This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 177 / This Is A Man’s Job with Alison Armstrong

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

We’re going to kick off the year with a first on this show – we’re going to talk about the AMAZING, EXTRAORDINARY value of men. Joining me to make sure this conversation is grounded in research and celebration, is Alison Armstrong, a sought-after speaker and thought leader whose exploration of human behavior began in 1991, with her decision to study men. Her success in understanding men naturally led to studying women’s behavior and making vital connections between the two. Through her seminars, books, online programs with over a 100 hours of content and media contributions, she has been giving millions of people access to more fulfilling lives, loving relationships, stronger families, and more productive organizations. If you’re a regular listener you already know that the purpose of this podcast is to redefine what it means to be doing “woman’s work” so that the new definition is whatever is TRUE and RIGHT for you, whatever lights you up from the inside, and whatever it means to live authentically and with purpose. FOR YOU. And the same goes for defining “a man’s job” – if you identify as a man, you get to be lit up from the inside too. You get to set aside the expectations and the shoulds, the pressures and the opinions, and show up in this world as the fucking magical gift YOU ARE too. I want this for anyone of any gender! I am not the decider of what that means. And neither is anyone else. YOU are the decider. Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Connect with Alison and Resources: Website: www.alisonarmstrong.com  IG: @thealisonarmstrong FB: https://www.facebook.com/understandmen

I am Nicole Kalil, and as you might imagine, when you host a podcast called This Is Woman's Work and write a book about how women can beat the confidence con, there are some questions and a whole lot of assumptions about how I feel about men. It's actually fascinating to me when people assume that I hate men or when they immediately close themselves off to anything I have to say because they think that I believe that women are victims and men are to blame for everything. So let me set the record straight. I am a feminist. I define that as advocating for all genders to have equal rights and opportunities. That doesn't mean that I think we're equal as in that we're all the same.

It means I believe no one gender is superior to another and that we all have great value to contribute, which should be reflected in social, economic, and political equity. I do not advocate for women at the expense of men or any other gender. I believe that women can lead and men can follow and vice versa. I've met women who are angry and men who are emotional, men who are amazing allies and women who seem to be on the patriarchy's payroll. I know men who would love nothing more than to be a stay-at-home parent and women who are childless by choice. And I know people who don't want to

identify with either gender and don't want to be put in any of those boxes. So let me be clear. The only thing I'm wholeheartedly against are assholes of any gender. And trust me when I say that I am very aware that some women are just as big of assholes as some men. I don't believe that your gender should be a factor in how much money you make, and I don't believe it's a factor in whether or not you're acting like an asshole. I am an equal opportunity detester of people behaving like jerks. I believe with every fiber of my being that our ability to choose what feels best and right and true for ourselves, to be able to trust ourselves firmly and boldly is what allows us to live a purposeful, authentic, and joyful life. And lastly, I do believe we're different. I believe our gender identity contributes to who we are and how we see ourselves and each other. And recognizing,

celebrating, and embracing those differences is what will make us collectively better. So we're going to kick off the year with a first on this show. We're going to talk about the amazing, extraordinary value of men. Here to make sure this conversation is grounded in research and celebration is Allison Armstrong, sought after speaker and thought leader whose exploration of human behavior began in 1991 with her decision to study men. In her words, to find out how I was bringing out the worst in them and hopefully how to bring out the best. Her success in understanding men naturally led to studying women's behavior and making vital connections between the two. Allison now, decades later,

illuminates human characteristics that precede and express themselves regardless of gender, age, and upbringing. She distinguishes normal human instincts that compel both men and women to behave in ways that contradict and undermine our own purposes, goals, values, needs, and relationships. Through her seminars, books, online programs, and media contributions, she has been giving millions of people access to more fulfilling lives, loving relationships, stronger families, and more productive organizations. Allison, thank you for joining me to talk about, for the very first time on This Is Woman's Work, men. My first question, and I have many,

what do you see as the biggest misconceptions we as women have about men? So biggest misconceptions, let's see. One would be that they are, they're a version of women, and usually a dysfunctional, defective, misbehaving version of women that therefore incites and deserves to be fixed, trained, and punished. So that's where like the whole mess would begin. But there are other misconceptions like that are part of that, like that men don't care as deeply as women, that men don't feel as deeply as women, that men either, what I thought when I started studying men was that men either didn't care what I needed or were actively withholding it. Another misconception is that men ignore women.

