4. Are women really that eager to enter into management positions?

Thousands of talented women now graduate from business schools and hold substantive middle-management jobs at major corporations. However, a research about the leadership of 2000 top performing companies all over the world found out that only 29 (1.5%) of those CEOs were women, an even smaller percentage than on the Fortune 500 Global list (2.6%). In the top 100 rankings you can only find one women, Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay. (H. Ibarra et al., 2009)


http://hbr.org/web/extras/100ceos/1-jobs

Below you find a video about a U.S survey about the glass ceiling, which refers to the phenomenon that women get blocked to be promoted as a top manager.    Why aren’t there more women in top management positions?

3. “Women are the new generation of managers”

As women continue to join the ranks of leadership positions, considerable attention has been paid to the differentiating aspects of female and male leaders. I thought about the first and second blog entry and combined these two with each other:

Soft skills are becoming more and more important in management positions and women are mentioned as the gender that best handles these soft skills. In fact, when I combine these two findings with each other, I came to the following statement:

“Women are the new generation of managers, since they possess better soft skills than men”.

What do you think about this statement? Are the soft skills of women the ultimate characteristics to become a manager? Or can these soft skills be the ultimate weaknesses of a manager?

2. Women are mentioned as the gender that best handles soft skills

As discussed in the previous blog entry, the importance of soft skills in managerial careers is increasing. More and more people come to the conclusion that hard skills are not the only skills managers should have, but soft skills should complement these hard skills. In the previous blog entry we discussed what soft skills are, I will give a short summary:
Soft skills concern about how people relate to each other, via communicating, listening, engaging in dialogue, giving feedback, cooperating as a team member, solving problems, contributing in meetings and resolving conflict (Coates, 2006).

There is a prevailing belief embedded in our society that women are more emotional than are men. Several studies have investigated the way in which female managers differ from male managers. A considerable body of research concludes that there are differences between female and male managers, and that female managers demonstrate emotional intelligence to a greater degree than male leaders. Below you find some examples of research I found concerning this topic.

A study by Rutherford asked 97 respondents in an airline company if women manage differently from men. Below you find the outcome.
Do women manage differently from men? (Rutherford, 2001)



Furthermore Rutherford asked the respondents that answered “yes” to the previous question in what ways women differ from men. The most interesting outcome was that women have better people skills than men; women are better listeners, more relationship-oriented, more empathetic, more likely to other people’s feeling into account and women give higher priority to human aspects of any situation. Furthermore she found that women are expected to bring certain caring and communication skills to their work which are naturalized, in the same way that mothering is considered a natural skill (Rutherford, 2001).
When I read these different skills I refer to them as the soft skills we discussed in the previous blog entry.

Furthermore, I found an article from professor Weiss in which he summarizes the outcomes from Brizendine’s book The Female Brain. In this article by Weiss is stated how men and women see and respond differently in their work environments.
1. The female brain and the male brain: Female babies spend much more time scanning the faces around them, while male babies spend more time scanning the environment. This difference emerges in the adult phase. When a woman scans another person’s face, she has the ability to feel the emotion the other person is experiencing. This process is called “mirroring”. Brain scans show that women can mirror the feelings of another person better than men.
2. Intuition: Brain scan studies indicate that a woman’s brain has larger areas of sensitivity to track gut feelings, also referred to as intuition.
3. Feelings: Brizendine indicates that for men, feelings do not trigger gut sensations, but instead increases rational thought. Scientists have found that it usually takes the male brain longer to decode and process emotions than women.
4. Communication goals: The communication goal for a man is to create status, hierarchy, and power. For most women, the communication goal is to create intimacy and connection by establishing empathy and where everyone in the conversation is viewed as an equal.
The 4 dimensions mentioned above show that there is a difference in the way men and women communicate and threat each other. These differences elaborate on the soft skill abilities and this research shows that women are better than men in soft skill abilities.

Below you find some other findings, which represent that women have better soft skills:
- A substantial number of studies have shown that women are more aware of emotions in both themselves and others (Barret et al., 2000; Carriochi et al., 2003; Lane et al., 1990; Carriochi, 2005)
- “With few exceptions, results indicate that women are more emotionally expressive than men” (Kring et al., 1998, p. 688).
- Women are more accurate at recognizing the emotional expressions of others (Hall, 1984).
- According to commonly held beliefs, women are more emotionally responsive, experiencing and expressing most emotions more intensely than do men; men, if they are emotional at all, are believed to experience and express more anger (Barret et al., 2000).

