Sick of Good Manners
This may seem like re-hashing of the same old story.
washingtonpost.com
Why Can't A Man Be More Like a Woman?
By Tina Brown
Thursday, February 24, 2005; Page C01
Perhaps in the wake of the Larry Summers debacle at Harvard it's time for a study of the missing social gene in men. It's amazing how many executive disasters are caused by the way otherwise smart males crash around in the thicket of interpersonal relations.
There were so many blunders of tone in the first Bush term it needed Condi Rice in her Jackie O pearls to go and suck up to wounded European leaders in advance of the presidential visit. By the end of the week Mr. Bush's diplomatic cholesterol will have spiked from having to feast on the foie gras of Old Europe. Social cluelessness was the root of Howell Raines's problems at the New York Times. All his Big Thinks about Times strategy and Flooding the Zone got torpedoed not by Jayson Blair's plagiarism, which he could have survived, but by his mulish refusal to once in a while stroke the working stiffs who toiled in his newsroom.
Then there's James B. Stewart's new scorcher about Disney. The glory days of Michael Eisner's rescue of the moribund mouse house have been soured by recurring outbreaks of unchecked masculine pathology. In Disney's case, all the jostling male egos seem to have killed each other off. There are more dead bodies at the end than in "Coriolanus."
The new study about men should focus on the epidemic of testosterone poisoning in the executive suites of America.
As with Raines at the Times, the storm now drenching Summers at Harvard is not really about PC politics. It's an insurrection about his manners. If his pleasingly polite predecessor in the job, Neil Rudenstine, had made some offhand comments about the innate abilities of women in a closed meeting, faculty members would have shrugged it off.
The presidency of Harvard has only magnified characteristics Summers was just barely able to get away with in Washington. Young Turk economists in the Treasury Department could handle the cut and thrust of Summers's ongoing seminar with himself, but academics are more sensitive souls. In Tuesday's meeting with several hundred Harvard professors to discuss faculty criticisms of Summers's stewardship, Caroline Hoxby, one of two tenured women in economics, told Summers the ties between scholars, their mentors and students is a "great shimmering web." "Every time, Mr. President, you show a lack of respect for a faculty member's intellectual expertise, you break ties in our web."
Poor, preposterously brilliant Larry Summers put his web foot in it all the time. He even made enemies for himself during such tension-free occasions as "Memorial Minutes," the short remembrances at faculty meetings of Harvard colleagues who have passed away. According to Richard Bradley in his new book "Harvard Rules," Summers infuriated everyone there by "closing his eyes and drumming his fingers -- as if honoring the dead were keeping him from more important tasks."
Hard-charging men are often stunningly oblivious to their own behavior or their own motivations. Summers is notorious at Harvard for leaving meetings that went horribly, thinking they went really well. Al Gore seemed utterly unaware of his own passive aggression when he endorsed Howard Dean without giving his ex-running mate, Joe Lieberman, a heads-up. It was obvious to everyone but Michael Eisner that when he appointed his best friend and rival Mike Ovitz president of Disney it would turn into an antler-clashing contest to the death.
One of the side effects of testosterone poisoning seems to be an uncontrollable longing to be properly understood. Throughout the Sturm und Drang he unleashed when he forced out Jeffrey Katzenberg and later fired Ovitz, Eisner was always writing to the two of them about his trampled feelings.
He frequently mourned the death of Frank Wells as the only Disney executive he felt knew how to be his real partner, just as Ovitz, at the recent hearings in Delaware, went on about how much he missed and needed Ron Meyer, his old partner and co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, to help him make decisions. Yet both Eisner and Ovitz spent the last 10 years trying to prove to themselves they alone were responsible for their own success. (Eisner may get the Oscar for screwed-up responses when he thought after firing Ovitz that he could still host his 50th birthday party.)
Some of the almost touching obliviousness of smart men may trace to the fact that their gender has narrower options than women for role-playing. Samurai or wimp are the only parts they get offered. Women, by contrast, get a crack at boss lady, taskmaster and office power woman along with mistress, wife, geisha, doormat, chatelaine, vixen, goddess, nursemaid and she-devil -- all in the course of one day.
A woman playing any of these roles is perfectly in her element; a man playing a role feels unmanned. It's easy for Condi to switch from standing on Putin's corns to gazing into Chancellor Schroeder's eyes and laughing coquettishly at his Germanic jokes. That kind of thing is harder for Bush -- and off the table for Rummy.
