Alpha Tokenism

Dreamforce, the annual conference and extravaganza, for Salesforce happened recently. It was a cornucopia of showboating, glitz, and hot air. As was expected. Salesforce's CEO, Marc Benioff, outdid himself by having the President of Haiti flown in to kiss his ass in front of thousands of dazed and amused spectators. In all the hoopla, Benioff spent 1.5 hours of the conference keynote spotlighting what a great "humanitarian" he is while laughing about low-wage Walmart workers, talking about poverty while wearing shoes custom made by Christian Louboutin, and boasting about Salesforce giving 1% of profits even though his company has no profits. One media source characterized Benioff as an "egomaniacal buffoon" and I think that sounds about right. For an amusing take on the conference,  see here .

Benioff did one more thing- he spotlighted his commitment to women. He had a whole segment called  Women Rule Tech . He interviewed Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo. Basically, saying how much potential women have and so forth.

From Valleywag:

This impression was reinforced by the rest of the show, where all the big guests.... HP CEO Meg Whitman, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — didn't just get up by themselves and give speeches, but instead had to appear onstage with Benioff, because God forbid anyone else should be the center of attention, ever. The theme of this year's show, Benioff declared, was "powerful women." P.T. Benioff figured he could get some mileage out of this. So he talked a lot of shit about how women make great leaders and wow isn't it great that I'm a man but I'm also so supportive of women."


In all this, two things stood out. First, Benioff was playing the role of alpha. At 6 foot 5, Salesforce's CEO, and center of attention at this conference attended by over 100K, he is well suited to playing the role. The second, like most alphas he is talking the talk - with zero commitment behind his words. How do I know that? Take a look at  Salesforce's own exec staff - of the 22 people, only 4 are women; and one of them appears semi-bogus ("Chief Adoption Officer"). Here's the list:

The executive management team at salesforce.com is comprised of:
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Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO
Parker Harris, Co-Founder
Keith Block, President and Vice Chairman
Jim Cavalieri, Senior Vice President
Alex Dayon, President, Applications and Platform
Scott Dorsey, CEO, Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud
Monika Fahlbusch, Senior Vice President, Global Employee Success
Anthony Fernicola, President, Global Enterprise Sales
Steve Fisher, Executive Vice President, Technology
David Havlek, Senior Vice President, Finance
George Hu, Chief Operating Officer
Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, President, Global Sales
Vivek Kundra, EVP, Industries
Maria Martinez, President, Sales and Customer Success
Brian Millham, Executive Vice President, Global Commercial Sales
Burke Norton, Chief Legal Officer
Patrick Pélata, Chief Automotive Officer and Executive Vice President
Brett Queener, Executive Vice President
Graham Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Jim Steele, Chief Customer Officer
Polly Sumner, Chief Adoption Officer
Frank van Veenendaal, Executive Vice Chairman
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But despite this mismatch between actions and words, women lapped it up. What is this? Alpha Tokenism. I don't want to delve too much into Dreamforce details but rather use it as a concept of this Alpha Tokenism. Alpha tokenism basically describes a phenomenon where women lose their judgment in support of an alpha mainly because of his status and don't look behind the curtain. It's almost as though anything positive from an alpha to a woman should be hung on by them without expecting anything to back it up.

Now let's see how this applies to dating. Similarly, alphas show no overt sign of commitment when "plating" a chick. They don't commit to being exclusive, they want to see the girl once a week, obvious flirtation with other women, etc. And somehow when the girl finds out 8 weeks later, he's dating 2 other girls and he dumps her as a plate, she thinks she deserves a gold medal in victimhood. Yet all the signs were obvious, had they looked, that this was just a f*ck and chuck. Instead, women substitute "wishful thinking" for actual thinking when dealing with an alpha.

