Tag: male-dominated workplace

The HUGE Misperception Women Have About The Male-Dominated Workplace

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Women have a HUGE misperception about the male-dominated workplace that has done incredible damage to our efforts to advance.

Women work from a narrative that says men want to climb to the top so they can have power over others. Many women believe men aspire to control and dominate others – they want to be authoritarians, dictators and the king.

If you think about it, that makes men sound really dysfunctional and as if all men are inherently insecure with control issues. But we know most men aren’t that way, they are normal guys. However, the few that have real control issues – such as the recent list of powerful men who are sexual harassers – get a lot of attention and reinforce the narrative.

In reality, men don’t aspire to have power over others.

They aspire to keep others from having power over them.

Men want to be autonomous – they want to be independent and have self-determination. They want to exercise their own judgement to do what they want, when they want, how they want. They don’t want to be treated like a child who has to ask permission or be told what to do. Therefore they aspire to rise higher in the organization so there are fewer people above them who can tell them what to do.

If you think about that too, you realize it is why every revolution, rebellion and resistance movement was fought. It is why there are very few monarchies left. Men fought for autonomy, self-determination and self-governance.

So if men aspire to be autonomous then why do so many women believe men want power and are driven to protect their power structures?

To understand that, we have to go back in time to when women had no legal rights and were completely dependent on men. Women spent their lives in a precarious and vulnerable state. Their only means to attain financial security, power and status was to attach themselves, through marriage or family affiliation, to a strong man with those attributes. Therefore women needed to see the public sphere (the world of government and business) as the male proving ground where survival of the fittest played out and the strongest man rose to the top. Women used men’s success in the public sphere to measure how good of a marriage prospect he was.

Women saw the public sphere for what they needed it to be. Their perceptions about how it functioned were formed by being on the outside looking in through their perspective. They weren’t formed by actually watching and observing how men interact with each other in the workplace.

When women went into the male-dominated workplace they brought their perceptions with them. They wrote their own narrative that one had to “tear down to rise up.” This narrative said women had to fight men for power. Women had to tear down men’s power structure in order for women to rise and take power for themselves.

Women weren’t shy about stating they wanted to be the CEO’s, on corporate boards and in top government positions for power. Once women obtained this power, they believed they could dictate new rules and exercise their control. (Ironically, women stated that they wanted to be just like the men they wanted to tear down.)

However, women’s belief in how they thought the male-dominated workplace worked clashed with how it really worked.

Men who aspired to be autonomous, saw women’s quest for power and control as a threat to the autonomy they valued and the entire structure they built to promote their autonomy. Faced with this threat, men resisted the advancement of women.

For 40+ years, men and women have interacted through a huge misunderstanding of what the other wants and values. Women interpreted men’s resistance to advancing women as men wanting to subjugate women. Even when men treated women like men – like people who valued autonomy as much as men – women felt rejected. To women autonomy feels like you are being left to fend for yourself, no one supports you and you are in a sink or swim situation with no life preserver. It doesn’t feel like you are being treated equal to your male colleagues – it feels like you are being ostracized.

So when men treated women as their “equals”, women still saw it as men rejecting women in order to keep power for themselves. It reinforced the narrative that men work off a power and control structure and that women needed to tear down that structure. This in turn caused men to believe women worked off a power and control structure and men had to stop women in order to protect their autonomy.

Even worse for women, men learned how to use women’s perception about the power and control structure against women. If women want to believe men have all the power and women assume they are in an inferior position, men, especially dysfunctional men, will take advantage of that.

I suspect that the increase in harassment and bullying of women is due in large part to this dynamic. Many men believe they will get away with it because women are taught they are powerless victims who cannot overcome the power structure. And as I said earlier, these dysfunctional men get all the attention and reinforce the narrative that men are all about power and control. We create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Today we have a huge mess of misunderstandings and misperceptions we need to fix.

In order for women to achieve equality and parity with men, they must first change their perspective and stop buying into the power and control narrative. They have to see the male-dominated workplace for how it really functions and for the huge role AUTONOMY plays in its structure.

Women need to watch and listen to the men they work with.

Are they acting to have power and control over others?

Or, are they acting to preserve their AUTONOMY – to do what they want, when they want, how they want? Are they being isolationists who want to pretend their actions don’t affect other people and resist other people’s actions affecting them? Do they resist listening to others, wanting only their voice to be heard? Do they take autonomy to an extreme by becoming selfish, self-centered and even narcissistic?

I guarantee that if you look for autonomy in the male-dominated workplace you will be shocked by how much of it you see. It’s rampant. As women, tune into all those things that bug you about working with men that don’t seem to come from power and control – they probably come from autonomy.

Only when women learn to recognize autonomy and understand its power in the male-dominated workplace, will they put themselves on the right path to realizing their own equality.

One more point.

I use the Yin-Yang concept to describe the natural and correct interaction of men and women. Notice in this image there are no power and control mechanisms. It is about mutual influence and harmony.

Therefore, for everything men do, women have a balancing, influencing reciprocal action. We are inherently equal.

However women will never recognize and exercise their inherent equality if they continue to work off of bogus narratives. So change your perspective. See the male-dominated workplace for how it really is.

Empowered Women See the Male-Dominated Workplace For How It Really Functions

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December 1, 2017
Seeing and Believing In the Equality of Women

What value do women, bring to the workplace?

For centuries the accepted answer was “None.” Even today most of us can still only give a vague answer. We hear that companies with more women perform better but we can’t specifically state why that is. Without a clear answer, women don’t know how to leverage themselves at work and companies don’t have an incentive to proclaim “We need to hire and promote more women!”

The reason we can’t define the value of women is because we are still influenced by old ideas. Most notably is the Doctrine of Two Spheres, which most of us probably never heard of even though we know its effects.

The Doctrine of Two Spheres states that men and women, due to their biological makeup naturally inhabit two distinct and separate spheres. According to the doctrine men naturally have traits suited for the public sphere (politics, law, business, commerce, academia and finance) while women naturally have traits suited for the private sphere (domesticity, child rearing and religious and charitable work). This doctrine determined that male traits set a superior standard in the workplace and female traits are of little to no value.

Back in the 20^th century when women first went into the workplace to work on par with men, we didn’t question the validity of the doctrine. We didn’t declare women’s equality by saying “Female traits are just as important to workplace success as male traits!” Instead we sought women’s equality on the basis of equal rights and equal opportunity – giving women the right and the opportunity to go into the workplace and achieve the superior standard set by men.

Without the declaration that female traits are just as valuable as male traits, a woman couldn’t work on par with men by acting like a woman. To be equal she had to be perceived as being the same as a man. She had to leave her female traits behind in the private sphere and adopt male traits for the workplace. She could have the body of a woman but she had to think and act like a man.

Many, many women still think this way.

The consequences of this have been enormous for women. We perpetuated the perception that men are superior and women inferior in the workplace. We made women choose between their femininity and having a career and financial security on par with men.

This choice keeps women out of many industries, jobs and professions, especially the highest paying. It is a major contributor to the wage gap. It leads women to conclude that they can have a career but they can never go as far or achieve as much as their male colleagues. It is a significant reason why women aren’t advancing in the workplace.

This is why any effort to advance women has to start with throwing the Doctrine of Two Spheres in the trash can. We have to stop comparing women to men, stop telling women to copy men and stop believing that the way men do things in the workplace is the best and right way. We have to stop believing women will obtain equality when we measure up to the standards set by men.

This is how I began my engineering career. Like many women, when I started my career I had high expectations of my all-male workplace. However, it took me only a few days to say, “What the Hell? I thought you guys knew what you were doing!”

All around me I saw was chaos, crisis management, stress and lots of inefficiency. Any concerns I had about measuring up to my male colleagues immediately vanished. I saw lots of things that I needed to fix if my workplace was to meet my standards.

I quickly realized that the way my male colleagues worked always felt incomplete – it was as if there were a lot of “things missing” in everything they did. At the time I couldn’t quite articulate what was “missing” so I began using the term “Swiss cheese” to describe how they “functioned” and “completed” tasks.

To fix my workplaces I didn’t copy my male colleagues or compete in their discussions. Instead I listened for and looked for what they weren’t saying or doing. I looked for the Swiss cheese holes. Then I asserted myself and filled in the holes. Filling in the holes felt obvious and completely natural.

It also made our performance soar. It made me wonder why millions and millions of men armed with their superior traits never figured out how to fill in the holes like I did. We had the same education and experience. There was only one difference between us – I was a woman.

Could it be that as a woman I brought unique and valuable traits to the workplace that men couldn’t?

After many years and many workplaces I concluded the answer was – Yes!

I discovered that it was the combination and interaction of male and female traits that made workplace performance soar.

To understand how this works we only have to look to the Yin and Yang concept we are already familiar with.

Unlike the Doctrine of Two Spheres which divides male and female into two static and separate spheres, Yin and Yang are connected opposites.

Yin and Yang continually interact and influence each other. Neither is superior or inferior. Each controls the other and both need the other to create a harmonious whole.

Yin and Yang allows men and women to be different but still remain full equals.

But it is really the concept that men and women together create wholeness that is really important.

This is what I picked up on when I began working.

My male-dominated workplaces weren’t whole. They were full of Swiss cheese holes because they didn’t have any women.

I came along and provided the missing other half. By asserting my female ways of thinking and doing things I made my workplaces whole.

The significance of this is enormous to all workplaces and companies.

It means they are all under-performing.

This is especially true for all those heavily male-dominated STEM industries who work from the premise that male traits are the right traits for their industry. But watch the movie Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine. Listen to how many times the word “chaos” is used and how often the men talk about their stress and frustration. This occurred because they were working with only one half of the whole.

Workplace that function in wholeness, achieve greater performance while also reducing stress, frustration, chaos and inefficiency. That is the beauty of working in wholeness.

So let’s answer the original question: What value do women, bring to the workplace?

Women make the workplace WHOLE.

This is why workplaces with more women perform better.

Empowered Women Understand They are One Half of the Whole and Essential to Every Workplace

To learn more about the value of women in the workplace and how we create wholeness, checkout my book.

November 28, 2017
How to Change Sexist Perceptions

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I read a lot of articles about women in the workplace and it seems we are fixated on identifying every slight, bad comment and bit of poor behavior. I’ve been told many times that the intent is generate awareness of sexual biases in the workplace and let women know what they are facing.

I can accept that but sharing bad experiences without presenting solutions that change workplace behavior does nothing to advance women. It only lets us make another notch in our “how women are treated unfairly” belt. We need solutions that actually work.

So why don’t we get solutions?

There are many reasons. One reason is because many people believe an individual woman can’t do anything to change her workplace. They believe change only happens from the top down and it takes CEO and senior management intervention to advance women.

However, that is a myth. The male-dominated workplace already knows (and it can cite lots of its own examples) that top down directed change does NOT work. Real change can only happen from within. This is why it is up to individual women to change their workplace’s behaviors.

So how do we do that?

We think outside the box. We get creative so we make sure we don’t absorb the negativity being thrown at us and allow it to diminish us.

Typically we are taught that that when we are faced with unacceptable behavior we have a binary choice – Let it go or Fight back. Too often women let things go when we would really prefer to take a stand because we don’t want conflict. We are afraid that the conflict will back fire on us – we will be seen as a troublemaker and the sexist behavior dismissed.

There is however a third option that is effective – teach men through humor.

