Episode 190: Difficult Relationships: Managing Drama at Work
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time…managing our relationships at work…even the ones that are meant to be supportive…is not always easy.
“Women report a lot more drama around that than men do with mentors. And I think part of the reason is that women don't have as much power in the workplace. So if a male mentee takes flight, they're just like, oh, fly bird. And I think sometimes when women do that, it's like, wait, who do you think you are? I made you!”
Handling workplace drama – coming up on The Broad Experience.
Stacey Vanek Smith is known to a lot of you – she’s a longtime US public radio reporter and host, and currently she co-hosts The Indicator from Planet Money. It’s a daily show on business and the economy. She was one of my guests on an episode I did several years ago on confidence, in which she eloquently expressed how elusive that quality can be for women, and why. She and I used to work together at the same company, where we both had plenty of formative experiences.
Since we last spoke for this show, I think I can safely say that Stacey’s confidence has increased; she has also written her first book. It’s called Machiavelli for Women: Defend your Worth, Grow your Ambition, and Win the Workplace.
I had to ask her…what does a 16th century Florentine statesman and author of the political treatise The Prince…have to do with women in the 21st century workplace?
And she said it’s really to do with who he wrote the book about – Machiavelli wrote The Prince as sort of guide to power for Florence’s rulers…and he notes there are two types of prince: princes who inherit power, and princes who win power through conquest. So this latter type of prince is in power, but people around them are skeptical, they had all sorts of doubts about whether this person should really be doing the job – they’re in a constant struggle to defend the territory they’ve won…it all reminded Stacey of a parallel situation five centuries in the future…
“I really actually used the Prince a lot, as a book, I must have read it through like a hundred times, because his suggestions are really smart. And in a lot of cases, the advice was just so on point for the struggles that I had noticed, and that research was showing that women experience in the workplace.”
And by the way, for all its pitfalls and parallels with the cutthroat world of 16th century Florence, Stacey loves the workplace.
AM-T: “You make this great point at the beginning of the book. You acknowledge the workplace can be full of unfairness and discrimination for women, much of which you have experience of. But it’s also this incredible place for growth and self-development…it’s like, the workplace is meaty.”
“Yes. Yes! Well, I think there are so many interesting things about work and its place, particularly in American life. I think work holds a very, very central place in American life…and I think we define ourselves by our work, but work is also like a way to make money. It's independence. It's your own identity.”
Stacey has hit plenty of roadblocks in her career. She’s been passed over for promotion…patronized… sexually harassed. She’s also made lots of mistakes herself. And yet she says the workplace has added so much joy and meaning to her life. As she said in the last show we did together, she was an ambitious kid and as an adult she’s loved building her career.
One of the ways she’s achieved that is through mentorship.
We hear a lot about the importance of mentors and sponsor to women’s careers. But we don’t hear that much about how to manage those relationships ,or how to extricate ourselves if and when they go sour.
Earlier in her career Stacey found a mentor at work – a woman she really got along with, thought was a lot of fun, and this mentor took her under her wing. In fact she became more of a sponsor—that is, someone who’ll truly advocate for you at work.
“She really believed in me and championed me in very concrete ways. I think I owe her my first reporting job.”
And as they spent more and more time together…the difference in their ages and status shrank. They got really close. And Stacey says that was partly by design.
“I wanted to create a bond of friendship, hopefully because …I also just liked this woman. But I think also in the back of my mind was like, oh, she can be helpful to me. So I want to have as close a relationship as possible. Right. ‘Cause if you're friends with someone, then they do friendly favors for you, right? I didn't want to have boundaries. I wanted to have closeness.”
She says this tight relationship made her feel like she had more control over her career at a time when she was eager to go in a certain direction, and this mentor was there to help her. But later on, when Stacey started reporting directly to this woman, things changed…Stacey wanted to switch things up at work. She was keen to report more serious economic stories. Her mentor slash editor wanted her to work on lighter stuff. They clashed.
“The fact that I sort of had no boundaries with her really came back to bite me because we didn't have a professional relationship at that point, we sort of had a friendship, but the fact was that she was my supervisor at that time…And so it, it became like a really difficult situation. I don't think it needed to be, and I didn't know how to handle it at all. And I think, you know, friendships with mentors can be tricky. I mean, she was my mentor for sure. I feel like I owe her parts of my career in certain ways. But I think this happens - a mentor can take you so far up to a point.”
And then, she says…you need to go your own way. Have the confidence to follow your own path, even if that path diverges from the one your mentor thinks you should be taking. She says this parting of the ways can be more complicated for women with female mentors.
“Women report a lot more drama around that than men do with mentors. And I think part of the reason is that women don't have as much power in the workplace. So if a male mentee takes flight, they're just like, oh, fly bird. And I think sometimes when women do that, it's like, wait, who do you think you are? I made you!”
