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?
Women are more personally engaged with their employees, which means women are able to handle human situations more deeply, especially in dealing with subordinated and special business cases.
ReplyDeleteSoft skill characteristics makes employees feel cared about and inspired to produce higher-quality work.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, women are also said to be better at handling and resolving conflict.
ReplyDelete“That women might be better managers than men makes sense because the same skills women bring to their traditional roles in the home, such as multitasking, delegating, and prioritizing, also make them valuable on the job,” (Kathleen Wu)
ReplyDeleteAnother theory on why female bosses outperform male bosses is that women are more likely to communicate information rather than keep it tightly controlled
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if you think about this statement in a different way and consider the typology of the soft skills, then you can also notice that female managers could have a problem in keeping private and work life separated. Since women are more emotionally involved in relationships with employees, women are not able to handle most cases objectively and neutrally.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, you could argue that women are easily influenced and affected by this emotional engagement with employees; blurring the line between boss and friend. This phenomenon is also referred to as the “Good Mother” model (Welch, 2007).
ReplyDeleteThe opposite is also true. Women in managerial positions tend to mimic the classic male boss; tough and authoritative. This phenomenon is also referred to as the Ice Queen Model (Welch, 2007). When women tend to use this management style they set out clear directives and performance incentives but they also create fear amongst their employees.
ReplyDeleteI found a study of 2,000 women in full or part-time employment in which they were asked whether they would prefer to have a man or woman as their immediate line manager.
ReplyDeleteSixty three per cent expressed a male preference, while only 37 per cent opted for a woman.
The main reasons cited were mood swings and bringing personal problems to work.