How To Get More Women Into Corner Offices
September 26th, 2007
Please see updated article.
Proof That Women Make Great Managers
September 13th, 2007
Studies Show Areas Where Women Excel
Comprehensive management studies are showing women outscoring men in many categories. Of course, my first questions are: Which categories? And why hasn’t this translated into the top two tiers of management?
Business Week reports, “Twenty-five years after women first started pouring into the labor force–and trying to be more like men in every way, from wearing power suits to picking up golf clubs–new research is showing that men ought to be the ones doing more of the imitating.” The studies show that women executives, when rated by their peers, their employees, and their bosses, score higher than their male counterparts on a wide variety of measures—from producing high-quality work to goal-setting to mentoring employees.
Contrary to stereotypes, women outperformed men in intellectual areas, such as recognizing trends, generating new ideas and getting results.
The Hagberg Consulting Group conducts in-depth performance evaluations of senior managers for its diverse clients, including technology, health care, financial-service, and consumer-goods companies. Of the 425 high-level executives evaluated, each by about 25 people, women execs outperformed men. In fact, women managers consistently rated higher than their male counterparts on 37 of 47 critical management qualities such as leadership, social skills, problem-solving and decision-making.
Several other studies showed similar patterns. Personnel Decisions International, a consulting firm in Minneapolis, looked at a large sample—58,000 managers—and found that women outranked men in 20 of 23 areas.
In a five-year study, Lawrence Pfaff, a Michigan management consultant, examined evaluations from 2,482 executives from a variety of companies and found that women outperformed men on 17 of 20 measures. You may not be surprised that women excelled in coaching, teamwork, empowering employees, but they excelled in decisiveness and planning as well. So, “Women Can’t Make Decisions” has been proven untrue. Which adage is next?
Adds Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, ”Women get high ratings on exactly those skills needed to succeed in the global Information Age, where teamwork and partnering are so important.”
Head of IBM’s Global Services Div., Douglas Elix, says that instead of being motivated by self-interest, women are more driven by what they can do for the company.
Now for the Big Question: Why don’t we see more women in the top two tiers? One of the reasons is that more women need to venture out of the human resources and the publicity departments, which rarely provide top-level chair fillers—men or women.
Another reason is the result of backward-thinking stereotypes that make you want to bang your head on the desk, as evidenced by the following research. Robert Kabacoff of Management Research Group has just finished a study showing how CEOs and corporate boards view upper management, and he found a clear double standard. Male CEOs and senior vice-presidents got high marks from their bosses when they were forceful and assertive and lower scores if they were cooperative and empathic. The opposite was true for women: Female CEOs got downgraded for being assertive and got better scores when they were cooperative. Kabacoff’s conclusion? ”At the highest levels, bosses are still evaluating people in the most stereotypical ways.” Banging your head on the desk is not going to help. What we need is more men like IBM’s Douglas Elix who are hiring and promoting women—and talking about it!
Tip: Don’t try to be so perfect! The Hagberg study indicates that women, in a quest to be thorough, want all the data before making big decisions. This style may have helped women reach middle management, but may discourage them from taking career-advancing, high-risk assignments. Take a tip from the men: Speed can often be more important than perfection. It’s a hard idea to swallow, isn’t it? But you know it’s true.
Further Reading:
Podcast (always less than 10 minutes), Working in Heels, by Nancy Clark, Stereotypes, Not Differences, Are Holding Women Back —Mars-Venus Stereotypes Are Barriers To Women’s Advancement? or read it here.
Blog, Women’s Lunch Talk, by Nancy Clark, Be A Woman Who Makes As Much As A Man —Money Facts You Should Know About The Gender Pay Gap or listen to it here.
Blog, Women’s Lunch Talk, by Nancy Clark, Communicate Without Losing Your Authority —Assertive, Not Aggressive, Works Best For Women or listen to it here.
Website, WomensMedia, by Hilary M. Lips, Radford University, Women and Leadership: The Delicate Balancing Act
Blog, Women’s Lunch Talk, by Nancy Clark, More Money? Do You Want To Ask For A Raise? —How To Ask For A Raise Even Though It’s Not The Perfect Time (It never is!)
Website, WomensMedia, by Evelyn Murphy, with E.J. Graff, Gender Wage Gap: Are you paid as much as a man if he had your job?
