“Why would you want to focus on women? They’re so much more work than men.”
That's an actual response I received from someone when I mentioned my business partner and I intentionally tailor our accounting practice to meet the specific needs of female-owned small businesses.
Well, to that I say, thanks for making my point for me. But this response points out the truism that male and female business owners have different approaches to managing the various challenges entrepreneurship brings.
The following are three categories in which there is variation between male and female approaches, and upon which female accountants are uniquely situated to be of maximum benefit to women-owned small businesses.
One item to note: Obviously, we're all unique, and the following items are based on observations made by myself (and others), and are not meant to imply that all women think, behave and feel the same.
1. Data Interpretation
A few years ago, a UC Irvine study found that men have about 6.5 times the amount of gray matter of women, and that women have almost 10 times the amount of white matter compared to men. Gray matter helps with muscle control and sensory perception and white matter helps with synthesis.
According to Rex Jung, co-author of the study, this helps explain why men excel at tasks requiring more local processing (like math), and women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information (such as required for language facility).
The study also found that both brains are designed for equally intelligent behavior, but they just take different routes to the same destination.
As female accountants and consultants, we can find motivation and inspiration alongside our female clients through the processes we collaboratively create to help them reach their business goals.
After having a conversation with a new client about her motivation to leave her old CPA because he never told her anything, I started pondering how I could disseminate my clients’ accounting data to them in a way that would be more meaningful than the standard financial statements.
What I’ve found is that women, myself included, must have a conversation, or at least be free to ask and have answered all of their questions, in order to interpret and absorb data. This is because a woman’s brain is wired to use a collaborative process to assimilate and integrate the information.
In taking a consultative approach to working with my clients, spending time discussing their numbers rather than expecting them to read a statement and come to me if they have questions, not only am I being of maximum service to them, but that I'm also a woman means that I'm simultaneously integrating and assimilating information through the process. This ultimately aids my own growth as a professional. Quite a bonus.
2. Decision Making Process
In the article, "How Women Decide," authors Cathy Benko and Bill Pelster describe their findings from an internal survey performed by Deloitte in which 70 percent of the firm’s senior management said they believed there was a difference between selling to men and selling to women.
A particularly interesting finding, one which I’ve observed with our clients as well, is “…that women see a big meeting with a potential service provider as a chance to explore options in collaboration with an expert resource, while men see that event as a near-final step in the process, when they are narrowing down and choosing options.”
This collaborative approach can lead to deviations from the client’s original request, netting women the reputation of being “fickle,” when in reality it's simply part of the female decision-making process.
Joy and I have had loads of conversations about our own experiences with this process being misinterpreted. Not too long ago, she and her husband, D, were car shopping for her, and though she was the one asking questions, the salesman insisted on responding to D. He kept trying to engage him in the process rather than Joy.
Granted, this is the run-of-the-mill anecdotal story every woman is familiar with. And when she told it to me, we just snickered about how clueless the sales guy was. But the truth is that even as women accountants, we can make this mistake with our female clients.
Female accountants have the advantage of having been trained in the traditional methods of working with clients, as well as having the natural ability to work in a more collaborative mode with their clients when necessary.
Now, our motivations probably aren’t the same as the guy on the car lot who mistakenly perceived he had a better shot of closing the sale by using the "good old boy" tactic. But when we get into “accountant mode,” it's easy to fall back on the traditional methods of communication developed within our industry, which aren’t necessarily collaborative or consultative in nature.
Female accountants have the advantage of having been trained in the traditional methods of working with clients, as well as having the natural ability to work in a more collaborative mode with their clients when necessary.
This dual-modality gives us the unique ability to dive deep with clients and form a partnership in helping them attain their (professional) heart’s desire, positioning us trusted advisors rather than just number crunchers – which I view as a win-win for all.
3. Goal Attainment
How many inspirational quotes have you seen on social media such as, “Life is a journey, enjoy the ride” or, “Focus on the journey, not the destination?”
These inspirational snippets aren’t solely quoted by women. I have an uncle who’s particularly prolific in posting them. But they do mirror a general sentiment I hear often from other women, and truth be told, believe myself.
Based on the previous sections outlining some of the ways women business owners can vary from their male counterparts, it's not surprising that when it comes to goal attainment, there are some differences as well.
While it’s not uncommon for a man to have tunnel-vision focus on the end result in his pursuit of a goal, it’s equally common for women to apply the same focus to the process involved in attaining the goal, rather than the end result.
This is not to say women don’t have solid goals or aren’t just as determined to reach them, but the source from which she continually draws her motivation to press onward is different. While men tend to be bolstered by the idea of goal achievement alone, the more unattainable, the more motivating, women are energized by the process of getting there.
As female accountants and consultants, we can find motivation and inspiration alongside our female clients through the processes we collaboratively create to help them reach their business goals.
It is the fact that as women working with women not only can we be of service to our community, furthering the idea that any woman who so chooses can be her own boss, but that through engaging in this process with our clients, we ourselves are made better as professionals that has motivated our firm to become female focused.
Lindsay Hiken and Joy Pang run Mayfield Accounting, a virtual accounting consulting/CPA firm registered with CalCPA. You can find their bios here.