Yep, after yesterday's post all high and full of righteousness, I was...not mean, but certainly not kind to someone today. This is my confession.
It was at the end of a long day, where I had spent most of the day heavily concentrating on Big Thoughts. I did eat lunch, and even an afternoon snack. But I was tired. And frustrated. My Big Thought project was hitting obstacle after obstacle, to the point where I just decided to give up for the day and try again tomorrow.
I figured I'd do one menial and tedious task before I left. I didn't know where to start. So I asked someone who, if they didn't know, was the right person to find out for me. S/he is not the easiest person for me to talk to, being nearly dumbstruck with what comes across as fear of me, but I suspect is just general unease around people s/he doesn't know well.
I thought I asked my question carefully, but s/he didn't answer what i asked, and instead went off on a shiny metal object tangent. Once I realized that's what was happening, I got more direct. Like freshly sharpened knife direct, slicing straight through to my point which was I expected hir to be the expert on their area of responsibility.
In my book, from years of working on the farm, it's totally okay to admit you don't know something. But lawd help you if you sit on that as an excuse like a contented toad on a toadstool looking perfectly pleased with yourself, instead of saying very simply, "I don't know. Let me find out and get back to you."
Obviously the conversation went down hill from there. And out went all my high-fallutin' ambitions of treating individual with respect for their own uniqueness. I didn't yell, (miraculously) didn't cuss, and wasn't overtly disrespectful, but I surely wasn't kind either. I walked away feeling even more frustrated than when I went to ask my question and a little angry with myself for kicking a puppy (**figuratively, ** people...jeez!).
I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this tomorrow. This person does not work for me, but provides me with required support services. And I saw on my phone (but did not read the email) that s/he sent an email out with a subject line that indicates it's the information I requested. But staring at me dumbfounded and making excuses about not knowing basic required knowledge...? Well, let's just say I don't have a lot of tolerance for the excuses.
I know I should look at this from hir point of view. I have no idea what hir workload is or what I interrupted with my question. I'll likely address it with hir supervisor and see how this incident fits in with their prior stated expectations for hir. And not go overboard being nice to hir, but certainly trying harder to be more understanding and less instantaneously judgmental.
It's a work in progress. *I'm* a work in progress.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Sunday, February 25, 2018
I Didn't Drown...or More Thoughts on Finding Strength in Vulnerabilities
Convincing my super strong lizard brain that I wasn't going to drown...well, that's another story.
One of the training sessions during PDT was water survival, designed to teach us how to get out of heavy ballistic plate armor if we fall in the water. Very reasonable and useful training, making sure we have at least some muscle memory of how to save ourselves in case things go Very Badly Wrong.
The training is done in steps, crawl-walk-run style. The crawl part was a skills assessment. Very basic. I'm a strong swimmer. I love to swim...am basically a fish without gills. My mom had to threaten dire consequences to get me out of the pool when I was a kid.
But, (there's always a but) I hate feeling like I can't breathe. It...well, um...it Terrifies me. Which is weird, because I can hold my breath a reasonable amount of time. I do controlled breathing exercises in yoga and for meditation. But you add water, and I freak tf out.
The skills assessment didn't go well the first time. I wore myself out trying to do the dead man's float (face down, holding my breath), and tapped out after about 2 minutes of it. I was panting too hard to control my breathing to willingly put my face in the water. Didn't bode well for the rest of the training.
And it **FRUstrated** me. I knew it was in my head. There was nothing the instructors were asking me to do that I was physically challenged to do. But that damn lizard brain at the base of my skull got aholt of me, and terrorized me with a desire for flight. I sloshed out of the pool after failing the skills assessment.
I didn't cry in front of everyone. I stepped outside to do that.
I sulked for a few more minutes, chastising myself that this was the easy part, wtf was I going to do when we got to the fast walk drills. Finally, I swallowed enough of my pride to go into the shallow end to work with one of the instructors for "remediation." I did the dead man's float by itself for about 25 seconds, and then immediately had to take about 2 minutes to compose myself so I didn't burst out in tears in front of the instructor (he was very patient).
