Selected Readings
SELF-CONFIDENCE AND DECISIVENESS: PREREQUISITES FOR EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT IN THE 1990S
R. DUANE IRELAND, MICHAEL A. HITT, AND J. CLIFTON WILLIAMS
To make the tough decisions necessary in today’s global business environment, managers must develop the self-confidence to take the risks often involved.
Managers in today’s organizations face complex, turbulent, and challenging decision environments. Among other conditions, U.S. firms are now confronted with significant global competition. In recognition of these realities, and particularly in light of the impending globalization of marketplaces, it has been suggested that:
• innovativeness is necessary for U.S. companies to regain—and retain—a prominent role in the world’s economies;
• innovative goods and services must be brought to the marketplace rapidly and with high degrees of quality;
• both executive and organizational mindsets must change for companies to cope successfully with turbulent environments; and,
• the products and services demanded by today’s sophisticated consumers affect decisions that must be made.
Interestingly, the need to develop innovative goods and services and to cope with today’s globalized environment is not limited to large firms. Small manufacturing firms are also facing a crisis situation, principally because they often supply products used by large firms in their manufacturing processes. Today, small firms must use the most recent and sophisticated technologies to manufacture products that satisfy large firms’ ever-increasing demands for higher-quality inputs. However, innovation in both large and small companies is achieved typically through decision processes and organizational commitments involving significant levels of risk. Furthermore, to effectively make risky decisions, a manager must have several skills and attributes, including a high level of self-confidence.
Source: Reprinted from Business Horizons, January/February 1992. Copyright 1992 by the Foundation for the School of Business at Indiana University. Used with permission.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-CONFIDENCE
An increasing number of executives are recognizing the close relationship between self-confidence, risk, and effective decision-making processes. For example, Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric, believes self-confidence and courage are required for managers to make the types of risk-laden decisions called for in today’s business environments. Based on this belief, Welch has implemented programs that evaluate a manager’s performance across several dimensions, including qualities such as openness, candor, and self-confidence. Welch has observed that self-confidence and courage are required for a manager to “pick the bets, put the resources behind them, articulate the vision to the employees, and explain why he said yes to this one and no to that one,” and to see reality as it is, not as one wants it to be (Sherman 1989; Tichy and Charan 1989). Similarly, Andrall Pearson, former President of PepsiCo, noted that a general manager must have the willingness to make the “tough calls” required to upgrade an organization (Pearson 1989). Thus, Mr. Pearson believes managers must be “tough-minded” if they are to set the type of leadership examples necessary for a company to become more dynamic and innovative. Some prominent and successful business leaders believe self-confidence is required for a manager to make the type of tough decisions that result in positive contributions to organizational effectiveness.
The importance of self-confidence can again be observed through consideration of GE’s Value Statement. A portion of this statement notes that managers must have self-confidence to trust and to allow others the freedom they require to act. Simultaneously, each manager is expected to have the self-confidence to become involved in issues critical to a given business unit or the corporation as a whole (Tichy and Charan 1989).
So effective managerial decisions are the product of more than logic and sophisticated analyses. A decision to act—to risk a firm’s resources and thus ones career success—requires self-confidence. Without it, managers at all levels may become risk avoiders, often at crucial times, since the most promising opportunities may be accompanied by significant levels of risk.
WHAT IS SELF-CONFIDENCE?
Self-confidence, a complex concept, can be defined in several ways. McCarty (1986) defined it as “how individuals perceive their ability to succeed at a particular endeavor, or judge their effectiveness once a task is finished.”
Similarities exist between self-confidence and other concepts related to the “self” Self-efficacy, according to Gist (1987), refers to belief in one’s capability to perform a specific task. Self-esteem has been defined by Coopersmith (1967) as “the evaluation which the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to the self. It expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval and indicates the extent to which the individual believes the self to be capable, significant, successful, or worthy.” Tharenou (1979) noted that self-esteem is sometimes called self-acceptance, self-satisfaction, self-confidence, self-worth, or self-respect.
