All through my career I faced closed doors. On the other side of the doors were the All-Boys Clubs. I could have let each closed door stop me but as I looked at the door, I also saw knob.
So, I turned the knob, opened the door and walked in.
It was easy.
Of course, men were surprised to see me. but I knew I had just as much right to be there as any man. I knew my credentials, experience and achievements actually gave me more right to be there than many of the men.
And this may shock many women – the vast majority of men accepted me and made me part of their group.
Remember closed doors have knobs. So, turn the knob and walk in.
We like to think of negotiating as two sides coming together, sharing ideas and compromising on their interests in order to achieve a larger common objective. That is how negotiations work in an ideal world.
However, all too often we wind up in negotiations where one or both sides don’t want to negotiate in good faith – they refuse to subjugate their personal interests to the common objective.
They want to win.
They want the other side to lose.
Compromise is not acceptable.
Working in the construction industry I dealt with many of these bad faith negotiations where intimidation and threats were common tools. Negotiations worked on the belief that the strongest and most powerful will prevail and win. Negotiations were little more than a contest of wills, testing who was weaker and give in first.
Most people hate these types of negotiations. We don’t like the ugliness that goes along with them. So, when we face bad faith negotiations most of us (both men and women) make a critical mistake:
We are too nice.
We believe that if we are nice, if we act in good faith, if we concede something first then, they will realize we are good people who they can trust and work with. We believe our goodness will cause them to have a change of heart.
In our optimism and naivety, we believe we have the power to make goodwill blossom all over so we can negotiate among the sunshine, flowers and rainbows.
But it doesn’t happen.
Instead ,they hit us with a sledgehammer and then run over us with a truck.
Undeterred, we stick to our values.
We continue to tell ourselves that if we continue to be nice, we have the power to win them over.
But then our good faith efforts are rewarded with an even larger hammer getting dropped on us and an even larger truck running us over.
We may try again. We may try again several times. But eventually we get the message that the other side’s top objective is for us to lose.
They want us to bend to their will so they are in control.
So, how do we negotiate towards a common objective when we are faced with bad faith actors?
The traditional response is for each side to aggressively attack each other. We get as ugly as we can be in order to intimidate the other side into backing down and conceding. However, this seldom works. It usually results in each side just getting more entrenched in their position.
In more strategic workplaces there is a different tactic.
Instead of being more confrontational and taking steps forward to get in each other’s face, we deliberately take steps back.
We engage in a dangerous game of trying to back up them up so they step backwards off their cliff first. In other words, we want them to make so many mistakes that they take themselves out.
When we take a step backwards and claim our power, we send a message that they don’t intimidate us. We don’t have to be aggressive and confrontational because we are confident in our position. We create the perception that we are using our territory and taking everything that is rightfully ours. And we will NOT give it up.
In response the other side takes a step backwards too. They have to claim their territory too and prove how confident and powerful they are.
But are they?
Do they really know what is rightfully theirs and the limitations of their power? Or are they going to make false claims – claims they can’t deliver or prove. Claims that prove their incompetence and lack of credibility.
When we assert everything that is rightfully ours, our strategy is to force them to also assert themselves. However, they are still playing the domination and intimidation game. So, in their haste to prove they are more powerful than us, they eventually respond with false claims.
We then calmly discredit their claims, “Sorry, you can’t do that. Sorry, that’s not true.”
We prove we aren’t intimidated.
Because people hate to lose, they then make more false claims and take actions they expect to intimidate us. They believe they are expanding their territory and proving their power. However, if we know those claims are false, they discredit themselves. We have successfully backed them up onto unstable ground and eventually they fall.
This is not a game for the faint of heart!!
(And why most people don’t do it.)
It requires, putting away our ego and defensiveness so we play strategically. We must know our industry and profession inside out, backwards and forwards. We must know and be honest about our capabilities and our limitations. In my industry, I also had to know my legal and contractual obligations that gave me both power and restrictions.
I learned how to project my power and work within my limitations.
To succeed, we must play cooly and confidently. We must engage intellectually, not emotionally.
The biggest mistake people make is that they revert back to emotions. Some go back to being aggressive and trying to intimidate, going for the win. However, playing into this emotion causes us to do something stupid and shoot ourselves in the foot. (We want to make our opposition to do that to themselves.)
Other people revert back to being nice. They value “being liked, being respected, making friends and being seen as fair and compassionate,” above all else. They tell themselves this is the best long-term strategy that will pay off in future negotiations.
WRONG!!!
It actually sends a clear message that you are a weenie who is afraid to assert yourself. It reveals your vulnerability.
Too often people are afraid to assert their full power and leverage because they’re afraid of how the other side will respond. They don’t understand that the other side already knows what power you have and if they see that you’re afraid to use it, they know you are a weenie. And they will take full advantage of.
They will take advantage of that today and in every future negotiation.
This is why we must NEVER be afraid to project our full power.
This quote from Marianne Willamson says a lot about us:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.”
So, we concede nothing. We give up nothing. We stand up for ourselves and refuse to back down. (I can imagine how many people are cringing at this thought. How many people, especially women, are afraid of doing this.)
And that is why it is so effective. Anyone who is willing to project their full strength and power is INTIMIDATING! It’s what makes the other side respond foolishly and take themselves out.
When the other side sees themselves losing, they may go for the stalemate. They back off and lull us into thinking we won. But nothing is resolved. There is no guarantee they will now negotiate in good faith. They could just be buying time until they have the opportunity to strike again.
In my industry stalemates were very common but never a good thing. Since nothing was fully resolved, tensions kept boiling under the surface. When either side believed they could assert an advantage they took it and conflict erupted all over again. This lack of resolution ultimately resulted in a lose-lose scenario.
This is why we can never be afraid to play hardball and go for a final resolution or what we think of as “the win.” In order to get the outcome, we want we must become skilled players who force the other side to acquiesce. We must force them to accept there will be no win-lose scenario in which they are the winner.
We must also accept there won’t be a no win-lose scenario in which we are the winner either.
In order to turn bad faith, into good faith, we must be gracious and generous in our victory. We must grant a win-win solution.
When the other side knows they are going to lose, their priorities change. Their biggest priority isn’t making us lose – it’s protecting themselves. They want to save face and not look like a bunch of weeny losers.
This is when we can finally be nice.
Their change in priorities makes them very willing to accept a win-win solution. Amazingly, these solutions are easy to derive once everyone stops trying to intimidate and prove their power. Win-win solutions just require everyone to accept the realities of the situation (not bravado) and to do their job.
Understandably, many women don’t like engaging in these bad faith negotiations because of all of the macho bravado and posturing that accompanies it. I know that because I am a woman, the first tactic men used on me was intimidation.
However, my reaction was to roll my eyes and think, “Really??”
Who says that just because he is a man and I am a woman, I have to be intimidated?
What is there about him that is supposed to intimidate me?
I never figured that out.
Many men used intimidation because they assumed that I was the “token woman hire” who didn’t know my job. They assumed they could roll right over me with a bunch of BS. But not so fast guys. I know my job and profession extremely well. Much better than most men.
Over the years I learned that women are far better at knowing details. Therefore, we’re really good at detecting men’s BS. This gives us leverage…and power. We’re the ones who can force negotiations to be based on facts, not intimidation. We’re the ones who actually discover the full strength and power of our side.
I learned that men’s weakness in providing and working through details is what led to all the bravado and intimidation tactics. So, when the bravado started on the other side, I knew they were losing. To be a powerful negotiator, I just had to stick to the strategy. And yes, there was a lot of satisfaction in being the “toughest” person in a room full of men.
While negotiating through intimidation is still very popular, in the early 2000’s some men came up with a new negotiation strategy.
Instead of going all macho-bravado against macho-bravado, one side changed out a team member. They brought in a man who could nitpick really well (for a man).
Now, men have always dealt with nitpicky men and know how to intimidate them and blow them off. So, this new man wasn’t one of those. This man applied a new tactic:
He acted like men’s worse nightmare: A bitchy, nagging wife.
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Yup.
