How Men Think : The Seven Essential Rules for Making It in a Man's World

"An interesting tool for working with gender differences."
--John Gray
Author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
Men at work do it all the time: They brag, cover up their mistakes, pretend to know what they don't, start fights. And they still get ahead! Why? As psychologist Adrienne Mendell learned when she interviewed one-hundred male executives, the traits that women spend their entire lives erasing from their personalities are actually the qualities that men value in the world of work. And since men are still in the power positions, if you don't play it their way, you don't play at all.
Based on Mendell's interviews and her experience of counseling hundreds of frustrated career women, How Men Think identifies the seven rules that men learned by playing sports as children--games that excluded girls. These rules may seem simple on the surface, but understanding them as men do is anything but easy. You may have fallen into many of these traps yourself:
* You're mad because you want your male boss to let you control your projects. But you've got to take control--that's the only way you'll get it.
* You're steamed because a male colleague consistently takes credit for your work. Do you make a point of touting your accomplishments?
* When you make a mistake you apologize. But the man you apologize to doesn't think you're polite--he thinks you're admitting incompetence.
* A fight with a male colleague leaves you shaken. But the men in your office shout at each other for an hour and then go out for a beer.
These are the times that try women's souls! The strategies, insights, and eye-opening advice in How Men Think will help you get along better with the boys and propel you to the top where you belong.
"The more women have opportunities to play sports the more proficient they will become in competing in this men's world of 'unwritten rules.' To bridge the gap, Mendell's book, How Men Think, is a necessary guide for women working with men."
--Diane Everett, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Association for Girls and Women in Sport

Introduction
 
Nineteen years ago, a friend and I decided to follow one of our dreams. We went off to the Annapolis Sailing School for a weekend course. I fell in love with sailing instantly. The grace of the boats, the feel of the wind, and the sound of the water moving past the hull all gave me a sense of contentment that I hadn’t expected. I knew I had to make this sport part of my life. I wanted to become the best sailor I could, and learning to race seemed the most direct way to achieve that goal. I began racing, and at that time I was one of very few women racing on the Chesapeake Bay and almost always the only woman skipper at the regattas I attended. That hasn’t changed very much. There are more women involved in racing now, but still few of them at the helm.
 
I had no idea of the profound changes competing in this sport would require of me. It had never occurred to me that all my competitors would be male. By the time I realized this, I was in the thick of it, and much too committed to racing to care.
 
When I first declared my intention to race, one of the racers laughingly said to me, “So you think you know how to make a sailboat go. Wait until you try to make a sailboat go fast.” I didn’t know what he meant.
 
Now I understand why he laughed. Racing is very demanding. I threw myself into it. I read every book I could find about racing. I went to sailboat racing clinics. But when I got out on the racecourse, I just couldn’t translate what I had learned into action. I thought I knew a lot. I could quote the books; I knew sail trim, strategy, and all the rules. But it was clear that something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on, was happening. The other racers’ behavior and responses just didn’t make sense to me. Worse yet, the other skippers didn’t like me and clearly didn’t want me around. I felt angry, resentful, and confused. The answer to all this came unexpectedly.
 
One day, in an attempt to be friendly, I made a joking comment to another crew about a mistake they had made the day before. I will never forget the response. An angry, frightening, low-pitched male growl arose from the boat, and they abruptly tacked away without a word. “What did I do wrong?” I cried out, astonished. To my further astonishment, a male crewmember proceeded to tell me.
 
I had heard other people teasing this crew about their mistake and thought I was doing the same thing. But what I had failed to notice was that the teasing had stopped after the party that followed that race. He didn’t use these words, but in essence this crewmember told me there was an unwritten set of rules that everyone played by. Not only did I seem to be ignoring these rules, I was breaking them as well. I had just violated the unwritten rule that puts a time limit on teasing.
 
He told me that he knew I was a nice person off the water, but had been surprised and dismayed by my appalling behavior at the helm. He was glad to have an opportunity to speak up. Luckily my curiosity overrode my defensiveness and I began to ask questions. He was shocked by what I didn’t know, and I was flabbergasted by what he was telling me.
 
I decided to use my skills as a psychologist to learn the rest of these unwritten rules. I asked endless questions of the men I was sailing with, and they answered readily. I observed the way the men interacted with each other and with me. I copied and experimented with the behaviors I observed. Eventually, I figured the puzzle out. I began to play by these unwritten rules. I became a much better racer and I started to have much more fun. Most surprising of all, the other skippers began to like, accept, and even respect me.
 