For our purposes, the important point is that a self-confident manager is willing to make what are often very complicated and tough decisions. In part, this willingness is a product of the manager’s belief in his or her capabilities and effectiveness as a decision maker. Herein, self-confidence is viewed as a manager’s commitment to trust his or her own judgment, to be free from debilitating fears, to take calculated risks, to confront openly rather than avoid the unpleasant aspects of work, and to judge the effectiveness of those actions. Accordingly, self-confident managers expect to succeed in situations where others anticipate failure. They often establish more challenging goals and persist in the pursuit of these goals. In addition, self-confident managers set personal standards for excellence. These are established through a manager’s willingness to work long hours, his or her obvious commitment to excellence, and in the setting and reinforcement of high performance standards.
The perspectives described above suggest that managers, like most people, exhibit varying levels of self-confidence. In other words, some managers display levels of self-confidence readily apparent to virtually all people with whom they interact. At the other end of the spectrum are managers whose relative lack of self-confidence produce decisions that tend to be safe, somewhat free of risk, and consistent with previous organizational practices. Importantly, the stability resulting from self-confidence permits accurate predictions of managerial behaviors. The ability to accurately predict a self-confident manager’s behavior contributes positively to others’ attempts to deal successfully with rapidly changing internal and external environmental conditions.
It is important to note that self-confidence cannot be separated totally from a manager’s work experience, awareness of the firm’s technological and political environments, or self-perceived position power. Even the most confident managers have reason to act with caution when operating in new or unique circumstances. As managers enhance their understanding of an organization’s internal and external environmental conditions, their knowledge and self-confidence increase. Thus, self-confidence is not uni-dimensional. Rather, it is a product of the interaction between personal and situational factors.
ACTIONS OF THE SELF-CONFIDENT MANAGER
Self-confident managers display a host of desirable actions. For example, they are willing to share power with others, particularly those in their own organizations. In this sense, these managers “empower” employees. Such empowerment has been linked with increased organizational effectiveness, particularly when a firm is in a period of transaction or transformation.
Managers capable of empowering others are also comfortable in the role of a “follower.” As described by Robert Kelley (1988), in highly successful organizations where power is likely to be distributed appropriately, managers and subordinates share leader and follower roles. Effective followers, Kelley argues, are enthusiastic, intelligent, and capable of relying on themselves in the pursuit of organizational goals. Confident, empowering managers contribute to organizational effectiveness by better utilizing the talents of their employees and by being effective and enthusiastic “followers” (as appropriate) in pursuit of organizational goals and missions.
However, self-confident managers are also aware of organizational realities. If appropriate support systems (in terms of financial, physical, or human resources) are unavailable, the self-confident manager recognizes that a directive leadership style may be necessary to ensure that important activities are accomplished and goals are achieved. Similarly, self-confident managers are capable of focusing attention on the challenges of “important” projects rather than wasting their energies on what Abraham Zaleznik (1989) has called “psychopolitics.” Psychopolitics involves managers who concern themselves with process rather than the substance of producing and distributing an organization’s outputs to the marketplace.
Self-confident managers also provide employees with job-specific feedback. This commitment, and the actions based on it, are significant because employee job performance may be inhibited when this type of feedback is not provided. Additionally, because they expect their efforts to be rewarded, self-confident managers are highly motivated to exert an influence on their environments. As a result, they are willing to act, often in a bold and courageous manner, when less confident managers hesitate.
BEHAVIORAL EFFECTS OF SELF-CONFIDENCE
As implied by the comments presented above, individuals with strong self-concepts tend to both think and act differently from those who do not. Research has shown that people with low self-confidence appear to have less effective social skills and are (a) more prone to exhibit anxiety and depression, (b) more easily persuaded, and (c) more likely to conform quickly to established norms. Furthermore, those with low self-confidence tend to lack initiative and assertiveness, have lower aspirations and expectations of success, and perform less effectively under stress.
Because of these tendencies, it is quite challenging for managers with low self-confidence to perform effectively. Their difficulty surfaces because they often set less challenging goals, ineffectively manage other people, and have trouble making tough decisions. Such challenging decisions are very stressful for this type of manager. Clearly, he or she would be much less likely to take significant action-oriented risks, for a manager with low self-confidence prefers to select more conservative decision alternatives. Therefore, such a manager is less likely to be an innovator or effective leader of an innovative organization or unit within a company.
Still other differences between those with high and low self-confidence have been discovered. For example, those with high degrees of self-confidence tend to have lower anxiety levels, greater job satisfaction, and satisfaction with life in general, and are better able to cope successfully with managerial stress. More specifically, self-confident individuals experience less of the kind of stress often created by conflicting demands and ambiguity resulting from multiple organizational roles and expectations. Finally, self-confident managers are more willing to participate in group activities requiring input or decisions from group members.
