss partnering with Oasis. Our shared passion for user safety budded into a fast friendship. There are many wonderful things about Tiff, and one of them is how she celebrates others and raises them up. She calls this group “the sisterhood.” She is on to something.

As Shelley Zalis, founder and CEO of The Female Quotient, an organization that raises the visibility of women through experiences, media, and advisory, said, “A woman alone has power; collectively, we have impact.”

Backed by research, Zalis’s “power of the pack” means that women benefit from having a close inner circle of female friends. This inner circle likely helps women find out the private information about a role that explicitly affects women, like different challenges they may face in that role. Men do not have any extra benefit in having a pack. 

In a recent talk I did with Dr. Americus Reed’s class at Wharton, I mentioned some of the naysayers I experienced as a student in high school when we were starting up. One of the students in the class asked if it was primarily the men or the women who put me down, expecting it to be the women. There is a myth that women don’t support other women. 

I’ve found that women are enormously supportive of other women, and I’ve felt that support grows as my career advances. Having a supportive group of women in my corner makes me braver and more able to own my accomplishments without fear.

Women should be able to promote themselves without fear of pushback, and we need to normalize being our own advocates. But it takes courage. Men and women can benefit from supporting each other and being needed wingmen. Both men and women should surround themselves with people who care about and believe in them, but women especially should create ties and form bonds with other women. We’re more powerful together.