There are two distinct styles of doing business: a man’s way and a woman’s way.
It doesn’t matter what body people are in. Often a man will do business like a woman – or a woman will do business like a man.
A man’s way is direct. He wants to get straight to the point and give or receive information and then make a choice.
A woman’s way is to talk about things at greater length. She will want to discuss how things could work and what her feelings about the project are. She will ask, ‘What do you think about this?’ and she loves to be asked this question herself.
How do you like to do business? Do you prefer a man’s way or a woman’s way? Have a look at the people you work with. Do they do business like a man or like a woman? This isn’t a judgement; it’s not a wrongness or a rightness. It’s just for your awareness, so you can create and generate in your business with greater ease.
Understanding a man’s and a woman’s way of doing business gives you more information – with more information you make clearer choices.
Are you a woman in business?
Have you thought you had to do business by being a tough businesswoman? Sometimes women think they need to become tough, disconnected and mean in order to be successful in business.
Nothing could be further from the truth! Women can be great manipulators in business; they can make things go the way they wish and bring everyone else along with their ideas and plans. Do you know how easy things are for a woman if they used a little manipulation?
Some people see manipulation as the crafty or fraudulent part of its definition. But it also means to handle a situation artfully, easily or skilfully, and that’s what I’m talking about. If a woman is using her feminine attributes to her advantage she can usually create situations to go her way.
A man can use his attributes in the same way.
Are you a man in business?
Many men in business have been taught that they have to be the commander-in-chief.
Men are impelled by society to be the Answer Man. They think they’re required to be the authority at all times. For the last 2000 years, men have been taught to give orders and follow orders.
Once he comes into a point of authority, the man who has been following orders tries to make others follow orders too, because that’s what he did. These men tend to make arbitrary decisions and they expect people to do what they’re told.
The difficulty with this approach is that these days very few people are willing to follow blindly. And you don’t want blind followers, anyway. You are asking people to make a contribution.
True entrepreneurs, people who can truly get things done, have more questions in their universe. Their approach is, ‘What does this person know and what can they contribute?’
We aren’t really men or women, anyway; we’re infinite beings
Understanding a man’s and a woman’s way of doing business is a great tool and gives you more information – with more information you make clearer choices. And it allows you to see what’s required when you’re doing business with people.
But don’t let this point of view become a limitation because really, you’re not a man or a woman in business: you’re an infinite being – infinite meaning limitless and unlimited. You should not allow your sex to limit your choices in business or your life.
If you limit yourself to doing business as a man or a woman, you are not actually doing business from the expansiveness of what is possible because you’ve put a definition in place about what you are or what someone else is.
When you do business like a man or a woman, you aren’t really making it about the business. You’re making it about yourself. So please use this information to help you get what you require, and don’t make it significant.
Every choice you make in a business should be about what will create more – does it match what you would like to see created in the world?
Simone Milasas, Founder, Joy of Business