SELF-CONFIDENCE AND THE EFFECTIVE MANAGER
Collectively, research findings suggest that self-confidence is an attribute of effective managers. Because of their self-confidence, these managers tend to establish more autonomous work structures. (An autonomous work structure indicates that self-confident individuals can operate effectively when given autonomy and that they are willing to provide employees with significant levels of autonomy in order to complete their jobs.) In other words, self-confident managers are less threatened by high-performance subordinates.
The foregoing discussion suggests several conclusions. First, self-confidence is likely to affect choices of activities and roles in which managers become involved. It is less likely, for example, that an individual with low self-confidence will desire a managerial position. Such a person will select his or her environmental settings carefully, seeking situations associated with relatively low levels of risk. In addition, self-confidence appears to affect the amount of effort a person will devote to a given task and the length of time he or she will spend toward the completion of any given task. People are not motivated to perform tasks or persist in their task-related efforts unless they are confident their performance will be acceptable. Furthermore, people with greater levels of self-confidence are likely to be higher performers. They are relatively more motivated, persist longer on tasks, and accept greater amounts of risk. Thus, they will accept more challenging assignments.
These points suggest that work can play a crucial role in the development of a person’s self-confidence and overall self-concept. Importantly, the linkage between self-confidence and high performance assumes that an individual’s abilities are matched correctly with the job requirements. If the match is unacceptable—if the person does not have the skills necessary to complete a job successfully—self-confidence can actually be detrimental. In these instances, high degrees of self-confidence may result in a conviction that one’s performance is quite adequate even though evidence suggests the opposite conclusion.
DIFFERENCES IN SELF-CONFIDENCE LEVELS OF FEMALES AND MALES
Women are an increasingly important component of the professional work force, and constitute a large portion of the pool for managerial jobs. The talent pool for managerial jobs has been decreasing, making female professionals an increasingly critical resource. Redwood (1990), for example, argues that businesses must recognize their reliance on women workers and realize the need to employ them effectively. However, research has shown that women often have lower levels of self-confidence than men. Because of socialization experiences, women often lack the self-confidence required to develop strong self-expectations of success in occupations traditionally dominated by males, such as managerial jobs. It has been argued that one approach to dealing with this condition is simply for women to accept the risk and act.
Molly Neumhower, a successful senior systems analyst for the advanced systems planning department at Mocatta Metals Corporation, could perhaps be described as one who accepted the admonishment to take the risk and act. She is responsible for the long-range planning of the firm’s data processing department. However, achieving this level of professional success was not easy. She states: “I was never a competitive person; it’s been hard to change my style and go after what I want. … One of the problems I had in the past was a lack of confidence. I believed that I was capable and intelligent, but did not feel equal to many of the people I worked with” (“Women in Management…” 1980). Such statements are typical of women in male-dominated vocations. In contrast, it is interesting to note that men do not appear to lack self-confidence in their ability to be successful in professions, such as nursing, that are traditionally dominated by women.
It is also noteworthy that even though the academic performance of female college students is often superior to that of males, women tend to establish lower vocational/professional goals than do men. Thus, there is strong evidence that women, more than men, potentially underestimate their abilities.
Some argue that sex discrimination in work settings contributes to females’ lower performance expectations. It is true women have been denied access to professional and managerial positions; however, research findings suggest that although sex discrimination in the workplace still exists, it has been reduced. Interestingly, some surveys show that the majority of working women now believe they have opportunities equal to those of men to increase their salaries, enhance their responsibilities, and gain promotions. To some degree, the reduction in discrimination has occurred because of the shortage of managerial talent. In other words, there is strong demand for talented, high-performing professionals and managers, regardless of gender.
However, Sarah Clement (1987) concluded that a lack of appropriate self-confidence among women contributes to continuing occupational segregation and underrepresentation of women in a number of professions. In fact, her findings suggest that self-confidence plays a less significant role in predicting the occupational preferences of men than it does of women. Clement argues that in most cases women have unjustifiably low levels of self-confidence. However, in some cases, women may have more realistic perceptions of their limitations, whereas men, due to their higher confidence levels, may over-estimate their capabilities. Furthermore, men sometimes lack confidence in expressing the “caring” side of their personalities. Clement concludes that whereas it is important to have appropriate levels of self-confidence, it is just as important to have accurate self-perceptions of one’s job-related capabilities.
