mentorship

This month the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column took the female CEO of a major jewelry company to task for being abrasive, hurting employees’ feelings, and keeping employees in long meetings. The article was passed around in jewelry circles as an example of both bad bosses and female-leader-bashing, depending on the point of view. In my point of view, it was both.

Well, not necessarily. We’re talking about a gossip page in a newspaper for Pete’s sake. Whispers of irritation from inside sources don’t seem reliable to me, and I have no idea whether or not this person is a good boss. But there are two things that really should be addressed.

The first, and many have said this before me, is that if a man said the same things or acted in the same ways, he would be considered a bold and aggressive leader, action oriented, with high expectations. Men are leaders, women are bossy, right? When female leaders are tough they make the gossip sheet. When male leaders are tough they call it news. This will only change when we refuse to turn a blind eye to it. The news editors will stop writing it when people like us stop clicking on it and start writing letters to the editor about it.

The second is the thing that bothers me about my first statement. If it were a man . . . it would be perfectly acceptable to be a bad boss. As a corporate culture expert, I can’t let that stand without challenging it. The last thing corporate culture needs is another bad boss, and the last thing women should do to ascend corporate power structures is to become bad bosses.

I do believe there are some general differences between men and women as leaders; differences in the way we communicate, differences in the way we problem-solve, and differences in the way we lead. I say general differences, because plenty of individual men and women behave outside their gender norms. But there are differences. For women, these differences can be a source of tremendous leadership strength in a world where corporate behavior is increasingly challenged and employees expect more effective power structures, more respectful treatment and more inspiring leadership.

What are these leadership and management traits that women are typically better at, and how can we cultivate them to create healthier, more innovative, and more resilient companies?

Women are more efficient with time

In my observation, women are efficient with time and men are efficient with things. If you’ve ever waited 45 minutes for your husband to load the dishwasher, finally gave up and loaded it yourself, and then discovered he rearranged how you placed the dishes inside, you know what I mean.

Being efficient with time is a critical component of strong management. Getting the right things done first, letting the less-important things fall to a lower priority, entering a meeting with an agenda and clear expectations and moving efficiently to a set of meeting deliverables; these are things that women are (yes, generally) better at. Time efficiency not only saves the company money, it speeds innovation and it respects that employees are busy too.

Women are more collaborative

Collaboration, cross-discipline innovation, and information-sharing will be at the heart of the next era of business. Men tend to be more competitive with their peers and women tend to be more collaborative. Leaders who know how to participate as a member of the team and who are capable of inspiring team members to collaborate with each other are increasingly in demand.

Women are better leaders across the board

In fact, Harvard Business Review conducted a study in 2012 that indicated women were definitively better leaders than men, excelling in the following areas:

•   Takes Initiative
•   Practices Self-Development
•   Displays High Integrity and Honesty
•   Drives for Results
•   Develops Others
•   Inspires and Motivates Others
•   Builds Relationships
•   Establishes Stretch Goals
•   Champions Change
•   Solves Problems and Analyzes Issues
•   Communicates Powerfully and Prolifically
•   Connects the Group to the Outside World
•   Innovates
•   Technical or Professional Expertise

Whew! The only point on which men scored higher than women was Develops Strategic Perspective (hey, if you're worried I can help you with that).

How do we change?

How do we cultivate more of these behaviors and make it safe for women – and men – to lead in ways that in the past may have been viewed as weak or less masculine?

The first is to break the barrier that places men in the majority of leadership positions (64% overall, 78% of top managers). Whether this is due to blatant discrimination or more insidious social conventions is irrelevant; the only way to change a pattern is to disrupt it. And men are not solely responsible for this imbalance. I cringe to think of every time I’ve heard a woman say, “I hate working for women bosses, they’re bitches.” We can hardly expect men to stop looking at leadership as a gender issue when women are also responsible for reinforcing negative perceptions. How do we disrupt the pattern? By actively supporting women we work with as they are offered promotions, by being less suspicious and more supportive of women bosses, and – for those of us in a position to do so – by addressing our own biases and hiring qualified women to management positions.

The second thing we can do is provide mentorship. Most companies – particularly outside the Fortune 500 (which is most companies) – do a terrible job of providing training and mentorship for new managers. Those of us with extensive leadership experience must provide mentorship to new female managers (though I wouldn't turn away a fella who wanted mentorship to be a more effective leader), helping them choose positive and productive management traits over the less desirable traits they may be more familiar with. This mentorship should extend to managers who have been in their roles for some time, but who sense they could be more effective if they learned a different approach.

Finally, we need to work on our own leadership skills. Every day, without fail. Our shared goal should be to create work places filled with mutual respect, excellent communication, joy in shared success, freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, trust for management, work/life balance, and concern for workers’ families.

So the next time you read an article that takes a woman to task for being a strong leader, speak out against treating women differently than men when it comes to strength. Then, take a moment to privately hope that the female leader in question hasn’t made the mistake of leading like a man.

As a writer, I value the editors in my life. They find my errors, recognize when I need to clarify, and push me to be better. An excellent editor approaches the task without self-involvement or ego - she seeks excellence for the sake of excellence.

Back when I was first studying the craft of writing, my professors drilled into me the importance of loving - and not resisting - the red pen of the editor. It wasn't easy at first, but as I began to see how much better the edits made my writing, my appreciation grew.

Once editing is an essential part of your life, you seek its benefits in other areas. We all need the impartial eye of someone we can trust, someone whose discernment is impeccable, to bring us thoughtful critique. A trusted life-editor - a mentor - can help us recognize when our judgment is off, when we are exhibiting less empathy, more ego, or reduced awareness of how we are behaving. Truly honing the self requires the insight of others.