The first time I saw it used, I was stunned.
I was also stunned by how incredibly effective it was at neutralizing the machismo in the room. (And yes, I chuckled.) But I was also a little freaked out by the inner depths of the male psyche that was revealed to me. Were men really that intimidated by bitchiness and nagging?
At first, I thought this tactic was unique to one particular situation. But then I encountered it again. And again, in different workplaces. It had become common place.
Admittedly, I found this tactic humorous until it was used against me.
Yes, men (note the plural) played bitchy, nagging wife against me.
Really???
No.
Sorry guys, that will NEVER work against me!
“Do you really want to see who can be the bigger bitch?!”
“Bring it on! I guarantee no man will ever out-bitch me!”
They caught on. So, they changed tactics again and went all macho.
After I stopped laughing my response was: “No guys. After you’ve gone all bitchy-woman, you can’t pull off being a macho-man. It just doesn’t work.”
When they realized none of their tactics were working against me, I was labeled “infuriating.” Personally, I loved being called “infuriating” because it meant we were now playing by my rules.
Playing by my rules, intimidation and BS claims have no effect. I don’t react to it. I stay put and send a very clear message “That doesn’t work against me.”
My second rule was to deal only with facts. No game playing.
In life there are facts and realities that are fixed. They can be laws of nature, industry requirements, contract terms, laws or even basic math: 2 + 2 = 4.
Bravado does not change facts. All the bravado in the world doesn’t make 2 + 2 = 8, even though men will try their best to convince us it does.
In negotiating it is important to find and put all the facts out on the table. When the BS is discarded and we deal only in facts, then the number of negotiable items is significantly reduced.
As I said, women are extremely good at facts and details. This is where we find our leverage in negotiations. We can overload the other side with the inarguable facts that cement our territory.
My bad faith actors also knew this tactic. So, they had their bitchy-man write a very lengthy letter or email making all kinds of claims. It was very effective against my male colleagues. They only made it part way through before they were overwhelmed and lost it using a lot of colorful graphic language.
But not me. (No bitchy-man was going to out-woman me. I was ready to play.)
Remember that episode from season 4 of Friends where Ross and Rachel decide to get back together after “taking a break”? Rachel has one condition.
She writes Ross a long letter in which she describes everything that went wrong and requires Ross to accept full responsibility for why things went wrong. Ross, anxious to get back together lies and says he read the letter – twice – and agrees to everything in the letter. But, as he learns what he agreed to, he is unable to keep up the charade.
Ross finally comes clean and admits that he fell asleep reading the letter – it was 18 pages long – front and back!
Rachel’s letter is a pure female masterpiece. It’s what the bitchy-man tries to replicate.
But he can’t out-woman, out-bitch, or out-Rachel us.
We are women and those qualities belong to us.
During my career I write countless “Rachel Letters” and relished every opportunity to dive into the deepest depths of my femininity and turn male bravado BS into stuttering, stammering blather. It is so empowering!
No matter what strategy they use, we CANNOT allow men to intimidate us during negotiations.
We know they will get ugly and try to intimidate us because they believe we are afraid of conflict. They believe we only want sunshine and roses. They don’t realize the power of our sunshine and light.
Unfortunately, too many of us have been conditioned to fear conflict and give intimidation and bravado more power than it deserves. We were never taught about our own feminine power and how to use it to get the good outcome we want.
As women, we are NOT required to negotiate by men’s rules which set us up to lose. We can use strategies that rely on our feminine strengths to counter male tactics and gain the upper hand.
As women who want the win-win scenario and to create a workplace full of sunshine and roses, we can’t be afraid to get our hands dirty. We must remember that to plant the flowers, we must dig in the dirt and get our hands dirty.
Empowered Women Aren’t Intimidated By Anyone Who Acts In Bad Faith
2026 Update:
I’ve thought about this blog many times during President Trump’s tenure. While I’ve never read “Art of the Deal,” I suspect Trump uses a similar strategy to one I talk about in the first half of this blog.
He absolutely is NOT afraid to use the full power of the United States economically or militarily. And he certainly seems to be overly friendly to “enemies” at the end of a conflict.
It’s interesting to watch all the responses, especially from media.
There are many people who believe he is all about aggression because that is the only strategy they know. It aligns with a narrative they promote.
There are many people who believe we diplomacy has more power than it has. They say we should always be nice and value friendships and alliances above all else. They want to believe everyone in the world wants sunshine and roses and the only reason anyone is aggressive is because we were aggressive first.
This attitude ensures you will be taken advantage of.
A lot of people also don’t want to believe there are ‘bad faith actors” in the world because well, they are afraid to deal with them. It’s easier to ignore them and forever kick the can down the road hoping some event will magically change who they are, just like the singing in Whoville changed the Grinch.
Recently saw a sign that said:
My immediate reaction was, “What do you do when your neighbor is throwing stones at you and doesn’t stop????”
We must remember that this is the real world and “bad faith actors” exist and need someone to stand up to them.
The bottom line is, that when we are faced with “bad faith actors,” we need to wisely use whatever power we have to stop them. That is the only way we can possibly change them.
This is from my friend Natalie Hill. While many men in Tucson retire out to pasture on the golf course, their wives keep “working” pursuing their interests and passions. This is one of the things that make Tucson different from any other place I’ve ever lived – Tucson embraces female energy. In Tucson I’ve had the pleasure to get to know many “older women” who don’t believe in going out to pasture.
Why Retiring is Wrong
Thought that might catch your attention.
Of course, there are exceptions to everything and I’m not the black and white thinker my subject line implies.
So let me explain why I say retirement is wrong.
I disagree with the whole idea of retirement.
It’s bad for the mind.
Bad for the body.
Bad for the the planet.
Here’s why.
Here’s the kind of retirement I’m talking about.
The kind where people no longer do any sort of meaningful work that supports people or the planet.
The kind where bridge, golf and the upcoming cruise are the main events on the calendar.
This kind of retirement is saying to the mind and body – you’re not important or needed here any more.
Might as well shut down.
Turns out the body does better with daily exercise. No surprise there.
If you need some convincing of WHY you need to exercise after 50, read Younger Next Year, by Crowley and Lodge.
So I’ll leave the body out of it.
Let’s talk about the planet.
Retiring to the golf cart or the bridge table or the Princess Line is not what most of us think of when we think of making the world a better place.
And this is where we all come in.
You accumulate skill and wisdom and knowledge over the course of your life.
This is what I call your Brilliance.
And when you reach a Certain Age, that Brilliance is RIPE!
It’s juicy and mature.
Just think how much good we could do if, at the age people typically retire, they instead give the received from their bountiful life.
Can you imagine how much GOOD people in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s (and beyond) could do for the planet?
That’s 40 more years of giving!
Empowered Women Don’t Go Out to Pasture!
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We experience a wrong-doing at work. It upsets us. We want justice. We want management to be just as outraged and upset as us but they aren’t. They just make it to go away. This makes us even angrier that this is how the system works. It isn’t fair.
We have all been there – experienced a wrong-doing that seems to get swept under the rug. But it also seems that in these situations women are treated more unfairly than men. Women get dismissed as emotional if not crazy. Men seem to brush it aside and all go out for a beer together. To women it doesn’t seem like men care about justice or righting the wrong.
How do women get justice?
Let’s go through a scenario.
We suffered a wrong-doing and we immediately have an emotional reaction – hurt, anger etc. We tell all of our friends what happened and they are outraged too. They tell us we need to do something about it. We need to stand up for ourselves. Our wrong-doer can’t be allowed to get away with it. Now we are really upset. Our friends did what we needed – they validated that we were right to be upset. Now we are very upset.
We report the wrong-doing to the appropriate person. They give us a patronizing look and tell us to calm down. They will look into the situation. Over the next few days we watch our wrong-doer. We are waiting for them to disappear for a couple of hours then come back looking beaten up and disgraced. We harbor a fantasy that they will be fired and we will watch them take the walk of shame with their box of personal items. That will make us feel vindicated. But as the days go by, our wrong-doer is happy and carries on like normal. We know we were blown off.
