What You Don’t Know About Your Male Boss

What You Don’t Know About Your Male Boss

By Caroline Cox

Shaunti Feldhahn knows what your male boss is thinking. After a decade of research and countless hours spent interviewing professional men about how they view female colleagues, her newest book, Cracking the Male Code of Office Behavior, can help women better communicate with and understand the male mindset at work.

Here are some of her most surprising findings:

1. It’s not you, it’s him. Not moving up the corporate ladder as quickly as you’d like? It could have nothing to do with your work performance. “When the men would say [a female colleague] wasn’t leadership material, it almost always had nothing to do with her skill set, but with these other expectations,” explains Feldhahn. She found many men make a strong separation between appropriate work-world behavior and personal-world behavior. Thus, they tend to view emotions coming into play as unprofessional and not the trait of a leader.

2. You are a better multi-tasker. When approaching a problem, it’s common for women to employ a “zip processing” method and automatically know the best solution. But be careful – as quick decisions may be misinterpreted. “They think you’re being hasty,” Feldhahn says. “They think your decision must have been based more on emotion than logic.” This can be remedied by explaining your reasons behind discounting other options and why you think your chosen option is the best bet.

3. He wishes he had your natural abilities. Feldhahn says a few things were very clear in her research, one being that men are “envious of the female abilities to read body language, be better listeners and to see aspects of things that lead to morale positives or negatives and take advantage of them.” This includes being able to tell if a client isn’t buying your pitch or if someone is getting agitated in a meeting, so you can switch gears before things take a bad turn.

4. Authenticity makes you trustworthy. “At the end of the survey,” she explains, “I gave men a blank space and said, “If you were to give women your top piece of advice for advancement, what would you say?” Feldhahn was shocked by the responses. More than half of men said something like, “Just be yourself. Be competent, be who you are, we’re behind you. Don’t be like a guy, and we’ll trust and respect you more,” which she says is incredibly encouraging.

Caroline Cox is associate editor of Little PINK Book.

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