This suppleness with roles in a fast-changing corporate environment is why women are now doing so well running studios in Hollywood. Stacey Snider at Universal, Nina Jacobson at Disney, Amy Pascal at Sony, Elizabeth Gabler at Fox 2000 and, until five minutes ago, Sherry Lansing at Paramount are more willing than men to acknowledge that they are supported by a team. Not for them the lose-lose mud wrestling with their enemies in public. They find other ways. Everybody in Hollywood can do an imitation of Sherry Lansing calling you "honey" right before she inserted the knife. Still, with all the leg-crossing and lash-batting that went with it, it somehow hurt less.
Harvard now needs to appoint a committee of women to figure out how to redress the innate differences in emotional intelligence by which men feel compelled to shoot themselves in the foot.
©2005, Tina Brown
(Thanks to Whispering Campaign for the link).
However, this article brings up several interesting points.
And the central issue is, of course, Form over Function. Not Form Follows Function, but over it. Form is given as much importance, if not more, than substance. Now, I've got to admit, form plays a crucial role in the instances when there IS no substance. In the cases, when substance is there, form adds an extra touch of class. Who doesn't like suave approach, good manners, genteelity? Who doesn't like razzle-dazzle Broadways shows, and fake smiles, and pleasant conversation (a.k.a. "small talk")?
However, is form the essence of our society? If it is, then there is not much substance to it, is there? All that glitters is not gold... The author of the article seems to be of a different opinion.
And in her analysis, she follows her own advice - gives form its due, without paying sufficient attention to substance.
The superficiality of the article is evident in the way she inducts an "epidemic of testosteron" out of a few renown examples. Are several famous people indicative of a national trend (even if we assume that her characterization of them is true)? Gee, we would need more than one article to prove that, wouldn't we?
What's even more interesting is that her characterization of the examples she uses is based on other people's and publications' descriptions of her subjects. I would have liked her to have used personal interviews with at least one of those people. Would her opinion of their behavior been the same had she talked to them in person? Maybe, maybe not, but that we'll never know, will we? As a matter of fact, the more is said about these symbolic figures - Summers, Eisner,& Co. - the less I'm inclined to believe all the rumors. At this point there are so many theories circling around these characters that, I'm afraid, they've been elevated far above the understanding of us common mortals.
Finally, an equally superficial point of analysis is generalization. Women are granted many roles, whereas men are demonstrated to be rather two-dimensional characters, safe only in their own territory - that of brusque aggression. Hey, who knows, for the most part that may be true, but generalization of this kind is crude and unconvincing.
Reminds me of a completely different story, but with the same psychology behind it. A (female) member of the Israeli Knesset proposed a bill, mandating the presence of at least one woman in order for (international) negotiations to be considered legitimated. The reason for this drastic gesture, she claimed, was that women are more flexible, diplomatic, and compassionate, and therefore would be more productive at negotiations. This line of reasoning I'm all too familiar with. How often do I hear that "if only women were in power, there would be no wars, no conflicts, and everything would be great". I don't know WHOSE reality the proponents of this idea (mostly women) are living in, but I can tell you that when "regular, average" women get together in a group, eventually you're going to get a cat-fight.
Why should it be any different on the governmental level? (Not that anyone's preventing women from getting to "power", whatever it is!) Sounds shallow and un-PC? Not any more so than some of the statements above, that's for certain. Flexibility is a great trait in diplomacy, when we're arguing with France over certain potatoes should be called "French fries" or "freedom fries", but when you're dealing with a nutcase in power, you cannot afford to be so "compassionate" as to appease him (or her or them). That's the reality, for all our wishful thinking.
Getting back to the "substance" of the article, I'm surprised whether anyone cares whether the President of a university or a CEO of a company smiles has social graces or not as long as he is efficient, effective, and improves the image of that university/company. In fact, I think most people really don't. I honestly think this is all malarkey, intended to distract from the substance of the real issues. Social graces are all in the eye of the beholder, and personal distaste is not reason enough to raise ire over certain powerful figures. Good old envy, perhaps?
Anyway, this is as good a candidate for PC as any. We all know how PC functions nowadays - as a cover for things most people agree with but are afraid to say, and therefore feel obliged to attack.
Next!
Bored,
Irina
washingtonpost.com
Why Can't A Man Be More Like a Woman?
By Tina Brown
Thursday, February 24, 2005; Page C01
Perhaps in the wake of the Larry Summers debacle at Harvard it's time for a study of the missing social gene in men. It's amazing how many executive disasters are caused by the way otherwise smart males crash around in the thicket of interpersonal relations.
There were so many blunders of tone in the first Bush term it needed Condi Rice in her Jackie O pearls to go and suck up to wounded European leaders in advance of the presidential visit. By the end of the week Mr. Bush's diplomatic cholesterol will have spiked from having to feast on the foie gras of Old Europe. Social cluelessness was the root of Howell Raines's problems at the New York Times. All his Big Thinks about Times strategy and Flooding the Zone got torpedoed not by Jayson Blair's plagiarism, which he could have survived, but by his mulish refusal to once in a while stroke the working stiffs who toiled in his newsroom.
