Toxic Masculinity makes women concerned about working with men.
Since I spent my career in environments where women expect to find lots of toxic men and rampant toxic masculinity, I want to share what I learned about toxic behavior and how I controlled it.
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What To Expect
Working in a male-dominated industry, I learned that out of every 10-15 men, I could expect to find 1 toxic man.
I usually identified him because he spent a lot of time trying to round up a couple other men to join him in some form of obnoxious or aggressive behavior. Most often, men’s toxic behavior in the workplace comes out as bullying.
As women we often think this aggressive behavior makes a toxic man an Alpha male – and that is exactly what they want us to think. But in reality, he is just an Alpha Wannabe.
And Women, who see through this facade, can usually put a toxic man, in his place all by themselves
This is why most toxic men won’t act out alone. They will have wing men in the background encouraging their behavior.
It’s really important for women to understand that a toxic man acts out because he is allowed to.
As women, we are taught to report his behavior to management and we expect management to take the appropriate action. But the toxic man already knows that management probably isn’t going to do anything. He knows management will wimp out and ignore his behavior.
So, if you get a wishy-washy response from management that’s what happening. And if you expect them to change and address the situation, you will be disappointed.
This is why women must take matters into their own hands and resolve the situation themselves.
It’s a Man Thing
The first thing women must understand is that this isn’t a man-woman issue. It’s a man-man issue.
For whatever reason, the toxic man doesn’t feel respected enough. He feels low on the male hierarchy so he needs to act out and prove his worth to the other men around him. He thinks that by bulling and picking on someone else he will raise his status.
Contrary to what we are taught, he usually picks on another man first. But if that fails, he will turn his attention to a woman.
Being a female manager, you can imagine what I dealt with whenever I had a toxic man working for me. But since I understood this is a man-man issue, I took a step back and turned it over to the male hierarchy to resolve.
Here’s how it works:
Let’s say we have 10 male colleagues and 1 is toxic. His first move is to recruit 2 men as his wing men and create his little toxic gang where he can play the Alpha.
Out of the remaining men, there are another 4 you can’t count on to stand up to him. They will wait to see which way the wind blows before they decide what to do. If no one controls the toxic gang, these guys will be recruited to join them because that is where the power is. It’s this power shift that creates a toxic workplace.
Out of the remaining 3, there is usually 1 strong and highly respected man who will stand up for what is right. He is the man the rest of the men recognize as the true Alpha.
This is the man we need to identify. And, usually all we have to do is explain the situation to him, then stand back and let him do his Alpha male thing.
He will recruit the remaining 2 men to form a gang of good guys. The good guys will engage the toxic gang and start reminding them who the real Alpha is.
The real Alpha doesn’t bully. He just reminds the toxic gang that he is highly respected and wields a tremendous amount of power. This shifts the power back to the good guys side.
Seeing which way the wind is blowing, 2 of the noncommittal guys will join the good guys. The good guys now out-number the toxic guys 5 to 3, with the remaining 2 guys hiding out somewhere with your manager.
With the true Alpha man asserting himself, the balance of power is restored.
Our Challenge:
The biggest challenge women have in dealing with toxic men is identifying who the true Alpha really is.
Our popular definition of toxic masculinity identifies the toxic man as the Alpha. Or, we think a manager due to his position within the workplace hierarchy is an Alpha.
But a true Alpha is someone who has gotten there because he’s earned the position. He’s there because he’s earned the respect of everyone throughout the workplace hierarchy.
A Few Final Points:
The vast majority of the men women work with are genuinely good guys. I’ve been the only woman with hundreds of men and had no trouble . But then, I was also working with strong highly respected Alphas who kept the toxic men in line (including toxic senior managers).`
As a woman and a female manager I learned to build a working relationship with the Alphas. Since I was usually the first one aware of toxic behavior I notified them of a situation they needed to take care of. But I also realized things were working really well when they notified me of toxic behavior they handled that I wasn’t even aware of.
The truth is Alphas are a tremendous asset and they are our best friends in helping us create a really great work environment.
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