Anytime that we had a new hire in our organization, and definitely within our office, I was one of those that was asked to help with their onboarding and training. And without hesitation, I would enthusiastically say, “Yes!”
“Hey Colleen, could you take half a day and train Jane on this system?”
“Of course!”
“Hey Colleen, you’re really good in this department. Could you get Joe up to speed?”
“Absolutely!”
Without fail, I was saying yes. Now part of this is I love to train, so I wanted to make sure that they had a good foundation. But as a leader, I also wanted them to have a really strong onboarding experience, in terms of energy and culture and just positivity all around. But what I failed to recognize and understand is that I was participating in what’s called non-promotable tasks, NPTs. All of this time, this energy that I was giving into onboarding would not be considered when I was in my performance review.
These things weren’t taken into consideration for opportunity for me to get promoted to Vice President; these things weren’t being taken into consideration for a promotion. These are what we call NPTs. So as much as I may have enjoyed onboarding, I needed to understand that I should take control of the amount of time, and/or take control of whether or not that would be considered for any growth opportunity in the future. These NPTs, you might be participating in them. Are you being asked to plan social hours or plan baby showers? They’re not always social things, they can be business things such as the onboarding.
Or have you ever been asked, “Hey, could you take notes during this team meeting and then send a recap out for everyone?” Or, “Would you create or edit slides for so and so’s presentation?” These are NPTs because while they’re good for the organization, whether it’s for business or culture, they are not considered promotable tasks. Again, they’re not taken into consideration when you go in for your performance review. Now women, I am calling you out! You must start to say no. Women leaders, it is imperative that you say no to majority, if not pretty much all, of these non-promotable tasks.
Managers are 50% more likely to ask women to do these NPTs, which is unfortunately why it has been given the nickname “office housework.”
That is appalling – office housework, because women are more likely to be asked and say yes to these NPTs. Women leaders, for your own sake, if you want to continue for promotion or raises in the future, you have to start saying no to these NPTs; they are not considered. And look, you are already behind the game. Men are 21% more likely to receive a promotion, and we know they make more on average than women. So you’re already behind. And by continuing to say yes to these NPTs, you just get farther and farther behind. So women leaders, you’ve got to say no for your own growth.
In addition, you have a responsibility to your team. You need to lead by example – to show team members, and especially other females on your team that want to grow into leadership; you have a responsibility to show that this is not okay that women are twice as likely to be asked for this. In addition, when you take on these NPTs, it means that you are adding more to your plate. Because I’m sure that by you saying yes to planning that office party, you don’t get to move or push off other professional responsibilities. So what happens? You end up working more hours.
You end up working later, earlier, and that all contributes to your burnout – and we are fighting hard against burnout. Continuing to take on these NPTs, it’s ridiculous. Are you burned out? Stop saying yes to these NPTs. And finally, I know that so many, especially women because it tends to be part of our natural instinct to take care of other people, so you want to say yes, you want to sound like you’re a team player, that you’re there to help your organization and other people. But every time you say yes, you give up your power.
There is no power in somebody coming to you and enthusiastically saying yes. That’s not power ladies and gentlemen; the power comes when you take time to evaluate the opportunity. When you say, “No, thank you,” when you’re choiceful, when you know what it is you want and how these aren’t going to match it. So start creating some awareness in your organization of these old paradigms, start offering, “Hey, we need to go into rotation, we need to draw names from a hat,” whatever you need to do to change these practices so that it also isn’t being left up to the individual woman to say no, but you as a woman leader are starting to shift those paradigms in the organization so that everybody is in support and not always forcing women to have to be the ones to say no.
But women leaders, it starts with you; you have got to be that example.