Most Masculinities are Not Toxic!
Real Power and How to Use It Effectively
Executive Coaching Series
Betty J. Woodman, Ph.D.
This series is a three-part, topic-centered, executive coaching program. The approach combines executive coaching with leadership briefings, small group peer-peer discussions, and a think-tank dialogue to brainstorm best steps forward on leadership, culture, and industry issues.
Program Description:
We all want our work teams to be high functioning and cohesive. But sometimes things break down: tensions arise, information isn't shared in a timely fashion, feelings of competition undermine our good work, people behave poorly. This series will introduce participants to a model called "coactivity," which involves the productive use of power to support effective, cooperative teamwork. Part of its genius lies in its ability to help us transform sometimes unconscious power dynamics resulting from traditional, but unhelpful, aspects of male gender roles.
Coactivity is a partnership model, aligned with the work of Dr. Riane Eisler on partnership versus dominator systems, that depends upon relational integrity to strengthen interpersonal connections among co-workers within a learning culture. It balances welcoming different voices, new idea generation, and innovations with effective, proactive behaviors.
This approach offers an alternative to destructive power patterns that discourage, demotivate, divide, and disempower, reducing achievement and leading to the marginalization of voices and value. Research finds that unhealthy power patterns lead to higher employee turnover, low morale, and reduced productivity, all of which negatively affect profitability. These power patterns have distressing psychological and health impacts on those targeted as well as to bystanders who witness whisper campaigns, microaggressions, and other forms of exclusion. Given the prevalence of these patterns in many walks of life, even positive, healthy work cultures can be susceptible.
Many leaders and team members may hold back from fully addressing unproductive patterns because of lack of awareness, discomfort, or not knowing how to intervene. Discomfort can originate from deeply embedded effects of socialization processes, such as male gender socialization, that make it more difficult to speak out. Yet different groups and cultures through time have different ideas of masculinities, plural, each associated with different definitions of what it is to be powerful as a man. How do various current-day masculinities define and live into what it means to be powerful? Are there social pressures that keep some men from speaking up to address unproductive power patterns?
What’s needed is the capacity to develop teams with the awareness, confidence, empathy, and skills to speak up or act effectively in the face of distressing interactions or alpha bullying dynamics. This depends upon directly addressing the social factors that keep people silent and practicing ways to overcome them in order to build strong cultures of empowerment.
This series draws on cross-cultural examples of differing masculinities, reflections on meaning, autonomy, and difference, as well as essential needs for acceptance and belonging, and useful assessment/alignment tools. Each part of this three-part series happens within a month and includes:
Two-hour leadership briefing
1:1 executive coaching conversation
Small group peer discussion
Plus an end-of-series, think-tank brainstorming dialogue on next step initiatives.
This program enables participants to:
1) Recognize early signs of unhealthy power patterns
2) Identify effective, individualized ways to respond, step up, and act
3) Use assessment and alignment tools to map power patterns and gain insight on best next steps
4) Strategize longer-term structural changes that minimize unproductive patterns and strengthen positive work relationships.
The series enables the organization to:
1) Develop employees’ abilities to effectively address unproductive dynamics, increasing personal empowerment and job satisfaction
2) Strengthen leadership skills, building relational integrity, allyship, and job satisfaction
3) Reduce employee stress and turnover
4) Create thriving, innovative team cultures
5) Increase productivity and profitability.
With speakers, Dr. Riane Eisler, of the Center for Partnership Systems, and Dr. Jed Diamond, of Men Alive and Moonshot for Mankind, and facilitators Drew Kundtz and Deborah Blake Dempsey, we welcome you to join us for coactive coaching and dialogues that are both practical and philosophical, with insights from the real-life experiences of men from various walks of life. We welcome the participation of all people.