The Type E Woman: Everything to Everybody

Written by Jane S. Goldner Thursday, June 30 2011

In 1986, Harriet Braiker, Ph.D., published a book, The Type E Woman: How to Overcome the Stress of Being Everything to Everybody. As a practicing psychologist, Braiker noticed that, while sharing some of the same issues, high-achieving women manifest stress very differently than high-achieving men. The term “Type A behavior” became the catchall phrase for stress behavior when, in fact, research on Type A was done exclusively on men.

Why, 25 years later, should we still be concerned with this issue? Why is it important to pay attention to Type E behavior in the workplace today?
There is an abundance of statistics that point to the increasing numbers and importance of women in the workplace. For example, in addition to the increasing percentage of women in the work force, consider:

• Companies with the highest number of executive women had a 35-percent higher return on equity and a 34-percent higher return to shareholders compared to those with few women near the top (“The Bottom Line: Connecting Corporate Performance and Gender Diversity,” Catalyst, Jan.26, 2004.)
  
  
• Firms in the CAC 40 (French equivalent to the Dow Jones Industrial Average) with a high ratio of women in top management showed better resistance to the financial crisis. The fewer female managers a company has, the greater drop in its share price since January 2008 (Study by CERAM Business School, 2008).
  
  
• More women in leadership positions present a double-edge sword for them and their organizations. These women may bring the unique and needed leadership style of collaboration, communication, and teamwork, but they also bring Type E behavior – everything to everybody.

What is the definition of a Type E woman? Typically, she is a high-achieving woman with multiple roles who wants to excel in those roles, but it can be any woman of any age and position who tries to juggle multiple roles and desires to achieve. (Harriet Braiker)

On an anecdotal level, each time I talk about Type E behavior, women’s heads bob up and down in agreement and they say, “That’s me!” While only 15 percent to 16 percent of senior leaders and board members are women, there are more high-achieving women in the workplace than ever before. The dilemma continues for them. They still need to succeed by men’s rules, but also maintain the societal demands of what it means to be feminine. We all know the example of aggressiveness as a positive trait for men and aggressiveness as “bitchiness,” a negative characteristic, in women.

With fewer employees doing even more work and the need to develop high performing leaders for the sustainability of organizations, leaders in companies need to understand that women manifest stress very differently than men. When women get stressed, they are not Type A. Women are Type E – everything to everybody. They are trying to satisfy everyone’s needs (boss, coworkers, husband, children, and friends) and become more fragmented instead of singularly focused like their Type A male counterparts.

What are other differences between Type A and Type E behaviors?
Type A men are typically hard-driving, impatient, competitive, and aggressive. They are time-urgent, so typically Type A men arrive early for appointments. They have free-floating hostility/anger, and, when kept internal, that is the key trait that leads to ill-health. These men use quantifiable measures of success such as money, promotions, number of tasks completed, and number of “toys” owned. They see themselves as responsible for their successes. They identify the key to success as achievement in their professional lives.

Type E women may have some of these same behaviors, but they manifest and cope with them differently. Women are pulled in so many directions they are fragmented and have difficulty focusing. When they are at work, they are worried about home. When they are home, they are worried about work. Women still hold three times as much domestic responsibility and twice as much child-rearing responsibility as men.

Recently, a woman was interviewed on television. She indicated that one way she deals with this type of stress is to leave her Blackberry in the car for 90 minutes when she comes home from work so she can focus on her children, all the while worrying about what she is missing from work.

Some other Type E Behaviors:

• Having perfectionist standards so partial successes are seen as failures. Full success is not celebrated; the bar gets raised.
  
  
• Underestimating the amount if time it takes to do things so she over-schedules herself and usually runs late.
  
  
• Putting others’ needs ahead of her needs, which may create internalized anger and go unrecognized.
  
  
• Worrying about others’ stress and internalizing it.
  
  
• Continuing to demand more and more of herself and not asking for help, which results in spreading herself so thin that she is in danger of tapping out.
  
  
• Believing that success is due, in large part, to luck and the help from other people.
  
  
• Equating success to achievement in both her professional life and in her personal life.

Granted, stress is present in everyone’s lives. There is “eustress” -- good stress that accompanies such events as births, weddings, and other joyous occasions. There is a normal amount of everyday stress. And then there is “distress,” the type that leads to ill-health. As women continue to become more important in the sustainability of organizations and continue to juggle it all, they are exacting a cost for themselves and a lost productivity cost for their organizations due to dis-stress unless both the women and the organization focus on coping mechanisms. Simply recognizing these behaviors and being told to “get a grip” is not enough.

What Can Type E Individuals Do?

• Recognize and assess Type E behavior.
  
  
• Clarify personal core (mission, vision, and values). Know what is central and important.
  
  
• Create a list of multiple roles and how much time is spent doing each one. Compare the list to the core.
  
  
• Determine how to get help. Make significant others real partners. Delegate at work.
  
  
• Learn and practice how to say “no.”
  
  
• Carve out personal time. Learn relaxation techniques.
  
  
• Celebrate successes

As high-achieving working women swell in the ranks of leadership, they also have the potential to swell in the ranks of the “unwell,” exacting a personal cost for themselves and a lost productivity cost for their organizations. One of the main concerns of senior leadership is retaining top talent. If Type E women find their environments too stressful, one option is to find another organization that is less stressful because it promotes wellness by allowing them to gain control and focus. As companies develop successful cultures, it would be well-served for both the Type E women and their employers to “get a grip” on the everything-to-everybody syndrome by creating coping strategies.

Jane S. Goldner, Ph.D., is the author of Driven to Success: A 10-Point Checkup for Achieving High Performance in Business, a keynote speaker, and a consultant who helps leaders develop successful cultures for great results. She is a recovering Type E woman who, through presentations and workshops, helps other women recover.