Am I invisible?
Today I was in at all day CPD event, which was very fruitful and mostly enjoyable. Mostly. Isn’t it a pity that we so often have to qualify these things? At the end of the day, one of the brilliant facilitators asked me a question when a male colleague joined us. He’d heard the question so she used his name as well: at this point, I was halfway through answering her question but he jumped in and started on his own response. Hoping he’d realise how rude he was being, I carried on with my answer but no, he just continued to talk over me, really quite loudly. I decided not to compete but I was fuming! I had to walk away.
I wanted to raise my voice, too, and tell him he was being rude. I should have. I should have called him out, however, it isn’t easy to do it in the moment. The red mist was all around me and my rationale head wasn’t able to tell me to say, “Excuse me, I was talking”, I just walked away. You might say the facilitator should have stopped him but why? Why is the onus always on women to call out or stop badly behaved men?
Nancy Kline talked about the different Thinking Environments that men and women create: how women listen while men take over and talk; how women ask questions, while men make believe they know everything; how women establish equality while men assume superiority; women appreciate, men criticise; women put others at ease, men control; women encourage, men compete…the list goes on.
The most successful businesses are those which value female characteristics – and there’s plenty of men out there who display them, I’m not man hating here. I believe that the companies people want to work for and give their best for are those which allow feelings and don’t expect you to toughen up (this isn’t the ‘80s for goodness’ sake), that supply accurate information widely and willingly rather than keep secrets and lie, that humanise rather than conquer, and that value and create diversity instead of deriding difference.
But back to my original point, how do we get those men who behave badly to behave better? Much of coaching is about self-awareness and I’ve had some tricky conversations with men (and women, it has to be said) who just haven’t realised what they are doing and how they make others around them feel. It’s worth looking in to. I just hope my colleague today didn’t mean to spoil my day!
Neil Morrissey and Martin Clunes in 90s sitcom, Men Behaving Badly - it was being done ironically then, we should be past this by now!
