Leadership And The Sexes: A Reading Assignment For You
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it:
1) Please read this book.
There will be more from me, once I’ve had the chance to read it myself, but in the meantime (and if you are game), I strongly suggest you take a look at the excerpted first chapter of Leadership and the Sexes by Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis now posted on 800CEORead.
2) Let me know via email if you are taking me up on this assignment.
3) I’ll keep track of the group (possibly via a Facebook or LinkedIn).
4) I’d love to start a discussion in early October and possibly interview a few of you for some research I am doing.
Here’s a paragraph from the excerpt that struck me (“bridge brain” in this book refers to the brains that seem to be not all female or not all male, such as: people whose brains share a number of characteristics of the other gender’s brain, transgendered individuals, and people who just sense their brains may be toward the middle of the gender/brain spectrum.)
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What research into bridge brains is showing us scientifically is this: (1) every one of us has both our own gender’s and the other gender’s hormones and brain characteristics (hormones and the brain are “human,” and we all share them); (2) yet if we are biologically male, we will tend toward being more male on the brain/chemistry spectrum, and if female, we’ll tend toward female; and (3) some of us are closer to the other gender on the spectrum than others are. Some of us, in other words, are neurological “bridges” between genders.
You yourself might often see bridge brain women in the technology sector, just as you might see bridge brain men in the social services sector. The bridge brain women might be a lot like the woman who spoke to Michael, and the bridge brain men more likely than other men to multitask, care a lot about verbal and emotional material, and not be as competitive as other men or women around them.
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Fascinating – think about how bridge brains come into play in the parenting/career balance, or how a male or female marketer with a bridge brain might be well suited to projects focusing on the opposite gender. Bridge the thinking and have more holistic understanding of how/why humans consume.
I’m psyched to read this book and hope some of you will join me.
