I was sharing stories about a friend that had recently passed away with a separate mutual friend. My friend mentioned that she recalled going shopping with our friend decades ago. He wanted female input into his fashion choices. They were in a store, and he was trying on some pants. He called her into the change room to ask her opinion. She said as tactfully as she could something to the effect that the pants made his privates appear prominent. He nodded, glad to hear that his intuition was in tune with hers. He proceeded to purchase three pairs of the same pants. Thirty-five years later, she remembers the story because of how absurd, to her, his reaction was to her input. She said what she said to him not as a compliment but as a suggestion that this was not something he should want from a pair of pants. She was trying to subtly communicate that he should not purchase these pants. He heard only the literal words that prominence of privates in pants was a positive for a guy. He took her input as honest and direct when it was intended as anything but.
Where the shoe is on the other foot and as a man you’re out shopping with your lady, what do you do when asked for input? Do you enjoy sitting or standing outside a change room waiting for her to return in a revolving door of outfits asking for your thoughts? What’s your answer to do these pants make my butt look fat? Have you ever had the courage to answer, no the pants don’t, it’s your fat butt that makes you look fat? If so, how did that go over? Do you fare any better responding to the question, how do I look in this outfit? Women want validation in these circumstances. They want to be affirmed.
In our opposite situation, where the man is trying on some clothes, he wants not affirmation but honesty. He wants to know the unvarnished truth. Does the outfit make him look like a serious, accomplished individual or a try-hard clown? He doesn’t want to be strung along to feel good in the moment. He doesn’t want to hear something that makes him feel good, he wants the truth. He wants to know what will happen when the outfit interacts with reality.
Rob Henderson offers a separate example illustrating the same idea. In a note posted to Substack, Henderson contrasts the contents of self-help books marketed to women versus men. He writes, “The books for men tend to emphasize stoicism, discipline, and self-sufficiency: become more focused, toughen up, don’t let the world knock you off your path, no one is coming to save you. The message is essentially that you need to strengthen yourself and earn your way forward.” Books written for women, on the other hand, are deeply different suggests Henderson writing, “The books for women, by contrast, rarely begin with the idea that you’re lacking something that needs to be built. Instead, the theme is closer to: you’re already great, but you keep getting in your own way. The world hasn’t recognized your value because you haven’t fully accepted it yourself. The promise is that once you stop beating yourself up and embrace who you already are, others will see it too.”
Henderson sums things up, “Two very different messages—one built around improvement, the other around affirmation.”
John Gray wrote about gender communication differences in Men are From Mars, and Women are from Venus. Men tend to be direct. Men seek to solve problems. Women want to be heard. They want to talk without hearing a bunch of solutions. Just like Gray nailed these differences thirty plus years ago in his book, here’s an entertaining two-minute video that nails the point home. As testament to its message it’s circulated the internet for twelve years garnering tens of millions of views.
A feminine personality trait is to focus on feelings. This doesn’t mean all women focus on feelings more than all men. It just means that the average woman is more concerned about her own and other’s feelings than is the average man. Is there a cost of choosing comforting feelings over brutal honesty? Are there benefits to choosing comfort over honesty? Asked differently by Nietzsche, “Who is better, they who promote truth over happiness, or happiness over truth?”
The late Pastor, Tim Keller, offered, “Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness: it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot easily hear it.” Preserving the peace of a relationship may be the priority justifying a polite response. I read somewhere the suggestion to ask and answer the question do you want to be right or do you want a relationship prior to responding in a conversation with someone you care about. Sometimes, the relationship takes precedence over the topic. However, do you want your surgeon, airplane mechanic, or accountant using this approach?
It’s not that one approach is better than the other. Both have their places. It’s not that one view is sexist. Different approaches exist. Both serve purposes. Neither is universally applicable. There are places and times where one approach helps and other times and places where the same approach doesn’t work.
What are some consequences of choosing kindness as a default? William Meijer offers a graph showing costs of compassion.
Applying Meijer’s graph to Canada, Candace Malcolm writes “Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed our country fall from a functional system, into something almost unrecognizable.” Malcolm continues, “Simply put: kindness got in the way of truth.” Meijer offers, “An extreme commitment to the truth makes relationships acutely dysfunctional but systems chronically functional (think Elon Musk). An extreme commitment to kindness makes relationships acutely functional but systems chronically dysfunctional (think Sweden, UK).”
We’ve traded functional systems for functional relationships. It has become more important to get along and be seen as a good member of the group than it is to prioritize truth or accuracy. Kind lies lead to a catastrophic cascade dragging things down. Where the focus is on feelings over facts, things suffer. Excellence is not built around empathy.
Meijer and Malcolm aren’t alone in their observation. Helen Andrews has spoken and written about The Great Feminization suggesting that adoption of feminine behaviors has led to dysfunction across several domains like academia, the workplace, and political polarization. She notes that as female majorities arose in various institutions, these institutions developed dysfunction. The correlation is very strong. Much of this demographic shift is recent. Law schools became majority female in 2016, medical schools in 2019, the New York Times newsroom became majority female in 2018. Women make up the majority (60%) of those earning University degrees. They also make up the majority earning PhDs. Female professors are the majority in more academic fields. The teaching profession is majority female across grade levels.
As the number of women increased, these institutions shifted from direct debate and truth to feelings and consensus. They ruled through conformity rather than confrontation. In one institution after another feminine preferences began to displace masculine norms. Janice Fiamengo further supports this idea pointing out that institutions tend to pursue the values of those individuals that populate them. When more women are involved in a profession or institution, their values tend to be promoted.
