Coaching: A Sucesssful Style

With Which Male Managers Are Comfortable

One style, which most women find natural and with which most male managers are comfortable, is one in which women managers relate to their staff as "coaches", possibly because coaching seems related to nurturing, an accepted role for women, although coaches are expected to be very demanding and tough.

Catalyst, an organization which studies women in leadership in three nations - the U.S., UK and Canada - identifies "the top individual career strategies used by senior women to advance across these three cultures:

1. Consistently exceeding performance expectations
2. Developing a style with which male managers are comfortable.

There is a perception among women managers that they must do more, perform better than their male counterparts in order to advance, so, generally, they do put in the extra effort to exceed expectations. The other top strategy, developing a style with which male managers are comfortable, is a bit more complex and challenging.

A great deal of study has been done about women in leadership has also been done by researcher Joyce K. Fletcher, Professor of Management at the Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons Graduate School of Management, and Senior Research Scholar, at the Stone Center, Wellesley College.

Fletcher tells us that there are certain assumptions and intuitive hypotheses about the role of women in organizations and how a collision of gender and power undermines women's effectiveness in organizations and impedes their advancement.


Women's Styles

The Helper

At work, women are often caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, women like to help. They tend to be more nurturing and are better at forming and tending relationships. They tend to help out, pitch in, or do work for some outside their unit or when the task is, strictly speaking, not their responsibility but someone has asked them to do it, "for the good of the team or the company."

The practice of mutually empowering " in a culture of independence and self-promotion - where individual achievement is prized and competition means beating the other guy and finishing on top - voluntarily helping others achieve is deviant behavior."

In fact, taking on the role of helper diminishes women in their colleagues' eyes. In addition, if you are a woman manager, the role of helping is often seen as an inability to rise above minutia, to give up "doing" in favor of "managing", another negative.

The High Powered Executive Acting Like Her Male Counterparts

On the other hand, when a woman seeks to rise above being a helper, when she adopts a style which emulates that of her male colleagues, she collides with unspoken stereotypes which reside just below the surface about a woman's role at work.

When women are helpful and engage in mutual empowerment, they are perceived as feminine which is considered inappropriate at work. But when they begin acting more like their male counterparts, in a way that the organization expects male executives to act, women " are likely to be labeled arrogant, bitchy or brash - common attributions for stepping out of the bounds of femininity."

In effect, women are caught in "what Ann Morrison and her associates at the Center for Creative Leadership call the narrow band," a very circumscribed, rigid and stereotypical area in which women's behavior at work is viewed favorably.


Negative Cycle - The Disappearing Dynamic

In fact, studies demonstrate, this dilemma for women sets in motion an unfortunate dynamic in which women who are helpful and view connections with others as a way to be effective at work receive negative feedback, are misunderstood, exploited or seen as inadequate and ineffectual so they adopt a more masculine style. The new style, closer to the organizational norm for men, is then viewed as unfeminine, and also receives negative feedback , earning the women resentment and unflattering nicknames. So they try again, resume being helpful and the cycle begins all over again.



The Multi - Pronged Solution

For women who wish to move up the ladder to top management, the dilemma of management style is definitely one which must be confronted and resolved.

Coaching

Every person, and , of course, every woman, must find a style which, if not natural to begin with, becomes natural over time and with practice and with which she is comfortable. One style which most women find natural and with which most male managers are comfortable is one in which women managers relate to their staff as "coaches", possibly because coaching seems related to nurturing, an accepted role for women, although coaches are expected to be very demanding and tough.

By the time a woman reaches the mid to upper level of management, she obviously has skill sets, techniques and ways of accomplishing tasks which have proved valuable to the company. It is part of her job to transfer some of these skills to her staff. When a woman manager makes it clear that she is trying to help and support someone by telling her what to do, it both reinforces her authority and makes it more palatable to the one who has to follow orders because she is the beneficiary of some potent acquired wisdom.

Coaching, can be practiced in many variations and adapted to one's personal style. There are also many degrees of authority or flexibility, which may be adapted to suit the culture of different organizations. The way one relates to staff in an art museum, or a computer lab, would be very different than how one might relate in the military.

For example, a particular woman who rose to General in the Air Force, had to manage to be both as tough talking as the macho officers around her and work to maintain a feminine image by such tactics as frequently referring to helping her children with their homework. She had, in fact, many subtle gradations in her style, from steely to warm. But, bottom line, she chose a style, which played off her strengths and was a form of coaching.


Pushing For Change

After developing a style with which your male colleagues feel comfortable, one should keep pushing for change by quietly challenging organizational norms and stereotypes on a daily basis.


Many women want their companies to value their nurturing, giving, sharing and "helpful" traits as a part of competence, a way of caring about and enabling the whole. This won't happen without a great deal of effort over a considerable amount of time. But you can begin.

When you reach the upper ranks of management, instead of making it all about you, work to make the efforts of your team visible. Instead of hoarding all the glory for an accomplishment, share the glory and make it a team achievement. Get your glory as the person who can inspire a team and lead them to achieve. You will have validated both the coaching style, and the alternative competence of women leaders who choose to work for the good of the whole.