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Male vs female managers - the great debate - or no debate?

I read with interest an article called "Women Entrepreneurs ­ Catalysts for Transformation" by Diane Chamberlin Starcher and thought I would share an extract along with a few of my own views:

"Among the particular characteristics of women entrepreneurs are their great diversity, their strong interpersonal skills, and the transfer of "motherhood skills" to the job. Women bring to their work strong interpersonal skills. One trait is a capacity for empathy, the ability to view something from another person's perspective. Women have strong communications skills. They are active, attentive listeners with an ability to sense what is not being said as well as what is.

They are collaborative and consultative, intuitive and rational. Rather than giving orders women prefer to lead through influence and persuasion, teaching and guiding. Motherhood skills are gaining value in management in a working world increasingly buffeted by change.

Having been conditioned to compete and win in games and sports, men approach negotiations with the objective of coming out best - winning. Women, on the other hand, approach negotiations with long-term, mutually beneficial and collaborative relationships in mind".

The writer sees the world in starkly contrasted and rather romantic terms. Things are either black or they are white: they are never grey. So in her world, male leaders exclusively work through "command and control", while women leaders employ "motherhood skills". When male managers are in charge, relationships are "competitive", and power is enhanced through control of information, whereas women managers are "holistic" attentive listeners with an ability to sense what is not being said as well as what is. The truth, I would say, is rather more complicated.

Much of what is discussed in this kind of area is based on highly stereotyped views of what it means to be male and what it means to be female. Simply because our physical differences are obvious, does not mean that our temperamental differences are as clear! There is a myth about gender and leadership capabilities. This holds that women are better team players than men; more mature in the way they handle sensitive issues; and more conscious of other peoples' feelings and hence better people managers than men.

But the fact is that women are not necessarily better managers. Surveys of top male and female managers in both the private and public sectors clearly show over and over again that, in fact, women are no better or worse than men in the practice of management and leadership. It all depends on the culture of the organization and the management performance of the particular individual man or woman in question.

Part of the problem here is that women bosses are still such a rarity. So whereas previously when top managers were only men, the question of male and female management styles never arose, now a debate has arisen about whether such a difference really exists. But perhaps, when all is said and done, there are indeed two leaderships styles ­ those that create a successful business and those that don't.

In the past, successful managers were overwhelmingly identified with stereotypical male traits such as self-confidence, competitiveness, decisiveness, aggressiveness and independence. Nowadays, qualities such as empathy, a consultative style and the ability to build teams are stressed as the decisive qualities a manager needs. But the crucial point is that none of these characteristics are exclusively male or exclusively female.

Bodyshop founder Anita Roddick said: 'I run my company according to feminine principles ­ principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy, having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labor where your love is, being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognising the bottom line should stay at the bottom'.

All laudable sentiments. But characteristics that men can have too and actually some women don't. So while I am all in favor of feminine values, I don't believe that only women possess them and that men don't. By the same token, I don't believe that all women automatically possess feminine values simply because their sex is female!

Gender is a powerful distraction in the debate about different leadership styles. Because women have been excluded from top positions, there is a tendency amongst some sectors to believe that everything that took place before has been an error. Quite rightly, the cause of women, both at work and in other social settings has been championed in recent years, so that even though it still remains unusual for a woman to run a large company, it is becoming, almost daily, less so.



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