Over the years, I have hired outstanding women – educated, intelligent and highly articulate. Yet, I am exhausted. I have become profoundly tired of being a therapist and a babysitter, of being drawn into passive-aggressive mental games and into constantly questioning my own worth as a manager. I have had several women who quit to stay home to “figure out what to do next”. No, not to stay home and care for children, but to mooch of a husband or a boyfriend while soul searching (aka: taking a language class or learning a new inapplicable skill that could be acquired after work). Incidentally, I have not had a single male employee quit with no plan in mind.
I have had women cry in team meetings, come to my office to ask me if I still like them and create melodrama over the side of the office their desk was being placed. I am simply incapable of verbalizing enough appreciation to female employees to satiate their need for it for at least a week’s worth of work. Here is one example to explain. My receptionist was resigning and, while in tears, she told me that although she was passionate about our brand and loved the job, she could not overcome the fact that I did not thank her for her work. It really made me stop in my tracks and so I asked for an example. “Remember when I bought the pictures with butterflies to hang in the front? And you just came and said ‘thank you’? That is a perfect example!” – “Wait”, I said, “So, I did thank you then?” – “Yes! But you did not elaborate on what exactly you liked about them! Why didn’t you?” She had bought them with the company credit card and I actually did not like them at all, but I digress.
I have developed a different approach for offering constructive criticism to male and female employees. When I have something to say to one of the men, I just say it! I don’t think it through – I simply spit it out, we have a brief discussion and we move on. They even frequently thank me for the feedback! Not so fast with my female staff. I plan, I prepare, I think, I run it through my business partner and then I think again. I start with a lot of positive feedback before I feel that I have cushioned my one small negative comment sufficiently, yet it is rarely enough. We talk forever, dissect every little piece of it, and then come back to the topic time and time again in the future. And I also have to confirm that I still like them – again and again, and again.
I am also yet to have a single male employee come to my office to give me dirt on a co-worker or share an awkward gossip-like story. My female employees though? Every. single. one.
clarissasblog.com/2014/05/14/i-dont-want-to-hire-women/
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CURT:
I think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for men. I mean. Not only are we oblivious, but we just don’t care, and women don’t expect us to care. We just do our thing. And go on obliviously.
Men are easy. They want to know their place. If they have a place, and don’t have someone too stupid in the way, they’re happy. I’m extremely communicative and very friendly with anyone who will engage me so managing men is pretty easy. I love the young guys who want to learn so I spend extra time filing their heads. They love it.
I have had very bad luck with women in senior exec positions. In fact, it’s been almost fruitless. I suppose in other industries it’d be different. But in my generation the combination of feminism and craziness has just been impossible.
But in middle management, it’s been just the opposite. In middle management you’re trying to facilitate – herding cats. In executive management you’re trying to discriminate – apply scarce resources to the best return whether people like it or not. And women are much better at herding cats, and processing multiple lines of communication than men and that’s just how it is. I don’t argue with it. I just accept it. I have found male middle managers to be free riders, and female middle managers to be more effective. I think it’s genetic. I have been on a career long quest to reduce middle management, indeed all management, to the bare minimum wherever possible and to empower the talent whenever and wherever possible. This tends to lead to a project-based company that is often reorganized, rather than a department based company structure, that is rarely reorganized.
The gossip mill that women create is almost always destructive and the only cure is over-communication. I’ve tried to manage anti-gossip campaigns whenever possible. But the gossip thing is just insanely painful to deal with.
(My favorite example is the accusation that I was sleeping with my young female assistant, and I simply could not silence it, despite the fact that she was actually sleeping with one of my married business partners from the east coast. I never even sold the guy out. But he never defended me in public either. I don’t ever want to touch women at work. Too dangerous for white males in america. Just ignore them. But everyone thinks I do for some reason. Which is probably more that I’m friendly and clueless than anything else. )
It’s really good if you can get all the admin chicks in your company on a gossip containment committee. This turns the problem into an effective means of control because the girls at the lowest level who have the greatest access to gossip become empowered by policing gossip. You try to get them to tell you anything that’s negative. Then you tell the the TRUTH about what you’re doing and let them do the work. The problem is you can never lie to them. And if you screw up you have to tell them.
Good gossip lifts people up. Bad gossip cuts people down. It’s hysterical how effective this technique is. (I tell people, “if you want to gossip and conspire to make me a more successful person then please do.”) So there are positive ways to channeling negative behavior if you understand the incentives. (As strange as chick-incentives are to us men.)
What bothers me still, and something I would like to find a way to solve, is the degree of self destruction women practice upon one another. The hen pecking thing is just impossible. And yes (straight) women are much higher maintenance.
I hope to improve some of this over the next decade with Oversing. But I suspect that stopping women from trying to social climb their chick-status-ladder by gossip and undermining is freaking impossible.
