Let me ask you: When was the last time you decided to tidy up the kitchen yourself because no one else at home would do it, or do it right for that matter? How about taking over the task of organizing lunches and get-togethers in your department at work? Or even taking over the planning of events in your friend group? If you’re reading this and nodding, you probably have been the victim of weaponized incompetence, and a willing victim at that…
Weaponized incompetence was coined on TikTok and is routinely defined as the act of pretending to be incompetent at a task in order to get out of it. Usually, this is done so as to get someone else (aka the weaponized incompetence victim) to do it. It can play out in any context, from household chores to friendship-related tasks, to family dynamics and definitely work environments.
For working women and moms, this is a phenomenon that definitely plays out in the home, where mothers tend to take on the majority of the parenting and household labor three times as much as their partners, according to a McKinsey poll. This became even more apparent, and traumatic for working women and mothers, during the COVID pandemic. The pandemic also brought to light the heavy invisible labor of women leaders, from supporting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts to providing employees with emotional backing or taking on unofficial mentoring and administrative projects.
The reality about weaponized incompetence, as much as too many of us unfortunately would prefer to justify and excuse it, is that it’s nothing but an attempt to manipulate others, namely women, into doing more work than their fair share. The real danger about it as related to gender, is that it has the unfortunate tendency to victimize women and girls, seeping into their education and socialization from an early age Although it’s embedded in the artificial, man-made fabric of gender stereotypes and societal expectations, it can be addressed and fought against. Here are a few ways to do so:
Call it out!
One of the first weapons against weaponized competence is the courage to call it out, just as it is, and for what it is. Often, the perpetrators are weaponized, or strategic incompetence, do not fully realize its negative impact on its victims.
The woman leader at work who takes on unwanted DEI or administrative tasks is piling on additional labor, hours and stress that are taking a toll on her well-being and even the quality of her work. The wife who has to shoulder the majority of household tasks is crumbling under the pressure, not able to be present with her family, attend to her work and take care of herself. The friend who is constantly expected to plan all outings is prevented from enjoying the latter because of all the work she has to put in. Calling it out is the key to starting the process of fighting it!
Have an honest conversation
The first time I mentioned the concept of weaponized incompetence to my husband, he was quite taken aback. As a matter of fact, when I mention it to my male friends and family members, they’re often surprised and even tickled a bit. Yet, the more we talk about it, the more we can come to a mutual understanding.
Having an honest conversation about the load taken on by victims of weaponized incompetence, mostly working women and moms, is vital. Whether it’s discussing the mental load of planning and scheduling everything on the home front, to the time and physical load of handling household-related tasks, to the pressure of doing too much at work, being honest about the consequences and impact of weaponized incompetence is crucial. The more we pretend we’re ok taking on more responsibilities, more work with less time and resources, the less others realize what is really happening. Hence the need to have frank conversations about what this means, and how to more equitably share the load…
Now release control!
Yet, it’s not enough to just call it out and have an honest talk. Last but not least, implementing solutions discussed and releasing control are key. As working women and moms especially, we are so accustomed to doing it all that releasing control and allowing others to step in can be particularly hard. As a recovering perfectionist, letting go of the need to have things done my way was one of the biggest challenges in this process, yet one of the most freeing parts of it. It also happened to benefit my entire family, as it became an opportunity for my partner and children to learn and even start enjoying some of the tasks they had been running away from previously.
Surrendering and releasing control, even if the initial outcome if not exactly to our taste, may take some substantial trial and error. However, it is what ultimately can, and will free us, from having to suffer from weaponized incompetence.
All in all, weaponized incompetence is a phenomenon which has always existed, although it was only recently coined on social media. More than just an unfair allocation of labor, be it personal, relational or professional, it is really rooted in the patriarchal, power-based construct of our societies. The good thing is, as we’re gaining more awareness of it and its negative impact, we’re also able to counteract it in constructive and beneficial ways, not just for its victims, but for the education and bettering of all.
Many are the professional goals set at the beginning of each new year, both at the individual and at the company level. However, little attention is often paid to diversity and inclusion goals as part of these. Yet, diversity and inclusion are an important part of each and every one of our careers, as they also benefit us all, including the companies and organizations we work in. This is especially important for working women and mothers, who are among the minorities suffering from the very lack or application of diversity and inclusion efforts.