The reason we don’t get justice is due to a series of mistakes.
Our first mistake is looking for emotional validation by talking to our friends. (Men do this too.)
Our second mistake is delving into the drama and emotion of the situation. This is what we are taught to do because we live in a society that is in love with drama. So when we suffer an injustice we do as we were taught – we feed the drama monster. (Men do this too.)
Once we feed the drama monster he grows quickly. When our friends feed him he grows even more. Soon he is really big and fat and ugly. As we look at him we believe he was created entirely by the wrong-doing. Therefore the facts of the wrong-doing have to align with and support his existence. We then write our story of facts to align with and support his existence. We tell this story to ourselves over and over again until it all feels natural. We accept that our original perception was incomplete and our current story is true because if it wasn’t our big ugly drama monster wouldn’t exist. (Men do this too.)
When we present our big, fat, ugly drama monster to other people we want them to be horrified. We want a dramatic outcry by the masses. We want everyone to rise up and join us in our feeling of injustice. We want our feelings vindicated. (Men do this too.)
Our drama loving society tells us that if we create enough drama and enough of an outcry then people will be forced to give us justice.
However, it doesn’t happen. People abandoned us and we are left standing alone with our drama monster.
Our fatal mistake was in believing drama gets justice. In reality, we have to build a factual case to get justice.
Men and women get two very different reactions when they present their drama monsters. This is because we are taught to believe that women react emotionally and men react rationally. As a result women get discredited and men don’t.
When men are emotional, even very emotional, they are seen as functioning through the right side of their brain. To act rationally they just need to switch over to the left side. To do this, you drop him on his head, kick him in the butt or yell in his face. Men are literally treated as if they have a switch that can be flipped to make them act rationally. Flip the switch and he is back to normal.
Once he is back to acting rationally, the problem is solved. It’s time to go get a beer.
To women this makes no sense. What about the wrong-doing that initially caused his emotional response? Women continue to feel the injustice until the situation that caused the wrong-doing is corrected. Once they feel justice, then the situation is resolved.
To the male-dominated workplaces this makes no sense. Women are told to let it go – let go of the emotion and it will all be good. Women are treated as if they have a flush valve that once activated will release any excess emotion. The problem men have is that they don’t know how to activate the valve in women.
The reason they can’t activate the flush valve is because women don’t have one. That’s not how women work.
A few months ago I wrote an article about The Difference Between Male and Female Brains. In this article I cited a study about the difference in connections between the male and female brain. The point of the article was to dispel the stereotype and myth that women only respond emotionally.
Because of the connections in women’s brains, women respond emotionally AND rationally.
Women are every bit as rational as men but also filter events through their emotions.Contrary to what we are taught this doesn’t create a weakness. It creates a tremendous strength – a superpower. Women see more, pick up on more and understand more deeply. Women are tuned-in in a way men don’t comprehend.
The problem women have is that they aren’t taught to use their superpower. They are taught they are emotional and react emotionally. And our drama loving society continues to feed that narrative knowing that it discredits women.
Women have to be taught how to use their superpower to their advantage to get justice. They have to learn and practice processing events emotionally and rationally simultaneously. Women aren’t men who separate and switch between emotion and rational thinking.
When women experience a wrong –doing and have an emotional reaction (just like men) they need to vent (just like men). They vent to one person who will listen and nod but not feed the drama monster.
After women vent, they need to start thinking and gathering the facts.
Rule #1 in gathering facts is to keep your mouth shut. Tell no one what you are doing. If you need help use a neutral third party who won’t feed the drama monster. If you tell your friend, the drama monster will get fed.
When women keep their mouths shut, their superpower kicks into high gear. Their emotions become their radar. By listening to initial feelings, gut responses, intuition and funny little feelings they can read a situation. They become incredibly situationally aware.
When you fully understand the situation, you know how to present your case. You also know how it will be countered. You can then present the counter to the counter argument.
Sound complicated? It isn’t. It’s what women already do.
One of my first articles was about the Rachel Letter. The name came from the episode of Friends where Rachel writes Ross an 18 page letter – front and back. Women (and men who have been the recipient of one) know exactly what I am talking about. This letter has a powerful business application. (All men just said “Oh no!”).
Women’s ability to write this type of letter is really about their ability to organize and connect a great number of details. When those details are connected logically and rationally, we build a case that is hard to dismiss or dispute. (Maybe this is why women make such great lawyers.)
Typically when women write a Rachel Letter in their private lives they include emotion and feelings. In business those have to be removed. You want to present the facts, just the facts.
It takes practice to build the skills to eliminate emotion and present pure facts. I used other opportunities such as writing plans, reports and proposals to learn how to write and state a case. I also did a lot of briefings and presentations. For me there was two prong benefit – I got really good at business communication and I could build the detailed case to right any wrong-doing.
It also takes practice to stop feeding the drama monster. It takes practice to stop talking to everyone for validation and to start venting so the emotion is processed and can be put to a constructive use.
Many years ago I knew a woman who caught her powerful husband having an affair with his secretary. She told no one. She gathered her facts. With the help of an attorney she worked out her plan. She then secretly presented her facts to her husband’s boss. With no notice, the boss flew in, walked into the husband’s office and instantly removed him from his position. It was a perfectly executed castration that all of us were in complete awe of. She got her justice.
Women can get justice. For the most part it is a matter of not doing what they were taught – following the drama route. Their justice comes from empowering their natural superpower.
Empowered Women Get Justice.
For more articles on harassment and discrimination go to The Ugly Stuff article category
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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 2nd 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
Those of you that have read a lot of my articles know I love to give a different perspective anytime there is an issue based on something women do differently from men and there is the assumption that what women do is wrong or inferior. Last week I was going through old emails from my daughter and I came across and article she sent me on how much women use the word “just.”
The article caught my attention because not long ago while editing my book, I tuned in to just how many times I use the word “just” in my writing. It has to be one of my favorite words!
While editing I just deleted the word “just” because it just wasn’t needed – it seems superfluous.
However, according to the woman who wrote the article, women use “just” as a permission word. And using “just” casts women into the “child position” and the person we are speaking to into the “parent position.” For example saying:
“I just want to talk to you about…”
“If I can just get an answer on…”
“I am just seeing how you are doing on…”
The relationship caused by the word “just,” just ruins our credibility.
Now, I know I use these phrases all the time at work. However, I usually preface them with: “Hey, you got a minute? I just want to discuss…“
I know I use the word “just” to establish a limitation or set boundaries. In my writing I use “just” to limit my thoughts and prevent myself from going off on tangents. It helps me remain focused. But if “just” is a bad word for me to use, then should I just say what I am really thinking:
“Hey, you got a minute? I’ve got a lot on my mind and there are 3 things we need to talk about. But I’m not ready to discuss all of them yet and also I don’t have enough time right now. So, I want to discuss this 1 topic.”
Sounds awfully wordy. So to me, saying “just” is just easier.
Given how bad the word “just” supposedly makes women look, I decided to check another source. So, I looked up the word “just” in the dictionary and some of the definitions are:
Within a brief preceding time
Exactly or precisely
Only or merely
Funny, the dictionary doesn’t say “just” is a permission word. But if the “experts” say it is a bad word for women to use, then what happens if we change out “just” and use “only” instead?
“I only want to talk to you about…”
“If I can only get an answer on…”
“I am only seeing how you are doing on…”
Does using “only” do a better job at conveying a limitation or boundaries better? Or do we still sound like we are still asking permission?
Or, do we sound a bit bitchy?
Obviously tone has a lot to do with it. And if a woman is asking a question and sounds all mousey, then there is something wrong. But did you notice all of these examples are examples of interrupting someone? (In which case is it better to sound bitchy or mousey?)
When we interrupt someone, we don’t know what they are working on or how important it is. When we use “just” we are conveying a limitation or boundaries so they can gauge how much time we will need. This allows them to determine if they have time for us. That is being respectful and having some manners.
Suppose instead of using the word “just” we say:
“Excuse me, do you have time to talk about…?”