Now shifting to the workplace, to be successful in the workplace and to get promotions, women need to win over the 80% of other men who are responsible for giving feedback on co-workers, providing information, serving as collaborators. But in many ways, a woman's instincts fail her. By seeing her beta colleagues as "boring", she eliminates any chance of really winning the trust of her co-workers to move up --- and doesn't. Well a few get chosen as the CEO's secretary, and yes, there a few cases where an Alpha can select let's say a woman head of HR. But for all the real C-suite positions, a broader base of support is needed. But how do women view these men?  CH describes this well :

This social and quasi-sexual dynamic, playing out across corporate hierarchies all over the West, pollutes the minds of women and renders them less able to appreciate the dull ministrations of the less-than-senior-management beta males ..... In the company of beta males, a de facto corporate harem girl is emotionally aloof, cocksure, unfeminine, petulant and entitled. She has felt the presence of a real modern king, a maestro of the symbol manipulation secret society, and now peasant men simply won’t do. So she lashes out at the piss bucket boys with undirected, malevolent spite, for their naive importunings fill her with disgust. Who are these nobody betas, to consult her? She has warmed the cock…les of a king’s heart! No commoner’s girl is she!"


I remember in my workplace, the women in the hallway were talking about  "Lean In" , the pro-woman in the workplace book by Sheryl Sandberg. The only guy's opinion they cared about this was the resident Alpha. And he agreed, but in a distant, conditional way. But they lapped it up. There are mostly men in the office but they didn't ask anyone else's opinion (just as well in my case). But when you think about building support for Women Rule in the office, you might think they would take actual support over Alpha Tokenism. Nevermind, the "alpha" in question here had no management authority or ability to help bring about the desired future state of **** rulership in the C-Suite. But just like the female instinct betrays them in the dating world where they trade love with a decent guy for self-induced psychological torture dating an alpha, so too does Alpha Tokenism lead them astray in the workplace. Selective and uncritical adoration for alphas (especially with token support), and dismissal of the majority of men who actually control their fate - leads to career stagnation.

For the alpha, they are doing what comes naturally. Of course, if they can make an average chick swoon, use her sexually and move on, they will; their interaction is consensual and he only can do what she wants him to do. In the workplace, it makes sense for Benioff to play the hero while committing nothing. He gains customers, burnishes his image without lifting a finger. Women are unused to calling alphas to account because history has embedded the deeply subconscious thought that doing so is dangerous for their health. In fact, their primitive instinct which few women have stared down, clings to any shred of outreach and hopes (foolishly) for the best. But the important point is that as modern humans, we are not prisoners to our evolutionary programming. With feminism, women are stepping into the driver's seat- but with little experience, they are misapplying dated instincts in the modern world and it is creating for them a dead-end. As much as we talk about AWALT, I should point out the wrong kind of women (the majority) are doing this more than women who are in good relationships and getting ahead in their careers. Surrendering to alpha tokenism uncritically for women has meant serving as a freebie prostitute throughout her 20s and leaving her 20s with the psychological damage worse than a prostitute, because the prostitute made peace with the fact that this sex wouldn't lead to anything more and so her sense of love was never fractured. In the workplace, it means choosing token approval from the Benioffs of the world and the resident alphas of the world (with or without seniority) over truly building bridges with most men. It's why stats like this, especially the ones at the top, may not change fast:

http://cisisnotadirtyword.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/iwd.png?w=423&h=819

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And so women wonder about their "dismal" situation- abandoned in relationships and nowhere in the executive teams in the corporate world. Unsurprisingly, similar women who find themselves in an infinite loop of being f*cked and chucked in their personal lives, hamster it in the workplace, flirting with alphas and directing scorn at 80% of their male colleagues and end up getting stuck on the corporate ladder or ostracized. Women want you the world to believe they are 'victims'. But increasingly, people are pointing the finger back in their face. Alpha Tokenism - and women's refusal to do anything but be suckered by it is one of the major reasons women fail in their personal lives and fail to make headway in the professional world -- results brought about by their own choices. Given a chance, women will accept a bad deal from an Alpha, over a good deal from other guys. And women abuse their free will in this way: all during the week, and all during the weekend, 365 days a year.

“But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.”

― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change