Why Women Appear Less Efficient

Last week I went out to run errands with my husband and he noticed that I was carrying around a file folder with a non-profit project I am in charge of, and copy of a spreadsheet for some client work I am in the middle of, a baggie full of watches that need new batteries, an empty ink cartridge to have with me at Costco, a Skirt Strategies book to mail to a fan, and a broken vacuum belt for the old Kirby. I had a dozen balls in the air and needed every last item for my long to-do list.

I looked like a modern-day bag lady.

I’d like to say we women are the picture of composure and effectiveness, but in actuality, we kinda shoot ourselves in the foot when we try to do so much. We are good at it, but I have to wonder  – where does the line between focused and scattered lie?

The Intuition Model at Skirt Strategies includes a host of natural skills that we women have more innately than most men, and one of them is planning. Another is multi-tasking, and a third is big picture thinking. When you combine these three, it might be a recipe for disaster …. especially if your self-awareness is not on top of its game.

It’s a constant battle for me…. how about you?  When I am getting stuff done, I feel invincibly capable with juggling the various tasks, but I have also noticed a risk in it. Not only do I occasionally leave a task and neglect to get back to it, (when I was composing this blog and couldn’t remember the name of my vacuum brand, I went looking for it online, saw a googledoc that I wanted to update, which led me to an email, and faxing a contract to someone …. 13 minutes later I came back to search for the Kirby name and resumed the blog-writing), but our image may suffer as well. We just look discombobulated.

At the heart of it is a physiological difference in our thought patterns. Research has validated with functional MRI’s (fMRI’s) that women have more widespread blood flow through our brains than men, who have limited blood flow in that cranial area.  (You can insert your own quip here). The result at the cellular level is massively more neuronal firings in diverse functional areas of the brain for a woman. In a man, the targeted blood flow stabilizes the concentration in a certain area and results in more focusing abilities. They disappear in their absorption of something more readily. And you thought they were just ignoring you. (noooo!)

Ah … so that’s why I get a dazed look when I toss in an off-topic comment during a business meeting with a narrow subject, or if I mention of something bigger picture that seems out of context. In my mind … brilliant observation. In another’s mind, off-the-wall perspective and maybe scatterbrained.

A woman’s success lies in a delicate balance in being herself, leveraging the natural strengths, and exerting poise and slight push-back when others pass along a subtle judgment about how she may be “oddly” going about something, all at the same time as not rocking the boat so much that no one wants to work with us.

So when you have the multi-tasking going on, and the various to-do lists in your head including groceries, kids, exercising, work tasks, and so on, use the duck technique. On the surface float with grace and confidence, but under the surface paddle like hell.

For a self-assessment of your 16 female leadership skills, see www.AssessMySkills.com