Stop Sh*tty Comments From Undermining You by Darrell Farrow

Stop Sh*tty Comments From Undermining You – Transcript

by Sophie Odgers

(Edited for length and clarity)

Intro

Okay, so for those of you who don't know me, I've worked in the mining and exploration industry as a geologist for over 30 years and I spent a good portion of that time working in the oldest of old-school boys' clubs; the South African mining industry. One of the things that happened, was when I started off my career with my shiny new degree in geology, I was absolutely horrified to discover that I was a female geologist. I'm still trying to figure out what the difference is between a geologist and a female geologist - so if anybody here happens to know, please do tell me.

At the same time, I discovered that in South Africa, they did not employ women as geologists in the field or on the mines; there went my aspirations of working out in the field in remote areas, which is one of the reasons why I studied geology. Anyway, as some of you might know, the mining and exploration industry is a very boom and bust industry. When we go through a downturn, they lose geologists, and geologists have to eat, so they go off and do something else with their time and they don't come back to geology. Then, we get back into an upswing and they're desperate for geologists.

So what happened for me, which was a very lucky break, was they got into a situation where they were absolutely desperate to fill jobs; they lowered their standards and employed me as a geologist on the mines and that's why today I'm going to talk to you about shitty comments. At the time I was the first woman to be employed on the mines as a geologist and the pushback was enormous.

Examples of Sh*tty Comments

One of the things that I want to just say right upfront is that I'm going to give you a few examples of sh*tty comments and some of these sh*tty comments are terrible. So just be warned. Nearly all of the sh*tty comments that I'm going to share with you were comments that were actually made to me…a couple of them were made to other people that I know. Examples of shitty comments:

What Do Sh*tty Comments Do to Women?

They put us down. They make us angry. They make us cry. They make us fume and fret. They make us run through endless scenarios of why that comment was unjustified, and they also make us endlessly justify why we have the right to be here. Eventually, what happens is we internalize all of these comments and that's when it gets dangerous, because internalizing comments leads to feeling that we're not worthy; feeling we don't deserve to be in our roles and contribute; second guessing ourselves; constantly justifying ourselves; not positioning ourselves so that we are heard; questioning our right to apply for or to hope for that promotion; not positioning ourselves for that coveted promotion and not applying for the job.

Ultimately, taking these comments on board totally undermines our ability to work properly, and it also undermines our ability to contribute effectively and eventually that leads to burnout. And that's when women say… “it's all too much,” they quit and they move on to something else. I can honestly tell you that some of the lowest points in my career were when I saw other women just saying, "You know what? This is just too much. I'm leaving." That's when I really felt like, "Why am I doing this?"

Statistics: Why Women Leave The Tech & Mining Industries

Indeed surveyed a thousand women in the tech sector and what they found was that 56% of women in tech leave before they reach mid-level. That's quite a horrifying statistic if you think about it. Why? Well, the reasons that they found people were leaving was a lack of pay equity, a lack of career advancement, slow salary growth, bias and discrimination, work-life balance, sexual harassment, and inadequate parental leave. I find that quite an interesting statistic, because often when you hear people talking about women leaving the industry, they say it's, "Oh, well, you know, women, they go off and start families and they may leave." Quite clearly there are a lot of other reasons why women leave.

When we think about shitty comments, what we're actually talking about is bias and discrimination. Another study, the Ramp Up study, looked at the status of a woman in Canada's mining and exploration sector. They found that 30% left because of inflexible work arrangements, 14% because of workplace culture, and another 14% because of having to travel to remote locations - 12% because of bias and discrimination, and another 12% because of childcare or parental leave practices. What we're looking at when we talk about shitty comments is workplace culture bias and discrimination. So, what we actually have is approximately 25% of women leaving because of the culture of bias and discrimination and that's pretty horrifying.

How Do We Handle Sh*tty Comments?