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What To Tell Men Who Want To Help Women
September 6th, 2007
Honest, There Are Lots Of Men Who Want To Help Us!
Many men would be sympathetic to the working woman’s plight, if only they knew 2 things:
- How bad is the situation?
- What in the world can I do to help?
How bad is the situation?
Give ‘em the numbers—guys like numbers! Today, women make up almost half our workforce in the U.S., 46.5% to be exact—and we should be exact. Women are doing as well as men in mid-level management—that’s fair. But when you get above mid-management, things deteriorate rapidly. In the top 2 tiers of the Fortune 500, women fill only 16% of the positions. Now some conventional wisdom is still lurking around saying that women don’t want to be CEO’s. Well, research by Catalyst showed that one out of four women at the second-tier level did not want to be the CEO. Guess what? One out of four men at that level felt the same way.
The other bit of conventional wisdom that comes up is that women drop out of the race to the top because they want to raise families. Many women do take breaks in their careers to start families—that’s true. This usually occurs early in their careers, and slows up progress a bit, but doesn’t dampen aspirations for upper management. We have a man to thank for researching and discovering this fact: Mike Cook. When Mike was the CEO of Deloitte & Touche, he couldn’t understand why women were leaving in great numbers before reaching senior management. He asked the men and they said the women were leaving for “personal reasons,” which sounded like “family reasons.” Fortunately, Mike wanted to be thorough in his research. Although women were saying “personal reasons” when they left, when he contacted them later, most of them told him they had already started families before that time, so that wasn’t the problem. The problem was they were not being promoted as quickly as the men, and they didn’t see enough women above them to be encouraged that this would change. Conventional wisdom was proven wrong. Mike Cook got involved. He required all of his managers to take gender awareness training so they would recognize when they were holding back promotions for gender-related reasons. Are you saying: What?? Good, that’s where the next part comes in.
What in the world can I do to help?
I have to give you my disclaimer first: Not all women are alike and not all men are alike. But this is what generally happens when you ask a man if he can do a new job that’s one step up: “You bet I can do it!” Now, he’s worried as much as a woman at this level would be, but he’s careful to not show it. The woman will most likely tell you her worries about the 5% of the job that’s new. Then she’ll say she can figure out how to find the answers and that she can do the job. Mike Cook found that the die was cast by this point. His managers were deciding, one at a time, that the woman was “not quite ready to be promoted.” When you add this to the subtle expectation that men are doing better in the company—when you look at the upper ranks—you have the formula for a losing battle for women.
So, a man can help us when he’s conducting a promotion review by looking at the woman’s production record before talking with her. Then, if she seems less confident than a man, remember that women often verbalize their worries. I’m doing my part by continually telling women to keep minor worries unverbalized—if you know you can find the answers.
That problem had to do with talking. The next problem has to do with not talking! When women are in meetings with men, some of them keep their suggestions, contradictions, and challenges to themselves. Amazing, isn’t it? If you’re running a meeting you can help our plight by asking a silent woman, “What are your thoughts on this?” You’ll be getting more out of women, and women will be happy about it. And don’t you think a company is better off if it looks at a full range of possibilities before making decisions? Yup, it’s good for business!
Men, you can help us! We want you to!
Here’s the tip of the week.
Tip:
Think of all the men you know who might be sympathetic to the working woman’s plight, if only they knew the answers to these questions:
- How bad is the situation?
- What in the world can I do to help?
Then plan a coffee break with the men—one at a time. Tell each man what he needs to know. Tell him you’ll appreciate his help. Now, get out there and talk to the guys!
Further Reading:
Podcast (always less than 10 minutes), Working in Heels, by Nancy Clark, Gender Communication: Nature Or Nurture? —Why Do We Have Mars-Venus Communication, And Why Is Mars More Powerful?
Website, Harvard Business School, Winning the Talent War for Women, by Douglas McCracken (about Mike Cook and Deloitte & Touche)
Blog, Women’s Lunch Talk, by Nancy Clark, Gender Communication: Nature Or Nurture? —Why Do We Have Mars-Venus Communication? And Why Is Mars More Powerful?
Website, WomensMedia, by Bonita Banducci, Equality and Equity— Equal and Different
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