What is it about women working with men?

New research shows that women undervalue themselves when part of a male team but are happy to take credit when their colleagues are female.

The researcher, Dr Michelle Haynes at the University of Massachusetts, who wanted to see how women viewed themselves in teams, feels that this damages their earning potential and stops them getting to the top.

She set up experiments where participants worked remotely with people from typical male roles such as a managing supervisor at an investment company.

There was no other person involved however but the participants didn’t know that and they were then asked to both give and receive feedback about their team’s performance.

When they did this the women gave more credit to the supposed male team-mate and took less credit themselves. When their supposed team mates were female however they were happy to take credit for the team’s performance showing that they didn’t undervalue themselves in that setting.

Dr Haynes said “This finding is critical because it debunks the notion that what we found is simply a function of women being modest in groups”  and “if women view their own contribution less favourably than they regard the contribution of their male co-workers, it is likely to impact how women view their efficacy at work and the degree to which they are likely to to vie for competitive projects and promotions”.

This study was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Other research about women working in teams has found that:

Women perform worse after receiving feedback in a mixed team

Adding women to a team can increase the group IQ level

And do women actually like working in teams?

The issue of men and women working together is a rich area for research.

Throw children into the mix and you can get some surprising results

Mothers not welcome at macho workplaces.................

Reblogged from Kindadukish's Blog:

 Working mums more likely to quit a job in male dominated professions 

Mothers are more likely to quit ‘male professions’ which are traditionally dominated by a male work force, such as banking, according to a new study.

Women with children were 52 per cent more likely to leave their job than childless women, but only in professions with a mainly male workforce (classed as having over 70 per cent male employees).

Read more… 384 more words

Stress in the workplace.............myth or reality?

Reblogged from Kindadukish's Blog:

“How women experience stress: what the research tells us – Guardian Newspaper 14 March 2013

Studies show that women are more likely to feel anxious or sad – and that women rely more on their social circles than men.”

I saw the above headline recently and it brought back memories of  the years I worked as a Training Manager in a large NHS hospital in the North West of England.

Read more… 309 more words

Guest Blog

Teams and Groupthink

It’s two years since the Treasury Select Committee published its findings on the global financial breakdown.

Reading the various reports on the Treasury Select Committee’s findings brought back memories of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 which failed and probably strengthened Castro’s position.

Irving Janis’s extensive work on the subject of Groupthink included his analysis of the reasons for that and other failures. And it still holds true today.

In recent times it has become a common belief that team working is the key to delivering results and that the more cohesive the group, the more effective it is.

It may be more fun to work in such a group but the evidence also suggests that members of groups may indulge in “social loafing”, there can be diffusion of responsibility in the absence of individual goals, and that sometimes individuals can outperform teams.

Janis proposed that close-knit teams are insufficiently critical of each other, don’t seek alternatives, believe in the group’s invincibility, want consensus, restrict negative information and generally, as the Select Committee said, adopt a herd mentality.

The Select Committee suggested that diversity was the answer – in this example by having more women at senior levels. This is old news now; on a similar note in Management Today at the time Emma de Vita bemoaned the testosterone fuelled culture in the city and made some interesting points about leadership styles.

She also and cited some research at London Business School that found that having a 50-50 gender balance produced more effective, stable and innovative teams. A finding that the Norwegian government  put into practice in 2008 so that all public companies are required by law to have 40% of females on the board. Spain had just given companies 10 years to follow suit.
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/865053/

It had previously been suggested in The Times suggested that women board members may be better at getting rid of bad bosses (but not as good at making money) as women tend not to meet at the golf course or the club and may be less susceptible to groupthink.

Gender is not the only difference that organisations should explore however. Different socio-economic backgrounds, qualifications, and career experiences are probably more important. See post on Teams & Diversity

And the dangers of creating an inner cabal or kitchen cabinet probably cost the Conservatives electoral victory in 2010. The failure of the Tory’s “Big Idea” to energise voters and the last-minute slide in the polls infuriated many conservative MPs. They blamed David Cameron’s “Leadership by Inner Circle”. He apparently relied on a close group of advisors rather than the shadow cabinet which he informed rather than consulted. Candidates were saying that the public wasn’t interested in the “Big Idea” but more mundane issues such as crime and immigration. Failure to listen to critics and a wider circle is symptomatic of Groupthink.

Original post 12 April 2010

Fathers get easier ride at work

Research in America about how working mothers fare at work (not very well it seems – see stats at end) also looked at how working fathers were treated.

