• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

Executive Coaching

  • Home
  • Capabilities
  • Associates
    • Ira Chaleff
    • Emily Barnes
    • David Grau
    • Mandeep Singh
    • Marsha Hughes-Rease
    • Beverly Jones
    • Rosa María Barreiro
    • Kari Uman
  • Articles
  • Facilitation
  • Workshops
  • Case Histories
  • Blog
  • Coaching Enquiry

Men Managing “Mean Girls”

January 24, 2012 By Kari

Understanding Their Dynamics to Achieve Greater Results in Your Organization

by Kari Uman

The recently released movie, “Mean Girls” examines the relationships between high school girls and the cruelty they inflict upon each other by gossiping, backstabbing, and sabotaging one another. If this sounds suspiciously like the dynamics among the women in your office, you might be witnessing a grown-up version of “mean girls” adolescent behavior: women using passive-aggressive behavior (behavior that is neither direct nor obvious about who is the instigator) 10, 20 or 30 years later against other women to deal with anger, frustration, and feelings of powerlessness in the workplace. Women who engage in these behaviors shift the focus away from the organization’s mission or customer needs to the internal dynamics of the team.

Men managing teams of women often find this behavior confusing and bewildering. If you have no more idea how to deal with these behaviors now than you did when you were an adolescent (remember scratching your head in disbelief when you watched this behavior among many of the girls?) but want to see greater results from your team, here are some tips that will help you achieve your organization’s mission and shift the focus back on your customer’s needs.

  • Model Professional Behavior – The most important thing you can do is to model the behavior that you want others on your team to use. Make sure you are not engaging in the same behaviors that you want others to change – no gossiping, sabotaging, or backstabbing (yes, men can act this way, too.) You will most likely see people behaving respectfully towards others if you model that behavior. Acting unprofessionally gives people permission to do the same.
  • Develop Norms and Hold Employees Accountable for their Behavior – As a team, develop a list of norms or “rules” everyone wants to live by to create the kind of workplace where everyone can excel. Discuss what everyone will do to hold themselves and others accountable. Establishing norms gives people permission to intervene when they see someone going against the norms and raises the awareness of their own behavior.
  • Facilitate, Don’t Triangulate – Triangulating means using a third party (e.g. you!) to manage a relationship between 2 other people. If employees come to you separately with complaints about each other, bring both parties into your office and have them talk to each other. Act as a neutral party and facilitator. This will help employees learn how to be direct and sends the message that they need to learn how to manage their own conflicts. If your employees don’t have the skills to manage their own conflicts, send them to a conflict management workshop.
  • Train or Explain – Help your employees develop good communication skills, such as using “I” messages and feedback models. Using the following model (DESC) when giving feedback to your employees will teach them how to use it as well.
D – Describe the behavior or event without any judgments or assumptions regarding intent. Be specific as if you are videotaping a scenario. Say, “Yesterday, when you started whispering in the staff meeting” rather than “Why were you whispering in the staff meeting?” “Why” questions make people defensive.
E – Express your feelings or explain the impact the person’s actions had on you or others. Say, “I was embarrassed (feelings) because the CEO was there and it reflected badly on our office” (impact). People rarely see the impact of their own behavior and this brings their attention to it.
S – Specify what you want the person to do differently in the future. Say, “In the future, I’m counting on you to act professionally in all of our staff meetings.”
C – Consequences for changing. Positive reinforcement tends to motivate and move people towards action more effectively. “Thanks for being so responsive to my concerns. Your contributions are always valuable and I want to ensure that they will be seen in a positive light.”

These tips will help you reduce the destructive behavior among women on your team and allow the movie, “Mean Girls” to be about adolescence, not your work force.

