|
 LEADERSHIP
AND THE SEXES: USING GENDER SCIENCE TO CREATE SUCCESS IN BUSINESS,
is a book by Michael Gurian with Barbara
Annis. (Jossey-Bass/John
Wiley, September 2008.) To learn more about the book please
click here.
 Forbes.com interviews
Michael Gurian about LEADERSHIP AND THE SEXES
Women Vs. Men: Who's Better At Business?
Matthew
Kirdahy, 05.28.08
Gender science tells us that women are more likely than men to remember
they even read this story.
In Leadership
and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business,
Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis offer decades of experience so we can
decide who is better at what in the business world.
But it turns out that it's not a question of better, just different.
"I think what we've been able to prove over the last 20 years is that
there is not superiority or inferiority," said co-author Gurian, who
also wrote the best-selling The
Wonder of Boys.
Gurian: Leadership
and the Sexes, published by Jossey-Bass, combines Gurian's
use of brain science in gender studies and Annis' years of experience
consulting top international companies on gender concerns. Annis adds
real-life examples of what's happening in business leadership.
Forget about individuals for a second, and observe everyone just as
male or female on the job.
According to the book, due out in August, men are more apt to zone out
in a meeting since their brains are designed to enter a "rest state"
more easily than women. In that same meeting, women may run off topic
before returning to the task at hand because they're born multi-taskers.
Gurian talked to Forbes.com about how the book digs deeper into these
differences and offers tips on improving communication, negotiations
and leadership in the workplace based on the gender balance.
Forbes.com:
Other than just years of practical experience, what type of research
needs to be done to write a book on this sensitive subject matter?
Gurian:
I've been in
a number of corporations. That's relatively anecdotal. [Barbara Annis]
has done formal diagnostics and her corporation (Barbara Annis
& Assoc.) has done over 2,000 workshops at corporations.
The brain science of the book is obviously the bedrock, and that's my
20 years of that. Then my personal, anecdotal and then the book
research, the scholarly research on what's already out there. There are
other reports already out there--women in leadership books, authentic
leadership books--there's a lot out there to see if I could match it
with gender.
Then Barbara Annis' workshops and all the anecdotal research she's
brought in ... What I did is I basically wrote a book that brought
together everything I could find that showed when you use
brain-differences information, here's the positive effect on people and
on corporations.
Forbes.com: What do you
mean when you say that this gender science is a bottom-line
issue?
Gurian: There are
two ways in which I've seen this happen. One thing, if you look at the
endorsement blurb for Brooks Sports--I was working with them, and they
saw immediately that when the folks learned about the brand
differences, the workplace comfort increased, the power of that
workplace increased. They understood, as leaders, how to help their
sales teams. Help men market to women and women market to men. That's
an example of where it started with the HR level and the CEO level and
trickled through.
Another example: Barbara and her corporation and others went into
Deloitte & Touche about 10 years ago [to teach] the brain
differences ... the differences between males and females. In that
case, their bottom line was affected by retention. They retained
talent. [We] give that example in there of the $109 million that they
claim they're saving by retaining these people, especially women ...
A third way to look at it is in the IBM way. They are a sort of a
combination of both. They develop mentoring systems. They taught people
male-female brain difference. And they made changes in both. They
increased the diversity in their small business and market ability so
they sold more products. They also retained more people.
Forbes.com: Who will
benefit most from the information in this book? Could it be of any
special use to, say, hiring managers? While they can't discriminate,
could they use this information when considering the right candidate
for a job?
Gurian: I know that
that's how my teaching is used, and I know that what happens is folks
absorb this. And HR people are very smart, they just haven't seen this
information. Once they get this information, they'll say OK, No. 1, who
am I going to hire? It's not they're discriminating--it just becomes
something intuitive.
When they're assessing people, they're intuitively now assessing for
things like how will this man work with this female team. If I want to
hire this man, because I really love what he brings, how do I need to
train him to work with this female team and vice versa? How will this
female work with this male team? I want to hire her, [but] she might be
overreacting to the things men do, or the men might be overreacting to
the women. How do I train them to get over that so people don't leave a
year from now?
I think it's absorbed, and it becomes intuitive, and then it's also
specifically about addressing gaps that we all have. We walk into our
marriages with a gap. How does this woman work? How does this man work?
