By Scott H

Scott works in finance and helps private equity firms raise capital. He and his wife Brittany live north of Seattle in Washington and have two children and one on the way.

I am thrilled at the invitation to participate in Manuary for FMh. Recently my participation in Movember was derailed by my genetic inability to grow facial hair, so I view this as a shot at redemption. I should count myself lucky that the church doesn’t define our eternal roles as children of God by our ability to successfully complete biological functions like growing facial hair or… whatever. I’d be in serious celestial trouble.

It seems that FMh is the most exciting progressive Mormon group on the internet today, which is quite a statement given the rate of propagation of new progressive Mormon groups. Of course, wild eyed radicalism has always attracted rebellious youth with the promise of love, freedom, and pants. As a white heterosexual male, I must proceed delicately. My time on the FMh blog has taught me about things like “Mansplaining”—which apparently is not a reference to the Italian soccer player by the same name.

I’d like to address the issue of Mormon men’s attitudes toward women in the workplace. Ten years ago my wife Brittany and I moved to Boston so that I could accept a job in consulting. My college career counselor had suggested I pursue a career in consulting after noting that I had an “uncanny ability to speak authoritatively for hours on end on any subject proffered, in spite of being f***ing clueless about the most basic elements of the subject”. What my college counselor failed to tell me was that SOME consulting firms require that one back up their assumptions with “evidence” and “data” (please visualize me using a snarky tone and air quotes).

He also neglected to tell me that several of my direct supervisors were going to be women. Not just any women but business ninja-women. Women who could pick out a calculation error on a balance sheet from 30,000 feet with one hand while redesigning a pricing matrix with the other hand. Of course, I knew that in liberal bastions like Boston, women worked. I’d seen an episode or two of Ally McBeal. It just never occurred to me that women would be, you know, my bosses.

Unperturbed, I dove in. Over my first year I had a fairly steady mix of ninja-women and ninja-men bosses. The nature of consulting is that every few months you have a new team and a new set of bosses. Then came my first year review. While the reviews were fairly consistent (and on the slightly positive side of mediocre), I noticed that a few of my case leaders talked about my penchant to display a “negative attitude” from time to time, while others talked glowingly of my “positive attitude”. What was really crazy was that the negative attitude comments came invariably from my (wait for it…) women bosses! Being the natural introspective person that I am, I ignored the negative feedback and continued to view myself as the consulting shizzle.

After another year in consulting I transitioned to another company in a different industry. There I had two bosses—one male and one female. After a contentious conversation with my female boss, my male boss pulled me aside and gave me the straight scoop. “You need to check your attitude with her”. Although he didn’t come out and say that I had a problem with women in authority, the connection between “attitude” and “her” was stark in my mind.

Finally it hit me. I had never learned (and to the point – had never been taught) how to work under a woman in a power structure. Worse, I had been taught that power structures were, by their nature, male. From my earliest days, it was men calling the shots, and women taking the orders. At age 12 I was given my first hands on lesson in the male power structure as a deacon’s quorum president. Those eight boys lined up before the sacrament table exactly where I told them to. By age 19, my transition into patriarchal authority progressed when I became a mission zone leader. Now I wasn’t only telling 19 year old men what to do, but slightly older women had to listen up, too! Sister missionaries that had problems were supposed to come to me, and I’d send them on their path (with a good dose of my male wisdom). Women who wanted to get baptized had to clear me first. Armed with my questions about abortion and lesbian activities, you could be sure that this was no easy gauntlet. My mission experience cemented the lessons of my early priesthood experience—that by providential design men and women could work together, but men made sure the whole thing worked how it was supposed to. A magnanimous priesthood leader could allow women to offer up ideas, but it was the man at the end of the day who would receive the inspiration of the Holy Ghost to tie it all together.

The feedback I received in that short interaction at work was among the most important professional feedback I’ve received in my career. After that encounter, I spent more time listening to my female boss, and less time expounding to her (moment of personal head-slapping “Really Scott? She had built a multi-billion dollar firm and had been in the industry twenty years, and you had read the Wall Street Journal a few times? And you were expounding to her?” I digress). What I found was that she was legitimately brilliant and insightful, and through her experience would arrive at better decisions with more regularity than I would. Recently I went and visited her at her new job. She heads investor relations for one of the largest private investment firms in the world. We had a great conversation about our jobs, families and our mutual friends. She has become a mentor to me.

For me, being forced to face the reality of my own misogynistic attitude was painful, but necessary. Over time, as I’ve consciously tried to shift my gender paradigm, I’ve learned to be more forgiving of myself for my earlier approach to female authority figures (although as I sit here typing the embarrassment feels somewhat fresh). Through some reflection, I came to two points of consolation:

1. Point of consolation one: I came by my prejudices honestly. My formative years were spent in church and at home, where the messages were clear: women were to be praised, adored, adulated, and even sometimes listened to. But men lead, and women follow, and if breakthrough inspiration comes, it will come from the guy in pants. Having never been in a hierarchical situation where women were given authority to lead, correct or castigate men, my brain was utterly unprepared to handle a situation in which women did have that authority.

2. Point of consolation two: I was not alone among young Mormon men in this struggle. Recruiters and HR executives that I have spoken with are flummoxed by an apparent contradiction—while Mormon men they’ve recruited tend to be “hungry”, “aggressive” and have a “great desire to prove themselves”, they can also exhibit sexist attitudes with alarming frequency. My Boston consulting firm regularly recruited from BYU, and I was often involved in that process. During one year, a crop of intern candidates was being interviewed at our offices. One of the BYU candidates took a break in between interviews to go to the restroom. While walking through the halls, he passed a woman walking the other way. This candidate looked at her, smiled at her, and then… he winked at her. It just so happened that this woman was a senior partner with the firm. She immediately walked into the interview area, asked one of the interviewers who this candidate was, and proceeded to recount the incident. The candidate didn’t get the job. Other women I’ve encountered talk of being disregarded, belittled and addressed condescendingly by Mormon men they lead and work with.

In 2007, Jeff Benedict wrote a book called “The Mormon Way of Doing Business”. The book contains the stories of a dozen or so Mormon men who have achieved the pinnacle of success in corporate America. I’ve had the privilege of meeting many of the men highlighted in this book. One of them sent me on my mission. There is much that is admirable about the work that these great leaders of industry of the late 20th century. However, the workplace of the western world has changed and will continue to change, and if we are to ever have a book on Mormon leaders of corporate America in the 21st century, Mormon men and women will need to learn better how to be led by smart, capable women leaders. If Mormons cannot experience a truly balanced power paradigm at home or church today, they will be a step behind in succeeding in one in the workplace tomorrow.