“Excuse me, do you have an answer for me on…?”
“Excuse me, I want to see how you are doing on…?”
If a woman said that would the “experts” tell us she still be asking permission because children used to be taught to say “excuse me”?
OK. Let’s just get something straight.
Just because women show deference to someone else it doesn’t mean we are timid, insecure or that there is something wrong with us. It doesn’t mean we see ourselves as subordinate or as a child. We just might be using some manners and we just might be showing some respect for someone else.
And there is just nothing wrong with that.
And maybe for that reason alone, I will continue to use the word “just” as much as I want.
One more thing.
Do you know what I just hate?
I just hate it when a man just comes walking into my office and just starts talking to me about something and expects me to just drop what I am doing and pay attention to him and whatever it is he wants to talk about. I just find that rude. Maybe he should just take a few lessons from women in how to use “just.”
I want to share a quote I’ve seen several times this past year:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
I thought was odd that we would be afraid of our own power. But if you think about it, that is what we are afraid of. It made me wonder – Why?
I read some opinions that said that if we believe we are powerful, then we feel responsible to step forward and serve the world. But then when we put ourselves out there we open ourselves up to ridicule, critique, questioning and possibly failure. There is the possibility that the power we felt within ourselves can be taken away. So in order to protect our power, we hide it – we play it safe by playing small.
When we play it safe, we wait for the right moment to let ourselves shine but those moments don’t come often, if at all.
For myself whenever I consider backing off and playing it safe – like every week when I write these articles about empowering women – I examine my perspective. It is the perspective I have been taught that makes me want to play it safe. Marianne said “There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” What she is saying is that we are taught to believe that if we are powerful, then we diminish or disempower others. That however, is a Blue Zone perspective – a perspective based in male traits.
When I want to feel powerful, confident and shine, I reject this male perspective in favor of my natural female perspective.
As women we don’t believe in the male hierarchal perspective that says there is a fixed quantity of power and for one person to rise up another must be diminished. We don’t believe that to be powerful, brilliant, gorgeous, talented or fabulous we have to take those qualities from others. Instead we know these qualities originate from within ourselves and we project them outward as an expression of who we are. So when we express our power we are saying “This is how I shine.” And it makes us look around to others and say “Tell me how you shine.”
To keep our female power, we must keep our female circular perspective. When we see people in a circle, we recognize each person as an equal individual and value them for who they are. Each person is a vital piece contributing to the whole. It allows us to say “This is who I am” without impacting other people – we only impact the sum of the whole. When we keep this perspective, it encourages other people to do the same. In a circle everyone can express who they are without taking anything away from who anyone is.
I think of a circle as a container. Each person adds to the whole and each person’s contribution of themselves only increases how much the circle contains. So as we express ourselves, we don’t feel our energy dissipate or be consumed. Our power isn’t attacked with ridicule and criticism. Our energy is captured and interacts with the energy of others. This is why when women gather in circles they get to experience their own inherent power.
Contrast our female perspective to how we have been taught to think about our personal power. The hierarchal male perspective we were taught doesn’t have a mechanism to collect and contain everyone’s power. It is about competition of individuals – winners and losers; givers and takers; risers and fallers.
So then, why aren’t we taught to think through a circular perspective? Because it doesn’t produce the individual heroes the male hierarchy promises us. We have subordinated the collective energy of many in order to pursue the dream of the ideal individual who is as powerful as the collective many. When we hold ourselves back and play it safe we are hoping there is superhero out there who is stronger, more powerful and better in every way than us. But there isn’t. There are only lots and lots of other ordinary people just like us.
We always have a choice in our perspective. We can choose to play it small and wait for the elusive ultimate hero or we can step forward with our shining powerful selves encouraging others to join us. Every week as I write these articles I am embracing my female circular perspective and inviting other women to join me in allowing themselves to shine in hope of creating a great big circle with boundless amounts of both male and female energy. This is what the world needs.
Our workplaces and communities need powerful women – women who retain and act from our circular perspective. My hope for the coming year is that women learn to no longer play it small and begin to embrace their inherent feminine power.
Recently I read a blog that announced there was no difference between male and female brains. The author was too anxious to state that men’s and women’s brains are the same and therefore men and women are the same, that she missed some important information. She didn’t read the study herself but got her information from other articles and unfortunately passed on bogus information.
The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science examined male and female brains as a whole. “Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain.” The study didn’t conclude that male and female are the same. It stated there are sex/gender differences. What the study does is debunk the myth that there is a dividing line with male brains on one side and female brains on the other.
This study also doesn’t contradict another study also published in the PNAS in December 2013 by Ragini Verma an associate professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania medical school and her colleagues. They researched the differences in the connections within the brain between males and females using 949 youths from 8 – 22 years of age. Their research revealed differences in the connections between male and female brains.
The male brain has more short front and back connections that are within the same lobes or in the same hemisphere. These front and back connections exist on both sides of the brain. The female brain however, has more long connections that go across from one hemisphere to the other. Females also have connections that go from one lobe on one side of the brain to a different lobe in the other hemisphere.
They also conducted a behavioral study which also produced pronounce differences between the sexes. The behavioral study supported how different brains connections affect behavior.
This study may provide a scientific and neural basis as to why males and females excel at different tasks. Male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action. Female brains however are designed to facilitate communication between the analytical and intuitive processing modes.
What I found fascinating about this study is that it states that because female connections go across brain hemispheres, women actually process information both logically and emotionally. So, women are logical but the added dimension of emotions gives us greater insight and understanding. Women can achieve a deeper and more thorough understanding of a problem or situation and therefore work with a team of people to come up with a better solution. That’s a very powerful skill to take into the workplace.
Like the other study, the brain connection study help debunk some myths. I still hear women say women process information emotionally (right brain) and men process information logically (left brain). This leads us to believe that there are distinctly different male and female brains where female brain connections are all on the right side and male brain connections are all on the left. These studies prove that wrong and should hopefully put to rest the idea that women are emotionally neurotic because we don’t use the logical and rational left side of our brain. It also debunks the myth that men purely rational.
This brain connection study also showed that the divergence between male and female brains began in youth and widened significantly into adolescence and adulthood. From youth to adulthood male brains connections consistently ran front to back. Female brains connections however continued to change, changing what parts of the brain were connected.
The study didn’t draw any conclusions as to why there are different connections in the male and female brain. It couldn’t conclude to what degree the differences natural or the result of how we are raised.
When we read these studies or articles about studies we want to be careful not to draw drastic conclusions like the other blogger did. In science there is never a “they are all the same” or a “they are all different” answer. Scientific findings fall under a bell curve. So there are many similarities between male and female brains but they are not exactly the same. Likewise there are many similarities amongst female brains but they too are not all the same.
We are only beginning the gender research to explore our similarities and differences so we are far from any conclusive results. And even when we get there, we probably won’t discover any dividing lines, only tendencies that fit under a bell curve. But that is what makes each of us unique.
I was going to publish another article but just saw that the Secretary of Defense is going to announce a plan to open all combat positions to women. I’m glad women will now have the opportunities I couldn’t.
When I was in the Air Force women weren’t allowed to be any “combat” position. I was offered a pilot slot but turned it down because I couldn’t fly fighters. Women were limited to transport and refueling aircraft which meant we had to either “haul trash” or “pass gas.” Neither was appealing to me.
As an engineer, men could be part of the “combat engineers” which to me sounded like a great adventure because they got to do all the really cool stuff. As a woman, sorry, no can do. However, I was sent to the training and I was either the first or second female officer to go through the course. The instructors literally wanted me to sit in the tent and watch. I refused. I wanted to direct the entire exercise scenario because I had experience doing it back at my base. I was told “No.” So they sent me out to the field where they expected me wilt under the Florida heat and humidity.
In our scenario we had to recover from a major strike. It began as chaos and only grew worse. Very hot and frustrated I grabbed a radio out of an NCO’s hand and started talking to the “director” about the situation. I described the scene and what I thought the priorities should be. The director was confused. He was removed from the scene and couldn’t picture what was going on. Eventually I started directing from the field. It was multi-tasking Nirvana which is why I always loved that role.