Regardless of gender, there is a strong demand for managers who can cope successfully with the types of organizational challenges mentioned earlier. Therefore, significant efforts should be exerted to ensure that those with requisite skills and talent also have appropriate levels of self-confidence and accurate self-perceptions. These efforts and understandings are necessary if individuals are to perform effectively in their managerial roles.
DEVELOPING SELF-CONFIDENCE AT WORK
Research results suggest that self-confidence can be altered during all stages of life. In addition, self-confidence can be developed regardless of sex, age, experience, or other demographic personal characteristics. To help members enhance their own confidence, organizations can provide supporting mechanisms.
Work can play a crucial role in the development of employees’ self-confidence. Accordingly, several alternative actions for influencing the self-confidence of current and future managers can be employed. Among these are training experiences intended to develop an individual’s skills (in terms of delegation, for example), providing positive reinforcement (as expressed by recognition, promotion, and/or pay increases), and efforts oriented toward ensuring high employee performance by a variety of means.
Clearly, providing opportunities for employees to acquire skills linked with increased job performance can contribute significantly to the development of the type of self-confidence required for effective decision making and managerial success. Such opportunities may be provided through on-the-job training or specialized classroom training (technical or otherwise). Furthermore, managers can offer the type of support that will encourage high performance. This may entail providing information, gaining cooperation from other parties, coordinating interactions among employees and with other managers, and so forth. Such supportive actions can increase an employee’s feelings of self-worth, and may increase the probability that he or she can complete a task or a job successfully when appropriate effort is exerted.
An additional benefit of initial job-related success is that it tends to breed still other successes. Several researchers found that task performance plays a dominant role in influencing self-confidence. Thus, when managers perform well, they become more confident that they will also perform well in the future.
Managers should reinforce high performance to ensure that employees gain maximum levels of self-confidence. Desired performance can be reinforced by recognition, merit pay, promotions, and frequent performance reviews. For example, individuals in higher-level positions tend to be more self-confident, suggesting that promotions can reinforce strong performance while simultaneously boosting self-confidence.
Compensation can also serve as a positive reinforcement of performance. However, managers must be careful not to overemphasize pay as a means of positive reinforcement. Well-known research by Deci (1971) suggests that overemphasis on external rewards can, in fact, lower one’s intrinsic motivation and self-confidence. This suggests that if an organization or manager depends heavily on external rewards for motivation, employees may attribute positive outcomes such as high performance more to the rewards than to their own skills and inputs. Thus, managers must balance external rewards (reinforcement actions) with other reward alternatives to enhance employees’ self-confidence most effectively.
One such alternative that can provide intrinsic motivation and enhance self-confidence is to delegate authority and responsibility. Successful delegation provides individuals with greater abilities to influence and control job-related outcomes. As a result, these people are more likely to attribute positive outcomes, such as high performance, to their own efforts. It is perhaps not surprising that entrepreneurs who delegate effectively—and by so doing allow their employees to complete tasks with a minimum of external control—tend to be more successful than entrepreneurs who do not actively delegate.
Situations of high delegation have been referred to as self-management. In other words, when significant authority and responsibility have been delegated, employees increase their self-confidence through results obtained specifically because they have an opportunity to manage themselves.
Clearly, many organizations face massive challenges in the form of global competition and unequaled environmental changes. At the same time, however, the challenges of achieving managerial effectiveness may be even greater, because dealing effectively with global competition and environmental changes demands continuing increases in managerial effectiveness.
One critical issue for organizations in the 1990s may be the development and effective utilization of personnel. According to Pearson (1989), it is impossible for an organization to have too many talented people. However, development of a large number of talented individuals requires multiple actions, several of which are relevant to the arguments presented herein.
First, techniques must be used that will identify individuals having high potential to contribute to the accomplishment of a unit’s and/or an organization’s mission. Women exemplify one major group of candidates whose talent and skills appear to have been underutilized in the past. However, as noted previously, the demand and supply realities associated with today’s pool of managerial talent indicate that corporations will overlook a significant source of managerial talent if policies and practices enhancing women’s skills are not developed. Thus, previously ineffective hiring and training patterns will be even less so for firms operating in today’s challenging environments.
