He Said, She Said: What the Sexes Can Learn from Each Other at Work
Aug. 27, 2009 — -- Last month I addressed the never-ending debate about whether men or women make better bosses, or whether bad bossery has more to do with leadership skills than chromosomes.
Like me, the employee advocates and management trainers I spoke with felt that assuming one sex makes for better managers is ludicrous.
"The issue that people are missing is that managers, regardless of gender, have to have a certain skill set," said Christopher Flett, author of "What Men Don't Tell Women About Business: Opening Up the Heavily Guarded Alpha Male Playbook."
"I do think we often confuse a 'good boss' with 'nice person,' said Karen Burns, author of "The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use."
"A good boss is someone who's predictable, consistent and fair," Burns continued. "It's someone who is clear about what the job entails, supplies you with the resources you need to do it well and gives you helpful feedback. A good boss backs you up and gives you credit when credit is due. You don't have to like your boss, but I guess if the boss is all those things, you couldn't help liking her or him."
Like Flett and Burns, the other experts I spoke with said that trying to feminize men's management styles or make women's managerial tactics more masculine isn't the answer. However, they did agree that there's a lot men and women in the leadership seat can learn from one another. Their best suggestions follow.
Women, Drop the Mother Hen Act
In the workplace, there is such a thing as being too nurturing and too concerned with everyone's feelings and whether you're the kind of person your colleagues would invite to a dinner party. In general, if anyone's guilty of this, it's women.
"When a male manager needs something done, he'll say something like, 'Jones, have this completed and on my desk by the close of business tomorrow,'" said Thomas, a chemist in the cosmetic industry who's been in the workforce three decades and claims he hasn't had a female manager that "didn't end in disaster."