Afterwards, I went up to the instructors and told them that for the next scenario I was going to be the director. I was and the exercise went very smoothly. The instructors who looked down on me the first two days were now suddenly very friendly and dragged me off to meet the commander to talk about how well I did even though I was starving and dying to take a shower.
For the third exercise I didn’t direct, I instructed the man who was the director.
What I noticed was the difference in my perspective about being the director from the men’s. The scenario was set up with the director removed from the action because men believed that is how you direct – to manage the big picture you have to be removed from it. For women, to understand the big picture we do better when we are part of it. For the first scenario I was in the field, amongst all the action so I understood what was happening. For the second scenario when I was removed from the field I still kept asking questions and picturing what was happening to make myself feel like I was amongst the action. When I instructed the next director I tried to teach him to be part of the action and not removed from it.
To their credit the instructors understood exactly what I was doing. After the third exercise we had a long discussion. Because of their previous roles the instructors were used to being in the field and part of the action. They were uncomfortable being in the command tent and like me really didn’t get it as to how you can direct something without being a part of it. We talked a lot about communication and how during the first exercise I described the scene so they understood what was going on even though the director who hadn’t been out in the field was clueless. What we really discussed was blending male and female perspectives to improve how we approached the scenario. Until I came out there they didn’t know what was possible. They didn’t believe that a woman could actually enhance the exercise.
That training only intensified my desire to be part of Red Horse which was the Air Force’s combat engineers. I knew I would excel at it. That Florida training proved it. But I couldn’t. Every few months the assignment people would call and ask me if I would go to Korea. I always had the same reply “Can I be in Red Horse?” Their answer was “No” so my answer to them was “No.”
I am glad women now have the opportunity to enhance combat roles. There may be only a few women who are qualified for the various roles but I have no doubt they will make a significant positive impact. It’s been a long time coming.
Empowered Women Have the Opportunity to Fulfill Any and All Roles
I started this website to teach other women the concepts I successfully used in my career. Little did I know that I preparing myself for my biggest challenge yet into the male-dominated workplace.
I want to share this experience because I was in such an extreme condition and yet I dramatically changed the company in one year. I will not lie and say it was easy because it wasn’t – this was the hardest I’ve ever worked. Work consumed my life. But my experience demonstrates the capabilities of women when they are empowered to apply themselves. I am now in awe of what is in us to achieve.
This article long so read it when you have a good half hour. I dealt with a lot in my job and this article discusses only about 25% of the issues. I included music clips – the songs I associated with the issues and sang over and over again in my head to maintain my sense of humor. And as you will see, I needed my sense of humor!
I was recruited to be the General Manager of a construction company (I will call it DSC) because of my experience creating a process-driven workplace. I was a little wary about the job. Just because an employer says he wants a process-driven company, doesn’t mean he really understands what a process-driven company is.
Because this company was not in the U.S and not American, I wanted to make sure it was solid. I was assured the company which was part of a larger group of privately owned companies was profitable, functioning well and in a market full of opportunity. So, I looked forward to what I saw as an adventure.
My Job Won’t Be Hard!
Upon my arrival my boss welcomed me with a card showing a tranquil dirt road ascending a gently-sloped grassy hill. To him, this expressed the extent of the difficulty I would encounter in my new job.
That was my first hint. This is construction and there is no such thing as smooth roads. I suspected that dirt road was a bit bumpier than depicted. But, no problem, there’s a reason I drive a Jeep not a BMW.
By noon on my fourth day, I knew DSC had serious financial issues. Neither DSC nor the corporate financial department understood or used the basic principles of construction financial management. I thought back to a construction financial course I took many years ago and realized I was in the worst case scenario. DSC was projecting revenue it could not justify and didn’t know its outstanding costs. There was no way to know DSC’s true financial position.
Then as I do with every company I work for, I applied the Dollars to Doughnuts Concept. I discovered DSC had no idea how to make money in construction because there was no project management. This meant the entire middle section of the concept was missing. While a gap between the top and bottom section is common, within this corporation, they weren’t even aligned. The corporate level didn’t know what DSC did as a business, how they functioned or how they should function. And since no one within DSC had any project management training, they didn’t know how they were supposed to function either.
Dollars To Doughnuts Concept
DSC Version of Dollars to Doughnuts Concept
I thought about the four quadrants of knowledge. This corporation was in the “we don’t know what we don’t know” quadrant.
Or in layman’s terms – this is the blind leading the blind.
That gentle grassy hill just got very steep and rocky. I had to teach everyone the most basic fundamental principles of the construction business and how to integrate them into construction management processes.
My first DSC Theme Song
I didn’t need my Jeep, I needed a rock crawling Rubicon Jeep with a 5” lift!
During my first two weeks, I had a steady stream of people from the corporate staff and our sister companies inform me that DSC’s fundamental problem was a lack of accountability. I found this ironic because in the management meeting, anytime someone was questioned, they deflected by bringing up something DSC was doing wrong. I made a HUGE mental note of this. It seemed everyone liked that DSC wasn’t functioning because they used DSC to avoid their own accountability. That meant possible trouble in the future. Once I get DSC on track, how will they react when they can’t deflect onto DSC and have to address their internal performance issues?
By the end of that second week I realized a lack of accountability was merely a symptom of DSC’s real fundamental problem – Autonomy. DSC valued autonomy above all else. Each person did what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted. And they fiercely protected their right to do so!
Its excessive value for autonomy made DSC an extreme male-dominated company. DSC was so deep into the Blue Zone that it didn’t know there were other colors in the rainbow! Even the women were pure blue.
To understand DSC’s and the corporation’s culture you have to go back in time at least 60 years and forget all management concepts that have been developed since. (This job involved time travel too!)
I pulled out some old articles written in the 1980’s that discussed old management styles to refresh my memory. I read: “People choose which competencies to develop based upon their self-image. They develop an idea of what it means to be a manager and act accordingly.” I remembered one of my first articles, Understanding Why Being a Manager Is So Important discussed this passage and I pulled that out too.
DSC is a unionized company (yes, I hear the collective U.S. groan) and most of the current supervisors had been with the company for decades. They remember the days before professionals were needed, when their senior union supervisors ran all the work. Now that they were the supervisors, they wanted the same status and autonomy their predecessors enjoyed. They believed, and were corporately empowered to believe, that when it came to doing “the work” they alone could make all decisions. There was no need for management or technical professionals such as project managers, quality managers, estimators, schedulers or even engineers for design.
The union members had a pre-industrial revolution era concept of how to do work. (Now we are really going back in time to the days before building codes! Scary but true.) They believed in the master craftsman that independently decided how to construct the project and directed the trades in what to do. As a worker moved up vertically from foreman to general foreman to superintendent , he grew in status based upon his expertise. And because they didn’t have any horizontal perspective, the higher a supervisor was in the vertical hierarchy, the greater his autonomy – there were fewer people he had to answer to. At DSC Autonomy = Status. Listening to them I often thought of teenagers, anxious to achieve adult status at 18, and no longer be answerable to mom and dad.
The Autonomy of DSC Divisions
The DSC org chart depicted these beliefs. DSC did not have a central office and each division operated from client sites or various corporate offices. Each DSC division was its own independent company working an assigned territory and reported only to me. They did not trespass onto each other’s territory. There were no shared resources – they did not share personnel, tools, vehicles or equipment. Trade workers worked for a specific superintendent and were not allowed to work for another.
I continuously hired project managers and other professionals in an attempt to fill in the middle management ranks and delegate my massive workload. But every manager I hired created more work than he relieved. The reason – each and every one of them got pulled deep into the Blue Zone and continuously engaged in intense arguments with the union workforce. The union workforce did not want a middle management layer to erode the status they waited decades to attain.
I spent my days (Sundays and holidays were the most frequent) breaking up arguments and averting physical fights, leaving me to do my work late into the night. One night while working with Mad Men playing in the background I heard:
Don’t fight with the Pig in the mud.