In the meantime, the rest of the group was working their way through the slow walk stages of the training. At least my lizard brain didn't impede their progress with her nonsense.
Once I convinced myself that I wasn't going to die during the dead man's float, I successfully passed the skills assessment. I sang The Eagles, "Take It Easy" to myself, and rubbed the thumbs and forefingers of each hand together to distract that lizard bitch. Whatever. It worked.
And that was the end of Day 1. I spent a good part of the evening in a mixture of a) wondering what tf was wrong with me, b) berating myself for being such a f'ing delicate snowflake, c) thoroughly dreading the next day, and d) absolutely not facing the reality that I had to get through this somehow. Emailing, texting, then calling my sister helped. She's pretty skilled at calling my bullshit what it is.
I passed the next phase fairly easily first thing in the morning, while everyone else was getting ready for two steps ahead of me. Then it was on to more work in the shallow end. This is how it went for me in the shallow end: go through the required steps out of the pool, lower myself into the water, psyche myself up to go under, freak out a little, take a few more deep breaths, go through the steps again out loud with the instructor, psyche myself up to go under, take a deep breath, go under, get through one or two of the steps, freak out a lot, stand up and gasp for air, stand there feeling foolish and ridiculous and pitiful and pathetic...and repeat, like two more times. I think one of those times I didn't even make an attempt to do anything, just went straight to freak out mode. They didn't count that one against me.
After what felt like a thousand times, but I'm pretty sure was only the three we're allowed, I was able to get through the first task. You know, the easy one. There was significantly more psyching up to do for the second task...you know, the much harder one. We were still in the shallow end. Somehow, idk, maybe the lizard brain was finally wearing out or maybe, just maybe, realizing that I was going to do this regardless of her input and she should ease up on convincing me that flight was the only response, I managed to get through the second task on the first try.
I was still two steps behind the rest of the group; they were progressing fantastically, and making it look easy at the same time. Then I had to move up to the deep end for the next stage. It was the same tasks as the shallow end, just, you know, in the deep end, where I couldn't stand up if things started to fall apart for me.
It was about this time that one of the guys who hadn't passed the skills assessment (also a strong swimmer, just having difficulties with having boots on in the water) told me he was impressed with my ability to stick it through despite my difficulties. I think I made some brush off comment about being overly stubborn.
But the truth was, I was still terrified that I wouldn't successfully finish each of the remaining tasks, and I'd have to go into the remedial swim training when I got in theater. Not only would that be completely mortifying to my pride, it would also take precious time away from my ability to Do. My. Job. So into the deep end I jumped...after staring at the water for 30 seconds, walking through each step in my head, freaking out a little, deep breathing, staring at the water...well, you get the picture. I was not being shy about my freaked-out-edness.
For the second task, the harder task in the deep end, I talked myself out of jumping a couple of times, tried to get one of the JOs who had to do it again to go ahead of me, and then realized that wasn't fair because s/he wasn't ready either. When I stepped back up to the edge, I stood there, breathing, looking at the water, and then looked up. I saw a gaggle of the high-speed, super low-drag crowd standing by the lifeguard's stand about 20 feet away. As soon as they saw me looking at them, they quickly looked away..."No, why of course not, we weren't looking at you. Why would we do that? Nope, we were looking at that fascinating ceiling beam up there." My lizard brain had too much of a grip on me for to do more than note it at the time, but later, I realized they were concerned about me, watching me to make sure I was okay. And was going to be okay.
I got through the second deep end jump successfully. One of the Chiefs came up to me as I was prepping for the next task. He said, referring to a conversation we had previously, "sometimes your battles are not about you at all," and told me the JO who I tried to get to go first, who was also struggling, did it more easily because I did it at all. Perspective.