This is what happened in her case. And she’s seen versions of her own situation play out with younger colleagues – women, but also a young man of color who had the same experience of being pushed back, and told…you’re good, but you need to stick to THIS area…don’t try THAT…you won’t make it.
“I think you have to be so careful about who you listen to about what's possible, like what the best career move for you is. And I feel like red flags should go up if you've got a mentor saying, ‘oh no, you should not go in this direction, go in that direction.’ If they're sort of maybe feeling inappropriate ownership over your career, or if they start being discouraging, I feel like those are like little tells, not little, but they're tells. And I feel like that just, that happens a lot. And maybe women and other marginalized workers are more affected because we may be relying more on mentors and sponsors and guides in a workplace where maybe we don't see a lot of people who look like us or feel like we need more help.”
She says the key is to try and wrap things up on a good note, which did not happen with her former mentor.
She wishes things had ended differently She advises people who feel stymied by a mentor relationship to seek support from others in your workplace, ask them for feedback on your ideas about next steps. But to NOT badmouth the person you’re having problems with – goes without saying, not a good idea in an office.
Finally, start off with some boundaries in place – don’t get too close. Because not having any can come back to haunt you.
It feels appropriate that I’m talking to Stacey for this particular show because she wrote her book for many of the same reasons I started this podcast, ten years ago this month. She couldn’t believe the gap she was seeing between women’s achievements at school and university…and the low numbers of women in positions of power. Not to mention the gender pay gap, which hasn’t shifted in quite some time. She wanted to help women navigate a workplace that wasn’t designed for them.
I had similar thoughts when I was a student in CUNY’s entrepreneurial journalism program in the spring of 2012. I had done some reporting on women and work, and had my own dodgy workplace experiences. I suspected there were lots of reasons women weren’t as far ahead as it seemed like they should be. So I set out to look at different women’s experiences, learn from them, and bring you some ideas.
I never imagined this show would still be going ten years after its launch. I also never imagined that the podcast world would explode the way it has. And I want to thank you all for listening and supporting an independent podcast like this one.
AM-T: “Jumping ahead…I want to go to mothers for a minute because you say this yourself, but some of the advice in the book which comes from really well respected women in their fields, lots of academics, can seem pretty retro. I’m thinking about that chapter on mums and what you need to do when you get back from maternity leave to show that you’re still engaged and you’re on it and - from don’t show off your baby pictures at the water cooler to basically work your butt off, even though you’re probably absolutely exhausted…but the reason I raise it is this type of advice is also against this other prevailing culture in the workplace which is authenticity…we should all be so authentic at work. It’s the opposite of being authentic, right?”
“Yes, yes, no, it's been, I think this has troubled people, many people who've read the book is that some of the advice is frankly very cringey and I felt that way writing it, as you can imagine. I did make a promise to myself in the beginning when I was writing this book, because you, you know, I mean, I, I started out being like, why is this pay gap persist? Why does this promotion gap persist? And I think, I think part of the reason is that women get bad advice. feel like there are two kinds of advice, at least when I've looked for advice, I'm very into homework. So when I was looking for a promotion or looking for a raise, I would do a lot of research and I feel like often advice for negotiating, for all that, is either just geared towards the every man - and I mean every white man - and that will often backfire for women ‘cause it's just a, you're just in a different situation, negotiating, if you're a woman. Or it'll be kind of like ‘you go girl,’ it's sort of like advice for the world as it should be.
And the pledge that I made when I started the book was like, I will give the best advice I can give based on the research that I find. And even if it's not advice that I want to give, I will be honest because the idea of like marching into the boss's office and like pounding on the table and being like, listen, I know you paid Ralph $150,000 when he was dean and I'm worth it and you have to pay me this much. Like, yes, we should be able to do that. Like I feel like my soul does jumping jacks or whatever, a little celebration dance - just the idea of like marching into an office and pounding on a desk, like yes, yes, yes. And the likelihood of it working is probably small.
So I was just determined to give advice that, that I could bear out in research and I didn't like a lot of it, a lot of it I didn't want to give, but we're dealing with discrimination.”
And during her research she found discrimination against mothers is rife…
“It's harrowing! The pay gap between mothers and women with no children is bigger than the gender pay gap. Women with children are mommy tracked relentlessly. Their work is looked up on way more critically, they're way less likely to get promoted. They get paid less, obviously. I mean it is. And, and it's, it's something that, that hits most women. Most women, will have children at some point in their lives or become parents at some point in their lives, and you know, it is just, it's a very tricky kind of discrimination to deal with. I think it does not get as much attention as a lot of other kinds of discrimination because it is so tricky... Often…And I say tricky because it's often couched in help, right?