It appears that working dads are held to lower performance and punctuality standards and yet more likely to be promoted than childless men with identical qualifications.

Potential clients were asked to rate their impressions of fictitious male and female McKinsey consultants some of whom were parents. The father was the only one rated as warm and competent and the mother the only one considered warm but less competent than her childless peers.

I wrote about European research on the warm v competent dimensions a few posts ago and this has similar results. So not just an American phenomenon.

However the picture changes dramatically when the American dads take time off for child care. A number of studies show that men are penalised through lower performance ratings and fewer recommendations for rewards even after taking only a short break.

Being a father doesn’t hinder career prospects until you want to play a more active role in being a dad when your career may suffer.

Men are subject to a range of sanctions such as being passed over for promotion, having people doubt their competence behind their backs, and openly being mocked about taking time off.

And those stats on working mums: chance of being hired in first place falls by 79%, and 50% less likely to be promoted than a childless woman.

It seem the image of the male breadwinner is alive and well.

Source: HBR September 2012

Are your employees engaged?

The Sunday Times “Best Companies to Work For survey”, which has now canvassed over a million workers since 2000, has identified eight factors that foster workplace engagement.

The factor with the strongest correlation is Leadership: employees must have faith and trust in their senior management team to be engaged.

To do that leaders must gain their trust, live the values, and inspire the team.

Their 2009 survey revealed, in answer to the statement “I have great confidence in the leadership skills of the SMT”, there was a 54% difference between engaged and disengaged employees. In answer to the statement; “senior management truly live the values of this organisation”, there was a 51% difference.

In the top 10% of companies there was a massive 94% confidence rating that the leader ran the company on moral principles.  Would that figure be so high today in the depths of a recession?

Giving something Back (GSB) is one way of engaging employees. Organisations with a good track record of this get higher scores from staff for leadership, pride in their company, and personal well-being.

There does seem to be a rash of books and articles on the new leadership approach needed since the recession. And values and principles are high up among the key factors which is maybe why organisations turn to women when they are in a crisis as they appear to be more trusted as CEOs even though, or maybe because, they  seem more willing to criticise their organisations.

Updated since first published 02/04/2010

Men and Women at Work

Work affects men and women differently, no doubt about it.

Being happily married helps women resist work-place stress whilst men dissatisfied with their jobs are more likely to flirt.

If you’re a working mum stop worrying about it having negative effects on your kids but try not to work more than 30 hours a week.

If you’re a stay-at-home dad then you’re probably more satisfied with your life than dads who go out to work but, like many women, miss adult conversation.

If you are an independent women rejecting help may make people believe you are competent but cold, and vice versa. Not so for men.

In a mixed group women cooperate more than men but men are more cooperative than women when working in a single sex group.

But men and women do have one thing in common: taking work home – whether mentally or physically –  can depress you and make you feel tired.

A study at UCLA, published in 2008 in Health Psychology, showed that happily married working women rebounded quicker from daily stress than women in less happy relationships.

Men showed lower stress levels as the day progressed – as measured by levels of cortisol in their saliva – whether happily married or not. So while marriage is often seen as good for men’s health it may come at a price for women in unhappy relationships.

But there is good news for working mums. Research at the University of Bath, published this year, shows that working mums are significantly less likely to suffer from depression whether part-time or full-time and regardless of salary level: single mums 15% less likely and mums in a partnership 6% less likely.

The researchers said there seems to be little evidence to link stress at work to depression. Women going back to work showed a 26% drop in mental health problems compared to an increase of 25% for women giving up work. And the same results have been found in a 10-year study in America where working mums also report fewer symptoms of depression than mums who don’t work. Working part-time was the healthiest option of all.

We have known for decades that unemployment was bad for men and now the same applies to women. Work gives you a sense of identity and boosts your self-esteem which impacts on your well-being.

And there’s no evidence that babies suffer when their mums work. Past research has found that returning to work early results in children who are slower learners and UNICEF recommended in 2008 that women stay at home for the first 12 months rather than put their children at risk.

But the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care followed 1,000 children over 7 years tracking their families and their development. The research published by the Society for Research in Child Development in 2010 showed that overall the net impact was neutral: the advantages of more income and better child care offset any downsides of the mums returning to work. Again part-time working of up to 30 hours a week offered better outcomes than full-time working.