Humor works because men like to jab, joke and prank each other. (It is what makes working with men so much fun.) When we use humor we show that we aren’t easily offended which men then interpret that as being strong and confident. Humor is also an easy way to build rapport and become part of the gang.

I’ve used humor to deal with a variety of situations from mild to crude. Here is an example of how I handled one sexism based situation:

I was a project manager working in a construction office out on a construction site when I kept hearing rumors that I wore “high heels” to work. I typically wore one of two pairs of old shoes. They had 1-1/2 to 2 inch heels and were far from my definition of “high heels.” To me they were “construction office shoes” and not something I would wear if I worked in the main office. If I went out on the construction site, I put on another pair of “site shoes” that I kept under my desk.

One day while sitting in my office I overheard another project manager on the phone whispering about my unsuitability for being a project manager. He whispered “She even wears high heels to the office.”
That was it! It was time to put this issue to rest.

The next time I went home I brought back a pair of black high heels. They weren’t sexy. They were just a nice pair of heels that I would wear with a business suit to look “professional.”

When I got to my office I took one of each pair of shoes and set them on my desk. Under the shoes I hung a sign that said “High Heels, Office Shoe, Site Shoe” with arrows pointing to the appropriate shoe.

That got a discussion going. The guys began an all-day discussion of women’s shoes and their personal preferences. I learned that my “high heels” were nice but not sexy enough to be considered “date shoes.” I told them I left my Carlos Santa shoe collection at home because I didn’t want them drooling all over my desk.

By the end of the day the matter was settled. It was determined that I didn’t wear “high heels” in the construction office. I wore “ugly shoes.”

After that the other project manager and I developed a really good working relationship. We teamed up and used our similar sense of humor to lighten the mood in an otherwise stressful environment. By not getting mad, offended and preaching to the guys, I built rapport and strengthened our team.

Throughout my career I probably experienced many more sexist incidents than most women. However, I’ve only made a few notches on my “how I was treated unfairly” belt because I chose to use humor to flip the situation. By flipping the situation, I stood up for myself and I made a positive impact on my male colleagues. Consequently the sexist behavior that was intended to diminish me only made me stronger and more secure in who I am.
I have more stories and I will share them in future articles.

Empowered Women Use Humor to Take a Stand Against Sexism

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August 28, 2017
It’s Time To Get Out Of The 20th Century And Start Thinking Like 21st Century Women

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A couple of years ago I was introduced to a woman who coached professional women. When I told her I was in the construction industry we struck up a conversation about the male-dominated workplace. As she talked I kept thinking “That hasn’t really been my experience” but I continued to listen because I am interested in other perspectives.

Eventually she talked about how working mothers are judged differently from working fathers. That’s when it struck me that her words were directly out of the 1970’s and 80’s. I interrupted her and told her that – thanks to divorce – the male-dominated workplace has dramatically changed its attitude towards working parents. Now that men get joint custody and experience being a single working parent, they understand and empathize with the challenges of being a working mother or a single working mother.

As she began to talk again, I started wondering where she was getting her information from. She never worked in the male-dominated workplace, so in my mind I began challenging what she said.

As I tuned back into our conversation she was discussing how aggressive men are and how they use “tear-down-to-rise-up” in order to get ahead and get promoted.

Before I could stop myself I blurted out “No they don’t! That’s just something women believed back in the 70’s. We watched too much Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom growing up and believed that since survival of the fittest worked in the animal kingdom it also works in the male-dominated workplace. It’s women who promote the idea of tear-down-to-rise-up and it’s one of the biggest reasons we make.”

After our conversation I began thinking about how much misinformation about the male-dominated workplace is still out there – how, even though we are well into the 21^st century, we still discuss it using outdated 20^th century narratives.

The problem with the old narratives is that we wrote them while we were still dependent on men for financial security and social status. They were obtained in the larger world outside the home. We thought we understood this world and believed it was driven by power and strength. Everything we were taught in school, in history, in literature, on TV and even in fairy tales told us men always fought each other and the winner was rewarded with money, respect, power and status – everything women didn’t have.

We knew men didn’t go to work every day and physically fight each other – it was more of a mental battle. The men with the more dominant, forceful, aggressive and bold personalities were the ones who got ahead. We even believed that companies were successful because the men at the top had larger than life personalities and it was the sheer force of their personality that drove the company’s success.

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By the 1960’s women wanted their own respect, status and financial security. So we entered the male-dominated workplace anxious “to compete with men” and fight for our power, wealth and place at the top. We were ready to be aggressive, forceful and climb the corporate ladder the only way we were taught – by battling the man above us, beating him and taking his place.

We assumed we had it figured out. But we didn’t know we were sold an image of the male-dominated workplace designed to portray men as heroic figures to women. The idea, that men tear-down-to-rise-up, fit our romanticized ideals and imagination but it wasn’t reality.

The reality of how men get ahead was far less gallant.

The male-dominated workplace hierarchy is really a carefully constructed network of alliances. Men use their connections to be invited to join an alliance. When the alliance does well, the men in the alliance also do well. Therefore, if a man wants to move up the corporate ladder, it is critical to be part of the right alliance.

Women went into the workplace without understanding this and that using tear-down-to-rise up brings the wrath of the entire alliance down upon us.

Alliances are built on trust. Alliance members look out for each other and take care of each other. When women used tear-down-to-rise-up men saw us as a usurper who stabbed an existing alliance member to gain entry to their alliance. This meant we couldn’t be trusted and therefore had to be removed. The alliance became aggressive and pushed the women out or down.

For women, this aggressive response reinforced our larger narrative. Men want to keep all the power for themselves. Men don’t want women in the workplace. Men are aggressive. Femininity is weak. Women need to ramp up their aggression in order to beat men in the workplace and rise to the top.

Because these narratives are self-fulling they have endured. Today they are main-stream and accepted as truths. They are told to women as career advice but actually only serve to hold women back. Let’s look at one example all women are familiar with – the conference room meeting.

We’ve all read or heard that when we attend a meeting in the conference room, we must sit at the table because that is where men sit. By sitting at the table, we can lean-in and jump into the raucous battle of ideas. Our goal is to defeat all the men so our idea is the winning idea! That’s how we show we are confident, bold and have that larger than life personality that will get us promoted. (Ironically we are told this by people who used connections and alliances to get ahead.)

But as any woman who has experienced in this scenario knows, having the winning idea is not the same as having the best solution. The winning idea is an incomplete solution that results in problems and unintended consequences. It may produce a conference room victory but it won’t deliver the expected results. And without results, you don’t get invited into the best alliances.

Let’s correct this narrative and bring it into the 21^st century.

When we go into the conference room for a meeting, we aren’t after a win – we are after a solution, the best solution. To do this, we don’t sit at the table – we use the power seat. From here, we can take control of the room, stop the debate and begin collaboration. We know the best solution comes from listening to everyone and combining ideas. We want to be the person who makes this happen – we want to be the leader.

As the leader of the collaborative effort we then continue to take a leadership role through the implementation. Even if we aren’t the person officially in charge, we can still assert our leadership by continuously working the solution to keep it on track and on target.

When our efforts produce the expected or better than expected outcome, we are seen as achievers. And everyone wants to be associated with the best achievers. This is what creates new connections and invitations to join the best alliances. This is how we advance ourselves in the 21^st century.

We are 17 years into the 21^st century and it is way past time to drop the narratives that focus on power, competition, aggression, personality, a me-first attitude or natural male superiority. We have to understand how the male-dominated workplace really functions, what drives it and how women can excel in it.

Our 21^st century success will be determined by our ability to work with and manage complex issues, problems and situations. This takes collaboration, teamwork, systems-thinking and leadership from within, all qualities women possess in spades. But it also requires one major step first – accepting that we are complimentary equals to men.

The 21^st century a perfect era for women to advance – but – we have to leave the 20^th century narratives behind and write new ones for the 21^st century based in our inherent equality and value.

Empowered Women Think and Act In The 21^st Century.

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February 1, 2017
What a Secretary Taught a Female Engineer

When I went into the Air Force as an engineering officer in 1982 my first reaction to my new workplace was: “What the Hell? I thought you guys knew what you were doing!”

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My reaction came from the perspective of a young woman raised at a time when society believed men excelled in business… and women were housewives because they couldn’t.

Given this perspective, I naively expected that since men “excelled in business” that everything would be thoroughly planned out, then flawlessly executed. I expected men to run their workplace like Martha Stewart hosting a dinner party. But much to my dismay, the male-dominated workplace functioned more like a housewife who burned dinner every night.

Being a natural efficiency freak I wasn’t prepared for the amount of chaos and crisis management that was accepted as standard operating procedure. While women were expected to fit into and conform to how men functioned, I didn’t want to fit into my male colleagues’ chaotic way of doing things. I wanted to function better.

I needed to talk to a woman with experience in the workplace and have her explain how it functioned to me. But, there were no senior professional women or senior female Air Force officers. The only women with years of experience in the workplace were secretaries.

Could I talk to them?

Or, would I lose credibility as an engineer and an officer?

Watching my male colleagues for a clue, I concluded that since they seldom talked to the secretaries, I should be careful.

I found myself in an uneasy quandary but luckily the Air Force provided me an opportunity to get what I needed.

The Air Force said its mission was to “Fly and Fight” but the sarcastic joke was that the real Air Force mission was to “Fly and Write.” Everyone was expected to write, even my fellow engineers who had horrific writing skills which were only surpassed by their even more atrocious spelling. Because my squadron had so many bad writers we had a rule: Nothing left our squadron until it was reviewed and approved by the Squadron Commander’s secretary Marian.

Marian wasn’t like the secretaries we see portrayed on TV. She was a smart, professional executive secretary with a Bachelor’s degree in English. She was my commander’s unmistakable right hand on all administrative matters for which she was grossly underpaid.

As the new 2^nd Lt. I was delegated a lot of writing assignments. After turning a few draft documents into Marian for review she reported to my Squadron Commander that I could write. And spell! Word quickly spread that there was ONE BIG difference between male and female engineers – female engineers can write. As a result I was given even more writing assignments.

Those writing assignments gave me cover to talk to Marian anytime I wanted.

As the Commander’s secretary Marian had all the inside information. By talking to her I got the first-hand account of what went on in meetings I was too junior to attend. Needless to say what Marian told me was often quite different than what filtered down to me through the workplace hierarchy.

One day the higher ups held a meeting on a very important issue. Afterwards I went to see Marian to get the scoop on what was said. She told me what they discussed and the course of action they decided on. Then with absolute certainty she said the words that forever changed my career: “But it won’t work.”

What does she mean that it won’t work? How does she know? She’s not an engineer or a facilities management professional – she’s just a secretary with an English degree!

Marian then went on to explain the holes in their plan – the things they didn’t discuss or consider. It was the holes that would cause their plan to fail. (Weeks later she was proved right)

Listening to Marian I realized she was seeing the same problem in her meetings that I was dealing with, with my male peers: Poor Planning.

My fellow 2^nd Lt.’s and I were routinely given special projects to work on as a group. And true to stereotype I had one of those loud mouth male colleagues who thought he knew it all. On our first project he dismissed my concerns about his plan and we wound up doing the project his way. The project quickly became a disaster as my concerns came to fruition. Though we pulled it out in the end, I was not a happy camper fixing problems I knew could have been prevented.

