Women and management.

As usual, I start my posts apologizing for my English, since I am not a native Speaker. This time I would like to describe my experience in having women as a manager. This is mostly because i think is very little helping to "fight for equality" , when you don't try to help people to succeed.

So this is a sexist post. Is just a (hope helpful) comparison.

It just happens to me that I am working as a consultant, and is now 20+ years I do this job. Yes, I'm old, even if I prefer to think I'm like music, you know, never old, just "classic". So I'm "classic". Anyhow , I had the chance to experience many managers to "consult", and I notice some "systematic" difference between women and men, while doing the managers.

Regardless of the fact Information technology is a field which experiences a dramatic lack of women in technical rank (I think I will write something later on this) , when it comes to management I had the chance to experience half a dozen managers (mostly customers to "consult") in middle-range project, meaning I was able to observe them for more than one year.

First, I refer to "leaders", which means women which needs to be leaders. I refer to leadership in the terms Max Weber first defined the word: a person which is able to get a wide consensus in the group, thus being able to impose his new culture, eventually making the whole group something different. Example: Steve Jobs entered a company which was doing computers mostly used in DTP, making a service/phone company out of it, with a completely different culture. He did it getting a total consensus (=charisma) of people, then doing something different of the whole company. This is a "leader" which is not simply "the person in charge": the person in charge could be a person with the aim of keeping things like they are, by example because the company is running well already.

When it comes to leadership, men and women are different, both are doing mistakes, which are (in my experience) quite different.

Some of them are, in my opinion, damaging women's career, when not killing any chance.

The first error mostly common in Women leadership is loneliness. I think keep saying women "YOU can do it" is good, but this word "YOU" is a bit misleading, because it convinces people (=women) they can do it alone. All this rhetoric about meritocracy is correct: you must deserve your career, and you should have the career you deserve. But... the word "you" is often read as "you alone", or "you need nobody else". Sure, if you keep saying a woman that she needs no man to be successful , you are motivating her and probably giving a good political message. Unfortunately, this is a very bad advice.

Just to do an example: I worked to a huge migration of IT infrastructure, in the automotive field. I was asked to join (as a consultant) by the new board's IT director, while the CEO was changing. What' I've seen was that, while the CEO changed, he brought with him a whole team. His team. They behaved as many man-lead teams: a wolfpack. The alpha, betas, and so and so. The new CEO was asked to do the leader, which means, to get consensus and use it to change the culture of the company, creating a new culture, together with a "new" company, a new mission, and so. (This happens quite often in the late times, because of technology is changing everything.)

Of course, when you do the leader, you must overwhelm lot of resistance, up to sabotage. Being a team, and behaving like a wolfpack, is needed. N-e-e-d-e-d. So the CEO was thinking "I need help of other men to succeed". It was not a taboo. A girl which is told "you need no help to succeed", is getting a very positive message in terms of gender equality culture, but a devastating instruction.

Just a few time later, I've seen the same in a company which changed the leadership to get a paradigm shift. The lady which was chosen as a leader , and actually she had the skill and talent. Overwhelming overperformer, too. But, she came alone on the chair. Because she is a woman, so she can do whatever a man can do. Sure. I don#t doubt of this. But, what someone miss to tell her, was a woman cannot do what a PACK of men can do.

Useless to say, she failed. The company was resisting against change, as humans are doing ALWAYS, and she had a first line of people she cannot really trust. They were working against her, or almost they didn't changed.

Ladies, bring YOUR PEOPLE with you. Men are doing it. Put your people in the place of existing. Sure. Because of trust. Like men are doing. We didn't had a taboo saying "you can do it means you must do it alone". Some men are doing the same error too, sure. This is why they fail, too.

Nevertheless, men aren't growing with a misleading rhetoric where "you can do it" means "you don't need the others". If you say a woman she needs someone else to do a career, then she feels insulted: are you saying she cannot do it? Are you sexist? Are you saying a woman cannot do it? No, I'm not. And since all successful men are having "their" people with them, it is not a taboo to me thinking yes I can succeed, nevertheless I need someone else.