But women don’t have it all their own way at work. When it comes to “benevolent sexism” a study reported in the European Journal of Social Psychology  last year showed that women couldn’t win. If they accept someone’s offer of help, for example opening a door for them or helping with a computer problem, they are seen as warmer but less competent; if they reject help they are seen as competent but cold.

And the same researchers found that accepting help meant that women were judged less suitable for managerial jobs while rejecting help led to their being judged less suitable for care jobs that relied on emotional skills.

For men the results were different. Rejecting offers of help led to them being judged as competent but not less warm. And it seems men are judged both competent and warmer when they offer help which is accepted.

It seem that independent women are seen as competent but cold mainly by people who believe in benevolent sexism and who adopt paternalistic attitudes.

A review by Balliet of 50 years of research discovered that men are actually more cooperative than women. And they are more likely to help strangers and be cooperative in large groups, whereas women are seen as more supportive and agreeable.

Perhaps surprisingly men are more cooperative in single sex groups than women but in mixed sex groups women are more cooperative.

It seems that when men and women are working together they resort to stereotypical behaviours because of the presence of the opposite sex. Perhaps men like to show women how dominant they are which reduces cooperation.

And sexist men earn more, at least in the USA. Research at Florida University (published in the Journal of Applied Psychology) showed that men with traditional attitudes earned substantially more than their egalitarian colleagues whereas for women it was the other way round – although not such a big salary difference.

Over a 25-year period the traditionally-minded men earned an average of $8,459 more annually than egalitarian-minded men and $11,374 on average more than traditionally-minded women. The gap between egalitarian men and women was much less at $1,330.

The differences occurred regardless of education, type of job, family commitments or hours worked and the researchers aren’t really sure why. They surmise it might be unconscious bias.

Talking of egalitarian men, it seems that “stay at home” dads do better in terms of life, marital, and job satisfaction, than dads who work outside the home, according to research reported at the American Psychological Association’s 2007 Annual Convention.

Men were staying at home for a number of reasons including deferring to their wives’ higher earnings potential and wanted to be more involved in bringing up their children. Being a full-time dad did have some stigmas attached and they also reported missing the adult work-place interactions (something often mentioned by women when they decide to return to work).

Finally one thing that applies to everybody: taking work home, whether mentally or physically, can make you feel depressed and tired. Researchers at the University of Konstanz found that the greater people’s workload and work hours the harder it was to detach themselves from work. Workers experiencing high work demands need more recovery time but are less likely to get it because of their work habits and not having time to switch off.

Those workers with hobbies or who engaged in physical activity reported feeling less tired and more engaged. But the researchers also point out that thinking about work can be a mood booster as well if people are reflecting on their successes and accomplishments.

But let’s give the final words to women. There is evidence that while women can contribute a lot to teams they don’t always perform at their best in them. They are also more critical of organisations. And there are people who believe that women are the winners at work anyway!

Feedback – whose responsibility is it?

Working with a client the other day he mentioned that he never got feedback from his boss on how well he was doing. When I asked him if he ever asked for feedback he admitted he hadn’t and that he avoided bringing it up.

When I asked him why he thought his boss never gave him feedback he thought it might be because he didn’t have anything good to say – which is why he avoided bringing it up.

When questioned further he wondered, on a slightly more positive note, whether or not his boss just wasn’t used to praising staff or hadn’t been trained to do it.

It started me thinking about whose responsibility it is to provide feedback? Is it just up to the manager to do this and only at specified times of the year as part of the dreaded performance review process? Surely not.

Why shouldn’t people ask their bosses for feedback as part of their own career management?

And why stop at bosses? As anyone who has undergone a 360 degree feedback process knows it is very interesting to find out what other people think about your performance and behaviours and can be a powerful incentive to change or improve.

So maybe managers should give themselves permission to give staff feedback at any time it is appropriate and staff should be more assertive about asking, even demanding, feedback.

Years ago Schein said that everybody at work wanted to know how well they were doing. Recent research however suggests that it doesn’t necessarily work out so well for women. Women in groups receiving feedback seem to perform less well.

No Woman can ever be too Rich or too Thin

Whilst other women appears to be piling on weight, those who are lawyers, doctors and business leaders have actually lost weight.

The National Obesity Observatory, an organisation set up in 2007 to monitor the obesity epidemic, found that these were the only groups of women to lose weight in the last 15 years.

In contrast men in similar occupations actually put on weight with 20% being classed as obese in 2008.

There is a perception that women are judged not just on their work performance but on their appearance too, and particularly if they are overweight.