Our second project followed the same scenario with the loud mouth taking over. I tried to get some of my other male colleagues to take him on with me but it didn’t work. This time however, I was smarter and got with a couple of my colleagues to develop a recovery plan for what I knew would be the problems. When disaster hit, we put our recovery plan into action.

On our third project, the loud mouth again assumed he was in charge again until I stood up and said “We’ve done it your way twice and both times were a disaster. We aren’t doing it your way anymore.” I then took over the meeting and we collaborated on how to do our project. Both that project and the next were great successes.

Up until Marian said “It won’t work” I attributed my desire for collaboration and detailed planning to me being a slightly more OCD engineer than my male peers. I suddenly realized it wasn’t an engineer thing. It was a woman thing.

My perspective changed dramatically. Maybe there were more differences between male and female engineers than better writing, spelling and communication skills. But what??

This realization set Marian and I off on a new mission to find out how men and women differ in the workplace. Given her lack of opportunity she was very committed to helping me advance. She gave me the support to feel like I didn’t need to become one of the guys; I didn’t need to conform to how the guys did things. I could be different. I could be a woman, I could be me.

I will always remember the day she literally pushed me out of her office like a mother bird pushing her young out of the nest to fly. She pointed me down a different path from my male colleagues and told me to go walk it.

For over 30 years I’ve stayed on that path. Along the way I discovered that women bring many different but highly beneficial qualities to the male-dominated workplace. I learned that women aren’t meant to fit into the male-dominated workplace, they are meant to transform it into something better, more productive and more profitable.

Even though Marian was “only a secretary” she was one of my most influential mentors. She kept me from being absorbed into the all-male culture which has either driven so many female engineers out of the profession or held them back. By walking the path she encouraged I discovered how women can succeed in the male-dominated workplace by being themselves. And I am now able to share that information with other women.

So, on behalf of myself and many other women all I have left to say is: Thanks Marian!

Empowered Women Walk Their Own Path

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July 6, 2016
The Importance of Alligator Trophies

I wanted to do a follow up to last week’s article Political Swamp Wars 2016 because I got some great positive feedback reinforcing a point: When we are at work, we all need to have a bit of Alligator Slayer in us. That after all is what our employers expect – they expect us to deliver tangible results. They want us to have alligator trophies.

This is very important for women to understand, especially when they are going after a promotion or they are asking for a raise.

Have you seen this commercial on TV?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ilSeJ6B5ro

The girl wants a raise but is uncomfortable asking for it. Why? Because she doesn’t know how to justify her raise to her boss.

What she doesn’t know and what the older women doesn’t teach her is that the way to justify her raise is to show him her Alligator trophies.

Have you seen this commercial on TV?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIWcfhJ5PHc

Uncle Ritchie says we don’t need more desk sitters and status quoers. We need more Chargers and Challengers (Alligator Slayers). I can’t help but think that this is a huge endorsement for Alligator Slayers to win Swamp Wars.

Watching the two commercials together we also can’t help but see the different gender messaging about being Doers. Women aren’t confident Doers. Men are bold chargers.

As women we need to start seeing ourselves as Alligator Slayers. We need to know what our alligator trophies are.

Going back to using the Presidential election as our universal example of the male-dominated workplace, last week (May 22) Hillary was interviewed on Meet The Press by Chuck Todd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t1d7moOULg

Chuck Todd asked her what her “Big Idea” was in comparison Bernie’s Political Revolution and Trump’s Make America Great Again. She replied “We are stronger together” and discussed that concept. Chuck Todd then asked her “How are you going to do it?” because she is a polarizing figure (like Trump). She responded “That when I have these jobs Chuck I get things done and I work with people across the aisle.” Earlier in the interview she said that as President she would get “positive results” and make “tangible progress.”

What struck me was that the interview was a perfect set up for her to list all of her achievements – all of her alligator trophies.

She said that as First Lady she worked with the Senate to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program and worked with Congressman Tom Delay to reform adoption and foster care. Then she said that she worked as Secretary of State “to reduce nuclear weapons between Russia and herself.” She then stated how she had favorable ratings as Secretary of State.

That was it.

She mentioned tangible achievements from the 1990’s but then for her most recent job as Secretary of State she began to falter and basically said – people liked me. She did no better at promoting herself than the young girl in the commercial!

Answers like that won’t get you a promotion or a raise in the male-dominated workplace!

To move up in the male-dominated workplace women have to be able to rattle off their accomplishments!

Our workplaces assume that our male colleagues have accomplishments because society teaches us that men are Doers.

Women aren’t automatically seen as Doers.

So we wind up with thoughts like this.

This is not how you want your male colleagues or boss to see you!

But both Hillary’s interview and the Secret commercial reinforce that this is who we are because we can’t list off our accomplishments.

I was taught very early in my career the importance of slaying alligators. So I have always slayed them. I also tie the alligators back to improving the workplace financial performance because it is the best justification for a raise or promotion. Believe me, as a woman competing with men, slapping down a big ole alligator trophy on the desk and saying “Who’s got something bigger?” is very powerful!

It forces a meritocracy.

Contrary to what society teaches us, women are alligator slayers. Given my experience I would say women are probably better alligator slayers than men. In one job my boss questioned why I paid a woman who worked for me so well in comparison to some men. I explained that in the last 6 months she returned $1.2 million to revenue that was pure profit. She was slaying some huge alligators to make that happen. I couldn’t list any alligators the men had slayed. When I asked him to list their alligator trophies, he couldn’t list any either. He just incorrectly assumed that because they were men, they had alligator trophies.

The most effective way for women to compete against men in the male-dominated workplace is to have bigger and better alligator trophies. Therefore, we need to start seeing ourselves for the Alligator Slayers we are.

If you haven’t done it, write a list of your jobs, the description of your responsibilities and your accomplishments. List everything you’ve done even if it seems small and insignificant. It might be hard at first because we aren’t taught to see ourselves this way. But keep the list handy and add to it when you think of something else.

It won’t take long for you to start seeing all the things that you make happen in a day. And when you start seeing your accomplishments you start having a lot of pride in what you get done. You then want to do more so you have more pride in yourself. Before long you see yourself as an Alligator Slayer who has pride in her alligator trophies and isn’t intimidated to ask for the raise or promotion.

Empowered Women Slay Alligators and Use Their Alligator Trophy Collection to Get Raises and Promotions

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May 26, 2016
Political Swamp Wars
Like everyone else I am tuned into this year’s Presidential race but I am fascinated by it from a different perspective. After working in and studying the male-dominated workplace for 30 years, I am fascinated by watching so much of what I talk and write about play out daily on the television screen.

In recent weeks the various cable news channel pundits have been lamenting in bewilderment: Who would have projected a year ago that Trump would actually become the 2016 Republican nominee?

I immediately jump up wave my hands and shout “I did! I did! I did! I did! I knew he would win!”

Did I believe this because I am a Trumpeteer and I have great faith in my candidate?

No.

It had to do with understanding the male-dominated workplace. While other people were amazed, shocked and even horrified by the GOP debates, I just stood in my living room saying “Welcome to my world folks! This is what I deal with.”

This election cycle is exposing what is happening behind the scenes in the male-dominated workplace: A war. Contrary to what we may expect, this war isn’t over policy positions. It isn’t Men versus Women. It isn’t Democrat versus Republican or Progressive versus Conservative.

This war is over which character in the male-dominated workplace is going to be our Great American Hero.

I call it Swamp Wars.

Several years ago, I posted a satirical article on my website Swamp Wars This Century’s Battle for Status. I first drafted it over 5 years ago to express my frustration over how my male colleagues put more time and energy into fighting and villainizing each other for status than into constructing our projects. They created petty arguments; fighting merely for the sake of fighting. Their only intention was to force the other side succumb to their position which of course never happened. After they wasted an inordinate amount of time, energy and money and put both sides into major crisis, they gave up. We were forced to sit down together and solve the problems in order to survive.

Let me repeat that. They sat down together and solved problems.

In our problem solving there were no winners and losers because everyone had to abandon their positions. Let me repeat that again too. Everyone had to abandon their positions in order to properly identify the problem, solve it and get the project done.

Like my male colleagues, politicians engage in Swamp Wars but they raised it to an art form. They want us to believe they can argue policy positions and make the other side succumb to their position. They refuse to modify their policy position let alone abandon it.

They are trapped in election cycles that are nothing more than petty battles resulting in small wins and losses – but they tease that a big glorious overwhelming victory is possible. In the meantime, nothing is accomplished, no problems are solved.

Since drafting Swamp Wars 5 years ago I watched with humor as it played out in our national politics. In 2015 when the TV pundits began talking about how the presidential election would be Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush, I immediately thought “OMG! They are setting up the presidential election to be a Swamp Wars battle! WWE move over! This is going to be 10,000 times better!”

Swamp Wars is all about who attains Hero status.

To understand Swamp Wars, you have to understand the 4 main characters in the male-dominated workplace. I’ve watched these characters throughout my career. In 1991 I wrote my first essay on changes in the male-dominated workplace that were threatening the status of the highest ranking and most heroic workplace character – The Great American Alligator Slayer. Swamp Wars is about how the other 3 characters try to usurp the status of the Great American Alligator Slayer in order to claim his title of the Ultimate American Hero.

I based Swamp Wars and the characters on the old analogy that when you are buried in problems, you are up to your waist in alligators. Each character has a different way of dealing with alligators (problems).

It is also important to keep in mind that in order to have Heroes we need villains but more importantly we must have problems. No problems, no Heroes.

In today’s male-dominated workplace the characters are:

The Great American Alligator Slayer (Operations): He is our classic Hero. He is a combination of Teddy Roosevelt and John Wayne. He will kill the alligators and solve problems with his big guns and larger than life personality! He’s a man’s man, hard-charging, he calls it as he sees it and runs over anyone that gets in his way. He is both feared and respected. On his office wall hangs dozens of alligator hides – his trophies – for all to admire and be in awe of. Through human history young boys dreamt of growing up and becoming the next Great American Alligator Slayer – of slaying an alligator larger and more fierce than any ever known before and becoming the greatest Hero ever known.

Swamp Drainers (Planners, Analyzers, Researchers): They believe the Great American Alligator Slayer is obsolete. They believe alligators (problems) exist because of the environment – because the swamp exists. Figure out how to drain the swamp and the alligators will go away. They know design techniques, processes and procedures, six sigma, statistics and financial analysis. They can redesign the environment and refine the swamp draining process so all the alligators leave, negating the need for big guns. Swamp Drainers rely on their brains and ingenuity not brawn to eliminate alligators.

Swampers (Nerds and Geeks): Once Swamp Drainers, Swampers broke away forming their own group. They based their identity in technology. Using technology they developed navigations tools to move quickly through the swamp’s vast network of waterways. They live in the swamp and know it better than the other characters. They compiled massive amounts of information about the all of the swamp’s plant life, animals and fish. They know where the alligators nest and breed and can provide that information to the other characters, if they want. They enjoy living in the swamp, content with their separation and happy to interact only with other Swampers using languages outsiders don’t understand. They called themselves Swampers in keeping with their newly found coolness.

