Okay, here we go again. The new rap on Sonya Sotomayer is that she is “overly aggressive,” maybe even a “bully” based on comments by anonymous lawyers on the almanac of the Federal Judiciary.
I have to admit that the whole debate makes me tired. I have constantly advised my female coaching clients that they simply do not has as much “bandwidth” as men, even in this day and age.
What I mean by that is that they are walking a tightrope. They can’t be too angry or, of course, they will be labeled with the B word. They can’t be too soft, or they won’t be tough enough. Men, of course, have the same kind of constraints in corporate America; they also have to be charming to be liked but the road they walk is simply wider.
As I wrote in my book Stop Pissing Me Off! What to do When the People You Work With Drive You Crazy, one of my clients learned the hard way that the war of the sexes still rages in the workplace. Coached by a mentor at her old law firm to be direct with support staff, she endeavored to do that in a new firm. She was brief, clear and direct. It failed miserably. Although the terms law firm and soft culture often don’t belong in the same sentence, my coaching client didn’t recognize that the new firm did, indeed, have a much softer culture. Consequently, the support staff found her approach to be nothing more than condescending and abrupt antics.
She had run smack into the old gender stereotype: men can be rewarded for hard-charging and direct, even angry behavior, but women may be penalized for the same tactics. Instead of being applauded, they’re called bitches. I had to inform my client of the sad truth that women’s styles are still examined differently. Women who fail in male-dominated workplaces leave a trail behind them: “We tried hiring a man but it didn’t work out.” It’s not fair, it’s not legal; but it does still happen.
NPL legal reporter Nina Totenberg analyzed the oral arguments of Sotomayor and found that her style was tough and blunt but no more so than other judges, especially when compared to notoriously tough judges such as Supreme Court Justice Scalia. Early in her judicial career Sotomayor was criticized as being too blunt, and her mentor Judge Guido Calabresi, former Yale Law School Dean, started keeping track, comparing the substance and tone of her questions with those of his male colleagues and his own questions.
As he told Totenberg “And I must say I found no difference at all. So I concluded all that was going on was that there were some male lawyers who couldn’t stand being questioned toughly by a woman. It was sexism in its most obvious form.”
Since I spent ten years standing in front of federal judges, I frequently joke to my speaking audiences that they can’t insult me, I’ve been insulted by professionals. (Not that they’re not professionals, it’s just not their job to insult me.) The people who are critiquing Sotomayor for behavior that most seasoned trial attorneys would find pretty typical should just get a grip!

You may not have your cubicle assaulted by Somali pirates, but violence is still an issue that arises in plenty of workplaces. And even one incidence of violence in the workplace is one too many.

This is not the kind of thing that we can ignore. Most people who have been violent have made threats beforehand. Ignoring it and hoping it will go away — not a good strategy. Are you pooh-poohing it? Cutting someone slack? Being understanding? Maybe that’s not what the situation demands.