15 March 2008
For Women Only: Break the Glass Ceiling
Ladies only please. The first step Your Business Blogger(R) advises women who are managers or who aspire to take on more responsibility is to understand — and appreciate the risk of failure.
And how really unimportant failing is.
Men also need to be reminded of the nature of risk — but men are hard-wired differently from women on risk-taking. Men naturally take risks. Women less so.
Women are indeed more relational and nurturing — but the real challenge is to understand that perfection is not required. No, biology is not destiny, but it is instructive.
For example, women are hard-wired not to assume risk. Women as care-givers for infant children know instinctively that failure in her “job” will result in a dead baby.
Perfection in constant care and attention and feeding are absolute. Don’t feed a new-born for a few hours and the outcome can be tragic.
Women are not permitted any margin of error in infant care. Women worry about children and relationships — Charmaine wrote about this in her book: <em>The Mommy Wars</em>. Men worry less about the kids when at work.
We see this in Academia. Studies have shown that male scholars will publish more articles — but they will be of lower quality than compared with their female counterparts. Women will publish fewer papers, but they will be cited by other scholars more than male-authored articles.
Women, I have learned from clients and students, are perfectionists: they do not guess at test questions, do not use aggressive test taking strategies. Take safe choices in management.
Women prefer all the traffic lights to be green before getting in the car to leave town.
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP who engineered the merger with Compaq, writes about perfection in her book, <em>Tough Choices</em>. She calls this management philosophy “perfect enough” to encourage HP’s culture that mistakes will be made, but this is the only path to success. “The goal is not perfection; the goal is progress.”
In seminars, I review baseball’s at-bat analogy. If a batter only gets on base 4 out of 10 times, he is a super star.
Many women might view with horror a 60% failure rate. But management, like baseball does not deal in perfection. A manager can have a lot of strike outs, but an occasional home run will win games. A .400 batting average will make you a rich woman and win games.
Please watch the short video clip and let us know what you think.
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Script:
Hi, I’m Jack Yoest Your Business Blogger® With Solutions to your Management problems.
This clip is for Women Only: Breaking The Glass Ceiling – The Batting Average
Here’s the first step to the top of the corporate pyramid: you’ve got to “get” what academics and pundits do NOT –
You are not perfect.
Let’s look at — baseball. A good manager will be exactly right about 40 % of the time.
Women are horrified by a 60 % failure rate.
Men nod and say that 400 is a pretty good batting average.
Aspiring women must see that in management there are lots of swings and lots of misses. You will not be perfect.
Baseball players will spend hours practicing the perfect swing of the bat –
But each player — each business manager — will often strike out – and seldom get on base. Home runs are rare.
Remember: a 400 batting average is a success!
You can hit a home run if and only if you fearlessly step up to the plate – even after striking out.
Top athletes and top managers take that chance.
Ladies, you the chance. Go on and step up to the plate.
For more information and upcoming classes please visit me online at Yoest.com that’s YOEST dot com
Cross post at Reasoned Audacity
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