“You know you are way too nice,” he said. “You should yell more. How will your team respect you if you don’t yell at them.”

At the time I didn’t understand this. When he said it to me, I looked at him and said, “I don’t feel the need to yell at them. I have my own ways of getting results by treating them as equals and projecting an air of authority by being calm and in control. You don’t have to yell to be in charge.”

Now that I’ve started researching the differences between the masculine and feminine approaches to management, I understand his reaction better. The male approach is a single-focused, target oriented, hierarchical way of thinking. It doesn’t take more feminine factors like feeling, connection, emotion, and community into account.

There was something so true and a bit sad that hit me. I remember being on yet another business trip in which I felt the golden handcuffs that attached me to my laptop tighten just that tiny bit more.