As much as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts have been on the rise lately, what with the COVID pandemic and the recent social justice tragedies, including Georges Floyd’s murder, much work still has to be done in this realm. Moving from an obscure, often misunderstood concept adorned with endless speeches, statistics and numbers, to an actual impactful movement is still very much a work in progress. The reality is, the work of Diversity, Equity and Inclusionis a never ending one. Hence the need for us all to continuously recommit ourselves to it…
Here are 10 DEI goals to consider in our own careers, departments, and or/or organizations:
What does this look like for you? It looks like challenging oneself and others to learn about other cultures around, as well as take action towards being and encouraging others to be more inclusive and equitable.
For me, it looks like teaching and writing with a conscious awareness of my audience, and a commitment to take action to develop more equitable and inclusive content. What does it look like for you and your department or organization?
Support diversity and inclusion in your teams
Another important DEI goal is the support of diversity and inclusion initiatives in the environments that we’re part of. This can take many forms, from becoming an ally to an under-represented minority, to advocating in favor of increased diversity and inclusion. Your support can make a world of difference to one person, and by extension to an entire team or organization.
What is your support of DEI be this year?
Support the hiring AND retention of more diverse employees
Research shows increased diversity, especially gender diversity, contributes to greater innovation and better business results overall. However, this is mainly achieved through diverse and equitable representation, which involves hiring and retaining diverse employees. Unfortunately, hiring and retention of under-represented minorities is often lagging, and not a priority for many. Even when diverse hiring is encouraged and implemented, the lack of a diverse and equitable culture prevents the retention of under-represented minorities, which perpetuates and even compounds the problem.
If, in your individual, departmental and/or organizational capacity, you are able to support and implement the hiring and retention of more diverse employees, you’d be breaking one of the most powerful barriers to effective DEI. It may be recommending a qualified colleague for a position, expanding the pool of candidates considered for open positions, or serve as an ally to a peer. Some tech tools that can also help with this include Applied, a platform aimed at removing bias from the hiring process, as well as diversity-focused online job boards.
How can you support the hiring and retention of more diverse employees this year?
Focus on the impact rather than DEI numbers
The hype around DEI in recent years is undeniable. As a result of it, many organizations have focused more on inflated DEI numbers in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion metrics, than on the real impact of their DEI efforts. Increasing diverse employees’ numbers, or the number of DEI initiatives and trainings is a good start. However, ensuring a true culture of diversity, equity and inclusion, having diverse representation at the highest levels of management, and fostering a genuine sense of belonging for all, are way more impactful measures.
This impact can be achieved both at the individual and organizational level. Being willing and able to nurture an atmosphere of belonging, to engage in constructive dialogue around DEI, and strive for effective representation, are ways that we can all contribute to creating more DEI impact.
How can you create more DEI impact beyond the numbers this year?
Help someone through mentorship, sponsorship and allyship
One of the biggest obstacles to increased diversity, equity and inclusion, is the lack of support for under-represented minorities. In Lean In’s 2022 Women in the Workplace report, many women, especially Black and Latina women, report not being supported by their managers. This is where diverse forms of support can help.
Some of the most common forms of support include being a mentor, sponsor or ally. A mentor is someone providing guidance and knowledge to someone else. A sponsor goes a bit further by becoming an advocate for their proteges. An ally, on the other hand, is someone who strives to better understand others’, especially those from marginalized groups, circumstances.
In your capacity, whether or not as a manager, how could you support another employee through mentorship, sponsorship or allyship?
Participate in or create employee resource groups
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) aim to connect employees sharing one or many affinities within an organization. This way, they support employees and their development, and help to build more inclusive cultures. Some common ERGs bring together people of color, women, LGBTQ+ employees, single moms, caregivers, as well as employees with disabilities, to cite a few.
Participating in or even creating an ERG is an effective way to advance DEI goals in your organization.
Will you be participating or creating and ERG this year?
Create a sense of community
Creating a sense of community can be as simple as showing interest in another’s culture or background, welcoming newcomers, showing care, or recognizing individuals for their contributions. This is something that can be done at the individual and organizational level, and doesn’t cost much. As a leader, teaching others in your team, department or organization to be more inclusive can also go a long way.
How can you create more of a sense of community this year?
Listen!
On underrated aspect of DEI is the willingness and ability to listen to, and hear, others’ voices. Too often, employees’ concerns about DEI are quick to be dismissed, or buried under layers of unnecessary bureaucracy. Change happens when each and every one of us is willing to listen to others, especially others from marginalized groups whose experiences and circumstances we may be unfamiliar with. Therein lies the not-so-secret secret of deciphering and advancing the monumental cause of DEI.
