Women, it seems, are better bosses

By Mark Sappenfield (sappenfieldm@csps.com) and Julie Finnin Day

More than 2,400 managers in 19 states rated women more highly than men in 17 of 20 leadership skills, according to a five-year study released in 1999 by Lawrence A. Pfaff and Associates in Kalamazoo, Mich. The skills included not only traits such as coaching, teamwork, and empowering employees - traditionally seen as women's strengths - but also decisiveness and planning.

•Women came out on top in 42 of 52 skills in a survey of 425 executives by Hagberg Consulting Group in Foster City, Calif.

•A study of 58,000 managers by Personnel Decisions in Minneapolis gave women the advantage in 20 of 23 measures.

•A survey of more than 6,400 questionnaires by Janet Irwin and Michael Perrault showed that women finished ahead in 28 of 31 management categories.

"Women tend to be much more comfortable with ambiguity, sharing information, and sharing responsibility - when you have to be flexible," says Judy Rosener, a professor at the University of California at Irvine's Graduate School of Management."And this flexibility is going to make women much more effective."

In one survey of marketing executives released by Westport, Conn.-based Copernicus in 1998, 73 percent of respondents said men make decisions without input from others, while only 20 percent said the same of women.

It costs $85,000 in training to replace a customer-service employee who makes $23,000 a year. Women have shown a particular adeptness at keeping employees happy.

For men and women who have grown accustomed to a more autocratic style of managing, the switch to a softer tone can take adjustment. "It can create confusion in men - they don't realize they're being told what to do,"

A recent study by professors at Arizona State University West in Phoenix in found that employees - both male and female - were more likely to feel they were treated unfairly if disciplined by a female manager.

Research has shown that women have taken on more male qualities to survive. But, interestingly, a study by Marshall Sashkin at George Washington University in Washington found that women executives often reverted back to a more inclusive, nurturing style when they became owners of their own companies.

A recent study of 676 male and 383 female managers from 211 organizations found that women topped men in such areas as setting goals, planning, communication, teamwork, and facilitating change. The study, by Lawrence A. Pfaff and Associates, reported that in traditionally male areas, such as decisiveness, the sexes were dead even.

Replacing a valuable female manager will cost 150 percent of her annual salary, according to a 1993 study by the Families and Working Institute.

"Now we have over five years of data and the results are more convincing than ever, " said Dr. Larry Pfaff, who conducted the research. "Once again, women outscored the men," said Pfaff. "Female managers - as rated by their bosses, themselves and the people who work for them - were rated significantly better than their male counterparts. This difference extends beyond the 'softer' skills such as communication, feedback and empowerment to such areas as decisiveness, planning and setting standards."

"The statistical significance of this data is dramatic," said Pfaff. "Over a five-year period while gathering data on more than 2,400 subjects, on average, men are not rated significantly higher by any of the raters in any of the areas measured."

Female managers are more pessimistic about their promotability than their male counterparts and there is a valid basis for this perception. Each of these managers filled out a questionnaire analyzing their perceptions of their own performance.

Women received slightly higher ratings than men with respect to managerial competence in their present positions. Men, however, received significantly higher ratings than women with respect to perceived long range potential. This research confirms other studies, which show that gender stereotype play more of a role in evaluating future potential than it does in evaluating current managerial performance. When evaluating future potential, they often make many assumptions. Current performance evaluation lends itself to more visible measures.

Women’s ratings of their own performance were generally in line with the rating given to them by superiors. In other words, women display realistic self- appraisal. Male managers’ self-ratings were inflated relative to how they were actually perceived by their superiors.

New research is showing that men ought to be the ones doing more of the imitating. Management gurus now know how to boost the odds of getting a great executive: Hire a female.

Ironically, the researchers weren't looking to ferret out gender differences. They accidentally stumbled on the findings when they were compiling hundreds of routine performance evaluations and then analyzing the results.

'Women are scoring higher on almost everything we look at,'' says Shirley Ross, an industrial psychologist who helped oversee a study performed by Hagberg Consulting Group in Foster City, Calif. Hagberg conducts in-depth performance evaluations of senior managers for its diverse clients, including technology, health care, financial-service, and consumer-goods companies. Of the 425 high-level executives evaluated, each by about 25 people, women execs won higher ratings on 42 of the 52 skills measured.