Naturalists (Intellectuals): Naturalists identify with Plato’s Philosopher-Kings. Highly intelligent, they attend expensive and prestigious universities where they attend lectures and hold discussions. They write op-eds based upon other papers they read and their internal discussions with other Naturalists. They aren’t the get your hands dirty type – they visit the swamp once but it is in a guided tour with luxury hotel accommodations outside the swamp at night. Their visit merely checks a square so they can say they have been to the swamp. They spend their careers in Naturalist groups far away from the swamps. They believe possessing a superior intellect should be the only gateway through which one should be allowed to access the best information on swamps. It is through their extensive academic study of the swamp, that they consider themselves swamp experts. And in keeping with their identification with Philosopher-Kings they believe their swamp expertise makes them worthy of governing the swamp and all other characters.

In America, we love men of action. Men who make things happen against all odds. Men who git ‘er done.

In America our Action Hero is The Great American Alligator Slayer.

Great American Alligator Slayers are the men (and women) who forged our nation. They were bold and courageous. Christopher Columbus sailed out into the unknown to discover this continent. George Washington led the Revolutionary War as a General in the battle field and daringly crossed the Delaware. Lewis and Clark set out on an expedition across the vast western territory to the Pacific Ocean.

As the industrial revolution emerged, so did new Great American Alligator Slayers. Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford were just some of the Captains of Industry.

Wars produced many Great American Alligator Slayers from lowly Privates to Five Star Generals. World War II produced an entire generation of male and female Alligator Slayers, heroes and heroines. I was in the Air Force during the Cold War and part of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) which was filled with Alligator Slayers and led by many Great American Alligator Slayers who inspired my portrayal of this character.

We think of most of our Presidents as Great American Alligator Slayers.

When we had a manufacturing based economy, the male-dominated workplace was filled with Alligator Slayers and Swamp Drainers. Most were average working class men. Some were college educated. Since then technology added Swampers to the workplace. Together these three characters became the Doers – the people who contributed a valuable piece towards producing tangible products and services.

We expected the men at the top of the workplace hierarchy to be Doers – the men who accomplished the most; the men with the most trophies and plaques on their wall. Typically they were Alligator Slayers. But we believed any man (or woman) could pull himself up to the top. He just had to be a Doer who worked hard and persevered. This made America unique from the rest of the world.

To understand how unique American is, we have to understand a little about Plato’s philosophies. He believed in a society where there is a hierarchy of three classes of people:
1. Philosopher-Kings (and Queens) at the top who have the intellect and wisdom to govern
2. Auxiliaries – the men and women who protect and defend the state (military)
3. Producers – professionals and skilled workers.
Our Great American Alligator Slayers come from Plato’s Auxiliaries and Producers. In America, we allow men in the bottom two classes to rise up to the top and be our Heroes. We even allow them to be President and govern!

Where are the Naturalist/ Philosopher-Kings in our workplaces?!

Oh – they were kicked out of the male-dominated workplace a long time ago because they couldn’t cut it.

Literally!

Alligator Slayers drove them out because they couldn’t get their work done on time. Naturalists spent too much time thinking and pondering to take any action, no matter how much Alligator Slayers ripped into them. They were driven out to form their own boutique consulting companies where they could conduct studies and work endlessly on plans and papers. When I was in the Air Force, the Alligator Slayers told me which two consulting companies hired the Naturalists they kicked out and told me to never work for those companies.

Many years later, when a man from one of those companies walked onto my construction site, I knew something had changed – Swamp War was declared!

This Naturalist immediately took on the Alligator Slayers. He was going to force them to succumb to his will. He openly declared he was taking his rightful position at the top of the hierarchy.

This desire to reclaim the status of Naturalists in the workplace began within the Baby Boomer generation. They were raised with the American image of the self-made man but they were also told to get a higher education so they could work with their head and not their hands.

Over the next several decades we continued to elevate the status of the college educated, especially those who attended Ivy League colleges and universities. This elite education made Ivy League graduates the great thinkers worthy of directing the Doers. We also understood that with an Ivy League education you could bypass all of the lower rungs of the workplace hierarchy and begin your career near the top.

In our old image of the self-made action-oriented man, we respected the man who came up with an idea and made it happen. Today we respect and admire the man who came up the idea. He isn’t expected to implement the idea or lead the implementation. He leaves that to the Doers.

Today we think of management and the C-suite being filled by highly educated and intellectual people. An MBA is requirement and Doers are excluded.

Many Doers are the un-college educated or vocationally educated workforce. We dismiss these Doers as potential managers because they lack the right education.

The Doers who are highly educated professionals are dismissed too. They spent their career in roles that were too “hands-on” or too close to the uneducated workforce. It is these Professional Doers that Naturalists challenged in Swamp Wars because Professional Doers got their hands dirty and therefore were tainted.

What does this have to do with politics?

Well in case you haven’t noticed, Congress (and Washington) is now full of Naturalists – people who got a degree law, political science or liberal arts from an Ivy League or other elite university and went directly into government or politics. We used to call these people Bureaucrats.

Bureaucrats never held a real job in a company that has to make money producing a product or service. They never learned how to make things happen. In the old days we called Bureaucrats paper shufflers because they spent their day moving paper from one side of their desk to the other without producing anything tangible.

Today, Congressional and Washington Naturalists believe they do produce something – policies. But are policies really tangible?

What does a policy produce, do or make happen?

Think about your workplace policies which probably address dress code, vacation time and ethics. Do the policies tell you how to do your actual work or do you rely on our workplace processes and procedures for that?

In politics, Governors are quick to claim they aren’t Naturalists – they are Alligator Slayers. They tout how they have to make “executive decisions” to make things happen. They have to deal with real alligators such as striking teachers, crumbling infrastructure and natural disasters. They want to distinguish themselves from policy producing Congressional Naturalists who make speeches, attend committee meetings, hold hearings and raise money for their next campaign.

Governors also like to remind Senators that the Presidency is an Alligator Slayers position and therefore they are best suited for the Presidency. Historically, that is correct – our Presidents were Doers, not Naturalists, intellectual Philosophers or policy wonks.

That is up until the election of Obama, a pure Naturalist.

Following Bill Clinton’s (Alligator Slayer) presidency, the Democratic party became very comfortable with Naturalists. I credit this to Hillary Clinton (Naturalist). She used her position as First Lady to take the Naturalist out of the back shadows and assert the Plato’s theory that Naturalists should be at the top and govern.

This sent out shockwaves.

At the time most men in powerful positions saw themselves as Alligator Slayers who earned their place at the top. While we often believe she came under fire for stepping out of the traditional role of First Lady and for being an assertive woman, the real issue was that she challenged men’s personal self-images as Alligator Slayers.

Most men believed they got to their power position by trudging through the swamps slaying alligators. They had th alligator hides hanging all over their “I Love Me” walls to prove it. Now this woman was coming along and saying that their hard earned trophies were irrelevant. She said her diplomas said she was worthy of governance and trumped all of their alligator trophies.

In response, the Alligator Slayers did what they do best. They went hunting. Hillary season was opened.

As the years went on, up and coming generations of Alligator Slayers were taught to hunt Hillaries. On the surface the fighting appeared to be gender-related but all along it was really Swamp Wars. Alligator Slayers weren’t going to take direction from or respect anyone, male or female who doesn’t have alligator trophies hanging on their wall. (Very important concept to understand!)(And trophy size does matter!)

Hillary swung open the door for Naturalists to assert themselves. Because most Intellectual Elites in the ‘90’s were already in the Democratic party, the first Naturalists to assert themselves were Democrats.

For the Republicans however, the rise of Naturalists began their mass identity crisis. Republican Senators and Congressmen knew they weren’t Great American Alligator Slayers – they were at best okay Alligator Slayers. And if they were really honest they would admit that they really were Naturalists. But they couldn’t – they had ideal images and icons to emulate.

John Wayne, Charlton Heston and Clint Eastwood were Great American Alligator Slayers (at least in the movies). Then there was Ronald Reagan, who epitomized their image of the political Great American Alligator Slayer. What would happen to his legacy if Republicans suddenly elevated Naturalists?!

Republicans had no choice but to promote themselves as Alligator Slayers. (Bring on the NRA and the Second Amendment!)

With Bush 43, a former Governor from the great (and manly) state of Texas in the White House they rallied around their Alligator Slayer identity.

Then 9/11 happened.

It was a tragedy that called for the heroic valor only Great American Alligator Slayers can provide. Naturalists were shoved back into their corner or suddenly transformed themselves into Alligator Slayers.

But following 9/11 the great victories Alligator Slayers promised didn’t come. (Iraq War) Naturalists reasserted themselves. Maybe the Great American Alligator Slayer (Cheney, Rumsfeld) is an obsolete, relic of the 20^th century. The 21st century is the age of technology. We now rely on our brains not our brawn to get things done. High tech is the future, manufactured mechanics are in the past.

By the time the 2008 Presidential election rolled around the momentum was with Naturalists. The Democratic primary featured two pure Naturalists, Hillary and Obama. A woman and an African American man created the imagery of heading down a new path in a new century towards a new future led by a new kind of Hero.

Yes, Hero not Heroine. The one thing we didn’t leave behind in the 20th century was our love for Heroes, as in male Heroes. Democrats and eventually America chose a knight in shining armor on his fiery steed who was going to usher in the new era of hope and change, of intellectualism and technology. We trusted our Hero, to deliver our new future.

The Republicans meanwhile were in a state of utter confusion. The Great American Alligator Slayers didn’t deliver the big victory. Should they jump on the Naturalist bandwagon?

What about Reagan?

Confused they nominated McCain in 2008 who was a confusing mixture of Alligator Slayer (war hero) and Naturalist (Senator). In 2012 they nominated Romney who was another confusing mixture. While a Governor he was also a Venture Capitalist and Venture Capitalists are NOT Alligator Slayers. They DO NOT go into swamps. They DO NOT slay alligators. They wear alligators. They have alligator shoes, belts and wallets produced by the common masses of Doers.

After losing two election cycles, the Republicans decided for 2016 they would return to their roots, to a Governor and an Alligator Slayer. Better yet, so there is absolutely no further confusion, an Alligator Slayer with a family lineage of (Great American?) Alligator Slayers. Jeb Bush was their man.

The Democrats had long decided Hillary was going to be their nominee.

The cable TV news channels began announcing there was going to be an iconic Swamp War battle:

Naturalist Hillary Clinton

Versus

Alligator Slayer Jeb Bush

Our polarized and partisan politics worked on this battle for years and it was finally coming to fruition. Each side used polarizing policy positions to emotionally work up their most fervent supporters. They maximized the distance between their policy positions so no one accidently wandered over to the other side. Gender cards could be played. Family histories dragged out. It was going to be a wonderful show and the Media couldn't wait!

Will more Americans identify with being Intellectuals or with being Alligator Slayers?

Not that it really matters. As long as everyone stays locked in place by their by their partisan policy positions, no problems will be solved. No one will advance. Swamp Wars will continue on and it will play out every 4 years in dramatic fashion. The real winner is the Media.

The only thing that does matter is making sure one side doesn’t have the big victory and make a clean sweep by taking the Presidency, Senate and House. This would be bad for the Washington Bureaucrat Naturalists (Democratic or Republican) who won because they would now be expected to make things happen, get things done. They would have to convert policy positions into tangible action. Yikes.

Thankfully partisanism keeps the odds of a clean sweep very low.

The big Swamp War battle was all set. But then something unexpected happened.

Enter Trump.

His optics were perfect. He leaves his gilded office from up high in the Tower and rides the escalator DOWN to join the people. He begins his announcement speech and jaws drop.