Andrews suggests feminine conflict resolution is not about open battle or contest for ideas but expulsion. Free speech is sacrificed in the name of safety. Dissent alone threatens emotional safety needed to maintain the group. Women prefer social cohesion over objectivity and competence. Conformity is favored over confrontation. Protecting people’s feelings and helping them feel like they belong is prioritized over accountability and performance standards. Who cares about the truth? Be kind. Who cares about competition or getting better? Be nice or you will be kicked out of the group. Did you try? Did you mean well? Well, then this is more important than what happened. Who cares if you made a mess. Who cares if something failed. You meant well and should be rewarded independent of outcome. This results in dulling or eliminating performance standards.
Unbekoming writes, “the shift from masculine to feminine conflict resolution has profound implications for institutional function. Science advances through adversarial challenge of hypotheses. Law depends on adversarial presentation of evidence. Democratic politics requires adversarial competition between ideas. When institutions adopt feminine conflict-avoidance, they lose the very mechanisms that made them effective.”
Favoring the feminine has costs. More meetings to ensure a consensus leads to reduced productivity as less time is available to do real work. Risk management is favored over innovation. In education, female teachers focus on feelings over facts. Grade inflation has become rampant. Standards have been set aside to avoid hurting feelings. Awards for kindness exceed those for academic merit. Sports stop keeping score and offer participation trophies to everybody. Comfort is favored over challenge. Students are encouraged to feel good yet scores on standardized tests drop.
All to say there are consequences to choosing the collective over competence. When inclusion is prioritized over intelligence or integrity bad things can happen. When being able to play the part is seen as merit instead of objective performance standards, the quality of output can’t help but decline. Being good at saying the right things and behaving the right way is not the same as being good at technical skills. Competence is not the same as conformity. Where talent is seen as who is best at toeing the line, the pinnacle of performance becomes being best at parroting the prized perspective. Critical thought and questioning things simply aren’t permitted.
Is improvement possible in an environment without transparency, truth, and trust? High-performance is definitionally about a hierarchy. Empathy and excellence seem somewhat incompatible. Dick Cavett has suggested, “It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.” In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky wrote, “Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.” Winston Churchill continued this vein noting, “Criticism is like pain in the human body. It is not pleasant, but where would the body be without it?”
High performers believe that life’s like a mirror in that it gives us not what we want but reflects who we are. They realize that if their results aren’t what they want, the first place to look is internally. What responsibility can they take for where they find themselves. This leads to a look for what kinds of actions can be considered to improve their situation. A willingness to relish reality results in a proactive perspective. As painful as the truth may be it’s the only path to progress available. To those hungry for performance, the discomfort of criticism is worth the excitement of improvement. To the ambitious, the commitment to a goal is more important than protecting their ego. To the mediocre, preserving ego is prioritized over performance.
Living harmoniously with others may feel good, but it’s an environment where excellence is unlikely. Gabrielle Zevin points out in Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, “The best teams are constantly at each other’s throats. It’s a part of the process. If you aren’t fighting, then someone doesn’t care enough about the work. Say you’re sorry. Move on.” Type A’s can be hostile and volatile. Because they care, they dare. They confront, bicker, and compete their position forward. Type A’s can earn A’s at arguing. Learn to bicker better. Delight in those that are disagreeable.
Consider business research that correlates “happy” teams with poor or mediocre performance. In The Right Fight, authors Joni and Beyer introduce research that “found that the single greatest predictor of poor performance in a business group is when the employees are happy.” This seems like a counterintuitive result but may make perfect sense. We’re often told business benefits from a strong culture. Staff that get along may be more productive. However, perhaps happy equals lazy? If one is happy, they’re not looking for challenge, they’re seeking the status quo. The satiated sit still as they’ve had their fill.
It’s the hungry that are willing to work. Tension is part of being intense. A dog with a bone isn’t necessarily relaxed. They’re intent, committed, focused. These are all positives. Opt for agitated over apathetic. Make intensity your intention. Consider kindness as a curse. See compassion as capitulation. Kill your kindness and amplify your aggression. In Winning, Tim Grover writes, “A rose with thorns lives longer than a rose with the thorns clipped.” I’m no florist, but I love this idea. I view it as a testament to embrace your edginess. Perhaps, support for the idea that nice guys finish last. Defanging your fierceness is anything but a long-term strategy.
Legendary choreographer, Twyla Tharp observes in The Creative Habit, “You’ve been there when a boss throws a temper tantrum in a meeting. Everyone in the room goes “Uh oh! The boss is mad. We better shape up.” The tantrum, judiciously applied, is a great wake-up call to get people to do something. It’s the same for you when you’re alone and scratching for an idea. Throw a tantrum at yourself. Anger is a cheap adrenaline rush, but when you’re going nowhere and can’t get started, it will do.” Sometimes shaking a fist wakes us up.
Adam Grant recounting an interview with someone in Think Again quotes his interviewee, “I want people who are disgruntled because they have a better way of doing things and they are having trouble finding an avenue. Racing cars that are just spinning their wheels in a garage rather than racing. You open that garage door, and man, those people will take you somewhere.” See Type A’s as sources of ambition and aspiration. They want to get on with things. They’re willing to work and happy to hurt. These are the people you want to be around when operating in any kind of high-performance environment.
In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker echoes Grant writing, “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to.” Those that are willing to stand aside from the crowd are the ones that have the chance to live loud. Harmony is incompatible with high performance. Diversity of thought is desirable. Improvements follow a clash of competing ideas and approaches.
All to suggest there are times where galvanizing the grumpy may lead to greatness.
