Carol Smith: Women are Better Managers

The New York Times has an interview with Carol Smith, the senior vice president and chief brand officer at the media company the Elle Group. And she makes some pretty admirable statements.

I think it's always nice to hear from women in business who hold leadership positions. It's really disappointing when powerful women don't really care about gender roles in the work place or don't hold feminist views, considering that they do have so much power and could be such great role models.

Smith has some really interesting comments about her role as leader, saying: "I feel I’m a leader without ever really thinking I’m a leader, which is to say that I know when I walk into a room of employees, I command a presence, but I’m always feeling like I’m part of the gang. I don’t instantly sit at the head of the table. I sit in the middle of the table, always. I don’t want to sit at the head of the table. I want to be part of the process and part of the decision. In the end I think that if you win people over, they’ll follow you. And of course you need other qualities, like honesty, decisiveness and the ability to confront. I’m a really good confronter."

On being a good confronter: "I have been in this career for many years and I have seen, and this is a generalization, that women are better list-makers. They will do their to-do list. They will prioritize their to-do list. They will get through their to-do list. Maybe it’s because we do shopping lists. And if we have a problem — again, as a generalization — we will confront the problem and deal with it head-on. I think that has really made me good at managing people, because I think they always know that they’re going to get a real answer."

On why women are better managers: "In my experience, female bosses tend to be better managers, better advisers, mentors, rational thinkers. Men love to hear themselves talk. I’m so generalizing. I know I am. But in a couple of places I’ve worked, I would often say, “Call me 15 minutes after the meeting starts and then I’ll come,” because I will have missed all the football. I will have missed all the “what I did on the golf course.” I will miss the four jokes, and I can get into the meeting when it’s starting. Men also, they’re definitely better on the “whatever” side. Things tend to roll off their back. We women take things very personally. We’re constantly playing things over in our head — “What did that mean when they said that?” — when they mean nothing. And I’m certainly not immune to this. So there’s a downside to women."

The downside to women in offices: "I hate an office where there aren’t men and women together. I hate it, hate it, hate it. Men and women together is the best."

I don't think these statements are necessarily perfectly feminist, and maybe Smith doesn't even identify as a feminist-- I still think it's great that she's speaking out about women in leadership roles and men and women in the workplace at all. It's cool to see that women are making strides in that area.

In fact, in 2002 women represented one-third of all business owners and generated about $939.5 billion in revenues. Nearly 1.2 million women are top wealth holders and comprise some 43% of Americans with gross assets of $1.5 million or more.

All in all, some pretty promising information. But then that's only America. And, of course, there are still fields in which women are significantly under-represented, such as the financial industry. In 2008, women managed only 3% of approximately $1.9 trillion invested in hedge funds. Maybe if there had been more women, things would be different right now economically. Who is to say, really...all I know is that women bring different perspectives and different talents to the table than men, and that can only be a good thing.

All stats taken from the National Council for Research on Women's report Women in Fund Management: A Road Map for Achieving Critical Mass - and Why it Matters