Why “Be Careful” is Never Good Advice (but often given to women)
By Evelina Fredriksson & Johanna Hallin
While management is the ability to make sure that things are done correctly, leadership is about doing the right tings. For a business to survive in this rapidly changing, interdependent world some of those right things will be done for the first time. The leader has to be an innovator ready to adapt to new market needs and she must find opportunity in the unexpected.
It is often said that innovative entrepreneurship and risk-taking is synonymous. Yet no successful enterprise is built on a carefree approach to threats. It’s rather an outstanding ability to assess, mitigate and define the risks that have to be taken that makes an entrepreneur prosperous. Seeking advice is crucial for that process but way too often the first input given to female leaders is “be careful”. And that is never good advice.
Advice & Risk — Running on the Gravel Road
When we started working on this text about what advice that makes a leader ready for the future over WhatsApp Johanna was by her desk in Europe’s biggest hub for impact tech and Evelina on her balcony facing the Mekong river. Yet the scene that comes to mind is one that on the surface has little to do with tech innovation in Stockholm or educational programs in Phnom Penh. As we talk a memory from Johanna’s third year as a mother gets highly relevant:
The three-year-olds face is glowing with laughter as her small feet moves faster and faster over the gravel road. She is amazed by how fast she can run downhill with her pigtails flying. The line between Johanna’s friends eyes gets deeper and deeper until she bursts out and in a high pitched voice says “You have to tell her to be careful!”. Johanna does not. Images of the little girl falling and scraping her chubby knees in the dirt keep appearing for her eyes but she does not tell her to be careful.
The reason for that is simply that the only outcome of such advice would be that if the girl fell Johanna could have said “I told you so”. The only two responsible approaches in the situation are to stop the girl from running — or let her run. Informing the child that she should be careful would be avoiding risk for sure, but for the advisor/mother only.
Advising while Caring
Over nine years that we have worked, traveled and socialized together we have never said any of the following to each other:
- Are you sure that walking home after the party is a good idea? Text me when you get home, ok?
- Let me know when you landed safe and sound
- Be careful
Is this because we don’t care? A way of keeping professional boundaries? Or because we think about the other person as so strong and independent that we simply don’t worry?
It is not.
Before Johanna went to Mozambique to write about sexual abuse taking place in school environments Evelina called her and told her to pack a pair of good warm socks. And when we were in California to present a paper on trafficking at a conference Johanna took a flattering picture of Evelina in the Los Angeles art district and advised her to use it to set up a Tinder-profile. In other words we care, worry and talk about personal things.
What is then the difference between telling someone to pack a pair of socks and asking a person to text when she gets home? The phone call about the socks is an expression of empathy — I was just in that region and was freezing my feet off and I don’t want that to happen to you. It is telling someone about the risk of freezing toes and how to avoid it. To tell a person to text when she gets home is on the other hand a way stating that it might be dangerous for her to get home. But it doesn’t do anything to help her mitigate the risks.
If I tell someone to text when she gets home you have to have a plan for what you would do if she doesn’t text. Are you committed to go out and find her? Then fine, tell her to text. If you know that you will just assume that she forgot and go to bed knowing that you at least expressed your concern. Just don’t ask for the text.
With or Without Helpful Information and Accountability
The same principles apply in business. To give advice without defining the risk, providing information on how to deal with the risks that have to be taken in order to move forward and committing to being accountable for this advice is not helpful. That only opens for the “I told you so” but even worse is that it sends the signal that you will not stand behind the leader you are advising. Good advice offers solutions on how to avoid risks or facts that makes it possible to understand the risks that have to be accepted.
Women and children are considered to be in need of more protection than men. Therefor it is also socially more accepted to advice them to be careful. But typing in “advice to female leaders” in the Google search engine will give a different picture: female leaders should dare more, stand up for them self and to believe in their own ability. In other words, when entering leadership positions women do not necessarily get the advice be careful — instead they are all of a sudden told the opposite: dare more. Those two statements have one thing in common: they are given in relation to risk but they do not hold any helpful information about how to manage those risks and the person giving such advice can not be held accountable.
That means that the female leader’s management teams and mentors (and parents for that matter) do not always offer the best possible advice. To say “be careful” or “dare more” is a way of washing your hands off the person you are advising. And a management team distancing themselves from the outcomes of a leaders decision seriously undermines her leadership.
The biggest problem with how female leaders are advised is the product of a complex web of power and knowledge. Tara Sophia Mohr, the author of Playing Big, puts it like this:
“Women have been told a million times and in a million ways that the answers lie outside of them — in the right book, degree program, expert’s opinion. The subtle message is that the answer comes from a canon of knowledge developed largely by men, based on a man’s experience of the world.”
This has implications for how those advices are received and it makes it easer to advice women without being accountable for it. Women are equipped with the skill of gratefully accepting advice and not trained in questioning anyone who puts himself in a position to give those advises.
Risk, Uncertainty and the Skill of Transformation
Good advice is advice that makes a business leader ready for the future. That means facing risk, uncertainty and adapt to new conditions based on information. In the Inter Business framework the ability to transform is identified as a key-skill needed for future-preparedness. The need for systematic innovation is also stressed in some of the most influential research on modern management. In Innovation and Entrepreneurship Peter F. Drucker points out that it is not enough to be alerted to changes in markets, demographics and knowledge. Instead those changes are to be seen as sources of innovation and should be systematically analyzed on regular bases. Then the advice “be careful” is not helpful, because it doesn’t contain any information. But relevant information and people ready to be accountable for the advice they provide however, is helpful.
Give Her Your Best Information
To create accountability and good support for a leader is to have clearly defined measures of success. It is often said that companies measure success in profit but in reality profit is only a framework for what can be done. To shift focus and instead measure success considering a diversity of perspectives, approaches and capabilities leading to a sustainable business ready to tackle challenges of tomorrow is needed.
To be ready for the future a business need to see opportunities in the unexpected changes. It must be ready to transform: Purposeful systematic innovation begins with the analysis of opportunities — it involves managing uncertainty by accessing best possible information and moving ahead with calculated risk.
So to express care for the leader and her cause, never tell her to be careful or to dare more. Give her your best information.
Evelina Fredriksson is a writer and lecturer, living in Phnom Penh. Johanna Hallin is the founder of Inter Business Initiative, dividing her time between Stockholm and the rural North of Sweden.
Their book Srey — Tales of Urban Girlhood came out January 2017.
