Rising To The Occasion, Women Are Proving To Be The Heroines In This Crisis

Who do you think are the ones having a harder time adjusting to working at home during the pandemic, men or women? You may not be surprised (I wasn’t) to learn that in general, it is the men who seem to find the home-based business environment the most unsettling, at least among the clients I’ve been talking with throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

As I discuss in my recent article for ceoworld.biz, in the beginning of the new “working from home” reality, women started out challenged at their changed home life, yet quickly found innovative ways to manage their daily lives, balancing their own needs with those who were counting on them. To read my entire article, click here.

Women and men: very different ways of coping with crisis and change

As an anthropologist and culture change expert, I filter much of what I see through an ethnographic lens. And what I’ve been seeing are different patterns for coping with change from among my male and female clients. Men tend to want the old to come back, while women are learning how to build teams in remote settings and confidently lead their staff even when the future is unknown. Without concrete knowledge of what is coming next, they are making it up, quite effectively, while at the same time, developing a style based on trust, honesty and understanding.

What does this mean for how businesses view women as we reopen the economy?

In this new COVID-19 environment, women need to rethink themselves, to see themselves as real success stories. This can be a lemons-into-lemonade opportunity for women in business, if only they could see it. They need to step back and see through a fresh lense, creating a new story about the future in which they overcome the fear of learning to cope with change.

Perhaps they can do something amazing at the office when it reopens? Maybe that office won’t ever need to come back.

Now more than ever, I am convinced that there are positive possibilities for women in whatever “new normal” we find ourselves in eventually. In the meantime, this pandemic is creating better women leaders, better women managers and better women-led teams to pull the economy and the culture into a new stage in our gender development. Lemonade!

Want to learn more about women showing how well they can lead? Start with these

Are you a woman (or a man) wanting to break out and lead? Let’s talk.

At Simon Associates Management Consultants, we help women and men develop their leadership and entreprenurial skills and in so doing, maybe turn around their company or an entire industry. Please contact us to discuss how we might help you in your business so you can start getting the recognition you deserve. We look forward to hearing from you.

From Observation to Innovation,