I am a psychotherapist by profession. My practice is in the center of Philadelphia and consists primarily of business and professional women and men. My training as a psychologist taught me to look for the source of my patients’ problems within each person’s psyche, but I was hearing too many of the same problems to consider them to be unique or isolated instances. If I were to assume that these problems originated within each person’s psyche, I would have to believe that all the professional women in Philadelphia were suffering from a mass psychosis. I decided to look for an alternative explanation.
 
Curiously, I began to realize that the problems these women were having in their jobs were similar to the problems I had encountered racing my sailboat. I wondered if the same set of unwritten rules that were operative in sailboat racing were operative in business. Could these women’s problems be a consequence of their ignorance of the unwritten rules of the game?
 
I felt frustrated seeing so many women suffering. Eventually, I called Joan Saltzman, an attorney and a friend, and said, “There have been too many professional women crying in my office. We have to do something.” We met for lunch the next day and began brainstorming.
 
Joan and I systematically approached the task of learning how men think about work. First, we had to identify the problems women were having in their jobs. Then we studied the way men approach the workplace. Because Joan is a lawyer, we took advantage of her experiences and studied lawyers first. Since then, I have gone on to study other businesses and professions.
 
I used a variety of techniques to pinpoint the most common and most pressing problems for women. I listened to the patients in my psychotherapy practice and to my friends. I examined my own experiences. I ran problem-solving groups specifically for women with problems in the workplace. Joan and I ran focus groups of female lawyers to explore the problems they faced. Then I ran similar focus groups for business and professional women. It became clear that there was a consistent set of problems that crossed all parts of the workplace. These are the problems I will address in this book.
 
The next task was to learn how the workplace looks through a man’s eyes. I had learned the unwritten rules of sailboat racing by asking the men, so I tried the same strategy in business. Joan and I began to identify and interview very successful lawyers. I added doctors, accountants, engineers, insurance executives, stockbrokers, business owners, etc. I tried to make my base as varied as possible. I formally interviewed over one hundred very successful men and spoke informally with countless others. For comparison and new insights, I also interviewed twenty very successful women.
 
All my male friends were fair game. Whenever I had a chance, I talked to them about the way they approached their work. I found most men to be fascinated and flattered by the fact that I was studying them. I was surprised at how willingly and how candidly they spoke to me. I taped and took notes during the formal interviews and learned to slip away unobtrusively to write down an especially juicy quote or a new idea during informal conversations.
 
For the formal interviews, I had no trouble getting subjects. The men I approached were delighted to be included in a study of very successful men. Each interview was unique, but I always managed to weave in a standard set of questions. I asked these men to describe how they approached their work, what they thought of their female colleagues, and what they thought women did best and worst. I asked them to describe the very best and very worst female coworker they had ever encountered, and how they thought women should change professionally.
 
My questioning verified something these men always knew to be true: women were “a problem” in business. I used my clinical skills to direct the conversation from general complaining to specifically defining these “problems.” They were especially glad to help me find solutions because these men were frustrated with many of their female colleagues. In their eyes, women displayed consistently “inappropriate” behavior that puzzled them. The men felt they kept encountering unwarranted hostility from women and were at a loss as to how to respond to it. The men I interviewed seemed to be waiting for an opportunity to talk frankly, especially to a woman.
 
Their responses were too consistent across interviews not to be true. And not only were these men willing to talk about their approach to work, but they were also willing to describe tactics they use specifically against women in business situations. They were more than delighted to help me pinpoint what they considered women’s self-defeating behaviors. Interestingly, the very successful women I interviewed shared many of the perceptions of the men.
 
The results of these interviews revealed a common theme that I think of as “the rules of the game of work.” Men approach the workplace as if it were a battlefield or a sports contest. They approach their work with the same mind-set they use in competitive sports. Competitive sports, war, and the workplace are governed by a set of unwritten rules familiar to most men but unknown to most women.
 
In order to be competitive in the game of “work,” it is necessary to learn the rules of the game. The men taught me the rules, and through this book I will teach them to you.
 
My goal in writing this book is not only to teach you the rules of the game, but to provide you with the knowledge and skills necessary to improve the quality of your life, reduce conflict and stress, and help you become as successful as you want to be. I don’t like all of the rules that I describe, but right now these are the rules by which business plays. I hope this book will help women become successful and powerful enough to rewrite the rules.