Women’s Influence on Business Management in the Last 40 Years

By Ranni Hillyer, Chief Operating Officer

Aero Financial, Inc.

Over the last 40 years, women have increasingly taken roles as managers and senior executives
in businesses in the United States and throughout the world. This brief paper tries to answer the
question: “How have women impacted organizational cultures, and what is different now from
40 years ago as a result of female influence?” As a senior executive myself with over twenty
years of management experience in banking and finance, I can now answer this question from
my personal perspective.

First of all, “emotional intelligence” has been in demand for a number of years in the
management suite. It is hard to trace the source of this change in management culture. No
matter how this got started, it is certainly true that women have provided the “emotional
intelligence” required. Women tend to be more understanding and empathetic naturally. In the
finance and banking industries where I have worked, we have found that financial decision
making is often driven by emotions such as fear and greed. Clients come to advisors and banks
full of emotion. This is true for both men and women clients. I personally have brought an
emotional intelligence to my work with clients and I have encouraged my teams to do the same.
By understanding their emotions I have helped clients make wise financial decisions rather than
emotionally reactive decisions. It is clear to me that I was able to do this in large part because I
am a woman and I have found the same to be true of the people who work under me.

Secondly, the ability to be compassionate and to see past the surface have benefits to me as a
manger and for my employers. As a manager, I have learned to recognize that everyone’s
strengths and needs are important. Within this context, I fit the job to the person as well as the
person to the job. Working with me, everyone gets to fulfill their life purpose, whether gradually
or quickly. There should be no losers, and unfriendly competition is not only discouraged, it is
just unnecessary. Competition so long as it is “friendly” can be motivating. However,
competition that seeks to destroy or operates to the detriment of another is not useful. Women
tend to make this distinction. So, I create a win/win environment on my teams. This creates
synergy, where my teams enjoy coming to work and working together. The result is a team that
is “bigger than the sum of its parts”, the very definition of synergy. All of this has been made
easier by my perspective as a woman manager, with the more natural ability for compassion and
to see the full potential of each person.

Third, as a woman, I encourage candidness and openness in communication. I have found that
candidness without maliciousness is empowering. The converse is also true, malicious
candidness is destructive. Clarity, simplicity and constructive candor builds a phenomenal team.
My number one goal is to create teams, not friends. So, to this end, I encourage my people to
communicate in a way that is clear and to the point. And I encourage a compassionate form of
candor. I’ll speak more to this a little later.

Fourth, consistent with the emphasis on candidness and openness, the industrial age “Do as I
say”, top down style of management has gone out of style. This style does not provide ideal
results in the informational age. I am not giving credit to women for initiating this change; a
different kind of management culture was already appearing in the 1960’s and was the vision of
both men and women leaders. However, women have played a special role in bringing this new
information age management culture into real life and making it work. Our more natural
communication skills and relationship skills have enabled the teamwork and two-way
communications that are so important in the information age.
Firth, women have brought balance and family into the modern workplace over the last 40 years.
As a general statement, women have to balance home and work more than men. So this
experience teaches them how to bring balance into the workplace. Laws have protected women
in the workplace. More significant however, technology has allowed women to be more creative
and productive than ever before. For example, technology allows managers to spend part of their
time working from home. This is of obvious benefit to managers with families seeking
work/home balance. Women have this experience to teach everyone as well. Balancing work
and family has now become a recognized priority in most business cultures in large part because
of the influence of female managers.

There have been some issues resulting from women taking a significant role on management
teams in the last 40 years. The good news is that by dealing with these issues, managers and
executives have created opportunities and positive change. In many cases, it took a woman to
convert these issues into positive change. Here are some examples of how this happened:

A mixed-gender environment creates communication issues. After all, clear communication

between the genders is not natural, given the complexity of our social and personal lives outside
of the workplace. Many emotions come up between the genders, naturally, and men and women
tend to be reactive to one another. There is also some continued confusion as to appropriate
forms of communication between the genders. To handle all of this, I teach my teams: “keep all
communications simple and to the point.” It has not been easy. People take some time to get
used to keeping it simple, direct, to the point. But what I have discovered is that this simpler
form of communication has benefited all my teams. This has been true whether the
communication is between genders or man to man or woman to woman. So the result is, as
managers, we are learning to be more efficient, simpler and clearer when we speak to one
another. Thus, what’s showing up in the management suite is greater clarity and efficiency in
communication. All communications have become more efficient because of the mixed genders
in management, at least when my approach has been used. We needed someone to make this
happen. I think it took a woman.

