Women
in the Workplace: Some thoughts for Men to Consider
I
know that most of friends and patients, know how strongly I feel
about men and women taking their roles as husbands and wives,
and fathers and mothers, very seriously. I have run a Men’s
Group for the past two years, emphasizing some of my beliefs.
My
emphasis often lies in men better appreciating the enormous and
profound value that our wives play in our lives, managing the
home, managing the marriage, and managing the children, while
we go out into the workplace and do the mundane, albeit equally
important job, of providing for our families.
I
came across an article that outlines some reasons that we men
could also learn to value women in our respective workplaces.
As
women gained traction in the workforce, gender differences among
senior and junior staffers have turned up in every workplace,
from offices to factory floors to fighter planes. Now that women
are pulling up chairs at boardroom tables and launching their
own companies — the number of women-owned firms has increased
by 103% in the past 10 years — those differences are increasingly
playing out in executive suites, too.
Studies
show that both male and female styles of leadership can be effective.
But when compared side by side, it seems that "female"
has the edge.
Gender
differences stem from nurture and nature alike. It's not only
socialization that shapes men and women. It's also biology.
Researchers
are discovering physiological variations in the 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. Women also tend to have a larger corpus collusum — the group
of nerve fibers that connects left and right hemispheres. That
makes women faster at transferring data between the computational,
verbal left half and the intuitive, visual right half. Men are
usually left-brain oriented. As girls and boys grow up, of course,
they're also molded by differing sets of social rules and expectations.
Gender obviously colors behavior, perception and just about everything
else. In short, gender matters.
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, regional training director of
the Mars-Venus Institute in New York. "Women are more willing
to explore compromise and to solicit other people's opinions."
By contrast, she says, 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.
Other
female leadership strengths:
Men
tend to be more speedy decision-makers, compared to women. Male
managers are also more adept at forming what management psychologist
Ken Siegel calls "navigational relaionships," or temporary
teams set up to achieve short-term goals.
But
women usually do better with relationships. Generally, women delegate
more readily and express their appreciation for hard work more
often. "Women ask questions, men tend to give answers,"
says author, consultant and career coach Terri Levine. By communicating
company goals more readily and expressing appreciation more often,
women tend to be better at making staffers feel valued and rewarded.
That translates into cost-effective recruiting and being able
to operate with stable, loyal employees — or, as Christian
puts it, the best talent.
Besides
generally being credited with better communications and relationship
skills, women are lately demonstrating higher levels of traditional
"hard" or "male" skills as well. Some investigators
suggest that many women workers had such skills all along, but
that male bosses either overlooked or misperceived them. Others
think that the cumulative years of experience for women are broadening
their skills.
And
so, there are some things for both women and men to mull over.
March
2003