This was the main error of... let's say for sure... Carly Fiorina. Marissa Mayer. Ellen Pao. To mention some.

All of them did the same mistake: they took power , ALONE, not bringing THEIR people with them. Suggestion to women: sure, you can do it, sure you can to it being a woman, but you need lot of people. You need YOUR people.

When you see a woman becoming a leader (which is the very moment companies are asking for consulting) , and you see she is alone, you know how it ends. She will work 3 times more than anyone else , she will get crazy to succeed, she will destroy her own private life for that, and still, she will get grilled. If you have your pack, your people, troublemakers will need to reach you first, but they cannot because they have a little chance to meet you: they only meet your team. Don't move alone, ladies. Never.

The second error I see from women doing the manager is to de-scalate problems. I call this "the Queen syndrome" . When lower ranks have a big problem and they ask higher ranks to work at it, this is "escalation". When higher ranks are having a problem and they ask the lower ranks to work at it, this is "bureaucracy". Escalation is good, bureaucracy is bad: useless to say.

For some reason, one of the bigger failure of women managers is to ask lower ranks to work at their problems. To do an example. If you have a problem with accounting, the solution is to hire a secretary, or to buy a better software. Asking your people to fill papers every day may help you, although this is asking them to work at your problem: which is how bureaucracy starts. If YOU are in charge of accounting ( not the receptionist, not the developer, not the system engineer), then the amount of time they must spend for accounting is 0%. End of story. It's all of your job, none of their business.

The Queen's syndrome means "thinking the fact people is working for you means people will do your job too". There are also men which are doing this error, sure, but never the good managers. Men doing this mistake are usually middle managers, the top managers are almost never doing this mistake: they get immediately the name of "control freaks" , "bureaucrats", and their career stops there.

I'm not sure why this mistake is that common among women being leaders: I suspect is because of family imprinting: when Dad has a problem at work, it's out of the door. It's his problem (until he is not fired). If the housewife has an Accounting problem then is everyone's problem, and everyone in the family gets the call of duty: report what you spend. This model is probably good into a family, but it cannot map really well into a company. It results in the Queen's syndrome, which is a continuous de-escalation of problems. Making the business of the leader the business of everybody is never good, and it goes with the name of "bureaucracy".

To behave like the queen will just make people to spend private life time to accomplish your task, to be unable to plan their tasks because it rains your tasks, ending in a general feeling "we aren't so happy with her management", or "I don't work so well with her". Plus, this will lead you to depend by them for your tasks. Which is the opposite of "leading".

The last problem I've seen is "I and YOU". And this is also typical of women leadership. There is a strong difference between orders and duty. When you give an order, you work under the implicit assumption the lower rank person's will is not relevant. This must be done just because "I tell you". Giving instructions is leadership: is saying "we have a picture how it should work, and we the leaders will explain to you" .

It not a matter of what you say or not. Is a matter of "the amount of people you say to". When you tell to ONE person what to do , and he/she is lower rank, it will almost always result to be an order.

When you tell a group what they must do, it is almost always instructions. The most common error in women leadership is to communicate decisions to single people. Of course they realize this sounds like an order somehow, so they maybe try to get polite, friendly, or maybe bitchy when they want this to be an order, the issue is they have no idea how the number of people matters.

People wants to work together. If you tell to 10 people "you must do this" , you are just telling your team what to achieve. Is not an order, even if you say "you are ordered to do that". This is because you are telling them "you are ordered to do that together". And this is implicit, because they are a number. So basically you are asking them to cooperate, even without telling.

When you say "you must do this" to a single person, you're not asking the person to cooperate. The person must do this, it's all of its problem, and the person is asked to report personally to you. This is not asking to cooperate, this is asking to obey.