Another issue is that women take things more personally than men. I have learned how to
compensate for this both in myself and in other women. Both genders benefit. As a result, I can
fully immerse myself in creating team. I have now taken it upon myself to teach others to stop
taking everything so personally. Here again, as a woman, I have been able to turn lemon into
lemonade. The need to compensate for an issue has created an opportunity to lead, for
everyone’s benefit. In this case again, I think it took a woman.

Another issue is that women have, until recently at least, sacrificed their feminine identity.
Many women have tried to be more like men. I have always thought this was silly, as it
sacrifices the beneficial character traits and experiences we can bring, as discussed above. So, in
my case, I have never let this happen. My feminine identity comes before my position in the
company. I never forget that I am a woman. Because of this, I have brought the best attributes
of a woman into my work. I have learned to manage business with gracefulness rather than
forcefulness. Now, I am in a position to teach this to other women. In this case clearly, it took a
woman to lead the way.

Most people who study business culture agree that men have traditionally taken the lead as
entrepreneurs and women have taken more of a supportive role. Statistically, I think we can say
that this difference persists, although the difference has been eroding. Women have learned to
be more entrepreneurial lately. Women generally recognize that business actually gives us an
opportunity to learn about ourselves and what we are capable of. Being an entrepreneur and
thinking like one empowers us. Women have been leaders in seeing this potential and are
starting businesses in rapidly growing numbers. It is widely recognized that new businesses will
be the source of most of economic growth in the future. The number and type of new business
started in he future will be greatly enhanced by the fact that women are increasingly playing the
entrepreneurial role. This can be credited in part to the growing openness and willingness among
women to take the founding role.

Notwithstanding the above comments about what women bring, I believe that the gender
differences are only skin deep. I believe we are here to do the best we can and I also believe that
most people feel this way. Regardless of gender, I encourage my people to choose the roles they
are good at and to give it their best. They respond enthusiastically. I do not give any energy to
gender differences in my people, except recognizing the special traits that each gender may be
able to offer, as I have explained earlier. This creates compassion in me; I don’t take advantage
of others. I don’t try to use my gender to gain un-earned advantage. I use the unique abilities
that my gender offers and I remain conscious of them, but I also see myself as a person and a
team member where the gender does not really matter that much. This nuanced approach to
gender differences has to be taught to others.

I am looking forward to the next 40 years, where men and women working together as managers
can grow on the emotional, personal, professional and spiritual levels. I see greater creativity
and ingenuity; and I see greater leadership with compassion. All of these are traits that women
are especially strong in. Also, we will working together as synergetic teams on a conscious
level. Women have had to learn to manage and balance their lives consciously. So women will
continue to take the lead in conscious management.

At my company, Aero Financial, Inc. (an investment bank), the CEO is a man and I am COO. I
have taken responsibility to make sure that the company runs smoothly so that the CEO can
travel and build relationships and divisions around the world. He knows when he leaves on a trip
that all will be taken care of back home. These roles could have been reversed just as well. This
happens to be the kind of work I enjoy and the CEO enjoys being the visionary. So we have
these roles at this company. The point is, we have a successful male/female leadership team that
really works. Aero Financial is growing amazingly quickly and expanding worldwide, an
investment banking team that works well together. We all share a strong belief in client service
and commitment to integrity. I credit this in part to the combination of a man and woman at the
helm. I look forward to making the firm under combined male/female leadership into a
successful, ethical and responsible enterprise, where serving the needs of our clients comes first.
It’s a great 40 years to look forward to.