One of the things I found out, they almost never do. And which doesn't mean their brains don't tune us out because that's a function of a committed state of mind. Our brains literally screen out everything considered irrelevant. And as women get older, they will experience more and more of this. And even when they're younger, depending on their levels of testosterone. And so I like what you said. And I even did a Instagram live a couple months ago called, When Does Gender Matter? And one of the ways that gender really does matter is understanding gender hormones but because there's an interaction between our hormones and our state of mind and hormones create a state of mind and state of mind literally causes our

body to produce hormones and so it's this cyclical thing that can be really cool, like an upward spiral of empowerment, or it can be a disaster. And if we try to disregard them altogether, we're going to be in trouble. We literally won't take care of ourselves. We won't take care of our well-being. And as you know, at the beginning, I was like, okay, what do you mean by women's work? Right? And before we spoke and I got to ask you that question, I was thinking about it. It's like, hmm, depends on the context, right? Women's work. I think a big part of women's work, I actually have this on my finger. after my husband died four and a half years ago I wore my wedding rings for a long time until it was time to not and then I walked around kind of freaked out and I I wanted a ring and I and I went and searched for a ring that would represent me committing to myself not waiting to get a ring from a man committing to me me committing to me And so this looks like this because it's to remind me to make myself whole before I try to get anything from

anybody else. And so I loved it in the beginning when you were talking about finding out what's true and real and authentic to ourselves. And we have a saying around here, honor yourself first or all is lost. And that would lead to another huge misconception, which is that men are selfish. I have to work with men as much on honoring themselves instead of sacrificing themselves as I do women. Okay. So let me just tack onto that last part. I would imagine that shows up in different ways though. Women may not honor themselves in different ways than men don't, or men might feel different pressures than women do.

Is that fair or is it really the same? So there's a core that's the same, and then there's expressions that can be very different. So the core, and it took me a long time to get to this, I would assert our fundamental, you could say human instincts, but they're not merely human. They're older than that. And we share instincts and the expression of the instincts to procreate and then to protect what we've created and then to provide for what we've created or provide what we've created to others. So we call it procreate, then protect, then provide. And you can see it in every species. Every species literally risks its life, its survival, in order to procreate. So procreate trumps protect.

And procreate has a lot of meanings to it. Entrepreneurship is an expression of procreation, for example, right? So anything that's creative, we're causing, we're generating is going to be part of that. And it will cause us to bet the mortgage. It makes human beings gamblers. And we gamble with our hearts. We gamble with our time, our energy, our finances. So that, if you think of that, like, okay, how is, how is this person creative, man or woman, right? How, what is this person protecting? What are they protecting at this moment? And what are they compelled to provide? And this is what, this is one of the places where you start to get different expressions. So for example, under protect, if our expression is to produce results, what I would call a committed state of

mind, we're going to produce results, then what we're going to protect is being trusted and respected. Because those are the two biggest factors in how big the results are that we can produce, whether we're going to be invited to be on a team, for example, even a championship team depends on trust and respect. So depending on a woman's orientation, she'll be as much concerned about that as a man. When we have an open state of mind, which estrogen literally configures the brain to ideally be open, where testosterone configures the brain to be committed, if we're in an open state of mind, what has us feel safe and therefore what we're protecting, what we're looking for all the time is feeling connected. Are we connected? How connected are we? How about now? How about now? How about now? It's on auto. It's just a macro program that's cycling, cycling, cycling. Who am I connected to? How connected am I? OK, I sat in an airplane.

Am I connected to the person next to me? Right? We just do that. We do that naturally. And just as how productive am I being, right? How connected am I? Am I? Our access to connection is interest and attention. Good interest and good attention. But we'll even put up with bad attention rather than no attention in order to feel connected we'll even pick a fight to feel connected because being ignored being paid no attention which is why

women notice this so much and feel ignored which we're actually not we're just interacting with someone with a committed state of mind and they're committed to something else right now. Literally, men would have to, most men would have to concentrate on ignoring a woman in order to ignore her, ignore her, ignore her, ignore her. That would have to be their focus is ignoring her. That's how difficult it is for them. Opposite for diffuse awareness and an estrogen-soaked brain, we can hardly ignore anything, right? We get snagged all the time by a crooked pillow, an ugly curtain, a tablecloth that's a little not straight. These things are where we really see different behaviors and where a lot of conflicts show up because, and this is a most, because it could be the opposite.

