The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions, and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace

Based on a nationwide survey and confidential interviews with more than three thousand men, bestselling author of For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn, has written a startling and unprecedented exploration of how men in the workplace tend to think, which even the most astute women might otherwise miss. In The Male Factor, Feldhahn investigates and quantifies the private thoughts that men almost never publicly reveal or admit to, but that every woman will want to know.

Never before has an author gotten inside the hearts and minds of men in the workplace—from CEOs to managers, from lawyers to factory workers—to get a comprehensive and confidential picture of what men commonly think about their female colleagues, how they view flextime and equal compensation, what their expected “rules” of the workplace are, what managing emotion means, and how that lowcut top is perceived. Because the men in the surveys and interviews were guaranteed anonymity, they talk in a candid and uncensored way about their daily interactions with women bosses, employees, and colleagues, as well as what they see as the most common forces of friction and misunderstanding between men and women at work.

Among the subjects The Male Factor tackles are:

• how men, with rare exception, view almost any emotional display as a sign that the person can no longer think clearly—as well as what they perceive to be “emotion” in the first place (it’s not just crying)

• why certain trendy clothes that women wear may create a career-sabotaging land mine in terms of how male colleagues perceive them

• the unintentional signals that can change a man’s perception of a woman from “assertive and competent” to “difficult”

Women will likely be surprised, even shocked, by these revelations. Some may find them challenging. Yet what they will gain is an invaluable understanding of how their male bosses, colleagues, subordinates, and customers react to a host of situations—as well as the ability to correct common misperceptions. The Male Factor offers a unique road map to what men in the workplace are thinking, allowing women the opportunity to decide for themselves how to use the insights Feldhahn reveals.