The third deep end task...well, we got to hold on to the side of the pool for it. And then came the platform jumps. By this time, I had caught up with the rest of the group, thankfully. And I had also come way too far to give up and quit, even though the platform jumps scared the bejeezus out of me and I really, omg, so very badly didn't want to do them. I got through the first jump successfully enough. And then somehow, managed to find myself on the platform again for the second, harder jump. And I jumped. I got a couple breaths, and then tried to get one more, as I shed equipment, but wasn't quite able to manage it. My panic started to set in, and then somehow a thought passed through my mind that I didn't need to breathe yet. I had enough air to make it through the last crucial step to get the majority of the drowning weight off my body, and from there I was home free.
As I climbed the platform for the last, easiest jump of the day, one of the instructors said something along the lines of being very impressed with my courage and that he'd serve with me any day.
Um, they all just saw me almost lose my shit, struggle with and almost fail at some really simple tasks, and that's the response I got? Huh. Not what I expected.
From the perspective of a few weeks, I (obviously) have a few thoughts about the experience. The majority of the early days in my working life, both before and in the Coast Guard, were all about not showing vulnerabilities, not being perceived as weak, making everything look as easy as freaking possible. If I did any of that weak stuff, I was pegged as a useless girl, and then I had to work twice or three times as hard to prove myself the next time. So I limited my vulnerabilities...or I limited my willingness to admit I had any, even (and probably most damaging) to myself. I shoved them all deep down, away from the bright light of day as much as I possibly could.
It's just recently that I've started to wonder, as I work on becoming my most honest version of myself, if those vulnerabilities I buried so deep could actually make me better at what I do; maybe make me better able to appreciate another person's experience, or offer them a way to connect with me through shared perspectives, or make me think about a situation differently while looking for the best of a bunch of bad solutions to a problem. Or maybe just give me a stronger foundation, a more complete me, from which to act and react.
On the last drive back to DC from NC after training, I listened to a bunch of podcasts, one of which was Freakonomics podcast titled, "After the Glass Ceiling, the Glass Cliff," about the 5.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs who are women. From one of the interviewees, Michelle Ryan, "...we should see that after women were appointed to these boards of directors, share price should go down. But actually what we found was the opposite. What we found was when companies had been doing poorly, when their share price had been declining, they then appointed women to their boards of directors. So what we found was a really different causal problem. Rather than women wreaking havoc on company performance, what we found was when companies were doing badly, they were much more likely to appoint women."
The podcast goes on to talk about a series of experiments that Ryan used to delve more deeply into her results. "We had two incredibly well-qualified candidates for the job, one man and one woman. We gave their C.V.s, and descriptions of their experience. We gave photos of them, and we’d very carefully made sure that they were absolutely equally qualified for the job. And in fact, what we had was, we had two C.V.s, and we just switched their names on them, really, for every second participant in the study. And then we said, “Okay, who do you want? In a scenario where everything is doing well, who do you want: the man or the woman? And in a scenario where things were going badly, who do you want?”
"What we found was when everything is going well — when share price was going up, or when everything is hunky-dory — they were almost 50-50 likely to choose the man or the woman. But when things were going badly — when there was crisis on the horizon, where there’d been criticism, and where there was risk involved in the leadership position — they almost exclusively chose her. So we can conclude from that there’s some sort of preference for women when all is going badly."
The podcast goes on to talk about what might be behind that "preference for women when all is going badly." The theories range from shareholders wanting Mommy when things are going badly (seriously), to men not wanting the risk associated with a potentially failing company and having the options to say no, while women don't have the same career opportunities and are grateful enough for even a bad job, to unfair targeting on women-led companies by activist shareholders, to less than complimentary media coverage for women CEOs. I encourage you to read or listen to the whole thing.
I'm not entirely sure why I thought this podcast was so relevant to my thoughts on strength from vulnerabilities. Probably about shareholders wanting a CEO they think will be more collaborative and focused on teamwork like women are supposed to be. Turning what appear to be vulnerabilities (as compared to the aggressiveness ascribed to men) into strengths.
But that just makes me uncomfortable, too, ascribing certain qualities to a certain gender. I struggle (a lot) with the idea of the female identity solely as "...gentleness, empathy, sensitivity, caring, sweetness, compassion, tolerance, nurturance, deference, and succorance..." straight from Wikipedia's definition of femininity. That is simply not my world view, my experience, my being. Just for comparison, here is what Wikipedia has for masculinity, "courage, independence, violence, and assertiveness."
