13 THINGS I’VE LEARNED FROM WORKING WITH MEN

March 24, 2008

I love working with men. They bring their male rules of conduct into the workplace and they fascinate me. They’ve set up the game, they know the rules well because they play by the same set in every aspect of their life.

Business rules.

Women don’t innately understand these rules, but in the workplace, the guys’ way sure does work if you happen to meet the public every day and have (or want) a leadership position. This is because “the public” is just all of us. Our social training has taught us that the male approach signifies confidence, experience, and ability.

Though the male default is to become controlling when they’re feeling pressured, we can still learn some valuable tactics from them. In the article, Book Review : Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office, you can learn about an excellent book for learning to see these behaviors and implement them yourself.

13 Things Men Are Good At

1. Don’t make a simple thing complicated. “If this is happening, then do that” works just fine most of the time. Don’t get yourself into a state until you’ve at least tried the simple obvious thing. Most of the time, all the things that might happen never do so don’t use up energy on unnecessary contingency plans.

2. Do not chatter on at length when speaking with clients or when speaking about business. You do not need to empty the contents of your brain. Pare it down to the essentials. This is especially important on the phone.

3. ‘Low-and-slow’ is the only tone of voice that will make a real impact with anyone.

4. Trust what you know to be true. Don’t question your plan. 85% of the time, you’ll be right. For the rest of the time, see No. 5 and 6.

5. Nothing is ever your fault. It’s either someone else’s fault or nobody’s fault.

6. On the rare occasions that something is your fault, have the grace to say so but get over it fast.

7. Do not make yourself too available. People will have more respect for the value of your time and you should freely indicate that you have respect for the value of theirs. Don’t call back too quickly or too often. Limit the amount of hand-holding you will do.

8. Men solve problems by doing something. They become frustrated if there is no action that will resolve the situation. Women like to discuss a problem, often without even really wanting a solution. In fact, we can discuss a question into the ground before making a move. Do not delay the action step. It may not be the perfect solution, but 95% of the time, it will be plenty good enough. There is no perfect option so don’t use time to look for it.

9. Learn to completely separate emotion from fact when making a decision. It takes a lot of awareness.

10. Don’t try to find a solution that will suit everybody. Decide on the best solution, without weighing the 8 other options. Whoever doesn’t like it can adjust on their own time, no apologies.

11. Stop wondering if your services are too expensive. They’re not.

12. Do not make assumptions about what people cannot afford. Assume that everyone has lots of money for the things they really want.

13. Do not endlessly revisit a decision. Once you’ve made a choice, move forward from there.

Men at work.

Allow your inner man

The most interesting thing of all is this : those that respond most to the above behaviours are women, not other men. We’ve been taught to respect the importance of what men do (but not of what we do). We bow down too easily in front of a busy, grouchy, self-important man (but when we’re overworked, we just work harder).

There are skills that women have honed over decades, such as collaboration and compassion, and we are extraordinarily good at these. Men have sharpened a different skillset. We can remain true to our female behaviors and learn to incorporate those traditionally male rules of conduct that convey confidence and are conducive to advancement and success at work and at home.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness