Queen Bees

This past weekend, the WSJ had a provocative article about Queen Bees in the workplace. In a nutshell, it said women at the top of the corporate ladder who you’d expect to mentor women climbing up said ladder, don’t. In fact, many actively undermine these female underlings. This is surprising to those who expected successful career women to bring female warmth to a male dominated cold, calculating corporate rat race. What surprised me was that anyone would expect a woman succeeding in this world to then turnaround and become a different person. Naturally, I think it’s about personality type and how these women are wired. But when I threw this idea out during the Q&A session of our talk to the APTi Southern CT chapter, one member of the audience disagreed because she’d seen research that showed these successful women do mentor … young men. Gasp! Get your mind out of the gutter because you know they’re not doing it for the reason your naughty side thinks. Or is that just me?? 

The perception that women are kinder and gentler than men likely comes from the fact that the majority of women are wired to make decisions subjectively and are therefore Fs — meaning 60% of women are either Classic Freedoms (SFJ), Fun Freedoms (SFP) or Organics (NF). Conversely, 60% of men are wired to make decisions based on logic and are threfore either Classic Structures (STJ), Fun Structures (STJ) or Smarts (NT). Often the subjective decision making nature (F) of the preponderance of women means we come off as warmer because Fs tend to consider impact upon people first when making decisions. This doesn’t mean Ts don’t consider the impact upon people when making decision but it’s not always their first consideration and therein the impression that Ts are not as warm or thoughtful. They are, it’s just not their knee jerk reaction and they get unfairly maligned for not having as many feelings when in fact they do.

Katie and I have long debated whether women who are Fs or Ts are “meaner” or more calculating. Our arguments are mostly anecdotal and lead to really, annoying endless debates because we have no hard data. The WSJ piece on Queen Bees was interesting to me because it felt like the first piece of hard data I’d found for this debate. The corporate world is not warm and fuzzy and therefore a T world. There are a few  corporations that don’t fit the usual cold and calculating stereotype but I think it’s safe to say it’s a legit stereotype. Any woman or man who is going to survive and thrive in this world is likely a T or an F who has learned to adapt. 

What was a head scratcher for me though was learning that successful career women mentor young men climbing up the ladder. It made me think of women I’d known when I was younger who’d say that they only had guy friends because they didn’t like women. As an F, I remember thinking, “Who ARE you??” but as I grew older and made a few close women friends who were Ts, I finally understood why some women preferred the company of men (and not THAT way people!). Sometimes F women think T women can be a bit too harsh and they take things Ts say personally when they’re not meant that way or they were joking. I guess I know these things because I had a Classic Structure (ESTJ) grandmother so even though I’m an F, I understood that Ts love/feel things just as deeply as an F even if they seem tougher on the exterior. My longwinded point is that those T women who didn’t have girlfriends probably just found it easier to find fellow Ts amongst guys — just a numbers/probability game.

As a Classic Freedom (ISFJ), I had to really push my preferences when working on Wall Street as an analyst at a hedge fund. I was a lot more logical and strategic when making decisions than I am in my personal life or am now as an entrepreneur. I was an F who adapted. But, even still, I could never quite stop wanting to help those below me, male or female. I wasn’t paranoid of younger/junior women as much as just paranoid anybody trying to screw me over — pardon my French — and it was usually a male peer. Frankly, my female peers (women now in their late 30s, early 40s) were not nasty and competitive but supportive and kind to me. I did however find the women who were older than me — at the time by about a decade — DID seem more insecure and calculating. Perhaps it’s because they were just exhausted by it all or it was worse entering finance in the 1980s versus the 1990s. The truth is, I was not as calculating and logical as I should’ve been and would’ve killed to have had a T mentor teach me to be moreso!