Masculine Energy at Work Has a Price Tag. Here Is Who Pays It.

Oct 9

10 min read

Updated: Oct 15

Erica Anderson Rooney talking with women leaders about masculine energy at work.

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.

The loudest person in the meeting gets called a leader. The woman who kept the project alive, calmed the client down and trained the new hire gets called "supportive."

That is masculine energy at work, and you have been paying for it for years. So has your company.

I spent 15+ years in HR, climbing to Chief People Officer. I sat in the rooms where pay, promotions and "culture fit" got decided. I want to show you what this culture costs in dollars, and then what you can do with that number.

You Have Sat in This Meeting

He interrupts, and people call it conviction. You make the same point with the data behind it, and you get told to "be more strategic."

He answers email at 11 p.m. and it reads as commitment. You leave at 5 for pickup, log back on at 8 and deliver the same work, and somebody wonders out loud about your bandwidth.

He takes the big risk without checking with anyone. When it lands, he is bold. When it fails, the team cleans it up, and a lot of that cleanup is yours.

Then review season comes. He gets "ready for the next level." You get "great team player" and "the glue of this group." Lovely words. They come with a much smaller raise.

You're not crazy. You read the room correctly. There is a contest being scored in that room, and nobody handed you the rules.

I will never forget sitting in a room filled with the “executives” and “leaders” of the company where I was a Chief People Officer. We had to make some tough decisions that day, and as the CPO, my job was to help “calibrate” those decisions. As I sat back, I saw the trend emerging. The women who were quieter, kept their head down, and did really great work, but seldom shouted it out were not even brought up. But the men who were loud about their own actions (even the ones that honestly, weren’t that great, were the ones that were getting the words “retain” next to their names.

I kept hearing words like “potential” being attached to the loud ones, and “not quite ready yet” or “lacking leadership potential” to the women who were quieter. After that, I heard of the rumblings in the hallways. I watched the best women exit on their own, and the ones that remained became defeated, passive, and frustrated.

What Does Masculine Energy at Work Cost Women and Companies?

The phrase went mainstream in January 2025, when Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's podcast and said, "Masculine energy I think is good," while arguing that corporate culture had lost too much of it (Fortune covered it that week).

This month in Fast Company, Laëtitia Vitaud added up what that ideal costs in a piece worth your time. She describes workplaces running on "exhausting productivity theater." I read it as a former CPO, and I want to add what I know from the inside.

Start with who is at the top. In 2026, a record 56 women run Fortune 500 companies. That record is 11.2% of the list, according to Fortune's June 2026 count. The Women in the Workplace 2025 report from McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, published in December 2025, found women hold 29% of C-suite roles, the same as in 2024. And for every 100 men promoted to manager, 93 women were.

So the people deciding what "leadership" looks like are still mostly men. That shapes what gets rewarded.

The contest has four rules

Researchers Jennifer Berdahl, Peter Glick and Marianne Cooper gave this culture a name in 2018: the masculinity contest. (It is an older study. It is also the original, and I have not read a clearer description since.) They surveyed thousands of workers in the U.S. and Canada and found four unwritten rules, which they laid out in Harvard Business Review:

Show no weakness. Strength and stamina. Put work first. Dog eat dog.

Read those again and think about your last performance review. Their finding was blunt. Workplaces that score high on those four rules are "highly correlated with organizational dysfunction."

The star who costs more than he earns

Every company has one. He hits his number, and people quit his team every few months.

In 2015, Michael Housman and Dylan Minor published a Harvard Business School working paper called "Toxic Workers." It is from 2015 and it is the original study. They looked at 58,542 workers across 11 firms. Avoiding one toxic hire saved a company an estimated $12,489 in turnover costs. Hiring a top 1% performer added an estimated $5,303.

That is more than two to one. And the authors say the $12,489 leaves out lawsuits, regulatory penalties and the hit to morale, so the real cost is higher.

Your company is paying more to keep the jerk than it would earn from hiring a superstar. (Let that one sit for a second.)

Men pay for it with their safety

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in February 2026 that 5,070 people died from work injuries in 2024. Women were 413 of them, or 8.1%. Roughly 92% were men.

A lot of that comes down to who holds the most dangerous jobs. Culture plays a part too. Robin Ely of Harvard Business School and Debra Meyerson of Stanford studied two offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, about as macho a workplace as exists. The company had changed how the crews worked, so that admitting a mistake and asking for help became normal. The company's accident rate fell 84%, and production, efficiency and reliability all beat the industry's previous benchmark (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2006, the original research).

Fewer people got hurt and the platforms made more money. I would love for every CEO who believes toughness is what produces results to read that one.

Women pay for it in the paycheck

Somebody has to onboard the new hire, plan the offsite, take the notes and smooth things over after the blowup. Linda Babcock, Maria Recalde and Lise Vesterlund, whose research became the book The No Club, call this non-promotable work. Their studies found women volunteer for it more than men, get asked to do it more than men, and say yes more often when asked. (They summarized it in Harvard Business Review in 2018, and that is the original research too.)

That work keeps the team running. It almost never shows up in a promotion case. Promotions are where the raises are. So the cost of this culture lands in your paycheck, year after year.

Here is what I would do with all of this, whether you work inside a company or you own one.

Woman leader presenting her results in a team meeting.

Learn the Four Rules So You Can See What Is Being Scored

Most feedback women get about "style" traces back to one of those four rules.

