Shaunti Feldhahn - The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions, and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace

Front, left to right: Jenny Reynolds, research analyst; Shaunti Feldhahn, author; Linda Crews, director of operations; Karen Newby, research assistant. Back, left to right: Kim Rash, content advisor; Vance Hanifen, research assistant; Calvin Edwards, content advisor; Jeff Feldhahn, content advisor; Leslie Hattenbach, research assistant. Not pictured: Jackie Coleman, research assistant; Ann Browne, cofounder, Human Factor Resources.

ABOVE LEFT: Decision Analyst team, left to right: Ramiro Davila, senior research analyst; J. Scott Hanson, PhD, vice president, Client Service; Felicia Rogers, executive vice president, Client Service.

ABOVE RIGHT: Analytic Focus team, left to right: Charles Cowan, managing partner; Mauricio Vidaurre-Vega, research assistant.

Are you saying women dont already know that?

The charismatic African-American businessman sitting next to me in first class looked at me in disbelief. We were only a few minutes into the usual What do you do? airplane conversation when I shared something that apparently stunned him.

I had explained that I was a financial analyst by training, had worked on Wall Street, and was now, unexpectedly, a bestselling author and speaker about relationships.

His inevitable question: Whats your main topic?

Men. I grinned at his wry expression. I spent a few years interviewing and surveying a few thousand men. My last book identifies some ways that men tend to privately think and feel, that women tend not to know.

He folded his arms across his chest, and it was his turn to chuckle. OK, he said, hit me with one.

So I shared one of my findings about menone that I will share with you in the following pagesand that is when the amusement turned to disbelief.

When I confirmed that even the most astute women may not know that particular truth about men, I could see that suddenly, his thoughts were off in a universe of their own. If he hadnt been strapped in his seat, I think he would have gotten up and started pacing.

That explains something! he finally said. You see, Im a corporate trainer and consultant. Fortune 100 corporations bring me in to help with leadership and strategy at the highest levels of the organization. And all too often, I see skilled and talented women sabotage their careers because they treat the men they work with in a way that no man would treat another man.

He looked at me with awakening interest. But from what youre telling me, these women probably dont even realize that that is what they are doing.

It was my turn to be interested, and my notebook and pen were already out. Can you give me an example?

Ill give you an example of something that just happened a few hours ago. For the next few minutes, he told me his story (which Ill relay in a later chapter), and concluded, I was so puzzled why this female executive would shoot herself in the foot like that! But perhaps she simply didnt understand how her actions would be perceived by her colleaguescolleagues who were mostly men.

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And, because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how our failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. R. D. LAING

Over the last few decades, corporations across America have developed a bucket of programs to help advance or retain women. Many approaches have been quite effective; others, better in theory than in practice. Weve seen a surge in management attention to work/life balance issuesparticularly to retain working momsand a corresponding surge in flextime and telecommuting options. Businesses and industry groups are increasingly fostering female networks and mentoring relationships as an alternative to playing golf with the guys, and are emphasizing professional development for rising women. Organizations large and small have studied and trained their people on avoiding sexual harassment, and on the unique needs of female workers, customers, and stakeholders. Gender-equity task forces have proliferated.

But as valuable as that effort is, Ive come to realize that it has a significant hole. We as women can be skilled, talented, highly educated, mentored, networkedand yet trade all of that away by unintentionally undermining ourselves in our interactions with male colleagues. As my new friend on the airplane put it, we can still sabotage ourselves simply because we do not understand the male factor: some relevant truths about how the male half of the population thinksand thus how they may be perceiving (or mis-perceiving) our words and actions.

Even without that potential trap, we may be missing some important insight, effectiveness, and tactical advantage through a simple gap in informationa gap exacerbated by the fact that (as you will see) men often have clear internal expectations but dont feel able to openly share what they are privately thinking. So the end result is the same: A woman can all too easily be missing valuable information that might be helpful or important for herinformation that she would presumably want to know in todays market. One senior executive put it this way:

Women in business have seen some tremendous opportunities open up, but have also seen that it is still a mans world in many ways. What I mean, though, is different than you may think. What I mean is that, historically, for better or for worse, men pretty much created what we mean by the business world today. And since men still tend to hold most of the top-level positions, their subconscious ideas about how things should work are still framing the debate.

It would be extremely helpful for women to have insights into what its like to be a man in that business world. When men say things like, Its not personal; its business, it would be helpful for women to understand what its business actually means in the minds of the men whose ideas originally defined that business world.

Based on everything I have heard from men about how they think and feeland how surprising some of those facts have been to the millions of women who have read my previous books or heard me discuss those findingsI would argue that understanding men in the ways that might impact us is a career-critical skill set that women can develop, like any other.

Over the years, Ive heard from hundreds of women readers who were validated that they had already recognized and incorporated some of these truths into their workplace approachand from many others who wished they had learned these often-hidden truths earlier or better.