Banning Bossy

Last weekend I read an article in Parade Magazine, "Condolezza Rice, Sheryl Sandberg, and Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chavez:  Let's Ban Bossy."  I also found the Ban Bossy web site.  The goal of this movement is to encourage leadership development in young girls by removing the negative connotation that comes with the label "bossy."

Like many women leaders, I am familiar with the "bossy" label.  I just hadn't thought about it much until I read this article.  The label definitely sends a message to girls that they should not step up to a leadership role.  Those that do earn the label and the resultant teasing.  It saps confidence.  How many times have you heard a girl called bossy?  How about a boy? 

Of course, times are changing, and we see more and more women in leadership positions these days. Many of us have had to struggle to overcome a lack of confidence to take our places, including me.  A woman friend and I used to coach each other to "not apologize," as we both recognized our tendency to start out a request or an opinion with an apology or an acknowledgement that we "might be wrong about this...."

Like some many things in life, I learned a few good things from the bossy label.  I learned to be more sensitive to the way I present myself, to the way I ask for someone to do something.  I learned to be more diplomatic in offering criticism.  These are good lessons.  But I'm still all for banning bossy.

It's So Easy to be a Critic

We had an incident on our campus yesterday when someone reported a person on campus with a gun, near our bus stop.  Our police responded quickly, resolved the problem, and arranged to have a campus alert sent out.  An all-clear followed somewhat shortly after the original alert.  Our campus has practiced for just this type of scenario, and from my point of view, I thought it all went very well.

Today I heard that the police had come in for a fair bit of criticism about this event.  I don't know any details, and I'm not sure what the gist of the complaints were.  But I've heard that sending out an alert has often resulted in criticism aimed back at the sender, some of it bordering on abusive.  I wonder why this is.

I've been thinking today about how easy it is to be a critic, especially when you are criticizing some faceless human being.  I wish that as a society we could learn to be a bit more tempered in our criticism.

Critical thinking is an important skill.  We pride ourselves in higher education that this is something we teach our students.  But critical thinking is a two-sided coin.  The good side helps us to see things that are wrong and work to correct them.  The bad side lets us fall into a knee-jerk response that the other person must be an idiot.  Let's work to stay on the good side.  And when we do have useful criticism to offer, let's try to do it diplomatically.

I hope you'll join me in thanking our police officers for putting their lives on the line to protect us.