However, simple identification of talented personnel is insufficient. Organizations must also be able to prepare both female and male employees for challenging managerial roles. Even further, Schwartz (1989) argues that companies must be prepared to operate with two types of managerial women—those for whom careers are primary, and those who desire to balance a career with family relationships.
As we have suggested, a challenge confronting organizations during the 1990s is the development of appropriate levels of self-confidence and accurate managerial personnel. Achieving this objective is important, because self-confidence plays an essential role in employee motivation and performance. Many women and men may require training accompanied by positive managerial actions aimed principally toward positive reinforcement of the self. This training and these actions are necessary to enhance individuals’ self-confidence while helping them maintain accurate self-perceptions. Based on research, men in particular may need to give attention to developing accurate self-perceptions while maintaining adequate levels of self-confidence.
To accomplish these challenging objectives, organizations should support effective training and development programs. Among the types of programs that could be valuable are those concerned with specific skills training (delegating, problem solving, conducting meetings, making effective use of computer technologies), assertiveness training, and programs to teach modes of thinking and perceiving that increase self-confidence and the accuracy of self-perceptions.
Such actions may seem relatively simple. But implementation can be quite complex, suggesting that success can be achieved only through committed and dedicated managerial actions. Success in developing potentially effective and self-confident managers will contribute significantly to long-term organizational survival in an increasingly hostile global environment. In the end, self-confident managers will be able to make the tough decisions required for organizations to produce and distribute innovative goods and services.
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MANAGING IN THE 90S: THE ANDROGYNOUS MANAGER
BY ALICE G. SARGENT AND RONALD J. STUPAK
We are witnessing a set of critical value shifts in American culture. The major shift affecting corporate America is from the vertical values (rugged individualism, autonomy, and independence) to the horizontal values (interdependence, mutuality, networking, and coalition building).
It is a transformation from a predominantly masculine value system to an androgynous one (andro is Greek for male; gyne is Greek for female). The new value set calls for each person to have a blend of values—competence and compassion, action and introspection. It is the style required for effective leadership in organizational America in the years ahead.
Such a blend mixes together two sets of values:
• the so-called masculine characteristics that managers will need to continue to exhibit—dominance, independence, a direct achievement style, a reverence for rational, analytical problem solving, a valuing of verbal behavior, and a competitive strategic approach;
• the so-called feminine characteristics—concern for relationships, a valuing of expressive behavior, attention to nonverbal behavior, the ability to accommodate and mediate, and a vicarious achievement style (enjoying the development of others).
For contemporary role models of androgynous leadership and management, we can look to Bill Cosby, Alan Alda, Frank Furillo of “Hill Street Blues,” Corazon Aquino, Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund, and Barbara Jordan. In a recent Business Week survey, Colonel Potter from television’s “M.A.S.H.” was selected as the manager for whom most people would prefer to work, above Lee Iacocca.
Source: Copyright December 1989, Training & Development, American Society for Training and Development. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
In a sense, the 1960s and 1970s were about women; the late 1980s are about men. Books about men are proliferating. At least 25 universities have begun offering courses in men’s studies. Men are beginning to reexamine the male experience and the costs paid for the overuse of competition, the absence of close male friendships in adulthood, and the Lone Ranger style. Furthermore, the definition of masculinity as macho warrior, wimp, or anything not considered feminine is under intense scrutiny.
The nature of management is changing as well. Today’s managers spend 50 to 90 percent of their time interacting with people—70 percent of that in groups—and 50 percent operating outside the chain of command. An androgynous blend of competencies is critical for managerial effectiveness and organizational and corporate leadership.
MANAGEMENT REALITIES
How did things get the way they are? What accounts for the shift? Let’s examine the context.
Transactional Realities at the Executive Level
Frank Sherwood, a major influence in the field of public administration, says that as one progresses up the managerial ladder, horizontal skills begin to replace vertical skills as the basis for effective leadership. In other words, as a person moves up the hierarchy, with accompanying increases in formal responsibilities, problems become broader and more complex as constraints become more similar. At the highest levels of an organization, horizontal administration rather than vertical administration becomes the key to power.
