HR Professional - June/July 2008 - (Page 54)

T H E L A ST WOR D LEADERSHIP AND THE SEXES BY MICHAEL GURIAN M en and women lead differently— it’s hardwired in the brain. A comparison of brain scans of men and women confirms sex differences and those discrepancies reveal significant distinctions in how men and women lead. HR professionals who are attuned to this new science are gaining competitive edge for their companies. IBM, Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Digital are all increasing their gender intelligence and have reported retention gains because of it. Following the training, Deloitte & Touche reported a $190 million gain in retention in one year. Battle of the Sexes Scientists have discovered more than 100 structural differences between the brains of women and men. Through research, we can foresee potential applications for many of these differences. Brain Difference: With 15 to 20 per cent more blood ﬂow in the brain, women are able to process more sensorial and emotive information than men. And with more developed tissue between the two brain hemispheres, women leaders are able to do more relational multitasking than men. Application: Women place value on the nitty gritty of interactions. For men, once the transaction of a conversation is complete, there is a tendency to move away from the interaction and back to a solitary task. Women ponder interactions for longer periods of time and mine them for more data than men do. Brain Difference: Men process 10 to 20 times more testosterone—a primary human aggression chemical—through their bloodstream and brain than women do. Application: Even accounting for some highly aggressive examples, women leaders create more participative teams—ﬁnding ways in which colleagues are complementary. Male leaders tend to form hierarchical teams—they see colleagues as potential competition and focus on who is in charge, and who can be weeded out. Thus, both women and men collaborate, but men lace competitiveness into more steps of a process. 54 J u n e / J u l y 2 0 0 8 Illustration: Michael Eddenden Males spend more time making sure they move up hierarchies than women do, and awareness of this can be crucial to women managers who seek to advance in a corporation. Brain Difference: The female brain processes language in both hemispheres, giving women more word-processing and production centres in the brain. When reading, writing and speaking are measured, women leaders use and process more words than male leaders. Application: Male leaders are more prescriptive/ directive in their management—they will “tell people what to do” and not seek to discuss it. Women leaders are descriptive/invitational in their management—they describe what they want and spend more time detailing to employees (and hearing from employees) what options exist for accomplishing the goal. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Learning about the differences and applying them to leadership and management can signiﬁcantly shift a workplace toward success. Michael Gurian, neurobiology expert and founder of the Gurian institute, is a co-author of Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business (JosseyBass/John Wiley, September 2008). HR P R OF E S S I ON A L

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of HR Professional - June/July 2008

HR Professional - June/July 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Contributors Leadership Matters Upfront Legal Compensation The Broad Perspective Leading by Example On Message Strategy Talent Management HR 101 Case Study Interview with J.P. Pawliw-Fry Off the Shelf The Last Word HR Suppliers Guide 2008 Calendar of Events

HR Professional - June/July 2008

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