Just curious of your experience. Two part question:
1. If you are/have been a manager - is it easier to manage people of the same gender or does it not matter?
2. Have you had more success with bosses of the same gender or different gender?
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I had a female boss and we butted heads all the time - I hated it!
Then I had a male boss for the past 12 years and its been amazing!!!
For me, I prefer a different gender!
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Oh it totally matters. But it's a lot of personality, I think.
I've had better success with male managers than female. They're almost more...diplomatic? Sometimes the female manager i had was too buddy-buddy with me. And it didn't jive.
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I'd like to think it depends on the specific personalities involved. I've had good and bad bosses of both genders, although I had a streak of bad female bosses for about 6 years that almost had me convinced women were terrible to have as bosses. Then I had a total asshole male boss, so I realized it's all luck of the draw.
Then I had a really good male boss for three years after 2 years of the horrible male boss.
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I think it is easier for people to manage others with the same life experience, as in, parents make better managers of other parents than single people. I think there is also a difference between military/civilian. That being said, I don't have a lot of experience managing other people, so I can't answer 1.
As for 2, I have had both sexes of bosses, and my worst was a male and my best was a male.
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I don't think gender matters, as far as my experience tells me, when it comes to a manager's gender.
I do have more success working with male coworkers, however! But that could just be coincidental.
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I've been a manager of both men and women and it really depends on the personalities involved - I've had just as much petty fighting in the groups of men as I had in the groups of women and I find that type of stuff hard to manage because I have such little patience with it. I also have had some really great employees (both male and female) that were really easy to manage.
My two bosses that I think of as the best ones, one was male and one was female. All the really bad ones were male, but that is also a much larger pool of candidates since I've only worked for 2 women.
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I think you're right in life experience, @looch and personalities, @mrs.shinerbock @Anagram @blackbird. I think that is really what I'm thinking about today, rather than gender. If a supervisor or boss can "hang" with his crew vs just talk to them at work, it makes a big difference.
I guess my problem is I don't like socializing outside of work with supervisors or subordinates while others have absolutely no problem with it. Sometimes teams work when you don't hang out outside of work and sometimes they don't.
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I think it's more personality than gender. I do have a slightly easier time managing men, because some of our work is difficult physically (heavy lifting, carrying lots of equipment) and I feel more confident that I'm not asking them to do more than they can... though anyone can have physical limitations of course!
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Personality counts most IMO. The traits that a make a good manager are not gender specific. @looch: Agree. Similar life stage/ experience/ commonalities help.
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I've been a manager to both and personality mattered a lot more than gender.
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It depends on the personality and not the gender for me. I've had awesome bosses and staff of either gender. And I've had horrible bosses and staff of either gender.
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11 comments