by Nicole Selley

Created on: March 15, 2009   Last Updated: July 29, 2009

The old debate on strength and weaknesses of both genders has long since entered the business world. But as in most areas of life, the question if women make better bosses than make it is not easily answered. Still, most people have an opinion if they'd rather work for a woman or a man. The truth is there is no true answer if men or women are better bosses.

In order to be a good boss, you need to have many skills. You need to have a good factional understanding of business and your area of responsibility. You need to be able to delegate and guide a team, to motivate your staff and get the best out of them. At the same time you need to be able to see the bigger picture to ensure that your department supports the overall business strategy, to stand behind your team and to maintain strong relationships with more senior staff.

None of the above key skills are unique to either men or women. Some men are great bosses, as are some women. It depends on your personality, education, experience and ability.

But of course there are some skills that are more associated with men or women and are vital for a good manager.

A good manager sometimes has to make hard decisions for the best of the company and the department. This is usually seen as the prerogative of men, even though women today increasingly prove that they are able to keep up with men and may even be tougher often because they have to be in order to prove their ability to be in a managerial position.

However, another key skill for a good manager is empathy and building a warm relationship with your staff. And this skill is usually associated with women. The ability to understand your staff, to read between the lines and to find solutions that don't involve banging the table, but actually showing staff that they are understood and important enough to the business to try to find mutual solutions can make a big difference in satisfaction levels of staff.

In my experience, having been managed by both men and women and having been a female manager myself for some time, I couldn't say if men or women are better managers. I had good manager from either gender. And bad managers from both genders as well. Women might have a more natural ability for empathy, however, the demand of business to prove that we can be hard and make unpopular decisions often overrule this personality trait. And at the same time men start to understand that they need to become stronger in this area and learn to listen.

Therefore I truly believe that it depends on the person themselves if they are a good or a bad manager. Your gender might make some of the areas you need to become accomplished in easier, but being a good manager is something you can only learn with experience, guidance and commitment no matter if you are a man or a woman.

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