For nine years, I’ve been talking to and surveying thousands of men to investigate what they think — and then writing books about it.

I enter into conversations with unsuspecting men on airplanes, on the subway and in coffee shops. My goal is to dig out the inner, unspoken perceptions that affect women every day in the workplace.

When I share my findings with women’s groups, even the most astute professionals are often shocked at how much they don’t know about their male co-workers — and how much this knowledge gap affects them.

Why must women be the ones to analyse, and perhaps change, their work behaviour in light of what men think? Actually, it’s vital for both sexes to know what “the other half” is thinking.

I started by researching how men think because more men hold executive jobs. Women who want to avoid hidden traps and break through the glass ceiling need to know how to shape the way men perceive them. For example, one problem for women arises from the way men view personal feelings at work. The male brain has the enviable ability to essentially switch off emotions when desired.

The expectation that people shut down personal feelings at work has become one of men’s subconscious, “unwritten rules”. When men see a worker taking criticism personally, seeming to push too hard for his or her ideas, or having a personality conflict, they automatically view that worker as less business-savvy and less experienced, or as someone who operates on emotion, not logic.

Thankfully, those perceptions can be managed. The science is clear: although the female brain isn’t designed to compartmentalise personal feelings the same way a man’s brain does, a woman can, if she chooses, force a calm demeanour when she is starting to feel defensive.

But the situation is more complex than that; there’s an area where men themselves tend to take things personally. As a male executive told me, “I don’t think women realise men have self-doubt running through their veins.” And because a woman may not sense that insecurity, she can inadvertently hit that nerve and become someone whom the man wants to avoid, not promote.

So when we raise our hand in a meeting and ask, “Bob, why did you choose that pricing?” we are just asking for information. Bob, on the other hand, may be thinking, “She is challenging my judgment in front of my team.” Men respect people who purposefully avoid hitting that nerve by asking, instead, “Bob, help me understand the reason for that pricing.”

I recently talked with the male boss of a team made up mostly of women. When I asked whether he’d ever seen a talented woman do something he viewed as hurting her chances for advancement, he nodded. While he said women should take things less personally and consider how men might view their approach, he added that some women take this too far — and try to be just like men.

Women were once counselled to put on a hard-driving front — but that notion should have been scrapped along with our 1990s shoulder pads. The advice to be authentic, not artificial, has been nearly universal in my research. We’ll be far more effective when we recognise, instead, that working with men is essentially like working with a foreign culture. You might choose to speak a different language at times, or to consider the unspoken perceptions of that culture, but you don’t have to be a different person.

Despite the sometimes awkward subject matter, a vast majority of men I’ve interviewed have great goodwill toward women. Most are willing to talk to me in candid detail because they have seen these obstacles affect their wives, daughters and co-workers and sincerely want to help women advance.