Women think through decisions better than men, are more collaborative, and seek less personal glory

''Women get high ratings on exactly those skills needed to succeed in the global Information Age, where teamwork and partnering are so important.''

It's no surprise, then, that some executives say they're beginning to develop a new hiring bias. If forced to choose between equally qualified male and female candidates for a top-level job, they say they often pick the woman--not because of affirmative action or any particular desire to give the female a chance but because they believe she will do a better job.

"Women are more stable, all sorts of intangibles that can help an organization.''

But if women are so great, why aren't more of them running the big companies?

These undercurrents of bias in Corporate America infuriate many women, who then bail out rather than navigate unsupportive terrain.

The new studies offer some clues about why the cultural mismatch between women and large companies persists and why it's so critical to keep women on board.

Because the participants had no idea that their evaluations would end up as part of a study on gender, the data are untainted, says Janet Irwin, a California management consultant who conducted one of the studies. ''We were startled by the results,'' she says.

Contrary to stereotypes, women outperformed men in all kinds of intellectual areas, such as producing high-quality work, recognizing trends, and generating new ideas and acting on them. ''Women's strengths are stronger than men's,'' says Irwin, ''and their weaknesses are not as pronounced.''

Women have always outscored men in such evaluations, says Gebelein, whose company began looking at gender differences in 1984. And they score highest at the most male-dominated companies because, she surmises, of the type of woman who succeeds in such environments--someone who must be superior in every way.

They might have rated higher because they weren't being compared with men holding similar jobs

When he examined 1,800 supervisors in 22 management skills, he found that women outranked men on about half of the measures. Female managers were graded more effective by peers and subordinates, but bosses still judged men and women equally competent as leaders.

Nancy Hawthorne, former chief financial officer at Continental Cablevision Inc., who is now a consultant, says she often felt her bosses ''wondered what the heck I was doing.'' At meetings, she often allowed subordinates to explain the details of ongoing projects.

Sandra Kiely, managing director and chief administrative officer at National City Investment Management Co. in Cleveland, recalls that one of her bosses at National City Bank warned that her management style would hurt her career. ''You should be looking out for yourself, not your people,'' he advised her

Getting results was one of the categories in which women earned their highest marks in these studies.

Companies can also undercut women's strengths in another, often inadvertent way: by assuming that people skills are not business skills.

Women have been doing this kind of work for years, but their behavior is often devalued because their intentions are misunderstood, says Fletcher. A woman who takes the time to talk to an employee about a meeting he has missed, for instance, might simply be considered a nice person--not someone trying to make sure that the staff has enough information to make an important decision. Her business actions become invisible, since the staff attributes her behavior to just being kind.

Kiely bristles at some research that concluded that women aren't perceived as strategic or vision-oriented. Her strategy, she says, is to make people think something is their idea so she can get them to buy into a plan.

In the end, it takes a lot more than competence to make it to the top.

Companies may say they want collaborative leaders, but they still hold deep-seated beliefs that top managers need to be heroic figures. Interpersonal skills may be recognized as important, she said, but they aren't explicitly seen as corner-office skills. ''We are in the process of changing our concepts of leadership,'' she says. ''But organizations haven't evolved that much yet.''

Kabacoff has just finished a new study showing how CEOs and corporate boards view upper management, and he found a clear double standard. Male CEOs and senior vice-presidents got high marks from their bosses when they were forceful and assertive and lower scores if they were cooperative and empathic. The opposite was true for women: Female CEOs got downgraded for being assertive and got better scores when they were cooperative.

Female managers rate higher than male managers on 25 of 47. And as good as male managers on 21 of the 47 categories

The categories in which women scored the same as men include analytical ability, creativity, risk taking, objectivity, interpersonal relations, conflict management, vision, ambition, and sociability. The categories in which they scored higher include developing subordinates, self-discipline, strategic planning, decisiveness, and inspirational role model, which is the leading predictor of overall leadership strength.


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