Managing Men

By Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

The Institute of Leadership and Management, a UK-based organization that helps companies improve standards of leadership as well as individual and team performance, recently released a research report titled, “Index of Leadership Trust 2009.”

The report looked at six areas by which leadership is measured: ability, understanding, fairness, openness, integrity and consistency and asked respondents to assign importance to each of them. The Institute then examined the results based on the size of the organizations, the length of time in leadership, and the age and gender of managers and subordinates. The report revealed that, “Ageism and sexism are largely and reassuringly absent from the findings of this research. The most significant trend to emerge is that employees show slightly more trust in managers ‘in their own image’ – that is, of the same sex and similar age to themselves.”

While sexism doesn’t play an obvious role in managers building trust, the findings do underscore one of the key challenges in advancing women to the C-suite. Many believe that businesses “hunker down” in difficult times, like the recession and jobless recovery, and tap the resources that walk, talk and look like them. So even though more women are now reporting to work than men are, with so few women still at the top of businesses, the men already in power will typically turn to other men to make key decisions and fill critical roles.

A savvy woman knows however, that she can’t control other people’s behaviour, only her own. To that end, women should be mindful to earn the trust of their male subordinates in order to develop the most productive teams possible. If people like working for people similar to them, how can a woman best manage men? Luckily, the answer to that question is no longer considered to be: don an androgynous suit, accessorize with a faux bow tie, carry a bland briefcase and spew football stats on Monday morning. Now substance trumps style.

Focus on Competence

Julia Strickland, co-managing partner of the Los Angeles-based law firm Stroock, manages a group of 20 attorneys in her practice group, most of them men. She says the most important thing is competence. “People obviously trust people they feel compatible with. My experience with the men that I deal with is that truly, it’s all about doing a good job for them.”

But Beverly D. Flaxington, author of “Understanding Other People: The Five Secrets to Human Behavior” says, “It’s even more about how you support your team than how competent you are.” Flaxington has managed men in the financial sector for years. “At one point, I was one of the only women in the industry managing a sales force like mine and had almost all men working for me. Then, I was also recently in a Chief Operating Officer role with several men reporting to me.”

Flaxington says men want to know how their managers can help bring value to them and improve their game. “They are looking more for a coach, so they want a manger to not necessarily oversee everything but instead look over what they do and help the, better their game.”

While of course, you must demonstrate competence, Flaxington believes, “You don’t want to work hard to prove it. We as women have to have that very well developed sense of ‘look I know what I’m doing and at some point you’ll figure out I know what I’m doing.'”

Managing Individuals

Strickland says she doesn’t manage men much differently than she manages women. Still, she says that, in general, there are differences in how the sexes show up at work. “Women are more sensitive to criticism and look for a more personal management style. Men are less driven by the personal management style. Men don’t want to be friends. Men are much more about just coming to work and doing their jobs. A lot of women look for something else there—a sense of belonging to a unit.” These differences don’t impact results says Strickland. They are merely factors to consider when managing individuals.

And that may be the best advice of all. Managers need to manage to both individual’s strengths and to team dynamics. And just like the respondents to The Institute of Leadership and Management study, they should keep age and sex, mostly out of the equation.