Engaging Men as Allies: Nine Emerging Practices
Guest Contributed by Chuck Shelton, Chief Executive Officer, Greatheart Consulting
This is the touchstone for successful gender ally development: a man is an ally when a woman says he is.
Allies listen, co-create opportunity, and build a personal brand for accountability and trust. For us men, we aren’t allies to women because we aspire to be, or because we say we are. As men, we’re allies only when specific women are willing to speak about our behavioral support and teachability.
Consider nine emerging practices in engaging men as allies for women’s advancement.
#1 Define the value proposition for ally development.
Investing in reciprocal success among women and men delivers a robust and measurable return in talent, sales, customer relations, supply chain, and brand. Failing to solve gender-related challenges is expensive: top talent lost, uncompetitive product development, compromised customer relations, diminished sales revenue, decreased productivity, sub-optimized supplier relationships, and a languishing brand.
#2 Clarify your personal motivations.
Why do you want to find and equip male allies? For women, the opportunities are evident – a career can thrive when you have influence partners. They help you sort through on-the-job challenges, look for opportunity, and navigate the trade-offs that every professional culture requires. The impetus for men to develop ‘brother’ allies to women is also compelling: when we partner with other guys and help them to serve as allies to women’s opportunities, we grow the culture, we grow the company, and we grow our own influence.
#3 Imagine and explore the self-interest of male allies.
Men engaged as allies to women’s advancement tend to have their own reasons for doing so: shaped by relationships with their spouse, a female colleague, their mother, their daughter; recognizing that they need to retain the excellent contribution of the women reporting to them; internally motivated to ensure that women are paid equally for equal work; driven by a sense of justice or fairness or equality. Explore with each prospective male ally how he can define his self-interest in serving as an ally to women.
#4 Select prospective allies wisely.
Part of successful ally development is identifying the men who are open to collaboratively roll in your direction. Here are a few criteria, to help you focus your ally selection:
- Do you experience this gentleman as a skilled collaborator, open to your influence?
- Does he have a reputation for working well with women? Does he carry credibility with his male colleagues?
- Do you observe ways he is producing business results through his relationships with women: peers, direct reports, manager, clients and customers, business partners?
- Can he articulate (or is he open to learning how to speak to) how being an ally is in his self-interest?
#5 Approach ally development with respect and candor.
Think through what you’re looking for in the relationship (mentoring, solving a business problem together, etc.). Consider how you feel about and will handle any difference in position power between you. Keep in mind that he needs to feel safe as well – in the White Men’s Leadership Study, we found that relational safety is a top concern among male leaders when differences in gender and race are in view.
#6 Take care of yourself and your allies in the process.
Listen to his responses and watch his behavior. Ask yourself: “Does he believe in me? Is he willing to learn from me?” Be patient in ally development work – relationship building is an adventure, non-linear and unpredictable. Cut yourself some slack as you learn how to encourage men to work as allies. Accept that there are mutual risks in having allies and being an ally. If a man you’d like as an ally is not demonstrating to you that he’s currently up for actually being your ally, then don’t persevere in the attempt.
#7 Track ally relationships in terms of accountability and trust.
Bring a clear-eyed view to ally development. Not every man who wants to be seen as an ally is willing or able to act like one. Male allies are accountable to women for behaving in ways that the women deem useful. Yes, it’s a reciprocal relationship. But this is a two-way street with three lanes, with two of the lanes flow in the woman’s direction. Trust is “the making and keeping of promises over time. One key promise: influencing other men to become effective allies.
#8 Watch out for cynicism (among the women) and arrogance (among the men).
Women pay a price for attempting to thrive in work cultures built by and for men: expected to smile and yet be assertive, without being aggressive; counseled to care for people even while being excluded themselves; asked to contribute, even though their ideas may not be listened to, and then men take credit for those very ideas; wearing full-time hats at work and home. Women regularly report fatigue and weariness with the struggles that seem to accompany their gender.
What’s also salient is that a person cannot be an effective influencer from a place of cynicism, where they expect other people to fall short, and see little hope in many situations. While cynicism is a tempting response to the price women pay for being a woman in a man’s world, the simple truth is that such hopelessness and negative expectation make ally development unlikely. Cynicism as a default emotional state closes off the collaborative space that male allies need to grow toward the women they support.
A male malady in ally development comes across as arrogance: the tendency to solve women’s problems for them, a mistaken assumption that a man’s emerging awareness of gender challenges is equivalent to a woman’s lifetime of learning across the gender divide, the temptation to see oneself as a champion or advocate for women, rather than an ‘ally at their shoulder’. Humility is the antidote to the risks in such male arrogance.
#9 Position and organize ally development in the organization.
Many companies are busy innovating with male ally development. A few include:
- Cisco, with their nascent Men for Inclusion group, a mixed gender influence network to build opportunities with women and reciprocity with men
- PwC, focusing on building the cultural dexterity of all partners and other leaders, with a willingness to listen to and invest in their many white male partners
- Walmart, thoughtfully engaging men as part of their Global Women’s Strategy
A man is an ally when a woman says he is. It’s not that women can only achieve because men support them. But is always good to have supportive, influential, and caring allies. The work to engage male allies is a long game – trust between women and men cannot be manufactured, only earned – and it’s part of the solution to creating work cultures that welcome, support, and retain women.
Chuck Shelton is the Founder and Principal of Greatheart Consulting and can be seen on 26th February moderating theglasshammer.com’s Engaging Men discussion at the 4th Annual Navigating your career event.
