As you might imagine I get contacted about all kinds of HR and TA products and services. I recently got connected with a company called ywomen.biz, ran by ‘Gender Strategist’ Jeffrey Tobias Halter. (Tim note: I instantly don’t like people who use Jeffrey, instead of Jeff, and what’s up with “Tobias” in the middle? This isn’t a Divergent movie! But, I will say one of the best fake consultant titles ever in Gender Strategist!) Jeff wrote a book titled: WHY WOMEN – The Leadership Imperative to Advancing Women and Engaging Men.
I mean who to better tell companies how to advance women than a middle-aged white dude, right! Okay, I’m a skeptic, instantly, but I’m also a middle-aged white dude who wants to see women advance in leadership—hell, I wrote my Master’s thesis on it for my HR program! So, I looked into Jeff’s message and I think it has merit.
Jeff’s main point is (my words not his) you can’t “Womansplain” to dudes how they should act and expect results. Sure you can get some great female leaders to come in and tell all of your dudes what they need to do, but the reality is, the message would actually be taken better from another dude, because that dude, speaks “dude”!
Let me back up a step. You probably haven’t heard of “Womansplaining”. I’m sure you’ve heard of “Mansplaining” because it seems like it’s all the rage. Mansplaining is when a man explains something to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing. My wife lives in a house with four males, I know for a fact we mansplain to her and she’s really good about letting us know when we do it!
Womansplaining isn’t as popular, or politically correct. Womansplaining is the opposite of mansplaining: when a woman tries to belittle or shut down a man by gender shaming she is thus womansplaining.
The point of all of this was my initial reaction to a dude telling organizations how to advance women seemed silly to me. It’s like a white dude telling organizations how to recruit minorities better! (Oh wait, I just did that at SHRM Talent!) But, in reality, if your audience that needs to change behavior is mostly a bunch of white dudes, they will actually learn better from someone who is more like them.
How do I know any of this? Oh, yeah, I’m a man. I can tell you how I feel when I’m being womansplained things! Hell, just ask Laurie Ruettimann, every time we talk she’s womansplaining something to me! Dudes, just like women, don’t like to be talked down to, and everyone actually learns better when they feel safe and comfortable in their learning environment.
I’m afraid that too many women in the space of advancing women in leadership are womansplaining to a bunch of dudes. I appreciate the passion and effort, but if it’s not hitting the mark, sometimes you need to try a different tack. I don’t care how we get more female leaders, I just want to see it get done!
So, does this mean I recommend Jeff? No, I don’t even know the dude! But, I also wouldn’t discount him just because he’s a dude trying to advance women. I know plenty of dudes who are great ‘Feminists’ in the HR and TA space (Lars Schmidt, Jason Seiden, Will Staney, Chris Hoyt, Steve Boese, William Tincup, etc.) trying to help advance women every day. I think Jeff is trying to do the same thing, in a much more direct way.
Okay, hit me in the comments and tell me how I just mansplained this all to you!
If you Google “Tim Sackett” you’ll find our Tim, and a truck driver chaplain. Our Tim is NOT the truck driver chaplain, although how awesome would that be if he was!? He is a prolific writer in the HR and TA space who just happens to also run an Engineering and IT contract staffing agency (HRU Technical Resources) out of Michigan. He also writes every day at his own blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Weirdly, he’s known as an expert in workplace hugging, which was kind of cool years ago, but now seems painfully creepy, but we still love him and he’s fairly harmless. Tim is also on the board of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP), lifetime Michigan State Spartan fan, husband to a Hall of Fame wife, 3 sons, and his best friend Scout. He also wrote a book with SHRM called The Talent Fix, you can find it on Amazon.