Contest Culture: How Organizations Become Toxic, and How to Fix Them | Peter Glick | TEDxOshkosh

[Music] 25 years ago I held my son Nathaniel's hand as we waited for a school bus it was the first day of first grade and he was not happy about it he dragged himself onto that school bus holding back tears pausing just long enough on that top step to shoot me a look at once despondent and accusatory a double edged dagger to his father's heart a few stops later a little girl equally hopped on that same bus she was in a totally different mood she was excited optimistic couldn't wait to join her classmates in the first grade she carefully selected her first day outfit her dress her backpack her lunchbox all featured her favorite character Barney the cuddly purple dinosaur what happened next crushed her spirit a boy on the bus loudly declared that Barney was for sissies a couple others joined in mocking the girl she was immediately reduced to tears publicly humiliated she wished she was anywhere but on that bus or going into the first grade others on the bus put their heads down afraid they'd become the next victims of the bully when she got home later that day the care the girl carefully gathered up all of her beloved Barney belongings and threw them into the trash think of a time when you liked that little girl were rejected by a group how did it feel we evolved to be social creatures so much so that social rejection activates the same areas of the brain as physical injury yet we often define our groups by who they exclude on that bus a dominant class mate to find who was in and who was out the winners and the losers of first grade and Barney fans were most definitely out now why pick Barney this choice was no accident did you know that Barney is supposed to be a t-rex literally the tyrant king of the cretaceous yet Barney rejects ruthless dominance in favor of kindness empathy and love he should have been the fearsome king of the jungle instead he's a plush purple pushover this makes Barney that most subversive kind of radical someone who's surrendered masculinity for femininity a now I'm not here to bash men or to say that masculinity is all bad as a sociologist Michael Kimmel notes if you ask people what makes a good man you'll get all sorts of wonderful traits courageous protects the weak reliable dependable but ask people what does it take to be a real man and the toxic traits emerge callous ruthless dominant when these real man norms prevail everyday social situations become a zero-sum competition for dominance that my colleagues and I label the masculinity contest now there is nothing wrong with honest competition we should all strive to be the best and we should be proud of our wins and celebrate them without apology the problem with the masculinity contest is that it perverts honest competition and it becomes win at all costs because real men never lose a single stumble a vulnerable emotion at in the armor and you too could be a now in childhood it's all revolves around physical dominance one of my most vivid memories as a kid was when we moved to a new neighborhood I went out to try to make some new friends I quickly ran into a mandatory ritual you had to fight the Alpha boy to determine your place in the neighborhood now you know how sometimes that scrawny kid with the glasses kind of gets fed up with the bullying and suddenly BAM pulls out this punch he didn't know he had in him blood ease the bully's nose unexpectedly wins the fight that is exactly the opposite of what happened to me he wasn't the neighborhood boy for nothing predictably I was the one who ended up bloodied and on the ground the fight was mercifully brief the physical injuries were minor but the social consequences for my place in the neighborhood that was enduring in adulthood the locus of this contest shifts to the workplace traditionally a male domain yes women have flooded into the workplace in ever-increasing ever-increasing numbers but men still maintain a stranglehold at the top there are fewer female CEOs in the ESPE 1500 then there are men named James or William or Robert or John in the fortune 500 over 95% of the CEOs or men it's not surprising that when men rule the roost they might import some of the norms that they were socialized with and when those are the real man norms the workplace becomes a win or die gladiatorial arena and to the victor go the spoils the perceived right to bully humiliate even sexually harass subordinates when scandals break we rightfully blame the perpetrators the Harvey Weinstein's or les Moonves but there's other questions we really need to be asking how do these people get to be so powerful in the first place how did they get away with these behaviors sometimes for decades even when they were an open secret one answer masculinity contests cultures enable even encourage in this conduct a 2017 New York Times investigation revealed what could then only be called a masculinity contest culture at uber people bragged about sabotaging projects in an attempt to undermine their boss to try to take their place masculine bravado was mistaken for brilliance sexual harassment was tolerated as long as you were considered a top performer or a member of the in-crowd well how do you know if your workplace might be a masculinity contest culture my colleagues Jennifer berdahl Natalia Alonso and I have investigated this and we find that there are four core norms that make up a masculinity contest the first one is show no weakness in these cultures what's valued is somebody who never admits they have a doubt never admits they made a mistake never shows a vulnerable motion the second norm is strength and stamina even in white collar organizations where it doesn't really matter that jocks are preferred and promoted over other people third put work first pretend you have no obligations outside of work certainly don't prioritize family over work always be available and for the core of the competition which is dog-eat-dog you're called your co-workers are not your colleagues they're their competitors so trust no one always watch your back and compete show no mercy in sample after sample involving thousands of participants we consistently find that when people report these norms are endorsed in the workplace that they are much more likely to report it's a dismal dysfunctional place to work they are much more likely report that they have a toxic boss an insecure tyrant who belittles and humiliates their subordinates someone who blames everyone else for failures takes credit for all their successes bullying and harassment both sexual and ethnic are much more common and people in these workplaces are miserable as