Photo Credit: gcoldironjr2003 at Flickr

I have a friend that is going through a particularly tough period in her career journey.

Some weeks ago, while having a quick chat (and several lattes we really couldn’t afford) at Starbucks, she admitted, “Whatever I get next, I really don’t want to work for any more chicks if I can help it.”

Chicks? Women. Ladies. The Fairer Sex.

In plain King’s English, my friend, claimed that she rather be unemployed than work for any more women.

Yikes.

Knowing the obvious answer, I asked B, “How’d you like working for men?”

Instantly, she replies, “It was great.”

I’ve had my share of nightmarish bosses – male and female. But, both were nightmarish for different reasons. I remind B that when she first began her career, she pined for a workplace that held a mecca of female professionals who could serve as invaluable mentors.

She continues to summarize the positive traits she admires in male managers that’s lacking in their female counterparts. B insists that men:

1. Don’t question how work is done
2. Avoid pettiness
3. There is ZERO micromanagement

Women, on the other hand:

1. Embrace “hovering”
2. Encourage pettiness
3. constantly forgo workplace efficiency in order to pursue nit picking

B’s gross generalization has a slight ring of truth to it.

Nevertheless, she is mistaking her annoyance for female managers with a conflict of professional style. In other words, B was unlucky enough to have 3 bosses who had conflicting management styles in comparison to her own.

And, they all just happened to be women.

Curious, I began to wonder why B chose to focus on the gender of her bosses rather than the traits that linked them. On a superficial level, it’s much easier to criticize other women when you are one yourself, not to mention, holding them (mercilessly) to an imaginary and impossible metric of “greatness.”

Suzy Welch’s article for O Magazine directly addressed the bad female boss sentiment. Identifying several reasons why women fail at being good managers, Welch discusses ways in which to avoid tumbling into such management traps.

On varying levels, a female operated department (or company) definitely contains a different dynamic than those of their male equivalents. Also, unintentionally, women sometimes expect more (and better) from other women.  In female-managed arenas, you may encounter a boss that holds her (female) staff to rigid and exacting standards. When they fail, managers make them feel painfully accountable. And, in in the process, make it more difficult for them to recover from their professional missteps.

Women want to do well professionally. We want to withstand the scrutiny of other (male) colleagues and, if possible, never make mistakes.

No matter what.

Such approaches hinder creating an environment where mistakes foster learning. Positive female encouragement can embolden ideas as well as develop opportunities for women to confidently lead in the future.

Being a crappy boss has nothing to do with your gender. It just gives your bad management style its own particular flavor.

How do you think gender affects the way men and women lead? Does it have any affect at all?