To be clear: ask to obey to a Junior role is good. Is ok, and maybe part of mentoring. At the end, who doesn't knows how to obey, doesn't knows how to be a leader. This is nothing to discuss. Nevertheless, when you are a leader into a big company, your "first line" people is not a Junior. They are professionals, they have experience, and they may self-manage themselves pretty well in most of cases. If you didn't fall into the "loneliness" mistake, btw, you know them, because you bring the key roles with you when you change company.

The very point is , at work, is never "you and me". It maybe look like that in front of a coffee machine sometimes, but this is not "worktime". There is a nice rule to apply: "give orders only to groups, listen at problems only face to face". Most of women mistake I 've seen are related to this: thinking if you give the order to a person alone is less humiliating just because nobody is looking at this person taking the order. Or maybe thinking if you give this order while being alone, and you are very polite and friendly, this will help.

Sure it will mitigate the problem , but this is just mitigation. If you want a company to do this and that, you give the instructions to the whole team, mentioning single people just if you are assigning tasks.

When you do this mistake, what happens is people will stop cooperating. If you make a each single person personally responsible (and often accountable) for something, this person is PERSONALLY responsible. This person will just think to be personally fulfilling the request, and since he thinks the others aren't THE SAME committed (you gave the order to him, face to face) he will try to do it as one-person task.

When a leader does that, what I've seen is that people will self-organize to work alone, skip communication (they are a waste of time on the single person's perspective) , and/or have a good excuse when failing. Usually, an excuse like "the other guy didn't cooperated", which leads to the other guy saying "I was never ordered/I had other priorities".

Giving orders to the whole team has a different impact: it is implicit people has the same priority, people must cooperate together, and is clear that all of them are the same committed.

Of course, there also men doing the same errors. But, usually they stop their careers much earlier, keeping in the middle ranks, or the lower ranks. The very problem with women leaders I've seen, is that when they faced the price of those mistakes they react... just working more and more, up to impressive performances, overperforming, ending in self-sacrifice. Thus, thinking other people are lazy (because they don't overperform like them) , not willing (because they don't sacrifice while they are), and feeling sabotaged or surrounded by stupid.

I also had seen some (2 or 3) good female leaders, so Is not I am saying a woman will always ends like that. But, when I see a woman leader failing, I often see one or more of those errors. Plus, when you can tell a man he is doing such an error, is very hard to tell a woman he is doing those mistakes. I had verified this with my colleagues doing the consultants too: most of times those errors are labeled as "the women way to do business", so is very hard to change this.

This block of defensive/politically correct narrations may work with politics: of course I would not approach a woman colleague saying "you are doing the typical errors of a female manager" , there are many ways to rephrase the stuff, nevertheless often you get answered with such a defensive "feminist" dialectic , "this is the way a woman does". This is not true: a mistake is a mistake, whoever is doing that. There is no such a thing which is a mistake when a man is doing that, but not when it is a woman. A mistake is a mistake.

In a total of a dozen "long" projects I've worked (I don't count side projects because I have no time to know and judge) , more or less half of time I had a woman as a manager. The failure ratio was more or less the same of men, so I would say 50% of them were good as like men, what I noticed was just a different kind of mistakes. Men leaders are usually doing the mistake of ego-trip, the mistake of "everything as a fight", the mistake of "not my business", while women are doing "I will do it alone", "all of you help me with my own job" , "I tell YOU".

My current manager is now a woman, again. I had her as a manager 3 years ago with a different project, and she was doing the second and the third mistake. Now I see that she tries to avoid the second, so she has changed plus the third is now disappeared (=IMHO she was a bit shy when talking in public, so I think she had a training for that) .

But the fact she changed so much in 3 years means: it is not "the women's way". As far I see, she is still a woman, but she improved a lot.

So the excuse "this is the women's way" seems to me more an issue preventing women to improve, than a real fact.