The question I am most frequently asked isn’t about working with men, its about working with women:
Why are so many women such horrible bosses?
Even though I’ve never had a female boss, I’ve supervised and worked with women who supervised other women. From those experiences, I totally understand the question. There never seemed to be a shortage of drama and conflict. And because many of the women bosses acted horribly towards their subordinates, I dealt with a lot of HR issues that my male colleagues either ignored or just ran away from.
It may seem surprising that so many women are horrible bosses because women frequently tout their soft skills – understanding, listening, empathy, communication and teamwork – as reasons why women are better supervisors and managers.
But when women abandon those traits, we become cold, selfish, mean and bitter. I found we also choose to isolate ourselves, rejecting all efforts to feel included and part of the team.
Why does this happen to so many women?
The short answer is:
Because we listened to and believed all the erroneous narratives about men and the male-dominated workplace.
The most destructive narrative we believe is that the male-dominated workplace functions through survival of the fittest.
I remember this narrative from back in the 1960’s. Every week we watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom where we witnessed how the strongest, boldest, fiercest male rose to the top. Then we would see a courageous young male challenge and fight the Alpha for his position.
Most of the time the Alpha wasn’t toppled and the young usurper retreated to lick his wounds.
As we watched survival of the fittest play out, male scientists also told us men were like a wolf pack with Alphas, Betas and Omegas. In school, teachers taught us about the Gilded Age when ruthless, cutthroat men rose to enormous power and wealth.
We were conditioned to believe men and the male-dominated workplace functioned through aggression.
In response, we created our own narrative:
“Tear-down-to-rise-up.”
Women touted this narrative over 40 years ago and it still thrives.
“Tear-down-to-rise-up” teaches women to be aggressive. We believe we have to tear down and discredit our male colleagues in order to stand out. If we want a promotion, then we have to take down the person in the position and replace them.
Through the decades, “tear-down-to-rise-up” hasn’t been an effective strategy to advance women in the workplace. It’s only been effective in ruining our workplace relationships.
When we use it on our male colleagues they respond aggressively and ostracize us. We then interpret these responses as proof that the narratives are right – the workplace functions through survival of the fittest and men don’t want women competing with them in the workplace.
Unfortunately, we haven’t realized we just created and trapped ourselves in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Our fundamental problem is that we don’t understand how men really function in the workplace and we don’t understand their form of aggression.
Even worse, we’ve spent decades teaching women to act like men – to act the way our narratives tell us men act. In the process, we’ve forgotten that WE ARE WOMEN! And women’s aggression is very different from men’s.
Men use offensive aggression. They aggressively go after what they want. Most conflicts between men exist because a man can’t do what he wants, the way he wants because another man, is using his position or power to stop him. Eventually, someone backs down or there is a compromise. Then, for the most part, once there is resolution, the antagonism is gone.
Women use defensive aggression. When we feel attacked, we go for the kill. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom showed us that females are not afraid of any predator, especially when it comes to protecting their young. So, when we feel defensive in our workplace, we apply our instinctual “mama bear” attitude and we can get really mean. And as long as our defensiveness persists, so does the antagonism.
We use “tear-down-to-rise-up” to focus on our relationship with men in our workplace. Meanwhile we’ve ignored the effect our defensive aggression and using “tear-down-to-rise-up” has when we use it on another woman.
Many women bosses came up through the ranks believing in or using “tear-down-to-rise-up.” If they used it on their male colleagues, then they probably developed a lot of hard feelings.
In my experience, a woman who is a horrible boss is also extremely defensive. She expects to be attacked by men and women.
She expects men to favor a popular woman colleague and unfairly advance her career. She expects an ambitious younger woman to use “tear-down-to-rise-up” on her.
Her defensiveness makes her attack.
In response, the woman who is attacked becomes defensively aggressive. She attacks back.
Since the boss’s self-fulling prophecy has come true, she escalates. The other woman sees the boss as a predator and doesn’t back down. She may not openly retaliate. She may just rely on other more subversive means to get back at the boss.
It doesn’t take long for the workplace to be consumed in emotional female drama.
Chances are you’ve witnessed this in your workplace. And if not, turn on any REALITY television show featuring women. These shows promote women as aggressive, combative and overly emotional. They don’t act the way we want women to act.
In my experience many women bosses who act horribly have personal issues that have nothing to do with the workplace. Being a woman, I used to try to help them. But they exhausted me. So, I decided that I’m not a psychologist and they were responsible for getting help with their issues. My job was to address and hold them accountable for how their behavior affected the workplace.
The other common problem I’ve encountered with horrible women bosses is that they don’t how to work with other women.
Many turned off or abandoned their female traits believing they are incompatible with the male-dominated workplace. They try to fit in with the guys by becoming one of the guys.
Some look down on women in traditional roles. They fear that being seen as “a woman” will make their male colleagues lose respect for them. They fear they will lose some of their nontraditional responsibilities and be assigned more traditional ones. Their fear makes them defensively aggressive.
So how do we get women to stop being so defensive and aggressive? How do we get them to empower their positive female traits?
I found that since so many of these women feel ostracized, the best strategy is teambuilding. While there are many ideas for “teambuilding” out there, I’ve found that most of them aren’t effective. People know it’s artificial. So, you can always count on some men to not show up because “they have real work to do.”
What I’ve done that is very effective is to get everyone together and have them solve a workplace problem together. This video discusses this method and why it is so effective, especially when led by a woman.
Unfortunately, most men just wimp out of dealing with horrible women bosses which is why they persist. So, it comes down to women to address them. And while we may not think it is our job to do so, what we are really trying to do is have women empower their true female traits in the workplace.
This benefits all of us.
Empowered Women Are Confident, Not Defensive
To learn more, watch this YouTube video: