A few weeks ago Kelvin Redmile and Craig Cameron from Atlas attended an IoD event entitled “out of the cave” in the fabulous surroundings of Booths Hall, Knutsford.
The speaker was top business coach Nick Robinson whose niche is coaching men in the leadership skills normally attributable to the very top women managers. Nick started with two startling statistics. One, women are responsible for 85% of all purchasing decisions. Two, according to research by Harvard Business Review out of 16 key leadership criteria, women are ahead of men in 15 of them.
If that is enough to make you want to tear in half this month’s copy of Muscle & Fitness magazine then think again and if you read to the end of this article you will find where to get help.
Have a guess what was the management competence where men excelled? It was the ability to develop a strategic perspective. Personally I would have thought it was Drive but apparently top women managers are 12% more driven than their male counterparts.
On closer inspection of the Harvard Business Review article, and I must stress this is a personal opinion, the true message of the research is more subtle, albeit it is an excellent headline that makes you want to read more. Taking the direct comparisons the gap between men and women for the sixteen competences measured is not that large; typically men upper 40% to low 50% and women low to middle 50%. Nowhere is anyone getting 70%, 80% or 90% so is a true reflection not that women are marginally less useless at management than their male counterparts? With scores of 49% to 56% women are not perfect managers either.
Also is there a definite gender bias or something else in the statistics? Again a personal opinion (research funding welcome if you want me to gather the facts) but my understanding is there are relatively few top-level women managers and any person that reaches these levels has to be a truly remarkable individual.
This could create the statistical anomaly where the average women surveyed is more senior, and therefore, more capable than the average man surveyed. What might be getting measured is that on average because the women are more senior they are getting better results. The fundamentals behind the results might not be to do with gender but with ability.
If you want to draw your own conclusions the Harvard Business Review article can be found at
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/03/a_study_in_leadership_women_do.html
Whatever the root cause there are things to be learned from how successful leaders operate and that is where Nick Robinson can help you to help yourself. If you are looking for a speaker for one of your company events I can recommend this man, especially if you want to create lively discussion.
On a more personal level, starting in February, Nick is running an online Personal Development Course that is one event per month for six months. Having spoken to Nick, and signed-up myself, the course material takes the best possible leadership advice currently available, from both sexes, and shows you how to apply it to your 21st Century workspace.
If you want to book the course details are to be found at
http://nickrobinson.org/courses/development-for-leading-men-1/
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