He is speaking in a long forgotten language. And he is doing it in the open…in front of TV cameras for all the world to see!

Masses of Doers cheer. He is unashamedly speaking their language in public. Naturalists in media, universities, politics and intellectual institutes are horrified. He can’t say that!

What Naturalists didn’t understand and many still don’t understand is that Trump is speaking in the language of the Alligator Slayer. Naturalists don’t know the language because they don’t spend time in the swamps where it is spoken.

I will admit that I laughed at the media freak out because I speak Alligator Slayer. I learned it because I work in traditionally male roles in the swamp. It is a horribly inarticulate, punctuated and fragmented language. Simplistic words are used to convey paragraphs of meaning because Doers are too busy working for long eloquent discussions where words are carefully chosen. After working with men for so long I sometimes find myself speaking Alligator Slayer to other women who have never been in the swamp and it gets me in trouble. Non-speakers don’t understand the nuanced meaning of the simplistic words so they apply their non-swamp definition and misunderstand.

Naturalists of course believe Trump should be and is speaking their language so they believe their interpretation of what he says is correct. This is why they were dumfounded that all of his supposed gaffs only increased the number of his supporters. Doers understood exactly what he was saying.

When media and political Naturalists interpret the supposed gaffs as “–isms”, Doers were reminded that Naturalists don’t understand or respect the culture of the hard working Doer. Naturalists associated lacking a college degree with being ignorant and backwards. Naturalists didn’t understand how much Doers depend upon each other when working in the swamp – how they do risky jobs and have to trust the person working next to them. They don’t understand that when your safety or life depends upon your co-worker, you only care about how well your co-worker does his job. You don’t care about their race, gender or religion. The put downs only served to remind Doers that Naturalists haven’t worked in the swamps, don’t know how to get things done and certainly can’t solve Doer’s problems. So, Doers will listen to the man who speaks their language because maybe he does know how to solve their problems.

For months as media and political Naturalists mocked Trump, all l I could think is “Guys, you just don’t get it.”

In order to understand Trump’s supporters, you first have to understand the Alligator Slayer Creed written by Teddy Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Doers are in the arena. They know Trump is in the arena. Doers can forgive Trump just about anything because he is in the arena.

Doers see Political and Media Naturalists as the critics in the stands and as those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

This has been the difference in perspectives. Media pundits see Trump from their media perspective as a narcissistic Reality TV star wanting more attention. They probably even thought he was a Naturalist Wanna-be, running for the Presidency so he could join their elite club. Doers saw something else.

Doers saw an Alligator Slayer. But not your average Governor–type Alligator Slayer. They see Trump as an iconic Great American Alligator Slayer – the type of which has endured for centuries and will continue to endure for centuries more. He is a supreme Doer, who builds great, tangible and lasting brick and mortar infrastructure, not electronic gadgetry that is obsolete and discarded in 2 years. To the forgotten Doers Trump said what they had been screaming that no one heard: “We build great things! That is what we do. We don’t want hand-outs, we want to do more!”

(Billy Joel released Allentown in 1982 and it applied to the Baby Boomer generation. Now it applies perfectly to Millennials. The fact that it is still so applicable 34 years later speaks volumes.)

When Trump made his ceremonious escalator ride and spoke in the language of Alligator Slayer, he immediately connected with all of the forgotten Doers in America; the people (men and women) who built this country with their hands; the people who see the products of their labor rusting, crumbling and decaying. Trump spoke and immediately got the attention of every Naturalist who had been ignoring the voice of the Doers.

Unlike the rest of the management class who proudly announce “I don’t get down in the weeds” Trump said he is willing to get down in the weeds. His recent refusal or inability to change his language to be more “Presidential” tells the Doers “Now that I’ve gotten what I need from you (votes) I am not like a Politician or your manager who will ride my escalator back up to my big beautiful office. I am staying down in the weeds. I am staying in the swamp. Together we will slay alligators. Together we will do what we do – we will Make America Great Again.”

Prior to this election cycle I never paid any attention to Trump, his media image or celebrity. So as the media pundits referred to Trump as a Reality TV star, I kept listening for how Trump referred to himself. He kept calling himself a Deal Maker. It means he sees himself as a high level executive who lives in the world of money but his money is always connected to something tangible. There was a TV show “Let’s Make a Deal” and in that show the deal was connected to what was behind the curtain or in the box. Doers believe something tangible will result from Trump’s deals even if it is a goat pulling a cart behind the box. They are willing to take a risk because they see politicians and their policies as taking their money but not even offering a box or a curtain as part of the deal.

What I find intriguing about Trump is that most men have one trade they specialize in and master. Trump however is willing to take risks and go into multiple trades. He went from real estate development into media. He learned how to not only survive in the Media Swamp but to thrive in it. He learned how to use it to his advantage. He mastered the media not just as a marketing ploy but he made it a survival skill.

Now he is moving on to a new swamp – the Political Swamp. And he is finding his way and mastering it better than his rivals.

The media and political Naturalists can say whatever they want about Trump but his supporters don’t care. To them his critics are the timid souls who don’t get dirty in the swamps and would be eaten alive if they dared venture into the swamp.

Trump spent his career in the swamps slaying alligators. Sometimes he lost to the alligators in the swamps but he dragged his beaten body out to find another swamp and more alligators. Going bankrupt, failed businesses, law suits, being fined and whatever else is dug up are all battle scars. Faking being your own marketing person is taking something into your own hands to create an advantage. He did what he had to do to survive and win. Nothing in his past will diminish him because it proves he has always been in the arena. It proves he is a fighter and a conqueror. It proves he is a Great American Alligator Slayer.

The latest Trump criticism is that he doesn’t have firm policy positions and ideology – no one knows what he stands for. Calling himself a Deal Maker makes politicians nervous because they see him as readily abandoning their precious policy positions that they use to work up their most ardent fans into an emotional frenzy of support.

Again Doers don’t care because they know that in order to solve problems you have to abandon your position. You have to brain storm, consider all possibilities. So when Trump changes his mind on an issue, they interpret it as him examining a problem a different perspective.

In solving problems, Doers see themselves at point A and they want to get to Point B. They figure out the best path to get there. This is different from politics where politicians try to make us believe that their policy positions can get us to where we want to go. They want us to believe policy positions have magical powers to make things happen the way they want. But they don’t.
- Politicians say we are at A but our policy positions dictate we can’t go to B, we must go to C instead – C is the right place to be. But in the Outside the Beltway Reality, B is the only place you can go. When politicians take us to C instead they create a slew of new problems they aren’t prepared to deal with. (Obamacare)
- Politicians say their policy positions will get us from D to E. But Outside the Beltway Reality says it will take us to Q instead and we will have deal with the unintended consequences. (Middle East intervention)
Doers get this. They adamantly believe Trump does too because it is the only way he could of built his empire.

From a Doer’s tangible perspective Trump is a deal maker who makes deals to secure a project. The project is then planned out, designed and constructed. As anyone who has ever worked in construction knows, making money in construction is all about being able to solve problems quickly and effectively all through the course of the project from the initial deal to finishing the punch list. Doers see Trump’s business success as a testament to his leadership, teamwork, problem solving skills and ability to get things done.

Doers know Alligator Slayers slay problems.

This is what the TV pundits didn’t and many still don’t understand. So as the summer and fall of 2015 unfolded and TV pundits mocked Trump for being clown, I winced. I knew what was coming.

TV pundits may claim “Politics is a game of survival” but it isn’t. It is simply a chess game that you win or lose. Then you get to play again.

Real games of survival happen in the swamp and the arena. And who do you think is the master of survival?

Back in 1991 I deliberately named the workplace Hero The Great American Alligator Slayer in order to describe exactly what he does. Alligator Slayers are slayers. They eliminate their problems. Alligator Slayers don’t just wound. They go for the kill. That is how they get all the alligator trophies hanging on their wall. Great American Alligator Slayers are the supreme hunters and survivors.

Trump saw his GOP rivals simply as problems to be eliminated. One-by-one, he hunted them and picked them off. They were playing chess. He was playing in the Hunger Games.

Rick Perry and Carly Fiorina studied hard to take the Presidential entrance exam. They were eliminated for being Alligator Slayers who switched over to being Naturalists.

Lindsey Graham hung around to make the point that in order to be Commander in Chief you first have to write a 1,000 word essay explaining the difference between ISIS and ISIL.

Low Energy Jeb Bush and his super-pac supporters who thought they were big game hunters were revealed to be merely deer hunters. Killing Bambi’s mother is a far cry from being mud wrestling Alligator Slayers.

Poor Little Marco Rubio didn’t have any alligator hides on his wall. Trump told him that he needs to get some first in order to be taken seriously and be seen as a Man.

Lyin’ Ted Cruz says he is a Constitutional Conservative. (I have no idea what that means but to me it sounds intellectual and lawyerie.) He even referenced Philosopher-Kings during a debate, revealing that he is a Naturalist. But he is also smart enough to understand that we love our men of action and Alligator Slayers. So being the politician that he is, Cruz wrapped bacon around the barrel of a gun and went duck hunting decked out in full camo. Really?! Lyin’ Ted Cruz wanted us to believe he is a great Alligator Slayer by duck hunting?!?! We were supposed to blindly TrusTed that he is an Alligator Slayer.

In reality Cruz is the quintessential Conservative Naturalist who holds tighter to a policy position than anyone else in Washington. He is confused. Sorry Ted, holding tight to a policy positons isn’t “doing” something. And no, shutting down the government doesn’t earn you an alligator trophy you can hang on your wall.

With opponents like these, Trump winning the GOP nomination was inevitable.

Ted Cruz proved to be the best Swamp Wars adversary for Trump. The last weeks of Cruz’s campaign however were painful to watch because I’ve worked with a lot of men under intense pressure and stress. For an Alligator Slayer it was like watching a wounded animal slowly die. I kept thinking “Trump when are you going to put him out of his misery?” Then Trump made the comment about Cruz’s father. Holy Sh*t! I don’t know if Trump intended that to be just another cheap shot (which would be incredibly cruel) or the final fatal blow. The answer to that says a lot about his character.

Now Hillary is facing Trump. I highly recommend she watch the movie Gladiator again. Trump has already cast himself as Maximus (Russell Crowe). He defeated 16 other Gladiators and he controls a large portion of the mob. He is waiting to see whether or not Hillary will come out of the stands and engage him in the arena. I guarantee that he is ready for whatever she chooses.

She can’t take the high road and refuse to engage except on the debate stage. Kasich tried that and was drowned out. TV pundits tell her to take the high road and quote the saying: Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

This is the wrong analogy. Doers already know that many Alligator Slayers aren’t the nicest people. They have huge character flaws but Doers don’t care because getting stuff done is more important. So this isn’t about rolling in the mud over words, it is about getting down in the weeds of the swamp to slay alligators and get things done.

Hillary’s campaign slogan “Fighting for Us” really gives her no choice but to get in the arena and fight as a Gladiator. Her slogan suggests she is an Alligator Slayer or can fight an Alligator Slayer. She has to prove herself at this level of competition. And she has to fight by herself. She can’t rely on her husband, Obama, Elizabeth Warren or a host of other surrogates to engage him for her. If she does, she will come off looking like Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).