Then there's James B. Stewart's new scorcher about Disney. The glory days of Michael Eisner's rescue of the moribund mouse house have been soured by recurring outbreaks of unchecked masculine pathology. In Disney's case, all the jostling male egos seem to have killed each other off. There are more dead bodies at the end than in "Coriolanus."
The new study about men should focus on the epidemic of testosterone poisoning in the executive suites of America.
As with Raines at the Times, the storm now drenching Summers at Harvard is not really about PC politics. It's an insurrection about his manners. If his pleasingly polite predecessor in the job, Neil Rudenstine, had made some offhand comments about the innate abilities of women in a closed meeting, faculty members would have shrugged it off.
The presidency of Harvard has only magnified characteristics Summers was just barely able to get away with in Washington. Young Turk economists in the Treasury Department could handle the cut and thrust of Summers's ongoing seminar with himself, but academics are more sensitive souls. In Tuesday's meeting with several hundred Harvard professors to discuss faculty criticisms of Summers's stewardship, Caroline Hoxby, one of two tenured women in economics, told Summers the ties between scholars, their mentors and students is a "great shimmering web." "Every time, Mr. President, you show a lack of respect for a faculty member's intellectual expertise, you break ties in our web."
Poor, preposterously brilliant Larry Summers put his web foot in it all the time. He even made enemies for himself during such tension-free occasions as "Memorial Minutes," the short remembrances at faculty meetings of Harvard colleagues who have passed away. According to Richard Bradley in his new book "Harvard Rules," Summers infuriated everyone there by "closing his eyes and drumming his fingers -- as if honoring the dead were keeping him from more important tasks."
Hard-charging men are often stunningly oblivious to their own behavior or their own motivations. Summers is notorious at Harvard for leaving meetings that went horribly, thinking they went really well. Al Gore seemed utterly unaware of his own passive aggression when he endorsed Howard Dean without giving his ex-running mate, Joe Lieberman, a heads-up. It was obvious to everyone but Michael Eisner that when he appointed his best friend and rival Mike Ovitz president of Disney it would turn into an antler-clashing contest to the death.
One of the side effects of testosterone poisoning seems to be an uncontrollable longing to be properly understood. Throughout the Sturm und Drang he unleashed when he forced out Jeffrey Katzenberg and later fired Ovitz, Eisner was always writing to the two of them about his trampled feelings.
He frequently mourned the death of Frank Wells as the only Disney executive he felt knew how to be his real partner, just as Ovitz, at the recent hearings in Delaware, went on about how much he missed and needed Ron Meyer, his old partner and co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, to help him make decisions. Yet both Eisner and Ovitz spent the last 10 years trying to prove to themselves they alone were responsible for their own success. (Eisner may get the Oscar for screwed-up responses when he thought after firing Ovitz that he could still host his 50th birthday party.)
Some of the almost touching obliviousness of smart men may trace to the fact that their gender has narrower options than women for role-playing. Samurai or wimp are the only parts they get offered. Women, by contrast, get a crack at boss lady, taskmaster and office power woman along with mistress, wife, geisha, doormat, chatelaine, vixen, goddess, nursemaid and she-devil -- all in the course of one day.
A woman playing any of these roles is perfectly in her element; a man playing a role feels unmanned. It's easy for Condi to switch from standing on Putin's corns to gazing into Chancellor Schroeder's eyes and laughing coquettishly at his Germanic jokes. That kind of thing is harder for Bush -- and off the table for Rummy.
This suppleness with roles in a fast-changing corporate environment is why women are now doing so well running studios in Hollywood. Stacey Snider at Universal, Nina Jacobson at Disney, Amy Pascal at Sony, Elizabeth Gabler at Fox 2000 and, until five minutes ago, Sherry Lansing at Paramount are more willing than men to acknowledge that they are supported by a team. Not for them the lose-lose mud wrestling with their enemies in public. They find other ways. Everybody in Hollywood can do an imitation of Sherry Lansing calling you "honey" right before she inserted the knife. Still, with all the leg-crossing and lash-batting that went with it, it somehow hurt less.
Harvard now needs to appoint a committee of women to figure out how to redress the innate differences in emotional intelligence by which men feel compelled to shoot themselves in the foot.
©2005, Tina Brown
(Thanks to Whispering Campaign for the link).
However, this article brings up several interesting points.
And the central issue is, of course, Form over Function. Not Form Follows Function, but over it. Form is given as much importance, if not more, than substance. Now, I've got to admit, form plays a crucial role in the instances when there IS no substance. In the cases, when substance is there, form adds an extra touch of class. Who doesn't like suave approach, good manners, genteelity? Who doesn't like razzle-dazzle Broadways shows, and fake smiles, and pleasant conversation (a.k.a. "small talk")?