You get dirty.
And the Pig loves it.
I replayed the scene several times – that described DSC! I made up signs and plastered that saying everywhere. But every male manager still wound up in the mud. They ALL also wound up at the hospital with stress related ailments. Eventually they all left.
Status was important at the corporate level too. Going back to my old reference article, a passage read “It suited the self-images of the managers that they were superior, the brains for others who could only supply the brawn.” This fit the corporate culture! Most of the corporate staff was located in another larger city where “higher quality people” could be found. The town and area DSC operated in was industrial, “dirty” and a blue collar working town, (think Hunger Games, District 13) not a desirable place for professionals. Our physical separation enhanced the distinction in status between blue collar and professional.
The corporate staff did the strategic planning – the highest level of thinking. It wasn’t until my last couple of weeks that I understood that as a general manager I was under/inferior to the corporate staff. In this hierarchy they did not need my input. According to them, they were responsible to audit and evaluate (critique) DSC performance.
It always seemed odd to me that I didn’t discuss what DSC was working on with anyone. In management meetings the corporate staff gave detailed reports but the operating company GM’s (those of us who actually produced revenue) had only 5 minutes once a month to list our top projects. But if you understand that the corporate staff didn’t believe they needed our input to do their jobs to support us, it makes perfect illogical sense.
As I was writing this article I came across another passage I marked back then: “To managers employees were considered expendable, factors of employment, no different from machines. Managers demanded an allegiance they did not return. Workers responded by developing an allegiance to their unions.”
No wonder I marked it – that is DSC and the corporation in a nutshell!! I often thought to myself: Welcome to the 1950’s!!
At the corporate level, they were obsessed with returning DSC to its past glory days of being the local contractor who successfully competed with the big out-of-town general contractors. For decades DSC successfully grew without any project management or professional support! But that was 10+ years ago and a very different business climate.
The Corporate Theme Song That I Sang Several Times a Week!
Back then it was simple – Clients’ big oil money flowed like water. DSC did their work on a time and material basis – they went out, did the work, made whatever changes to the scope they wanted and got paid for every dime. This was construction project and financial management at its absolute simplest.
But then the environment changed dramatically in 2009. Oil money no longer flowed like water – oil companies competed for investors who expected higher returns, forcing them to crank down tight on budgets. DSC’s simple environment suddenly got complex – safety, construction management, quality management and financial controls were now required. But DSC didn’t evolve; it didn’t learn how to operate in its new complex construction market.
Complexity is the ultimate enemy of Autonomy and it beat the crap out of DSC! The complexity of construction project management put DSC on life support but without financial management, no one even realized it! By my third month I realized DSC would not survive another year without drastic and immediate changes.
DSC, who used billable rates established in its contracts, was losing money on every man-hour worked. Their billable rates were so far out of date they did not cover their costs. I “joked’ that their project manager rate was $20/hr. lower than the rates I used 12 years ago!
Because no one understood contracts, no one read the contracts so no one knew the contracts allowed for an annual adjustment of overhead costs. (I thought: ever hear of inflation?) Their oldest contract hadn’t updated overhead costs and non-union wages in 9 years! Even worse, that contract was about to quadruple in work. Do the math: lose $7 per man-hour for 60 men working 10 hours per day, 365 days a year! (7*60*10*365 = $1,533,000) Ouch!
Luckily the time to increase rates was upon us. I recalculated rates and increased the rates as much as each of our Clients allowed (It gave me something to do every night from 11:00 pm to 3:00 am for two weeks) I also restructured the profit calculations to capture more profit. They collected $2.50/hr. profit on regular time rates of $54/hr., overtime rates of $80/hr.and double time rates of $106/hr. I was shocked – $2.50 profit on costs of $106! I told them that was just plain Un-American!!
Rates were only one issue – DSC was hemorrhaging money everywhere. Another root problem was the women’s lack of clout. At DSC “the girls” as they were called didn’t carry the job title of Project Administrators as they do in most construction companies. They were Administrative Assistants. DSC hired girls with a clerical backgrounds believing the girls simply filled out forms in Excel and administratively cleaned up after “the guys.”
But their responsibilities weren’t that simple any more. Project Administrators are the first line of defense in protecting the financial integrity of projects. They watch over the financial and contractual processes and for this reason, good construction companies empower Project Administrators. Without any clout the girls at DSC couldn’t resolve issues. The filled out their Excel forms the best they could, then built walls for autonomy and to protect themselves from accountability for the incomplete work.
Without communication and teamwork issues remained unresolved. The associated costs mounted into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then because the issues seemed too complex to resolve, the costs were routinely written off.
Early on, I hired a phenomenal young woman to help me clean up the mess. She quit after 3 weeks and confided in me why. She worked with one of the men before (he recommended her to me) and didn’t want to work under him again. She felt that with her college degree and her experience she shouldn’t be “his girl” who cleaned up the mess he made of projects. She was burnt out from doing that with her previous employer and she knew she deserved more professionally. Because she was close friends with this man, she didn’t want to get into a power struggle as she asserted herself and ruin their friendship.
I felt bad for her because she was so capable but like the women of DSC she was pure Blue and that is what she really struggled with. She acted like a man thinking that is what she needed in order to get ahead but no matter what she would always be “his girl” and personal administrative assistant. (I always got a kick out of listening to her cuss up a storm while her little Prada handbag sat daintily on my desk.)
Her story emphasized just how deeply male-dominated the culture was. After she left, I really had to think about my strategy to move DSC to the Purple Zone.
I already began separating people into two groups – those that were willing to grow and learn (“Roundies”) and those that weren’t. The ones who weren’t willing to grow, I started calling “Flatties”. They believed the world was flat and that if we sailed too far in the direction I was taking DSC, we would fall off the edge of the earth into the abyss. When I discussed new processes, you could see genuine fear in their eyes! Their fear of the unknown, of losing autonomy and of having to acknowledge what they didn’t know would always prevent them from reaching the brave new world of the Purple Zone.
My Second DSC Theme Song.
The Flatties resisted change with everything in them. One woman was anointed as the head of the resistance movement. Her tactic was to resist until you gave up in complete frustration and backed down. In construction men often resolve conflict this way – he who backs down first loses. I was fascinated that a woman was so effective in this technique with the men. I secretly liked her for this and hoped she would become a “Roundie”.
Unlike the men who engaged her in the Blue Zone and failed, I engaged her from the Purple Zone. No threats, no hostility. I gave her a firm explanation of why procedures were changing and expressed my excitement as to how much better everything will be! (In the new world is it sunny, warm and we drink mojitos all day!) As she resisted, hoping to wear me down, I didn’t budge and maintained my chipper attitude. I responded to each and every email she sent – I could not allow her to have the last word. I kept responding and it took hours, if not all day or two days, until she gave up. The Flatties were no match for the American Dream Team! (That’s what the Flatties called the Americans in the company)
Over several months, most of the Flatties eventually left on their own. A lot of people were scared about the Flatties leaving because they were perceived to have the power and knowledge base – if they left then DSC would immediately fall apart. I’ve heard that same fear mongering many times and always found that once the bad apples leave, the good people who were pushed into the back corner step forward and flourish. And this is what happened at DSC. (Baby and Johnny tore it up on Kellerman’s dancefloor!)
I will admit that I was surprised how much so many people blossomed. They literally became different people!
With a lot of the resistance gone, I concentrated on closing out hundreds of projects with hundreds of unresolved problems. I gathered “the girls” from all of the divisions together to create a cleanup team. Some of the girls hated each other threatening to quit if they had to work with each other. To turn DSC around I had to start with the women and get them to the Purple Zone first.
I never imagined I would have to lead women from the Blue Zone and train them how to work in the Purple Zone. I encouraged and empowered their female traits and praised their use of their female traits. Soon, they all started talking and chatting away – the girls became women and a team. I used our clean-up process to train them on project change management. I encouraged them in their role as the protectors of project financial integrity. I expected them to speak up whenever they saw something wrong. They now had the clout to stand up to the men and correct them when they didn’t follow processes.
