By Sarah Skinner (MSc 2018/19)

You’re bound to have heard of the glass ceiling effect? Commonly it means the invisible barriers women face when trying to advance into the highest echelons of an organisation. However, did you know, the woman who coined the phrase in 1978 – Margaret Loden – intended it to mean the non-personal barriers women come up against at any stage of their career progression? Why is this important? Academics have historically focused their efforts to explain the phenomena from the top of the corporate ladder. However, it transpires the problem exists throughout the hierarchy of organisations and in particular in male-dominated organisations. This is important as it highlights a lack of representation for women at all levels, and shows that work needs to be done to understand what is holding up the glass ceiling from its base.

Interestingly, much of the research published to date has explored the barriers women face, such as the intentional discrimination, patriarchy and subtle gender bias. But there is a void that needs to be filled which explores the underlying mechanisms that enable the barriers to exist. New research has set out to understand how women in one large, UK, high-tech organisation experience and perceive career progression where men make-up more than 80% of employees. The study analysed and interpreted interviews with female employees in order to establish if they recognised differences and difficulties in their career progression in comparison to male colleagues. The study also sought to derive any possible explanations and recommendations for organisations. Interestingly, the women explained how they “loved working with men” but consistently referred to and indicated that the organisation is “a man’s world.”

The predominate theme in the study, A Man’s World has Benefits explains male privilege was not due to intentional bias in favour of men, or intentional discrimination against women, it was simply enabled by the sheer difference in gender numbers. Participants described “natural” groups were created at the most basic level – male groups and female groups. Ingroup favouritism and between group discrimination can occur without requiring any firmly established motives to drive conflict between groups. Results also indicated and agreed with recent social group and leadership theories, that when a person is the most typical of a group, be it by looks, demographics, values etc. it becomes more likely they will be followed and emerge as a leader. This echoed throughout the participants experiences where they spoke of being asked to recruit in their line managers image “a mini me” and that it’s “jobs for the boys” and “the natural instinct is to give it [an opportunity] to someone you know”. One participant described male advancement in the organisation as a “self-fulfilling prophecy, because the more men at the top, the more men they’re going to bring up the top”. Sadly, for the women in the organisation, the study posits, it will be very unusual for them to progress on an equal meritocratic footing with men in a male-dominated organisation. Put simply, women do not ‘fit’ into established social male groupings, and whilst some men continue to benefit from their social capital rather than competence, change is a long way off. “Women had to be chameleons of identity to get ahead”.

However, the women were not passive, they put in extra effort to counteract the problem, the most common action taken was to comprise their authenticity to fit in and be accepted. They would use “a persona to be effective” and “play the character that [they] I think is appropriate at the time”. It seemed women had to be chameleons of identity to get ahead. They also described how “every day I have to prove myself… you have to start from the beginning each day… …you’ve got to come in and kind of prove why you are there and why you’ve got the job or why you’re in the room.” Coupled with these proactive tendencies there was an underlying feeling of frustration, exhaustion, feeling undervalued and lonely. This is not to say that men do not experience these feelings as well, however, these feelings are typically associated with being in a minority group.

A Model Process

The study provided a model (below) to help explain the underlying mechanisms of the glass ceiling effect. It illustrates the relationships and interactions between social and psychological processes. This results in a cyclical career advancement process for men and a career advancement struggle for women in a male dominated organisation.

STEM ‘v’ non-STEM

The organisation was proactive in diversity and inclusion (D&I) investment and training, in particular for women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) roles. However, one of the findings indicated that women in non-STEM roles may not have been getting the same level of support as women in STEM roles.

What Can Be Done?

The study sets out a number of practical recommendations for organisations to adopt into their leadership and D&I strategies.

• Where practices have benefitted women in STEM careers, provide similar support for women in other business functions.
• Focus on women’s first step up to management ‘the broken rung’.
• Where there are few women at an event or workshop do not split them up to become ‘tokens’ in groups with men.
• Advertise and formalise all recruitment practices. No ‘invitations’ to interview.
• Ensure leadership teams are enabling women to network comfortably and inclusively. Discourage informal networking opportunities for men alone.
• Work with organisational psychologists to design, develop, implement and evaluate sustaining training and interventions, for example:
• For leadership teams: provide an understanding of current leadership emergence theories and explain how social groups privilege men in male-dominated organisations but can hinder women advancing. Ineffective leaders could also be appointed through social capital recognition and not competence.
• Sustaining unconscious bias interventions: coaching self-awareness and behaviour change, focus awareness towards biased social capital promotions and recruitment.

In summary, the study provides a unique explanation for the underlying processes enabling glass ceilings and provides a good model on which to explore further. Male-dominated organisations must not underestimate the power of such gender disparity. Arguably male-dominance is a natural self-feeding and growing ecosystem; therefore, male-dominated organisations are unlikely to become gender balanced organically. Despite good intentions by organisations to embed gender equality, it will always be an uphill battle with such disparity. Significant, thorough interventions will need to be implemented in order for such organisations to become aware, engaged and realise change.

