Seems the evidence considered here doesn’t stack up, but I have a hunch that there’s something real to the idea that men are harder to help than women.
My experience managing and leading men and women in the workplace is that, when offered the same sort of help, women are, on average, more receptive of help than men. I can’t recall a female employee outright rejecting training or coaching on how to get better at something we both agree they need to get better at, but I have seen male employees do this. (n~=50 over my career, approximately 10 women and 40 men)
My theory is that men, more so than women, are resistive to help that may seem to lower their status. Men are willing to accept help if they think the person offering it is clearly higher status than them because then it raises their status by association, but they reject it otherwise. I’m sure women exhibit this behavior too, but for as often as I’ve seen it in men I would have expected to see this happen with at least 1 female employee.
Of course I’m also the constant here in my data, so maybe there’s something about me that makes the difference here.
Seems the evidence considered here doesn’t stack up, but I have a hunch that there’s something real to the idea that men are harder to help than women.
My experience managing and leading men and women in the workplace is that, when offered the same sort of help, women are, on average, more receptive of help than men. I can’t recall a female employee outright rejecting training or coaching on how to get better at something we both agree they need to get better at, but I have seen male employees do this. (n~=50 over my career, approximately 10 women and 40 men)
My theory is that men, more so than women, are resistive to help that may seem to lower their status. Men are willing to accept help if they think the person offering it is clearly higher status than them because then it raises their status by association, but they reject it otherwise. I’m sure women exhibit this behavior too, but for as often as I’ve seen it in men I would have expected to see this happen with at least 1 female employee.
Of course I’m also the constant here in my data, so maybe there’s something about me that makes the difference here.