If you’re in the business of being a woman, you know that being a woman in business is not straightforward. To navigate that path, a natural starting point is to turn to other women in business. But the higher up you go, the fewer role models you find. Until one day you realize you’re the only woman in the room.
If you can’t find role models in your direct vicinity, a decent substitute is the advice of women in power in peripheral fields. You might be thinking Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg or Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi here. Well, I found myself surprisingly drawn to neither of those, but Abby Wambach, soccer star, instead.
Sheryl Sandberg skyrocketed to business leader fame after her 2011 Barnard Commencement Speech. This year, Barnard speaker Abby Wambach seems to be following in her footsteps. Wambach is a retired soccer player who has amassed countless awards: two Olympic gold medals, the world record for the number of international goals scored, champion of FIFA Women’s World Cup, U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year, not once but six times, among many others.
But despite her long list of accomplishments, she found herself in an unusual predicament. She retired with a mere portion of the income earned by her male counterparts equally honored with the Icon Award at the 2016 ESPYs, Kobe Bryant and Peyton Manning. Faced with this precarious situation, she recognized that her strange circumstance wasn’t unique to her, but one shared broadly among most women. And in her speech, she reflected on her learnings that were wrapped up in the frustrating outcome of unequal pay.
On Failure: “Make Failure Your Fuel”
Failure, especially in business, and even more so in entrepreneurship, is glorified far too often. That we know. What rarely gets covered is that failure is often amplified and lingers far longer for women than for most men. When women fail, that failure sticks to them like lint. No matter how many times they try to brush it off, it still finds a way to follow.
Wambach offers Michelle Obama’s thoughts on the topic that is too rarely touched upon: “I wish that girls could fail as well as men do and be okay. Because let me tell you watching men fail up—it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating to see men blow it and win. And we hold ourselves to these crazy, crazy standards.”
The athlete mentality is the best antidote to failure, Wambach says. No one wants to be defined by failure. Failure acts as a strong motivator to bury said failure with success. It encourages you to take that failure as fuel. And maybe, if failure clings more strongly to women than to men, women have more fuel.
On Position Versus Power: “Lead From The Bench”
If you took a tour of American businesses, you might incorrectly interpret position and power to be the same thing. But a game looks very different depending on where you’re standing. The point of view of an active player is very different from the point of view of a benched player. Both have value, any unique perspective brings with it value. It’s a little like information asymmetry. If you’re benched or passed up for a promotion, it’s easy to conflate that with self-worth. Consequently, you forget and forego the power you have.
Our societal model conditions us to incorrectly associate position with power. We need to dissociate power from the position or status. “If you’re not a leader on the bench, don’t call yourself a leader on the field. You’re either a leader everywhere or nowhere,” Wambach says.
On Competition: “Champion Each Other”
It’s sad that this still needs reciting, but experience dictates that it does. The most competitive colleagues I’ve had in the workplace have always been women, the most encouraging have always been men.
When you join a new organization, it’s easy to fall in line with the existing culture that pits women against other women. The only way to break out of this mold is to be the bigger person. A groundbreaking thought, I know. But be the first to reach out to other women to champion them. “Call out each other’s wins and just like we do on the field: claim the success of one woman, as a collective success for all women,” Wambach states.
On Asking For What You Deserve: “Demand The Ball”
It is well established that women “demand” much less than their men counterparts. Women don’t demand promotions. Women don’t demand more time off. And women definitely don’t demand equal pay. In Wambach’s words, “At this moment in history leadership is calling us to say: Give me the effing ball. Give me the effing job. Give me the same pay that the guy next to me gets. Give me the promotion. Give me the microphone….”
It’s true we cater to our people-pleasing instincts over our own interests. We love to keep the peace. My question continues to be: why? Asking for more does not disrupt the peace. Neither will asking for what you deserve. The employee who feels well-treated tends to be the most generous and, more importantly, contributes the most. If anything demanding that ball is for the greater good of the team.
What Defines Identity?
Retirement was a scary prospect for Wambach. She was about to face an uncertain future, one which was not buffered by the bank account of the likes of Koby Bryant or Peyton Manning. Reflecting on it, she says: “Doesn’t it feel like the second you figure anything out in life, it ends and you’re forced to start all over again?”
But the prospect of an empty bank account paled in comparison to the prospect of an empty identity. The sport of soccer defined who she was: she was a soccer star, she was the soccer star. She worried that her retirement would bring with it a loss of identity. Who was she without soccer?
The question of identity is a lifelong quest that some of us band-aid over and seemingly solve with the status of a job. True identity is defined without it. For Wambach, soccer was an outlet to showcase who she already was. “You see, soccer didn’t make me who I was. I brought who I was to soccer.”
Wambach implores: “Don’t just ask yourself, ‘What do I want to do?’ Ask yourself: ‘WHO do I want to be?’ Because the most important thing I’ve learned is that what you do will never define you. Who you are always will.”