How People Succeed By Defying Expectations

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laura Huang, associate professor at Harvard Business School, has studied groups that face bias in the workplace, from entrepreneurs with accents to women and people of color. She says that the best way for individuals to overcome this type of adversity is to acknowledge and harness it, so it plays to their advantage instead of holding them back. Start by recognizing your outsider status and the preconceived notions others might have about you, then surprise them by showing how you defy their expectations and can offer unique value. Huang is the author of the book "Edge: Turning Adversity Into Advantage."

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.2	and practical advice on navigating disability, career failures, and joining a board.
0:14.0	Listen for free to H-BRA's women at work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HPR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard.
0:37.0	Whether you're interviewing for a job, angling for a big assignment, or pitching a new idea to a boss or investor,
0:48.0	the goal is always the same. You want to persuade people that you have the talent to succeed and even to outperform.
0:55.2	But how do you do that?
0:56.5	Especially when you're not the kind of person they were expecting to hire or promote or
1:01.0	fund.
1:02.0	Maybe you're a female mathematician or a
1:05.0	disabled politician or a disabled politician or a non-native speaker working for a foreign company.
1:09.0	Our guest today says that we all have the power to control how we're perceived by others, even
1:14.8	when those perceptions begin with bias.
1:17.4	The key is to find our unique edge.
1:20.2	This includes working hard, of course, but that's not enough.
1:23.4	We also need to delight people, enrich, or add value to their lives,
1:27.2	and deliberately guide assumptions and expectations about our worth.
1:31.6	She's studied entrepreneurs and corporate executives,
1:34.3	Olympians and hairdressers and she's here today to tell us what she's learned.
1:38.4	Laura Huang is an associate professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the book Edge
1:43.6	turning adversity into advantage. Laura, thanks so much for being here today.
1:47.0	Great, thank you so, there's bias, there's
	...

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