As people get older, the hormones change, our brains reconfigure, right? So being with my husband for 28 years, initially was me interrupting him in order to connect. Later on, it was him interrupting me in order to connect. So literally what we would do to cause a feeling of safety and connection would interrupt what the other person was doing to be productive. And this is why you get these kind of reactions that then cause an even bigger disconnect. And it all goes on the toilet from there. As you were talking, I feel like you shed light on so many interactions that happen, even just with my husband and I,

when we have people over, I'm running around fixing, cleaning everything. He's like, people don't care. And I'm like, yes, they do. They care a lot. And we just can't see it the same way. Or even the, I think when I pick a fight with Jay, it's almost always what's underneath it is I'm not feeling as prioritized or as important as I want to feel. It can show up in different ways, but that is the crux of all of them. And I want to circle back with what you started with, with the first misconception, because I think I had a friend who is a big fan of yours, Lynn the first misconception, because I think we, I had a friend who is a big fan of yours, Lynn Casaletto, who I had called Jay and I were having a tough time. And she basically said, I think you're wanting him to show up like a girlfriend.

And it goes back to this. And I've heard you speak. And you said it was that men are just hairy women who are misbehaving and need sensitivity workshops. And I just wonder how often are we as women wanting to turn the men in our lives into women or expecting them to show up the way we would want us to show up as women? It's so far beyond wanting. I've interacted with tens of thousands of women and I would say less than 1% expect that men are different and knows the way in which they are different. And all the others think they're misbehaving and then they're obsessed with why

why is he misbehaving and self-oriented and we'll tend to go one of two ways we talk about this in the queen's code is he's misbehaving because he doesn't love or respect or care about me enough maybe all three depending on the context so it's personal and and then we're still why so why doesn't he love or respect or care about me enough and the answer is what's wrong with me i am too much or too little of something and so if I fix it so that I am more pleasing, which is part of where we call it hostess head, hostess head comes from wanting everything to be pleasing to everybody, because as the physically weaker sex, that's how we think we survive. It's ancient. And we still think we survived it.

So we think we're not pleasing enough. And we think if we're more pleasing, then he'll feel the right way about me. And if he feels the right way, he'll act the right way. So we mostly unconsciously are working on causing men to feel the way we think if they felt they would treat us right. Now, this flies straight in the face of men who, most men are honorable, doesn't mean they're perfect. Most men try to be honorable and to them honorable means doing the right thing no matter how you feel so he can love you more than anything on the planet respect you have so much admiration respect for you he's in awe that you're even with him, right? He can literally die for you.

He cares about you so much. He cares about what you need. He's so concerned about being able to provide everything you need for you. And if he considers something else to be the right thing, like to keep his word, he'll do that, even if it upsets you. And we think if they know how upset we are, then they'll change their behavior. No, they consider that dishonorable.

They consider it disgusting. Any man who would change his behavior in order to not upset somebody, that's a coward. And this is why women criticize me. Because criticism changes women. It lets us know how we fail to please. And we have to fight to not adapt to criticism. And so we think if they loved me enough, criticism would work. If they respected me enough, criticism would work. No, criticism just takes them. So back to procreate them, protect them, provide.

We want men to provide. We want them to provide and we want them to provide what we want them to provide, not what they think they should provide. Right. But when they're under attack, they revert from provide to protect. And the worst thing that we can do, and this is how I found out I was bringing out the worst in men, is when we attack them, when we attack who they are, which criticism is an attack, then they're protecting themselves from us.

And then they're- So does that show up as like defensiveness or being closed off? How does- Everything that disconnects men from women, everything that we hate, we actually cause by attacking men. And we attack them because we think they're misbehaving, because we think the right thing is obvious.

And it's what I think is right, is obviously the right thing is obvious. And it's what I think is right, is obviously the right thing to do. I mean, just the simplest thing, like I would have hostess head, massive hostess head. My mother's entire family is showing up for the annual party at our house. And Greg, we had a wet bar that never got used as a wet bar. It's where Greg unloaded when he came home from work and just left it there, left it there, left it there. So I would ask him, he's like, okay, what do you want me to do for the party? Clean off the bar. Okay, I can do that.

Well, what that meant is he took everything on the bar and he stuffed it under the bar on the floor because we didn't use it as a wet bar but he just concealed it and then he'd be like okay clean the bar and i would come by and because this was an annual event there would be dust a whole huge coating of dust. And I would be furious. Like, this bar is not clean. This is horrible. And I would say to him, well, did you dust it? What do you mean?

