UK: 63% of women prefer male bosses

Submitted by anthony on Mon, 2009-12-07 08:04

Article here. Excerpt:

'In short, our commercial DNA is not wired for corporate success. And nowhere was that more graphically demonstrated than last week when the much-feted co-chairman of Gordon Brown’s Women’s Enterprise Task Force was successfully sued by one of her employees for bullying.

Dr Glenda Stone runs a successful recruitment website, Aurora, with her husband. So even this colossus of female business success, the woman chosen to front such a highprofile government body, co-runs her business with her spouse.

Not much of a triumph for feminism after all, is it?

And what’s more, by all accounts in the industrial tribunal, she was a terrible boss - overbearing, foulmouthed, petty, bullying, micromanaging-vindictive.

I know that type of female boss well, the Bully Boy Boss, who thinks they have to be nastier than the nastiest male boss to succeed. But more of them later.

Now, before the hate emails start pouring in from outraged feminists and female bosses, I have a special interest in this subject.

Not just because I’ve had the misfortune of having some of the most God-awful female bosses in the history of modern business, but because I was a boss myself, more than once.

I have edited two national newspapers, been the managing editor of one, the marketing director of two and the managing director of one national newspaper group.

As William Hague’s Press Secretary, I was boss to a team of press officers.

I have sat in the editor’s chair, the boardroom and the shadow cabinet. And while I can confidently say most of the people who worked for me liked me and respected me (I always thought of them working with me, but that’s such a girl thing), and, more importantly, worked well for me, I’m not sure I was always a good boss.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t tough enough. I had that classic female trait of being able to get the most out of people - it’s called nurturing now - but I also wanted to be liked, a fatal flaw in a boss.'

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Comments

Actually all the ones I have had have been very good. But I did notice they had a tendency to seek out a little "too much" contact with coworkers - generally speaking, with one notable exception I can think of. They seemed a bit too interested in things like what their reports were doing on week-ends, etc. Not that they were being nosy or trying to "get the goods" on someone... just they seemed to come across sometimes and being too personable.

This is a problem with male bosses, too, if they display such characteristics as well. It sends a signal - it says "You want to be liked," and so it's easy for people to exploit that. It is the exact same dynamic as a parent-child relationship wherein the parent wants more to be loved by a child and have that expressed to them rather than loved and respected (ie, obeyed), and to hell with whether the child likes it or not. It's that attitude that is more likely not only to see tasks get done and goals met but also to keep reports from getting cheeky or steamrolling over you. It can happen to people of either sex but indeed, in my experience, it seems to happen more with women, and in the case of people of both sexes, the problem starts with the attitude the individual boss has towards their job.

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2009-12-08 03:33