Why I Was Glad He Asked

Recently, I was sitting at a table with about eight people at a Lean conference.

It was one of those conference lunches where nobody quite knows where to sit, so you pick a chair, introduce yourself, and discover who landed beside you.

A few people at the table knew one another.

Most of us did not.

The conversation eventually turned toward the keynote speaker, Elisabeth Swan, and I mentioned that I knew her through Women in Lean.

Several people leaned in.

One woman smiled.

And one man leaned back.

Arms crossed.

Head tilted.

Then he asked:

“When do men get a group?”

I have been ready for that question for most of my professional life.

So I smiled.

And I meant it when I answered:

“I love that idea.”

I think he expected something else.

Maybe defensiveness.

Maybe a lecture.

Maybe an argument about why women deserve something men do not.

But that isn’t how I see it.

In fact, I think men absolutely need spaces where they can talk honestly with other men about what leadership looks like now.

Because the world has changed.

Women have changed.

Organizations have changed.

Expectations have changed.

And plenty of men were raised, trained, promoted, and rewarded inside systems that taught them one version of leadership only to arrive in today’s workplace and discover that some of those rules no longer apply.

That is a legitimate leadership problem.

And legitimate leadership problems deserve somewhere safe enough to discuss them.

A man should be able to sit in a room with other men and say:

I was taught this.

Now I am hearing something different.

I don’t entirely understand what is expected of me.

This makes me uncomfortable.

I’m worried about saying the wrong thing.

I’m worried about losing influence.

I don’t know how to work through this without becoming defensive.

Those are conversations worth having.

Not because women need men to become perfect.

Not because men need permission from women.

Because people cannot improve what they cannot safely examine.

And that is one of the reasons I actually appreciated the question at our lunch table.

He said the thing.

Out loud.

In front of a table largely occupied by women.

Think about the psychological safety required for that.

He could have kept it to himself.

He could have gone home and complained about Women in Lean to somebody who already agreed with him.

Instead, he put the question on the table.

That gave us somewhere to go.

And when I answered, he didn’t get up.

He didn’t become combative.

He didn’t continue dismissing the conversation.

He listened.

There may have been a smirk or two.

That’s fine.

Nobody had to win the argument because there wasn’t an argument to win.

There was simply an opportunity to think.

That is where I believe a great deal of improvement actually begins.