The Power of the X Chromosome in the Workplace (Part )II: Women Really Are Different than Men

(Another installment in the series I've written for the Future Tense, Corante's latest blog devoted to trends in the workplace.)

My subtitle sounds a bit strange, but it was my realization a year ago, when I attended a personal development retreat, and was brought back in touch with my feminine nature. Before that I figured that men and women were the same, but that men actively decided to be obnoxious listeners.

At the end of the seminar, when I was asked what I'd learned, I didn't know that what I had said in earnestness would inspire laughter from the group.

I said: "I learned that women really are different than men!" There really are inherent natures in each gender that facilitate entirely different management skills.

As I mentioned in my last installment, I haven’t always had the best time working for a woman or being a boss. Though I don’t think that failure to lead is a female inadequacy. Not at all. I think that my experiences were the result of bad leadership—both mine and my colleagues’.

I once wrote about an outstanding female boss I had. She was outstanding, not because she was a woman, but because she was less concerned with her SVP title than she was with determining her team’s strengths and building an organization that capitalized on them.

HOWEVER—isn’t there always a however?—I believe that, being a woman, she was much more attuned to the underlying dynamics of our team, which had morale issues from having seen a number of bosses and business models come and go. She interviewed each of us informally to get a sense of our personalities, the things we were most proud of accomplishing, and she fought for us when other demands unrelated to our core goals threatened to divide our attention. She didn’t assume that she knew the answers before investigating. Her goal was not to kick ass and take names, but to help the company thrive by helping us be our best selves.

You can drill down my argument for women’s innate ability to teambuild to biological levels, to Deborah Tannen’s work, which shows that from a very early age women seek to relate while men seek to dominate. Better put, men relate by dominating. I saw a fascinating presentation of Tannen’s at the M2W Conference earlier this year. She studied a group of boys and girls at different stages of childhood. At the earliest stage of socialization two girls sat together, facing each other, and their conversation went something like this:

“My Mommy has one of these,” a girl said, pointing to an item.
“Really? My Mommy does too!”

At this point the girls have bonded, and they continue to bond by sharing their experiences and more commonalities. Cut to the boys, who sit next to each other in a line, not looking at each other. Their conversation goes something like this:

BOY 1: “I can throw a ball up this high.” (stretching arms to show)
BOY 2: “I can throw one to the sky.”
BOY 3: “I can throw a ball and hit heaven.”
BOY 4: “Mine hits God.”

Domination, often displayed as playful one-upping, is a way for males to socialize. I witnessed grown-up boys doing this the other day, comparing car horsepower, how much stronger Lance Armstrong is than Ivan Basso, hell, even the sharpness of each other’s gourmet knives. (If you find me in conversations like these with any of my girlfriends just smack me.)

My point is that it’s natural for men to want to dominate, and for women to relate and collaborate. There are plenty of examples of the opposite—plenty of women who can take charge and men who are good at relating and creating consensus, but let’s stick to our inherent natures. And let’s not rate any quality as better or worse than the other. Both inherent natures are valuable in the workplace, but with a more networked and global model of doing business becoming the norm, women's inherent skills, ones we’ve often relegated to off-hours endeavors, are the skills required to make things happen.

In my next installment, I will show how my experience working with women to put on the BlogHer Conference provided a laboratory of sorts for proving the effectiveness of feminine-based leadership.

Comments

[christien]

i love your thoughts on this subject. i've said the same things to female friends and i think 1/2 disagree and the other 1/2 are just shocked that i even care to have an opionion. it's even more amazing to think that when i talk to the same women away from a group. they are interactive and ask questions and want to have a conversation about it. funny, marketing is about communication. the most challenging for anyone is the marketing b/n XX and XY. thanks for not being scare to say what you really think on any subject.

[Stacie]

I work at a manufacturer whose management is mostly male. The females that do make it that far act like there male counterparts. Thanks, Jory, for showing that women can make it on their talents. Having Pause in bold on my aggregator always alerts me a thought provoking reading.

[Meghan Townsend]

Thanks for bringing attention to the subject of management styles. I have much anecdotal evidence about the "bulldozer" tactics used my male managers from my last 3 years being the only woman on my team of 15 men. Let me tell you, it doesn't work. At least not for me. I realized a long time ago that the management style here was not for me. I stay because I am good at what I do and I try to be my own buffer when my manager fails to prevent distractions. Some days it's hard. Way to bring attention to the concept of inherent management styles.