Men, are you ready? (a she-said, he-said account)

Pam:
Let’s just say that we start fostering diversity through gender balance, as we’ve suggested in our Soluna Institute mission.  The irony of the movement [currently take on by women's organizations and supported by women's initiatives] then is that the major tipping point for women will have to come from men!!  If women make up 15% of the C-level roles, then the leaders who will take this on for all of us will be – - to a very great extent – - the men who currently sit at that level in the other 85% of the CEO positions!!  Guess we’d better invite them to the conversation a bit more often!!!

So, gone are the days where we women can discuss our futures just among the other women in our affinity group.  (Okay, so, yes, these groups give us a lovely sense of ourselves and a necessary bond with other women that gives us strength, BUT….)

What do men need to do/know/be to help us all foster the diversity we need for better decisions, stronger families and more successful communities?  Seriously, guys, what do you need???

You are about to hear one man’s answer.  Hey, Charlie Elkins, are ya ready?  Will you help us all?  [Oh, and by the way, Charlie just happens to care a lot.  He is not only a Board member here at Soluna and a marketing leader in his industry, but he enjoys helping men and women make sense of their marriages.  He even wrote a book to offer some witty guidance to his son on the subject of understanding the other sex.]

Charlie, if you (and other men, of course) are meant to do-this-diversity-stuff along with all of us, what do you need?

Charlie:
I’ve been married 24 years as of a month ago.  One of the keys to a long, successful marriage is being a student of your mate’s behavior, and your own.  Studying her behavior helps me anticipate situations that will arise.  Observing my own behavior as objectively as possible helps me recognize my tendencies and perhaps modify my responses to better accommodate her.  To keep it interesting, I try to find humor in each situation.

One of things I struggled to understand early in marriage was my wife’s desire to share a seemingly moment-by-moment account of her day.  This usually occurred right as I walked in the door from work.  It felt like a flood of words washing over me.  I found myself frantically asking myself, “what am I supposed to do, what am I supposed to DO?”  I think this is pretty common husband/wife behavior.  Eventually, I learned that my wife was simply sharing her day with me and there was usually no “to-do” attached with any of it, although there was the risk that I would be expected to remember some nugget of information at a future date.

If you study marriage as I have done, it becomes pretty obvious that men and women approach it with very different, perhaps even opposite expectations. Most men approach marriage, and everything else for that matter, in terms of action and accomplishment–what am I supposed to do?  Men want to know what they are expected to do and how it should be done.  Most women approach marriage in terms of emotions and relationship.  Women want to share their feelings, both shallow and deep, with their husband.

I think the working world mirrors marriage in various ways.  Certainly, those of us in management find ourselves inundated with information, much like I did as a young husband coming home from work.  In the working world, we frequently receive reminders about the company’s commitment to diversity and such.  We are told that diversity is important.  We have programs and metrics related to diversity.  Yet I don’t think most of us really know what we are supposed to do.  It can’t be just theory and it shouldn’t be limited to purely token actions like putting a female on the board or setting a quota for racial balance in a department.

If diversity is really a serious objective, we need to find positive, practical ways to enable each person in the business to know how to bring about diversity in their department.  We need to take it out of the realm of pithy statements by executives and generic posters in the breakroom.

I have some thoughts on how to make accomplishing diversity practical and will share them in future blog posts.

Ladies and Gentlemen, What do you think we should do?