09/19/2008
Gender Differences in Leadership
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
In their book, Leadership and the Sexes, Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis look at the science of male/female brain differences and how these differences impact their approach to leadership. They note these specific management style differences:
- Male leaders tend to be moire prescriptive in their management -- they will prescribe, direct, tell people what to do more aggressively, in general, than women do.
- Female leaders tend to be more descriptive in their management -- they tend to describe what they are looking for and spend more time detailing to employees -- and hearing from employees -- how to accomplish the goal...
- In conflict management, men tend to seek out more direct conflict than women...
- Although certainly many men are conflict-avoidant with other men, males who usually show no aversion to conflict can become conflict-avoidant, or even relatively ineffective in conflict, when facing workplace conflicts with women.
- Because women remember interactions, including conflicts, longer than men, men may perceive that women are holding on to a grudge, and thus distrust female managers.
- When judging employees, women tend to be more forgiving than men are of others, especially men who fail.
[Note: Gurian and Annis sprinkled this commentary with frequent reminders that there are clearly exceptions to these rules.]
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