Hillary has to be careful not to fall into the Commodus role because it plays into the Crooked Hillary name. In case you haven’t figured out what the name means, it means unethical, immoral, selfish and greedy. It references back to the person who violates the workplace ethics policy. In construction it is the guy who awards the paving contract and winds up with a new driveway at his house. Or the guy who builds a condo complex and suddenly has a newly built summer home. Doers know who these people are. And they also know that proving it is really hard because there is no paper trail. The person making the payoff has to speak up but never will because he got what they wanted. Crooked people are loathed by hard working Doers.

I can go on and on about what Hillary is up against. Not long ago Chris Matthews on Hardball asked his panel what Trump was getting at by the Enabler label. His panel gave some really poor answers. They couldn’t explain it because they didn’t know that Alligator Slayers don’t really believe in enabling! Enabling is one of those simple words that convey paragraphs of meaning. So Chris, if you want to know, contact me. I can explain. I can even explain how Putin ties into it. (Update: If Russia did hack the emails, it is because Putin saw Hillary as an “Enabler” and that is the message he was sending.)

And Hillary needs to figure out what it means because she just played right into it when she announced she was going to put Bill Clinton in charge of the economy.

Trump fundamentally changed Political Swamp Wars. He elevated the performance of the Alligator Slayer to a masterful level. Hillary is no longer up against Alligator Slayer Wanna-be’s like she was in the 11 hour Benghazi hearing. She is now playing in the Super Bowl of Swamp Wars.

Last night I heard Hillary was looking for help to prepare for the debates against Trump. Hmmm… I speak Alligator Slayer fluently. And I was trained by Great American Alligator Slayers so I know how they play. Hillary, maybe we should talk.

Or if any TV pundits out there need me to interpret Alligator Slayer speak, let me know…

Or Trump, if you need a woman to translate for you to keep you out of trouble…I have lots and lots of experience!…And BTW I have an alligator trophy the size of Jaws.

Update November 9, 2016

Trump won this round of Swamp Wars. In the process he blew up both the Republican and Democratic parties. Does this mean he ended Swamp Wars once and for all?

Time will tell.

If he can get a stagnant government moving, get the economy growing and help bring financial security to American families he will elevate the status of Doers. If he can help all Americans learn what it feels like to achieve, to have great accomplishments or in his words “to win” he will inspire us to return to being a nation of Doers and Achievers.

We have forgotten that we are a nation of Achievers. As Swamp Wars escalated, we became a nation of words. We gave words power and made them more important than taking action and doing. We became of nation of protesters, debaters, pundits and lawyers arguing one side of a case thinking that if we won the argument we accomplished something great. But winning an argument doesn’t create anything tangible on its own. We still need to act and to do.

I hope that Trumps leads us back to being a nation of Achievers and all Americans get to experience the pride and joy that comes from accomplishing something the naysayers said they couldn’t or even better, something they didn’t think they could.

If Trump can Drain the Swamp (solve our problems) and end Swamp Wars permanently by making us a nation of Achievers, again, we will Make America Great Forever and once again be a Great Inspiration to the rest of the world.

A Personal Note (part of original post):

After a career working with thousands of blue collar white, black and Hispanic Doers, I learned that Doers judge, respect and value people based upon how hard they try, how hard they work, how safely they work and what they get done. If their colleague is a good, safe hard worker they do not care if they are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, a woman, gay, educated, uneducated, covered in tattoos and piercings or is a man wearing a dress.

That was one of the first lessons I learned about the male-dominated workplace. Understanding that was critical to my success as a woman in a traditionally hard-core male role. All I had to do to be respected and accepted was do my job well. And I did, I did it extremely well.

I also learned that even though many Doers are brusque, poor communicators and seemingly unemotional, they give an abundance of time and energy to others. It is often the most outwardly gruffest who are genuine Teddy Bears who unselfishly give the most. They:
- Give up their family Thanksgiving every year to cook and serve provide Thanksgiving dinner to their community low income families and the homeless.
- Build homes for Habitat for Humanity and renovate homes for disabled vets, the elderly and the poor.
- Buy Toys for Tots and personal items for the forgotten elderly in nursing homes at Christmas.
- Make up the volunteer Fire Department, community patrols and Search and Rescue teams. They can be counted on to respond in any emergency.
- Actively belong to any number of charitable organizations doing good works benefiting the less fortunate, sick and needy in their community.
- Mentor young women in the male-dominated workplace and promote their careers,
Doers make a difference because they value making a difference above all else.

This is a concept that is either unknown, long forgotten or ignored by politicians, political wanna-be’s, media pundits and many in the C-suite that has brought our workplaces, society and politics to where we are now. While some believe it will take an “Outsider” to change this, in my first Swamp Wars article I state that the only way to end Swamp Wars is for women to empower and assert their female traits.

There is no magical political or business Hero or Heroine who will arise from inside or outside “the establishment” and do it for us.

Change and action will only happen when women assert themselves as Doers on par with men. That is when we will create the balance and wholeness that transforms workplaces, society and politics into what we want them to be.

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May 18, 2016
How Women Can Excel Above Men in Middle Management
When I was a kid growing up we understood that when people went to work, they did something tangible. We understood what the mailman, policeman, salesman, doctor, dentist, nurse and teacher did. Then a new job emerged – the middle manager. We asked our parents what they did but our parents couldn’t give us a good description. They really didn’t know. They just told us we should become one.

Eventually an image of managers emerged. Managers were smart, well educated, and driven to climb the corporate ladder. In their upper echelon, they develop strategies, attend meetings and conference calls, make decisions, read reports, meet with clients, play golf, have two-martini lunches, drive expensive cars, live in a big houses and belong to a country club.

Since managers were selected and promoted into the management ranks, we assumed they were the best and the brightest in our workplace.

However, in spite of all of the status and air of importance associated with managers, the workforce had a different opinion. They often thought that if a manager disappeared, no one would care; if they even noticed.

Their perspective brought us back to the greatest mystery in business: What does a middle manager really do?

When I entered the male-dominated workplace in the early 1980’s I joined the throngs of people wondering what managers do and why the workplace needed them. I expected managers to interact and supervise their staff but I hardly saw my managers and rarely talked to them. They always seemed to be busy but they didn’t produce anything.

In 1987 I got my first middle management position. I asked my predecessor what he did. He showed me to my new office stacked to the gills with 102 unresolved open project folders and I realized he never knew what he was supposed to do as a middle manager either.

I began to work on my own definition of being a manager. I interacted a lot with my three departments solving our functional problems. We rewrote all of our operating processes and procedures. We tightened communication and coordination. We all began moving in the same direction together and eliminated people going off randomly on their own doing what they wanted. Our performance soared.

Then about 15 months into my job my boss was unhappy in his life so he called me into his office to counsel me. He told me that I didn’t yell enough at my staff. He wanted me to follow his example where he had been yelling at and insulting the men in our weekly staff meeting. He directed me to go down to my Planning Dept. and yell at all the planners.

At least I knew his definition of what a manager does.

So I went down and met with my planners. I told them I was sent there to yell at them and asked them what they would do if I yelled at them like my boss wanted me to. Their answer was: “We will ignore you just like we do him.”

I still didn’t get how men thought about management. At the time I was getting my master’s degree and decided the department head was the perfect person to answer the mysterious question of what a manager in the male-dominated workplace is supposed to do. In response he set me up to take a one-on-one course with a new visiting professor.

My new professor explained the role of a manager by drawing a diagram based upon Juran’s interpretation of the workplace vertical hierarchy. For some reason I immediately renamed it the Dollars to Doughnuts model.

This model explains how a company should function holistically.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the largest group – the workforce. The workforce is comprised of unskilled, skilled and/or professional workers depending upon the product or service the workplace produces. The workforce can be of any educational level ranging from uneducated unskilled laborers to highly educated, highly skilled neurosurgeons. They use processes and systems to produce the products and services purchased by the workplace’s customers.

I call these people the doughnut makers. They know how to make the doughnuts and how to operate the shop that sells the doughnuts. They live in the world of the doughnut shop and they speak in the language of doughnuts.

At the top of the pyramid are the CEO, CFO and Sr. Management. They represent the company to the outside world. They speak in the universal business language of money. Using the language of money, they can compare themselves not only to other doughnut making companies but to companies in other industries.

Since the top of the pyramid speaks in the language of money and the bottom in the language of doughnuts, there is a communication problem.

For example, a senior manager knows the doughnut shop is short on revenue and is busting some budget lines. So, on his semi-annual scheduled doughnut shop walk-thru he asks the doughnut makers: “What’s going on?”

The doughnut makers tell him about how the doughnut fryers keep breaking down. They have to wait for new parts to come in so that means they are down on fryers. Being short on fryers they have to work overtime in order to make the doughnuts. But that makes the working fryers run longer which means they break down faster. They are also short one person because he is busy dealing with broken fryers. They were so busy dealing with the fryers that the flour and sugar orders got messed up and they had to expedite some deliveries. But then the flour and sugar supplier changed their weekly delivery date based upon their expedited delivery so they ran short the following week. They need him to change it back because it conflicts with their heaviest production day.

This is the truthful answer that drives senior managers right back to their office and to never step foot in a doughnut shop again. The only response the overwhelmed senior manager can offer is the obvious solution: “Get those fryers fixed as soon as possible.”

To this the doughnut maker response is – “Duh. What do you think we are busting our butts trying to do?”

This is why the workforce doesn’t find value in management.

The real problem is that the senior manager asked a question speaking “Money” but the doughnut makers replied speaking “Doughnut.” They don’t understand each other.

What they need is a translator. (That sounds like a communication skill and something women excel at!)

Translation is the real definition of what a middle manager does.

In Juran’s original model, he said that middle managers convert doughnuts into budgets. That is true however it is only a partial definition of translation. I expanded the definition to leverage female traits.

What a middle manager really does is know how to make money making and selling doughnuts. That goes well beyond developing budget lines and tracking monthly whether you are over or under budget.

Making money by making and selling doughnuts requires understanding how the doughnut shop operates and how actions within the doughnut shop impact financials. Very simple examples of translation are:
- An expedited delivery of flour will have a $100 delivery charge
- Two people working two hours overtime will cost $190
- If the shop makes 100 doughnuts per hour doughnuts cost 20 cents to make. If they make 120 doughnuts per hour doughnuts cost 18 cents to make.
Translation begins by focusing on the doughnut shop’s processes and procedures. We want standardized processes and procedures so we have consistent outcomes. When the processes are standardized, the outcomes are consistent and it is easy to see the financial results. With experience we instinctively learn to see what is happening in our doughnut shop and immediately know the financial ramifications.

What many middle managers do is wait for the month-end financial statement, look for discrepancies, then make up stories that sound plausible to explain the discrepancies to senior management. They do this because they can’t translate.

When we become good at translating we don’t have to wait for month-end reports. We see a variation in how the doughnut shop functions and we know in real time what the financial impact is.

This then triggers us to work with our doughnut makers to improve the processes, so the variation doesn’t reoccur. By reducing these variations financial performance improves. For a middle manager this is your claim to fame.

The problem is that many of our workplaces don’t operate through standardized processes even if they supposedly have them. Individual departments or projects tout they are different or unique so the standardized processes wouldn’t work for them.

The real reason this happens is because in the male-dominated workplace men aspire to autonomy – to being independent and doing things the way they personally think is best. Standardization works against everything men are taught about being men. Without standardized processes laying the foundation, male middle managers can’t translate.

