Ray Arata’s journey to becoming an inclusivity ally leader, DEI consultant, and founder of the Better Man Movement started with a series of wakeup calls in his own life. Since then, he’s trained, coached, mentored and led countless men to become their better selves and understand their roles and responsibilities when it comes to inclusion, equality and diversity — in life as well as in work. In this excerpt from his book Showing Up: How Men Can Become Effective Allies in the Workplace, he takes us back to the beginning of his remarkable journey.
In the winter of 1999, my family had just moved into a newly renovated house in Marin County, California, as the stock market was climbing. The financial services industry, in which I worked, was booming. Everything felt good.
That is, until my wife came to me early one morning to share something. I hadn’t been listening to what she had been trying to tell me, she explained. And what she had been trying to tell me was that my behavior and our relationship weren’t working for her anymore. At the time, I was so absorbed in my own notions of what it meant to be a man, a husband, and a father that I couldn’t hear her. Additionally, I didn’t think anything was wrong. From my point of view, I was providing for my family, I wasn’t suffering from any addiction, and I was faithful to her. I was grossly unaware of the impact of my behavior on the most important woman in my life—my wife and mother of my children.
Over time, she’d had enough of my seemingly small actions— expecting the house to be clean when I got home (it was her job after all, wasn’t it?), saying one thing and doing another (effectively breaking my word), and not centering my attention on what she needed (because it was all about me). I had no clue what it meant to be accountable. My emotional range was limited to anger, expressed through raising my voice and speaking with the same condescension that I’d heard my father use when I was growing up.
Despite numerous attempts on her part to let me know, I missed the cues until she spelled it out bluntly: She didn’t love me anymore. She wanted out of our marriage.
Hearing this was beyond painful, and it also pointed to a bigger issue—I didn’t have the tools or training to navigate this. No man in my life had ever modeled emotional literacy for me. So, I did what most men do. I stuffed my emotions down deep and tried to pretend everything was okay. But, predictably, that only made it worse. As a last-ditch effort, I attempted to make promises to her, the kinds of things I thought she wanted to hear. I tried to charm my way out, express remorse—all of my old tricks. But there was no talking my way out of it this time. She had decided.
One month after that devastating break-up, my business partner, who was also a close friend, left our company to go to a rival firm. He cleaned out his office in the middle of the night. I imagine that just like me, he lacked the tools to meaningfully confront real issues.
I was left in a state of shock, with much to contend with—a new mortgage to pay and a family to provide for, all predicated on a business that now felt like it was falling apart.
After my business partner left, I reverted to the same pattern I used when my wife left. I stuffed my feelings. I struggled immensely, with no hope that I’d be able to dig myself out. Nearly six months later—after languishing, getting nowhere, and finding myself in an ever-deeper rut—I experienced the first of many blessings that would help turn things around.
My Turning Point
One afternoon, a colleague asked me to come into his office; he accused me of acting out of control and letting emotions get the best of me. You see, there had been a recent incident at work where I’d angrily yelled at someone over the phone. This was not okay, he explained—which I agreed with completely. As I listened, I realized he was giving me the same feedback about my behaviors that my wife had already shared. He described my actions as often coming from a place of entitlement. This was hurtful, but it rang true.
This colleague then offered me the invitation that would change my life. He encouraged me to attend a personal growth weekend put on by the ManKind Project, a global brotherhood of nonprofit charitable organizations that conduct programs for men. I had never heard of it; he gave me few details but was adamant the weekend had changed his life years before. I accepted his offer and signed myself up.
The weekend is akin to a rite of passage—an initiation into healthy manhood. It helped me to debunk outdated norms of masculine behavior I had adopted and emulated, just like most men. During the workshop, I confronted unexamined beliefs about myself that were driving my behaviors and creating havoc in my personal relationships. I experienced healing that I wasn’t anticipating. Most importantly, I discovered that I was able to have a conscious relationship with my emotions. Instead of me reacting without control over what I was feeling, I could actually engage with my emotions in a healthy way.
I learned that if I stayed on the path of being awakened, rather than allowing my inner “little boy” to run the show, I could be healthily masculine in all my roles: father, husband, leader, and friend. This was the beginning of a lifelong partnership between my head and my heart.
Inspired by my new awakening, I wanted more of what I had experienced during the men’s weekend. I signed up as volunteer staff for future workshops and joined a local men’s group to continue the work I had already started. My intention was simply to “stay awake” and develop those new emotional muscles to serve me in my life.
Little did I know what would come of it: Eight years later, I had racked up thousands of hours of staffing and was actually leading those weekend workshops, along with weekly men’s groups.