"You need more presence" usually means strength and stamina. "We are not sure about your commitment" means put work first. "You need to be tougher on your team" means dog eat dog.

Once you can name the rule, you can stop taking the feedback as a verdict on you. Then move the conversation to results. Ask your manager, "What result would you have needed to see to rate me one level higher?" Write the answer down. Now you have a target made of outcomes, and you can hit it and prove you hit it.

Put Your Name on the Work That Holds the Team Together

I say this to the women in HER Collective all the time: if you don't have a receipt, it didn't happen.

The onboarding, the client you calmed down, the two people you talked out of quitting. All of that has a dollar value. Your company would have paid a recruiter and lost months of work to replace those two people. So write it the way finance would. Something like: "Retained two senior analysts who were interviewing elsewhere" or "Got three new hires to full productivity in six weeks."

Then say it out loud in your review, with your name attached. Take the credit. Put your name on it.

And the next time the offsite needs a planner, try this: "I ran the last two. Whose turn is it?" You are allowed to hand that work around. The time you get back goes to the projects that get people promoted and paid.

Get Someone Speaking for You Before the Meeting Happens

Here is the belief I built HER Collective on. Good work does not speak for itself. Some people just have someone speaking for them.

The data backs it up. The same Women in the Workplace 2025 report found that employees with sponsors were promoted at nearly twice the rate of employees without one. At the entry level, 45% of men had a sponsor. Only 31% of women did.

Promotion decisions get made in rooms you are not in. I know because I was in them. The person who gets the yes almost always has a senior leader in that room vouching for her work.

So pick one senior leader who has seen your results. Be specific with the ask: "My review is in March. When my name comes up, would you be willing to speak to what I did on the pricing project?" Give her the receipts so she has the numbers ready.

If You Run the Company, Change What Gets Counted

This one is for the business owners and the women who lead teams. You set the scoring now.

Before you promote your top seller, look at how many people have left his team in the last 12 months. Pull turnover by manager. Read the exit interviews for that team side by side. Look at who gets promoted out of each group and who never does.

If I were your CPO, that turnover-by-manager report is the first thing I would put in front of you. Then I would put a dollar figure next to it. Remember the math from the toxic worker study: $12,489 saved by avoiding one, $5,303 gained from a superstar.

Then pay for what makes you money. If a manager keeps her people, develops them and gets them promoted, put that in her bonus plan. Whatever you pay for, you will get more of.

Men Have Just as Much to Gain

I want to be clear about something. Plenty of men are worn out by this contest. They are the ones in that fatal injury count. They are the ones who cannot admit they need help, or leave at 5 for their own kid's game without a comment from somebody.

The men on those oil platforms did better work once they were allowed to say "I made a mistake." So will the men on your team.

Listening, developing people and calming a conflict before it blows up are leadership skills. They make companies money, and the research above shows it. My conversation with Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, on the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors podcast goes deep on this. Listen to how she turned empathy into a C-suite job.

A culture that only rewards one way of leading is an outside barrier. It has nothing to do with your skill. I call that a glass ceiling, and I explain the difference between a glass ceiling and a sticky floor here.

One more number. In that 2025 report, only 54% of companies said women's career advancement is a high priority. So please do not wait for your company to fix the scoring before you ask for what you have earned.

What I Want You to Take From This

You have been reading your workplace correctly this whole time.

The way you work (steady, prepared, good with people, careful with risk) makes companies money. The research says so in dollars. You have earned the title and the pay working the way you already work.

So make sure your work has your name on it, a number next to it, and a senior voice behind it. Those three things are what get you paid. If you want more on how promotions get decided, the Getting Promoted section of our blog is where I keep it.

Women in HER Collective working together in a group coaching session.

Come Practice This With Us

It is hard to practice any of this inside your own company, where the people who could vouch for you are often competing with you. That is why I built HER Collective. It is the room I could not find when I needed it. We meet live every week for group coaching, we bring in an expert for a masterclass every month, and we do hands-on AI training so your results show up in your numbers. You will find out what other women asked for, practice your ask before you make it, and leave with the words. See what's inside HER Collective. You can sit with us.

I am cheering you on.

Erica

Frequently Asked Questions

What is masculine energy at work?

Masculine energy at work is a culture that rewards aggression, long hours, risk-taking and never showing weakness, and treats cooperation and caution as soft. Researchers Jennifer Berdahl, Peter Glick and Marianne Cooper call it a masculinity contest and describe four rules: show no weakness, strength and stamina, put work first, and dog eat dog. In my experience as a former Chief People Officer, those rules shape who gets called a leader and who gets called supportive.

How much does a toxic high performer cost a company?

A Harvard Business School working paper from 2015 looked at 58,542 workers across 11 firms. It found that avoiding one toxic worker saved an estimated $12,489 in turnover costs, while hiring a top 1% performer added an estimated $5,303. The authors note that the $12,489 leaves out lawsuits, penalties and lower morale, so the true cost is higher.

How do I get promoted in a workplace that rewards the loudest person?

Keep receipts on the work that holds your team together and describe it in dollars and results. Ask your manager what result would earn a higher rating, so the conversation is about outcomes. Then ask a senior leader to speak for you before the promotion meeting, because the Women in the Workplace 2025 report found employees with sponsors were promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without. This is the work we practice every week inside HER Collective.