Stereotype & Identity Threat - Part 2

In part 1, I shared my experience attending a Flag Football coaches meeting where, as the only woman present, I encountered stereotype threat - the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about your group that can affect performance and behavior. Despite no overt discrimination, subtle environmental cues and being the minority led me to second-guess my actions and hold back participation, illustrating how stereotype threat can manifest even in low-stakes situations.

The second half of the story: Why does any of this really matter?

First, Steele's work on stereotype threat is profound & more people should be aware of it. Whether you're a member of a privileged or minority group, you can experience stereotype threat and understanding it's effects may change the way you act and understand others. Though this is a very low-risk, low-impact stereotype threat example, hopefully the story helps you carry the concept and empathy for it into your own real-life interactions.

Second, what I learned from the experience helped me shift my focus and show up in a way that I am proud of. Maybe you can learn something from it too.

In the past, how these fellow male coaches saw me would drive my inner dialogue (Steele calls this "churn": the disruption or preoccupation of your thinking where your mind focuses on the stereotype or identity threat & how to fix it rather than on the task at hand). It would also drive my motivations for how I act moving forward. As I did at this meeting, I would spend time in my head, ruminating on how I was confirming the stereotype and then spend most of my energy trying to disprove that stereotype to these men: that I'm capable of being one of the guys (cue college flashbacks), capable of being as knowledgeable in football as they were, even capable of throwing a spiral (which imho is better than I've seen some guys throw).

In Whistling Vivaldi, Steele provides some alternative ways to change the impact of stereotype threat, both external to the person experiencing it & internal to them.

External Solutions:

Critical Mass - if just one additional woman was there, the stereotype is much less obvious and the narrative that I don't belong goes away.

Empathy - a simple act of recognition/attempted connection from the others in attendance would have gone a long way to reinforce that I do belong there.

Internal Solutions:

Disassociate - If I care a bit less about the experience, recognize that it doesn't define my being, my identity, the threat could be diminished & I could focus on the task at hand easier. Great, but it's really hard to "care less" about things that seem to challenge my identity.

Disidentify - I could decide that my goal of being a great football coach just isn't something I'm interested in anymore and the threat will diminish. This isn't an option for me - I made a commitment to my daughter that I'm not interested in breaking.

Reframe/Self-affirmation - Changing my perspective on the situation to focus on something positive about myself and reflects my values will put less pressure on me to disprove the stereotype and gives me a positive place to direct my energy. Sounds pretty great - let's go with this one.

My reframe: the identity that I actually care about here isn't that I'm a woman who understands and likes to play sports. It's actually about being a confident mom coaching her daughter's sports team. Modeling for her and all the girls in the league that if they're interested, girls can be leaders in this space too, and that it's okay to coach differently than others.

Now that's an identity that I can achieve by just being myself, showing up in my integrity without giving away parts of myself to prove myself. It's not likely to be easy at times, but if my mind is going to churn on something, I'd rather it focus on being a great role model for my daughter and her teammates than focus on what my fellow coaches think about me. And guess what? In the process I'm going to disprove the stereotype because I do know a lot about football and about coaching sports, and I'll likely perform better as a coach because I'm less distracted with the negativity of proving the stereotype wrong.

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"In some of the situations where we care most about our results, it actually serves us to care less. And it's hard to do that, but thinking about other things that you care about, other areas where you excel, seems to be a powerful step toward putting each performance, each test, in perspective. And that's probably something we could all benefit from."

Adam Grant's recap of his conversation with Claude Steele on the podcast ReThinking