Financial Times

Do women make better managers?
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 involved in the boardroom and launching their own companies the number of women firms has increased tremendously in the past 10 years.

Studies show that both male and female styles of leadership can be effective. But when compared side by side, the female has the edge. 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 fibres 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 colours behaviour, perception and just about everything else.

Gender matters
"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.

Women are better than men at empowering teams and 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 valuable feedback.

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 relationships," or temporary teams set up to achieve short-term goals.
How do such "female" traits translate into better business management?

In today's lean workplace, when employees have multiple jobs and fleeting loyalty, when technology enables even tiny companies to compete in global marketplaces, the ability to make staff feel charged up, valued and individually recognized is a definite competitive edge.

"Some companies succeed while others don't," says Jeffrey Christian, CEF of Christian & Timbers, a well-known Cleveland search firm. "It's not about production … 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.

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 communication 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 for a long time, but that male bosses either overlooked or misperceived them. Others think that the cumulative years of experience for women are broadening their skills.

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

Here's my speculation; Men are used to running the show and, for the most part, don't reward "female" style management because they see it as weak. Women have had to prove that their way of managing works, over and over again. Then, too, women have only gained the independence and skills to ascend in the latter half of the last century. No doubt, their rise will continue.

For owners of small and mid-sized businesses, being able to keep staffers and stakeholders enthusiastic as you steer the company forward may be the most important factor in building success.

The upshot for chief executives should be to move over to the "female" side of management, whether you're a thoroughgoing left-brainer or woman manager who may be trying to manage the "male". As it turns out, girls do it better.
(Courtesy - McQuire Rens & Jones (Pvt) Ltd)

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