Yet another tale of female managers
The biggest story yesterday doing the rounds of the local businesses where I work was about a prominent boss who had been suspended and it’s uncanny what for. Even in the paper today was a story on such a situation:
Where have the bossy women gone? Number of females in powerful jobs plummets in politics, law and arts
Things happen for a reason. There’s also an adage about if it has four legs, a long nose, a mane and it neighs and gallops, odds are it’s a horse. There’s also a saying about night follows day. For ideological and psychological reasons but for no good reason, a certain type consistently and continually fails in management – it’s uncanny how consistent the failure rate is.
Let’s not talk gender here. Let’s talk about the nature of people. You can always tell them when you look at their CV. Instead of listing actual measurable, eternally verifiable improvements they’ve made to an organization, they either list ones which can be challenged when looked into or else they list job titles.
There is a type of employee who doesn’t want to pay dues, who’s not interested in learning the ropes. This person just wants to be A Manager, wants to lord it over others. The kudos of the job title trumps anything she [or he] has to actually do to be any good. If this type happens to be often women these days, it’s because the explosion of women managers has brought all the wrong types into power and part of the collateral damage is that they’re bullies when things don’t go their way:
Elizabeth O. wrote:
Consistently as a teenager and then as a career professional, women have been absolute bullies. I learned early to work for men. That is not to say I have not met very talented and excellent women; I have. But experience has taught me that almost all of the time, I am more likely to be thrown under the bus by a woman than a man.
Even Ruchika Toshyan at Forbes gets into it:
Workplace bullying is four times more common than sexual harassment and racial discrimination, found the same study. Girls are taught to be critical about each other from adolescence, and it’s particularly vicious among working women; from playing favourites to badmouthing colleagues. Common careers where women face bullying? Law, finance or any other job where “women feel the need to be hyper-aggressive to get ahead in a male-dominated environment,” says Dr. Namie.
Sorry, it’s not only to “get ahead in a male-dominated environment”. That’s a cop-out. It’s actually the nature of the beast. Weak people will always bully and that includes men and women. Inadequate people, seeking confidence, demanding one-way loyalty, on a mission for their own promotion and everyone else is there to make her [or him] look good.
You only need look at Flint, Fiorina and Dunn to see the way that the witchhunt is never far from the surface.
Debra Falzoi, a communications coordinator who was terrorized by a female boss at a Boston university, says:
“My female bully lied and gossiped about me and others. She used all indirect tactics. I have seen men also use indirect bullying tactics, but they’re much less frequent, and they have seemed solely to protect their ego rather than proactive moves to sabotage.
Ruchika Tulshyan adds:
My article focussed on the woman-on-woman bullying trend, but indeed, I have read stories on the rise of women bullying their male colleagues.
LouLou wrote:
Interesting article and I agree completely. In my experience bullying from men tends to be openly agressive whereas bullying from women is underhanded and based on false accusations, gossip and lies. The most dangerous thing about bullying from women is that it is more difficult to prove, due to its covert nature. I have also experienced bullying by a gay male. He followed the bullying style of women rather than men.
Sandy Sheridan came up with a very important aspect of this:
It’s important to remember, a bully (I’ve had two in my life, both women managers) can only operate if management above her lets that happen. In both instances the managers above the female bully were men, who had a completely lassez faire attitude towards the woman.
This is why Our Rebekah was able to do as she did. Putting a woman in charge and giving her carte blanche -a lethal combination] in an organization like that is asking for trouble because there is this unhealthy mix of power-women being such a new thing, it goes to their head, along with the female traits mentioned by the women above, along with their way of doing things which doesn’t come from long experience as managers.
To illustrate this, there is an ex-manager of mine who really is a good manager – you can tell it by the calm way she goes about it, nothing fazes her, there is great loyalty to her from staff [as there had been from me] and she knows her stuff. Staff working conditions concern her but equally, she has targets.
That’s a real manager.
Sadly, so few women are of this type. So many today, especially in this country, are of the type lambasted in this post. And this is why bossy women, as defined as “women in powerful jobs”, are dying out, thank goodness – once the novelty is over, it can be seen they can’t cut it and no one likes them when it all starts going pear-shaped. They were in it for the “powerful job” and “prestige”, not for any natural ability to manage.
Now no one’s saying men managers in this country are much better – look at Osborne, Darling, Brown and the loss of the AAA, look at Shoreditch and Raspberry. There are so many more male managers anyway that it’s easy to see bad ones. It’s just that the female ones bring the worst female traits to the table on top of their inexperience and incompetence and the result is awful.
And it’s all so unnecessary:
Going back to the good female manager I had, what were some characteristics?
1. Middle-aged, had had the family, had life experience in a variety of jobs;
2. Even-tempered and not ambitious, not pushy, not trying for approval from the high-ups;
3. Working in her chosen field in which she had long experience.
4. Cared for people under her, not out for her own self-advancement although obviously, just like all of us, she would take opportunities and even create them but not by walking over the dead bodies of others.
I’m past caring whom this offends or how it appears to the disgruntled and deluded. Unfortunately it is the way things are and so we sit back and see it happening day after day. For how much longer must society put up with this Narrative induced dystopia?
Filed under: Politics & economics
“Going back to the good female manager I had, what were some characteristics?
1. Middle-aged, had had the family, had life experience in a variety of jobs;
2. Even-tempered and not ambitious, not pushy, not trying for approval from the high-ups;
3. Working in her chosen field in which she had long experience.
4. Cared for people under her, not out for her own self-advancement although obviously, just like all of us, she would take opportunities and even create them but not by walking over the dead bodies of others.”
Fits my wife exactly. When I did a Senior Management course many years ago, the subtle thread was to ensure people will want to work for you. That way lies corporate success.
You’re a lucky man then and when I show her your comment, you’ll probably get a nice supper too.
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The best managers are never bossy.
They know their stuff and have charisma. That is how it works…
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