Did you clean off the dust? What dust? And later on, I found out studies have shown that the faster an object is moving, the faster an object is moving, the bigger the difference between a man and a woman's ability to track it. We literally have different vision. So this is why they can cut through traffic like they have all the room in the world and we're freaked out right but they don't see dust it's not moving this is hysterical

you have to end up with a sense of humor about it or you just all the time just oh it's not moving he literally doesn't see it and I mean I thought honestly honestly Nicole when I started I thought it would take two or three months to learn everything that was worth knowing about men because I was sure they were shallow I was sure they had no feelings. And I questioned whether they had souls, but I was clear they were a lesser form of human than women. And I was that kind of feminist that you're and I have my moments. I take two or three months to learn everything worth knowing about them. And that was 1991. And I've never committed to studying them. I'm just fascinated.

And then the first thing I learned from them was how they saw women. And they're really hurt by us because they are incredibly sensitive. I assert they're more emotional than women are. That's my experience too. Yeah. Deeply emotional and pride themselves in keeping a grip on it because it would be dishonorable to be run by your emotions. Um, but they, they're a lot more forgiving of us. They, they allow for us being mysterious and that the things they need us for,

which they need us, they need us. And they're not trying to not need us. There are a few men these days who are actually working on not needing women. There's like a community of men who are working on that which is kind of scary um but it's and i'm not talking about because of sexual orientation it has nothing to do with it um but it's they just allow for that all that we are for them and can be for them is gonna come with some things that are mystifying to infuriating. They just, they have much more acceptance. And I would say another thing, Nicole,

is because of the way testosterone configures the brain, and estrogen configures the brain, we see flaws. Women are scanning for what's wrong, scanning for what's out of place, scanning for what's ugly and displeasing, scanning for what needs to be changed. Men are so nurtured by beauty that they don't see flaws. Interesting. Okay. I'm going to, I'm not sure if I'm going to word this question well. We think about, so I'm a big believer in equity, obviously, and I don't think that any gender is superior to another. And I think we have some work to do in creating equity for women and people of color and all that.

And I also think that that work sometimes can be done at the expense of men or to make men bad. Or there is sometimes this lean of like, OK, let's let's just put women in charge. Like we're going to replace the problem with men with the problem of women. And so my question is around equity and men or even equity and emasculation. What's happening with men as we seek equity and how can we have help? I'm assuming they want to be on board, most of them, in the spirit of it, but maybe the way we're doing it is creating problems. I'm curious your thoughts and research on that. And we have a few days to talk about it, right? Right. I know. Sorry.

Okay. It's a big one. Yeah. So just to fly the flag, in my twenties, I laid commercial carpet for a while as my job to make a living. And that quickly revealed the difference in physical strength between myself and men, which is a function of gender hormones, right? They have the physical strength, we have physical resilience. So whether it's physically or mentally, I've always wanted to get to do everything that the boys did. And being born in 1960, right, between barbies and feminism it was very confusing so i'm going to propose something that will probably be really unpopular first i'm going to say yes there are misogynists not all of them are men there are women right women who who despise women but there are in fact misogynists and deeply wounded deeply wounded and very frustrated in getting what they need and the and the reaction

is like a woman's reaction to not being able to get what she needs from a man, right? We can go from sacrifice and living without and all the reasons we think it is to ending up, we can get hatred and fury easily. Anger spectrum will do that. But for the most part, what men care about is productivity. That's what they care about is productivity. They care about getting the job done. And because of the way women are wired, not that we're bad, we tend to do the equivalent of burping and farting at the dinner table in the business world. We don't understand the ethics of having somebody's back, the ethics of you help me succeed

and I take you with me, right? We think how to get a job is prove how stupid our boss is. That has men cut, even doesn't matter whether they're a man or woman they're going to cut out anybody who doesn't help them be productive so something that if you look at this historically like you take a long view which is one of the things I do if you looked at the percentage of women in professions, in managerial and executive positions, even CEOs and chairmen of boards, if you look at how quickly that has come into existence and how many of those positions had to be granted by men, that it was men who hired individually or as a group who hired the women to do those things. If we were paying close attention, we would call it a revolution. It has happened so quickly since World War II. If we were measuring against where we came from,

instead of the ideal of what we're trying to get through, it would be considered a revolution. But we don't see it that way because we see what's missing. We see what's wrong. We don't see what's full, what's beautiful, how much has been accomplished. We see what yet has to be accomplished in order to be perfect, in order to be ideal. And unfortunately, it has us behave in ways that are counterproductive. My husband called me unemployable.

