Do Women Make Better Managers?

Daniel Pinks thought-provoking book A Whole New Mind encourages businesses to be more right-brained in their thinking. As women are generally regarded to be more right-brained than men, it should follow that as we move from, what Pink described, as the Information Age into the Conceptual Age, womens performance in business should improve relative to men.
While considering this point, I came across an excellent article by Johanna Krotz in which she poses the question: Do women make better managers? Johannas article is reproduced in full below:
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nature alike. It's not only socialization that shapes men and women. It's also biology.

In the past few decades, researchers have discovered Before getting to the point of this provocative headline, physiological variations in the brains of men and women. here's a disclaimer: Prepare to consider widely accepted For example, male brains are about 10% larger than generalizations. female brains. But women have more nerve cells in Translated, that means, Included in this article are some certain areas. Women also tend to have a larger corpus sweeping statements presented as general truths but collusum the group of nerve fibers that connects left and right hemispheres. That makes women faster at based on limited or incomplete evidence. transferring data between the computational, verbal left But let me add this: Remember, too, that being equal half and the intuitive, visual right half. Result: Women are does not mean being the same. Now, let's proceed. more flexible and find it easier to multitask. Men are As women gain traction as business owners and usually left-brain oriented. That often makes them better executives, gender differences are increasingly playing at solving abstract equations and problems. out in the way they run their shows. If you think that isn't As girls and boys grow up, of course, they're also molded having an effect on the rules of the business road, think by differing sets of social rules and expectations. Gender again. obviously colors behavior, perception, and just about Nearly 11 million privately held companies are now everything else. majority-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. In addition, women-owned companies now generate $2.5 trillion in annual sales and employ 19 million people nationwide. Typically, women operate and manage those businesses in some significantly different ways than men do. Recent studies point out that while both male and female styles of leadership can be effective, female frequently has the edge. Women exhibit these leadership strengths Typically, when comparing managers, the dialogue is framed as men's command-and-control style versus women's team-building or consensus approach. 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 director of the MarsVenus Institute in New York. Women are more willing to explore compromise and to solicit other people's opinions. By contrast, men often think if they ask other people for advice, they'll be perceived as unsure or as a leader who doesn't have answers, according to Burrell.

Obviously, no single individual can embody every one of the many traits we tend to call female or male. In Other female leadership strengths: exploring such issues, we must allow for the sweep of Women tend to be better than men at empowering imperfect generalizations. staff. With that understood, here's how women manage and Women encourage openness and are more why they often do it better than the guys. accessible. Biology, upbringing make women more flexible Women leaders respond more quickly to calls for As we all know, gender differences stem from nurture and assistance.

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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-makers compared 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?

assessments for more than 6,000 managers. Such assessments include anonymous reviews from a manager's peers, supervisors and subordinates. The study 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 demonstrates that women are considered better performers in both right- and leftbrain skill areas. Women received higher evaluations than men in 28 of the 31 individual behaviors, representing 90% of items.

Big deal, right? So women typically outperform men at The most problematic factor for women is Managing communications and interpersonal skills, which is far from Self . . . The worst rated of the 31 behaviors is 'Coping a news flash. You're probably thinking: Those are soft with one's own frustrations.' skills, not the hard tools and analysis required to grow a But more glass ceilings ahead business. How do such female traits translate into better business Obviously, there are still very few women running Fortune management? 500 companies and, in the corporate VP ranks, there are roughly three men to every woman. So if women have In today's workplace, when employees juggle multiple the managerial edge, how come you don't see more of jobs, and technology enables even the smallest them in positions of power? businesses to compete in global marketplaces, the ability to make staff feel charged up and valued is a definite Here's my speculation: Men are used to running the show competitive edge. and, for the most part, don't reward female style management because they see it as weak. Women have Some companies succeed while others don't, says had to prove, repeatedly, that their way of managing Jeffrey Christian, chairman of Christian & Timbers, a works. (Then, too, women have only begun to rise on Cleveland-based executive search firm. It's not about corporate ladders. Give them time.) production, it's about talent. Whoever has the best team wins. For owners of small and midsized businesses, being able to keep staffers and stakeholders enthusiastic may be the Money is not the primary reason talented people stay on key factor in building success. You want to delegate the job or jump. Rather, they stay predominantly because outcomes, not tasks, says consultant Siegel. You must of relationships. Women get that, says Christian, whose have the ability to let go. Women can do that better than firm placed Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, among men because their self-esteem is multifaceted, he says. other high-level hires. Men's self-esteem is based on what they do, it's uniGenerally, women delegate more readily and express dimensional. appreciation more often. Women ask questions, men The upshot for chief executives should be to move over to tend to give answers, says Terri Levine, a career coach the female side of management, whether you're a based in North Wales, Pa., who often advises thoroughgoing left-brainer or a woman trying to manage entrepreneurs. male. Turns out, girls can do it better. By communicating goals more readily and expressing appreciation more often, women tend to be better at making staffers feel recognized and rewarded. That About the Author: translates into cost-effective staffing and recruiting. Joanna L. Krotz writes about small-business
marketing and management issues. She is the co-author of the Microsoft Small Business Lately, women are demonstrating higher levels of Kit and runs Muse2Muse Productions, a New traditional hard or male skills as well. Some York City-based custom publisher.

Experience leading to broadening of women's skills

investigators suggest that many women workers had such skills all along, but that male bosses either overlooked or misperceived them. Others think the cumulative years of experience for women are broadening their skills. One influential study, conducted in 1996 by management consultant Advanced Teamware (since merged with ConsultingTools), analyzed a database of 360-degree

This article was first published in the Learning Centre of the Microsoft Small Business Centre. For further details visit: www.microsoft.com/SmallBusiness The foreword was written by Alistair Schofield, Managing Director of Extensor Limited.

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