Like, oh, well, you know, ‘Joy just had a baby. Let's not put her on that nutty account that's gonna demand all her time. Let's just give her a break and let her spend some time with her kids.’ People think they're helping, and it's discrimination. And so I was like, I just wanted to lay out what the reality was. And when I talked to women who were mothers, who had gone through that, I got the advice from them too. And they had all done versions of, I mean, basically - it's like the words are catching in my throat. I don't like saying this, basically pretend like you don't have a kid, or you just have to be super firm with your boundaries.”
I would love to hear from some of you on this. Because I do wonder is this just an American phenomenon? I heard from a listener in Sweden on social media and it was really refreshing to hear this – she said because of the long parental breaks you get in Sweden – it’s over a year – she came back to find she had more interesting projects and more prestigious clients…she says it was great to have been able to hand off a few projects she would have been stuck with otherwise that she thinks would have held her back in her career. So for her, having a baby did not hold back her progress. But then…that’s Sweden.
One other tricky area I wanted to ask her about is women not supporting other women. Now I know that it’s always risky to talk about this because you get accused of being anti-feminist if you dare to suggest that women don’t always support eachother.
But a lot of us know from experience that they don’t. We have had an unpleasant experience with a female colleague that’s left us reeling. I knew Stacey had gone through this in the past.
So I asked her, what’s going on when this happens…and how can we deal with it?
“This is so interesting because you are the first person to ask me about this. I feel like it's, it's such a sticky subject that people don't want to talk about it. But like I said, I had made this pledge, like I'm going to address the reality of things. And it came up in so many interviews. I, so many women were like, are you gonna talk about how women just go after other women, sometimes, in the workplace?
So I started looking at the research because I was like, there's a reason why - because I don't think this is women being women, right, I think the problem is yeah, you're painting women as these dragon lady shrews, like Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. And I don't think that's true.”
So she plunged into the research and found herself reading about so-called Queen Bee Syndrome. When there are lots of powerful men, and only a few powerful women…some of those women can resort to their own forms of discrimination…
“But it is a result of discrimination. And when I read that, it completely flipped my head around. I'm like, oh, of course, if you were a woman in the workplace and you were trying to succeed and you were doing your level best and you know, on some level that part of the reason you're there is that you are a woman, that you are a token, then you have to defend your turf, not against everybody, but against other women who are like, younger and cheaper and don't require as much vacation as you do. And if you're a man, let's say a white man in that position, there is a feeling of abundance. There's lots of opportunity. There's plenty of success to go around. It's cool. Like, you know, there's room at the top. If you're a woman, it doesn't feel a lot of times like there's room at the top. And I think that often brings out the worst parts in people.”
AM-T: “When you had this happen to you – and it wasn’t really a superior, it was just another female colleague…how did you deal with that and how would you advise other people to deal with it when people are overtly, as they sometimes are, overtly hostile… or just the subtle undermining that happens in numerous ways?”
“I mean, I've actually thought about that incident quite a few times yes. This was a female colleague from years ago. And at the time I got super wrapped up in it. I was all consumed, very traumatized. Um, this woman would kind of lash out in certain ways and do things that were sort of very much crossing the line - sometimes I would just call in sick I felt so traumatized, because I just like, couldn't go into the office and deal with this person.
I think if I had to like go back and give myself some advice, it would just be that, this is not personal. This person has many dragons to slay.
So I think I would just try as much as possible to take emotion out of it, minimize contact, and I would tell myself to be more thoughtful, more strategic, less outraged.”
AM-T: “Yeah and also in some of that chapter you have situations where the suggestions is to actually ask a question of the person, if the person says something particularly mean or maybe tries to embarrass you in a meeting or something like that, you talk about…almost I would say confronting the person, well that’s not the right way to put it…but asking them very honest, open questions like, ‘why did you say that?’ Just stuff like that.”
“Yes, it is a confrontation. You're totally right. And I think because a lot of toxic work mates, especially towards women, but I think towards - everybody experiences this, is bullying. And I think a lot of what happens is people feel like they can kind of get away with stuff. And so the more you stand up to the person the better, and I think at least…the idea I had in my head of confronting someone, standing up to them is like, lots of drama, and like, ‘you can never do this... Town ain't big enough for the both of us!’ or whatever it is. This is a confrontation, but it's like, ‘Hey, you know, I noticed in the meeting, you said I talked too much, and I wanted to ask about that. Um, do you feel like I talk too much in meetings?’
That is a confrontation, it's addressing it in a sincere way. I think those sort of one-on- one, real talk situations are at least a way to make a situation better. And I really wish I'd done that with this colleague. I think that would've been a way more effective way to deal with it, much easier on me, as well as on her.”
