Promotion vs. prevention questions & how to spin them in your favor
by Ray Bass
It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century, we’re still so far from equality in the workplace. One prominent example is the discrepancy in venture capital funding: the gap between male and female entrepreneurs when it comes to securing funding for early stage cos.
Despite the fact that women own 40 percent of businesses in the U.S., they receive just 7 percent of venture funds for their startups. Keep in mind that over the last few years the number of women venture capitalists in the U.S. has increased.
This begs the question: What’s going on here? Why are female entrepreneurs receiving less funding than males?
One part of the answer lies in the work of Dana Kanze, an assistant professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School who, alongside her colleagues, conducted research on why female entrepreneurs obtain less funding than their male counterparts. Her findings revealed a clear, implicit gender bias: A difference in the questions entrepreneurs were being asked.
The research & results
According to Kanze’s study, male-led startups raised five times more funding than startups led by females—a startling gap, to say the least. The reasoning behind the funding gap, they found, had to do with the questions male and female entrepreneurs were being asked by (both male and female) VCs.
Kanze and her team observed numerous discussions between 140 prominent venture capitalists (40% of whom were female) and 189 entrepreneurs (12% female) and tracked their subsequent funding. The questions posed to male and female entrepreneurs, it turns out, were different—very, very different. Men were typically asked about their potential for gains (known as “promotion” questions), and women were asked about their potential for losses (known as “prevention” questions).
What’s the difference, you ask? Here’s a table, created by Kanze, that breaks it down a bit:
By being asked prevention questions, women in the study were put in a position of having to defend themselves and their abilities, rather than advocate for their potential. Prevention questions are usually concerned with safety, responsibility, security, and vigilance, and promotion questions have more to do with hopes, achievements, advancement, and ideals.
Think back to compensation or promotion discussions you’ve had with your prior bosses—were you asked questions like these below? I know I definitely was—and they’re all prevention questions.
As you rose through your career, were there times when you were discouraged?
What was the hardest criticism/feedback you received? How did you take that and turn it into something useful? What was the outcome?
Name one of your greatest challenges or worst mistakes made, how you overcame it and the lesson learned.
Name an insecurity and how you've gotten past it or name a career challenge you are wrestling with today and your strategy for coping.
Fortunately, how you respond to these questions can have a major (positive!) impact on the outcome.
What you can do
So, what does this mean if you or a woman you know is trying to fundraise? How can you avoid this trap and improve your outcomes, despite being asked prevention questions? Answer: Recognize prevention questions and give promotion answers.
The study shows that we tend to respond in the manner we’re asked, meaning if we’re asked a prevention question, we give a prevention answer—but according to Kanze, that paradigm actually yields the worst outcomes:
“Entrepreneurs who fielded mostly prevention questions went on to raise an average of $2.3 million in aggregate funds for their startups — about seven times less than the $16.8 million raised on average by entrepreneurs who were asked mostly promotion questions. In fact, for every additional prevention question asked of an entrepreneur, the startup raised a staggering $3.8 million less, on average.”
What Kanze also discovered, though, was that when women gave promotion answers to prevention questions, they were able to change their outcome.
“Entrepreneurs who were asked mostly prevention questions but gave mostly promotion responses went on to raise an average of $7.9 million in total funding. Conversely, those who responded to mostly prevention questions with mostly prevention answers went on to raise an average of only $563,000.”
Bottom line
If you want to change your outcome—whether it’s getting more VC funding, landing a promotion, or getting a job—you’re better off flipping prevention questions on their head and responding to the question as if it were promotion-framed. For example, if asked something along the lines of “how are you not going to fail?” (a prevention question), the best response would be something like “I’m going to succeed by doing XYZ.” You want to keep your answers promotional in tone and content, and do your best to exude confidence, own your worth, and emphasize your potential.
While this implicit bias has been proven out, it’s hard to say when the gender gap will close. If you are a female VC, my hope is that you come away from this piece feeling compelled to educate yourself and others on this gender bias (and all the other biases that exist in the workplace, both intentional and unconscious). And if you’re a female entrepreneur—or a female employee at any company—I hope you’re better equipped to recognize and address any prevention questions that come your way. We need to change the system, but for now we need to do the best we can within it while fighting for equality.