Why Should Women Copy Men - Building Gender Balanced Business

Women are increasingly being advised to make sure they get noticed, that they take the credit for something they did and that they are “visible”. Men, it is often noted, don’t seem to have a problem selling themselves. For example, women might not spend any time at all building their “me brand”, as Tom Peters used to call it.

A headhunter told me recently that she once asked the very small number of women who had risen to the top in the sector she covered why they did not spend more time visiting headhunters and building external contacts that would help them in their career. They replied that they did not have the time as they had to go home at the end of the day and could not give up evenings to do this extra work. The headhunter, somewhat surprised, asked them why they did not do what the men did. And that was to do all their personal branding work on the company’s time.

Another example. The Chairman of a global multinational sometimes invited a woman director to accompany him on a short cab ride to an event or a meeting, and sometimes a man. He noticed a difference in how they chose to spend the time. The man bragged about his achievements for the whole trip while the woman earnestly prepared the Chairman for his meeting or talk. The moral of the story? That the woman in question was under-selling herself and missing a crucial opportunity to further her career.

One final example. A group of women at a women in business conference were asked to briefly introduce themselves and they took up most of the session revealing the most personal details about their lives and careers. It was fascinating, moving and interesting. But one of the women said later, as the discussion moved on, that women were always saying they accidentally fell into this work or that work. “We shouldn’t do that,” she said with a sense of urgency in her voice. The moral of this story? Women are too honest and too humble and they will send the wrong message to their male bosses, who will see it as a weakness.

“Yes, we need both men and women to balance boards and executive committees. But if we are going to continue to ask women to give up some of their natural charactertistics to get there in the first place, we should at least be asking what we will end up losing.”

So, yet again, women are being advised to adapt to the male environment in order to succeed. Yes, this is understandable and perhaps, in a Machiavellian sense, necessary. The ends justify the means. But we should stop at this point and at least take stock of what we, all of us, might lose as a result. If women become more “assertive” in order to gain “visibility”, they will become like the men. This is not evolution. It is adapting to a flawed system. They will also be more likely to spin a story about themselves and be less honest in the process.

Shouldn’t we be asking men to emulate the women? In the post-crisis world, this is the age of the humble business leader, once championed by Jim Collins in Good to Great. Instead of the shy, modest and truthful leader being the model, however, we ended up with droves of Sheridan McCoys, the protagonist in Bonfire of the Vanities (the one with the aristocratic Yale chin), Tom Wolfe’s Master of the Universe, whose life crumbled around him after a car accident in the Bronx. Two decades after the book was published and the era of excess it chronicled had ended, McCoy once again became the template for new Masters of the Universe with short memories who put greed and a sense of infallibility above common sense.

There is much talk at the moment about seizing the opportunity brought to us by the financial crash to introduce a new and better world. More green technology, financial markets that are the servants of the productive industries not the masters of it and so on. But the moment is also here to ask whether the feminine qualities of leadership (team-working, collaborative styles, hard-working, attention to detail, greater concern for governance and the proper way to do things, etc) should not be held up as the model for the rest of us. Yes, we need both men and women to balance boards and executive committees. But if we are going to continue to ask women to give up some of their natural characteristics to get there in the first place, we should at least be asking what we will end up losing.