Shut-Up and Listen

Men have always found ambitious women intimidating, which is why in most cases they cannot accept us. My interaction with most men leaves a sour taste as I don’t allow them to takeover or lead a conversation. This is the daily reality of women in leadership and management positions around the world, but when we are your client, we do expect you to shut-up and listen, as you would listen to a client that is male.

In less than a month I have had two hilarious encounters with male representatives of companies that my organisation is looking at as potential partners, vendors or suppliers. Before I tell you a couple of silly stories, allow me to give you a background on where I work.

I am employed at one of South Africa’s biggest training companies, which is owned by a woman and has an all-woman staff. The reason they are no men in this company is because the aim is to help bridge the enormous pay gap between men and women and different races, and also to promote gender equality by proving women can play any role in any company, if given the chance.

Now, let me come back to my stories.

Meeting 1: 

This company is a large learning solutions company and they sent two representatives to meet with us. A man and a woman. My boss attended the meeting along with me. In this meeting, the woman representative hardly got a chance to speak but whatever she said made more sense than what her colleague rattled on about. I and my boss even hinted to this man on several occasions that stop talking, let us tell you what we require of you – but it all went in vain. To salvage a losing deal, the woman representative offered us value adds that we badly needed and the man on his side said he would send us a quote. It was weeks ago, we have received all the value adds from the woman and no quote from the man. On our side, we did not bother following up with the man about a quote because we not only felt disrespected as women but also as a business, and we realised that a partnership that begins with disrespect on one side will never be fruitful.

Meeting 2:

This occurred a few days ago. This vendor, a man, assumed I was a man as the name Paul appears attached to Smriti in my signature. I had requested this gentleman to send a quote before a meeting and guess what, he did just that – he sent a quote 20 minutes before the meeting and arrived before I had the chance to cancel the appointment. This gentleman quoted enormous prices and had I received a quote even two hours before the meeting, I would have cancelled it.

So, Mr. F arrived and asked for Paul. To his horror, Paul turned out to be Smriti Paul, a woman! He was more horrified to find out the owner of the company was a woman as well. And so, we sat down in the meeting and he began by commenting condescendingly about the size of our company saying: “you have a nice thing going on here” and boasted about the experience of his staff. I brought it to his notice that we have more experience than his staff and know exactly what we want – emphasising “we know what we want”. He insisted on giving us a background to his company. We sat and listened and kept glancing at the quote. When we tried to ask questions, he continued talking over us. We then asked him to walk us through his quote, after which I said I can do all of this for a much lesser price but I need a partner company that shares my vision on this product. I knew this statement would offend this old gentleman but I underestimated how much. Mr. F said: “when you can do all this, why did you make me come here”. I replied I didn’t make you come here, you insisted on meeting with us. My boss said we are an all women company and we like having human connections with our clients and suppliers and it is important for us to meet people. 

After this Mr. F suddenly concluded the meeting and said his goodbyes. Before he left he said he has bigger clients and he doesn’t meet them ever, to which I replied, every organisation works differently and each needs to respected. I thought my interaction with this man had ended for good but he had to have the last word and sent me a condescending email. Needless to say my boss and colleagues had a good laugh at how this meeting went.

What I am trying to say is, women are not taken seriously by most men, and honestly, the world is losing out on a lot of good because of that.

When your project sponsor or client is a woman, give her the same respect you would give a man, or watch that investment walk right out the door. Women are kind and generous and full of empathy. Women are visionary leaders and great managers but we can also be ruthless and brutally honest. If you don’t want to come across as a chauvinistic pig and lose out on opportunities, just shut-up and listen!