However, is form the essence of our society? If it is, then there is not much substance to it, is there? All that glitters is not gold... The author of the article seems to be of a different opinion.
And in her analysis, she follows her own advice - gives form its due, without paying sufficient attention to substance.
The superficiality of the article is evident in the way she inducts an "epidemic of testosteron" out of a few renown examples. Are several famous people indicative of a national trend (even if we assume that her characterization of them is true)? Gee, we would need more than one article to prove that, wouldn't we?
What's even more interesting is that her characterization of the examples she uses is based on other people's and publications' descriptions of her subjects. I would have liked her to have used personal interviews with at least one of those people. Would her opinion of their behavior been the same had she talked to them in person? Maybe, maybe not, but that we'll never know, will we? As a matter of fact, the more is said about these symbolic figures - Summers, Eisner,& Co. - the less I'm inclined to believe all the rumors. At this point there are so many theories circling around these characters that, I'm afraid, they've been elevated far above the understanding of us common mortals.
Finally, an equally superficial point of analysis is generalization. Women are granted many roles, whereas men are demonstrated to be rather two-dimensional characters, safe only in their own territory - that of brusque aggression. Hey, who knows, for the most part that may be true, but generalization of this kind is crude and unconvincing.
Reminds me of a completely different story, but with the same psychology behind it. A (female) member of the Israeli Knesset proposed a bill, mandating the presence of at least one woman in order for (international) negotiations to be considered legitimated. The reason for this drastic gesture, she claimed, was that women are more flexible, diplomatic, and compassionate, and therefore would be more productive at negotiations. This line of reasoning I'm all too familiar with. How often do I hear that "if only women were in power, there would be no wars, no conflicts, and everything would be great". I don't know WHOSE reality the proponents of this idea (mostly women) are living in, but I can tell you that when "regular, average" women get together in a group, eventually you're going to get a cat-fight.
Why should it be any different on the governmental level? (Not that anyone's preventing women from getting to "power", whatever it is!) Sounds shallow and un-PC? Not any more so than some of the statements above, that's for certain. Flexibility is a great trait in diplomacy, when we're arguing with France over certain potatoes should be called "French fries" or "freedom fries", but when you're dealing with a nutcase in power, you cannot afford to be so "compassionate" as to appease him (or her or them). That's the reality, for all our wishful thinking.
Getting back to the "substance" of the article, I'm surprised whether anyone cares whether the President of a university or a CEO of a company smiles has social graces or not as long as he is efficient, effective, and improves the image of that university/company. In fact, I think most people really don't. I honestly think this is all malarkey, intended to distract from the substance of the real issues. Social graces are all in the eye of the beholder, and personal distaste is not reason enough to raise ire over certain powerful figures. Good old envy, perhaps?
Anyway, this is as good a candidate for PC as any. We all know how PC functions nowadays - as a cover for things most people agree with but are afraid to say, and therefore feel obliged to attack.
Next!
Bored,
Irina
posted by Irina Tsukerman @ 6:41 PM
2 Comments:
At March 24, 2005 11:19 PM,
Michael Brenner said…
"Getting back to the "substance" of the article, I'm surprised whether anyone cares whether the President of a university or a CEO of a company smiles has social graces or not as long as he is efficient, effective, and improves the image of that university/company. In fact, I think most people really don't. I honestly think this is all malarkey, intended to distract from the substance of the real issues. Social graces are all in the eye of the beholder, and personal distaste is not reason enough to raise ire over certain powerful figures. Good old envy, perhaps?"
No, you're wrong on this one. CEOs and college presidents, and, for that matter, other organizational heads are leaders of people, not animals or objects. Good manners is a part of good management precisely because one who cannot navigate the personalities and egos that constitute most organizations is not going to be effective at bringing the personnel of an organization behind the manager's policies. This is not to say that it is impossible to be effective without substantial interpersonal skills (George Washington, for instance, was said to be shy and aloof), but I think most good leaders understand that though one's judgments in a corporate setting should not be dominated by the feelings of others, considering those feelings will improve the chance for eliminating needless dissension in the ranks and make for more effective leadership.
At March 25, 2005 11:27 AM,
Irina Tsukerman said…
That's the thing. I'm sure most leaders do have those social skills to some extent. Otherwise, they would never have made it to the top. The problem is, whatever defects in manners they may have, are blown out of proportion simply because they are at the top, and then used to bash the very leadership of these individuals. In other words, mostly that criticism may have a legitimate basis, but is greatly exaggerated by journalists and enemies of those leaders.
Post a Comment
<< Home