© Kari Uman 2006

Filed Under: Articles, Kari Uman, Women at Work Tagged With: kari uman, managing, mean girls, men

Primary Sidebar

Are You Considering a Coach:

How To Choose a Coach
The Coaching Process

Ways to Use Executive Coaching:

Leadership Development
Merging Exec Teams
Organizational Change
Strategic Leadership
Etiquette Coaching
Career Transition
Gender Management
Interpersonal Conflict
Job Promotion

Street Address:

Executive Coaching Consulting Assocc.
216 7th Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
USA

Phone #

1-202-544-0097

Secondary Sidebar

Meet Our Associates

Ira Chaleff
Emily Barnes
David Grau
Kari Uman
Rosa María
Barreiro
Mandeep Singh
Marsha
Hughes-Rease
Beverly Jones

Copyright © 2022 · Executive Coaching & Consulting Associates · All Rights Reserved

Marsha Hughes-Rease - Senior Associate

After fifteen years of coaching and consulting experience and over twenty five years of leadership experience at different organizational levels, Marsha Hughes-Rease partners with senior leaders and managers to address what she calls “swamp issues”, those really messy and complex challenges that can greatly diminish productivity, stakeholder satisfaction, financial performance and personal effectiveness in any organization.

Read more

Ira Chaleff - President

Ira Chaleff is the founder and president of Executive Coaching & Consulting Associates. He has been named one of the top 100 leadership thinkers by Executive Excellence Magazine. He practices the high-stakes art of helping talented people prepare for and succeed in senior level roles. Whether working in the public sector with Senior Executive Service leaders or in the private sector with CEOs and leadership teams, he brings clarity to core success issues, and provides savvy and supportive guidance in tackling them.

Read more

Beverly Jones - Senior Associate

Beverly Jones helps executives bring new productivity to their organizations, and works with professionals to restructure and re-energize their work lives. Throughout her varied career, Bev has engaged in leadership and change management activities, and today she coaches accomplished professionals and executives who want to become more effective. Bev’s current and recent coaching clients include attorneys, other professionals and small business owners, and also executives with university systems, with a national laboratory, and with a major brokerage firm.

Read more

Mandeep Singh - Senior Associate

Mandeep partners with leaders who want to bring their own vision and passions into service for the world. This necessarily means deep inner work – increasing self-awareness and personal mastery, taking ownership and accountability, and expanding the ability to influence people and networks from within the system. While this may sound like hard work, in practice it tends to be completely natural, energizing, satisfying and fun. “Serious” and “impactful” are not correlated. Mandeep’s natural style is gentle, and his clients and he tend to forge long term, easy, trusted partnerships.

Read more

Rosa Maria Barreiro - Strategic Management & Human Resources Consultant

Rosa María Barreiro is an innovative leader, business strategist and change agent with an extensive background and success in global operating environments throughout the USA and Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Rosa María has repeatedly been recruited to design and execute change management, employee engagement, leadership development and performance improvement initiatives for a wide variety of organizations and companies.

Read more

Kari Uman - Senior Associate

Kari Uman, Senior Associate of Executive Coaching & Consulting Associates in Fairfax, VA, has more than twenty-five years’ experience as a coach, consultant, and trainer. Her particular experience and interest in gender issues, and their impact on relationships and performance, enables her to help individuals change behaviors that are undermining their best efforts.

Read more

David Grau - Senior Associate

David Grau is an executive and leadership coach in Bethesda, MD, with an in-depth consulting background in organization development and change management. He has over 17 years of coaching and consulting experience in the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors. He has particular abilities in assisting executives in identifying and making maximum and appropriate use of their strengths and identifying their opportunities for increased effectiveness as a leader.

Read more

Emily Barnes - Senior Associate

To organizations and individuals adjusting to recent, current or anticipated change, Emily Barnes brings the strategic focus and competencies gained during fifteen years of diverse experience with various leadership, relationship, performance and communication challenges. A consultant and strategy coach, Ms. Barnes helps clients create and implement new success strategies.

Read more

We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience.
By clicking any link on this page you are authorizing the use of cookies.