It is an accepted fact, that women of a certain age can have monthly cycles and hormonal changes that affect their whole personality and in fact their business performance. 35 years of employing both men and women has taught me that cyclic behaviour due to hormonal and on effected emotional changes occur in both men and women. These gender emotional cycles are therefore, not restricted to women only.
Some facts
We know as a fact that women have hormonal changes due to their physical anatomy. This is a known and accepted fact. Not all women find that their hormonal changes affect their emotions and their work performance in business. Some, however do recognise this and attempt to mitigate the effect. While a few either don’t recognise they are affected, or simply put, don’t care.
Myth or fact – Male Monthly’s – true or not?
I have been investigating this now, as I have had personal experience as a manager with dealing with this, and I wondered if I was imaging it. It turns out – there is a term for this called IMS (Irritable Male Syndrome). In fact, there are books and psychiatrists that work on this issue.
Is this Cyclic in Men?
IMS is not recorded as a Monthly Cycle. I however can attest as a manager, that this is cyclic. Now, as far as medical the opinion on this matter go, the responses totally contradict each other. However, I will speak from my experience as a manager on this point. I have noticed that for some men, emotional changes are cyclic and the time between them can vary. For example, I had one employee who every 3 months, just ‘Drops the Ball’ as far as his work. He gets told off, takes a bit of time to consider and then he is back on track. Another employee every 2 months, would get very sarcastic to people – to the point it is uncomfortable. Both of these people you could time their behaviour with a calendar. It was clearly cyclic and clearly repeated itself.
This is not stating that these employee’s did not have other days that they behaved with sound emotion, they did. But these were repeat behaviours one could predict, monitor, assist and manage.
Why has this occurred?
In simple truth, this has not been medically investigated and publicly reported, as far as my research has indicated. It is clear that as we have developed as a society, men are using less of their brute strength to survive. We are also eating more hormonally affected foods, e.g. growth hormones, chemically improved additives etc. I believe when we do get to review this, we will find that men have begun to alter hormonally to these changes and maybe even evolving if you will as a result of these changes
Is there a solution?
With any hormonal repeat issue, this takes awareness and management for the person to have a relatively ‘Normal’ existence. However, there is no solution to evolution. But there are ways to mitigate their effects. Stay well rested. Keep your body healthy, balance your physical and mental existence. Be aware, and take that awareness into consideration when interacting during those tough times.
For those of us that manage men and have noticed this change, we also need to be aware, and try new techniques so that we can retain our valuable staff assets. I am trying some down time now for those periods with my staff that need this support. I will blog my outcomes once well tested. So if you wish to keep informed, please let me know.
