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Do Women Make Better Managers?

Daniel Pinks thought-provoking book AWhole New Mind encourages businessesto be more right-brained in their thinking.As women are generally regarded to bemore right-brained than men, it shouldfollow that as we move from, what Pinkdescribed, as the Information Age intothe Conceptual Age, womensperformance in business should improverelative to men.

While considering this point, I came across an

excellent article by Johanna Krotz in which she posesthe question: Do women make better managers?

Johannas article is reproduced in full below:

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Before getting to the point of this provocative headline,here's a disclaimer: Prepare to consider widely acceptedgeneralizations.

Translated, that means, Included in this article are somesweeping statements presented as general truths butbased 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 andexecutives, gender differences are increasingly playingout in the way they run their shows. If you think that isn'thaving an effect on the rules of the business road, thinkagain.

Nearly 11 million privately held companies are nowmajority-owned (50% stake or 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 private companies in the United States. Inaddition, women-owned companies now generate $2.5trillion in annual sales and employ 19 million peoplenationwide.

Typically, women operate and manage those businessesin some significantly different ways than men do. Recentstudies point out that while both male and female styles ofleadership can be effective, female frequently has theedge.

Obviously, no single individual can embody every one ofthe many traits we tend to call female or male. Inexploring such issues, we must allow for the sweep ofimperfect generalizations.

With that understood, here's how women manage andwhy they often do it better than the guys.

Biology, upbringing make women more flexible

As we all know, gender differences stem from nurture and

nature alike. It's not only socialization that shapes menand women. It's also biology.

In the past few decades, researchers have discoveredphysiological variations in the brains of men and women.For example, male brains are about 10% larger thanfemale brains. But women have more nerve cells incertain areas. Women also tend to have a larger corpuscollusum the group of nerve fibers that connects leftand right hemispheres. That makes women faster attransferring data between the computational, verbal lefthalf and the intuitive, visual right half. Result: Women are

more flexible and find it easier to multitask. Men areusually left-brain oriented. That often makes them betterat solving abstract equations and problems.

As girls and boys grow up, of course, they're also moldedby differing sets of social rules and expectations. Genderobviously colors behavior, perception, and just abouteverything else.

Women exhibit these leadership strengths

Typically, when comparing managers, the dialogue isframed as men's command-and-control style versuswomen's team-building or consensus approach.

Women managers tend to have more of a desire to buildthan a desire to win, says Debra Burrell, a psychologicalsocial worker and regional training director of the Mars-Venus Institute in New York. Women are more willing toexplore compromise and to solicit other people'sopinions. By contrast, men often think if they ask otherpeople for advice, they'll be perceived as unsure or as aleader who doesn't have answers, according to Burrell.

Other female leadership strengths:

Women tend to be better than men at empoweringstaff.

Women encourage openness and are more

accessible.Women leaders respond more quickly to calls forassistance.

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Women are more tolerant of differences, so they'remore skilled at managing diversity.

Women identify problems more quickly and moreaccurately.

Women are better at defining job expectations andproviding feedback.

On the other hand, men tend to be more confident andfaster decision-makers compared to women. Malemanagers are also more adept at forming navigationalrelationships, that is, temporary teams set up to achieveshort-term goals, says management psychologist KenSiegel, whose Los Angeles firm, the Impact Group, workswith executives to develop leadership.

What about 'hard skills' and analysis?

Big deal, right? So women typically outperform men atcommunications and interpersonal skills, which is far from

a news flash. You're probably thinking: Those are softskills, not the hard tools and analysis required to grow abusiness.

How do such female traits translate into better businessmanagement?

In today's workplace, when employees juggle multiplejobs, and technology enables even the smallestbusinesses to compete in global marketplaces, the abilityto make staff feel charged up and valued is a definitecompetitive edge.

Some companies succeed while others don't, saysJeffrey Christian, chairman of Christian & Timbers, a

Cleveland-based executive search firm. It's not aboutproduction, it's about talent. Whoever has the best teamwins.

Money is not the primary reason talented people stay onthe job or jump. Rather, they stay predominantly becauseof relationships. Women get that, says Christian, whosefirm placed Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, amongother high-level hires.

Generally, women delegate more readily and expressappreciation more often. Women ask questions, mentend to give answers, says Terri Levine, a career coachbased in North Wales, Pa., who often advisesentrepreneurs.

By communicating goals more readily and expressingappreciation more often, women tend to be better atmaking staffers feel recognized and rewarded. Thattranslates into cost-effective staffing and recruiting.

Experience leading to broadening of women's skills

Lately, women are demonstrating higher levels oftraditional hard or male skills as well. Someinvestigators suggest that many women workers hadsuch skills all along, but that male bosses eitheroverlooked or misperceived them. Others think thecumulative years of experience for women arebroadening their skills.

One influential study, conducted in 1996 by managementconsultant Advanced Teamware (since merged withConsultingTools), analyzed a database of 360-degree

assessments for more than 6,000 managers. Suchassessments include anonymous reviews from amanager's peers, supervisors and subordinates. Thestudy looked at a range of managerial behavior, includingproblem solving, controlling, leading, communicating and

more.The results:

. . . Previous studies showed that women excelled ininterpersonal skills (right brain), not in intellectual skills(left brain). Our study demonstrates that women areconsidered better performers in both right- and left-brain skill areas.

Women received higher evaluations than men in 28 ofthe 31 individual behaviors, representing 90% ofitems.

The most problematic factor for women is ManagingSelf . . . The worst rated of the 31 behaviors is 'Coping

with one's own frustrations.'

But more glass ceilings ahead

Obviously, there are still very few women running Fortune500 companies and, in the corporate VP ranks, there areroughly three men to every woman. So if women havethe managerial edge, how come you don't see more ofthem in positions of power?

Here's my speculation:Men are used to running the showand, for the most part, don't reward female stylemanagement because they see it as weak. Women havehad to prove, repeatedly, that their way of managingworks. (Then, too, women have only begun to rise oncorporate ladders. Give them time.)

For owners of small and midsized businesses, being ableto keep staffers and stakeholders enthusiastic may be thekey factor in building success. You want to delegateoutcomes, not tasks, says consultant Siegel. You musthave the ability to let go. Women can do that better thanmen because their self-esteem is 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 tothe female side of management, whether you're athoroughgoing left-brainer or a woman trying to manage

male. Turns out, girls can do it better.

About the Author:

Joanna L. Krotz writes about small-businessmarketing and management issues. She isthe co-author of the Microsoft Small BusinessKit and runsMuse2Muse Productions, a NewYork City-based custom publisher.

This article was first published in the Learning Centre of theMicrosoft Small Business Centre. For further details visit:www.microsoft.com/SmallBusiness

The foreword was written by Alistair Schofield, ManagingDirector of Extensor Limited.

Extensor Limited www.extensor.co.uk

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