I am some of both of those things, and I really want to be valued by my organization, my bosses, my peers, my subordinates, my friends family and acquaintances, for Who I Am...for my essential Me-ness...that irrepeatable combination of quirks, qualities, quixoticisms born from my DNA, molded by my family, shaped by my experiences, honed by my challenges, burnished by my family and friends and breathed daily by this ephemeral mortal shell....not some societal generalization of what They think I should be because of my gender, my age, my skin color or any of those other things that are more by-products than essence.
It only works if I can offer the same respect to other Individuals I meet.
How's that for some mf'ing strength from vulnerabilities.
The training is done in steps, crawl-walk-run style. The crawl part was a skills assessment. Very basic. I'm a strong swimmer. I love to swim...am basically a fish without gills. My mom had to threaten dire consequences to get me out of the pool when I was a kid.
But, (there's always a but) I hate feeling like I can't breathe. It...well, um...it Terrifies me. Which is weird, because I can hold my breath a reasonable amount of time. I do controlled breathing exercises in yoga and for meditation. But you add water, and I freak tf out.
The skills assessment didn't go well the first time. I wore myself out trying to do the dead man's float (face down, holding my breath), and tapped out after about 2 minutes of it. I was panting too hard to control my breathing to willingly put my face in the water. Didn't bode well for the rest of the training.
And it **FRUstrated** me. I knew it was in my head. There was nothing the instructors were asking me to do that I was physically challenged to do. But that damn lizard brain at the base of my skull got aholt of me, and terrorized me with a desire for flight. I sloshed out of the pool after failing the skills assessment.
I didn't cry in front of everyone. I stepped outside to do that.
I sulked for a few more minutes, chastising myself that this was the easy part, wtf was I going to do when we got to the fast walk drills. Finally, I swallowed enough of my pride to go into the shallow end to work with one of the instructors for "remediation." I did the dead man's float by itself for about 25 seconds, and then immediately had to take about 2 minutes to compose myself so I didn't burst out in tears in front of the instructor (he was very patient).
In the meantime, the rest of the group was working their way through the slow walk stages of the training. At least my lizard brain didn't impede their progress with her nonsense.
Once I convinced myself that I wasn't going to die during the dead man's float, I successfully passed the skills assessment. I sang The Eagles, "Take It Easy" to myself, and rubbed the thumbs and forefingers of each hand together to distract that lizard bitch. Whatever. It worked.
And that was the end of Day 1. I spent a good part of the evening in a mixture of a) wondering what tf was wrong with me, b) berating myself for being such a f'ing delicate snowflake, c) thoroughly dreading the next day, and d) absolutely not facing the reality that I had to get through this somehow. Emailing, texting, then calling my sister helped. She's pretty skilled at calling my bullshit what it is.
I passed the next phase fairly easily first thing in the morning, while everyone else was getting ready for two steps ahead of me. Then it was on to more work in the shallow end. This is how it went for me in the shallow end: go through the required steps out of the pool, lower myself into the water, psyche myself up to go under, freak out a little, take a few more deep breaths, go through the steps again out loud with the instructor, psyche myself up to go under, take a deep breath, go under, get through one or two of the steps, freak out a lot, stand up and gasp for air, stand there feeling foolish and ridiculous and pitiful and pathetic...and repeat, like two more times. I think one of those times I didn't even make an attempt to do anything, just went straight to freak out mode. They didn't count that one against me.
After what felt like a thousand times, but I'm pretty sure was only the three we're allowed, I was able to get through the first task. You know, the easy one. There was significantly more psyching up to do for the second task...you know, the much harder one. We were still in the shallow end. Somehow, idk, maybe the lizard brain was finally wearing out or maybe, just maybe, realizing that I was going to do this regardless of her input and she should ease up on convincing me that flight was the only response, I managed to get through the second task on the first try.