To help in this, Allie, a chatbot integrated with Slack, helps in sending out Diversity and Inclusionn surveys, welcoming employee feedback, and even posting educational articles.
How will you manage to listen more to others in and outside of the workplace?
Link compensation to diversity metrics
Compensation deeply affects people, not just for obvious socio-economic reasons, but also at a much deeper level that can be tied to self-esteem and self-worth. This is where much can be taught and achieved in terms of DEI advancement by tying diversity metrics to performance and compensation. Making DEI an integral part of performance and compensation emphasizes its importance, and has the potential of creating more of an impact.
In your own capacity, how can you integrate DEI metrics into your own performance? As a leader, how can you encourage and implement the use of DEI metrics as part of compensation and performance?
Be consistent!
Last but not least, committing to more consistent DEI efforts, albeit in a sustainable and effective manner, is a major goal to strive towards. Having a plan, whether personal or at the department/organizational, can help in this regard.
How will you manage to be more consistent with your DEI efforts?
Overall, setting diversity, equity and inclusion goals for the New Year, whether at the individual or departmental/organizational level, is a process each and every one of us can undertake. In the long term, these should be goals that ought to be incorporated in everyone’s professional goals.
In this podcast episode, the first in the new year 2023, I discuss skipping the usual resolutions and instead going for consistency in 2023! If you’re like me, you may pick a word of the year at the beginning of each year to give your year more focus and direction. Mine this year is CONSISTENCY, and that is what I discuss in this episode, and share a few tips to be more consistent in our work and lives!
Here are links to the research mentioned in this podcast episode:
Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this week’s episode! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please share it by using the social media at the bottom of this post!
Also, leave me a review for the TCS podcast on Apple Podcasts !
The New Year is prime time to set goals, including our financial goals. While many tend to think about general life and career goals, few really devise an approach to tackle their finances in the new year. Hence why many find themselves repeating the same negative cycles of financial loss year after year…
As working women and moms, setting appropriate and achievable financial goals is all the more important as many of us tend to manage the finances in our homes. This is without mentioning the many single working women and moms who are sole earners in their households. Furthermore, as moms, we’re often partly or entirely responsible for the financial education of our children, hence compelling us to have a solid financial vision for the future.
I know in my own experience, it has taken me quite some time to get in the habit of setting strong financial goals every year. Despite my business background and growing up in a single-parent household where money had to be carefully managed, setting financial goals didn’t always come to mind. It is with time, experience, and through conversations with fellow women that I actually started paying more attention to the importance of financial objectives in our lives and careers.
If you’re thinking of setting financial goals in the New Year, here are three I would like to suggest to your attention:
Develop a more positive money mindset
As women often socialized to aspire to less in terms of remuneration (hello wage gap!) and money in general, we may be inclined to think of finances and money in a negative way. As a matter of fact, many may develop a scarcity mindset when it comes to money, not feeling like we deserve to be paid fairly in the workplace, or that we should not aspire to reaching higher levels in terms of position and compensation. When we add to it suffering from imposter syndrome as working women, having a positive money mindset can become a daunting prospect. Many women also suffer from being raised in families and environments where money was not discussed, let alone with the women in the family.
All these factors, and so many others, speak to the importance of mindset when it comes to setting financial goals. Developing a positive money mindset rooted in abundance instead of scarcity is the first step to achieving any desired level of financial success.
Yet, how do we go from a negative, or lukewarm money mindset at best, to a positive one? It’s a change that requires re-training our minds to think differently. One of my favorite tools to re-train my money mindset is through financial education, mostly financial books geared at women, such as “Women and Money” by Suze Orman or “Get good with money” by Tiffany Aliche.
Understand and own your money
The second financial goal that I’d like to propose is that of understanding and owning your own money. Too often, we have no, or very little of an idea, of the ins and outs of our own money. As busy working women and mothers, we can be so caught up in our daily commitments and duties that our own money slips through the cracks. This can translate into financial debt, loss, overuse of credit and overall disastrous consequences for ourselves and our families.
This is where setting a goal to better understand, own and manage our money can make a world of difference. This means committing to a consistent practice of taking inventory of our money, being aware of and accountable for our expenses, and setting up a reasonable budget that fits our personality and lifestyle. Personal finance software such as Quicken, Mint,YNAB, or TurboTax for taxes, can help in the process.