I sort of see this as a part of the evolution of the human being, and
they come to a workplace and the HR person becomes a part of their
growth by providing them with these assets.
Forbes.com: How truly
different are men and women in business? Is one gender built to be a
better business leader than another?
Gurian: Not better.
I think what we've been able to prove over the last 20 years is that
there is not superiority or inferiority. It's different. That can be
broken down. Like negotiation--no matter where we go in the world, and
we want to remember that the research that I put in my book is
worldwide. This is hard science.
All over the world when you test men and women for facial cue
recognition, women test ... better. It's a negotiation tool. This is an
example where if you say to yourself--if you're a man, and you say,
"Hey, I know everything. I walked into this negotiation, there's like
$50 million at stake, I've got it wired." But you're not really great
at reading facial cues--and especially if you're one of these
high-powered competitive guys who's not very good at reading facial
cues. You really want to team up with a woman leader and go into the
negotiation as a male-female team, because she'll bring many assets,
but one may be that she's better at reading facial cues than you are.
We have this example of a $50 million mistake. The guys thought they
nailed it because they presented the data, but their female partner
said, "no, no, no. Those two CFOs they needed more info." The guys
didn't believe her, but she was reading facial cues that they couldn't
read. They didn't believe her and they lost the deal.
Forbes.com: As a man or a woman,
what gender would you prefer being on the other side of the negotiation
table?
Gurian: Well, one
wants to be ready for anything, and so of course the teams that you
face are going to be men and women. Statistically, you're going to face
more men than women when you're negotiating because more men are at the
very top right now. But you're still going to face some women too. The
idea is to put together a team, not only to develop your own personal
assets.
It's about the self, the individual man or woman gaining more strength.
It's about them valuing the areas where they are strong. Then it's
about them creating gender partnerships between men and women so that
they are getting the assets of both sexes.
This facial cue thing is an example. We are not going to next year
produce as many men who are as good at reading facial cues as women
because the brain differences are too profound.
The old idea of we'll change each other--we're saying, "Well hey,
that's how we're losing all this talent and all this money. Let's look
at the natural assets."
Forbes.com: Take Sen. Hillary
Clinton as an example of these natural leadership assets. She tends to
possess the skills of both it seems, especially in
competition.
Gurian: Now,
Hillary Clinton is a great example of sort of both. I was going to say
that men and women both compete and bond, they just do it differently.
Hillary Clinton, as I see her--of course I'm just observing her through
the media, I don't know her personally--I see a woman who is really
caught. She is competing as a woman. She is authentic, but she's
cutting off from herself some assets because she's trying to compete
like a man.
When she cried and really touched those people in New Hampshire--if I
were advising her I would say, do more of that. That's authentic to you
and that really touches people, but she's caught. A woman right now
running for office is caught. Especially running against a guy who is
so dynamic. You're constantly playing defense because [Obama's]
speaking skills are so incredible.
A lot of women will be sort of "competitive like a guy" in the
workplace, but then when they go home, they realize that's not fully
authentic for them. They would like to have a more expansive or more
authentic relationship in the workplace around competition. And they
can help because they go home. Then they meet with their friends and
then they're not very competitive. So the workplace is trying to alter
women, and some of that's great. I think we need to compete.
I think our vision is that the workplace that wants to retain women and
save those hundreds of millions of dollars also has to understand how
women compete and how they bond and it is different.
We have this story in the book of this woman who was under a lot of
stress and she cried. The guy said, "Oh, you're weak." Well, when they
go through this training, they read this and go, "Wait a minute--that's
how she is actually being powerful." It brings people to her. It helps
people understand her, and she's still closing just as many deals as
the guy. Female tear glands are 60% larger than male [tear glands], so
women are going to tend to cry more.
Forbes.com: Who would you rather work for, a
man or a woman?
Gurian: I've had
both. I like both. I just have to go into any experience, obviously
treating everyone as an individual, but saying the conversations with
woman will probably be longer. I have to be more patient because their
magic is going to come through them verbalizing more and connecting
more dots. With men, I have to generally say, the conversations will be
a little shorter, the meetings with be a little shorter. We're going to
cut to the chase a little quicker. So some things won't get discussed,
but we're going to go for the end product more quickly. I think there
are benefits to both.
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