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Whenever I publish a post, invariably I receive one or two comments from some guy who is just an angry old bastard. Which is weird because at times I feel like an angry old bastard. In addition, the comment is always centered around whining or complaining by employees, and how people need to "suck it up and work harder".
My response, "go f#ck yourself".
Working harder is not going to make problems go away which may be inherent in a system or culture. Working harder is not going to make the employee feel better about their work environment. Working harder at a job which is a dead end, will in fact destroy employee morale and undermine the goals of management.
The old bastard's response to this post would be, "Oh boo hoo! So go get another job!"
Again my response is, "go f#ck yourself."
In my experience, the men in management that I work with and have worked with, have a tendency to react like the aforementioned angry old bastard, and push blame back on the employee. Even I do that! Initially, I think, "Wait...what? It's my fault? No it's your fault." Moreover, we/men tend to suppress any empathy we might have because we feel it might cloud our judgment. We want to be objective right? Wrong, we want to be men and make the hard decisions, like firing someone during the holidays. Yeah, that's right. I did that one year. I fired a guy right before Christmas, because my boss wanted me to send a message that we weren't soft on poor performance, even during the most festive time of the year.
My response should have been, "boss, go f#ck yourself."
Instead, I acted the part of the good soldier and fired a person when the really hard decision would have been to stand up to my boss who was being a jerk.
Which is why I think we need to stop promoting angry bastards and place more women into management roles...specifically senior management roles. Women comprise just 24% of senior management positions. Yes, I understand there is the campaign "Lean In" started by Sheryl Sandberg and her great book. The "Lean In" campaign has created circles all across the country to help women connect and to realize their full potential, while also getting spouses involved as well. However, this isn't enough. The people who are actually making management decisions, mainly men, need to begin advocating for women as managers. Senior executives around the world need to take some action and start actively promoting women into more prominent roles as leaders. Listed below are five reasons why I think the business world needs more women in management:
Women Engage Teams - In a Gallup poll conducted in 2015, 41% of female managers were engaged with their teams, while just 35% of the male managers were engaged. What does this even mean? Well it means that women managers are listening more to their employees and getting their teams more engaged and therefore their teams might be more productive. Further conclusions from the Gallup study revealed that higher engaged employees may lead to higher performing work groups. In the poll, 35% of women who reported to female managers were engaged, while just 25% of men who worked with male managers felt engaged. This is a significant difference of 10%, and any advantage you can gain in productivity is welcomed in the corporate environment.
Too Much Testosterone - Many of the companies I've worked with have been dominated by men. In the past, this set up has worked and they've been successful. However, moving forward, there needs to be less testosterone in the modern work place. Far too often, if you have a bunch of guys working together they start acting like silverback gorillas and trying to prove who is the most dominant, especially with regards to management. In contrast, the few women managers I have worked with have just wanted people to strive together towards a common goal, and they didn't let their egos get in the way. Which to me is how it should be really. Some of the men who I've associated with, especially insecure General Managers, often felt threatened by me, as if I was going to take over their band or troop. In each instance, I usually quit because the relationship was too strained, but what I should have done was cut off their balls.
Women Listen Differently - According to a study conducted in 2000, by the Indiana University School of Medicine, women listen differently than men. The study analyzed the brain activity of 20 women and 20 men listening to a reading from "The Partner" by John Grisham. The men in the study primarily listened with just one side of their brain, the left, which is notably associated with listening and speech. While the women listened with both sides of their brain, processing not only with the left but also the right side of the brain which is associated with non auditory functions. In other words, the women were listening and processing the information at the same time, using each lobe of their brains, both left and right. Whether this is better or not is subjective, but I'd prefer to have someone listening to me with their whole brain rather than half.
Women Promote Development - Affiliated with the Gallup poll of 2015, employees polled revealed that they believed women managers were more interested in their development than male managers.
"It does not mean that female managers are more likely to promote their associates, but it could signify that women are more apt than men to find stimulating tasks to challenge their employees, thus ensuring associates develop within their current roles and beyond." - Gallup Poll 2015
I'm not sure this is cognitive proof that women are better managers but it does offer a significant reason to place them in management positions, particularly if you want to develop your people.
We Need Balance In Our Workplace- If you have too much of one gender in your workplace, there tends to be a general bias towards one sex. A perfect example happened to me years ago. I was hired by a company that was made up entirely of women, and so when I would make suggestions on how they could improved productivity many of them would shrug off my opinions, dismissing them as "a man's perspective." Similarly, I have worked in places where the personnel are entirely men, and there were more off color jokes and back slapping than was necessary. And the women who were introduced into that environment acted more masculine than the men, just to feel accepted, and in turn get promoted. They were in fact, more off color than most of the men, acting almost over the top to garner some type of weird respect, and to feel that they were "one of the guys". Women shouldn't feel like they need to act like and swear like a drunken sailor in order to be part of the group. Moreover, men shouldn't feel like they need to suppress their masculinity. We should have balance and share in work place decisions.
These are just a few reasons why we need to promote female managers, but there are many more which are not listed, yet carry as much relevance to support the idea "we need women to lead."
SFTD
