The suggestion that women managers burn too many emotional calories, appeared in a discussion about women leaders and managers by women leaders and managers, New York Times, The Corner Office.
“It’s not always helpful to understand the person so well that you know why they’re not doing the job. If you tend to be very aware of other people’s feelings and motivations, there’s a lot of identifying and understanding and discussion about that. Sometimes you can spend a lot of psychic and emotional energy on something, when it might be easier to just say: “Look, here’s the line. You’ve got to make it across this line or you’re not going to be able to stay here.”
YES!!! ABSOLUTELY, YES!!!
Women Managers: Psychic and Emotional Calorie Usage
The statements quoted above, remind me of a conversation among a group of women managers and one man. I was one of those women managers. We were discussing a colleague’ annoying behaviors.The colleague was, of course, not present.
The women, not the man, spent many words along with excess emotional and psychic calories, hypothesizing about what motivated our colleague’s behaviors. We went on to speculate the possible reasons she could remain clueless about how annoying she was. The behaviors under our microscope took place during a corporate retreat. She was guilty of talking on the phone with her husband late at night, and she wasn’t using her ‘inside voice’. She was keeping most of us awake long past the hour when we wished to be asleep. We were all probably further annoyed because we could hear only half the conversation. How useless. Had we been able to hear his end of things, we could have spent our psychic calories speculating on their relationship.
How to Lower Your Emotional Calories
After this conversation between the women managers went on for a while, the man intervened. “Why don’t you just tell her, ‘Hey, You’re keeping us all awake.’ ” Six words could have changed everything. Omit “Hey” and our word calorie would be down to five. But no, we would prefer to spend excess psychic and emotional energy tickling our own fancy and flattering our advanced abilities to understand our colleague’s motivations.
So, I suggest a one word approach for women managers and leaders, including myself, who burn too many emotional calories— STOP. Our calorie burning behaviors are at best self-indulgent. Our psychic masturbation isn’t getting the job done. Our job is to deliver the message in a way that can be heard and acted upon. if it isn’t heard, we are called on to try again. In the end, we may even be called on to say,
Look, here’s the line. You’ve got to respect the line or you’re not going to be able to stay here.”