Women just don’t get along in the workplace!

Yes, that’s what I heard from a senior leader at a small company I was consulting with who was discussing moral issues in his office. He went on to say that “men don’t have the same problems getting along and that’s what happens when you have an office full of women.”

wow! As an author on women’s empowerment issues, plus my many years of experience in human resources, I was shocked and saddened by this gross generalization and her assessment of the problems I was having in her office. It struck me that her first response was to blame an entire “gender” for her company’s labor problems. Of course, I couldn’t resist digging further and asked him what specifically was contributing to these moral problems and really dug into what those reasons were. In other words, What were the actual behaviors being exhibited, how, and most importantly, WHY? “Well,” she began, “one of our managers was trying to address performance issues with her employee and she blew up on her and wanted to leave the job and now she wants to quit.” She went on to say: “This would never have happened if it was the men involved as they are more reasonable.”

Wait now! Talk about a controversial statement! Maybe I should have replied: “well, if they were men, they would go home, take a gun and shoot the person who gave them the answer.” But that would be wrong. Just as wrong as the general statement about women, IMHO. But fighting derogatory comments with other derogatory comments is never the answer. The most logical approach was that I started to peel back the layers of this onion, and lo and behold, the manager in question was recently promoted to her position and had almost no experience in giving her constructive feedback. Second, the person she was providing feedback to had only been with the company less than 60 days and was struggling to learn the concepts of the new job from her. Long story short, they were both feeling overwhelmed by their new responsibilities and this combination created a perfect storm that manifested as tension on both accounts. After evaluating the details behind the “why” this happened, it became clear that from an HR perspective, the root cause was due to a lack of training and proper onboarding of both employees in their respective roles. The conclusion was that the business he was unable to provide the manager with the tools and foundation to successfully provide feedback, and he faltered trying to “figure it out” without proper guidance and support. In addition, the company also failed the employee by failing to conduct ongoing checks to determine his level of competency and comfort in his new role. They both felt like failures and this was manifesting externally which was creating low morale throughout the office. I would say that anyone, male or female, would have had some kind of reaction to this lack of support.

However, this situation really resonated with me because, as you now know, ultimately NOTHING had to do with “women not getting along.” But sadly, this is bona fide sexism and it’s something that is very real and clearly still pervasive in the workforce in 2018. Interestingly, when I shared this scenario with some of my colleagues, some of them, too, repeated the same thing. feeling like the main leader did. This was the most surprising observation to me, that women (even younger women) have bought into these gender stereotypes and believe that women are irrational, emotional, competitive, and cannot get along. I did my part that day to educate that senior leader and help him put a foundation in place for future new and newly promoted employees. But I feel like that wasn’t enough.

The whole situation made me realize that sexism is an issue that needs to be discussed more widely and I feel a responsibility to raise awareness that this kind of thinking still exists in workplaces everywhere. But awareness is not enough. It’s time to show that we are not willing to put up with these widespread outdated statements and proactively address them when we hear them, both inside and outside of the workplace. We must all do our part both to educate men that this mentality is no longer acceptable and to empower women to rise up and become vocal advocates in their pursuit of equal rights. Only then will we be able to crush these outdated ways of thinking and move in the right direction.