The Exchanges

Q let's get started now. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. I appreciate it. I think it's really important for this conversation to be had, and I'm glad that you're one of the people that's driving the conversation, at least in America. Why don't you tell everyone a little bit about yourself? What made you want to get into this and what it is that you do?

A I am a white, cisgendered, heterosexual man who has a big heart, who considers myself forever an ally in training because in the work that I do, We don't get to call ourselves an ally. Somebody who represents or comes from a historically marginalized group will so bestow that upon us. I'm a father. I'm a cyclist. I'm an activist. I'm all about gender equality, equity, and inclusion, and I'm the founder of the Better Man Conference, and most recently, uh, my second book, Showing Up, How Men Can Become Effective Allies in the Workplace, uh, was The Labor of Love, and it's, I was just published, uh, in January, so that's the short version. I herald from an unusual place, which is a place of men's work. I've amassed probably 15,000 hours of working with men on how to live and leap from the heart, mainly from the Mankind Project insofar as leading experiential, healthy initiations into manhood around healthy masculinity and all that work that I did, including going into, uh, maximum security prisons. I took all that which I learned and brought it into the ally and inclusionary leadership space And men have been hungry, hungry for it.

AI assessment note: “I'm the founder of the Better Man Conference, and most recently, my second book”

Q Why do you think men are hungry for it?

A Because they tell me, because after all those hours of working with them, men are coming out to me all the time. Now in the context of corporate leadership and the corporate world, when we look at Time's Up, Me Too, the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, they've all come together to form a perfect storm. And so currently, Present day. There's a tremendous amount of attention on the majority of men. Because there's been a minority of men, what I call the bad apples, the ones we see in the news, et cetera, the ones that have fallen from grace that have historically been controlling the narrative. And so right now, more than ever, men and organizations are like, how do we engage the men in our diversity, equity, inclusion efforts? Men are asking, what do I do? And then there's a whole groupings of men that we can talk about inside orgs that Are still in, in, in sitting in a lot of questions. And then finally, anybody that doesn't identify as a man, women, people of color, people, you know, from the LGBTQ community, binary, non-binary, they're all curious and they've been at the affect of some of this behavior. So they want to support and be supported.

AI assessment note: “Because they tell me, because after all those hours of working with them”

Q Why do you think men felt it was okay to do what the, these bad apples, of course, not everyone's like that, but why do you think this subset of men felt it was okay to treat people as non-equal?

A A lot of answers to that. Um, if you think about the, what I call, uh, and I want to give credit to Paul Kibble and Tony Porter, the man box, those set of unwritten rules on what it means to be a man. That drive our behavior. A lot of men just were doing it because other men were doing it because their father, their grandfathers were doing it, and we all had blinders on. We are unaware of the impact on how it was landing on other people. We weren't feeling the pain out of sight, out of mind. So when women galvanized and other groups started to galvanize, You know, I'm 59 years old this coming Saturday. So you start looking at younger men and I don't know how old you are, Sean, but you know, the younger men look at guys my age and they're like, I don't want to be like those guys. So there's a growing constituency that aren't okay with, with that behavior. And so we all got a pass for a long time and that those times are over.

AI assessment note: “A lot of men just were doing it because other men were doing it”

Q that someone maybe just wants attention. I, I, I have to say it. I know that there's real problems, but I also know that there's a subset of people that want attention. What happens to the career of someone when these allegations are false? Not the person making the allegation, but the person who's been accused. And how do you handle that? Or how do you rehab that person's career?

A One of the things I've learned to do when someone speaks to an experience that they've had at the hands, not literally, but as a result of the experience of the man is the one thing you don't want to do initially is defend, invalidate, make light of their experience. And most people, you know, when men are accused, okay, the first thing we want to do is defend whether we're guilty or not. And if An individual man is at the affect of an allegation. There's a way he can conduct himself, right? Now, per your example, if it's untrue, like if this was me, if I put myself in, in those shoes, I would still, um, without admitting any fault, I would seek to understand, like, please tell me, what did I say? What did I do? Acknowledge if I did that, That it landed on you. Maybe make an empathic statement that, you know, I'm sorry that this happened to you, but under no circumstances, you know, if, if it didn't happen, I mean, it could have been something I said, but if it was like a sexual allegation that I, I touched somebody inappropriately, I give counsel to guys, you know, like when they're in this situation, like you gotta tell me the truth. What happened? If this happened on your watch from an accountability perspective, what did you have to do with it? So there's no easy answer to your question. And your, your question was like, if somebody was falsely accused, right? I have yet to…

AI assessment note: “your question was like, if somebody was falsely accused, right? I have yet to see one”