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Lee Ritenour tried to be "one of the guys" when she first became a line manager at Hughes Aircraft Company in Fullerton, California, 18 years ago.
Unsure of her own management style and having to maneuver around gender and education obstacles, she figured the way to smooth her road to success was to emulate her peers. Her colleagues, mostly men, were engineers and she thought that with her liberal arts education and MBA she had to be just like them to prove her abilities.
Now a Final Assembly Design and Manufacturing Center Leader at Santa Barbara Research Center, with 275 engineers and technicians under her direction, she has decided the management style that suits her best is the one that comes from the core of who she is rather than a composite of her peers' characteristics.
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| They Find a Style that Fits Who They Are |
That seems to be a key among many female managers. "It's hard to be a different person at work than you are at home," said Sue Patillo, owner and CEO of Carpinteria, California-based We Care Corporation, a manufacturer, distributor and retailer of home health care products.
"Dominating the works doesn't work. I've tried being the all-powerful boss and, believe me, it doesn't work. I'm always developing a managing style and the person I am today isn't who I was yesterday. After 14 years I am comfortable with how I do things because they've proved successful. But nothing changes who I am, even though my role changes."
Management styles are as individual as fashions and many female executives have tried on a few before settling on the one that works for them. "I have been a rarity ever since I started in the management chain at Hughes," Ritenour explained. "I tried to utilize the male style that I saw around me but I wasn't particularly comfortable with it. I've reverted back to the style that fits who I am. I used to be different from 90 percent of the managers around me. Now it's only 80 percent."
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| A Challenging Nurturer, Not a Mother Hen |
Ritenour's style, she said, is to be a nurturer - a common trait among women managers - who is always challenging her employees to stretch their abilities. "I get to know people as well as I can without invading their privacy. I try to create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable talking about who they are. I'm big on dialoguing with people and giving information."
Ritenour is quick to point out, however, that while she nurtures and encourages her employees, she is not a mother hen and they are not her chicks. "The mothering approach is where you think you can solve every problem they have," she explains, "business or not. I tried doing that but it took too much out of me and I realized I couldn't do it anyway."
Still, if employees are going through a personal crisis, a divorce perhaps, that affects their on-the-job performance, she encourages them to let her know, in broad terms, so it can be accommodated in the group dynamics. "I try to understand what needs they have as human beings, not just as workers." |
| It Still Comes Down to Leadership |
Seeing their employees as "whole people" rather than simply worker bees is a common denominator among many female managers.
Cathy Steinke, senior vice president and director of human resources at Santa Barbara Bank & Trust in Santa Barbara, California, assumes a similar responsibility. "I try to get people to develop beyond their comfort zones. I call mine an encouraging style that taps into their talent. People don't work for me, they work with me. I encourage them, but does that mean I am the mom? No."
Before joining Bank & Trust in 1997, Steinke worked in a staff position at Security Pacific Bank for 18 years and then at Bank of America for a short time following the merger of the two financial institutions. The consultant with whom Steinke had been working during the transition, also a woman, asked her to to take on a management position working with her directly. Though at that point she didn't have the technical skills or experience the job required, she had proven herself as a leader and that's what the consultant was looking for.
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| Try to Be Direct and Honest Yet Diplomatic |
"I try to approach things diplomatically. There needs to be communication and you need to develop relationships so you can be honest and direct."
Cathy Carter Duncan, CEO of Seymour Duncan, the Santa Barbara-based manufacturer of electric guitar pick-ups, envisions herself as a "kind of teacher. I give people assignments and they go out and struggle with them themselves. The skills I've developed with my kids have been useful for me to learn more about people in general."
But Duncan doesn't wear a "mother" hat at work. "I don't tend to try to take care of people. I can re-educate people, but I can't rehabilitate." |
| No Qualms About Firing Those Who Can |
These female managers operate within the "whole person" paradigm even with employees who aren't performing well. They have no qualms about firing a worker who isn't contributing to the corporate well-being.
"It used to be that when there was a difficulty in job performance I would look at my own inadequacies," Duncan says. "Now I know it takes two people to dance and I try very hard to pay attention not just to what is on the table being discussed, but what is going on at a deeper level. It's very painful to fire people and make changes, but I've found ways of protecting their dignity and humanity."
When Patillo has an employee who isn't working out, her style is to "sit down and say 'This is not where you belong; where do you need to be to be happy?' We give them every opportunity to make it in the company. But still I can go away from an exit interview thinking I've failed, that I didn't convey their worth even though they weren't doing a good job."
Over the years she has experienced hiring mismatches, and in those instances the employees were given two-week notices, but spent those two weeks polishing their resumes and interview skills. "We hired people incorrectly and we took responsibility for it. We had to make it up to them."
Steinke tries to get at the source of the conflict and help a problem employee improve. "I try to tap into them even further. Why aren't they performing? But if they aren't doing well, I let them go. I don't have any trouble with that."
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| Crediting Their Mentors, They Strive to Be Examples to Others |
All four women credit their own mentors with helping them develop their management styles and present themselves as examples for others who climb the corporate ladder.
A few years ago when Ritenour had to lay off some employees at the company's Fullerton facility, "they felt it was harder because they had so much faith that I would find a way to help them and I couldn't."
Some of them were so accustomed to her style they had trouble working for other managers. "And a few said when they got to be managers they were going to be more like me." |
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