1. Management qualities of today not only exist of hard skills anymore; soft skills are getting more and more important

IQ matters, but it is only a small part of what makes people succeed in their work and personal life.

People throughout and beyond the business community started talking that management qualities of today not only exist of hard skills (IQ) any more, but that soft skills (EQ) are getting more and more important. Studies on this subject support that soft skills have a greater impact than hard skills on career success, outstanding individual performance, leadership and the creation of successful teams.

“Hard skills” are technical or administrative procedures related to an organization’s core business. Hard skills are typically easy to observe, quantify and measure. Furthermore, they are also easy to train since most of the time the skill sets are brand new to the learner and no unlearning is involved (Coates, 2006). To measure hard skills the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is often used. The IQ measures intelligence, toughness, determination and vision (Motneni, 2009).

By contrast, “soft skills” (also called emotional intelligence) are typically hard to observe, quantify and measure. Soft skills concern about how people relate to each other, via communicating, listening, engaging in dialogue, giving feedback, cooperating as a team member, solving problems, contributing in meetings and resolving conflict (Coates, 2006). To measure soft skills we often refer to the Emotional Quotient (EQ). EQ consists of 5 components, which are:
1. Self awareness: people with a high degree of self awareness know their strengths and weaknesses and they are not afraid to talk about them. Can I accurately identify my own emotions as they happen? (Motneni, 2009; Goleman, 2000, Boyatzis, 2009)
2. Self regulation: people with this trait are able to control their impulses and use them for good purposes. Can I manage my emotions to achieve a positive outcome? (Motneni, 2009; Goleman, 2000; Boyatzis, 2009)
3. Motivation: people with high motivation have a passion for achievement for their own sake (Goleman, 2000; Boyatzis, 2009)
4. Empathy: emotional intelligence requires a ability for dealing with others. (Goleman, 2000; Boyatzis, 2009)
5. Social skill: the ability to build rapport with others, to get people to cooperate and to move them in the direction you as a manager desire (Goleman, 2000; Boyatzis, 2009)

(Goleman D. , 1998)

Several researches found statistically significant positive correlations between scores on the emotional intelligence scale and scores on the performance scales (Mohapatra, 2010; Goleman, Boyatzis). This means that increased emotional intelligence scores are associated with increased performance among executives working in various sectors. These results provide evidence of the concurrent validity of the emotional intelligence scale and also support the notion that emotional intelligence is associated with more or less workplace performances.

Organizations usually focus on recruiting employees with highly specific analytical and technical skills. Although a certain degree of analytical and technical skill is a minimum requirement for success, emotional intelligence is referred to a key attribute that differentiates between the average performers and the outstanding performers. “IQ turns out to be a threshold ability; you need to be smart enough to get in the game, once you are in the game however, the distinguishing competencies are becoming more and more important” (Goleman, Authors at Google: Daniel Goleman, 2007; Motneni, 2009).

Below you find a graph of how the hard skill quotient (IQ) is related to the soft skill quotient (EQ).

As already discussed, to be in a management function you need to be smart enough to get in the game, once in the game however, the distinguishing competencies are becoming more and more important. The graph depict a random population of people in the working environment. The vertical axis represents the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and the horizontal axis represents the Emotional Quotient (EQ). The blue and green area are normally the IQ standards for managers. However, you can also make a distinction between these high IQ people. The green area represents the small group of managers, that possess both high IQ, but also high EQ. In fact these people theoretically should be the best managers. Research has shown that 80 – 90 % of top leaders are in the high emotional intelligence domain (Goleman, Authors at Google: Daniel Goleman, 2007).

Below you find a video from author and professor Daniel Goleman, in which he presents emotional intelligence in correlation to IQ. In this video he explains very clearly that top managers nowadays not only depend on their hard skills, but that their soft skills are becoming more and more important.



Below you find a video of author and professor Richard Boyatzis in which he explains his vision on emotional intelligence.