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I agree that companies need more compassion for their coworkers, and a more constructive way of dealing with negative emotions. If people open up to each other, become a bit more vulnerable, and talk about what they feel vs argue that they are right and others are wrong—good things are bound to happen.

Maybe I misunderstood the notion about alphas, but personally I don’t like that phrase. It implies that there are betas (and possibly gammas), who evolutionarily had to yield to alphas whenever those demanded it.

Also, I perceive people who are labeled as alpha males mostly as fear-driven people who need to control other people so they themselves don’t get hurt or questioned. That seems not to be the case with alpha chimpanzees [1]—perhaps the alpha label is put on the wrong kind of character entirely.

1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alpha-male-a...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal

I read something by him. He's a primatologist.

One year, the "alpha" female of the group at the zoo died. For months, he couldn't figure out who took her place.

One day, there was an ugly conflict. He expected it to result in blood being spilled.

Then the quietest and meekest of the three older females began slowly walking towards the two fighting males. Behind her trailed a procession.

She sat down and began grooming one of the males. That was the end of the fight. No one dared start it back up and he finally knew who the new alpha female was.

You might enjoy some of his writing.

The social hierarchy based on alpha/beta individuals has never been observed in many species, including humans.

Yes, that’s what I read, too. IMO in humans there’s mostly idolizing and low self worth going on, causing feelings of inferiority/superiority towards others. „I am worth more/less than this person because XY“ is a very common thought pattern that we better do away with. Using a common denominator can be useful to realize that everybody is equal - like the fact that we all die, or that nobody has perfect knowledge of the world.

> Female leaders protect the group from internal threats.

> Women with careers tend to learn male -- or yang -- leadership models.

The thing is, in order to have a sense of 'internal' responsibility, employees need to be really sticky within an organization.

At-will employment really interferes with this: it's simpler (although not necessarily better) to simply burn employees out and replace them rather than invest in the long term that may not exist.

Would you mind sharing what you read about alpha females in primate groups? Sounds fascinating.

I wrote a snippet here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17957612

I read at least one of the works by the author listed in that comment and the scene depicted was a big Aha! moment for me.

I have a history of being an important figure in various online forums, but I don't play a leadership role like a man and I'm not comfortable trying to do so. Attempts to operate like leading men in the same social groups inevitably backfire.

But people seem to very much want my approval, which was a thing that made me crazy. A lot of people like to try to demand my approval, like I owe them my approval and this has often been a point of friction for me socially.

I'm not willing to be socially manipulative. That doesn't sit well with my morals. And that scene in that book helped me figure out how to be me in an empowered way.

I like taking care of people and I tend to do things with an eye towards group cohesion. Male primates defend "the peace" against external threats -- against predators, war, invaders. Female primates typically defend the peace against internal threats -- against friction within the group that is threatening to splinter it. They help people get past their differences, put problems behind them, etc.

And that's a thing I tend towards, but in the US that is not respected as a position of power. There is an awful lot of talk these days about how women are expected to do "emotional labor" and we are expected to do it for free, it is an imposition on women and one of the ways we are victimized. This was also my experience for a long time -- I had experienced my tendency to be caring towards others as a source of being victimized.

And that snippet helped me see how it can be a source of power.

I don't act in a caring fashion towards others in order to have power over them. My desire to help is sincere.

But I also don't owe them anything. I don't have to agree to be anyone's bitch. Helping others doesn't mean I am obligated to keep "being nice" while they heap abuse upon me. I can stop doing nice things for them if they want to mistreat me.

My oldest son has a lot of personal challenges. He was a very difficult child and punishing him never worked.

Fortunately, I'm not big on punishment and he eventually came around because of how I handle things.

I liked doting on him, but when he was a horrible, horrible little shit, I would be less giving. If he wasn't horrible to me, he could wake me up at 3am and ask me to cook for him and I would, even if I was sick and short of sleep. I would tell him "Bring me a cola to help me wake up and turn the oven on so it preheats." And I would drag myself out of bed and cook for him.

