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Newton’s Third Law of Motion is:

For every Action, there is an equal and opposite Reaction

As a female engineer, I discovered there is a similar law in the male-dominated workplace:

When one man Acts, all other men must React

Early in my career, my Reaction to this phenomena was to ask: “What are you guys doing?”

To me it was wild to watch the frenzy of activity in all different directions as each man gave his individual response.

Why do men act this way?

They do it to maintain a balance of power.  As women we are told men aspire to have power over each other.

Not true.

Men aspire to prevent other men from having power or influence over them.  So, when one man acts, all other men must react in a way that maintains their neutrality with the actor.  If they don’t react then they are being submissive.

Being a woman, this law of the male-dominated workplace didn’t apply to me, so I didn’t react.  I was frequently then asked in a frenzied, panicked voice “Aren’t you going to do something?”

My response was typically, “Do what?  I’m not going to react just to react.  If I need to react I will react and I will do so with the appropriate response.”

In the first couple of years of my career men’s Law of Action and Reaction created one of my biggest pet peeves about working with men – too many men shoot from the hip.

When men shoot from the hip, they don’t take the time to figure out the appropriate and best response.  Consequently, they create new but completely avoidable problems.  This is called:

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Resolving unintended consequences wastes a lot of time and money which is my other big pet peeve.  So, out of my frustration I got very good at breaking the Law of Action and Reaction.

“Guys STOP!  You don’t know what you are doing.”

That got their attention because challenging men’s competency is always a good way to get their attention.  That’s another law of the male-dominated workplace.

Before they could React to me, I would tell them, “Do you guys even know what you are reacting to?  No, you don’t.  So, let’s stop and figure this out so we can respond the right way and we shut him down, for good.”

You see, in the male-dominated workplace the Law of Action and Reaction is perpetual.  The original actor interprets the original Reaction as an Action so he Reacts.  This second Reaction is then interpreted by the original reactors as a new Action so they must React again.

This back and forth can go on and on for days, weeks, months, years…

A great example of this is the Stock Market.  It reacts to a headline.  Stocks immediately plunge or soar.  But is the reaction the correct response?  There is no way to know because there is no tangible change in the performance of a company or sector yet.  But traders get into a frenzy, “I have to React, I have to React.”

And with everyone reacting the way they think they need to, stocks radically go up and down, and up and down, as everyone is reacting to everyone else.  The Stock Market calls it Volatility.  I call it Stupidity.  There is no need for it.

In the list of tangible values women bring to the male-dominated workplace, our ability to break the Law of Action and Reaction is at the top.  It is of enormous value because we can stop the behavior that leads to the creation of wasted time, money and manpower.  When we stop or disrupt this behavior we can make a huge direct and meaningful impact on productivity and the bottom line of our workplace.

This is the kind of difference we want to make – we want to #BeImpactful.

Empowered Women Don’t React, They Respond Appropriately.

 

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