SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, June 4, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Women are much better at handling change than men. Men are just trying to survive and too many are wondering, “Now that I am a VP and have a perfect wife, how come I’m not happy?” John Van Vleet of Susan Van Vleet Consultants, estimates “The rate of alcoholism and drug abuse in the boardroom is far greater than on the shop floor (the drugs may be prescribed but they’re still drugs). The problem is that as you move up a corporate ladder, you are allowed to express less and less emotion. Getting to the top has a subtle yet devastating effect.”

The current rate of change is astronomical. Expressing emotion is the first stage of the change process. “Susan and I deliver a Managing Corporate Change© course that teaches that the first reaction to change is always emotional, putting men at a disadvantage right out of the gate. Women are much more expressive about emotions with multiple outlets for those emotion to get through this first stage.”

John continues, “Thirty percent of men with high school diplomas have left the workforce, they see themselves as no longer employable, while over 50k welding jobs are unfulfilled. These are huge and tragic numbers. Men are still looking for their fathers or grandfathers’ job down at the steel mill or the GM plant.”

CEOs and executives are also struggling on the opposite end, finding workers. “They have to process their emotions so they can start to truly understand and lead not just try to control their people. They just cannot understand and gain advantage from this change without knowing how to process emotions.”

Fourteen percent of young men under the age of 25 report that they don’t have one friend who they can share problems with, up from 3% from 10 years ago. Young men in high school are 50% more likely to fail at math, science, and reading than women. By 2030, 90% of all the graduating Ph.D.s in psychology will be given to women. “When I was in grad school, 70% men were receiving this degree. In Ireland, 77% of students receiving B.A.s are women. Young men are in horrible, horrible shape and are failing at an astronomical rate,” laments John.

In his Advanced Men’s Course©, which he offers every year in a retreat setting for mostly executives, John sees men struggling with this conversation. “I teach this class with amazing men from all over the world; with men who know it’s possible to be better than what they are. But cultural training of 40 or 50 years doesn’t get completely unraveled in 3 days. Men are taught to compete for limited resources: one CEO job, one perfect wife, one perfect house. Most men are still taught ‘…big boys don’t cry,’” explains John. Thousands of repetitions of this message means when expressing emotions, you are not a man.”

“Teaching in Venezuela, I was working with all scientists, brave guys, everyone had a PhD. Going into the course, my impression of Latin men was that they’re more open with their emotions than Americans, which is absolutely not the case. Latin men are expressive, yes, but if you talk about sharing your vulnerable emotions with another man, they’re extremely reluctant. They, too, are taught that emotions are not safe and they cannot trust other men with that expression.

“Doing an exercise on confrontation, I asked for two volunteers. We had set up the tables in a horseshoe and I had both volunteers bring their chairs into the center of the horseshoe. I then asked the first volunteer to make his initial statement to begin the confrontation. After spending the entire day practicing listening skills, I told the other participant to listen to the emotions of the person he was confronting—but don’t argue. Even though they knew how to listen to emotion, it was still so outside their culture to listen to someone without arguing to prove their point. Without prompting, the other 10 men in the group brought their chairs inside the U-shape because they wanted to be up close and personal. They were huddled around the 2 guys, wanting to see this magical event where someone listened rather than argued, and it happened.

“Later, two men who were not in the class photoshopped a poster size image of two of the participants in the class, to show them kissing and pinned it on the door of one of the volunteers office door. This is how uncomfortable men are talking about their emotions! This is how big the threat is of the status quo of the culture of men communicating outside the norm. Such is the state of men’s relationships.”

Of course, men collaborate. But, men are far more disconnected from other men than they are from women, and even further disconnected than women are from other women.

“I’m privileged to work with amazing guys, cultural pioneers, who do pour their hearts out and have amazing conversations. They talk about the pain and sense of disappointment, and betrayals from their work and personal lives. From that standpoint, this is very profound and satisfying work. But it’s still hard to get men to commit to taking care of themselves,” admits John. “At the end of the course, men will tell me the course transformed their lives. But when I talk with them 2 months later to ask if they will be returning, answers are often vague and noncommittal. Compare this to Susan’s work where out of the 12 women who attend the Women’s Leadership Retreat©, 11 sign up for the next year’s session the last day of this year’s session. It’s a struggle for men to think about reserving the time to take care of themselves and be with other men, even though they have an enormously satisfying experience.”

In addition to his Advanced Men’s Course, John offers Men Relationships, and Work© and Managing Corporate Change©, as well as individual coaching sessions, in-person and virtually. For more information on John Van Vleet and Susan Van Vleet Consultants, visit SVanVleetConsult.com.

Close Up Radio will feature John Van Vleet in an interview with Doug Llewelyn on Wednesday, June 6th at 1 pm Eastern

Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio

If you have any questions for our guest, please call (347) 996-3389

For more information about John Van Vleet or Susan Van Vleet Consultants Inc., please visit https://svanvleetconsult.com/

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
+1 631-850-3314
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