Plan to create generational wealth
Last but not least, the third financial goal I’d like to propose may sound like a lofty one, but is one most of us should think about when it comes to our finances. As working women and moms raising the next generation, impacting our communities and creating a legacy, our finances can serve as a powerful tool to create change and make a lasting difference. This is why it is so important to have a long-term financial view that includes planning to create generational wealth.
Generational wealth is wealth that can be passed on to future generations. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not something only reserved to the rich families and communities of this world. It is actually possible to build, starting with each and everyone of us. It can be done through investing in children’s education, in the stock market as well as in real estate. It also can be achieved by creating a business, and taking advantage of the benefits of life insurance. However, all this requires setting solid financial goals and having a clear plan.
Overall, setting financial goals is an important part of starting a new phase or season of life such as the New Year. Among these, developing a strong money mindset, understanding and owning your money and planning to create generational wealth are three of the most important goals we can set as working women and moms.
What financial goals are you setting this year?
With Gratitude,
The Corporate Sis.
PS: Please note some of the links are affiliate links.
After becoming a mother, I started getting in the habit of setting goals for my growing family. This became all the more important as our family kept growing, and the demands of work and life in general started taking over. Achieving some semblance of balance became harder as there was an increasing amount of tasks to attend to. As a working mom, juggling the home front, work, relationships, and everything in between would at times seem like an insurmountable challenge. Without some clear goals and objectives in mind, it was next to impossible to keep up. Hence the importance of setting family goals, especially as we start a new year…
I remember reading some business and strategy books (this is one of my favorites, as well as this one, and this one too), and thinking to myself that running a family and a household ought to incorporate similar principles. There has to be a foundation and systems in place, albeit unique and less business-like, to keep it functioning as smoothly as possible. Without these, the family unit is bound to crumble under the pressure of conflicting schedules, differing personalities, career demands and multiple other sources of pressure.
Setting family goals is not much different than setting any other types of goals, from personal to work and even financial goals. However, it does involve a greater level of complexity due to the sheer number of individuals, personalities and opinions involved. For family goals to truly be effective, they have to involve everyone and take into account each and every unit of the family. This can make for a monumental task at hand, and possibly a breeding ground of disagreements.
So how do we get to set effective family goals that involve everyone and can be achieved individually and as a family unit? Here are three tips that may help:
Start with a process of self-introspection
Yes, family goals involve the entire family. However, since the family is made up of separate individuals, it also requires each person to go through a process of self-analysis and introspection to determine what their vision of the family is.
When we started setting family goals in my own family, my husband and I quickly realized that coming from different cultural and personal backgrounds had us define the concept of family in very different ways. It was important for us to first think about what our own view of family was, in order to bring it to the table and discuss. It was also important to involve the children in this process, by inviting them to journal about their own family goals (this is an excellent journal for kids by the way).
Meet and discuss
Family goals are for the entire family, and do require the entire family’s contribution, including the children, as long as they are old enough to participate. Coming together with everyone’s view of what the family should be like, how it should operate, what the rules should be, and so many other factors, is a game-changer. This is where ground rules can be set, an effective foundation can be built, and where respect and consideration for all can be demonstrated.
This is also where fundamental disagreements can arise, which is also beneficial to identify where there is a need to set a different foundation. Some of the topics discussed can range from respect, health, responsibilities, religion, finances, communication, to time management, education and purpose.
Decide on the best goals for YOUR family
Setting family goals is not about reaching an ideal and elusive set of grand objectives for the family. Rather, it’s really about coming together and sharing what works best for YOUR family. No two families are alike. As much as we would like to replicate the organizational skills of this family, or the glamour of that family, the reality is, each family is beautifully unique. This is why it’s so important to focus on the goals that are appropriate, realistic and achievable for your family. It may mean starting with just waking up on time for school, or setting up a basic family calendar (check out this well-reviewed family calendar, as well as this More Time Moms Family Organizer too), or having a set budget,( you can use this Simplified Monthly Budget Planner, or this Monthly Finance Organizer) as opposed to launching into extra volunteering activities or investing in the stock market. Whatever it is, it has to be aligned with the type of family YOU have, its vision as well as its heart.
All in all, setting family goals is a crucial part of the goal-setting process as the new year begins. It involves partaking in a process of self-introspection, coming together to discuss, and finally deciding on the best goals for one’s family.
Do you set family goals at the start of the New Year?
With gratitude,
The Corporate Sis.
PS: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
