Where women excel at work, and what men have to learn | Managing Leadership

Forest for the trees

As we have seen in the past few days, women are beginning to surmount considerable obstacles in a world of work still dominated by men and their ways of working. But they are a long way from achieving anything like equity. And the best evidence of that is the following fact, reported in this Management-Issues piece: Women do best in women-led companies.

When the CEO is a woman, and especially when board members are as well, women are promoted into more senior positions, and they are paid better than similarly qualified women in male-dominated firms. There is a moral in this.

It is not that everyone tends to favor their own gender, although that is an unfortunate likelihood. It is that a new world of work is on the horizon.

It is one that will see a vast improvement in the practice of management. And that will be because women are joining in the practice of it.

A hint of why that is can be found in another Management-Issues piece, ironically explaining survey results that purport to portray women as less ambitious than men to excel at work. The survey team argues that it is the very male-designed and managed workplace that suppresses positive ambition in women, and, as we saw in Tuesday’s review of Off-Ramps and On-Ramps, there is much to be said for that argument.

But let’s look at this: When asked what sort of factors motivated them to seek promotion, men outnumbered women two-to-one in identifying the opportunity to direct others. Women, on the other hand, outnumbered men by the same proportion in identifying the chance to empower others.

In the new world of work, women will be immensely more influential than men. Greater numbers of women, after all, will have empowered their juniors. And greater numbers of men will likely have alienated theirs.

Women have been learning a lot about management from men. The time is approaching for men to do the reverse.

Or step aside.

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Please be sure to see all the posts in this series:

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Many thanks to MableandHarry, hosting the Carnival of Leadership Development, for their selection of A random climb up the career ladder for publication in this week’s carnival.

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