Wired for Winning

Your brain and hormones make you different – and valuable at work.

By Dr. Judy B. Rosener and Michelle Jordan

For generations, corporate America has rewarded workplace attributes more likely to be male: a linear approach to problem-solving; a tendency to ignore subliminal cues and intuition; an inclination to focus on one task at a time; and a top-down decision-making process. But when women are forced to adapt to that conventional mold, they’re doing more than just playing a man’s game. They’re actually fighting against deep biological differences that could be used to their advantage.

That’s according to a growing body of research about the brain and the initial application of that research to women’s roles in business. It turns out that differences in hormones and how the female brain is wired may result in many of the workplace qualities that women – in contrast to the typical man – often exhibit: a holistic approach to decision-making and problem-solving; awareness of subtle body language; reliance on intuition; proven ability for multi-tasking; and a more inclusive management style.

As a 25-year veteran of the construction business, including a stint as CEO of Costain Homes, Julie Hill has seen the different styles firsthand. She recalls, for example, a week of intense meetings in 1991 at Costain, the U.S. subsidiary of a $2 billion British conglomerate, after the ouster of the American company’s CEO. At the time, Hill was the only woman among the four vice presidents called to meet with the British parent’s top brass.

“As the week went on, I found our three guys answering only the specific questions in their particular area of the business. Very linear,” says Hill, today a board member for Wellpoint Inc., among others. “They were somewhat at a loss with the generalized questions gauged to measure our opinion of the health of the business as a whole. But I understood what they were asking.” The British were so impressed with Hill, in fact, that two weeks later they asked her to be CEO.

Although scientists have studied human brains and hormones for decades, only recently have their findings caught the attention of big business. In the 1960s, Joseph Bogen, M.D., Philip Vogel, M.D., and Roger Sperry, Ph.D., first split a brain and observed how the two hemispheres work together and separately. They noticed that the corpus callosum, a bundle of fibers that connects the two hemispheres, is in most cases larger in women than men. It’s believed that the larger size means there are more messages being transmitted between the two halves – the right hemisphere being associated with spatial attributes, the left with verbal attributes.

The corpus callosum is an information network that, in women, has more and different kinds of messages traveling in both directions, resulting in an increased ability to process many tasks at once. Men, on the other hand, tend to use the right hemisphere more, helping them focus on problems involving spatial components.

And what about men’s characteristic tendency toward speed? James Fallon, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and neurobiology at UC Irvine, says men perform many types of tasks faster than women because their brains are wired for quick decisions – perhaps an evolutionary hold-over from times of constant hunting and fighting. Women, on the other hand, tend to use more brain areas to carry out many different kinds of tasks, which can take longer. For example, Tiffany Tomasso, chief operating officer of Sunrise Senior Living, a multimillion-dollar company based in McLean, Va., views the speed of a meeting as less significant than making sure everyone has had a chance to participate. “It’s important for me to read the room, to observe body language and make sure those attending feel the meeting is a safe environment,” she says.

“Often that takes time.” So what’s going on here? In a study titled Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, not Fight-or-Flight, researchers Shelley E. Taylor, Ph.D., Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., and colleagues show that under stress, men tend to secrete high levels of testosterone and become aggressive, or they leave to be by themselves – “fight or flight.” Women under stress, however, secrete ocytocin, the same hormone secreted during pregnancy, which makes them want to bond with colleagues and work together. In other words, they tend to the concerns of others and act as a friend.

Paul J. Zak, Ph.D., director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, believes women are more sensitive to social cues, due not only to their hormone secretions but also to the way their brains are structured and function. As a result of hormonal differences, women tend to be more effective than men when managing a team of people who must work cooperatively, Zak suggests. “Women have a management advantage due to their more reactive physiology to understand others,” he explains. “This gut-level understanding is an important way to maintain employee morale and productivity.”

Consider Karen Evensen, the vice president of engineering for EADS North America Defense, Test and Services Inc. Recently her company, a maker of high-tech test equipment, collaborated with a supplier in Japan. “I do not speak Japanese, and neither do my male peers,” she says. “But I quickly learned to use my ‘soft skills’ – reading body language, observing the tone of the conversation – to help interpret whether or not we were making progress. I was often surprised that my male colleagues were not able to understand.” On more than one occasion, Evensen had to tap her colleague under the table to get him to stop talking and really listen to what the Japanese engineer was saying.

The most productive businesses, Zak notes, will have male and female managers working as complements to one another. “Males drive hard and fast going forward, and women make the whole thing hang together and work,” he says.

As researchers continue to discover biological reasons for female differences, and as more women feel comfortable being authentically female at work, the Catch-22 for women in workplace – not seeming leader-like if they act female, but not seeming female if they act like male leaders – may finally disappear.

This article originally appeared in the August.September 2007 issue of PINK Magazine.