Relational aggression why women hurt each other | Kris Stewart | TEDxPenticton

I'm here today to talk to you about something that's really important to me that topic is called relational aggression or indirect aggression in this particular instance I'm talking about that kind of communicating women do with one another in the workplace so this is just about the type of things that happen in the workplace between women I'll give you some stories to explain fully why this is so important to me and I think a lot of women here and perhaps men will find that it's relevant to you as well so I love this Maxim by Elizabeth Holland she was a very popular nineteenth-century Solanas so basically I can tell you in it to support that Maxim I can tell you that being is that I've been a nurse for over 25 years I can tell you quite confidently that there's a saying in health care that nurses eat their young I've also heard in business circles that female managers feel bloodied by women in lower positions isn't this interesting studies actually do show that female to female aggression in the workplace has increased by 50% over the last decade so I'm we're going to delve into this a little bit and I really like Sheryl Sandberg's TEDx TED talk thank you Brian for putting that up there it segues nicely with what I have to say here to you today basically I'm going to dig a little bit deeper into the phenomenon that Sheryl Sandberg is talking about for sure women are key in the modern-day workforce as Cheryl mentioned there are actually more women graduates from University than there are men so why is there such unequal representation of women in boardrooms and in the c-suite jobs like CEO see Oh CFO those are c-suite jobs certainly c-suite jobs really do elude many women let's look at this a little bit deeper shall we I'm going to share some stories with you about ten years ago I founded a high profile company that garnered massive press attention it was because of its political sensitivity my business partner and I hired a young woman to do marketing for us she had winning ways she was great at her job she was morbidly obese but we overlooked at because she was just great to be around my business partner knew I had things in well in hand so he went off to golf and I stayed there running the business that was our agreement that was working what I noticed though that over the course of time this young woman's work seemed to never really be done I would address it with her and she would give me excuses that didn't really ever seem to make sense to me but I was pretty busy running this business so I didn't really ever get to the bottom of it what I didn't know was that every time I asked her to do something she would get on the phone to my business partner and complain about the work I was giving her being an avoider he said oh well just don't do it then let's call that undermine so she didn't and I never got clear answers about that from her after a while my business partner got tired of all the complaining I didn't know this at the time and as an avoider what did he do he knew he needed to fire someone to stop the problem he didn't fire her he fired me can you imagine my horror and dismay at being fired from the company I founded this was like ripping the child out of my womb I actually fell into a deep depression I was unable to even finish sentences for a year much less work that was traumatizing and that really did change my career path I'll tell you another story after that happened thought well I guess I need to know a little bit more about maybe how to manage better or understand a workplace full of women better did a little bit of research and then I got a job as a VP of a small private college the CEO was a woman she basically wasn't there she didn't need to be there on-site every day what I did notice that one of the older lady department heads was a key influencer of the CEO I made sure knowing what I knew about the social dynamics in a female workplace that I should till the soil and warm the relationships and build rapport and all those great things and so I tilled the soil and things were going great for two weeks and then things changed and I realized that same female department head actually controlled the entire workplace I lasted six weeks interesting I'll tell you a third and final story so I gathered more information I studied this phenomenon even more and then I went to work as an acting clinical manager in a nationally branded home health company there were other managers in the office but none of them had any health care background except me the managers there knew of my extensive health care background but yet when I tried to make changes to improve client care or do performance management on a particularly troublesome employee who was committing all kinds of sins I was thwarted in my efforts I didn't really understand what was going on but before I could even figure that out I happened to look in personnel files of the nurses that I was responsible for managing I found out they were all making $2 an hour more than I was I'm their manager and they're making more than I am anyways I asked my manager for a wage parity meeting and explained to her briefly why I was always pleasant to deal with in the office because I knew you've got to keep things pretty pretty clean and calm so everything was calm I asked for a wage parity meeting and can anybody guess what happened I got fired what's at play here in all of these three stories my mom knows all these stories she said well I think they're jealous of you and I said I don't know mom I I'm not sure I don't know what's going on well I think I have it figured out I proposed to you I think that it was a power imbalance so let's look at what this looks like I've tracked down two researchers Susan Murphy and Pat Haim they both have PhDs they've done fascinating research on this phenomenon they've written a book called in the company of women why we hurt each other it is fascinating it's from that book that I present most of my material to you today their research has shown that women admit in all the hundreds of thousands of women that they interviewed women admit that there is a lot of conflict in the workplace women admit their Umbro Glee O's and they actually admit that their worst enemy at work is not a man it's a woman women