Tennis and Leaning In
I came across some interesting data in Sports Illustrated about player challenges in professional tennis. In the biggest tournaments, a player can ask for a video review of an official’s call (whether the ball was in or out). If the player is correct, he or she keeps the challenge and loses it if he or she is wrong. There are no additional penalties if a player is consistently wrong . According to the article, men and women are correct on their challenges at nearly the same rate (about 27%). However, men challenge 25% more calls on a per point basis. Why?
It is surprising to me that female players at this level would be less willing to challenge calls than the men. I do not believe that it is a competitiveness issue—Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal appear to be equally driven. I would think that is true of most players at this level.
I am interested to see if women use their challenges more frequently when there is a female chair umpire (the final arbiter during matches) or a male one. Note that the United States Tennis Association has a very clear statement on diversity of their chair umpires. But, the USTA only controls a subset of the major tournaments. While women serve as chair umpires for matches between men and vice versa, there are more male chair umpires in the tournaments with a video review system.
Tennis makes for an interesting cross-cultural study in that the players are from all over the world. Yet, this data suggests that these strong and talented women, who are operating under the same written rules as the men, are less willing to challenge authority, even when there is objective data to support them. Margaret Neal of the Stanford Graduate School of Business suggests that women don’t know, or are unwilling, to ask for more, hence they get less in some situations. This may be an example of this phenomenon.
Negotiation is a critical leadership skill. Effective leaders are always bargaining for themselves, making resource deals for their team, and negotiating deadlines and work load with their employees. Yes, there are some autocrats out there, and while their stars may burn brightly initially, they often fade away since negotiations are also key to relationship building in organizations. Effective negotiations lead to resources and respect.
Dr. Neal points out the implications from a formal educational perspective for women: They should be trained to ask for more so they get the same financial rewards as their equally qualified male counterparts. She offers a workbook here with negotiating tips that we could all use. Women who negotiate better terms for themselves from internal and external resources are going to be more effective (and they will earn the bigger salaries they negotiated for themselves).
This data suggests that asking for more is a learned skill. Women, and their organizations, will benefit from doing it more.
Warren Bobrow, Ph.D. specializes in employee selection, manager assessment, structured interviews, and opinion surveys. He has worked in a diverse range of industries, including customer contact centers, finance, health care, petroleum, retail, distribution, telecommunications, utilities, and apparel manufacturing throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Dr. Bobrow strives to create assessment programs that a client can easily manage and are designed to meet their specific needs. You can read his blog for occasional comments on leadership and employee selection.