Workforce development is a hot topic right now, as indicated by the fact that as many as two-thirds of the American workforce are looking for new opportunities and reevaluating their values regarding work and career.
This phenomena is being referred to as “The Great Resignation” or “The Great Reshuffling”.
As a manager, business owner, or even member of a team, building your team with intention is crucial to your future success.
Who you put on your team moving forward matters.
And here’s the good news:
In many cases, women are better.
Yep – I said it. Women are far superior in many facets of strategic and measurable traits that make growing your company possible.
And there’s data to prove it.
1. Women are better listeners
In a Forbes Magazine article entitled Age, Gender and Ability to Listen: Who Listens Best, women are the clear winners when it comes to listening effectiveness.
2. Women bring less ego to the table.
I googled this and came up with many articles discussing how to deal with male egos at work, so I decided to just let this one be represented by my own personal 51 years of anecdotal research on this topic.
According to me, men bring more ego-related issues to damn near everything in life.
I said it.
Fight me.
3. Women are problem solvers.
There are two sound bites I am going to share surrounding this one. One is from a very long paper I did not read:
“Individual item analysis of the PSI revealed that males scored significantly better on problem-solving items related to perceived confidence and ability and females scored significantly better on problem-solving items related to emotional awareness and deliberation.”
Let me summarize:
Men are better at solving problems because they are confident they can. Women solve problems because they think and feel.
Which one is better? You decide.
4. Women are more collaborative.
According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, “studies have shown that women are more likely to care for the collective, which means they are more likely to step in when they see a gap or ambiguity. Researcher, consultant, and author Pam Heim found that women are more likely to agree with the statement “Being a good team player means helping all of my colleagues with what they need to get done.” In contrast, men are more likely to agree with the statement “Being a good team player is knowing your position and playing it well.”
In organizations that get work done through informal project teams or that have overlapping accountabilities, this difference in perspective has implications for the way the men and women engage in collaboration.
Conclusion: Women help more for the good of the entire team regardless of the cost to themselves.
5. Women are more likely to be allies to other underrepresented groups like people of color and people who identify as LGBTQ.
Thus far, that allyship has gone unrecognized in most workplaces. You can read more about this in the recent Women in the Workplace Study by McKinsey.
“Allyship is a process, and everyone has more to learn. Allyship involves a lot of listening. Sometimes, people say “doing ally work” or “acting in solidarity with” to reference the fact that “ally” is not an identity, it is an ongoing and lifelong process that involves a lot of work.
One type of ally is a white ally. A white ally acknowledges the limits of her/his/their knowledge about other people’s experiences but doesn’t use that as a reason not to think and/or act. A white ally does not remain silent but confronts racism as it comes up daily, but also seeks to deconstruct it institutionally and live in a way that challenges systemic oppression, at the risk of experiencing some of that oppression. Being a white ally entails building relationships with both people of color, and also with white people in order to challenge them in their thinking about race. White allies don’t have it all figured out, but are committed to non-complacency.”
If you’ve read this far, I hope you realize that this position is about balance and not total domination. Adding more women to your team carries many benefits, and I hope that you, as a leader of your company, will take steps to diversify your teams.