Women as Leaders, Bosses and Managers

Do Men or Women Make Better Bosses?Fair or Not, Employees Have Gender Biases About Bosses

My first boss was a man twice my age. He taught me how to write a headline, punch up a lede and copyedit my stories. He also made inappropriate comments about my legs on a weekly basis, despite the fact that I kept them hidden under frumpy, ankle-length skirts.

My next boss was a year older than me. When she hired me to do her filing and data entry, she promised me a raise in a year. When my 18th month rolled around and she still couldn't get approval for my pay bump, she called me into her office and proceeded to cry on my shoulder.

Then she went to lunch with her manager pals like she always did, while I ate a tuna sandwich at my desk.

Like many, I've worked for bosses of all stripes over the years, from the woefully inept to the thrillingly supportive to the borderline psychotic. Some of my best bosses were men; some were women. Same goes for the worst of the bunch; each gender's been well represented there, too.

That's why when I first read the recent New York Times interview with Elle Group executive Carol Smith, who insisted women make better managers, I bristled. How can women ever expect men (and for that matter, other women) to stop stereotyping female bosses as shrews, softies or micromanaging morons if we're not prepared to stop stereotyping male managers?

The Double-Bind for Women
Fair or not, people do have their biases. I have an entire inbox of e-mails from workers of both genders telling me why they dislike working for men (too grabby, competitive, uncollaborative) and why they dislike working for women (too weepy, petty, ineffective).

Only now that we've reached the 21st century, women with grumbles about female managers often pepper them with caveats and apologies.

"Although I hate to say it, men are much better to work for," Jane, an office manager, said via e-mail.

Of a previous job at a counseling center, where most of her colleagues were female, she explained, "There was always some kind of drama, gossiping and backbiting going on -- from people who were trained in conflict resolution."

Not so in her current position at a law enforcement unit comprised mainly of men.

"Even considering their high-stress jobs, I've never heard any of the petty complaints, whining about their co-workers and outright hostility that was always taking place at the counseling center," she said.

And some women who've had positive experiences with female managers still said they'd rather have a male boss.

"I have had great bosses of both genders, but I still have a preference to work with men," wrote a corporate trainer who didn't want her name mentioned. "When there is a problem with a male boss, it's normally about the work. When there is a problem with a female boss, it could be the work or something personal. I hate to say it because I am a woman."

And I hate to hear it. Because even today, only 15 percent of executives in Fortune 500 boardrooms are women. And the faster we recognize that some bosses, companies and industries are more toxic than others -- regardless of gender -- the easier it will be for more women to reach the executive suite.

Turning Women Into Men Isn't the AnswerI suspect that no matter how many surveys and studies on the merits of female leaders think tanks and universities churn out, we'll still be having this conversation for years to come.

Sunday's New York Times "Room for Debate" blog post on whether women make better bosses drew hundreds of heated comments from readers, some outraged by the question in the first place, many strictly in favor of either male managers or female ones.

Thing is, so many workers have so little faith in the people they work for, be they male or female. Earlier this year, 52 percent of 3,000 U.S. employees and managers polled by international staffing firm Randstad said there aren't enough qualified managers in their organization.

Unfortunately, failing miserably as a manager is much more of a burden for women, said Jan Combopiano, vice president and chief knowledge officer of Catalyst, a nonprofit that researches women in the workplace.

"If a man fails, you're not going to think it's because of his gender," she said. But, she explained, that's not necessarily the case if a female boss falls flat on her face.

There's no denying that, in general, men and women have different communication styles. (Witness the dozens of letters in my inbox about less-than-nurturing male managers and female bosses who have difficulty giving a direct order.) Yet any workplace consultant will tell you that managing well is a skill that can be learned, no matter what your anatomy.

"We're never going to make men into women and vice versa," said Betty Spence, president of the National Association for Female Executives. "We really need both ways of seeing, both ways of thinking. We need the male focus, and we need women's ability to multitask."

In other words, men and women need to collaborate in the workplace and draw on each other's strengths, not try to change every last trait of each other.

"When men are sitting there watching a football game and you walk in naked, they aren't going to see you," Spence said. "We're just going to need to accept it and use it, because that focus is necessary in business."

