There are plenty of strategies for getting proper attention paid to your ideas in the workplace — visit the library and you’ll find sections on it. But what if those strategies fail to counteract built-in bias, like that which many women encounter at the conference table? The women on Barack Obama’s senior staff have a suggestion for workers feeling the neglect: band together and use the strategy of “credit and amplify.” Or what a NY mag article calls the “shine theory.”
Credit and Amplify works like this: when a female staffer makes a suggestion, others make sure to repeat that suggestion, crediting the originator aloud and amplifying it as a basis to agree — or even to disagree. (The point being to make sure the originator gets credit, and that ideas are given proper attribution.) The Credit and Amplify strategy makes ownership of initiatives and ideas less slippery, and properly pegs an idea to whoever introduced it. It’s working, according to veterans of Obama’s staff, which has seen more women rise in the ranks since his early staff was dominated by men from his campaign. Today half of all White House departments are headed up by women.
