Working under Female Managers in Office/Finance Setting
What do you guys (or girls) think of working with female managers in the general office, finance setting? I think overall in the last 10 years they are definitely more prevalent in management roles.
It seems to me, that if you have a go-getter personality you might butt heads with them. Any advice with working with them as your manager, or Director?
P.S. I understand you treat them as you would anyone else, but overall they definitely have a different leadership style/way of doing things, not saying if it's better or worse.
Run.
Every woman I’ve worked with in this business thinks you’re the devil, because odds are your a white male, and somehow that makes you inherently awful.
I’m sure there are those out there that have had different experience, but I have not.
"Every woman I've worked with thinks I'm awful"
It takes a real lack of introspection and self awareness to make the statement that female managers think you're awful, but attribute that to general misandry and not make the more normal and obvious connection that maybe you're just a terrible employee and/or person.
Wow, harsh. But okay.
I would suggest the following:
I’m sorry if I triggered you; but I think we’re all on this forum to share different experience and gain perspectives that are outside of our own. I shared mine.
I did, in my comment, offer that others may have had different experiences.
No shit I don't know you. What I know is that you've apparently had a run of bad female bosses who think you're "the devil" because you're a "white male". I'm working with exactly the information provided. I'm not comparing your experience to mine, or to what I expect it to be - I am making a comment based on common sense. If you go through life and people from a certain background dislike you "for no reason," the odds are is that there is a reason, that it's you and your behavior, and that you don't have the awareness to realize it.
And 50% weren't. Their competence may not have anything to do with their like or dislike of you, either. Again, if you are looking around and thinking "everyone hates me but they're all unreasonable pieces of shit," the odds are that you're the asshole.
You didn't "trigger" anything. People who throw around that word are generally the ones who feel that way.
You made a comment about your experience and I responded. I'm not sure how you expected your experience to be helpful to others, except to solicit sympathy for yourself, so don't play the "I'm just here to help" card. The "experience" you shared was incredibly vague, devoid of any detail that might help others navigate a similar situation, and so over-generalized as to be meaningless. How does your "perspective" that "female managers think white men are the devil" help anyone? That's the comment a troll makes on the Off Topic Forum, not something helpful or useful. Given that your reaction to be called out on such shitposting is to turn around and play the victim and demand that your opinion be given equal treatment and considered equally meritorious just because it's an opinion, makes me think that maybe your bosses, female or male, might be on to something.
Did you just assume my race??
Read it again dipshit.
“Odd are...” isn’t an assumption. It’s a statistical likelihood.
Relax intern I'm kidding, I haven't had great experiences with female manager(s) either, it sucks.
Zoomers are yikes
Woman here. In my experience some have been total bitches and control freaks but others were super nice and go getters themselves. It really depends on the person, just like it is for male managers...
I've had horrible experiences with all four female managers I've worked with throughout my career. I've had much better luck with male managers. I don't know what it is exactly and I know its not the "proper" thing to say, but its the truth.
I don't have enough experience yet, but the one female broker at the office is super chill. Really nice lady, who's easy to get along with.
It does depend on the person, that's true, and same I had a bad experience with a woman being my manager at a job, that I don't think would've happened if they had been a man.
I guess a better question is, what are ways of getting along with a woman who is your manager? Especially, if they are ambitious themselves.
Interesting post. I've had this chat with friends countless times before.
Personally, I've had terrible luck with female managers/more senior colleagues. Pushing 9 years in the industry now and I've had close day-to-day interactions/under direct management relationship with 5 different senior female colleagues/managers. 4/5 of those relationships have been terrible.
Reasons I didn't get along with them are usually: 1. They seem to think I'm trying to undermine them (No, I'm just speaking up for myself/my opinion, and would do the same as if they were male). 2. Extreme micro management - they care too much about little details that I know and can prove have minor impact on the bigger picture of pushing the deals through. 3. Close-minded and refused to accept other ways to operate. 4. and finally, most ridiculous reason of all, one of my female manager constanly wear very low cut attires that make a perv like me very uncomfortable at work. Imagine trying to stare at her eyes and be professional why she has some massive bolt-ons trying to stick their heads out to get some air - extremely hard to focus at work. It's like if you have a male boss who wears speedos to work everyday.
I was also in my 20s and might have not been experienced enough to deal with colleagues who are different than I am. You'll learn to manage up and down as you traverse your early years. The 1 good female senior colleague have been super chill and that works out. I've had zero bad relationship with male senior colleagues/managers in my entire career. Yes, I've met douchebags but I don't work with/for them fortunately.
In short, I don't want this to be a rant against my female colleagues, but more relaying my experience to you WSO folks. At the end of the day, regardless of their gender/race, we're all wired differently and have different style of operations. You have to learn to adapt and manage your relationships at work up and down, work with and accept their differences. Yes, it's hard to do that when they're female and thus think very differently than you do due to biology, so you just need to do some self adjusting that's all. All that being said, I'm now aware of this difference and will have to adjust accordingly as more female analysts are coming into our shop - and recommend at we all do the same given the fast changing demographics of today's work force.
