Every week or two, someone asks me a question about Seth Godin. “Why doesn’t he allow comments on his blog?” For the record, Seth answered this, so you could just go read that. In essence, every time someone commented, Seth felt like he’d have to go in, clarify, defend, explain his points, etc, and that it would eat up time. Others were entitled to their opinion, and he’d just choose to respond where he wanted, etc.
I understand that perspective on days when something gets stuck in my craw.
I wrote a post called Women in the Workplace, where I cited two articles that said the number of women leaders was still very low for several businesses. My big point, such as it were, is that maybe women don’t want to lead in the traditional sense that the posts mentioned. That’s all. Nothing about men. Just a thought about the fact that women lead from a different chair a lot of times, and that’s okay, too. I was saying, maybe the stat is misleading because maybe no one wants to fill those seats.
So, then Rieva Lesonsky writes a post calling me naive, misquoting my original post, talking about men’s interests, and telling me not to chase the holy grail.
Okay, but that’s not what I wrote about. So, I left a comment, but because comments are moderated, I find myself here stewing, the way I imagine Seth Godin sometimes finds himself stewing. (Funny that I’m using the word “stewing” because I just told Lindsey Nobles that I took the word to mean angry when maybe it means “thinking”.) When we hold something for moderation, it’s a chance to feel unresolved.
My comment to Rieva was as follows (in case it’s never posted):
I worry that you might have missed my point.
1.) I didn’t ever ask about women leading “like men do,” nor did I even mention men.
2.) My point was that not all women WANT to lead, at least the way leadership is set up now.
3.) Second point was that maybe women are leading “from different chairs” inside and outside of organizations.
I guess before you decide I’m naive, I’d re-read my really brief article and be sure you understand where I’m heading.
I didn’t talk about men in the post, so I’m not assuming all men want to lead. I don’t have any position on men in the post. I didn’t ask why women don’t want to lead; I asked did they, which is a very different question.
The wage gap is closing according to data cited in Maddy Dychtwald’s new book, Influence, which shows that the number of women making $100,000 a year has tripled since 1997 while men’s earnings have stayed relatively flat.
And why would you be sad that someone sheds light on all that’s left to be done? You’re saying you’re happy with how it is and we shouldn’t ask questions? Sounds pretty silly to go that route to me.
I’m not searching for a holy grail. I’m raising a point that clearly had some traction, given that the 80+ comments were all practical blog posts in length, all raised by smart women and men who also had something to say on the topic.
Thanks for your post, but you totally missed the intention of my own post, and you took this in a combative direction when it could’ve been your thoughts to support or augment women’s position.
So there. I can be done stewing. I don’t really have much more to say. I wrote the post. I sent a comment. Life can go on. It’s all just thoughts and opinions, and the mindset was, “Hey, women have choices and maybe they don’t want to be in a box.” Seems like a point.
Oh, one more point: it’s perfectly okay to disagree with me. I just want to be sure that when someone does, they caught the point I was making before they formulate their counterpoint.
Hi, Seth.
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