Are You Anxious About Taking a Risk?

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If you're a female leader of a team, there's an expectation that you'll collaborate and take other people's views into account. And women tend to pay a higher penalty for making decisions autocratic. If a woman brings other people into the decision and it fails, she's much more easily forgiven for that than if she made that decision on her own. So i think that, particularly for risky decisions, there's a lot of wisdom in bringing in otherpeople into the decision. Because if it turns out that it doesn't work, you've patted yourself. It's interest, it's frustrate. But it's interestinghrit so what if taking a risk and when you're

There’s a lot that goes into making a good decision at work: figuring out priorities, coming up with options, analyzing those — and several steps later, planning for what to do if you’re wrong. If you’re a woman, you are also factoring in how your colleagues expect you to ask for their opinions so you can create consensus. And if you do, they’re still likely to see you as indecisive and lacking vision.

We talk with Therese Huston, author of the book How Women Decide, about our strengths as decision makers and how to work around double standards when we’re making decisions and communicating them to our team.

Our HBR reading list:

“Research: We Are Way Harder on Female Leaders Who Make Bad Calls,” by Therese Huston

“Women and the Vision Thing,” by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru

“Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?” by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

“Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement,” by Alison Wood Brooks

Get the discussion guide for this episode on our website: hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work

Email us: womenatwork@hbr.org

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.