02/12/2009

Comparing Male and Female Leaders

Unfortunately, we have managed to ruffle a few feathers over recent messages on women as communicators. So why, you ask, do we risk more upset by focusing again on gender? Well, because this time what is being presented are research findings, not opinions. This message was sent out in February of 2003 when 49,000 of you were not yet receiving ExchangeEveryDay:

In The Female Advantage: Women's Ways of Leadership (New York: Doubleday, 1990), Sally Helgesen outlines the common traits of male leaders as researched by Henry Mintzberg and those of female leaders as researched by Helgesen herself:

Male Leaders:

1. The executives worked at an unrelenting pace, with no breaks in activity during the day.
2. Their days were characterized by interruption, discontinuity, and fragmentation.
3. They spared little time for activities not directly related to their work.
4. They exhibited a preference for live action encounters.
5. They maintained a complex network of relationships with people outside their organizations.
6. Immersed in the day-to-day need to keep the company going, they lacked time for reflection.
7. They identified themselves with their jobs.
8. They had difficulty sharing information.

Female Leaders:

1. The women worked at a steady pace, but with small breaks scheduled in throughout the day.
2. The women did not view unscheduled tasks and encounters as interruptions.
3. The women made time for activities not directly related to their work.
4. The women preferred live action encounters, but scheduled time to attend to mail.
5. They maintained a complex network of relationships with people outside their organizations.
6. They focused on the ecology of leadership.
7. They saw their own identities as complex and multi-faceted.
8. The women scheduled in time for sharing information.

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