I was still two steps behind the rest of the group; they were progressing fantastically, and making it look easy at the same time. Then I had to move up to the deep end for the next stage. It was the same tasks as the shallow end, just, you know, in the deep end, where I couldn't stand up if things started to fall apart for me.
It was about this time that one of the guys who hadn't passed the skills assessment (also a strong swimmer, just having difficulties with having boots on in the water) told me he was impressed with my ability to stick it through despite my difficulties. I think I made some brush off comment about being overly stubborn.
But the truth was, I was still terrified that I wouldn't successfully finish each of the remaining tasks, and I'd have to go into the remedial swim training when I got in theater. Not only would that be completely mortifying to my pride, it would also take precious time away from my ability to Do. My. Job. So into the deep end I jumped...after staring at the water for 30 seconds, walking through each step in my head, freaking out a little, deep breathing, staring at the water...well, you get the picture. I was not being shy about my freaked-out-edness.
For the second task, the harder task in the deep end, I talked myself out of jumping a couple of times, tried to get one of the JOs who had to do it again to go ahead of me, and then realized that wasn't fair because s/he wasn't ready either. When I stepped back up to the edge, I stood there, breathing, looking at the water, and then looked up. I saw a gaggle of the high-speed, super low-drag crowd standing by the lifeguard's stand about 20 feet away. As soon as they saw me looking at them, they quickly looked away..."No, why of course not, we weren't looking at you. Why would we do that? Nope, we were looking at that fascinating ceiling beam up there." My lizard brain had too much of a grip on me for to do more than note it at the time, but later, I realized they were concerned about me, watching me to make sure I was okay. And was going to be okay.
I got through the second deep end jump successfully. One of the Chiefs came up to me as I was prepping for the next task. He said, referring to a conversation we had previously, "sometimes your battles are not about you at all," and told me the JO who I tried to get to go first, who was also struggling, did it more easily because I did it at all. Perspective.
The third deep end task...well, we got to hold on to the side of the pool for it. And then came the platform jumps. By this time, I had caught up with the rest of the group, thankfully. And I had also come way too far to give up and quit, even though the platform jumps scared the bejeezus out of me and I really, omg, so very badly didn't want to do them. I got through the first jump successfully enough. And then somehow, managed to find myself on the platform again for the second, harder jump. And I jumped. I got a couple breaths, and then tried to get one more, as I shed equipment, but wasn't quite able to manage it. My panic started to set in, and then somehow a thought passed through my mind that I didn't need to breathe yet. I had enough air to make it through the last crucial step to get the majority of the drowning weight off my body, and from there I was home free.
As I climbed the platform for the last, easiest jump of the day, one of the instructors said something along the lines of being very impressed with my courage and that he'd serve with me any day.
Um, they all just saw me almost lose my shit, struggle with and almost fail at some really simple tasks, and that's the response I got? Huh. Not what I expected.
From the perspective of a few weeks, I (obviously) have a few thoughts about the experience. The majority of the early days in my working life, both before and in the Coast Guard, were all about not showing vulnerabilities, not being perceived as weak, making everything look as easy as freaking possible. If I did any of that weak stuff, I was pegged as a useless girl, and then I had to work twice or three times as hard to prove myself the next time. So I limited my vulnerabilities...or I limited my willingness to admit I had any, even (and probably most damaging) to myself. I shoved them all deep down, away from the bright light of day as much as I possibly could.
It's just recently that I've started to wonder, as I work on becoming my most honest version of myself, if those vulnerabilities I buried so deep could actually make me better at what I do; maybe make me better able to appreciate another person's experience, or offer them a way to connect with me through shared perspectives, or make me think about a situation differently while looking for the best of a bunch of bad solutions to a problem. Or maybe just give me a stronger foundation, a more complete me, from which to act and react.
On the last drive back to DC from NC after training, I listened to a bunch of podcasts, one of which was Freakonomics podcast titled, "After the Glass Ceiling, the Glass Cliff," about the 5.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs who are women. From one of the interviewees, Michelle Ryan, "...we should see that after women were appointed to these boards of directors, share price should go down. But actually what we found was the opposite. What we found was when companies had been doing poorly, when their share price had been declining, they then appointed women to their boards of directors. So what we found was a really different causal problem. Rather than women wreaking havoc on company performance, what we found was when companies were doing badly, they were much more likely to appoint women."