Rereading your post, I would add that I disagree with your statement that "you treat them as you would anyone else". Yes, fair game and all that. But you don't talk to everyone the same way...unless you have terrible EQ and lack social manners, which is an extremely important skillset in our industry and business/management in general.
First three I'd say can apply to both male or female. For point 2, thats usually a sign of someone who doesn't know what there doing. I've had that on reports, where my boss reviews it, and is focusing more on whether to use a " , " vs a " ; ", and not focusing on the actual content.
Point four is always interesting to me. As a guy, I guess its easier to dress because you don't have many choices. Its like, you can go find a a very conservative male, compared to an actor at an awards show, and they're both wearing the same thing, a suit/tux. However, the difference between a conservative female and a women at an award the difference is huge. I guess I've always worked when the atmosphere was a littler looser, but you look at some old pictures of women in offices, and they dressed pretty conservative, now theres a thin line sometimes between what women wear to work and what you'd expect to see at a club.
so boobies basically
I've had a couple female managers in my career, some have been good, some have been pretty bad. Had male bosses who are both as well. Problem is the same for both male/female leaders, they promote people who do the best in a lower role to an upper role; that doesn't mean their good at that upper role or being a leader. Its like in basketball, are the best players the best coaches, Lebron, probably, Durant, maybe, Harden, probably not unless the whole team wants to go to vegas and strip clubs.
The thing with finance jobs is it attracts what I would say are more "socialable" males and probably less "socialable" females. I think this can again be described by basketball. Most NBA players would be described as what society sees as alpha males-- tall, athletic, rich. While the same could be send for WNBA players, these aren't what most would consider as "ideal" females. So its more cause and effect. Meaning, because a women is in finance, the effect isn't shes difficult to work with, its, because a woman is perceived as spunky (or whatever), they end up in finance.
Great analogies
There is some weird shit in this thread. Your manager's gender doesn't determine if they're good at their job or not, nor is there a clear cut "female management style" vs. "male management style."
No kidding... nice reminder that we still have a lot of wood to chop as an industry.
Oh, I don't know. Misogyny is a real thing and it's not hard to imagine OP thinking he's an "alpha" or whatever nonsense term the neckbeard community has cottoned on to now, and expressing that attitude in the workplace. I can see why female managers would have a reaction to being leered at or objectified in the workplace, in a way male managers wouldn't.
Agreed. This conversation frequently lacks nuance because:
1. People are tribalistic (usually defend their gender, attack the other)
2. Lack of comprehension for basic statistics
3. This is the internet so good luck with good faith conversations
It's not A vs B. It's not Male vs. Female. It's an attempt to identify tendencies of each gender probabilistically. The difficulty is you get what, 15 managers in your life? That is by definition not statistically significant so nobody's one experience validates anything - hence we crowd source via conversation. And then we get lost in the noise and generally go nowhere. Or, as seen in the first quarrel of the thread, someone had a different experience than the other and felt invalidated.
It's not that every female or male manager is good or bad. Obviously. The gender doesn't guarantee any quality. But to say that you just need some simple adjusting when dealing with the opposite gender is far too simplistic for something we've only experimented with for like 120 years since women entered the workforce. Less than 50% of women were in the workforce by 1970. This is relatively new. The rules aren't obvious. We hardly know how to deal with the same gender, but it's at least somewhat in our realm of understanding because we are that gender as well so we can use a baseline understanding.
To say the genders are the same is dismissive and simply not accurate. The thread was started looking for advice in how to deal with female managers and it's turned to gender fighting. This is problematic, friends.
Tips for female managers but also helpful in general for male managers or relationships as a whole (might rub some the wrong way but I feel the need to at least address OP's question):
1: Let them know you appreciate their work/guidance/advice -> it creates clarity of how you feel about them and generally creates a positive environment / removes insecurity
2: Overcommunicate -> Creates certainty and understanding of where things are. Neuroticism scores are higher in females (James Damore of Google was harangued for stating this fact).
3: Make your reputation impenetrable -> Women historically fight with reputation, men historically fight with fists
4: Small/thoughtful gestures go pretty far -> Birthdays, names, details, donuts for the office. Anything that shows you cared and listened ( a lot of overlap in relationships )
5: When they're venting: Listen more -> They want to be heard and validated, not listen to your advice. Every female has a female hype crew behind her validating their actions. Just default to this.
I agree that gender doesn't matter. But that's a long road to go down right.
I also agree there are different management styles, doesn't have to be classified as "male vs female".
Thanks, @PWM Hopeful for the advice. I don't want this to be a female manager-hating post, just wanted to hear experiences and, for advice. I've had male managers who are bad managers and worse than my experience with a female manager. Like @Ironman32 had said, I think, generally speaking, finance usually attracts a certain type of woman, especially at the management level, so some general advice could be positive.
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