That point is critical, because the vertical skills of command and control are replaced by skills that emphasize making transactions across organizational borders, brokering coalitions, and building consensus. Negotiation, bargaining, and mediation start to become more important than directing, demanding, and doing. The need to master transactional competencies determines the status, character, and effectiveness of executives in the corporate arena.
Harold Leavitt, in Beyond the Analytical Manager, and James McGregor Burns, in Leadership, say that transactional leadership skills and human-relations skills are the ones needed to master organizational realities in the American democratic, incremental context. David McClelland says the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that women are more concerned than men with both sides of interdependent relationships.
As the “female” concern for interdependence becomes an essential perspective for effectiveness at the highest levels of management, the androgynous blend needs to become an operational reality at the highest levels of organizations.
The Service Economy and the Servant Leadership Style
As we evolve from an industrial economy to one that is 60 percent service-oriented, leadership requires both masculine and feminine dimensions of power. Surely unilateral power must be blended with synergistic power. Personal dominance may be effective in small groups, but leaders who guide large groups and massive corporations in the service economy must become effective in the more subtle and socialized forms of power and influence.
In today’s marketplace, where increasing numbers of followers, employees, and clients want to have a voice in the management of their organizations, a socialized leadership style must replace the autocratic, directive style of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. “Servant leadership,” based on the firm belief in people, generates the empowerment required to move the massive organizations of corporate America onto the new strategic stage of multinational and international competition and interdependence.
The depth and breadth of the reaction to poor service has demanded that organizations demonstrate the sensitivity and feelings necessary to get closer to customers and clients. Feedback is “the critical dimension” for those committed to an androgynous style.
Organizational Families
In The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America Robert Levering, Milton Moskowitz, and Michael Katz say that the number-one factor on their list of 12 themes for successful companies is that the excellent ones “make people feel part of a team … or a family.”
High-performing organizations demand that good managers have both the head and the heart to be effective leaders. The powerful managers who are memorable are often gracious people as well. The positive, not the negative, face of power predominates at Dana Corporation, Walt Disney, Procter and Gamble, and Hewlett Packard. Surely that suggests that the traditional masculine way of explaining the influence of a manager on his or her followers has not been entirely correct. A good manager does not use sheer, overwhelming dominance to force subordinates to submit and follow. Instead, the nurturing style of expressing power, along with the “sharing” perspective of empowerment, seems to “flame the families” toward productivity in high-performing organizations.
To paraphrase James O’Toole’s Vanguard Management, workers can no longer be treated as bastard stepchildren in the corporate clan, but must be viewed as legitimate stockholders empowered to participate actively in the “family enterprise.”
The 21st Century’s Paradigm for Productive Performance
Generative power, as opposed to imperial power (which is ruthless), appears to be essential to long-term organizational excellence. Generative power, which implies the coming together of two independent beings, has become the paradigm of productive performance in the corporate world as we shatter the traditional boundaries between black and white, men and women, public and private, and national and international.
New frameworks must be created in the multinational, multicultural corporate environment. McClelland makes it clear that men attain “generativity” more easily if they abandon some of their traditional assertiveness; women, if they abandon some of their traditional dependency. The androgynous model is relevant for leadership effectiveness in the re-created world of production, performance, and service.
Women and the Work Force
The work force is changing. In 1984 white males became a minority in the work force, 49.3 percent. The United States has become a two-career economy, but our social policies have not caught up with those other two-career economies—such as Norway and Sweden—in terms of day care and parental leave. Simply stated, women are a national resource.
When the members change dramatically, it becomes critical that organizations get ahead of the power curve to create leadership styles, skills, and perspectives that allow them to leverage the work force in the most efficient and effective manner. An androgynous blend may be one of the answers.
Time Management and Working Mothers
The relationship of time to work must be recast due to the influx of working mothers into the economy. Women, particularly working mothers, offer a new role model for how organizations must deal with time. “Super-women” experience tremendous time pressures; working mothers have the least discretionary time of any adult group in our society. It is important to observe their priorities in contrast to those of many working men, otherwise the “pink collar’7” white collar” reverberations will become a dysfunctional revolution.
Fortune and Time recently published comprehensive articles stating that the executive suites of corporate America are becoming “burn-out” places for the once-productive women managers. They placed the blame on the bureaucratic concreteness of outdated time-management principles based on a “man’s world” of work.
