Rejected Essays: She Called It Managing ‘Like a Man.’ I Call It Assertive

In the interest of better understanding which of my essays get picked up by editors for publication, I started sharing the ones that didn’t sell. After all, there must be a reason they didn’t resonate, right?

The Backstory

This essay was a slow burn when I was writing it. I started it in 2018, years after this snapshot of time happened, and rewrote the bulk of it in 2020. It’s also gone through several headline rewrites. Along the way, I pitched it twice in 2020 and several times more recently, but didn’t get any takers.

So why not? That’s always the question I want to answer. In this case, I think it came down to timing and interest. From a writing standpoint, I don’t think the quote lede really works. I like it, but this is probably a case where I needed an editor to talk me into a different lede.

This might have sold better in 2016, six months before the election. It might also have benefitted from being pitched to anthologies instead of magazines and women’s publications. It could also be that because of its specificity — I am writing as an editor, an industry with specialized customs and skills — it just didn’t resonate with a wider audience.

What do you think?

The Essay

She Called It Managing ‘Like a Man.’ I Call It Assertive

“You manage like a man.” 

She says this as we sit in a nice Portland, Maine, restaurant together having a decadent lunch that I will later expense. I, the manager; she, the employee. From the outside, we look like two professionals — both in heels and well-coiffed.

We’re at one of the few occupied tables. It’s mid-afternoon — after the typical work lunch hour rush— and she’s brought me here so I could see the owners fawn over her. She plays it off as unexpected, but I know this was a deliberate move. It speaks to her expertise, she thinks.

It’s the mid-2010s. Just a business lunch.

She wants a raise and more attention and to be valued. But no one is getting raises right now, warm hellos from sources or not. It wasn’t that long ago that the last round of layoffs shrunk the newsroom. Lunches like this are a small gesture in a time of financial strain.

I’ve been managing her for a year and it’s been a steep crawl uphill developing an editor-writer relationship. 

She works in a satellite office, two hours south of our main office. Ours is a relationship of phone calls, requests that she attend occasional meetings in person, instant messages and emails. It’s a relationship forged over questions in her stories and discussing her ideas. 

But she also doesn’t like how direct I am, how brief my instant messages are or the fact that she’s being edited. 

She wants effusive salutations. She wants more phone calls to say hello. She wants a lot.

We have a job to do. Ours is a fast-moving industry with deadlines throughout the day. 

I manage my staff the way I like to be managed: without nuance or beating around bushes. Just say what you mean and mean what you say, a phrase I utter a lot. And yet …

This, she has decided, is a masculine way of managing.

Apparently, because I am a woman, my work emails — even the brief midday ones with direction about assignments — should begin with an array of pleasantries saying hello and asking about her day, week, year. I should be more friendly, more personable, more careful to be perceived as pleasant as I ask her to call another source or check out a different angle.

Her statement settles around me, raising a variety of internal dialogues. It’s misogynistic and old-fashioned, something you might hear in the dialogue of an 80s movie. Coming of age in the heyday of IBM, where so many members of my family worked, I heard the stories of gender-coded interactions and underestimating women in power. I am sensitive to any idea that codes behavior as male or female, as if it’s that cut and dry and lacking in nuance. It’s not. 

I’m alternately outraged and curious by the patriarchy in her statement. Like an acid gnawing at the edges of my mind, it corrodes. 

Outside, I remain cool. I give a little smile.

I don’t lead with emotions. I am direct in my communications and expect the same of my employees. We begin phone calls with pleasantries, but not work emails or instant messages. While I absolutely care about each of my writers, I also keep an eye on what’s important: doing our jobs well. 

I am a woman in power. But my gender shouldn’t matter. Work communications are business — they are the communication of directions and the sharing of information. Should I be judged by how many words I write before getting down to business? Is that the test of a good leader? I don’t think so.

Later, as I make the long drive north home, I mull the statement over more. I realize that while I should be offended by what she said, I am not. Coming from a woman, this feels like a betrayal. It makes me realize that the progress of the last half-century is only as good as how we interpret it. This day, this interaction, feels like a setback for women everywhere.

No, what she means doesn’t offend me — it’s how she says it. It’s the fact that she seems to think that my breasts and vagina should dictate how I communicate basic instructions. 

Perhaps my bra size should shape my management style, too? Are my words too big for my cups?

Maybe the presence of my vulva should translate to “Good morning. It’s a beautiful day out there — is your day off to a good start? Have a good evening last night?”

No. They don’t. They won’t. They shouldn’t.

I want to hear about the stories she is writing, the scoops she has, the ideas she’s mulling. I want to push her to be the best writer she can be. I want to weigh options together for how to illustrate a story. This is the work. These are the interactions that help our department succeed, getting better placements in the newspaper and generating more attention online. 

These are the things that will earn her that raise when the money’s there. 

Instead, she wants to dwell in a gender-coded, misogynistic place where I am not “nice” or “friendly” or “feminine” enough. That’s fine. If that’s the way she sees me, I can’t change that.

But I won’t accept it. I won’t let her drag us down into a place where fluff matters more than performance. 

No, the patriarchy isn’t going to win today.