I Survived a Sexist Feedback Session (Part 2)

A lot of damage can be done in 45 minutes.

A man can say no, he’s busy. A woman has to be nice which means saying yes. Photo: Death to Stock

Wonder why women are opting out of leadership roles? Part of it is the feedback we receive. If you aren’t carefully considering the what and why of your feedback you can leave those who don’t benefit from traditional power structures — usually anyone who is not a white male — feeling confused and excluded. Think this could never happen to you? Don’t be so sure. Everyone has inherent bias.

This is the second piece in the series about a single, 45 minute feedback session. The first part showed how linking my job performance to getting along better with my male colleague was problematic. This part tackles how women like me are expected to be ‘nice’ in the office.

“When a woman declines to help a colleague, people like her less and her career suffers. But when a man says no, he faces no backlash. A man who doesn’t help is ‘busy’; a woman is ‘selfish,’” observe Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant in the New York Times.

As described in the first part of this series, the Executive Director, my boss, told me I would be better at my job if I improved my relationship with my male colleague, Tom.* I wanted to succeed and took this feedback seriously. After dropping this criticism, the ED gave three examples of recent interactions when I failed to foster a good relationship with Tom. This piece discusses example number one.

“Earlier this week,” he said, “Tom emailed, asking you to send him documents. You didn’t send them right away. If you had just sent them you and Tom would have a better relationship.”

I wrote down his example quickly, trying to follow along. Okay, I thought, I could improve at my job if I improved how I responded when Tom asked me for help.

Wait… What?! I thought my response to Tom’s request had been pretty solid. I was surprised to hear the ED disagreed. I silently reviewed what had happened.

Several days ago Tom emailed me requesting documents. I hadn’t sent them immediately upon request. I had done something I thought was even better.

While Tom’s exact job description was unclear, he occasionally worked on grant applications. As the person in charge of Operations and Development, I spearheaded the majority of grant applications and grant management. Tom and others in the organization often needed access to documents I organized and managed. Early on in my role I designed a filing system in our organization’s shared Dropbox, carefully labelling everything, including past grant applications. The system wasn’t foolproof but it worked 95% of the time for everyone at the organization. Everyone except Tom. I had reviewed the system with Tom several times over the years but Tom was never able to find the documents he needed. He emailed me about once a week asking me to send him documents — often requesting a quick turnaround.

The specific request the ED was concerned about was one that came in a week before our feedback session. Tom wrote:

ED and Megan,

I am working on the drafting of the Sunshine* proposal and wanted to see if you had time to review it.

In addition, I believe that you already have 1–5 below as part of other grants and wanted to know whether you could share answers to these questions with me.

I do not believe 3 applies, so it is really 1,2,4 and 5.

Please let me know…

1. Budget(s):

• Provide a copy of your organization’s current itemized operating budget showing projected income and expenses.
• If applying for project support, also provide an itemized project budget showing projected income and expenses for the proposed grant period. (see sample budget, page 9)
• Provide a brief budget narrative. The budget narrative complements the proposal narrative and tells the story of your organization’s financial health. It should align with the income and expense numbers presented in your organization and/or project budget and explain any deficits, inconsistencies, or anomalies in funding trends/history.
• List other funders and/or potential funders of the work described in the proposal and the amounts committed by/requested from each. Address plans to ensure the sustainability of the organization/program/project (as applicable) after the grant period.

2. Financial Statements and Reports:

• Provide your most recent financial statements (audited, if possible).
• Provide your most recent IRS Form 990 tax filing.
• Provide a copy of the current IRS determination letter indicating 501(c)3 tax-exemption status.
• Provide your Annual Report, if you have one.

3. Partner Organizations (if applicable)

Provide a copy of any Memorandum of Understanding or a general description of the roles and responsibilities of each organization that would be supported by a grant from the Trust.

