Life in a Suit

My mom is an executive at a large public university system. In fact, she’s the highest ranking female in the entire organization. Yeah, I’m proud. Over the years, she’s served as a great role model to me (my dad too of course - he was the chancellor at his college) and provided tons of leadership level advice gained through the perspective of a minority.

She started out as a low-level financial analyst in one of the dozens of departments within the university system, even though she had an MBA under her belt. Keep in mind, this was the 70’s, when not many people had an MBA and those who did were Godsends. With the “objectivity of a businesswoman and the creativity of a literature major” (she double majored in French Literature and something else I forget in college…plus a random minor in Russian), she cranked through the toils of desk-work and produced stellar results. This caught the attention of her department’s boss, who put his wing over her and catapaulted her to internal organization fame.

In the past ten years, she’s inherited several departments and built a $1 million enterprise into the $100 million landscape. Needless to say, financial skills have been honed and more importantly, her leadership skills have captured the hearts and minds of the legions that follow her.

Anyway. I’ll get to the point of my post now. Recently, she took an executive course over at Harvard involving female / male dynamics in the workplace. Having survived the last 20+ years herself with only male peers, she had her own perspective on the concept. But what she learned was pretty interesting:

1) The Primary Difference: Women tend to seek harmony in their relationships. Men look for the direct, objective-oriented fix. For example, if a female boss wanted her subordinate to get her a report by 3pm, she might say something like, “Hey Bobby, do you think it’d be possible to get me this report by 3pm?” Bobby interprets this as optional, not mandatory. When 3pm rolls around, the female boss gets angry (but bottles up this emotion of course) and waits and waits. When it becomes 4pm, she can’t stand it anymore and brings a hailstorm down on Bobby. Bobby goes WTF.

On the flip side, if a male boss wanted his subordinate to get him that report by 3, he might say, “Hey Bobbina, get me this report by 3pm.” without realizing he’s coming across as rude. While Bobbina interprets this as an order, she’s put off by his poor delivery. When 3pm rolls around, she gets him his report, but the relationship’s been stained.

2) Tendencies: Of course, the thing to keep in mind is that these are all generalizations, or tendencies. Women aren’t always one way, and men aren’t always the other. In my workplace, women make up 60% of the office. While the majority of them are afraid of confronting people if they have problems (many have come to me to somehow drop hints down the grapevine), some are so extremely direct that other women AND men are afraid to approach them. Men tend to be more laid back, but I know of at least one of my peer managers who’s so anal retentive about his work and sensitive about people who might be joking about him, nobody wants to work with him.

And so, what’s important to take away from any of these female / male studies is that they are all based on tendencies. If you can walk into a new workplace, don’t set up yourself with potential failure by creating expectations. Just err on the safe side and guard yourself against possibilities of angst. If you’re walking into a cheerleader camp, try to be as emotionally accessible and whatever harmonious means with respect to the group (sorry guy cheerleaders). If you’re walking into a locker room, feel free to point out to someone that one pec is bigger than the other, or that his obliques are lopsided.

How does this relate to today’s Web 2.0 or 3.0 or even 9.0 (this is when, I predict, our bodies will inhabit large plastic eggs from which machines harvest energy to operate a gloomy world)? Well, if men choose to have women avatars and vice versa, I think we’re SOL and this is irrelevant. But, in the workplace, if Bobbina presents herself as a woman, then maybe Bobby can use a couple of more emoticons. It then comes down to how we write in emails and instant messages.

Stay tuned for How to Email emotionally. Boy, that was an abrupt ending to this post.

Warren Bennis, a well-respected professor at the University of Southern California, believes that the leader’s life unfolds in seven stages, but in the environment of today’s social online workplace, maybe that’s just not enough stages. I just finished reading a Harvard Business Review article outlining this theory and found it to be one of the more entertaining leadership articles I’ve read, at least recently (because my memory fades as fast as the latest online fad). In that article, he explains the following:

1. “The infant executive seeks to recruit a mentor for guidance.”
2. “The school-boy must learn how to do the job in public, subjected to unsettling scrutiny of every word and act.”
3. “The lover with a woeful ballad struggles with the tsunami of problems every organization presents.”
4. “The bearded soldier must be willing-even eager-to hire people better than he is, because he knows that talented underlings can help him shine.”
5. “The general must become adept at not simply allowing people to speak the truth but at actually being able to hear what they are saying.”
6. “The statesman is hard at work preparing to pass on wisdom in the interests of the organization.”
7. “And, finally, the sage embraces the role of mentor to young executives.”

But something is missing from this list. Something relevant to today’s tech modernity, something important to the wellbeing of our Internet conscience, something so prevalent in today’s everyday conversations that I think Mr. Bennis should write a book all about this 8th Age of a Leader.

2.5 The pimply-faced, socially networked, text messaging, twittering, World of Warcrafting, and facebook status-updating teenager knows how to manage contacts and other people online, but when it comes to the real world, they avoid direct eye contact and chew on their upper lips like it’s a mandate from Heaven.

Heaven: “I command you, chew on your upper lip!”

This perfectly leads into 3, the lover, because it’s going to be a hot girl or guy that gets that computer geek off his/her overly cushioned chair and into what’s called real world interaction (shudder). Am I right or am I right? I hope one day Mr. Bennis can be my future sage, as right now I’m in boot camp, learning all there is to know about growing a beard and becoming a soldier.

When that day comes, I will be overpaid.