Soft Is Hard: “Excellence” Revisited
Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in In Search of Excellence forever redefined management. Peters and Waterman insist that emotions, feelings, and relationships need to be as important in the content of MBA programs as logic and quantifiable objects. They conclude that Western society needs to counteract the detrimental, rational, “masculine” one-sidedness pinpointed in their analysis of business organizations: We don’t argue for drastically tilting the balance toward either pathfinding or implementation. Rationality is important…. But if America is to regain its competitive position in the world, or even hold what it has, we have to stop overdoing things on the rational side.”
Peters and Waterman understand the practical need for the implementation of feeling attitudes; in their words, “the exclusively analytic approach run wild leads to an abstract, heartless philosophy.”
Old-guard definitions of management harped on productivity, obedience, and control. Peters’ new definition is management as concern for people—employees inside the organization and customers and consumers outside—as well as a clear concern for quality, not merely quantity. Daniel Yankelovich undergirds that new definition when he says we have shifted from control to quality as the central principle of management. Managers who focus on quality need involvement, motivation, locality, commitment, and pride from workers. That implies organizations based on trust and caring—and on a leadership blend of male and female characteristics.
The androgynous leadership blend poses a relevant style for the macro and micro relationships necessary to manage organizations in the multigender, multinational, and multisocial environments in the years ahead.
A MODEL FOR MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS
The significant questions for corporations today:
• Do organizations need the values and skills that women bring—caring, cooperation, conflict resolution, good communications, and an expression of a fuller range of feelings?
• Can “female” characteristics and behaviors become a greater part of the acceptable managerial style without jettisoning the best of “male” qualities?
Surely the answer to both questions has to be yes. Progressive corporations in the United States and abroad have flattened hierarchies, encouraged employee participation, and paid more attention to employees’ feelings and personal needs. They recognize that workers will perform better when they feel a sense of ownership in their jobs and organizations. Workers also do better work when they believe that the organization values their personal well-being; they see the evidence in such issues as satisfying jobs, health, and family life.
A so-called feminine approach focuses on collaboration, caring, and socialized power. The more traditional, “masculine” approach focuses on analyzing problems, exercising unilateral power, negotiating, competing, and getting credit for one’s impact. The androgynous manager integrates and incorporates and employs both sets of behaviors. He or she is both dominant and flexible, and combines independence and power with nurturing and intimacy.
When workers operate under a social contract rather than an exploitation contract, managers need skills to deal with the whole person. They need both instrumental and expressive behaviors, competence and compassion, and support and direction.
Androgynous behavior can enhance a range of managerial functions, including the following:
• conducting performance appraisals;
• building, developing, and maintaining team effectiveness;
• assisting in the career development of employees;
• using a variety of decision-making styles;
• dealing with conflict;
• dealing with stress.
For example, the performance of a work team depends on trust, collaboration, communication, and interdependence among team members. It also depends on competence in the technical aspects of the task. The manager cannot just tell the team members to be trustful, collaborative, and communicative. Example works much better than precept; the manager needs to model the behaviors sought in the team members. Also, how team members feel about each other is as important as how they interact with the task at hand. The androgynous manager deals with feeling and task accomplishment, with support and direction, and with productivity and morale.
Instrumental Versus Expressive Behaviors
At the core of the androgynous blend of behaviors are instrumental and expressive behaviors. The former deals with data, results, ideas, and tasks—in effect, it is role behavior. The latter deals with self-disclosure, spontaneity, authenticity, and feelings.
Such behaviors become clear to us in our relationships with family and friends. Instrumental discussions begin with such questions as “Have you paid the insurance?” “Where should we go for dinner Saturday night?” and “Who is taking the car to the mechanic?” Examples of expressive behavior include “How did it go at the office today?” and “How do you feel about your work?”
If a couple engages in too much instrumental behavior, the relationship becomes stale and routine. Communication lacks spontaneity and self-disclosure, the kinds of expressive behavior that build closeness.
Supervisor/subordinate relationships also grow dull and rigid when they become instrumental, focusing only on such questions as “Is that job finished?” and “When do you plan to take your vacation this year?” More expressive behavior is called for. Examples include “How is that project going?” and “Where would you like to be in your career five years from now?”