The podcast goes on to talk about a series of experiments that Ryan used to delve more deeply into her results. "We had two incredibly well-qualified candidates for the job, one man and one woman. We gave their C.V.s, and descriptions of their experience. We gave photos of them, and we’d very carefully made sure that they were absolutely equally qualified for the job. And in fact, what we had was, we had two C.V.s, and we just switched their names on them, really, for every second participant in the study. And then we said, “Okay, who do you want? In a scenario where everything is doing well, who do you want: the man or the woman? And in a scenario where things were going badly, who do you want?”
"What we found was when everything is going well — when share price was going up, or when everything is hunky-dory — they were almost 50-50 likely to choose the man or the woman. But when things were going badly — when there was crisis on the horizon, where there’d been criticism, and where there was risk involved in the leadership position — they almost exclusively chose her. So we can conclude from that there’s some sort of preference for women when all is going badly."
The podcast goes on to talk about what might be behind that "preference for women when all is going badly." The theories range from shareholders wanting Mommy when things are going badly (seriously), to men not wanting the risk associated with a potentially failing company and having the options to say no, while women don't have the same career opportunities and are grateful enough for even a bad job, to unfair targeting on women-led companies by activist shareholders, to less than complimentary media coverage for women CEOs. I encourage you to read or listen to the whole thing.
I'm not entirely sure why I thought this podcast was so relevant to my thoughts on strength from vulnerabilities. Probably about shareholders wanting a CEO they think will be more collaborative and focused on teamwork like women are supposed to be. Turning what appear to be vulnerabilities (as compared to the aggressiveness ascribed to men) into strengths.
But that just makes me uncomfortable, too, ascribing certain qualities to a certain gender. I struggle (a lot) with the idea of the female identity solely as "...gentleness, empathy, sensitivity, caring, sweetness, compassion, tolerance, nurturance, deference, and succorance..." straight from Wikipedia's definition of femininity. That is simply not my world view, my experience, my being. Just for comparison, here is what Wikipedia has for masculinity, "courage, independence, violence, and assertiveness."
I am some of both of those things, and I really want to be valued by my organization, my bosses, my peers, my subordinates, my friends family and acquaintances, for Who I Am...for my essential Me-ness...that irrepeatable combination of quirks, qualities, quixoticisms born from my DNA, molded by my family, shaped by my experiences, honed by my challenges, burnished by my family and friends and breathed daily by this ephemeral mortal shell....not some societal generalization of what They think I should be because of my gender, my age, my skin color or any of those other things that are more by-products than essence.
It only works if I can offer the same respect to other Individuals I meet.
How's that for some mf'ing strength from vulnerabilities.
Sunday, February 4, 2018
Lessons from Cultural Awareness Training
One of the training sessions we had last week during Pre-Deployment Training (PDT) was Cultural Awareness Training. A dynamic older gentlemen, former military (Army, I think), Arabic translator/interpreter, originally from Bahrain, taught the four-hour class. By the time we come home, we'll all have felt as if we had a year-long cultural awareness class, but this was to prep folks who haven't been there for some of the fundamental and practical differences between Bahrain and the US.
It only took about 30 minutes before he said something that put my back up. I don't remember the specifics, but I vaguely remember an extremely negative judgmental comment about homosexuality. I think it was meant as a generalization of religious dogma, but the speaker certainly didn't qualify it that way, so it came across as the truth as he saw it.
A few minutes later, he brought up gender roles and how men and women are treated in Bahrain. I know this is a push-button topic for me. I know I'm tecchy (i.e., touchy, with a spin of mountain pride) about it. I know I have some personal work to do here. So I was, maybe not prepared to be offended, but hugely aware it was a distinct possibility. Still, hearing him say blatantly that, in a group of locals and US military, the locals will always, always, always defer to the men. Never mind the rank or experience of the women, it's just not in their world view that women would have a useful opinion.