4. Resumes or Bio of Key Staff, Including:

• CEO/President/Executive Director
• Project Director
• CFO or person responsible for tracking grant expenditures
• Other key staff members

5. List of Current Board Members:

• Names, affiliations, tenure and terms

Thanks,

Tom

This request was annoying. It was obviously not something I could find quickly — it was a list of necessary documents. Tom hadn’t attached the grant application, so I couldn’t review the pages cited in the email. He didn’t attach his draft, so I couldn’t review what he might have already prepared. Instead he had copied and pasted a list from Sunshine and asked me and the ED to “share answers” with him. The majority of what he needed was available in our shared filing system. Had he looked? This request left me feeling like Tom’s assistant. But the work had to get done — the organization needed money from Sunshine, so I powered ahead.

I replied, cc’ing the ED:

Hi Tom,

Have you reviewed Dropbox? Many of these things are saved and well labeled there. Did you not see them?

Let me know where you are looking when you have a moment.

Thanks,

Megan

He got back to me about an hour later:

Megan,

I have reviewed DropBox and it seems like each of these applications have different bits and pieces of this information. Is pulling this information together something that Jason* could work on?

Thanks,

Tom

So, according to this email he had checked Dropbox. This was good, but I was still confused. Most of what he needed was available without any adjustment. We had resumes of key staff and Board Members, we had tax documents, all clearly labeled. He just needed to pull it off the shared drive. There might have been some documents that needed some manipulation but I had no other information about this application. Was it my job to figure this out?

Jason was my part-time assistant. For 20 hours a week he helped me with administrative tasks. I always had more work than he could get to in those 20 hours but I wasn’t opposed to sharing his time when necessary. Unfortunately this was not an option this particular week — Jason’s sister was in town and he was working even fewer hours than usual. Jason wasn’t going to be able to assist here. So I resigned myself to spending some time with Tom to help him find what he needed.

I wrote:

Jason has limited time this week because his sister is visiting and he requested some time off. Can you and I meet on Thursday and I can show you where to find what is in Dropbox and then you can better tell me what you need after that?

Let me know what times work for you.

Thanks,

Megan

Tom never replied to this email and never spoke to me again about this request.

Now, I was sitting across from my boss, the ED, hearing I had handled this situation incorrectly. To say the least, I was surprised. The ED had been cc’d on the entire email chain with Tom. I thought he would applaud me for making time to show Tom how to find what he needed (something, dare I say, Tom should already have known since the shared drive had existed for years). Instead the ED told me I should personally send Tom the documents he requested. That this would improve my relationship with Tom and in turn improve my performance at the organization.

If I did Tom’s job for him (or at minimum acted as his secretary, keeping track of all of the documents and systems he couldn’t be bothered to learn) Tom and I would get along better and this affected my job performance.

We were all understaffed at this growing non-profit. But the ED was asking me to be Tom’s support staff while managing my own full-time responsibilities. I was an executive at the organization. Tom and I were equals on the organizational chart. Why was this my job?

I couldn’t ask questions in the moment — my mind was struggling to process what I was hearing. Now I see this example of my “failure” was not a reflection on my work product, but rather a showcase of stereotypes in the workplace. I don’t think the ED intended to be sexist. I think he meant to improve our organization. But he failed to consider better ways to improve the organization’s output — ways that would make our organization’s systems stronger. Instead, the ED wanted this problem to disappear and the easiest way to do that was to fall back on the sexist system where I provided the administrative support to Tom quickly and quietly. I was being asked to nicely perform these tasks.

Tom was allowed to say ‘no’ to finding the documents. The ED accepted his statement. But when I said ‘no’ to doing Tom’s work (but yes to taking time out of my day to teach Tom, once again, how to use our system) the ED found this problematic. Saying no made me the difficult one. It made Tom (and possibly the ED) like me less. And the fact that they liked me less, I learned in the feedback session, affected my job performance.

I put my head down quietly and prepared to hear the second example of when I failed to get along with my male colleague. Read about it in the third part of the series.

*Names changed.