Photo courtesy Gary Kuwahara

Kim had thought of organizing such an event on campus for quite some time. When she continued to get updates on how active the CBAPP Advisory Board was in the life of the College and of the number of new female Board members, she felt the time was right. Three high-level female executives from the Board responded to her inquiry: Sharron King, general manager of the South Bay Pavilion; Joan Rollins, president of Rollins & Associates Personnel Services; and Kathrene Hansen, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Federal Executive Board.

Rollins volunteered her time because she felt she could bring new insight to one of the proposed topics in particular: the work-life balance many women in business face. “It’s been my experience in a leadership role that there are people, especially women, who have seen what I’ve done on the surface and assumed it was easy. But then they’ve become managers, and wives, and mothers, and they realize that it’s certainly not easy, but also that they may have had unrealistic expectations going in,” says Rollins, who points to the years when she was running her business, an international trade and transportation headhunting firm, at the same time that she was charged with caring for her 10-year-old son and her 86-year-old mother as the most difficult balancing act of her career. “I wanted to be a part of this event not to dissuade women from getting into these situations, but to give them a realistic picture of what it’s like.

“The short of it is that there will always be choices and there will always be sacrifices. Knowing that as you set out on your career is important,” says Rollins, who, along with Hansen and King, also stressed the importance of a strong support group and the ability to delegate as critical skills and tools for them in their work lives.

The panel dealt with other commonly addressed challenges women face such as the ideas of discrimination and a glass ceiling on advancement, but it also focused on characteristics of female leadership. As Kim explains, an understanding of such differences between men and women and their leadership styles can benefit all professionals, regardless of sex.

“Female leadership is more relations-oriented whereas male leadership tends to be more tasks-oriented,” says Kim. Such a focus can lead female managers to learn to delegate more quickly, an essential skill for effective managers in small businesses, she says.

The panelists also suggested that women can often communicate more effectively with customers by initiating more back-and-forth to make sure everyone is on the same page. In Rollins’ case, she has found it very helpful to reiterate her understanding of what her international clients tell her by constantly using phrases such as, “If I understood you correctly, you said,” throughout a conversation. “The focus is on, ‘Did I, the recruiter, listen effectively to the client’s answer?’ Often, the client answers, ‘No,’ and rewords his statement, and we continue on in this fashion until an understanding is reached. By responding in this manner, I am giving the client respect while collecting accurate information about the search we are about to launch,” says Rollins.

Kim explains that the point was not just to expose these differences though. “The point was to help students understand these differences so they can work with the opposite sex more effectively,” she says. And considering that the 70-student audience was evenly split between male and female students, the need to speak to both sexes was obvious.

Pleasantly surprised by the turnout and by the number of men in the audience, Kim recognizes that the interest means she has found a topic where future events are needed. She hopes to hold one event a semester and to address more specialized topics under the umbrella of women’s issues in business. While stressing that such plans are still in the germination phase, she reels off a number of potential topics such as the unique challenges women face in starting a small business and how to propose and set up an effective daycare center within an organization.