seem to be preventing other women from getting ahead and being happy in the workforce so what does all this look like those researchers by the way coined the phrase indirect aggression otherwise known as relational aggression that's where the phrase comes from at least they brought it to the surface so what does it look like what does it take the form of now some of you perhaps can relate to this it takes the form of gossiping publicly insinuating comments public humiliation divulging secrets sabotaging undermining raise your hand if that sounds familiar to anyone here I've seen it all I have experienced all that myself and I'll bet a lot of you have too so that's what it looks like so you might want to wonder how does all this even start well these researchers through their studies found that this phenomenon actually takes its roots in the socialization of little girls isn't that interesting what they found was that when little girls get together to play they try to make sure that each of their playmates has the same things as each other everybody has the same number of candies and cookies everybody has the same quality of dress-up clothes everybody is treated with kindness courtesy they don't want anyone to feel left out everybody needs to be cared about and included in other words they want the playing field to be level key word playing field level fast forward 20 years now what do you see you see those same little girls in a work workplace trying to keep the playing field level maybe they don't realize what they're doing but that is what's at play here so what they're doing is they're doing undermining gossiping sabotaging and maybe they don't realize what they're doing but that is trying to keep the playing field level what is the effect do you know the effect is not exclusively to women the effect is also to the men in those women's life so this can affect families this can affect marriages so it's not just restricted to women directly it's women yes indirectly it's their their partners and their families so it can have a devastating effect it can react and result in reduce them reduced profitability higher employee turnover it can erode a woman's self of sense worth self-worth it can have disastrous consequences it can be career limiting certainly in my case I feel that my career was a bit a bit limited in certain areas so it can have disastrous consequences and in health care what's really important is the sharing of information so this can even have an effect on whether or not women share information with each other in health care that's pretty important and other areas too so what do we do about this well I challenge you to think of four solutions here the first one is your goal as a woman in a women work woman's workforce your goal is to treat the relationships as the goal your goal is to establish warm harmonious mutually satisfying relationships with the women that you work with one by one so how do you do that you get to know them you have conversations to build rapport you do everyday small favors for those women in your workforce that are important to you second thing you can do is use women's because anybody heard that term women speak I never did before I read this book women speak is really about softening the message that you're giving to your your colleague your female colleague how do we soften the message we add something in the front of that sentence and we had something in the back so what you're going to add in the front is something like this doesn't really make sense however or sorry to bother you with this but okay there's some front-end things on the back end it could be things like you know or okay or write those things soften the message that women hear they need that men use a very direct style of communicating it's very efficient it's very crisp it's very clear I grew up with men and boys I know all about that if you use that efficient clipped style of communicating with women you're going to create dissension and there's going to be conflict guaranteed so use women speak the third thing is to create your chip pile what the heck is a chip pile a chip pile is actually a pile of goodwill bitcoins if you will what you're doing is you're doing everyday small favours and interacting in nice ways with the women that you work with it might be something like giving genuine compliments to a woman who's who's shown great business acumen or her attire it needs to be genuine so when you do small favors and maybe you give compliments that are genuine you're increasing your chip pile women do mental math all the time maybe you don't know that about us women do mental math they keep track of the chip pile maybe they don't know that but they do so if you're a woman and you need a favor done or you need some support by other women in your workplace you're going to want to make sure you have a great chip pile built up so above all avoid a chip deficit the fourth most important thing is to honor the power dead-even rule now what is that basically when you talk to a woman if you're a woman and you're talking to another woman or a work group you want to make sure you come across as having the same amount of power and self-esteem as that person or that group that keeps the power dead even remember women are all about keeping a playing field level this is how you do that if you're a woman you come across as having the same power and self-esteem as that woman or work group and that will help solve problems I love this quote from Margaret Mead basically what she's maintaining here is that it just takes a small group of people to make social change so may I suggest to you that from today going forward as a woman that you can create social change and great social transformation in your workplace by becoming part of a girl gang a good girl gang this means a powerful group of women who support each other and celebrate each other's successes and celebrate each other's needs and be nurturing I challenge you as a woman from today forward that you be the epitome of caring thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 172,346

Rating: 4.3361211 out of 5

Keywords: Gender, ted talk, ted x, English, Canada, tedx talk, Sociology, ted, Social Science, TEDxTalks, tedx talks, ted talks, tedx

Id: 2j-S06u5lDY

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 27 2014