The wrong background?

Of course a manager needs to support her reports. If her reports are plumbers or any other techies for that matter, learning some minimal tech details is necessary for providing the support. Why does Mary not ask her reports what tech info she needs to learn in order for her to make informed decisions and provide support? This certainly does not involve becoming a plumber herself. It DOES involve a genuine interest in the work that her reports do on a daily basis and some commitment to learn anything outside of her comfort zone.

Mary needs to find a "common language" through which she can engage with her all male technical team. If she is not going to be able to meet them on their own territory another tactic needs to be found. Perhaps start one by one building a more personal relationshiop with each. Leave the difficult characters to last. Hopefully by that point the rest of the team will be starting to support her so final resistance will crumble. The problem with a sales background is that often is not respected to the degree that it should be.

While I agree with Geoff that the attitude here is a bit odd "I don't want to learn a TRADE, I'm a MANAGER" - what's all that about - the rest of what he says is drivel, IMHO.

If Mary's a half-decent manager of people, she'll know that her role is simply to create the conditions under which her technical team can thrive and maximise their contributions to the business - to build an environment in which their individual and collective talent can florish. She needs to insulate them form all the crap that goes on in the organisation and represent their interests to others.

If she's doing this, the jibes will stop. If she isn't, she ought to start - ASAP.

Well Mary, your attitude towards your colleagues comes across here as pretty condescending – and not only that, you admit you don't even want to understand what it is they actually do. So I'm not surprised they take a pretty dim view of you.

I wouldn't expect someone with no knowledge of sales – or empathy with sales people – to manage a sales team. So why someone with no knowledge of technology or empathy with technical people is managing a technical team, heaven only knows.