By 2007, I knew that I wanted to live and lead from the heart in all areas of my life, including my career. I left my financial ser- vices job and embarked on a completely new phase of leadership coaching and consulting. I started by sharing what I’d learned by writing a book, and from there, people began looking to me for guidance and expertise about how men could do better—be better.
Around that time, I was introduced to a colleague who worked as a diversity and inclusion consultant. She became intrigued by my work with men and encouraged me to attend a Watermark women’s leadership event. At that conference, various women shared their stories and frustration about the experience of working inside companies run mostly by men. It wasn’t until then that it became clear to me how slow progress toward gender equality was. It jarred me completely.
The Moment
The courtroom at the Gender Equality Challenge was packed, with several hundred people in attendance. The event, hosted by the mayor of San Francisco at city hall, was attended by several TV crews and an audience of about 85 percent women and 15 percent men. As I sat in the back and listened to the speakers, I realized that progress toward equality might occur more quickly if there was a strategy to actually engage men in the process. I wanted to speak up, but a hot sensation came over me. I was too nervous. By the time I summoned the courage to raise my hand a few minutes later, they had stopped taking questions.
As I walked out of the room, a flood of thoughts entered my mind. I recalled stories my mom had told me of her predicament as the second-born child in an Italian family, where the cultural norm was that the first-born son received the rights and privileges—and the daughter didn’t. I thought about my new wife, Anna, whom I’d married two years after my divorce. She had shared her own stories about growing up in an Italian family governed by a strong patriarchal influence. I thought about my daughter who was attending Duke University, only a year from graduating with a degree in computer science. Imagining the challenges she was likely to face as a young woman entering the workforce was just the inspiration I needed to take action.
Using Privilege for Good
Upon the realization that I should do something, that I needed to instigate change, it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I had privileges—white privilege, male privilege, and economic privilege—that were available to me to use for this purpose.
I thought back to my men’s weekend, how we spent time creating a mission statement for ourselves with the intention of committing to something greater than us as individuals.
We’d been invited to imagine a healed world and what gifts we could bring forward to help create it. This exercise prompted me to reframe what kind of man I wanted to be. I decided to commit to helping create a world with more safety and equality. The gift I decided I could offer in contribution was simple: to live, learn, and lead with an open heart.
In addition to leading men’s workshops, I had been speaking at major conferences, appearing on panels, and conducting webinars to audiences largely made up of women. But where, I wondered, could more men like me learn how to be . . . well, better men? There were no conferences that focused on men as partners, leaders, and allies to women and people in under- represented groups.
I felt impatience well up inside me. I couldn’t simply wait to find a conference doing this work. I needed to create one. I envisioned that this conference—which was only an idea at this point—would focus strategically on the engagement of men in support of women. My own experience recognizing the parallel between my behaviors with my ex-wife and at work showed me that many of the principles I had taught men outside the corporate world would, in fact, apply inside the corporate world. Healthy masculinity, as a leadership imperative, ought to be modeled by senior heads and management. Men needed to see other men walking the walk. I knew this idea would be successful if I could get other like-minded people, especially men, to align with my vision.
Making My Mission a Reality
I took my mission statement to heart, reaching out to several men and women in corporate roles to share my idea. I wanted not only to create a men’s leadership conference that included healthy masculinity as a core driver, but to start a movement. I needed their help and also wanted women to attend. I knew that deep within each man is the desire to be his best self in the roles of spouse, parent, leader, and friend.
I also knew that the current roadmap for masculine behavior— what it means to be a man—wasn’t working for anyone, men included. Especially in their personal lives. And it didn’t seem like a stretch to presume that this outdated roadmap was also behind the challenges inside organizations. I only needed to speak to a handful of people to validate that the Better Man Conference was needed.
The Time’s Up and Me Too movements, in addition to put- ting the spotlight on men’s misbehavior, have helped legitimize the importance of bringing men to the conversation about their roles and responsibilities in inclusion.
The message of the Black Lives Matter movement has only reinforced the need further. I’m doing my part in removing the toxicity that we, as men, all perpetuate (in conscious or unconscious ways); my white privilege creates paths that are easier for me to navigate than those of individuals who are subject to white supremacy and structural racism. I’ve made the decision to use my privilege for good.
Even though my own wake-up calls turned my life upside down, I am a better man as a result of the changes I’ve made. And I’m thankful that through my work, I can support other men learning how to do the same.
Excerpted from Showing Up: How Men Can Become Effective Allies in the Workplace, by Ray Arata.
Available now at www.showingupbook.com