Of course, not everyone can be trusted with this role. If you've ever had the experience of someone criticizing or manipulating you to do something 'for your own good' when clearly they were driven by selfishness, greed, or insecurity, you know what I mean.

When we look for relationships in life, this quality should be part of our consideration, and building the trust necessary to give and take the editing should be part of the commitment. This is also true of the mentors in our professional lives. We often perceive a mentor to be someone who coaches us on skills, but the best mentors coach us on behavior, professionalism, accountability, and maturity.

I have been blessed with excellent editors in my personal and professional life, and as the decades go by, their advice and guidance has become better and better. If you do not have these editors in your own life, its time to seek them

The process starts with you; you must evaluate your ability to accept feedback and work on your 'editability'.  We can only lay the groundwork by ourselves though, cultivate the willingness. The sometimes painful, sometimes revelatory, always challenging work of being edited is something we hone over time, and only with practice.

Of course, no successful relationship is one-sided. It is essential that we cultivate the ability to be a thoughtful, not self-interested, non-judgmental editor for others as well.

I've learned to love the red ink in my life, though on occasion it can still be hard to embrace in the moment. But at the end of the day, as my self-review rolls by in almost cartoon form, with red scratch-outs, redirects, and suggestions appearing in the margins, I enjoy the peace of mind that comes from knowing that, though one gets no re-dos, one need not suffer from repeats.

I encountered a situation the other day that has been on my mind all weekend. For a number of months now, one of our most high-performance employees has been on a downward slide -- in her performance, her morale, and unfortunately, in her behavior. The downward slide coincided with the addition of a new member to her department -- a member she demonstrates a clear and seemingly irrational distaste for. The results are reasonably predictable -- the new employee does not get well trained or mentored, assimilation of the new employee ground to a halt, and other members of the department felt forced to pick sides. What a disappointment.

We've been fairly straightforward in dealing with this problem. The star performer has been there for nearly a decade, and continues to grow in her capabilities. We don't want her to go anywhere. The new employee comes with great experience and references, though from a related field. It's very difficult to find quality employees with this background who can also get through our rigorous pre-employment assessment process. There's no reason to think she won't ultimately be great, and we don't want to lose her. So we (that would be myself and the leadership group involved in this area) have been direct, have held individual and group discussions, and have made it clear that in the absence of information to suggest the new employee can't be successful, we expect her training and assimilation to continue, and that we'll provide support as appropriate. We worked with the department to break down the walls that had formed as people chose sides. For the most part the new employee began to assimilate and the group returned to more productive working behaviors.

Except for our star. She continues to spiral, and went so far as to confide to a co-worker that the new employee had "stolen her mojo." This deeply threatened behavior continues to show up, and as recently as last week, when asked if she was providing training as appropriate, our star said, "Well, if she asks me a question I try to find time to answer it." I was completely at a loss. It was honest all right. But you'd have to be completely delusional to admit you were behaving so pettily in front of a group of peers!

I decided after that comment that I better take an active role in the training of the members of that team. I don't want to take the risk that they will continue to divide and slide, and I have the direct knowledge necessary to assist with the assimilation of this person and any new people they bring into their area. Clearly we can't keep depending heavily on our star's abilities, because she's demonstrated that she's stuck at the interpersonal conflict level.

So on Friday I brought some training information to their group meeting. And as I shared the knowledge I brought, I could see that it was not only meaningful to the other members of the team, but that our star was actively engaged, writing down notes and asking questions. And I had an insight about our star.

I think she may be totally intuitive. I think it's possible that she is so naturally good at what she does -- is so clearly playing to her personal strengths -- that she doesn't really know "why" she does certain things, or perhaps doesn't reflect on what she's doing at all. And if that's the case, when a series of new employees (because the woman referred to above is the third near-failure in adding teammates to this area) have been handed to our star with an instruction to train them and mentor them, maybe she had no clue how to impart what she knows to someone else in a way that permits them to become independently successful. And if that's the case, then even as her frustration with her new team members grew, it's very likely that she began to suffer from feelings of inadequacy and shaken confidence as a trainer as well.

Some people simply don't know how to train others, because they aren't process thinkers. We can train others to think as we think to a small extent, but we can train others to do as we do to a great extent. If we train desired outcomes and specific activities and behaviors, our trainees are far more likely to be successful. If we train someone to "be" like us or to think like us, they are likely to fail and we are likely to be frustrated. A process thinker can break down what they do into small increments and then train those increments. A process thinker will turn seemingly complex jobs into a series of discreet tasks. Our star isn't a process thinker, and there are probably a lot of other stars like her.

I'm going to invest in a careful strategy of breaking down the work in that area and working with all the members of the team to ensure they know the processes that will lead to success. I'm hoping that by using my process approach the other team members will quickly catch up to the point we were hoping they would be at before now. I'm also hoping that by taking some of the training burden off our star, she'll have the capacity and the inclination to do the internal work of accepting that a lot of the problems on her team and between herself and the other woman have to do with her difficulties training and her handling of her feelings when she couldn't get the results she wanted.

It's possible that my observation on Friday was incorrect, so I'll pay attention to this thing as it unfolds. But if this insight is correct, then I'll have learned a very important lesson for the future. From now on, I'll consider whether or not someone is a process thinker before entrusting the training and mentoring of new team members to them. And when training and mentoring are taking place for new associates in the future, I'll also keep a keen eye on how the new associates are progressing, and whether their trainer is focused on teaching the new person how to think (like them), or whether the trainer is focused on teaching the new person the desired end results and actions required to achieve them.

And hopefully, everyone will live happily (together) ever after.