09/12/2007

Women on top equals good financial health, says Mckinsey

New Delhi: A recent study by McKinsey & Company has the writing on the wall: workplaces with more women in senior management posts perform better financially than firms with fewer women. The study, done on Europe’s top companies, showed that the performance of woman bosses vis-à-vis male counterparts had achieved greater capital growth, stronger underlying earnings and bigger increase in share price. But what’s the picture close to home?

Staff prefers tough bosses:
But what if that tough boss is female? Male managers who are thought to be unkind, insensitive and unaware of others’ feelings are not considered to be any worse as a result. But heaven save a female manager who displays the same behaviour. Female managers who can’t read unspoken emotions, such as facial expressions, posture, and tone of voice, are seen as less caring and thus receive lower ratings of satisfaction from their staff.

Secrets of her success
At 26, Monisha Advani floated her own company. Eleven years later, the new managing director-designate of Ranstad India says being a woman has clearly worked. The ability to empathise with a growing segment of the workforce other women has played a big part in her success. Her innovative strategies that tested managerial ability by “selling sandwiches for a profit and getting donations from corporates for a cause, all in a couple of hours,” has become an industry standard.

In Tania Gooptu’s line of work (she’s the only woman partner of the three-member board of Aventus), where business is cultivated through relationships, she finds women are less averse to mining a contact. Women managers tend to have more of a desire to build than a desire to win. They’re Accessible, Democratic, Nurturing.

“I’ve seen male co-workers who feel they will be one up or one down if they get business from their their drinking partner or a friend who is a CEO of a company,” says Indu Menon, a bank manager. Many women bosses note that men tend to complicate such transactions. Women use their business cards more efficiently, they say.

The oft-levelled ‘attack’ on women’s intelligence is unfair, says neuroscientist Vijaylakshmi Ravindranath, also the lady boss at the National Brain Research Centre, Manesar. “Male brains are about 11-12 per cent larger than female brains. When the size of the brain is compared to the body weight, there’s no difference between the two sexes. Moreover, the sheer size of the brain isn’t a measure of intelligence,” she says.

Women are intutive and are good at picking up non-verbal cues. “In today’s market of multiple offers or more-than-a-lakh offer, gut feel has paid off and how. A woman notices small slips in a telecon and can act on it,” says Gooptu. Poulomee Malik, manager, organisational learning and training, with Manpower, says interpersonal skills now are an add-on on a CV in these days of high employee attrition levels. “As a woman I can read people better. It helps me align their business goals with their personal ones.”