For women in business, a matter of style

by Cheri Streeter

Leadership styles based on differences in gender have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Knowing how to make the most of each can improve your business.

 

One thing fair about this down economy is that it seems to be gender-neutral: Business men and women alike are searching for strategies for survival. Identifying strategies to do that was the focus of a survey conducted last year by the Women’s Presidents Organization, a national group made up of women who own large businesses. The members surveyed, all owners of multi-million dollar businesses, acknowledged that they must change the way they do business by “broadening their product or service offerings, opening new offices, expanding their global reach and developing innovations.”

Like the economy, the strategies identified certainly are not specific to women in business, and their male counterparts obviously are just as capable of understanding and implementing them. But successfully doing so might depend on the ways in which strategies are implemented—and therein lie lessons for women, as well as men, in business leadership roles.

A leadership guide developed by Mariam MacGregor, founder of Youthleadership.com, show how differences in feminine and masculine leadership styles can be broken down into three distinct constructs: Cooperation vs. competition, teamwork vs. hierarchy, and quality output vs. winning.

Cooperation vs. competition: Typically, these leadership styles correlate to internal management practices. But in a tough economy, business owners can benefit from applying them to external situations. In a down economy, for example, two businesses within a single industry may find themselves both struggling, neither making sufficient profit to survive in the long term. The classic masculine leadership style would be for both businesses to focus on defeating the remaining competition, possibly resulting in the demise of both! The alternate approach might be to seek a merger or strategic alliance between the two businesses, bringing together the strengths of both and capitalizing on their synergies.

Teamwork vs. hierarchy: As business owners pursue this type of collaboration, they may combine staffs or acquire employees from competitors that have down-sized or gone out of business. They then face the task of assimilating new people into an existing arena with an already established culture. The acquired staff may even be more experienced or more highly skilled than the existing work force, causing skepticism, fear, and concern. If the business already operates in a team mindset, new staff may be more readily accepted and valued for their skills and potential contributions to the success of the team as a whole.

Quality output vs. winning: In the example above, the end product or service likely will be improved, broadened, or expanded, illustrating that a focus on achieving quality output can lead to longer term success.

Each of these contrasting styles shows two ways for an organization to get from Point A to Point B. So do these style differences really matter? “The growing success of women business owners indicates they do matter,” according to Sherry Turner, executive director of the Kansas Women’s Business Center in Lenexa. And the statistics support her: According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, 10.1 million firms are 50 percent or more owned by women and employ 13 million people, generating $1.9 trillion in sales as of 2008. The center also reports that women of color own 26 percent of all women-owned businesses, employing 1.7 million and gener-ating 235 billion in revenues. These firms are also reported to be the fastest-growing firms between 2002 and 2008.

“With this kind of economic impact, you can’t ignore what these women are doing right, Turner says. “Business owners, both men and women, need to develop and employ both the masculine and feminine styles of leadership to be successful.”

In his famous book, author John Gray proposed that “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” That might be true, Turner concedes, but “Venus and Mars are both planets co-existing within one universe, each just making sure they make another rotation around the sun.”

Cheri Streeter is a principal of JTAB Associates, LLC. small business advisers and a founding member of the Women's Capital Connection, a Kansas City based angel investor network.
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