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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is op. I agree with some PP's viewpoints. I am a quiet person, and I don't ask a lot of questions or help. Male supervisors probably tend to be more laid back and like that I don't bother them but I have work done.

One senior female staff has accused me one time that I look down on her and I don't even know what I have done. I think it is due to I have never asked her for any help for consult her for expertise. Our work does not cross path, and I sometimes go to chit chat with her over silly or happy things. I have seen a tall female coworker kneel on her knees when asking for help/guidance at female supervisor's office, and I find it unnecessary for her to do that even supervisor is sitting at her chair. But I think that makes female supervisor feel more respectful and have authority when her subordinates ask for help at work or wisdom for family matters.

I am not part of the group, could be because I am the only women with small kids and other women have high school kids or older on the same team. I also would not call it tacism, but it just happen my team are all white and I am the only minority. Maybe many things just do not click culturally or socially. In the future, should I bother women supervisor more or ask them wisdom their career path/history plus life wisdom? [/quote]

Agree with all of this. I think there are two things to pull out from this:

1) I think there is a difference of opinion as to whether women managers need to be more "hands on" in order to get respect/credit in their roles. I think this is sometimes true, but I also think it's true that there are many more women who WANT to be more hands on as a manager. I think there's a lot going on there, but one thing I've experienced is women who have been promoted to a managerial role after serving as a team contributor and who seem to struggle, more than men I've worked with, at shifting from a director contributor role to being a manager/facilitator. I don't know why this is exactly, but I think sometimes women feel that if they aren't doing the work directly, either it won't get done correctly or they won't be sufficiently credited with a success. And I think this is a misperception some women managers have because as a general matter, most teams don't like micromanaging and will resent a manager who insists on doing their jobs. Men and women. This is not a good management tactic and it does seem to be more common among female managers (I am a woman, by the way).

2) Personality fit seems to matter more with women, whether managers or not. I think this can contribute to feeling like you don't get along with your boss OR that your subordinate doesn't like or respect to, if both parties are women. I think if it's mixed gender people don't assume you need to get along on a personal level beyond just professional respect and having a functional work relationship. There's less pressure. I've had both female bosses and female subordinates who seem to push socializing more, who are more interested in talking about personal lives, etc., than the men I've worked with in either role. Once you pull in the personal, there are more chances of conflict. The most conflict I've ever had with a boss happened in large part because she was constantly asking me about and then commenting on my personal life. It was incredibly unprofessional but more than that, it just created things for us to disagree over. If we'd been able to just focus on work, I think we'd have found that we were largely in alignment and there would have been fewer issues. But she would even say that she viewed me "as a daughter" (no thank you, I already have a mother) and gave me tons of unsolicited advice and I hated it, which did mean I was less eager to take direction from her on substantive work.

I actually think there may be some lessons here for female manager if they are willing to take them. The posts in this thread that are like "people don't like female leadership, it's a subordinate problem" are ignoring some real issues here that can undermine women in management roles. As someone who has had both fantastic female bosses and really terrible ones, I just really disagree that it's impossible to command respect as a woman in leadership. It is harder than for women because, yes misogyny exists. But also some women make it much worse for themselves (and for the women who work for them) than it needs to be.[/quote]

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