Hello again. As mentioned last week, here is a guest entry from Pauline Crawford of Gender Dynamics, in which she asks us to consider that men and women bring different qualities to provide the answer - but do we know the question? Do we need to re-shape the playing field?
“In today’s economic crisis, is it possible that the answer can be right in front of our eyes? While we are now faced with a serious financial situation, political misdemeanors and banking chaos, there is much talk about ensuring that we engage the ‘right’ people at the top to sort out a different future scenario. Women can bring the change to the boardroom that is needed - but are both sides ready and willing to change together?
If we are to co-create the future together, men and women have an opportunity now to start the conversation about business again, rather than keep trying to fit people into the old playing field and try making it level. It’s time to actually dig it up and design a new one. This blueprint needs to acknowledge the life factors that affect both genders in business, and to not throw out all the old elements. However, it must take a serious look at the player’s natural abilities, acquired technical skills, professional contributions and life requirements. Men and women bring different perspectives in terms of personal and professional contributions to the business mix; they also require different things naturally. Half of the workforce is female and yet the business blueprint and the majority of rules and regulations are still decided by ‘male’ influence. There is still inequality in pay, a gender gap and limited opportunities within the corporate world for women to rise to the top. There are still too few women in the boardroom even though there is a renewed desire for more women to move into the top positions and the evidence is growing that a mixed top team creates the most innovative and sustainable output. Women opt out, get blocked, or go off to run their own business.
For many years I have seriously wondered why there are so many barriers to women at the top - and have concluded from my study, life observations and gathering of evidence, that the mystery lies not in the attributes of women but in the ‘playing field’ of business being unchanged for over two centuries. If we lay out a new business blueprint that encompasses economic, societal and life requirements, and the natural differentials that we observe in men and women, we might embrace more accurately the lifestyle necessities as well as the business imperatives that men and women have.
For women this would take account of their career as well as regarding their family desires and possible dependant relatives in a new way. For men, a new view might release them from their conditioned position as the breadwinner and enable them to co-parent where desired.
If we take away the problems that have besieged women on the way to the top and allowed a playing field that draws on natural strengths of the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, I believe we can grow ‘green shoots’ for new business fast. The new blueprint includes masculine and feminine characteristics to be fulfilled in appropriate balance, and all roles and functions aligned efficiently.
We need to qualify gender differentials at a deeper level. This is not just about men and women; it’s about masculine and feminine elements in us all, it’s about our biology, neurology, emotional patterns, experiences, stereotypes and perceptions; it’s about our sexuality, our culture and our personalities.
It has long been known that men, biologically, have a laterally organised brain, more focused on task, logic and thinking processes as natural business strengths; but some men do bring their intuitive ‘emotional feminine’ energy to work as their best natural strength. It is commonly understood that women are more relationship-focused, and with their bilateral, more networked brain bring a natural multi-tasking ability to the boardroom. Women tend to be nurturing, emotional and intuitive at heart, yet many women have a natural robust ‘masculine’ sense of business and bring that to the table. The confusion has occurred where women have changed their whole behaviour to match their ‘masculine’ brain and gone into business as a ‘man’, or when a man feels he cannot utilise his intuitive nature in conflict with an expectation of male business behaviour.
Creating the new blueprint ‘together’ means bringing both parties into one conversation - not one into the other. Like two computers, a PC and a MAC®, men and women speak the same language from a different hard drive, and are built differently. As we work and study the joys of masculine (M) and feminine (F) traits in business and in human nature - in both men and in women – we discover that the overall picture of gender dynamics is a more complex matrix than the usual male -female view. We can indeed observe and define six 'dynamics' in physicality (mapping body-types) and mind functions (profiling natural mind set and motivations). Exploring gender dynamics, at this deeper level within each gender, can both explain and open up communications and relationships in mixed teams that leverages more than the sum of the parts. Once understood, a wise leader can know what each man and woman brings to their ‘playing field’ and hone the best team to win.
If business potential comes from honing new resources aligned to market needs, we have all we need – it’s the configuration that needs attention. With a return to our natural strengths, and by taking a willing step forward together, men and women can bring an inspired scenario of the future into view.
Creating the future together needs to start with a new blueprint and a new inspiration.
President Obama is a fine example of a balanced masculine man who has a truly inspiring ‘feminine’ sense of emotion and who values relationships and mutuality in all he does. When he calls for mutual trust, people of all gender types listen. We too can combine these masculine and feminine attributes in business by valuing our gender dynamics as a fundamental principle of survival and eventual new growth. We have all we need born within us, let’s take a good look!”
Pauline’s personal story: I am a masculine-minded woman and I have mis-understood my gender dynamic myself over the years. I enjoy having a logical mathematical mind set, use rational thinking more than emotional response; however I also have the multi-tasking and natural relationship skills that many women have innately, and I now have a growing sense of intuition. The latter has been something I have developed over the last five years as I recognised I was not being true to my 'female' core nature. In the past I would have easily played the ‘male’ part in business and ignored my feminine emotional strengths. Now I can fulfill the balance required.
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