Do women make better managers.pdf

7/27/2019 Do women make better managers.pdf

1/4

Do women make better managers?

Before getting to the point of this provocative headline, here's a disclaimer:

Prepare to consider widely accepted generalizations.

Translated, that means, "Included in this article are some sweeping statementspresented as general truths but based on limited or incomplete evidence."

But let me add this: Remember, too, that being equal does not mean being the

same. Now, let's proceed.

As women gain traction as business owners and executives, gender differencesare increasingly playing out in the way they run their shows. If you think thatisn't having an effect on the rules of the business road, think again.

Nearly 11 million privately held companies are now majority-owned (50% stakeor greater) by women, according to the Center for Women Business Research,based in Washington, D.C. That accounts for nearly half (47.7%) of all privatecompanies in the United States. In addition, women-owned companies nowgenerate and employ 19 million people nationwide.

Typically, women operate and manage those businesses in some significantlydifferent ways than men do. Recent studies point out that while both male andfemale styles of leadership can be effective, "female" frequently has the edge.

Obviously, no single individual can embody every one of the many traits wetend to call "female" or "male." In exploring such issues, we must allow for thesweep of imperfect generalizations.

With that understood, here's how women manage and why they often do itbetter than the guys.

Biology, upbringing makes women more flexible

As we all know, gender differences stem from nurture and nature alike. It's notonly socialization that shapes men and women. It's also biology.

In the past few decades, researchers have discovered physiological variations inthe brains of men and women. For example, male brains are about 10% larger

than female brains. But women have more nerve cells in certain areas. Womenalso tend to have a larger corpus collusum the group of nerve fibers thatconnects left and right hemispheres. That makes women faster at transferringdata between the computational, verbal left half and the intuitive, visual righthalf. Result: Women are more flexible and find it easier to multitask. Men areusually left-brain oriented. That often makes then better at solving abstractequations and problems.


2/4

As girls and boys grow up, of course, they're also molded by differing sets ofsocial rules and expectations. Gender obviously colors behavior, perception,and just about everything else.

Women exhibit these leadership strengths

Typically, when comparing managers, the dialogue is framed as men'scommand-and-control style versus women's team-building or consensusapproach.

"Women managers tend to have more of a desire to build than a desire to win,"says Debra Burrell, a psychological social worker and regional training directorof the Mars-Venus Institute in New York. "Women are more willing to explorecompromise and to solicit other people's opinions." By contrast, men often thinkif they ask other people for advice, they'll be perceived as unsure or as a leader

who doesn't have answers, according to Burrell.

Other female leadership strengths:

Women tend to be better than men at empowering staff. Women encourage openness and are more accessible. Women leaders respond more quickly to calls for assistance. Women are more tolerant of differences, so they're more skilled at

managing diversity. Women identify problems more quickly and more accurately. Women are better at defining job expectations and providing feedback.

On the other hand, men tend to be more confident and faster decision-makerscompared to women. Male managers are also more adept at forming"navigational relationships," that is, temporary teams set up to achieve short-term goals, says management psychologist Ken Siegel, whose Los Angeles firm,the Impact Group, works with executives to develop leadership.

What about 'hard skills' and analysis?

Big deal, right? So women typically outperform men at communications andinterpersonal skills, which is far from a news flash. You're probably thinking:Those are "soft skills," not the hard tools and analysis required to grow abusiness.

How do such "female" traits translate into better business management?

In today's workplace, when employees juggle multiple jobs, and technologyenables even the smallest businesses to compete in global marketplaces, theability to make staff feel charged up and valued is a definite competitive edge.


3/4

"Some companies succeed while others don't," says Jeffrey Christian, chairmanof Christian & Timbers, a Cleveland-based executive search firm. "It's not aboutproduction, it's about talent. Whoever has the best team wins."

Money is not the primary reason talented people stay on the job or jump.Rather, they stay predominantly because of relationships.

"Women get that," says Christian, whose firm placed Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, among other high-level hires.

Generally, women delegate more readily and express appreciation more often."Women ask questions, men tend

to give answers," says Terri Levine, a career coach based in North Wales, Pa.,who often advises entrepreneurs.

By communicating goals more readily and expressing appreciation more often,

women tend to be better

at making staffers feel recognized and rewarded. That translates into cost-

effective staffing and recruiting.

Experience leading to broadening of women's skills

Lately, women are demonstrating higher levels of traditional "hard" or "male"skills as well. Some investigators suggest that many women workers had suchskills all along, but that male bosses either overlooked or misperceived them.Others think the cumulative years of experience for women are broadening theirskills.

One influential study, conducted in 1996 by management consultant AdvancedTeamware (since merged with ConsultingTools), analyzed a database of 360-degree assessments for more than 6,000 managers. Such assessments includeanonymous reviews from a manager's peers, supervisors and subordinates. Thestudy looked at a range of managerial behavior, including problem solving,

controlling, leading, communicating and more.

The results:

". . . Previous studies showed that women excelled in interpersonal skills(right brain), not in intellectual skills (left brain). Our study demonstratesthat women are considered better performers in both right- and left-brainskill areas."

"Women received higher evaluations than men in 28 of the 31 individualbehaviors, representing 90% of items."

"The most problematic factor for women is Managing Self . . . The worstrated of the 31 behaviors is 'Coping with one's own frustrations.' "

But more glass ceilings ahead


4/4

Obviously, there are still very few women running Fortune 500 companies and,in the corporate VP ranks, there are roughly three men to every woman. So ifwomen have the managerial edge, how come you don't see more of them inpositions of power?

Here's my speculation: Men are used to running the show and, for the mostpart, don't reward "female" style management because they see it as weak.Women have had to prove, repeatedly, that their way of managing works. (Then,too, women have only begun to rise on corporate ladders. Give them time.)

For owners of small and midsized businesses, being able to keep staffers andstakeholders enthusiastic may be the key factor in building success. "You wantto delegate outcomes, not tasks," says consultant Siegel. "You must have theability to let go. Women can do that better than men because their self-esteemis multifaceted," he says. "Men's self-esteem is based on what they do, it's uni-dimensional."

The upshot for chief executives should be to move over to the "female" side ofmanagement, whether you're a thoroughgoing left-brainer or a woman trying tomanage "male." Turns out, girls can do it better.

Documents

Do women make better managers.pdf