In a world of inspirational memes and #girlpost Instagram posts, it’s easy to forget that we all get stuck at work, or feel like we can’t find a way forward at times. Sue Unerman is the Chief Transformation Officer at MediaCom and Kathryn Jacob OBE is the Chief Executive at Pearl and Dean. Together they wrote The Glass Wall: Success Strategies For Women At Work And Businesses That Mean Business. Each week answer your work questions with pragmatic, honest advice that’s proven to work…
Q. I’ve just started working for a woman, for the first time ever. I was really excited about this, but whereas I expected to find her easier to work with than previous bosses, I actually find her really hard to read and just am not communicating as well as I did with my previous manager – how do I handle it?
KJ: How long did you work with your old manager? Could it be that it was like putting on a pair of new shoes and this is like getting new shoes, you have to wear them in?
SU: Changing managers is not always smooth, are you assuming that because this boss is the same gender as you that this is the key problem? It might be that you shared personality characteristics like being extravert or introvert, being analytical and detail orientated or being mostly big picture, with your previous manager and you don’t share them with your new one. Gender might not be the biggest issue you’re facing.
KJ: Just because you are the same gender as your boss, of course, doesn’t mean that you are going to instantly bond and reach seamless feminine harmony. Gender can be responsible for part of your personality traits and style but not all of it. Did you expect her to become an instant friend and ally in the way that you wouldn’t with a man?
SU: It feels like we’re giving you quite a hard time over this, but the topic does come up fairly frequently when we are out giving talks. Sometimes it seems as though we hold other women to much higher standards of behaviour than we do men. For example, we were once told of a situation where a woman had participated in a team project where everyone was a woman. She had hoped that the experience would be an enriching and successful one. She actually described it very vividly as “a team of snakes”. This begged the question for us. Was it a team of “snakes” because it was a team of women? Or was it an unfortunate team chemistry where gender had absolutely nothing to do with it. And if it had been a mixed team, would she have condemned it so brutally in this fashion or just put it down to a bad team vibe?
KJ: However there also the “mini-me/girl-gang” problem. We have a story in The Glass Wall where a woman in a similar position to you worked for her first woman boss and found that she was expected to meet certain criteria and deliver particular behaviours in order to be accepted. For instance, changing her natural style to be more in line with her boss. She was expected to join her on “girly nights out” and trips to the hairdressers. The hairdresser was her equivalent of a catch up meeting and bonding session. This woman couldn’t relate to this, and just wanted to do the job to the best of her ability. This wasn’t enough for her new boss. Simply delivering results as she did spectacularly, wasn’t good enough. And over time the relationship deteriorated to a point where the employee realised that it was impossible for her to be herself.
SU: Authenticity is crucial. You have to be able to be yourself. But so does she. Now it could be that you are still in the “development” phase of this important new relationship, where you are both working out how to get the best from the situation and from each other. It may be that you should try and engineer a discussion outside of the office about ways of working. For example, if she is more analytical than you are by nature you can’t expect her to take your gut instinct as evidence. If this is the case then you may need to ensure that you explain your logic and workings to her (remember the need to show your workings at maths class) and that once you’ve done this a few times you can get into a more trusted relationship where because she knows you have done due diligence she will take it as read.
KJ: This can seem hard, but it would be true of any new boss. The way they like to work can be completely alien to you at first. It’s how you grow as an individual. You aren’t going to instantly be on the same wavelength as everyone you work with. Learning from other people’s skill set and ways of working can give you valuable experience. If you had reached the point where you knew exactly what your previous boss expected of you and how to deliver it, you might have reached the point where you weren’t learning as much as you used to. If there’s one thing I know about successful people in business, it is that they never stop learning. Not every lesson is fun, just like in school, but the most painful ones might be the most valuable.
SU: Try not to take this personally. If you look at it from as objective a position as you possibly can, it might resonate differently. How do you think she feels? When she approaches a meeting with you what’s in her mind? It may well be that she should empathise with you, but what happens if you empathise with her? Use your capacity for compassion and understanding and see how that works
Sue and Kathryn’s book The Glass Wall, Success Strategies For Women At Work And Businesses That Mean Business is available from amazon.
Have you got a question you’d like Sue and Kathryn to answer? Email your questions to feedback@graziamagazine.co.uk. Please note, we will be unable to respond to every single question we receive, and will not be able to respond to any questions personally