Stacey says the circumstances didn’t bring out a great part of her either. She was obsessed with what was going on, she talked to everyone about it…
“It was a hard situation. I understand why I acted the way I did, but I think I had a lot more power and control over what was going on than I wanted to admit.”
One thing we should seek in the workplace in order to progress is feedback. And giving feedback is not always easy, as a manager, and it’s not always easy getting feedback either. But at least if the feedback is constructive you can learn from it and continue to grow.
If it’s not…it leaves you stuck.
AM-T: “I had to laugh when I came across this part of the book, so I didn’t realize we had this much in common in the way we were treated at this particular workplace. Years ago, you write about how you were trying to scale up from editor to reporter I think at this point, and you were told by the boss that that wasn’t possible because you lacked specialness.”
SVS: “Did you also lack specialness, Ashley?”
AM-T: “Stacey, I lacked distinctiveness. I was told, you’re not distinctive enough.”
SVS: “Oh my God. I mean, I think what happens is that - I think the fact that these weird things are getting expressed like specialness and distinctiveness, I think it's because those things are hard to pin down.”
AM-T: “It’s the opposite of what the feedback experts tell you, which is that feedback needs to be specific to be useful.”
“Right. It wasn't like, ‘Ashley, you're missing deadlines. Ashley, you don't have enough sources in your piece. You don't cover this enough or that enough,’ - actual actionable items. That's the thing. And women, their feedback often tends to be way more personal, about personalities and things like that, and often way less actionable than the feedback that men get. And that is harmful on a couple of levels. First, it's just like psychologically devastating to hear that you're not special or distinctive. I mean, that's a terrible thing to hear, but also what are we supposed to do with that information? You cannot say, well, I'm gonna become more distinctive. And I can't say, well, I've gotta be more special.”
AM-T: “Yeah, I mean we can’t anoint ourselves with these qualities.”
“Yes, exactly. And, and like the best, I think the moment when that, that came up in my head was when I was talking to this woman, Neha Narkhede who's, um, who was an executive at LinkedIn, and then went on to, to start a, a unicorn startup that's worth more than a billion dollars. This company Confluence, super brilliant, worked her way up in corporate and also founded a company. And what she said to me, she said she would run into this kind of thing all the time where people are like, I don't know, you just don't seem like a leader. I mean, basically they're trying to express, like, I don't know, probably they're trying to express something that's not a fact, which is probably some kind of discrimination.”
AM-T: “Exactly. And you did get what you wanted because you threatened to leave. And they said ‘here’s a job!’ Which is fantastic. But you do have this chapter toward the end of the book which is about going your own way…which I ended up doing. But it requires some fortitude to do that, confidence that you’ll be able to make it work and make enough money…but also a lot of women want to stay within an organization. They’re not comfortable being entrepreneurs. And I will say as someone who’s done this, one of the things I find really hard is that you’re not on the same trajectory that other people are…you can’t really measure yourself by other people because you’re not in an organization. So you’ve lost all those markers that other people have in their careers.”
“Oh yeah. That's, that is really interesting, but I think what you hit up against and what I hit up against… Neha Narkhede, one of the things she said to me was that when she would be hitting up against healing or asking for a promotion or asking for something and, and not getting it, she said, I would ask for of a list of concrete things that I could do, be like, well, what would you need to see from me to hire me as a reporter? And get a list of things. And she said it had to be concrete things. And she said she would leave. And she would go do all the things on the list. And then she'd come back and say like, ‘look, I did all the things on the list. I've succeeded on your terms. It's time to promote me.’ And I asked her, well, what happens if they can't give you concrete things? Or if you come back and there's another long list, and she said, then you have to go, because then it's not a glass ceiling. It's probably a concrete ceiling. And she said, I think I'm quoting her, I'm just a big believer that there's something better out there for you.
But I think that can be an incredibly hard leap. Like you said, it takes incredible courage. It took incredible courage for me, who is like in an incredibly privileged position. I, you know, I'm not in a ton of debt. I don't have family members counting on me for money. I had enormous privilege and freedom and I think it took like all of the courage I had and then some to quit.”
Thanks to Stacey Vanek Smith for being my guest on this show. I will link you to more information about Stacey and Machiavelli for Women under this episode at TheBroadExperence.com.
Stacey and I also spent quite a bit of time talking about women’s pay, and I’m saving that part of our conversation for a future show on money.
Thank you so much to my monthly supporters – I am going to name you, first names only because I haven’t asked your permission to do this – Linda, Anne, Cary, Mary, Megan, Branca, Diane, Victoria, Talia and Edith. Some of you have been supporting this show for almost as long as it’s existed.
Thanks for listening whether it’s been for a few months, a few years – or even ten.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. See you next time.