Freelance creative Julie Seal, among other things, used to work at Meta. She was particularly interested in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s call for “masculine energy” in the workplace. Here, she explores the good and the bad aspects of what that could mean.
I’d love to work in a place with masculine energy. “Sheryl hired great people and taught me how to run a company. She deserves credit for so much of what Meta is today,” said Zuckerberg in 2024. A few months later, he’s saying his former colleague is responsible for the diversity and the ‘culture issue’ brought about by Sheryl’s ‘feminine energy.’
But I think he’s right to do so. Personally, I would love to work in a company with ‘masculine energy.’ To plunge into the clichés, he could mean cutthroat and merciless, lunchtime arm wrestles and willy-swinging competitions, maybe actual shooting range target practice and MMA ‘team-building’ sessions, lunches of only red meat, protein shakes (or red meat protein shakes) and coffee with melted butter.
Some of you will be more familiar with the more British version, office floors exchanging shouty ‘bants,’ copious lunchtime, after work, cheeky bottom-drawer booze-bonding and ‘man-up’ ‘mickey-taking.’
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Maybe it’s like a dating app office I once went for a meeting at where there were photos of naked women on the walls, and the only female employees in hundreds were the high-heeled hot receptionists. (They wanted to attract more women to the app, hence my being invited to help them. Lol).
Or maybe it’s more like the now disgraced fast-fashion mogul who I saw in a meeting publicly berate every member of his staff, including his son, before slipping his hand too far down my back a number of times on the way out.
Or the ‘masculine energy’ I first experienced at work was when I worked for my dad in the school holidays from the age of eight. I valeted the cars he bought written off and did up, or we did painting and decorating. I worked 8-4pm every day and got £5 a week (and a daily fry up at a truck caff) for the pleasure. His masculine energy mainly meant being tight and saying very little of anything.
Later, I experienced the ‘masculine energy’ of working in a very rough estate pub (underage at 16), where I was placed in the middle of the daily fights to ensure they’d stop as “nobody would punch the little blonde girl.” I learned how to deal with perving, leering, requests to take photos of my feet for a fetish mag, filthy comments constantly sprinkled around the commonplace violence.
When I ran my own pub at 20 (the youngest landlady the company ever had), the ‘masculine energy’ came from every delivery man who asked for the manager, incredulous and low-key furious it could be me.
In advertising, the ‘masculine energy’ was different.
This was a professional office environment, so the aggression was passive, with each of the three founders hating and trying to undermine each other in more sophisticated ways than pinning each other up against the toilet cistern. We collected their drugs from the local butcher along with the sausage roll order, and that helped fuel the ‘masculine energy’ nicely (while I was being sent laminated sticky photos of myself from a stalker who worked in the neighboring offices).
In fact, Mark’s right, ‘feminine energy’ actually only really hit when I started work at Meta back in 2016. Sheryl seemed equally in charge, women were encouraged to ‘lean in’, they were respected and in positions of power, and people seemed to care about soft skills and the welfare of the workforce not just stock price.
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One of my early managers, an American powerhouse of ambition mixed with kindness was something totally new to me then. My male manager was the same. He was understanding, he listened, he had empathy and a heart. And as a result, we felt valued, worked harder, and smarter.
So weird, right?
So when I say I would love to work in a company with ‘masculine energy,’ I guess I mean like the men I know and respect most. The masculinity that’s secure in itself enough to champion other people, women included. Or that’s fully-rounded enough to prioritize his family and home life and doesn’t ‘leave it all to the wife.’ That’s mature enough to only take the credit that’s due to them, rather than stealing glory or ideas from others. Or that’s brave enough to want to learn from people different from themselves. Or that’s worldly enough to listen as well as speak. Or that’s wise enough to know that gendering ‘energy’ is pretty old-fashioned in modern workplaces anyway.
It’s not revolutionary to say that all the most successful workplaces are mixed. Mixed genders, backgrounds, skills, experiences, cultures, ambitions and styles. Yes, I’m going to throw you some actual provable data here (not my usual creative tack), but surely a ‘masculine energy’ thing to do is prove out a theory, right?
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McKinsey’s Diversity Wins series has consistently found that companies with greater gender and ethnic diversity in executive teams tend to outperform peers. Its 2019 analysis showed companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than those in the bottom quartile.
Credit Suisse Research Institute studied over 3,000 companies and found that organizations with at least one female board member had higher returns on equity and better stock performance than those with all-male boards.
Boston Consulting Group analyzed 1,700 companies and found that those with above-average diversity in management produced innovation revenue that was 19% higher than companies with below-average leadership diversity.
So, maybe the most powerful and effective ‘masculine energy’ thing to do should be to hire hugely diverse teams across all levels to ensure your company’s success.
And if you want to do the arm wrestles and willy-swinging while you do, that’s fine; the rest of us can look on a laugh and maybe suggest a therapist to help your flailing insecurities.
Julie Seal is a freelance creative director. She has previously worked with Meta and Mother. Chat with her on LinkedIn.