Play the Right Person in the Right Position; No strikers in goal!

Aye! Aye! Sir! The face of Experience but not the Voice.

One of the most common mistakes that I see in organisations is that they promote or recruit great technical experts to be poor project managers and excellent sales representatives to be ineffective commercial or business managers.

I am not a big fan of the highly commercialised football business, but the strategy mentioned here is the same as taking your best goal scorer off the field and puting him in as the club manager. The skills needed to perform one job function are rarely suitable to perform the other.

Someone who is a highly accomplished technical expert in the organisation is not the same person to lead, control and focus the efforts of others.

I am not saying that this person is not capable of being re-trained into a new role but has the appropriate assessments and interviews taken place to ascertain, not only elligibility but motivation and focused commitment.

You originally hired them or trained them to perform a very specific task or fullfil a series of objectives. They have consistently delivered high quality results and have bailed the organisation out of many problems. Everyone knows that they can rely on this person.

Suddenly and after due thought, the organisation decides to implement strict project management methodologies to support the company's forecasted growth. They decide to use this chosen technical expert to lead a major implementation.

It makes sense, doesn't it? This is the person that always delivers and therefore they must be the best candidate. Unfortunately, it is not necessarily the correct criteria and so often this person quickly falls into difficulties and ends up on their face. The real victim can be the organisation and it's new found belief that project management doesn’t work for them.

At the core of this issue is not the person chosen to be the project manager, it is the organisation that put them into an untenable position. Although the chosen person is very focussed and motivated by their technnical expertise, they were not truly suitable to organise the resources and coordinate the project.

The majority of technical gurus, would prefer to get their hands on the toys and start fixing the problems themselves. They are used to working in chaotic situation and they are happy to live in that environment. Therefore, they do not always see the true value of running a well controlled project in an organised and structured way.

A second issue that I have seen is with the governance controls inside organisations. These are intended to be established to support project management in an organisation. Often these organisations are stuffed to the roof tops, with theoretical and process people that have never successfully run a project themselves.

So often, processes and policies are developed for the rest of the organisation, that are far removed from the reality of everyday projects. What is developed is something theoretically sound, state-of-the-art approved and slick but, unfortunately, it does not meet the organisation's cultural requirements. "Looks great Bob! but we can't use it!"

At this point one of two things can occur.
1) Stakeholders and senior management sponsors will continue to insist that the PMs, running the projects, use these processes and policies, or else! The risk here is that the projects will all bog down and start to fail, despite the determination of all concerned.

2) In the absence of a strong directive from above, the more experienced PMs will simply ignore the processes and policies and fall back into their own tried and tested 'ways' to run the projects. This can also spell disaster for the organisation and by association, project management methodologies.

Another common issue I have seen, is that most organisation think they can perform project management cheaply, using more junior level people. They hire people that have less than five years experience and they call them Project Managers. They tell these people to take control and drive the projects towards implementation.

Without real, hard-won, experience about how to deal with and communicate positively with senior level functional and business managers, these poor people will very quickly lose their authority. They will be stripped of their implied status and will simply become the subordinates, and compliant 'yes-sirs', to the functional and business managers involved.

The functional and business managers have now gained control of your critical projects and the project managers becomes the note-takers, expeditors and coordinators. The project is now moving in another direction and with prioritised goals that were never required or intended. Again the organisation sees project management as the failure.

To have a successful project management environment you need to hire the right people. Just as you do not hire a goalscorer to manage a team, nor should you hire a technical expert to lead your project management effort. Find a seasoned, well weathered business management professional with the right experience and commitment to lead the organisation.

In conclusion, if you want to succeed, with the development and implementation of project management within your organisation, you must not skimp or stray from the path. You must hire a seasoned project manager with the correct skills and true experience to perform their duties and sometimes that means saying 'No sir!', with all due respect.

New appointment or promotion can be a day of mixed emotion

“Here is a pen and here is a pencil,
here's a laptop and here's a stencil,
here's a list of today's appointments,
and all the flies in all the ointments,
the daily woes a manager endures
take them all, 'cause now they're yours!”

based on an Ogden Nash quotation