We are living in an age of the emergence of women as a force in general. There are many examples of brilliant and insightful women in leadership positions around the world and this phenomenon is just getting started. We have women presidents of countries, even several that have seemed quite focused on machismo pictures of life that emphasize male pride and force. We have women surgeons, an arduous branch of medicine. Women serve as pilots, including military pilots, and are, I believe, clamoring for a chance to engage in combat.
It makes sense that members of a gender will differ among themselves in many, many ways. However, there may indeed be some valuable, fairly general commonalities. Listening to Jacqueline Novogratz's tale of her work in finance and banking to help less developed economies, in Rwanda, for instance, it is apparent that she tried to sell herself as hard-working and diligent. As she assisted women create and extend a bakery in Rwanda, she was thinking that she had found a team of hard-working and happy, motivated women to work with.
She was disappointed and hurt when she began accounting for the materials for the baking and the baked goods gone. The income from the sales from the women patrolling offices didn't match the amount of good taken out in the morning and those returned at night. Some workers were pocketing receipts from sales or taking goods themselves or both. She tried lecturing the group and admonishing all to be honest and careful but that didn't change the situation. One of the other founders of the group, a native, said she had to get tougher. She had to impose penalties. She told that Novogratz had to show the others that she cared enough to do that. She imposed penalties of at least the lost value on each worker who came up short. The situation immediately improved.
Novogratz had assumed that warmth and caring and good spirits would be more powerful than they were. She had to lower her estimate of the sort of tone and of procedure that was most helpful. She found that accountability and genuine pay-off, both positive and negative, made a big difference.
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
