Where Do Men Fit In? Reflections on Allyship

“So where do men fit in?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked since I first hung out a shingle on Something Major a year ago. Even though I spend a significant amount of my time working with leaders and their teams on gender-neutral business competencies like business development, effective communication, and professional relationship building, I’ve been hearing this question even more frequently since I went full-time. Considering that a major focus of my executive coaching work is with women and mother executives, it’s not an unfair question. It’s just one that seems to get a lot of air time. 

As I looked around the room at my launch party in January, I saw a room full of incredible women friends, colleagues, mentors, and business leaders. I also saw a room packed with men. They were men who had believed in me and who had bet on me. Men who had invested not just their trust in me over the years, but their time and their budget dollars.

As my friend and mentor Chris Lu, the former Deputy Secretary of Labor and White House Cabinet Secretary to President Obama, shared in remarks that evening, “During my 8 years in the Obama Administration, I had six deputies and chiefs of staff. Each one of them was a woman, and what I saw acutely were the challenges they faced both internally and externally.” Beyond his own team, what Chris observed about the state of women in the workplace in 2020 should be a call to action for us all: “Organizations in government and the private sector have to get it right because we’re leaving far too many people on the sidelines.”

So when I get asked this question about “where men fit in” in the conversation about gender inclusion in the workplace, I couldn’t be more passionate about enfranchising senior male leaders to be a part of the solution.

That’s because when it comes to men and women, it’s not an either/or dilemma. 

Women absolutely still need access to the women mentors, sponsors, and role models who are in positions of leadership. Their role-modeling gives other women something to aspire to and their active engagement gives them important tools to get there. As a dear friend who is a woman of color shared with me after a recent promotion, “Sure, I’m excited but I just want to look at the org chart and see other people who look like me.” That is something that is critically important and something we can’t afford to lose sight of in the conversation about where male allyship fits in. 

In addition to these women leaders, we also need allyship from men in leadership who are willing to be active, vocal, and passionate supporters of gender inclusion. In fact, the importance of being “active, vocal, and passionate” was a key finding from a 2018 study by FTI Consulting and Mine The Gap investigating why--if both male and female senior leaders say gender-balanced recruitment, leadership, pay, and parental leave policies are important--we still see such a delta between the stated goals and the realities on the ground in the workplace. 

What they found was that enthusiastic support for gender inclusion initiatives and policies mattered in a deeply (and statistically) significant way:

“The research shows that there is an Enthusiasm Gap at Work, particularly between genders, as women professionals show more intensity and enthusiasm in their support for gender pay equity initiatives, flexible work schedules, improved family leave policies, more transparent processes for career advancement and blinded talent recruitment. These enthusiasm gaps at work demonstrate the challenges in motivating senior leaders, who statistically are more likely to be men, beyond mere support for an idea to actual policy change.” 

I had a chance to sit down with one of the co-authors last year, FTI Consulting’s Elizabeth Alexander, to discuss her findings from this study of 6,000 professionals across the tech, legal, healthcare, financial services, and energy sectors. Her findings deeply resonated with me in regards to my own professional journey, as I am a product of both female mentoring and male sponsorship. Each element played an important--and synergistic--role in my professional development and career advancement. 

The findings also echoed the experiences of many of the women I coach across the very sectors of tech, financial services, healthcare, and Big Law that were studied. Some of these women are already senior leaders of their organizations; operating in a male-dominated leadership team where they’ve lived the impact of “active, vocal, and passionate support” from male colleagues (or lack thereof). Some of these women are emerging leaders who, as individuals, have great sponsors--but who feel this tension as their organization continues to miss the mark on things like culture, benefits, hiring, and retention. 

For many of the leaders who I speak with who are trying to solve for increased gender inclusion on an organizational level, the findings provide important data on two important things: (1) why allyship matters and (2) how it can make a measurable difference in advancing gender inclusion.

As I was reflecting recently on these questions around gender inclusion and where men fit in, I found myself reflecting on my former career. Before I launched Something Major, I spent nearly a decade as a fundraiser-turned-business-development executive, generating tens of millions of dollars for non-profits, publicly-traded and privately held companies, and start-ups. What I learned as a sales leader is that team performance and organizational success cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Every single person needs to do their part for the team to hit its revenue goal.

Just like a sales organization can’t sustain on the backs of a few star performers, we can’t expect men or women leaders alone to be the solution. In fact, The Enthusiasm Gap research underscores just how high the stakes are around male allyship (or lack thereof) and the impact that can make.

So when I’m asked the question of “where men fit in” my answer is: where don’t they?

Randi Braun is a coach, consultant, speaker, and the Founder of Something Major. Get in touch with Randi via email or social (below). Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.

Randi Braun