But when he was a horrible little shit, I would tell him "I'm sleeping here. I don't feel well. Make yourself a peanut butter sandwich and let me sleep."

He has a serious medical condition that was diagnosed when he was 14. Well before he was diagnosed, it was clear to him that he really needed his mom to get up and cook for him at 3am when he asked and he eventually realized that it didn't really matter how tired I was. What mattered was how much of a little shit he was.

He didn't need to be a good kid. I liked doting on him. He just needed to not be a little shit 24/7 and I would happily do all kinds of stuff for him.

I have something of value to offer. I'm good at certain things. But I don't owe anyone those things. I've made my peace with trying to demonstrate what I have to offer, then withdrawing it if it is met with shitty behavior.

An awful lot of people don't like me withdrawing my "aid". So that becomes a source of power because if you want my aid, then you play by my rules, which are more civilized than the rules most people have been taught.

No one has to play by my rules. I make no effort to force anyone to play by my rules. But I'm also no one's bitch and if you want the value of the things I can bring to the table, then you find some way to respect me and be good to me or I cut you off.

And I'm okay with that being influential in group settings. It sets the example. No one is required to follow the example, but many people will because it's better than the way they had.

And I don't need to worry about what anyone else is doing. I just need to worry about what I'm doing and other people can decide to emulate me or not, as they see fit.

So I'm comfortable with myself these days and I'm comfortable with how that interacts with groups dynamics and I have figured out how to be me in an empowered way and play to my strengths. I no longer feel crippled by the fact that I am not comfortable trying to lead in the same way men lead and it also is never accepted by the group when I use male tactics. I'm me and I'm not a doormat and it's all good.

I wish one day I report to a female boss.

I don't know that gender per se fixes it. Historically, men were in charge of certain kinds of work, the kind that is now paid, and women were in charge of other kinds. These complemented each other.

As we move away from traditional family and tribe or community based social organization towards more paid work, our male leadership patterns seem to have become more dominant and we have lost that balance. Women with serious careers are frequently socialized to lead like men and they are sometimes harsher than the men as if to "prove" themselves or out of bitterness.

I'm not sure how to fix this, but the Jessica Livingston story seems to be the exception, not the rule. From what I gather, she and Paul started the company together as equal partners and he soon roped his previous business partners into it. But it was initially the two of them.

When you have a male dominated organization and women rise through the ranks, they seem to typically be broken of such feminine leadership styles. They typically have to lead like a man to get promoted.

I'm not sure how we get there because currently the default expectation is that women learn to lead like men to get leadership roles.

1950 are not representative for whole history and upper classes livestyle was rarely representative of how majority of people lived. Don't use 1950 middle class utopia as representation of how genders historically acted.

Also, those women are not "acting like men" nor doing something against nature. They are acting like people in lead positions, full stop. Just because it used to be only men being in that position in the past does not mean that women in same position should be expected to do something else.

It is not male behavior, it is leader behavior. The "feminine" style is largely adaptation to different situation - the one where you don't have much direct power and where you depend a lot on how people feel about you. It is normal and healthy to adapt to changing circumstances.

I said nothing about the 1950s. Please revisit my first comment where I spoke of my personal struggles to make sense of my life and find a path forward for me personally.

If you would like to back way, way off of your outright dismissive position, we can try to bridge the communication gap here. But if not, I don't see any point in continuing the discussion.

You largely described 1950 middle class ideal in gender roles.

The kind of work women did in the past periods is paid now too. Households were making own candles, cloth, raised animals for food, killed them, bed sheets, soap and so on and so forth. A lot of stuff you buy now would be crafted by women. Outside of 1950 homemaker or rich people, women in the past could not afford to be only nice and gentle. Women sold on local markets (based on local museums) while men went to sell away. Nannies and servants were paid (poorly). Women even worked in mines based on mining museum - they were separating rocks which is not as hard as mining (they were paid less then men obviously). Kids worked too. Also, still in mining areas, male miners tensed to die young while women and kids continued to live and continued to need money. Which practically meant, making things and selling them.

