Playin’ With the Boys

UPCOMING EVENTS Success with Ease Training for Women: Playin’ With the Boys: A Woman’s Way to Thriving in a Masculine Environment We often think the only way to survive in a male-dominated environment is to take on masculine traits. Our femininity is a liability...or so we think! But by integrating the best of our masculine side with the best of our feminine, we can be not only effective but outstanding, in any situation. You'll leave this training with specific strategies for succeeding in a masculine or hostile culture...without attracting any nasty nicknames! TWO OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN AND CONNECT WITH TRUE PEERS: Tuesday MAY 16, 7-9am, at the Bellevue Harbor Club $45; includes training, breakfast, and workbook Thursday MAY 18, 6:15-8:30pm at the Columbia Tower Club, Seattle $60; includes training, dinner, and workbook Click here for full details. Just a few spots left for the June Elements of Feminine Power Retreat Come to the luxurious waterfront Alderbrook Lodge for three days of pampering, deep learning about feminine and masculine power, and delightful connection with other powerful women. You deserve this break, and if you’ve ever asked “How am I going to keep going like this?” you’ve found the retreat that will teach you to not only keep going, but do even more, with half the stress. Click here to learn more.

But first, what do we mean by a masculine environment?

We’re not talking about companies led by men: that’s still most large companies: only eight of the Fortune 500 companies are headed by women. Or places where you get slapped on the butt and called “sweetie” by your boss: that’s a sexist environment. Bottom line: we’re not really talking about men or a male-to-female ratio at all. And we’re definitely not male-bashing...We love men, and love working with them. A masculine environment is one in which the more hard-driving masculine qualities are valued TO THE EXCLUSION OF feminine qualities. For instance, intuition and connection are overshadowed by driving and determination.

This affects how decisions are made, how we manage people, how we handle conflict and creativity. You probably work in a masculine environment if you think or say:

• Since coming to work here, I am more competitive, territorial, and aggressive than ever before.

• When I took a risk and tried a fresh approach, I was shut down even before we had a chance to see whether it worked.

• I don’t really know the people I work with as people, and I don’t feel like they know the real me.

• I got the picture pretty quickly that I was expected to do what it takes to get the job done, putting in long hours all the time, not just at crunch time. Work-life balance is kind of a joke around here.

• I find myself trying to downplay the fact that I’m a woman.

• Communication seems like it’s only used for clean-up, not for prevention of problems.

• We have beautiful facilities, but who has time to enjoy them?

Women seek our coaching and consulting when they and their teams grow weary of the fallout from having a masculine dominated culture. The overall turnover in the company may not be high, but they’re having a hard time keeping good women on board.

Whether your company sees it as a problem or not, maybe you know that creativity, morale, and client service are suffering amid the fierce competition, in-fighting, short-cuts, and passive aggression on your team.

Our clients tell us they’ve tried everything and they’re still burning themselves out and they still don’t like how they’re working with the people around them. We’ve discovered that “trying everything” usually means swinging from one end of the Pendulum of Fierceness to the other. Everyone on the pendulum is thinking of work as a battlefield. There is a war to be won or lost, and there are three primary positions women take:

Armored Warrior: In this approach, they wear their shiny armor and let everyone know they’re tough. They march into the fray with aggression, drive, and determination, hiding their personal feelings and needs but giving everyone a piece of their keen intellect as they pursue the “right” way of doing things. They try to be the toughest among the tough. Their motto is “Bring it on! I can take it!” They’ve bought into the aggressive culture and are working really, really hard to succeed within it – even if it kills them.

Stealth Fighter: This approach lets a woman go guerilla in a masculine environment. She fights not directly but through political maneuvering and building alliances. From the outside, she looks less like an aggressor than the Armored Warrior does, but she’s still trying to fight. Her motto is “There’s a better way, and I’ll change this place!” She doesn’t like the culture and is trying to reform it, but she doesn’t bother to think that her passive aggressive approach is just as fierce as the masculine environment is.

Wounded Soldier: This approach is akin to “turning oneself in” to the enemy. Women who stay resigned for long don’t get far in the organization, but most women pass through resignation periodically, while they lick their battle wounds. In resignation, a woman throws up her hands and says, “I’m just going to do my job, try to get out of here on time, and focus on what’s most important to me.” She still shows up to work, but in a way, she “checks out.”

All these positions are part of a Pendulum of Fierceness. Many women, including our clients and us, have set up camp on this pendulum, moving from position to position trying to find a better way. But because all these ways of approaching work are based on distortions of fierceness (either opposition or resignation), each of them is exhausting, frustrating, and ultimately ineffective.

So we teach our clients to get off the pendulum. True fierceness – the capacity to engage with a challenge in a powerful way – is possible and necessary in a masculine environment. And by blending the power of fierceness with its counterpart resilience, we can create sustainable spaces for ourselves in almost any culture.

Want to learn to blend fierceness and resilience so you can thrive in a masculine environment? Our upcoming events are great opportunities to experience this blend for yourself. As well, you can get started today! In the next section after you read about the events, we’ll offer several steps you can take today to begin to step off the Pendulum of Fierceness.

Practices for Playin’ With the Boys

The following practices have helped us and our clients thrive in masculine environments. E-mail us at support@elementsoffemininepower.com and let us know your experiences with them.

See the pendulum for what it is: When you’re thinking, “I’ve tried everything!” consider the possibility that all your approaches have been some variation on fight, flee, or play dead. All these are distortions of fierceness; they’re all an echo of the harshness of the environment, and none of them are effective for long. But once you clearly see how we tend to swing from one fierce stance to another, getting off the pendulum is actually not so hard.

Know that it can be easy and more natural for you: Ease itself has a paradoxical sort of power: when we seek both success AND ease (rather than ease through escape!), all of a sudden, opportunities for easy accomplishment, easy communication, and easy problem-solving start to show up. Make it a habit to ask, “How could this be easier?” Find your own “Easy” button, and your old fierce stances will start to evolve into your own recipe for success in your culture.

Honor both your feminine and your masculine power: Ever noticed how insecure people are more likely to boast than truly confident people? Same goes for us: when we truly know that we’ve got the masculine power it takes to “play with the boys,” and we remember we ARE smart, focused, and tough, then we don’t have to be aggressive or bitchy to try to prove it. And when we know our feminine power is valuable, and we know it’s good that we know how to connect, intuit, and bring beauty to a situation, we can bring that power to our work in appropriate ways. Then we won’t make our feminine side a chip on our shoulder or push it underground. No one will mistake it for weakness.

Cultivate your resilience by restoring yourself daily: Clean fierceness is a masculine element of power; it’s partner is the feminine element called resilience. Resilience allows us to hold power without fighting. And it’s what allows us to choose our responses. We CAN thrive in masculine environments, as long as our tanks of resilience are full. So however much juice your work life sucks out of you, it’s crucial to put that back in: not with monthly massages or semi-annual beach vacations (well, those too!) but with daily practices that remind you who you are and why you’re doing all this. What restores you? Make time for it today, and you’ll be more yourself tomorrow.

Just a final reminder: You already know that you’re successful because you use your masculine power. The new idea here is that your feminine power makes success sustainable and – surprising as it seems - gives you a unique competitive advantage. So use them both, and enjoy the success that’s coming to you.

Until next time,
Here's to your uniquely feminine power!

Blessings,
Sara and Michele

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