It's Not Sexism - It's Good Manners

I spend more time in London than any other city, with friends, clients or fellow Engage For Success team members, which for me involves a train journey, usually followed by a hop through the tube system. 

Often there are not enough seats to go round - so I spend some of my journey standing up, which is absolutely fine by me.

There are always others in greater need of seating - the elderly, those with injury or disability, families trying to sit together.......but most of the time I give up my seat for a lady. 

Not because I'm sexist or believe women to be the weaker sex, but because I think it's a nice, polite thing to do.

If I was travelling with my Wife, I would not sit down and let her stand - so I find it weird that some men will sit down and watch women standing when they wouldn't dream of letting their girlfriends, wives or mothers do the same.

This is not a generational thing - yesterday I saw an elderly gentleman give up his seat for lady on the tube, a teenage girl did the same on the mainline train. In both cases, many more women were left standing by seemingly fit, able bodied men.

I realise that women have to bear some of the blame here - for decades fear has been instilled into men that by offering kindness to women they may be instantly labelled sexist and publicly humiliated - but I'm pretty resilient to that kind of nonsense so here are my top tips if you feel like developing some manners today. 

If you cannot make eye contact first (while standing and gesturing at the now empty seat),  then stand up, walk over the person you want to give you seat to, smile and say "There's a seat there if you'd like it".

Almost always, they will say "Thank you" and take it. 

If not, the two most common objections are "No thank you, It's OK" or "I'll be getting off at the next stop"

Here are some things you can say in that situation......

On mainline trains this usually means you'll be spending the rest of the journey at the end of the carriage, with a bunch of other people who cannot work on their laptops or spend all their time buried in their smartphone.

An unexpected bonus of this behaviour is that you may find you've started a conversation in the near silence of the modern morgue/library environment of the public transport system - and the journey will pass much more quickly.

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Sexist Misogynistic Over Opinionated Dictators

It's a hot topic, this diversity stuff. Even my evenings with friends can get dominated by the subject - and I'm beginning to think that there may be an unhealthy obsession with this in the workplace, despite my opinion that diversity is critical to success. 

People who think the same way cannot innovate together - my eldest son said to me recently that the problem with adults is they've forgotten how to dream, and don't question 'facts' enough. (Which made me think we should have some under 16's as consultants, but that's a blog for another day)

I spent a day in Oxford this week with some friends, and we talked a lot about this - specifically focussing on perceived sexism both inside and outside the workplace. I say perceived because we found than by engaging those around us to join in the conversation we discovered several different viewpoints.

Here's a simplistic one.  I feel it's right to hold the door open for a lady - but a short discussion revealed that I'll typically always open the door for the person behind me - regardless of gender. Nothing to do with male/female, just good manners.

Not one person we spoke to thought there was anything wrong with giving up a seat on a train for another person who you felt needed it more than you. An elderly gentleman, someone on crutches and yes, in almost all cases the mixed groups around us felt it was OK to give up your seat to a lady.

Thankfully 100% agreed that if that lady was pregnant, it was the duty of any passenger (male or female) to give over their seat. 

We concluded that it was nothing to do with sexism, and all to do with manners. Some people have different values, dependent on upbringing, age and culture.


Guess what? It's the same in the workplace - people are people. Everyone is different, and creating a policy conformist playbook, an extremist HR policy, or a fixed target is the wrong way to ensure that diversity is valued.

Recently I looked at the perceived culture fit of men vs women. Just over 400 managers were assessed by their teams on a number of behaviours (3500+ respondents). Whilst individuals had dramatically different results, when viewed together the conclusion can only be that people are people regardless of gender (or orientation, or race for that matter).

If your company has a high proportion of sexist misogynistic over opinionated dictators, then it's unlikely a policy of diversity inclusion is going to change the underlying environment.

Managers (and companies) with a short sighted view of diverse opinion will struggle with diversity programs. If you're looking for a place to start addressing this issue, make sure that a hidden bias education offering is available in your organisation. An excellent article on this subject can be found here,

The fact remains that appreciating diverse opinion is one of the most effective catalysts for change, and a diverse workforce under good leadership will always succeed in attracting better talent and delivering better results.

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