Same after wars. Men died, at periods a lot, women continued to live and needed to feed themselves and rest of family. That is the thing about male protectors and conquerors stereotype - they die or get disabled and remaining men can't replace them so easily.

There was patriarchy but also a very real need to negotiate well on market. A lot of those expectations is rich upper class thing - behavior you can afford only when you are rich enough not to be economically productive.

You largely described 1950 middle class ideal in gender roles.

My first comment was about primate research, specifically bonobos. You are projecting an awful lot that is in none of my comments here.

From comments above:

> Historically, men were in charge of certain kinds of work, the kind that is now paid, and women were in charge of other kinds. These complemented each other.

Seems pretty similar to idealized nuclear families of the mid 20th century

> As we move away from traditional family and tribe or community based social organization towards more paid work, our male leadership patterns seem to have become more dominant and we have lost that balance.

Now we're even talking about "traditional family" organization.

I'm not making any statement about whether this view is right or wrong, and I know plenty of families in traditional roles that lead fulfilling and financially stable lives - my parents among them. That said, these comments absolutely do describe "traditional" families where men and women's work are largely segregated. The above commenter is absolutely not "projecting an awful lot".

> They are acting like people in lead positions, full stop.

No. There are core differences that push individuals towards different leadership styles.

E.g.: "Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men." -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

>As we move away from traditional family and tribe or community based social organization towards more paid work, our male leadership patterns seem to have become more dominant and we have lost that balance. Women with serious careers are frequently socialized to lead like men and they are sometimes harsher than the men as if to "prove" themselves or out of bitterness.

I'm glad you took the risk in your initial post, as you've very well articulated something that I've noticed for a while - but couldn't capture as well. I'm highlighting this bit, because I think it's particularly balanced and insightful. In recent years, we've read about how broken many men are - how they're emotionally shut off and how depressed it makes them in the long run, but when discussing the ills of patriarchy, there's still a large group that attributes it to whining feminists, failing to realize that it hurts us all. Imbalance will always have negative effects - politically, socially, economically, spiritually, etc..

Thank you.

I think that's a really key point and it gets missed because most recorded history is male history. Men operated in the public sphere and most history is about that public sphere. It's really hard to find records at all about what went on in the private sphere. So our written records wind up de facto being an ode to male power and male tactics and we completely miss the fact that there was this whole other thing going on privately and it was a very big part of the world, but there is very little record of it.

So we wind up discounting it entirely and not even recognizing that it existed. It's a huge blind spot.

There's an interesting book about the history of technology for doing housework called "More Work for Mother." It details how in the past 300 years or so, we have very much reframed work in order to divide up domestic responsibilities and paid work. With the rise of money, we needed to free up male labor from the domestic sphere in order to empower men to bring home a bigger paycheck so everyone was better off.

Historically, men beat the rugs. Then we invented vacuum cleaners and vacuuming was "women's work." Historically, men took grain to the mill to be ground into flour. Now you can buy flour at the grocery store.

There were countless ways in which men were involved in running the household that got handed off to women so men could do paid labor. And now women are also doing paid labor and there's all these problems. And people fail to see the connection in part because they don't know how labor was divided up 300 or so years ago. They think the way it was done in the 1950s was always the norm and this is absolutely not true.

So there's a huge piece missing and we don't even see that it is missing and we wonder why in the hell things aren't working smoothly.

> they are sometimes harsher than the men as if to "prove" themselves or out of bitterness

Not out of bitterness, but rather because you are often assumed to be weak, emotional, and incompetent as a women and you need to overcome that negative bias. There's no such negative bias towards men in the role.

I have a female boss now and its the worst job I've ever had. None of this is because she's female, just to point out that it's probably got more to it than just male/female.

Currently I've got a good female boss, with which I appreciate working a lot. But I don't find that she works differently from the other good male bosses I've had the privilege of working with.

Note that I am in France so I think that leadership model here are different from America.