This is part of a series originally created on LinkedIn, where we attempt to understand others whom we might think of as “Difficult Colleagues” and dismiss or try to fix them, but who we might need to think differently about and the situations we are in.
Understanding we might be wrong is a possibility that we don’t usually think about. We are usually the heroes in every story we tell.
But let’s think differently about our teammates and ourselves so that we can see our own potential problems with them that might be right in front of our noses.
For the previous posts in the series, click here:
· Difficult Colleagues? Introduction to the Series
· Difficult Colleagues? Possibility 1 – Paradigm Shifters
This Possibility is a tough one, fraught with triggers that may not be true.
Possibility 2 – Gender Behavioral Differences
From Katie Gaebel, “A factor that contributes to problems in our workplaces is our own biases on how people with certain identities/attributes should or shouldn’t behave. It isn’t uncommon for women to be perceived in a negative way and men in a more positive way when exhibiting the same behaviors.”
For several reasons, including work behavior, men and women are expected to act differently.
- Men are expected to be self-confident, right fit, extraverted, aggressive/assertive, competitive, ambitious, imposing, demanding, insensitive, strategic, mentors, loud, self-promoting, competent, better leaders than women
- Women are expected to be emotional, overly sensitive, caretakers, helpers, need mentoring, passive, naïve, soft, nurturing, weak, critical, needy, quiet, manipulative, afraid to speak, less able than men, self-effacing, worse leaders than men
The way we approach our work colleagues based on these factors has a lot to do with our own biases.
When we see women acting in a self-confident manner, we may say she’s “power hungry.”
When we see men acting sensitively, people might have said in earlier times that he was “weak.”
How can this be? What a derogatory mess this is! And right when we were trying to do a better job of living without bias.
Our expectations for what we expect from each gender are deeply embedded in our internal biases. It is an internal heuristic, a mental shortcut, that we don’t normally push back on our thoughts because it’s harder to think this way. Bias is easy, comparatively. It’s also usually very inaccurate.
As discussed in Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, our brains are relatively slovenly creatures – we’d rather think Fast (using general rules of thumb – heuristics) than Slow. Slow requires real thinking and diving into the recesses of our minds to turn a subject around and look at it from many angles in the light of day. In this way, we can question our thinking before we decide if something is true or not. Thinking Fast can lead to dismissing someone rather quickly because we have other, more important things to think about. However, when we do this, we’ve already banished the colleague based on our biased thinking, determining that they are a “Difficult Colleague.”
When our expectations for the behavior of others clash in real life with our gender biases, we make judgment calls, dismissing our colleague as “Difficult.” As we’ll see in another article, we have two different rulers that we measure things by: one that measures ourselves, and one that measures everyone else. We are pretty kind with our own ruler, but our ruler for others can be very harsh.
Our families instilled many of these beliefs in us as we grew up, or we sensed them in our environments. This is especially true of older generations who grew up in a time when these concepts hadn’t changed for eras, and only a very small subset of women worked outside of the home. I remember my being in one of the first generations of dual-income earners and being held in contempt by my own mother for this.
What our own parents lived through, along with their values and beliefs, are not contained in the working environment of today. We must confront our own thinking in order to make sure we are looking at truth.
Biases harm everyone. They don’t allow us to accept our own or others’ natural talents, fully express ourselves or allow others to express themselves, state our own or accept others’ true emotions, or sometimes, even live up to our abilities. They rob us of our good intentions. They rob us of genuine connection, of seeing and being seen, and rob our organizations of creative experiences that produce innovation.
This gets worse as we add the biases of transgender, gender-neutral, non-binary, agender, pangender, genderqueer, two-spirit, third gender, and other kinds of gender biases that exist, simultaneously. I’m grateful that we are seeing people be true to themselves. There is a sense of freedom as they do this.
How did we start dismissing others based on gender qualities?
- Men dare not have emotions at work, cry, care, be sensitive to others, be mentored except for power positions, be introverted, or accommodate others in work they do together. And they still can’t be too self-confident or too ambitious – ‘too’ any of the other “male traits” – if so, they are now Difficult Colleagues.
- Women dare not be too self-confident, extraverted, loud, assertive/aggressive, competitive, ambitious, demanding, independent. And they still can’t be too emotional or too nurturing – ‘too’ any of the other “female traits” – if so, they are now Difficult Colleagues.
As much as I liked the Barbie movie (although at the end, I sensed a dark motive inside it that I can’t let go of – I would have liked to have seen a workable compromise for the sexes, not the underhandedness that ensued), we now need a Ken movie that references today’s male aspects that have changed because we desperately need to have Balance finally come home.
We have seen new movements sprout up that focus on changing the narrative on masculinity, making it safe to express compassion in our work together. I want to especially note a book written by a colleague called “Reinventing Masculinity: The Liberating Power of Compassion and Connection” by authors Edward M. Adams and Ed Frauenheim. This is about challenging our biases; looking deep within ourselves to think through how we intuit our fellow workers.
Women, on the other hand, have had to overcome traditional thinking about not being equal to men in almost every sphere of life. Women can be just as competitive and strong as men, except that then they may be perceived as being weakened from their roles as nurturers. There is a fine line here to navigate. Women have had to fight longer and harder to be seen as equals. And yet, they are still not equal inside the workplace. They may feel like they have to manipulate the male-dominated world to get ahead or to get a seat at the table. Do the perceived biases for women get in the way? Most assuredly.
We dare not continue to live inside these old biases we learned when we were young. We are human beings who need each other within the great kaleidoscope of life. And our workplaces are where we can unlearn some of our biases. We are human beings who work together and must learn from each other as we push back against these things.
I find that our younger generations are forcing older generations to confront their biases head-on. Don’t be surprised if your granddaughter or grandson asks you to rethink something that you just said. This is very healthy, and they are doing you a favor when they hear something come from your mouth that has bias attached to it – we need that accountability – and then we need to turn around our thinking after they’ve drawn our attention to it.
As we go forward, we must learn to value each other’s brilliance, thinking, care, and compassion, as well as our strength, resilience in the midst of trials, and determination. Viewing people as people, regardless of how they identify, starts to open up the possibilities for each of us to grow.
Grow more respectful. Grow in our abilities to be more human with each other. Let’s outgrow gender bias.