Women however, don’t aspire to autonomy. We enjoy and know how to work in groups. Standardized processes don’t threaten us. We enjoy leading from within, not leading from above and dictating downward. This makes us perfectly suited to lead our doughnut shop to map out their processes and then improve their processes.

Translation is the major discriminator between male and female middle managers. It is how women can distinguish themselves and set a new standard for middle management performance.

Translation is also what set us up to move up to senior management and excel there too.

Empowered Women Excel at Translation

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May 6, 2016
Why Women Are Mean to Other Women In the Workplace?

We want to think of women as caring and we hope their presence makes the workplace a more cooperative environment. As one of my female traits I list that women work in groups and we assume that their groups are cooperative and supportive. While we want to associate women with positive, peaceful and loving characteristics, we know women can also be extremely nasty to each other in the workplace. A lot of women report they have worse relationships with female colleagues and supervisors than their male.

Even though I’ve worked with 50 times more men than women, I would say half of the meanest people I’ve worked with are women. And by far, the #1 top position is held by a woman who personified every negative quality ever associated with a woman to an extreme degree. I will give credit to other women who tried to rival her Queen of Mean position, but they all fell short. And if anyone out there thinks they have a story about a mean and nasty woman in the workplace, believe me, my story can top yours.

Why can women be so nasty to other women?

I think it happens because there is a conflict between who women naturally are and the type of person they think the male-dominated workplace expects them to be. A lot of women believe that the male-dominated workplace is competitive and in order to rise up, you have to pull down. Another woman in the workplace is a unique competitor. Competing against her is not like competing against male colleagues.

Women know that being the only or one of a few women in the workplace is an advantage. We know how to manipulate situations to our advantage in ways our male colleagues can’t. This was one of the very first lessons I learned as a woman in the male-dominated workplace.

When I went into the Air Force, as new 2^nd Lt’s we were assembled into groups of 12-15 to meet the top brass. Typically I was the only woman in the group or on occasion there may have been one other woman. When the Colonel was introduced to a dozen random faces, he remembers the one that was different. He always remembered the name and role of the woman in the group. This was huge advantage.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out other ways to take advantage of being a woman.

If my workplace was working on an important proposal or report, I volunteered to use my better communication and writing skills to proofread. I could invite myself in as a team member on the most important projects.

If there is a big meeting with outside clients or senior management, I knew how to get myself introduced. I just played hostess when lunch was brought in. Setting up lunch, I got into the conference room. There is always a man who is anxious to eat. I introduce myself, strike up a conversation and eat lunch with the big boys. Meanwhile my male colleagues are wandering around the office trying to figure out how to get in.

In one workplace, a retiring male colleague taught me another trick. The women in the workplace make it their business to know what is going on. I learned how to use the network of office women to know what was really going on in my workplaces.

I’ll be honest, I play the woman card to my advantage. Some women are afraid of being associated with the stereotypes but we use them to get our foot in the door. It is what we do once we are in the door that is important.

When another woman comes into the workplace, we suddenly have competition – someone who can do what we can do. Our woman card is no longer as valuable. Now that competitiveness we were taught to have, kicks in but in a slightly different way than being competitive with men.

We see this new woman as invading our turf. That makes her the aggressor. She knows we have an advantage in the workplace and she needs to pull us down so she can take our place. This makes us defensive and women are the most aggressive when they are defensive.

Before it became politically incorrect to say so, we believed women had a maternal instinct that made us great defenders. You Tube is full of videos of females in every species defending their young against predators. They never back down. They fight to the death. No matter what we call it this instinct it makes females incredible defenders. We will be mean and defend our turf against the new woman.

There is another characteristic of the male-dominated workplace can cause women to be nasty to other women – Autonomy. Men work autonomously. Women feel ostracized and rejected when their male colleagues work autonomously and not as part of a cooperative team. I’ve seen this a lot and women become bitter. They then put on blinders and refuse to help others. Again, this is a defense mechanism to ward off unhappy feelings.

When a new woman comes in and the men gravitate toward her because she is the new, a woman’s feelings of estrangement increase. There is jealousy. When women see everyone else getting along and they are left out it hurts. Women can lash out.

There are many issues that make women nasty in the workplace. One of the first things I look for is bullying. As a manager, I’ve learned that most of the women who were mean, nasty or bullying to other women were acting out from being bullied in the workplace. Some other women act out due to abuse at home or from being abused as a child.

When women are mean or nasty in the workplace, we shouldn’t assume they are just ugly people and accept it. We need to find out the root cause and get it addressed. Most workplaces have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that gives employees resources for free counseling. Our goal is not to punish and further ostracize the woman but to solve the root cause of the issue so we can bring her into the team if possible.

I’ve found it is best if women are allowed to work out the issues amongst themselves with little HR involvement. A third party is used to choose sides. And if a male manager wants to get involved don’t let him! I’ve never seen men getting in the middle of a dispute between women without making it worse. He will allow himself to be used to choose one side, then the other side, then back to other. Men try to treat women like men when resolving their conflict. It makes the backstabbing between the women escalate.

While we can’t stop either men or women from bringing their personal baggage and issues into the workplace, we can change the male-dominated workplace so women don’t feel the need to compete and take down each other. Women should understand that we excel when we work in cooperative and supportive groups. If we aren’t working that way then we need to figure out why. That may sound Pollyanna-ish but it is part of our responsibility as being empowered women.

Empowered Women Ensure Women Work in Supportive and Cooperative Groups

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March 3, 2016
How Women Become Empowered

The tagline to my website is “Empowering Women to Lead the Male-Dominated Workplace.” Since writing it, I’ve been amazed at how controversial this statement is. This is because as a society we created a controversy instead of simply understanding the different perspectives men and women have about empowerment.

First, let’s understand what empowerment means. I like the definition in Wikipedia: “Empowerment refers to policies and measures designed to increase the degree of autonomy and self-determination in the lives of people and in communities in order to enable them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority.”

I like this definition because it uses the terms autonomy and self-determination. In my list of male and female balancing traits, I list Autonomy as the primary male trait. Men understand Autonomy – doing what they want, when they want based upon what they think is best. Men naturally think autonomously.

Men’s Autonomy allows them to empower themselves. As teenagers they couldn’t wait to turn 18 so they could become legal adults who no longer had to ask their parents for permission. Men believe that once they become a legal adult, they are fully empowered. Period.

Today, there is no reason why all women shouldn’t have this same attitude – that once we are an adult we are fully empowered. But many of us still don’t assume the empowerment that is rightfully ours. Part of the reason why is because we don’t have the same instinctual perspective about autonomy as men. We don’t see ourselves as an individual first. We see ourselves as part of a group. Unlike men, when we take action we recognize it impacts other people. Therefore we feel a need to check with others and validate that our action works within the group. We expect other people to give us feedback and tell us how the action we want to take impacts them. Women give us this feedback. Men however wonder why we are asking for permission or validation. To them, if we believe the action is what we need to do, then being autonomous and empowered we should just do it. If we ask for permission or validation, they will assume we see ourselves as teenagers and treat us as such.

In my senior year at Virginia Tech in the early 80’s I was explaining my career decision to an old male administrator. He got a very annoyed look on his face then yelled at me: “You’re free white and 21. You don’t need to explain what you are doing to me.” I was shocked by his statement for two reasons. The first was his obvious bigotry. The second is why I always remembered this moment. While I heard the statement before, I understood that it applied only to men because women based on gender had no rights or privileges of their own. In a shocking way, he told me I was fully empowered. He told me to think of my autonomy and self-determination exactly the same way any of my male peers would. I was a legal adult and I have every right to go out and live my life on my terms. Period.

And that is what I did. And my life on my terms put me in traditional male roles in one of the most male-dominated industries. Through my experiences I got to understand empowerment from both a male and female perspective.

Where women erode their inherent autonomy is in believing that we need laws, rules or policies to empower us. But, from a male perspective being empowered through permission makes empowerment an oxymoron. You can’t have self-determination if you have to ask to be granted self-determination. Our view of empowerment is backwards from how men understand and use their empowerment.

As women we need to reverse how we think of empowerment.

Once we turn 18 we are adults and therefore are fully empowered with the right to our own self-determination. It then takes laws, policies, rules and values to limit our autonomy and self-determination. This is how empowerment works in the male-dominated workplace. This is why we hear men at work say “It is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” Unless you are explicitly restricted in your action, you are free to act according to what you believe is best. Women have to understand this perception of autonomy and empowerment in order to be happy and successful in the male-dominated workplace. The women that do, love working in the male-dominated workplace. They don’t create barriers that don’t really exist. The women that don’t get it, unknowingly hold themselves back.

Being empowered also means accepting yourself for who you are and knowing your value. This is how society truly works against empowering women in the workplace.

Our society values stereotypical or traditional male traits more than female traits. This is especially true in the workplace. Men don’t have to question their value or right to empowerment. But, for women, it is a constant reminder that the traits they naturally feel are inferior. If we empower who we naturally believe we are, then, we are empowering inferiority. This deters women from feeling the same empowerment men take for granted. After all who wants to stand up and proclaim “This is who I am and I am proud to be inferior!”?

The reason I started speaking out on empowering women is to tell women that our natural traits are not inferior in the workplace. Who we naturally are is powerful and very much needed in the male-dominated workplace.

From my experience I know that in today’s complex workplace, female traits are the most powerful and most underutilized tools the male-dominated workplace has at its disposal. Throughout my career I’ve proven that when I added my female traits to my male-dominated workplaces, performance soared. I know our female traits are the keys to success the male-dominated workplace has struggled for decades to find.

So, the foremost “measure” society needs to take to empower women is to stop promoting male traits as the be-all, end-all in the workplace. We must stop the constant messaging telling women that they must identify with traits our society labels as “male” in order to be successful.

Male traits represent only half of the equation. The other half is female traits. We must recognize that men and women are designed to work together, in balance and only when both sets of traits are present can there be sustained superior performance.

No law, rule, policy or other person can empower women as much as our own attitudes and perceptions. As women we must embrace who we are and understand how everything that we are told is “wrong” about us is actually right, valuable, powerful and transformative. Then we must grab ahold of our full empowerment that has just been sitting over there in the corner getting dusty. No one else is going to pick it up, dust it off and hand it to us. We don’t have to ask anyone’s permission and we shouldn’t assume we have to run through a blockade of men to get it. It is completely your choice as to whether or not you pick it up. It is completely your choice how you use it in your life. And because these are your choices, you are empowered.

Empowered Women Chose To Use Their Inherent Empowerment

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January 7, 2016
Women’s Number One Advantage in the Male-Dominated Workplace

Recently I had a discussion with an older retired woman who started her career in engineering in the 70’s. She spent her college days and most of her career as the woman in the room. Shortly into our talk she brought up how her male colleagues would drive her nuts. It wasn’t how they acted but how they thought and did their work that frustrated her.

When the male-dominated workplace has a complex task, it breaks the task down into smaller pieces and distributes the pieces to individuals to complete. The workplace assumes that if each person completes their task correctly then when all the pieces come back together, all the pieces will miraculously fit together. Those of us who have worked extensively with men know that never happens. We wind up with pieces that changed their shape and no longer fit. This creates crises as we do a lot of rework to make the pieces fit.