How do we handle shitty comments? Well, the person who related this comment to me, "Are you here to take the minutes," was a relatively senior technical professional in our industry who had gone into a meeting and a gentlemen who had –if we can call him a gentleman–actually worked with her before and knew her, walked into the meeting and said, "Huh, so what are you doing here? Are you here to take the minutes?" And she didn't have a response at all. She just didn't know what to say. If we think about, how was she feeling when that comment was made to her? She was feeling put down… angry—she was fuming. She was thinking about why that comment was just so unjustified. And she was also justifying her right to be here.

If you think about it in that moment, when that shitty comment was made to her, what's actually going on internally is she's having a little meltdown and that's what children do if you think about it. Why do kids have meltdowns? Because everything to little children is a life-or-death crisis. They don't have the resources to handle it. Also, for little children, it's all about “me”. They haven't yet developed the sense of others.

What about you? You're an adult. As adults, we know this isn't a life-or-death crisis, and we do have the resources to handle it and it's not all about us. One of the things that I really would like you to take away from this talk, if you take nothing else away from it, is that 99% of shitty comments are more about the person who's making the comment than it is about us. It's what's going on for them. Maybe they're feeling insecure, threatened by having a woman doing the same sort of work that they are doing, I don't know, but there's something going on for them that's causing them to make that shitty comment.

As adults, we can stay in our rational brain when we’re dealing with shitty comments - what we have to do is activate our adult mode, basically step into adult mode. Don't go into child mode and react emotionally and have a little melt down, but rather step into adult mode. Remember that this isn't a life-or-death crisis, and that we have the resources to handle it - that's the adult mode motto.

#1: The Silent Treatment

The first strategy is The Silent Treatment. "She didn't deserve that promotion. She's all sizzle and no steak." This was a comment made to somebody I know, and clearly what was going on here was the person who was making this comment probably thought they should've got the promotion and not her, right? And really, it just doesn't deserve a response. I mean, there's just no point in making any response whatsoever. The formula for the silent treatment is basically just don't believe the lie, ignore it, and say nothing. The benefits of the silent treatment are that you conserve your energy, and you simply just don't dignify it with a response.

#2: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

When I started working on the mines as the first female that had been employed as a geologist, the pushback was enormous. One particularly vociferous mining engineer said, "What? We can't have a woman doing this job." And honestly, there was just a barrage of comments. I realized that there was absolutely no way that I could possibly handle all these comments, so I decided that I was just simply going to ignore them, say nothing, get on and do a darn good job. Interestingly enough, that's exactly what I did and the person who made this comment, "What? We can have a woman doing this job," ended up being one of my staunchest supporters on the mine because I took over a job that another geologist had been doing. Basically, I had to log all these trenches. This geologist had a huge backlog of trenches that hadn't been logged and I had to catch up that backlog. Basically, I ended up doing a better job than they'd been doing and this person then ended up really supporting me.

So, the formula for Actions Speak Louder Than Words is: don't believe the lie, ignore it, and do a good job. The benefit is: the proof is in the pudding. You don't get in a fight, and you get support and respect.

#3: Cover Your A$$

This is something that I teach a lot of people and anybody who knows me well would know that one of the things that I say to a lot of my clients is, "Put things in writing." I was told men are simply not going to listen to a woman and my response was, “Well, so what?” They don't have to listen to me; I don't care; It's not my problem if they don't listen to me. I'd go out every week - twice a week - onto the mine where I was the mine geologist and I'd go onto the pit super, and we’d talk about what was going to the plant, what was going to the waste dump. I knew full well that he certainly wasn't going listen to me. So what would I do? I'd go back to my office and in the afternoon, I'd sit down and I'd write a memorandum. I'd say, as per our discussions this morning these are my recommendations. I'd add maps, plans, whatever else I needed to. I would send it to the pit super and I would copy it to chief geologist.

Sure enough, what happened? He didn't listen to me. Surprise, surprise. At the end of the month when he hadn't made his grade, the assistant general manager, who's essentially chief operations officer, was out there on the mine trying to find out what the hell was going on. “Why haven't you made grade?” And of course, the pit super was saying, "Well, you know, it's that bloody useless geologist. She hasn't got a clue what she's doing." And so of course I got called in to please come explain myself. I asked lots of questions, you know, "What did you do? What went through the plant? What went to the dump?" et cetera and got him to answer all those questions. Then when he'd finished telling us what he'd done, I pulled out my memorandum and I said, well, had you followed my recommendations we wouldn't be having this conversation. I only ever had to do that once. After that, I got incredibly good support from the assistant general manager, so much so that it was a custom on the mine that all the head of geology, head of metallurgy etc., would go out with the assistant general manager once a month and they'd go to all the operations and discuss what was going on.

