Who’s Better: Men or Women?

Who makes a better manager – a man or a woman?

I suspect that in some quarters just asking that question is potentially career threatening! Can you imagine someone actually suggesting – in today’s culture and political environment – that a man might make a better manager because of his gender?

In a recent NY Times article (Adam Bryant. No Doubts: Women Are Better Managers. July 25, 2009.), Carol Smith, senior vice president and chief brand officer for the Elle Group, said the following:

In my experience, female bosses tend to be better managers, better advisers, mentors, rational thinkers. Men love to hear themselves talk. I’m so generalizing. I know I am. But in a couple of places I’ve worked, I would often say, “Call me 15 minutes after the meeting starts and then I’ll come,” because I will have missed all the football. I will have missed all the “what I did on the golf course.” I will miss the four jokes, and I can get into the meeting when it’s starting.

Men also, they’re definitely better on the “whatever” side. Things tend to roll off their back. We women take things very personally. We’re constantly playing things over in our head — “What did that mean when they said that?” — when they mean nothing. And I’m certainly not immune to this. So there’s a downside to women.

WOW! Imagine the furor that would be raised if a male Senior VP suggested that men make better managers, better mentors and rational thinkers, and that women love to gossip and spend too much time talking about their new shoes and who got kicked off So You Think You Can Dance!

Which, they do, by the way.

Yeow!! Sorry, that was my wife throwing a plate at me. Not all women do, of course. Just like all men don’t talk about golf and football…. Uh oh. I guess that argument just fell apart, huh? But you get my point.

Is It Gender or Personality Driven?

Actually, I think Ms. Politically Incorrect’s observations have much more to do with behavioral styles than gender. She is a dominant, driver personality – she likes to cut to the chase, avoid the small talk, and get down to business. In the article, she says:

I don’t waste time. If you want to chat, if you want to gossip, I’ll gossip with anyone, I’ll hang out. But when I’m working, I’m working. When you sit here in my office, we work. Men don’t do that as well as women do, either. All of sudden they’re on football. All of a sudden they’re showing videos of their son’s soccer game. Then they’re telling a couple of jokes. I’m not good at jokes during meetings. I’m very focused. I’m very singularly directed.

Again….WOW! Men don’t work as well as women?

But I digress. To my point, is Ms. Generalization’s unwillingness to waste time a gender-specific trait? I don’t think so. Is she focused and “singularly directed” (?) because she’s a woman? Doubtful.  No, more likely, these items are the cornerstone of her personality style, and has little to do with gender. And her generalizations about men are just that, sometimes true and sometimes not so true. Her experience has brought her into contact with – what? – a couple of hundred male managers in her career? And, from that HUGE sampling she has concluded that all male managers waste time talking about football, while their female counterparts are “nose to the grindstone?”

Uh huh.

But, Ms. You-Can’t-Touch-This, by her own frequent admission, does like to “generalize,” doesn’t she? By the way, isn’t that a HUGE no-no in our society? Here she goes again:

I have been in this career for many years and I have seen, and this is a generalization, that women are better list-makers. They will do their to-do list. They will prioritize their to-do list. They will get through their to-do list. Maybe it’s because we do shopping lists. And if we have a problem — again, as a generalization — we will confront the problem and deal with it head-on.

Somebody stop me! This paragraph sends me into painful shock waves of laughter. I had to go back and read this article three times to make sure it wasn’t a parody of some sort! If a man said something like this, he would be drawn and quartered, and then summarily dismissed – in that order.

Of course she never mentions anything at all about actual job performance. Does she actually care if a male manager talks about sports, or, conversely, if a female manager talks about soap operas, if they do their jobs well? No, the point is, she just doesn’t care to chit-chat (despite her weak claim that she loves “to hang out”) – and that has much more to do with her behavioral style than her gender.

Oh, well…it does makes for great water cooler conversation. Who do you think makes a better manager – a man or a woman?

Tagged as: Culture, gender, Personality