28 April 2006
Getting in touch with your feminine and how the nurture / listen / empathy approach really yields success in business.
The qualities possessed by people who are successful in business and know where they are going are the things that they are unconsciously very good at. These can, of course, be attributes they were born with – natural behaviours – or they may have abilities acquired over many years – nurtured behaviours.
As a coach I am always looking for the reasons, often hidden and unspoken, why some people are more successful than others. These success attributes are many and varied, and experience has led me to understand that a natural driver is purer than a learned behaviour – and the energy is almost inexhaustible.
I have roughly an equal number of male and female clients and a lot of the women run their own successful businesses. I have noticed that they have a real knack of communicating with their fellow directors and staff, and they generally do it so much better than men.
As you would expect, women show more female concern about the more emotional aspects of the lives of their staff and family, and yet interestingly they are better at business because they also have a number of male brain traits: good at map reading; good 3-dimensional spacial awareness; good at numbers; understand vision and strategy; get on well with men and have a good number of male friends. There is also a desire to win, and externally, demonstrate a lot of confidence. In coaching sessions they talk more readily than men about their personal challenges and they implement more quickly the changes resulting from our coaching sessions.
It seems that such women have the best of both brain worlds when it comes to business because they are able to mix and match the many hats that business owners need; they show interest in their staff, they’re creative and they have their own ideas while also able take advice from other people, as well as really listening to their client’s concerns.
Comparing these behaviours with those of my male clients who also run successful businesses, they exhibit the above masculine behaviours as well as feminine attributes: they’re sensitive to staff problems; show concern for others and talk about us and teams, rather than about me or I all the time. They tend to be more humble and more successful than those men who have a rather macho approach to business.
When I point out these success traits to my clients, they are amazed that things they have taken for granted all of their life, play such an important part in their success. By the way roughly 10% of ladies have some male wiring in their brains and 15% to 20% of men have some female wiring in their brain –
so if you have it, cherish it.
As I have seen, the aspects of female and male behaviours are crucial in running a successful business, whatever the gender. This is especially true in our knowledge based economy, where the content is created and interpreted by people for people. Men, especially, need to be proud of showing their softer, more sensitive feminine side.
But whilst I don’t recommend that men rush out and start buying dresses, learning to nurture their own feminine side will pay dividends.
TIPS FOR GETTING IN TOUCH WITH YOUR FEMININE SIDE
Do
Listen
Ask
Question
Discuss
Admit mistakes
Don't
Just Pause for breath
Tell
Crticise
Argue
Pass the Buck
©William Barron
Creating Insight
April 2006
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