On the job, the absence of expressive behavior produces ineffective, stilted performance-appraisal sessions. Staff meetings become frustrating; the remarks people make informally ten minutes after the meeting are much more meaningful than opinions expressed during the meeting.
TRAINING FOR ANDROGYNY
Today, managers do not have the luxury of autocracy. Management is defined as getting things done through people—between supervisor and manager, between manager and subordinate, and between manager and peer.
Given the way managers spend their time, organizational leadership becomes an influence-peddling, coalition-visioning, and power-negotiating process. Successful management styles tend to emphasize more collaboration and less competition, and different decision-making styles in different situations.
Contingency decision making and situational leadership styles are becoming more widespread; however, we really have not moved to participative management. Instead, we see a blend of the benevolent autocratic style and the consultative style.
To take a giant step toward dealing with these facts and issues, we need a three-step approach to transforming management for the future:
• We must design valid models of managerial effectiveness at the first-line, middle-management, and executive levels—models based on the androgynous paradigm.
• We must define systematic methods for performance appraisal systems that reinforce and reward the models.
• We must develop educational and training programs to “grow” managers based on the models.
How do we train androgynous managers? Certainly not in the business schools and public administration programs of today. Sixty-thousand MBAs are graduated every year in the United States—many of them are our future managers—but most degree programs require only nine hours of management education. As Sterling Livingston, the 72-year-old president of the Washington, D.C.-based Sterling Training Institute, has said, “Business schools teach how to problem-solve, not problem-find; how to work more with money than with people.”
The inability of our business schools to teach people management and team-building skills may be the reason for the recent wave of executive disenchantment with business-school graduates, along with the return to the belief that a liberal arts degree is better preparation for general management. Management is indeed a second career for many engineers, doctors, scientists, lawyers, and the like. They need to be educated for that career with the same commitment and intensity that went into their first career choices.
Business school curricula and management development programs should include work in both the theory and practice of each of the seven androgynous manager competencies:
• technical competence;
• problem-solving competence (analytical skills, left- and right-brain thinking);
• self-awareness competence (awareness of the impact of one’s behavior on others—introspection);
• interpersonal competence;
• team leadership and membership effectiveness;
• entrepreneurial competence;
• leadership.
The need is for practitioner/managers capable of modeling those behaviors.
The American Management Association is trying to begin a master’s degree program in management, while some business schools are trying to broaden their course offerings. For example, Harvard is taking a step in the right direction by offering a class to its second-year MBA students and their spouses called “The Executive Family.” Barrie Greiff, author of Tradeoffs in Executive and Family Life, teaches the course. It is designed to help future leaders of U.S. businesses balance the demands of a job with the demands of a family.
A life outside the office is beginning to be recognized as an important element for managers—an element that cannot be denied or ignored. (Remember, no one on his or her deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.”) But much more needs to be done to teach managers how to be androgynous in the office.
A MORE POSITIVE ROLE FOR CORPORATIONS
Outside of business schools, societal trends are moving people toward androgyny: women’s liberation, two-career households, couples in their late 30s starting families and becoming more home-centered, and the focus on male role expectations. The movement is slowly percolating into the workplace. But organizations need to take a more positive role in promoting the androgynous management approach.
In a Playboy magazine report on contemporary men’s values, the priorities were as follows: health, family life, love, friends, sex, respect for others, religion, peace of mind, work, education, and money. It is clear that attitudes and behavior are not connected. Work comes ninth, according to the men who filled out the survey, but for many, it remains number one in their lives. Some men are becoming conscious of other priorities and other management models. But from consciousness to behavior change is an important step. Organizations can help by rewarding managers who display androgynous competencies, for skill not only with tasks, but also with people.
Management in the 1980s and 1990s is about people, our most precious resource. To build supportive and effective workplace climates in which people can be creative and do work of high quality, we need a blend of both masculine and feminine behaviors. Then we will have a new managerial style that combines concern for people with concern for quality. We will have a style that values interdependent as well as independent ways of doing business. We will have a style that increases options for all managers to move beyond the constraints of stereotypical sex-role expectations.
The political, social, and economic environment is crying out for those who can lead, manage, and create with dignity, sensitivity, and integrity on the local, national, and international levels. It is essential that we in the United States reinvent the corporation. And it is a fundamental requirement that we reinvent the “American Dream” based on rational, feeling, and integrated leadership styles grounded in the androgynous paradigm.