“Individual Leadership Style”

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Eph. 2:10

DIFFERENCES IN THE WAY MEN AND WOMEN APPROACH LEADERSHIP

Women leaders have many of the same characteristics as their male counterparts but they also have a few distinctive traits.

· Women leaders work at a steady pace, much the same way men do, but women guard short “down times” to catch their breath and clear their mind throughout the day.
 
 · Women leaders make a deliberate attempt to be accessible. One study has shown that women managers were twice as accessible as their male counterparts.

· Women leaders integrate family and work. Men tend to compartmentalize their lives while women blend them. It may be natural for a woman manager to make out her grocery list or talk to her children on the phone in the five minutes between meetings.

· Women prefer conversations and delegation to be as personal as possible; they like face-to-face contact better than phone, memo or fax.

· Women in leadership maintain a broader network of relationships outside of their organization and have personal interests that do not seem connected to the job.

· Women leaders keep the long term in focus, while some male counterparts often felt buried in the “today.”

· Women leaders see their own identity as complex. She is not her career. Their career is just one element of who women see themselves to be.

· Women in leadership often hold relationships in high value. They tend to see interruptions by people as an opportunity to share and build the relationship, not as an interruption of a task.

Although the differences between men and women leaders are very light and seem to be narrowing, women are slightly better at verbal skills, reading nonverbal clues and maintaining high energy. Men are slightly better at spatial tasks, attentiveness to power structures, task oriented behaviors and most important, men had a better ability to see themselves as leaders. Our differences can lead to complementary leadership styles, especially as women grow in self-confidence.

However, there are vast differences in leadership styles within the female gender. We are all unique. God plants within each of us desires, dreams, talents and skills to be used for his glory. Each of us has our own responsibilities, and each of us has a different kind of leadership style. Together we can influence the world around us.

Posted under Pastor's Wives