During the second break, the other O5 trainee in the group approached me. He's deploying too, but doesn't work directly in the same chain of command as I will. He had heard some of the conversations from the more junior members during the break that they were disturbed, uncomfortable, disgusted...pick your emotion...with the delivery of the training. He suggested I address it, either with the instructor, the training coordinators, or the group. I love having a task to complete, so I immediately went looking for someone to talk to.
I came across the instructor first, and discussed with him my intent to add a few comments to the group after he was done with his presentation. I think I managed to get my point across that a lot of what he was saying was uncomfortable, and that's what I was hoping to point out to the crews.
Finally, after a few more insults about how all women like to shop to excess and how my gray hair will make me be perceived as an elder despite my actual age, the presenter wrapped it up after four hours and six minutes. I strode up to the front of the room, made sure all the lights were on (they had been dimmed for the power point presentation), and thanked the presenter for his welcome insights into the Bahraini culture. Because it was helpful to hear about how welcoming and friendly the locals are, about the beauty of the culture, and about the variety of goods in the souks and all the other mundane tidbits he shared with us.
I knew I was balancing on a very thin, tight rope, so I chose my words carefully. I said very blatantly, "Some of what he said offended me." I explained further without attacking him personally, along the lines of whether we heard things that offended us because of our gender, our sexual orientation, our age, our religion, or whatever... there was plenty in what he said to make us uncomfortable. For myself, I said, it's incredibly demoralizing to hear that, in a mixed group of locals and US military, I will always be dismissed, even in favor of a man of a lower rank, simply because I'm female. It feels like 18 years of a hugely successful career has been wiped away and is meaningless, all because I'm a girl. And that makes me feel awful and worthless.
I then went on say that figuring out how to be ok with being uncomfortable is necessary for us to be effective in our operating environment. That doesn't mean just fighting against whatever is making us uncomfortable, because, where we're going, that could start an international incident. It means understanding what exactly is putting us off balance, and being strong and self-aware enough to know that whatever it is is not our truth, and is instead an artifact of us being in a different culture who operates under separate beliefs. We have to learn to accept a certain amount of discomfort to stay focused on what we're over there to do.
I tried not to ramble too long...jeez, we'd already been in there for 4+ hours. But I wanted to make sure they understood my point.
Beyond the more obvious lessons about sitting with what makes us uncomfortable, I took two other insights away from this training session that were maybe more useful to me:
1. Trust my instincts. I say this All The Time to my JOs, so it was good to have it reinforced for me. I knew what I heard (important distinction of "message received" from "message sent") was not in alignment with our collective CG values. It took someone else validating that for me to take action. I'm very grateful to the other O5 in giving me the impetus, or maybe the tacit permission, to address it with the group, and maybe make the most of my first real opportunity to be a leader for them.
2. Figure out how to make my vulnerabilities into my strengths. I used how I felt about what the instructor said about women as an example. "I was offended." I described why I was offended and how it made me feel. And then I followed up with what I was going to do about it as the teaching point. I'm still getting used to the possibilities of making my vulnerabilities my strengths, and this was a fantastic example of what it might look like. I definitely felt vulnerable up there, talking to E3s and E4s, and all those other people who are going to work for me, about my soft underbelly...my fears about my own inadequacies and how they manifest and undermine me. But I also think it made it relate-able, made it personal for everyone, so they could be ok with feeling uncomfortable with whatever they may come up against. Or, at least that's what I was aiming for.
Afterwards, I got a hugely welcome and supportive text from one of the COs: "Thank you for giving the follow up talk after the training. That was very necessary and clarified some of the things I wanted to make sure the crew understood...It was just what we all needed."
Yes. That's what it's all about.
It only took about 30 minutes before he said something that put my back up. I don't remember the specifics, but I vaguely remember an extremely negative judgmental comment about homosexuality. I think it was meant as a generalization of religious dogma, but the speaker certainly didn't qualify it that way, so it came across as the truth as he saw it.
