As we pick through the wreckage, how can gender help us rebuild a stronger house?
By: Kat Dufresne
Call her the “Alpha Female”: inspiring, confident, bold yet feminine, tough, honest and authentic.
Ask a scientist, they’ll tell you it’s all down to subtle differences in the way the male and female brain works: women possess a unique and powerful skill set when it comes to communication, intuition, the ability to nurture and empathize with others. What is now undeniable is that the same traits used over countless generations to parent can be applied to management of people and large corporations.
These subtle differences, and the benefits they can accrue in the corporate world, have historically taken a back seat to more purportedly “male” traits such as aggression, competition, self-assertion, self-confidence, and self-reliance. Looking at the 2008 market meltdown, many are asking if that’s such a good thing after all.
And indeed, that slavish adherence to the macho market trader model may be changing. The 2008 crash, which brought the global financial system to the edge of doom, has since provoked much soul searching about the lessons to be learned and how such a disaster can be avoided.
WritesPaceUniversity’s Darren Rosenblum in Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Perspective: “Gendered understandings of economic relations have surfaced, with some arguing that testosterone encourages excessive greed in boom cycles and fear in bust cycles.”
OnWall St.and further afield, corporate boards are starting to wake up to women’s masterful ability to manage as a valuable tool in the upper echelons of corporate management, one that can help shape business culture and in turn boost the bottom line. These differences in approach – and their enlighteningly complementary nature – may be enough to warrant a quota system to change the balance of power around the top table, according to top European Union officials.
The European Commissioner of Internal Markets Michel Barnier said earlier this year he wasn’t opposed to Europe-wide quotas for women in the board rooms of publicly traded companies.
“Women have a collective interest in advancing and ways of dealing and thinking that are more long term,” said Patricia Bradshaw associate professor of organization studies atYorkUniversity. “Women’s connection to the generations means they bring an empathy and capacity to look long term that the short-term bottom line focus overlooks.”
Aside from the longer-term view, women are seen as being much stronger on corporate oversight than their male colleagues, with a greater attention to detail.
Professor Daniel Ferreira of the London School of Economics found women at the board level had a better attendance record than their male counterparts and were more involved in corporate life through various subcommittees.
Addressing a Women of Influence Corporate Power Player series, Canadian Tire Corporation chair Maureen Sabia told of her experience as the only woman at the table in her first board meeting.
Sabia said she was immediately struck by the fact that the CEO, who was often the chairman of the board, expected the directors to rubber stamp management’s recommendations. This state of affairs, she says, created a dependency on management, the very people the board of directors was supposed to oversee and evaluate.
“I can vividly remember in my early days on the board having the temerity to express an opposing point of view, and I asked that it be recorded in the minutes,” she recalls. “Well, the hostile response I had from the chairman – who loftily informed me that such dissent had never been recorded before and would not be now – really (made for) an interesting afternoon. I hasten to tell you however that my dissent wasrecorded, in part because I insisted on it and in part because the general counsel came to my aid and reminded the chairman that every director had the right to have his or her vote recorded. And in those days, for that man, it was a career-limiting move.”
(Then with characteristically dry and self-deprecating wit, she acknowledged in question period that “There are boards I’d love to sit that I think I’d be too big a nuisance for.”)
In the LSE study, companies with weak corporate governance in particular benefited from having more women on the board, with attention to pay and bonuses particularly strong. “More and more, compensation packages are being tied to performance,” Sabia says. “The setting of individual targets and holding those people accountable for meeting those targets. Even if the company does extremely well, you may not be getting that bonus.”
Susan Tose Spencer, a former general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles and entrepreneur whose companies have combined revenue of $50 million says there are 12 different character traits that women bring to a business that can boost corporate success.
She agreed with Ferreira in that one of those is attention to detail and oversight.
“Women do their homework,” she said.
Though perhaps more importantly, Spencer said women have a more intuitive management style and are able to empathize with their staff in a way that generates trust and loyalty.
“Women are able to communicate in a very special way, not just with our mouths but with our body language, our faces,” she said. “We listen and can remember what was said and it’s clear that it’s a skill set that women have that men do not.”
“If you come out of a meeting and ask a man and a woman about what happened you will get different answers. Women have a tremendous edge when it comes to connection.”
She said at the end of the day, the ability to empathize doesn’t necessarily mean she will act differently from her male colleague, but she is likely to have found a deeper connection with her team. This makes her more inclusive in her style and more willing to adopt a collaborative approach. And ultimately that has been proven to be a more effective way of problem solving. Scott Page, an economist at theUniversityofMichigan, has used mathematical models to prove a diverse group will solve a complicated business problem better than a homogeneous group.
So, to the key question – now frequently debated in the media – of whether or not the 2008 market meltdown would have happened with a greater female presence in senior management. Would they have been less risk-averse and less inclined to overlook discrepancies in the pursuit of profit?
“They certainly would have asked a lot more questions,” Spencer said. “Men do not want to show their ignorance. Women will intuitively ask the right questions.”
It’s possible that the willingness to ask the right questions and challenge the status quo that women bring to the boardroom is likely to be a much more valued commodity in top management.
“Women can bring a different perspective,” said Patricia Bradshaw, associate professor of organization studies atYorkUniversity. “I really believe that boards should play the role of loyal opposition, they can no longer be the chummy boys’ club where the board and chief executive agree about everything just because they golf together, they need someone to challenge the assumptions.” And where they stand three or more strong, women are poised to stare boldly across the boardroom table and ask the tough questions.