My New DSC Theme Song
And the men responded as most good construction men do – they loved the support! There was no fighting in the mud!
Empowered Purple women led the men to the Purple Zone. Hallelujah! At times the women ventured into the Pink Zone and I was surprised by how Pink some of these formerly Blue women could be. It was actually refreshing to see women be natural and true to whom they really are.
About the time we started the clean-up process I hired a new cost analyst. He was phenomenal. He knew construction financial management, he understood processes and he worked in the Purple Zone! He didn’t get dragged into the Blue Zone and fight in the mud. He took an enormous burden off of me and he was an amazing asset in growing DSC.
Mid-way through the clean-up process, we finally moved into the new central office. Standardizing processes was about to become so much easier! With everyone in one room the DSC divisions were finally forced to work together. To prevent problems, I assigned the cubicles. When everyone got situated I realized a huge mistake on my part or maybe it was just a glaring reminder that this was still a male-dominated organization. The office had rows of cubicles, two of which I considered the core rows – one with the Estimating/Planning staff and one with the administrative. In other words, one row of all women and one row of all men.
(As The Woman In The Room, I hung my head in shame!)
I had to fix this! There was one woman in particular I wanted to move over to the Estimating row. I had mentored her for months because she was in a non-traditional role. When hired, she was treated and paid like an administrative assistant and her real abilities were ignored. (I will write more about her in a separate article) I wanted her to work closely with a young man in the Estimating row because they had opposite professional weaknesses and strengths and they needed to learn from each other. Over the next few months a couple men left, and I moved her. That was the beginning of the real transition. I hired a planner – another young woman. Then, another project coordinator, also a young woman. The row was now this beautiful mix of 3 men and 3 women. Purple!!
The administrative row had a vacant cubicle so one of the superintendents used it when he came to work in the office. After a few more movements, the entire office was a wonderful Purple Zone workspace!
The project management process chart we developed together was printed large and hung on the wall. We had a small conference room where I met with the project coordination staff to review projects. My cost analyst met with the admin staff regularly to ensure DSC financials were on track. I designed a new organizational structure that addressed the realities of the limited labor pool and the DSC skill level. We were beginning to function.
For the first time in several years DSC was profitable! Our new work made good margins because we were following our processes and people were empowered to speak up when they questioned something. We started to come together as a team and one project administrator arranged pot luck lunches for celebration. We still had a very long way to go but we were moving in the right direction. I was so proud of my purple team!
Remember how I said that the corporate staff liked that DSC functioned poorly because they used DSC to deflect issues from themselves? For a few months, I was quietly saying that the time was coming when DSC would start functioning and that the corporate departments would also have to improve their performance. That time arrived.
I don’t remember what triggered it, but I came up with a somewhat tongue in cheek theme for DSC: DSC- Not Quite the F*ck Ups We Used To Be!
The multimillion dollar question was whether or not the corporate departments could accept the new emerging DSC. Were they willing to admit to their “opportunities for improvement” and take action to improve their performance too? Or would their pride stop them?
Department 1 had always been difficult to work with. I reported to HR several time that Dept. 1 management and personnel were demeaning to DSC employees. There was one project administrator in particular they openly denigrated in public and she got to listen to it on a regular basis. It was cruel. During our conference calls I felt like answering their questions with “because we’re stupid, that’s why.” After the calls, I could see the hurt on the faces of my team.
Dept. 1 was developing a new system for DSC which was several months behind schedule and plagued with issues. Dept. 1 said it was the fault of my administrative supervisor. But the underlying issue was that Dept. 1 didn’t understand how DSC operated and went forward with designing the system without a process map. The first system we reviewed had the process backwards.
The system highlighted the new complexity of our work. Completing the system took a long time not because the DSC admin supervisor was being…I will say it…a Bitch…but because Dept. 1 didn’t consider all of the administrative components outside of DSC that had to be integrated into the system. The problem was not a person; it was not understanding the complexity of the process.
As we moved to another issue with Dept. 1, DSC and a sister company proposed the standard industry process which was simple and easy. Dept. 1 rejected the process and instead came up with a cumbersome process that still didn’t do what we needed. It created a new mess! I will admit that I called their process “stupid” because it was. I told them we would be humiliated if anyone in the real world knew this is how we handled the problem.
In our next meeting to figure out how to make this process work, Dept. 1 came up with an even more complex system that required extensive system reprogramming. (WTF? They haven’t even gotten the other project right yet.) So, my Cost Analyst asked our boss if our initial solution was open for discussion. The response was ugly. (On the upside we learned our quiet and polite Cost Analyst had some brass huevos!)
Even as DSC greatly improved its performance we did not gain Dept. 1’s respect. They always reminded me of the "smart" kids in school who always had to brown nose the teacher for attention.
Department 2 whose support was critical to DSC projects refused to work with us. Even though they worked under DSC contracts, they proclaimed their complete autonomy and that DSC could not direct any Dept. 2 actions. Even my requests for support were met with “we will take it under advisement.” DSC managers and supervisors complained constantly that Dept. 2 personnel did nothing all day and never went out to the projects.
In construction, conflict between Dept. 2 and construction personnel is common but it is usually because Construction feels Dept. 2 is being too zealous in its duties. This was the first time I ever encountered Construction complaining that Dept. 2 was not being zealous enough.
Part of the conflict was due to the different pay structure between Dept. 2 personnel and DSC’s union personnel. During a typical work cycle, union personnel were paid for 15 hours more, even though they worked the same number of hours. This angered Dept. 2 personnel so they weren’t anxious to be proactive in their duties and they had very high turnover. Dept. 2’s solution was to hire women for the job because they won’t argue over pay like men do. (Yes, you read that right!)
Two years earlier, Dept. 2’s lack of diligence caused DSC’s largest client to shut down all work. Even after this Dept. 2 only did the minimum required to get DSC back to work. They did not continue to grow their functional expertise. Their current Sr. Manager, a self-proclaimed Intellectual, stayed at the 30,000 ft. level, and only associated with Dept. 2 through his manager – he didn’t associate with the working class.
The Dept. 2 Manager did not believe in the new stringent industry principles for this function and often thwarted them. (The cause for so many arguments with DSC management). His attitude put DSC, its personnel and our clients at risk. Until his attitude changed and Dept. 2 became champions for their function, clients would continue to limit DSC work on their sites. The bottom line is that DSC could not grow until Dept. 2 got their sh*t together!
Elevating issues to our mutual boss did not help DSC. Dept. 2 had one responsibility that DSC complained for years that Dept. 2 was not doing. For six months I followed up monthly directly with the Dept. 2 Sr. Manager and Manager requesting the reports. I was always promised them but never got them. I finally went to our boss to ask for his help. The Dept. 2 Manager was standing right outside the boss’s office so our boss asked if the reports were being done. The Manager replied that they were. End of story.
Our boss was very young for his position and inexperienced in industrial construction; he was more suited to the scope of work of one of our sister companies. One of his flaws is that he couldn’t deal well with problems. So, he just always wanted to hear that everything was fine. If you told him all was good, gave him the thumbs up, he didn’t dig any deeper. Managers used that to their advantage – an autonomy preservation techinique.
In early August DSC had an issue (yes we screwed up) that required Dept. 2’s support. At first Dept. 2 didn’t even respond. When they did they made mistakes, then more mistakes which upset the Client and gave DSC a big black eye. The Client requested Dept. 2 to produce the same reports I had been requesting. It took days and when Dept. 2 produced the reports they were incomplete and filled with obvious errors. Now the Client was extremely upset and the stuff hit the fan! This was the same Client who shut down work two years earlier because of Dept. 2. So there was a lot of stuff hitting an industrial sized fan!
Our boss realized he had been misled by Dept. 2.
DSC personnel were embarrassed and hurt that after all of our progress, Dept. 2 could bring us down. Our mistake was recoverable but Dept. 2’s errors…maybe not. August became a miserable month – it seemed like everything fell apart and that it was all beyond our control.
