An interview of Massimo Michaud, Director at Kinetica

• Reticence of many women to advocate for themselves - Women have a tendency to be more interested in the work they do than in the career they can make. In some ways women are more consistent with their own needs, and consistency is a trait of leadership. Women seem to be more motivated by their job content than the opportunity to climb to the upper level. I have seen men taking whatever job in order to have the opportunity to move up on the company ladder. Women often had refused the job. 

• Lack of self-confidence - A gender disadvantage for women is – generally speaking – poor self-confidence; women are much more cautious in taking a position, they wonder whether they are right or wrong, they consider the point of views of colleagues. Men are or appear more self-confident, more convinced about their opinions and, if they change their mind, they try not to show it: this allows men to have the advantage in their career.

• Lack of support/solidarity of women towards other female colleagues - I have noticed, to a certain extent, lack of solidarity amongst women, lack of support. Actually, in such a situation I would have expected that the few women in managerial positions would have supported the other women strongly, but I have remarked more solidarity towards men than women.

• Women don’t make their expectations explicit – I would say that it is part of the female behaviour that women prefer that their boss and other people try to understand what they want, men make their expectations clear. I think that this attitude is linked to the fact that women have a very strong ability to observe what’s happening in the environment around them and they perceive more, so they assume that men can observe and perceive as well.

• Lack social capital – Women network as actively as men in their company, but for many reasons take less advantage of social opportunities for networking.In some companies it is critical to socialize with your upper management level and in others with the second upper level, so far I have seen very few ladies building their second upper level social capital.

It is important to highlight that women are bearing the family load and they try to run both work and family in the best way, so they sacrifice the social side.

Last but not least some social environments are like rugby team clubs, are they easy enough for a woman to cope with it or are women attracted by these environment at all?

• Women’s need for perfectionism penalizes them – Perfectionism is a personality trait and not gender related. I guess this stereotype comes from the fact that successful female executives/managers are basically technically very competent, and experts tend to be perfectionists. 

• Women are not visionary - In my experience I often remarked that women, when they have a vision, they are more cautious than men in externalizing it. I want here to break the prejudice that women do not have enough vision, they are visionary but they tend to speak up less and they have a different way to express themselves and persuade others, a more subtle approach. Additionally, cultural implications have to be taken into account, the behaviour expectations with which women are confronted in some cultures.

• Identifies and defines a new direction --> vision

• Goes towards this new direction --> action

• Is able to convince/influence people to follow him/her --> followership