One day I came into the office to find the chief geologist with a huge smile on his face and said, "Oh, I wish you could have been there this morning." And I said, "What happened?" And he said, "Well, we were on our mine tour and this particular pit superintendent was saying, 'I'm doing this and I'm doing that.' He was wanting to look smart and clever in front of the assistant general manager and the assistant general manager simply said, 'Have you spoken to Rocky about this?' Because Rocky was his nickname for me. And the guy went 'Well, no.' And he said, 'Don't you ever do another effing thing on this effing mine without talking to Rocky first!'" which really pleased my manager immensely, because this particular pit super used to give all the geologists a hard time. He made an extra special effort for me seeing that I was female.

So, the formula for Cover Your Ass is basically don't make it your problem. Ignore it. Document, document, document, document. Publicize. If you're writing a memorandum, copy it to the relevant people. The benefits of covering your ass are that you look great, they look like a fool, and you get support and respect.

#4: Step Into Their Shoes

I got told, “Black men won't work for a white woman.” And my response was, "Hmm, is that true?" The trenching project that I took over, as I mentioned, there was this huge backlog, and I was busy catching it up. The backlog was such that some of the trenches had been dug so long ago that they had literally blown closed with windblown sand. I started backwards, and eventually I got to those trenches that hadn't been logged that had blown closed. I went to the trenching gang and I spoke to the team leader; the trenching gang was a gang of black men, and the team leader was a black man. I said to him, "Please, I really need some help. I need him to go and dig those trenches out that have blown closed with windblown sand." And he said to me, "No." So I said, "Okay." And I sort of asked him more, you know, "Why is that?" And he said, "Well, you see my team gets a bonus. We have a certain meterage of trenches to dig every month and if we dig more than that meterage, we get a bonus and I am not giving up my team's bonus to go and redo work that we've already done." Well, hell, I couldn't do anything but agree with him. I mean, I would've said the same thing. No way, I'm not going to sacrifice my team's bonus just because the geologist didn't get their act together to log the trenches in time.

I said to him, "Yeah, that makes sense." "Tell me, do you, by any chance have a shovel?" And he looked at me and he said, "A spare shovel?" And he said, "Yeah." So I said, "Well, could I borrow it?" And he said, "Yeah." So I grabbed the shovel and I jumped into the trench, and I started digging it out. The next thing I looked up and I had all these faces looking down at me and they were horrified 'cause they'd never seen a white woman in a trench digging it out. They all jumped into the trench with me and we all happily dug the trench out. And then I was able to sit down with the team leader and he said, "I'll help you - that's not a problem, I'll help you." We sat down and we worked out a plan so that he wouldn't lose his bonus for his team and at the same time, he'd dig a couple of trenches out for me, you know, slowly enough that I could get them logged without them blowing closed again.

What was really interesting after people telling me that black men won't work for white women, I actually had the best production out of that team out of all of the geologists and their teams. So, the formula for Stepping Into Their Shoes is don't believe the lie. If I believed that, you know, black men wouldn't work for a white woman, when that team leader told me, "Nope, I'm not gonna do this." What would I have done? I would have been a real pickle. Just ignore it, have curiosity and respect and consideration for other people and that goes a long way. The benefit of stepping into their shoes is that you form good working relationships, get the job done and motivate better performance.

#5: Hand It Straight Back

"Are you here to take the minutes?" When this person told me the story about, "Are you here to take the minutes," my immediate response was your response should have simply been, "No, I thought you were!"