Complexity was once again, crushing DSC. Even though DSC could internally make vast improvements we were not autonomous. We relied on corporate departments to do their functions well so they could support our work. They failed us.
Internally, I questioned if we fighting a losing battle to save DSC. My gut told me that I had taken DSC as far as I could.
DSC’s future hinged on whether or not the corporate functions could learn from their mistakes and now admit that they needed to improve their performance too.
Because my boss wasn't experienced in the industrial application of Dept. 2's function, I explained to him how my previous employers exceled in this area – they got "Religion!” Our client has "Religion." Our Client is waiting for us to be born again!! We need to let them know that we have seen the errors of our ways! We will confess our sins, we will atone and go forward into the shiny light and glory! Are you with me brother? Let me have an “Amen!!” Sing it! Do you feel it?!
Can I get that Amen?! Nope. My boss is agnostic.
The first week of September we forged forward anxious to get back on track. Later that week, my boss walked into the DSC office, looked right down my beautiful Purple rows and tells me he doesn’t like it. (Somebody wants to asserts himself.)
The next week I briefly met with him and he says he doesn’t like my organizational structure. He wants to go back to the old hierarchal structure that he and my predecessor designed. (You mean the structure that failed and had managers fighting in the mud?)
Call me naïve. But, up until that meeting, I thought the DSC I was fixing was the screwed up company my boss inherited. I thought I was helping him out. But I was wrong. I was correcting the DSC he created. He created the overly-empowered union members who fought with managers. He created and encouraged the gap and misalignment between the operating companies and the corporate office. He believed in and reinforced the vertical hierarchy. He believed in Autonomy – he had Autonomy Religion!! He was the one entrenched in the Blue Zone.
He never wanted the process-driven company he hired me to create. Our early conversations were not about a process-driven company but always about how soon I could fire two individuals. Get rid of them and the Glory Days return! All this time he and I were on different pages!
Nonetheless, I kept getting things back on track. DSC still hoped that our relationship with Dept. 2 would change dramatically. After our boss realized they lied to him about producing the reports, we thought he would finally listen to us and we would get the support we needed.
I invited my boss and the Dept. 2 management to a meeting with my staff. The meeting went very poorly. In the spin, DSC got blamed for the Dept. 2 not being able to produce the reports. (Wait a second! If you are saying that DSC prevented Dept. 2 from doing the reports, then you just admitted that Dept. 2 abdicated their job! Do you get that? No.) My staff pushed back like I had never seen them push back before. They asked direct questions but got NO answers.
After the meeting, it was the first time I heard my staff openly blame my boss and say he was part of the problem. Before the meeting, my boss said he wanted to build a bridge between DSC and Dept. 2 but in the meeting he burnt that bridge down.
The next time I met with my boss and Dept. 2 accusations were launched at me. I understood how my managers had felt, being enticed to get into the mud for a fight. I kept my responses short and direct, I was not going to get dragged into the Blue Zone. I felt like I was supposed to submit to the corporate staff, accept their abuse and DSC’s lowly position in the vertical hierarchy.
Sorry guys. It just ain’t in my nature to be submissive and you know that! !n this case everything in me screamed not to submit. This is the wonderful thing about being a woman – you pick up on so many signals that men will tell you are not real, but they are! My instincts told me not to trust them. Something’s up.
My boss and Dept. 2 had to avoid all personal accountability to the Client for the way Dept. 2 messed up in August. If the Client believed the accountability was at the corporate level, (as it really) then there would be huge ramifications to the entire corporation.
So, right from the beginning they openly made DSC the scape goat (and I suspect me directly). But that in turn had even bigger consequences which I don’t think they understood. I knew that being the scapegoat placed me in a precarious situation. Any issue in the future could result in legal consequences to me personally. I do not want to wind up in court in a foreign country. I could not submit. No job was worth that.
I was dismissed.
I was told “There were many complaints about you,” making it sound like everyone in all the companies complained about me. From his tone I was supposed to interpret that I was a horrible person. (Sorry I need to wave the Bullshit flag! I understand that you may want to hurt me but I know who I am, what I have accomplished and what my team thinks of me.)
I will always remember my body language when I asked the question – I was very relaxed like a friend just told me a funny story. I was even smiling. So, "People in DSC complained about me?”
Pause and stuttering. “No. The complaints all came from Dept.2 personnel.” Then it was something about “not being on their team.”
I didn’t say anything else because I knew it would do no good. He was coached to say nothing else.
In a male-dominated, hierarchal, status-driven organization, the person on top gets to decide who will be held accountable for anything that goes wrong. It is the opposite of ‘the buck stops here.” It is the opposite of process driven company. In a company like this, that values autonomy, an individual’s independent actions are to blame for problem. One of my fellow GM’s described our boss’s management style as- fire the right person and problems go away; hire a new person and all is wonderful again, until it isn’t.
So, after working 100 hours per week for weeks and on end, the inevitable question is: Was it all worth it?
Yes! Because I learned that the concepts I discuss really do work, even in the most screwed up, archaic, male-dominated company! I now have enormous confidence in myself and my concepts. This experience put all of the concepts of The Woman in the Room in one environment and I saw how powerful they are! I know everything in my career has built to this moment and I know my mission is to empower women to lead the male-dominated workplace.
And one more thing – God bless America! I am so glad to be home!
When I entered the Air Force many years ago, I was told that I needed a “Sponsor” to help ensure my rise through the ranks. My Sponsor should be a higher ranking officer who was upwardly mobile. My Sponsor should also have a Sponsor who was a well-connected senior ranking officer who is on track for General’s rank. The trick to the system was picking the right line of Sponsors. At the very top of the officer ranks there were rivalries and the senior officer in your sponsorship line could instantly fall out of favor or lose status to a rival. If either of these happened, the entire line of sponsorship would suffer the consequences and once bright careers would be dead in the water.
The whole concept of sponsorship was to work the politics of the merciless up-or-out system.
In addition to a Sponsor, I also needed a Mentor. Sponsors and Mentors may not be one in the same. Mine were very different. The job of your mentor was to teach the ins and outs of doing the job. My first mentor was my supervisor and his career was in the toilet – but – he knew everything about everything! He mentored two of us and we got exposed to…well…the stuff you don’t see if you have to worry about politics. He was a cowboy who took risks and also took the hits as they came.
I always say that I wish everyone could have the same experiences early in their career as I had in mine. I learned soooo much!!!
But this system that I first learned was inherently male. (more…)
I came across this story that a woman (Linda) posted on LinkedIn. It goes along with a lot of my recent posts so I want to share it with you. This is one of those stories that we like to pass on. And generally that is what we would do.
But I want to take it one (actually several) steps further, as I will explain after the story. Here is the story: (more…)
I came across a statement I made in an article : The successful businessman is the Hero and the driver of our society.
If you are paying attention to the stock market, 2013 is proving this statement is true.
I don’t know what made me do it but on January 20th I turned on CNBC. That is about the time the stock market really started taking off. And I don’t know why I thought it but I thought – someone on Wall Street has decided to take over the economy and drive it. Someone has decided that Washington is dysfunctional, not going to do anything and so, they are taking matters into their own hands to end this recession. Someone is going out on a limb, with a balls-to-the-wall attitude. Someone thinks they have nothing to lose that the only other option is stagnation.
In the weeks that followed, that someone ignored all of the bears, nay-sayers, the multitude of critics and doom-and- gloom forecasters. They were successful – they made something happen. And as an added bonus the whole federal budget debate in Washington is negated.
With the economy doing well, the fiscal cliff is postponed from May to end of the summer? Into late fall? Sorry Republicans your side of the crisis is negated. Sorry Democrats, your side of the crisis is also negated – there is no need to raise taxes.
The Wall Street businessman is the Hero who saved our economy. And his reward is power!!
Ladies – this is an example we need to follow!! (more…)
When we present our big, fat, ugly drama monster to other people we want them to be horrified. We want a dramatic outcry by the masses. We want everyone to rise up and join us in our feeling of injustice. We want our feelings vindicated. (Men do this too.)
