gender

Why We Need Friends at Work

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New York Times recently agreed with the ancient writers that friendships bring out our better selves, radiating social and political benefits that we all need. A number of scholars have written about the way adult women’s friendships outside of work help us stay upright in the face of life’s challenges. Jean Baker Miller and Irene Pierce Stiver wrote about the benefits to women’s mental and emotional health that result from having the support of other women in the workplace. Yet many of my coaching clients have lost touch with their old friends. The demands of work and family do not leave time for friends outside of work. The pressures of advancing in their careers make them feel they need to keep some distance from other women at work with whom they may be competing for promotions, or whom they may supervise one day. I’ve heard countless stories about two women being friends as peers, but when one gets promoted, the friendship ends because they don’t know how to handle the change. I think we need strong friendships at work, and I believe we can build them and maintain them, even as we compete for promotions and become each other’s bosses. The key is that we need to learn how to talk about and negotiate our expectations of each other as our roles shift and change—both inside and outside of work. Many women have difficulty with these conversations, but talking gets easier with practice. Why do we need friendships at work?

  • To test out ideas and get feedback we trust
  • For sanity checks when confusing situations arise at work
  • To vent frustrations so we can release them and move on
  • To celebrate our successes
  • To know who we can count on for help in a crisis
  • To speak up for each other and to help get our voices heard in meetings
  • To get work done in an enjoyable atmosphere
  • To prop each other up when times are hard—both inside and outside of work
Why do you need friendships at work? Let me know.  ]]>

Who Am I?

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Differences Make a Difference—Part I Women are not all the same. I write and give talks about women in organizations, but I know that generalizations about women are inaccurate. Of course, we are all different, but I agree with Joyce K. Fletcher and other researcherswho say we also have experiences in common as women in organizations. I believe we may all benefit from better understanding our commonalities as well as our differences. However, it’s complicated. Our individual experiences in organizations are influenced by how gender interacts with race, class, ethnicity, level of employment, sexual orientation, nationality, and even personal history—just to name a few possible variables. One concept that has helped me visualize the ways all these differences interact is the metaphor of a hologram or prism offered by Evangelina Holvino, a scholar on this topic. Holvino suggests that we imagine a prism with gender at the core and many intersecting sides representing race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and nationality. The prism is transparent, and as we turn it we see not only all the differences simultaneously but also each angle displaying a particular combination. Placing gender at the core helps us focus on how gender influences many of our experiences in organizations. Gender is central, according to Dr. D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, because “women have been systematically devalued and excluded in all capitalist patriarchal systems.” Rotating the prism can help us explain ourselves to others and understand one another. For example, to tell you more about who I am, I would rotate the prism to focus on aspects besides gender that are important for you to know about me:

  • I am a white woman.
  • I am in my 60s (but see myself as about 45).
  • I am Jewish.
  • I am upper middle-class.
  • I recently lost my mother.
I can describe myself in many more ways: For example, my grandparents were immigrants. I am a heterosexual. Different aspects of my prism come into focus at different times. I rotate my prism to convey what’s important to me and where my sensitivities might be at any particular time. Why is this important? Placing gender at the core of our identity has value because gender connects many of our shared experiences in organizations. The paradox is that we cannot truly connect around a shared identity as women until we can also understand and acknowledge our individual differences. The place to start is with understanding ourselves. What facets of your prism are most important for someone to perceive to understand who you are?]]>

Why Women Have to Smile More at Work

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Lean In when she described some excellent research by Heilman and Okimoto: “When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less.” I thought about this research when I read a recent New York Times newspaper article with the headline, “In Memoir, Hillary Clinton Emphasizes Her Softer Side.” I stopped and did a double take when I saw this headline. I wondered if, based on the harsh reaction Clinton triggered in many women and men during her 2008 campaign for president, she has been advised to do the equivalent of “smiling more”—or showing her softer side. So much research has been done now on what some authors call “the likeability factor,” including that recorded in Babcock and Laschever’s book Women Don’t Ask, that we have to take the gender difference seriously. It may seem unfair that women are held to a different standard of leadership behavior, but it seems to be a reality for us at this point in time. It’s not that women have to get “fixed,” it’s that different gender stereotypes mean we sometimes have to act differently to be successful. Here are some approaches that have worked for my clients:

  • They smile more than their male peers to help people be comfortable with them as leaders.
  • They invest more time than their male peers in relational behavior, such as listening to others.
  • They take time to share some personal information and show an interest in the personal lives of others.
What has worked for you? I would love to hear your tips and stories to share with others.]]>

Women’s Friendship Rules at Work

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New Rules for Women, shows that women often have different relationship expectations of their female colleagues than of their male colleagues. I call these expectations women’s friendship rules. We begin to develop friendship rules at a very young age. My granddaughter, by the time she was 4, was talking about the rules for being a friend. In middle school, girls ages 9 to 13 are thinking, “Who is my friend, who is not my friend, and what do I have to do to get invited to the party?” By the time we are adults, our friendship rules have become embedded as a set of filters, but, for the most part, we are not conscious of them. We don’t just show up in the workplace as a blank slate. We carry with us all the things we have learned, including this set of filters I call friendship rules. Men have friendship rules, too, but because of differences in gender socialization, theirs are not the same as ours. It is through the filters of our friendship expectations that we interpret the behaviors of other women at work and decide whether or not we trust or like them, along with a range of other expectations that can create misunderstandings. My research validates that a core of very common women’s friendship rules exists. Not everyone has the same ones: there will be variations for each of us. The most commonly reported women’s friend rules include

  • Exhibiting unswerving loyalty
  • Showing trustworthiness
  • Keeping confidences
  • Listening well
  • Sharing gossip and airing problems
  • Displaying self-disclosure
  • Practicing equality and acceptance, while seldom disapproving
  • Not discussing the friendship rules
The last one, the taboo on discussing friendship rules, is the one that gets us into the most trouble in our relationships. Cultural differences and other factors make it unlikely that all women share the exact same friendship expectations. However, the taboo against discussion means that mismatched assumptions may not be discovered until damage has been done to a relationship. How conscious are you of your friendship rules? I suggest you talk with some women friends, either at home or at work, and try to identify and name the friendship rules you share and the ones you don’t. Once you are aware of your own and have some practice describing them to someone else, you will be better prepared to talk about friendship rules at work with women colleagues to prevent misunderstandings. Let’s face it—we need all the support we can get at work. Naming and discussing our relational expectations with our women colleagues can go a long way toward strengthening our ability to help each other thrive and prosper at work.    ]]>