It seems that to get promoted women have to have an “executive presence” which means being slim and toned according to the New York-based Centre for Talent Innovation.

There is some evidence to support that view. Researchers in the UK and Australia asked students to assess the leadership potential of six fat and six thin women with identical educational backgrounds. The fat women were rated poorer than the thin ones.

However Heather Jackson, of the Women’s Business Forum, doesn’t believe it is a gender issue. She points out that among FTSE100 leaders the best ones are not obese because you have to be fit and healthy to be an effective leader.

So this is not about how good-looking you are – which some women think is really important but which can lead to you being discriminated against – but how physically fit you look.

So it seems Wallis Simpson was right: “No woman can ever be too rich or too thin”. It seems those two attributes go hand in hand for modern, well-paid, business leaders.

Golden Skirts don’t necessarily add Midas touch

David Cameron has been taking advice about Norway’s 40% quota of women on boards.There is a campaign to get the UK up to 25% by 2015.

Someone has even started a 30% club to improve on that figure.

So the general impression is that this is a good thing. Cameron says there is overwhelming evidence that having women on boards is good for business.

The government has also said that if companies won’t do it voluntarily the government might have to impose a quota.

That’s what happened in Norway after the 2003 legislation failed to achieve its target – moving from 9% to 40% – by 2005. So on January 1st 2006 publicly listed companies were given two years to comply or be dissolved.

So is there “overwhelming evidence” that it’s a good thing? Unfortunately researchers at the Ross School at the University of Michigan found that having the 40% quota negatively affected companies. They also believe the same thing would happen in the USA and the UK as they have similar systems of governance. Amy Dittmar, associate professor of finance, says “boards are chosen in order to increase shareholder wealth. Placing restrictions on the composition of boards will reduce value”.

First the stock price dropped by almost 3% following the introduction of the new law and 5% for those companies with no women on the board at the time. A measure of the firm’s corporate governance used to determine a company’s value, Tobin’s Q ratio, dropped 18% where companies had to increase the number of women by 10% or more.

One of the researchers, assistant professor of finance Kenneth Ahern, said that their findings support the view that board structure affects value. “Firms that were required to make the most drastic changes to their boards also suffered the largest negative returns. …constraining the selection of board members has a large negative impact on value”

Ahern and colleague Amy Dittmar point out that this is not because of the gender of the new board members but because of their lack of experience and young age. The constraint imposed by the 40% quota led firms to recruit women board members that were younger and with different career experiences. Dittmar says “when firms were free to choose directors before the rule they tended to choose women who were similar to men directors”. Recent research suggests women perform less well than men in competitive situations so could that have a bearing on it as well?

With a large demand and a small supply firms were forced to select directors they wouldn’t otherwise have chosen. And one newspaper report said that one women had ended up on 14 different boards.

Perhaps this research should give everyone a pause for thought. What’s good for diversity is not necessarily good for the company’s performance.  I’m sure women want to be in top jobs on merit and with more women than men graduating you might think it’s only a matter of time before we see more of them up there and the number of women on boards has increased lately in the UK.

However the number of women in senior management positions seems to have dropped – to around 20% globally, according to the Grant Thornton International Business Report. And in privately held businesses the number with no women at all in senior management has increased to 38%. Recent UK research shows that women managers are more critical of  organisations so does that influence women in deciding whether or not to go for promotion?

Whatever the reason with fewer women in senior management how will they provide succession at board level?

And should we really be worrying about gender imbalance. Don’t shareholders want the best person for the job irrespective of gender?

FYI the country with the most women in senior management positions is Thailand (which also has most female CEOs with 30%), followed by Georgia, Russia, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Not what you might have expected? But probably no surprise to find India, Japan and the UAE have less than 10% of women in senior management.

Update March 2013

In contrast to the US research a study of the French blue-chip CAC Index found that companies with at least a third of females in management positions had a 30% higher return than others over the last 6 years.

Professor of the management of human resources at Geneva University, Michel Ferrary, found that the CAC 40 had lost 35% of its value between since 2007 but the 10 companies which employed at least 35% of women managers (dubbed the Femina Index)  lost only 5% of their value.

The 10 companies in the Femina Index included Axa, Accor, Danone, and L’Oreal. Ferrary said that these companies were; “less discriminatory, drew their employees from a wider pool, and were more in tune with consumers.”  More diversity seemed to improve decision-making (see also:  Teams & Diversity).

The French government requires companies to have 40% women directors by 2017 but not one of the CAC 40 companies has a female CEO.