We did it. I’m relieved that we finally did. The anticipation was killing me. In leadership class we hit the inevitably contentious topic of gender in business. Faced with a Harvard Business School case study of two leaders in a transitioning company, one of the leaders was an aggressive and effective COO named Kirk.
In reading the case, my classmates and I naturally assumed that Kirk was a man. The case was written such that we would make such an assumption. No pronouns, no physical descriptions, etc.
When I initially read the case, I liked Kirk. However, when I watched a video of the real Kirk in action, I was immediately turned off. She was over-caffeinated, talked fast and loud, and used clichéd analogies and vague business terminology. She tapped her pen repeatedly on the boardroom table. My classmates, both male and female, had a pretty strong negative reaction to the very aggressive, direct, and demanding woman.
Funny. I liked her on paper when her gender was ambiguous. Even after learning that she was a woman, but before actually seeing her, I was a big fan. As soon as I saw her in action, I was immediately turned off.
To my surprise, when reacting to the video, one of my female classmates, whom I’d expect to relate to Kirk, said, “She doesn’t seem to have many of the soft qualities that I’d expect to see in a woman.” Beyond surprise, the comment infuriated another classmate and the back and forth began.
As the discussion on gender differences continued, our professor presented us with a study on students’ reactions to a similar case of a female business leader. The leader was given a male name in this second version of the study and male and female students reacted identically – they rated the male version as highly likeable and the female version as highly aggressive and overbearing. Both the male and female were rated high on effectiveness and competence.
While I certainly wasn’t shocked, I was disappointed that I’d sold out my own gender so easily and unknowingly. Did I dislike her for her androgynous suits and no-nonsense shoes? Did she not smile enough? Am I the statistic I’m trying to fight against?
In my limited experience, I’ve found that we women, Southern women in particular, are taught our whole lives to be pleasant and gracious, but also humble and harmonious, keeping the peace often at our own expense. The lessons aren’t explicit, but implied from years of schooling and dutiful parenting.
So many of us play happily into that traditional female role, but many others go farther and play helpless damsel in distress or beautiful idiot. Still others rebel and take it to the other extreme and play hardball, deliberately rejecting anything typically thought of as feminine. I find myself engaged in a constant back and forth of where I stand on the issue, of who I am and who I want to be.
The topic of gender in business has far too much breadth and depth than we even began to touch on in class. I’m glad that door is open though and that we discussed it respectfully but candidly and didn’t pretend that the glass ceiling is gone. There are so few women in the class, only 11 out of 56, I don’t want it to become a case of us against them, or worse, us against us.
Read more!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Couples Counseling
We sat side by side. Poised across a long rectangular table from us was a handsome middle-aged man with silver hair and kind eyes.
“Tell me what’s going on with you,” he said sincerely. “What is the biggest issue I can help you get through today?”
Tommy shrugged and looked to me with raised eyebrows as if to say, “Should I go first or you?”
In response to my encouraging nod, he began. “Well, we’re just so different. She wants things done by these arbitrary early deadlines and I just don’t work that way. I’m the get-your-homework-done-on-the-bus-on-the-way-to-school kind of guy.”
I tensed, holding back a jab about procrastinators. Tommy continued, “But I know I always wait until the very last minute. That works for me.” Turning to me, he said, “I’m sorry. I know that drives you crazy. If you’d just give me a firm push, I won’t have my feelings hurt. I need that.”
“Ok,” I said. “I will work on that. But I don’t want to be your mother figure nagging you to get your homework done.”
Similar dialogue continued for upwards of 30 minutes, as we traded concerns with one another, found suggestions for compromise, even laughed about past disagreements. All the while, the benevolent silver-haired man simply nodded in agreement or looked inquisitively from one to the other as we posed questions of one another.
The silver-haired man was not a counselor. This wasn’t couples’ therapy and Tommy is certainly not my husband – a fact for which I am confident he is extremely grateful.
Tommy and I are teammates on our mandatory, pre-selected teams as part of the Terry MBA program. We, along with two other classmates, are members of a four-person, permanent team to which we were assigned during the first week of orientation. Assigned in part according to our Myers-Briggs results, the teams are designed to have conflict. Tommy’s and my probing conversation took place during our group coaching session with a professional executive coach – a service provided to us by Terry.