The reason this happens is Autonomy. The male-dominated workplace encourages men to complete their task based upon their judgement. So men do their task based upon what works from their perspective. They forget their task is connected to other tasks and has to fit back into the bigger picture.

This problem is further compounded when men aspire to have expertise. Expertise is how men gain status in the male-dominated workplace. But in order to increase their expertise, they continually narrow their focus as they dive down deeper and deeper into the task. As they dive into the depths of detail, they continue to break things apart until they get individual, stand-alone parts. Men in STEM are very good at doing this and this is what my friend continuously dealt with.

Now that her colleagues had all of these individual little parts, they had to assemble them back into the big picture. This is where her male colleagues struggled – there were too many pieces and too much detail for them to connect.
We always hear that to understand the big picture you have to be removed from it, to look at it from afar. And when we do that we will sacrifice detail. In order to understand and see detail we need to narrow our focus, see fewer parts. This is a male perspective – a perspective that is not good at multi-tasking, forming relationships, creating connections and working in groups.

This is what drove my friend nuts. She could take her male colleagues’ detailed, individual pieces and assemble the big picture. But what frustrated her was that her male colleagues argued that she couldn’t do it. But she could because she was thinking like a woman. She remained focused on the big picture, connections and relationships. As the men broke the tasks down and created pieces, she naturally thought about how the pieces fit back into the big picture.

This is a significant difference between men and women. Men break things down to increase individualism. Women join things together to create groups and big pictures. And because we can maintain a high level of detail across multiple tasks, we don’t have to sacrifice nearly as much detail as men when we create the big picture.

Think about a mother who has to get her kids out the door for school and herself off to work in the morning. She understands how all of the morning activities have to fit together. She knows which kid has to be in the bathroom first and what time they have to be out by so the next kid can use the bathroom. She listens for the shower to stop running by 7:10, so she knows if they will have time to eat breakfast. She continuously listens for noises and checks the clock to monitor their progress. She knows her kids have to be out the door no later than 7:40 in order to get to school on time. And while she is managing her kids, she is also getting herself ready for her day, taking care of the pets and keeping track of her husband and his needs.

The skills a mother uses to manage her home are directly transferrable to the workplace because workplaces function with a lot of simultaneous connected activity. This makes the workplace complex. Complexity is the opposite of Autonomy and the Achilles heel of the male-dominated workplace. Women work well with Complexity because our multi-tasking, attention to detail and group focus allows us to connect numerous pieces and parts back into the big picture. We have such a good relationship with Complexity that I think of Complexity as women’s BFF in the male-dominated workplace.

When our male colleagues want to express their Autonomy and reshape their piece, we say “No” because we know how it won’t fit back into the big picture. When a piece needs to be reshaped, we immediately think about how it connects to other pieces. We know reshaping one piece will have a ripple effect requiring other pieces to be reshaped. Our brains are capable of managing this. We practice it every morning before we even come to work.

This is why women make fantastic managers. We don’t expect all the pieces to just miraculously fit back together. We follow up to see how our employees are progressing because we need to maintain connections. When we see someone working independently, off doing his own thing, red flags go off in our minds. That person must get reconnected to the group and fit back into the big picture.

The male-dominated workplace however likes to see people working independently because it associates independence with competence. But Complexity ended that association – independence now creates inefficiency, rework and chaos resulting in crisis management. Workplaces that allow men to work autonomously will struggle and ultimately fail. Complexity makes all of us rely on our colleagues to do their job right so we can do our job. All tasks are intertwined. All tasks are connected.

Complexity now dictates that what is most important in completing a task is how efficiently all the pieces fit back together. This requires female traits.

As Complexity increases in the workplace, female traits will be needed more and more. Our superior ability to work with and manage Complexity is the single most important trait women bring to the male-dominated workplace. And the trait that gives us a significant advantage over men.

Empowered Women Know They Are the Best Managers of Complexity in the Male-Dominated Workplace.

November 19, 2015
What Does Abstracts in Action Mean?

What do I mean by Abstracts in Action and Abstracts in Action?

When we discuss what men and women do when assigned a task, we hear that men take off into action while women start talking and building relationships. We get to action later.

We learn to associate action and getting things done with men. Men do tangible things and women – well, we have nebulous abstracts whose value is difficult to measure and quantify.

But don’t women also act? The women I know work, they work really hard. They get things done better and faster than their male colleagues. If I need three things done well in the next hour, I will assign it to a woman, not to a man.

What Abstracts in Action means is that women forget about our action. Instead we identify with ideas that are abstract in the workplace – talking, building relationships, nurturing, feelings and empathy. We became associated with making everyone feel good not with getting things done. As a result, the male-dominated workplace didn’t see our value.

For years women were associated with Kumbaya moments because ironically, we couldn’t communicate how when we put abstracts into action we got big results.

The two abstracts I put into action the most in the workplace are communicating and relationships but I use the active version of those terms.

Instead of “communicate,” I use “coordinate.” I don’t just talk to Bob and John, I coordinate what Bob and John are doing. If I don’t coordinate their tasks, Bob goes off in one direction, John in another. By coordinating their work, they each know what they have to do so the bigger task comes together properly.

Instead of “relationships” or “building relationships,” I use “integrate.” And this is so powerful! Tom is working on a task and when he is done he will pass his work to Marie who will use it to complete her task. But what typically happens? Tom formats his work according to what works for him and Marie spends a day reformatting it before she can do her task. She is then late getting her task done. The male-dominated workplace looks at Tom’s and Marie’s task as two individual activities but they aren’t. There is a relationship between them. Therefore, Tom’s work has to be integrated into Mary’s. Tom must do his work so it can slide perfectly into Mary’s.

Men can identify with coordinating and integrating work because it is similar to their “directing work” which they see as taking charge. So even if we don’t interpret coordinating and integrating work as taking the lead, men do. They see it as tangible action that gets things done.

Did your workplace go through a period where “synergy” was the buzz word? Did the idea come and go? If so, it was because there weren’t female abstracts in action to keep it going. Synergy requires coordination, integration and two other abstracts in action – collaboration and teamwork.

It is up to us as women to decide how we perceive ourselves in the workplace.

We can put our Abstracts in Action with talking, building relationships, nurturing, feelings and empathy.

Or, we can put our Abstracts in Action with collaboration, synergy, teamwork, coordination and integration.

But it is only when we put our Abstracts in Action that the male-dominated workplace will recognize us for making things happen.

Empowered Women Put Their Abstracts into Action

Leave your comments and share on Facebook and LinkedIn – Let’s spread the word about who empowered women really are!

November 12, 2015
Are You Part of the Male Hierarchy?

I hear from a lot of women who don’t feel as powerful at work as they want to be. They feel like the male hierarchy shuts them down or holds them back. I understand exactly what they are talking about. However, I don’t let my male colleagues and their hierarchy affect me.

How? Why not?

Because I don’t consider myself part of the male hierarchy.

If we use the perspective that women hold up half the sky then, men and women are side-by-side partners. We have true equality.

On the men’s side, the men gather themselves together in a line. Sometimes the line is horizontal and they line up with labels – first, second, third…last. Sometimes the line is vertical. We think of this as a pecking order using labels – Alpha, Beta, Sigma…Omega. Whether they line up horizontally or vertically, men can only see the men who are adjacent to themselves.

On the women’s side, we gather in circles. In our circles, everyone is visible and everyone has a voice. Everyone can talk to everyone else.

Now imagine the male vertical line next to the female circle. From any position in the circle, women can look around the circle and see all the other women. They can also look up and down the vertical line and see each and every man. Because we gather in a circle we are not limited in our access to anyone – male or female.

I have always had this perspective, even when I was in the Air Force at the very beginning of my career. I never felt that I couldn’t talk to the Wing Commander because…ooohhhh…he was at the top of the organizational hierarchy and I was close to the bottom.

I always made the distinction between the organizational hierarchy that identifies roles and responsibilities and the vertical male hierarchy.

Men don’t make this distinction – they inserted their vertical male-hierarchy into the organizational hierarchy. Decades ago when women entered the workplace we accepted their merger. So, of course we don’t feel empowered – paternalism put us at the bottom of the male hierarchy. And it doesn’t matter where we are in the organizational hierarchy we feel less empowered than our male peers because the male vertical hierarchy diminishes us.

But who said we had to accept their merger? Why can’t women keep their perspective?

As women, we can go into the workplace and put the organizational hierarchy into our circular perspective. We can visualize everyone in our workplace sitting around in a circle. I can talk to anyone and understand their role and responsibilities to the workplace. I can share what I do and understand how our roles come together for the benefit of the workplace. That includes the top guy.

I decided early in my Air Force career that it was more important for the top guy to have all the information he needs to do his job well, than to empower the male vertical hierarchy. If I was sitting in a meeting (along the wall because I wasn’t important enough to sit at the table) listening to a discussion and I had a valuable piece of information that the Wing Commander needed and no one was mentioning, I presented it.

Now, according to the male vertical hierarchy I should tell my boss, who then tells my Squadron Commander, who then tells the Group Commander who then finally tells the Wing Commander.

But what are the chances that the Wing Commander gets the information?

Nil to none. And that is the huge problem with the male vertical hierarchy – it doesn’t communicate well and it doesn’t communicate timely. As a result, poor decisions are made or the results are never as expected.

However, as a woman visualizing all of us sitting in a circle, working together, looking out for each other, with no ego to feed, I feel an obligation to speak up and make sure the Wing Commander has the information. Because I speak up, a better decision is made and better results are produced. Those better results benefit the Wing Commander, Group Commander, Squadron Commander and my boss. So now they are all very happy and I get lots of pats on the back. And they forgot all about their hierarchy because I made them look good.

What empowered me to speak up was my female circular perspective.

What would keep me quiet? Seeing myself at the bottom of the male vertical hierarchy.

Because I don’t make myself part of the vertical male hierarchy, I feel empowered and my workplaces perform better. And for those of us who work in project environments, our circular perspective is the correct perspective – the linear perspective is one of the greatest sources of inefficiency. When working in projects, we must include men into our circles. And men love our circles because they can have a voice their hierarchy doesn’t allow them to have.

Have there been men who want to put me in the male vertical hierarchy and push me to the bottom? Of course.

I’ve talked about being locked out of the Penthouse Suite of the All Boys Club even though I was more deserving of membership than most of the men in there. And when they shoved me out the door, they expected me to take the express elevator to the basement.

But I didn’t. Because in the Purple Zone and in the female half of the sky there are no elevators!

So, I just sat outside the door and waited – because I knew eventually a beer delivery was coming and that door was opening. And in spite of what women are told about bringing coffee and lunch to the guys, if delivering beer gets me back inside, I will deliver beer…I will personally hand a beer to the most prominent man in the suite and introduce myself.

Our empowerment begins with our perspective. We don’t have to be part of the male vertical hierarchy – it is a male hierarchy. We are women. In my book I will expand on how men are equipped to deal with their hierarchy in a way women aren’t. So, if men want to limit themselves by living in their hierarchy in their part of the sky, then that’s their business. It means nothing to me because I choose to keep my female perspective.

As women we gather and interact in a circle. We keep our circular perspective because it empowers us to see ourselves as equal to men – all men – from the Omega to the Alpha.

And if women want to sit in a circle, burn scented candles and hold hands while singing songs of love, peace and harmony, we can do that too.

Empowered women are not part of the vertical male-hierarchy.

Empowered women work through interactive circles.

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November 5, 2015