Are they really mistakes if half the population is prone to them?

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I read an interesting article today on the Financial Post’s Website called, “10 body language mistakes women leaders make.” The author is Carol Kinsey Goman, identified as “an international keynote speaker, executive coach, and management consultant.” She writes:

If a female wants to be perceived as powerful, credible, and confident, she has to be aware of the nonverbal signals she’s sending. There are a number of behaviors I’ve seen women unknowingly employ that reduce their authority by denoting vulnerability or submission.

Goman writes that women, among other behaviors, tilt their heads and nod too much, wait their turn when speaking, shake hands too delicately and emote too much.

I was struck by the idea that half the population (or at least half the population of leaders) is making “mistakes” in body language. Aren’t we using a male-centric standard of evaluating leaders here? If women were the majority of leaders in business, government and law, wouldn’t the more typically male body language behaviors be considered “mistakes”? I can easily envision a power structure under which interrupting, shaking hands in the bone-crushing way that suggests you’ve got something to prove and sitting emotionless while a deal partner speaks would be considered rude, mistaken behavior.

Certainly, most of the behaviors Goman criticizes are not inborn. Powerful women learn to temper their behaviors to make themselves less threatening to men, less likely to be called the dreaded b-word. (Remember Hillary Clinton’s “spontaneous” tears during the 2008 primary campaign?) It’s admirable that Goman dreams of a world where female leaders can interrupt, stop ending sentences with implied question marks and skip the hair flip. But to call out women leaders for making “mistakes” that really amount to adaptations is just blaming the victims.