By Sioned Rhys (MSc 2018/19)

How does our personality affect how we feel? Research has long explored the nuances of personality traits, the characteristics which make think, feel and behave the way we do. Does personality influence work success? Our job satisfaction? What about our general wellbeing? Indeed, research suggests that personality has its fingers in many pies, impacting almost every aspect of our personal and work lives in some way or another. In particular, there has been considerable interest in the literature between personality and wellbeing, our overall state of happiness and good functioning, with growing interest in work engagement, our capacity for absorption, energy and dedication at work. Some individuals are shown to be happy, sociable and absorbed at work, whereas others struggle to concentrate, cooperate and ruminate over problems which may seem minor to others.

Various models have been proposed to understand the differences in the way we think, feel and behave. The most well-known and established model is called the ‘Big Five’, dividing personality into 5 main categories: Agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience and conscientiousness. These five traits broadly represent our tendency towards compassion and friendliness, sociability and outgoing, sensitivity and nervousness, inventiveness and curiosity and efficiency and organisation respectively. Trait models have demonstrated the predictive power of personality, in particular extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness. Extraverted Emily, a highly sociable and outgoing individual displays greater wellbeing than her less extraverted friend. Similarly, their conscientious Claire, who follows the rules and always arrives on time experiences good wellbeing. Conversely, neurotic Ned is always worrying, anxious and sad. He struggles to reach these soaring heights of wellbeing so well.

Despite well-established links in the literature among personality traits and wellbeing, trait models are largely descriptive. They answer the ‘what’ of personality but not the ‘how’ or the ‘why’. Why are extraverts always happy, whilst their neurotic friend always sad, angry or frustrated – even when in the same environment or faced with the same situation? The mechanism linking personality and wellbeing is not well understood. As personality traits have a genetic component, they cannot be easily changed to improve wellbeing outcomes. This poses a problem as these descriptive findings have little practical implication. There must be a mechanism of change in this relationship, which will allow wellbeing to be increased, no matter what personality traits we were born with.

In walks Psychological Flexibility, waving its impressive credentials. Defined as the ability of individuals to respond to the present moment and act to engage in what really matters to them, psychological flexibility has received increased interest among researchers. Backed up by well researched theory of language and cognition, it is also found to increase wellbeing and engagement and is related with extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness. Some even suppose it has greater influence over wellbeing than personality. Now that’s impressive. What’s even more impressive is that, going by the name ‘ACT’, an intervention already exists and proven to increase this characteristic. It’s even effective for clinical populations, let alone the general and working population. Now this fits our mystery mechanism’s silhouette quite nicely.

The present study went out to test whether the boot fits. 127 participants answered surveys examining their personality traits, wellbeing, engagement and trait psychological flexibility. The results were fascinating.

As expected, sociable extraverts and anxious neurotics were strongly linked with higher and lower wellbeing and engagement, respectively. Interestingly, those rule-abiding conscientious folks were only related to engagement, not wellbeing. Perhaps setting goals, following rules and achieving impressive things only provides wellbeing benefits when this is reciprocated with money, success and status? Before we make assumptions, we need more studies to test this.

Results also showed that psychological flexibility was related with personality, wellbeing and engagement. Highly extraverted and conscientious workers were more flexible, like a yoga teacher, whereas neurotic workers were extremely inflexible, like me when I do yoga.

Now for the juicy bit. Psychological flexibility, as expected, explained the link between neuroticism and wellbeing and engagement, and between extraversion, wellbeing and engagement. In simpler terms, it seemed that high extraversion produced higher psychological flexibility, with this flexibility producing the change in wellbeing! In contrast, more neuroticism led to much lower psychological flexibility, and through this caused much lower wellbeing!

This finding is worth telling your friends about for several reasons. One, it explains the unanswered question of how personality influences wellbeing and engagement in the first place. Rather than being a direct influence, certain personality traits have higher psychological flexibility, and it’s the latter that has the power to determine how happy and engaged they are. Two, unlike personality traits, this doesn’t have to be the way forever. Lucky for us neurotic individuals, a well evidenced intervention to increase psychological flexibility already exists, which can be used to increase our wellbeing. Sorry to rain on your parade personality, but it seems psychological flexibility has more to offer. Not only does this provide value for us, but for organisations and businesses in terms of developing their people. Offering ACT initiatives will ensure less sick days, increase motivation and performance, providing a happier workforce and save a lot of money in the long-term too! Would neurotic ned have had such low wellbeing had his psychological flexibility been trained? What about extraverted Emily, could be train her flexibility to be even greater, giving her some flexibility superpower?

Findings like these are important for Organisational Psychology. As an applied science, it’s important for psychologists to understand the mechanisms of change. Sure, describing relationships are interesting, but results like these are what inform effective intervention to improve wellbeing and work outcomes.

Although these findings are exciting, the study was not perfect. As participants completed questionnaires over one time-point, we do not know whether the same results would be seen the next day, week, or month. Nor can we infer a predictive or reciprocal effect. Personalities are also made of a collection of traits, which means focusing on one, singular aspect of one’s personality loses sight of the individual as a whole. Further research is necessary, specifically adopting a longitudinal design, allowing for changes over time to be assessed. Also, in looking at combinations of traits, as this may change the outcome completely. 

Key Takeaway: Being born an extravert or neurotic does not determine your wellbeing forever. This study gives a deeper insight as to what influences outcomes, and psychological flexibility seems to be a valuable construct to explore and expand.