A few minutes later, he brought up gender roles and how men and women are treated in Bahrain. I know this is a push-button topic for me. I know I'm tecchy (i.e., touchy, with a spin of mountain pride) about it. I know I have some personal work to do here. So I was, maybe not prepared to be offended, but hugely aware it was a distinct possibility. Still, hearing him say blatantly that, in a group of locals and US military, the locals will always, always, always defer to the men. Never mind the rank or experience of the women, it's just not in their world view that women would have a useful opinion.
During the second break, the other O5 trainee in the group approached me. He's deploying too, but doesn't work directly in the same chain of command as I will. He had heard some of the conversations from the more junior members during the break that they were disturbed, uncomfortable, disgusted...pick your emotion...with the delivery of the training. He suggested I address it, either with the instructor, the training coordinators, or the group. I love having a task to complete, so I immediately went looking for someone to talk to.
I came across the instructor first, and discussed with him my intent to add a few comments to the group after he was done with his presentation. I think I managed to get my point across that a lot of what he was saying was uncomfortable, and that's what I was hoping to point out to the crews.
Finally, after a few more insults about how all women like to shop to excess and how my gray hair will make me be perceived as an elder despite my actual age, the presenter wrapped it up after four hours and six minutes. I strode up to the front of the room, made sure all the lights were on (they had been dimmed for the power point presentation), and thanked the presenter for his welcome insights into the Bahraini culture. Because it was helpful to hear about how welcoming and friendly the locals are, about the beauty of the culture, and about the variety of goods in the souks and all the other mundane tidbits he shared with us.
I knew I was balancing on a very thin, tight rope, so I chose my words carefully. I said very blatantly, "Some of what he said offended me." I explained further without attacking him personally, along the lines of whether we heard things that offended us because of our gender, our sexual orientation, our age, our religion, or whatever... there was plenty in what he said to make us uncomfortable. For myself, I said, it's incredibly demoralizing to hear that, in a mixed group of locals and US military, I will always be dismissed, even in favor of a man of a lower rank, simply because I'm female. It feels like 18 years of a hugely successful career has been wiped away and is meaningless, all because I'm a girl. And that makes me feel awful and worthless.
I then went on say that figuring out how to be ok with being uncomfortable is necessary for us to be effective in our operating environment. That doesn't mean just fighting against whatever is making us uncomfortable, because, where we're going, that could start an international incident. It means understanding what exactly is putting us off balance, and being strong and self-aware enough to know that whatever it is is not our truth, and is instead an artifact of us being in a different culture who operates under separate beliefs. We have to learn to accept a certain amount of discomfort to stay focused on what we're over there to do.
I tried not to ramble too long...jeez, we'd already been in there for 4+ hours. But I wanted to make sure they understood my point.
Beyond the more obvious lessons about sitting with what makes us uncomfortable, I took two other insights away from this training session that were maybe more useful to me:
1. Trust my instincts. I say this All The Time to my JOs, so it was good to have it reinforced for me. I knew what I heard (important distinction of "message received" from "message sent") was not in alignment with our collective CG values. It took someone else validating that for me to take action. I'm very grateful to the other O5 in giving me the impetus, or maybe the tacit permission, to address it with the group, and maybe make the most of my first real opportunity to be a leader for them.
2. Figure out how to make my vulnerabilities into my strengths. I used how I felt about what the instructor said about women as an example. "I was offended." I described why I was offended and how it made me feel. And then I followed up with what I was going to do about it as the teaching point. I'm still getting used to the possibilities of making my vulnerabilities my strengths, and this was a fantastic example of what it might look like. I definitely felt vulnerable up there, talking to E3s and E4s, and all those other people who are going to work for me, about my soft underbelly...my fears about my own inadequacies and how they manifest and undermine me. But I also think it made it relate-able, made it personal for everyone, so they could be ok with feeling uncomfortable with whatever they may come up against. Or, at least that's what I was aiming for.
Afterwards, I got a hugely welcome and supportive text from one of the COs: "Thank you for giving the follow up talk after the training. That was very necessary and clarified some of the things I wanted to make sure the crew understood...It was just what we all needed."
Yes. That's what it's all about.
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