Our two other teammates, Wilson and Vishal, were conspicuously absent. Vishal had come down with a nasty cold, likely from spending the better half of an entire day holed up with me in a small study room in the SLC working on an accounting assignment. Just today, I’m finally feeling better from my debilitating, but inevitable cold. As the fog has lifted from me, and my hacking cough has become a thing of the past, Vishal is rendered ill. A hazard of teamwork I suppose.
Wilson had opted out of the session. Scheduling conflicts hadn’t allowed him to join us and luckily, while the coaching resource is provided by the program, it is optional, not mandatory, making it strictly a benefit as opposed to a burden, given our current workload.
So there sat Tommy and I, facing our twinkly-eyed coach. He asked us vague, but still probing questions that caused us to look inward and answer the questions that that we had posed of each other, ourselves. Tommy and I left feeling a little bit shell-shocked by how revealing the whole process seemed to be, despite our initial skepticism.
We walked a few steps out of the meeting room in silence, down a wide corridor before we looked at each other almost shyly, which is uncharacteristic of both of us. I don’t know if I speak for him, but being in that safe environment, talking to an unbiased party about the challenges we face as a team helped me to relate better to my teammates, even to the two who weren’t there. It remains to be seen if we will really enact the compromise we agreed upon… Stay tuned.
Read more!
“Tell me what’s going on with you,” he said sincerely. “What is the biggest issue I can help you get through today?”
Tommy shrugged and looked to me with raised eyebrows as if to say, “Should I go first or you?”
In response to my encouraging nod, he began. “Well, we’re just so different. She wants things done by these arbitrary early deadlines and I just don’t work that way. I’m the get-your-homework-done-on-the-bus-on-the-way-to-school kind of guy.”
I tensed, holding back a jab about procrastinators. Tommy continued, “But I know I always wait until the very last minute. That works for me.” Turning to me, he said, “I’m sorry. I know that drives you crazy. If you’d just give me a firm push, I won’t have my feelings hurt. I need that.”
“Ok,” I said. “I will work on that. But I don’t want to be your mother figure nagging you to get your homework done.”
Similar dialogue continued for upwards of 30 minutes, as we traded concerns with one another, found suggestions for compromise, even laughed about past disagreements. All the while, the benevolent silver-haired man simply nodded in agreement or looked inquisitively from one to the other as we posed questions of one another.
The silver-haired man was not a counselor. This wasn’t couples’ therapy and Tommy is certainly not my husband – a fact for which I am confident he is extremely grateful.
Tommy and I are teammates on our mandatory, pre-selected teams as part of the Terry MBA program. We, along with two other classmates, are members of a four-person, permanent team to which we were assigned during the first week of orientation. Assigned in part according to our Myers-Briggs results, the teams are designed to have conflict. Tommy’s and my probing conversation took place during our group coaching session with a professional executive coach – a service provided to us by Terry.
Our two other teammates, Wilson and Vishal, were conspicuously absent. Vishal had come down with a nasty cold, likely from spending the better half of an entire day holed up with me in a small study room in the SLC working on an accounting assignment. Just today, I’m finally feeling better from my debilitating, but inevitable cold. As the fog has lifted from me, and my hacking cough has become a thing of the past, Vishal is rendered ill. A hazard of teamwork I suppose.
Wilson had opted out of the session. Scheduling conflicts hadn’t allowed him to join us and luckily, while the coaching resource is provided by the program, it is optional, not mandatory, making it strictly a benefit as opposed to a burden, given our current workload.
So there sat Tommy and I, facing our twinkly-eyed coach. He asked us vague, but still probing questions that caused us to look inward and answer the questions that that we had posed of each other, ourselves. Tommy and I left feeling a little bit shell-shocked by how revealing the whole process seemed to be, despite our initial skepticism.
We walked a few steps out of the meeting room in silence, down a wide corridor before we looked at each other almost shyly, which is uncharacteristic of both of us. I don’t know if I speak for him, but being in that safe environment, talking to an unbiased party about the challenges we face as a team helped me to relate better to my teammates, even to the two who weren’t there. It remains to be seen if we will really enact the compromise we agreed upon… Stay tuned.
Read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