"So you must be an affirmative action appointment." When I was given a senior position at head office, I went down to lunch with the rest of the people in my department and the chap sitting next to me turned to me and said, "So you must be an affirmative action appointment." He must have seen my face sort of look of shock and horror and so he sort of started to backpedal and he said, "Well, either that, or you must be bloody good." I said to him, "I guess you must be right. Had I been white and male, I could have been bloody useless and they still would have given me the job." And he was absolutely horrified.

We went on to become quite good friends and good colleagues, and the number of times he turned around and said to me, "You know, Darrell, I never thought about it. I just, it never even occurred to me." It's basically what you would call unconscious bias, and by just making a comment like that, it made him stop and think and change that bias that he had.

A True Sh*tty Comments Success Story

I went off to Whistler one day with my partner and a friend and when we got into the gondola, there were already five people on the gondola. They were five guys, and these guys were obviously all together going off skiing for the day. We squished into the gondola and it was all this, sort of, like, joking and saying, "Oh, well, it's really squishy in here." And the guy next to me turns around and says, "Is that your hand feeling up my leg?" And my immediate response was, "You wish." At which point all of his mates burst out laughing and he was the butt of the joke, not me. And I really didn't feel bad about making him the butt of the joke because had I been a young and shy woman, I would have been absolutely mortified and embarrassed by that comment. What he was really doing was embarrassing me or trying to embarrass me in order to make himself look good in front of his mates.

So, the formula for handing it straight back is don't believe the lie, make a joke at their expense, make a joke that elevates you. The benefit of handing it straight back is that it can cause fun, and it also highlights the absurdity of some of these comments and creates awareness. It sounds so difficult, right? I mean, in the moment, it's hard to think of a comeback.

Let me tell you a true story; when I started out working, I was working as a typist in what they call the personnel department, which is essentially an HR department and there were two personnel officers. One was female, and one was male, and I arrived early on my first day of work. I was working as a typist to save up the money to put myself through university so that I could become a geologist - not a female geologist, a geologist - and I arrived bright and early and I went up to the first floor. At the entrance to the department were these glass doors. I saw through the glass doors that there was only one person in the department, and it was the male personnel officer and I was too shy and terrified to walk into that room. What did I do? I turned tail, walked down the stairs, walked out of the building and stood on the corner. I watched the entrance and I waited until the female personnel officer arrived for work and then I followed her into the building and went upstairs.

Fast forward a good number of years when I was employed at head office in the senior management position. The person who employed me wanted to make sure that they got the right person for this job, and he spoke to every single person I'd ever worked with. One male manager who was on this mine where I had been the resident geologist, highly recommended me for the job and he said, "There's just one thing you need to know about Darrell." And so this person said, "What's that?" And he said, "She's one woman who doesn't take any shit from anybody."

It Takes Practice

So how did I go from being the shy, terrified little person to having a reputation of being a woman who just doesn't take any shit from anybody. Basically, it takes practice, but it also takes something else. Don’t internalize these things! Because I had a very strong belief that I had just the same right as anybody else to be here and to do this job, that strong belief helped me to say, "Look, I'm not taking this." Then on top of that, it just took practice.

Summary & Homework

My homework for you is - memorize the adult motto: "This isn't a life-or-death crisis and I have the resources to handle it." And most importantly, "It's not about me." Don't take it on, don't internalize it - it really isn't about you. Then, practice the strategies. It really is a case of figuring out which of these strategies to employ in the moment. Some comments - they're just not worth even responding to; just ignore them. The other thing is get on and do a good job – actions often speak louder than words, and cover your ass, document things, because that gives you backup. I mean, even if you have somebody who's bullying you in the workplace, just document every single incident, date, time, and this is what's happened. It takes the emotion out of it, it takes the uncertainty out of it and when you look back at that, you can see, okay, I'm not imagining this. This is just not okay and you have a record that you can use.

The other strategy is Stepping Into Their Shoes. Sometimes just being curious and finding out like, "Okay, so what's going on for you that you need to make that comment?" Or, "What's really happening here?" "What's the real issue? Not what they tell me it is." And last but not least —learning how to hand it straight back. I never was able to come back like that, but these days, most times I'm able to come back with a comment, pretty smartly and that just took practice, lots of it.