By FRANCIS KAHIHU
Would you expect relations among men and women in the wider society to have an effect on how they relate at the workplace?
How, for instance, do the relations affect how male bosses deal with female subordinates? This may not be unusual. The challenge, however, seems to be on how male employees respond to female bosses.
The challenge apparently seems to apply to both sides of the divide as they both struggle to fully appreciate the status at work.
The experience of George, for instance, illustrates just how challenging the relations can get. He came from a community that had clear distinctions of gender roles and grew up appreciating the clear roles of both men and women in the society he grew up in.
By the time he landed his first job after college, George was shocked to learn that his boss was a woman. He had a hard time settling in and felt as if his world was turning upside down.
He had grown up believing that it was a man’s role to give instructions to the females around him and rarely, if ever, would a man take instructions from them. Now here he was – with a woman as his boss. He needed the job, but did not appreciate the set-up.
George is not alone in this. I’m sure some readers out there might by struggling through a similar experience and would appreciate help in overcoming the mental block.
Today, there is an ever increasing number of female executives in the corporate world. Other parts of the world went through this long ago and actually forgot that it was once a challenge.
As much as this is becoming common locally, many people are living through experiences that indicate they are yet to fully appreciate the situation.
The challenges of this kind of relationship tend to affect both the female boss and male employees in almost equal measure. The male employees could be struggling with feelings of being under the authority of a woman, an experience they may not have been through in their life.
On the other side, the female boss may be struggling with perceptions of being undermined by male employees because of her gender.
In such a situation, every response and behaviour is suspect. When, for instance, the female boss instructs the male employee to undertake a certain task, he may struggle with the feeling that he is being pushed around as the boss seeks to consolidate and exercise her authority.
On the flip side, when the employee challenges the decision of the female boss, she may find herself feeling like her authority is being challenged just because she is a woman.
At this point, we lose the battle. In this case, both parties would be struggling with either superiority or inferiority complexes. While one would be seeking to show that they are not inferior, the other would be struggling to show that they are superior after all.
Such suspicions tend to affect the quality of service delivery as men and women compete to outdo each other.
In most of these cases, the main challenges would be individuals struggling to accept situations that are different from what they have been socialised to expect.
Exposure to other workplaces would serve well to help the feuding individuals to realise that males and females can actually live and work in mutual respect for the benefit of both parties and the employer to whom they both owe allegiance.
I have had several female bosses who were fantastic and I respected them for their professionalism and the way the related to the rest of the employees. No one ever considered the social relations between men and women as a factor at work.
Everyone delivered what they were supposed to deliver in the manner they were supposed to, and we respected them for that. This is the way it should be.
kahihucareers@gmail.com
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