I was fired so many times from jobs because I thought it was my duty to tell my bosses what they were doing wrong. They were interested in response to that. They became protective and they no longer wanted to provide me with employment. Yeah. It's interesting. I can see myself in everything that you said. And, you know, I almost to the point of priding myself on, I'm somebody who can analyze pitfalls really well or see the problems. And so there is, I think, a lot of truth to what you're saying. And I also think it's hard to hear because we don't want to be the ones that are participating in the problem. It's easier to say it's them, not us. And I think the opportunity lies in the end. I do think that we're better when there's

men and women, every gender has a seat at the table. And I think it's important that we acknowledge how far we've come and together acknowledge we still have so much opportunity of where we can go. Yes. Can I, can I just give something really practical to do? Please. Yes. We experienced this in our company, right? Which is 29th anniversary next month. And that we would hire someone. And in the beginning, we had entirely women. And they would come in and tell us what we were doing wrong. And so, and we would get defensive. That's not what we hired you for. And we had to start articulating our culture

and introducing people to our culture and even practice what we call aid, ask, insist, demand, enforce. So a methodical, predictable way of pursuing getting what you need from someone who has said yes to giving it to you. And we had to start telling everyone, before you make a suggestion, find out why we do what we do the way we do it. Start with curiosity.

And that led to one of the things we say around here. What if no one's misbehaving, including you? So if we go into an environment, if you go to any man or woman and you say, I'm sure you have a good reason for this. You're bright. You're brilliant. You're amazing. You've been doing this for decades.

I'm sure you have a good reason for this. Could you please illuminate it for me so that if I have a suggestion to get even more of the results you want, I make sure that I am not disrespecting what you've been doing all this time. Oh my gosh, you'll just see doors open, revelations. What's the good reason for that? Actually, there isn't a good reason. It's stupid. And I wanted to change it for decades.

What do you think we could do? As soon as we're not attacking, people can reveal themselves. And I mean, I've said to men, I'm sure you had a good reason for that thank you no I was just being an ass I love that giving people the benefit of the doubt is is what triggers in that for me and if you offer no one's misbehaving. You actually interrupt the reaction of punish. The desire to punish is one of the most primitive and destructive forces on the planet. And we're one of the few species that does it. We don't just have consequences. We don't just respond.

We punish. And punishment is also a natural reaction to powerlessness, which is a lot of the part of the backlash. We, because of the history of might is right and strength prevails. And I mean, I was just in the Caribbean and my heart hurt seeing in this century the results of imperialism and that we can take whatever we want because we're bigger and stronger. And that's men and women for a very long time. And now as our strengths, right, in an information age, in a relationship age, our strengths are coming to the forefront.

So even the machines that have been created by a productive mentality are allowing us to equalize in the ways that help. I'm so much more interested, Nicole, in how each of us, whatever our strengths are, how we can complement each other. And I think like an engineer, I always have my dad's brain, my grandfather's brain, and to be valued for that, right? For say okay I need the engineer on this help me out here and he'll actually and he'll like should we do this or that give me a moment let me figure out how it works and then he he lets me do it and he celebrates me doing it and then I'm like okay I've got the plan I need your muscles all right All right. What do I do? And it's taken, I mean, just enormous respect for different strengths and appreciation and that it doesn't make one of us better than the other. I have never once wished I had a three hour podcast until today.

So Allison, I feel like I've so many more questions and I know that we're at time. If you are listening and you want to get more of Alison, like I do, make sure you go to her website, alisonarmstrong.com. We'll put that and other ways to find and follow Alison in show notes. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here today. You're very welcome. Thank you for what you're doing. Keep up the good work. Keep up the fight where it's a fight and diplomacy where that's what works. You got to do whatever works. Yeah. Whatever works, right? Okay. If you're a regular listener, you already know that the purpose of this podcast is to redefine what it means to be doing woman's

work so that the new definition is whatever is true and right for you, whatever lights you up from the inside and whatever it means to live authentically and with purpose for you as a woman. And the same goes for defining a man's job. If you define as a man, you get to be lit up from the inside too. You get to set aside the expectations and the shoulds, the pressure and the opinions and show up in this world as the fucking magical gift that you are too. I want this for anyone of any gender. And I'm not the decider of what that means. And neither is anyone else. You are the decider. And as long as that decision doesn't include you being an asshole,

then get out there and do woman's work or a man's job or live a human experience with all its messiness and learning and loving and growth and know that we're always better together. So this is my invitation to you to join us in being brave and bold, imperfect and awkward, kind and curious, authentic and confident, knowing that the package we come in is only ever a piece of the whole story. I call it woman's work. You call it whatever serves you best. As Allison says, honor yourself first or all else is lost. Now let's get out there and do it because this is all of our work.