a result they report much higher levels of burnout and stress they're much more likely to say that they want to leave in the next few years and they report lower psychological well-being and the misery extends to men as well as women as long as you don't quite fit in imagine boy in Barney gear aboard that school bus how do you think he would have been treated but the situation is especially problematic for women because they're in a bind when you're in one of these gladiatorial workplaces you better pick up a weapon and fight but we know from decades of research that when women are assertive they are disliked and less likely to be promoted an aggressive man might be labeled a brilliant jerk someone not only to be tolerated but put on the fast track an aggressive woman gets a different label that also starts with B but I'm guessing you're realizing it doesn't stand for brilliance workplace masculinity contests intensify women's double bind you gotta fight like a man to survive but some come across as ladylike and nice while doing so now even if leaders don't care about whether their workers are happy or whether they promote women to leadership positions they should care about reforming the masculinity contest why because they are inherently dysfunctional everyone's looking out for number one instead of cooperating with their colleagues to achieve common organizational goals misconduct is rife leading to reputation damaging scandals and expensive lawsuits and people are miserable so they leave creating a talent ring well if these organizations are so dysfunctional why does these cultures persist do you remember that fable The Emperor's New Clothes in it a couple of con men claimed to have woven these wonderful robes for the king here's the catch you can only see the robes if you're fit for your office from the King on down everybody claims to see these invisible robes because to do otherwise they fear will be to reveal that I'm unfit for my role masculinity contest dorms work in exactly the same way if you question the norms you're admitting your weakling you're not tough enough for this environment you can't handle it so instead what we do we perform the norms you might conspicuously stay at your desk pretending to work until after the boss leaves so that you can look like a foot work first winner we're still we disparage people who don't live up to those norms did you hear that John's going on parental leave he's gonna be on the mommy track now I heard that Mariah cheered up at her first-year review she's never gonna make it here everyone may be privately miserable after all most of them are toiling under toxic bosses and even the winners have to constantly watch their backs but because everybody performs the norms publicly there's an illusory consensus that everybody agrees with them well if that's the case can these masculinity contests ever be reformed yes they can but it takes commitment from the leadership on down and that only happens when leaders realize it's critical to the bottom line let me give you an example oil rigs are a very macho environment they're also a very dangerous place to work 2010's Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people and created an environmental disaster that the estimated cost of all this are sixty five billion dollars in counting all of this would suggest that safety should be an organizational priority how do you make oil rig safer well you can import new technology that might help but people run these rigs and what they do really matters real men masculinity is all about courting danger safety is for sissies real men die younger than women because they take physical risks they work non-stop to prove their strength and stamina this can lead to green-lighting dangerous procedures and suppressing doubts about them or making a bad decision in a fog of exhaustion when one oil company decided to reform the safety culture they did not have quashing masculinity in mind but they quickly realized they had to in call new norms they had to make it so that people talked to each other and had each other's back they made it so that you were rewarded for expressing doubts and for listening to the doubts expressed by others for taking mandatory breaks the result of the safety interventions turned out to be an 84 percent reduction in accidents but there was an important by-product bullying decreased inclusion and cooperation increased the masculinity contest had been mitigated so how many of you out there work on oil rigs I can't see anything so I'm not seeing any hands so probably not a lot of Roughnecks in this audience let me give you a totally different example high tech organizations Silicon Valley is not blue-collar macho but it has its own bro culture infamously what are these corporations care about innovation is their lifeblood usually accomplished in teams well how do you have an innovative team have you ever been on a in a brainstorming group where other people in the group what they really wanted to do was cut down everybody else's idea to prove I'm the smartest person in the room does that inhibit or help creativity well the research on this is abundantly clear in the most innovative groups they have the most cooperative and supportive social relations in the most innovative groups people report I can float a half-baked idea and I know I'm not going to get cut off at the knees other people will take that idea and see what's try see what's good about it it'll spark further ideas people are disinhibited because they're not worried about being humiliated through their contribution creativity is inspired innovation is born if you went into a high tech company was a research-based innovation intervention you would find that it would naturally mitigate the masculinity contest so in some masculinity contests cultures are dismal and dysfunctional places to be they are miniature Nobles waiting to meltdown and socially they're kind of the equivalent of that bully infested school bus but they can be reformed to make a buy a mission-based inner intervention so reform can occur through a mission based intervention that makes a more functional organization and as a byproduct makes a more cooperative and inclusive organization just perhaps an organization or the adult version of that enthusiastic little girl in the barney dress might have the chance to rise to be a respected leader who motivates through inspiration rather than fear you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 30,781

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Business, Bullying, Culture, Work, Workplace

Id: WorA0rlKeD8

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019