Dr. Judy Rosener
Graduate School of Management
University of California
Irvine, CA 92717

Dear Judy,

Thank you for your precious time on the phone when I invited you to a showcase workshop of UNMASKING THE GENDER EFFECT: The Strategic Advantage In The Global Marketplace. I am going to take you up on your invitation to call you in and meet with you this fall.

You did ask me how my work is different and if you could tell what I do from my materials. Your book title, America's Competitive Secret–Utilizing Women as a Management Strategy resonates with my original research for the president of a Fortune 500 company, "What is the Contribution Women Make that Could be the Competitive Advantage in the Global Marketplace?" Everything we do is consistent with what you recommend in your book with leadership styles being embedded in gender.

Where we are different from other implementors of your recommendations, is what we add to the lens through which we assess, train, coach and design systems. We make gender differences more palatable, more explicit and broaden its scope by adding:

• The introduction of concepts and language of cross-cultural understanding to gender.

• The mental models and language of cultural differences starting with distinctions of how men and women relate to and use information, time, and relationships: Low/High Context, Mono/Polychronic, and Individualistic and Relational which are consistent with your Command-and-Control and Interactive Leadership Models

• The different, valuable results that come from different cultural "competencies"–translating style, communication, and mental models differences into "competencies" you can put on resumes, job requirements and performance reviews.

• The consistency of "Relational" competencies (from the prevailing culture of women) with what is essential for business leadership according to respected management thinkers who are not identifying women such as Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline, Margaret Wheatley Leadership and the New Science, and Collins & Porras Built to Last.

• How Relational competencies are invisible, unarticulated and often interpreted as incompetent: impeding promotion, filtering out valuable talent and driving relational people to leave–women and later people of other relational cultures, often "indispensable" Asian technical, hard stuff, people. Women often are still not seen as indispensable or women give family concerns as reason to leave to cover up their real dissatisfaction with company culture.

• Fostering the synergy of Individualistic and Relational competencies in individuals, groups and organizational culture (we are not going to wipe out how men have always done it, we're going to mix it up a lot–as many women now do–and come out with a whole that's greater than the sum of the parts.)

• There is a wonderment for men and women, seeing the relationship of gender culture to global cultures--often being exposed for the first time to how many cultures of the world are Relational (We always get it clear this does not mean these are countries who value women.) The Global Marketplace takes on new dimensions–with women as a bridge and gender as a key.

Gay men, lesbians, and cultural reversals–Relational men and Individualistic women–all feel safe in identifying themselves in degrees of Relational and Individualistic without messing around with masculine and feminine–not to mention that men in general are much more engaged with what is a Relational competency as something a man can take on. People of color gain new perspectives on how to promote their own differences, eliminate prejudices and create a new workability in their Individualistic work environments.

I discovered men really identify with "competencies," as a response to Deborah Tannen pointing out that men's greatest fear is being seen as incompetent. Communication differences are a cornerstone to my work–as a first step. Differences in communication style only opens the door to the stronger case for "Leadership Style." Yet leadership style is still not put on all resumes, job requirements, and performance reviews unless translated to competencies–and spelled out. Example: Team Player is a different set of actions and thinking in Individualistic and Relational cultures–so we have to describe what we mean by and expect from a team player.

We now have Catalyst's statistics that 93% of executive women in Fortune 1000 companies either strongly agree or agree that women bring a different perspective to problem solving and decision making. We must identify the different perspectives in language men understand as competencies for leaders, individual contributors, and people of all cultures to be utilized everywhere and for the fabric of organizational culture to become adaptive–for the competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

I am enclosing a workbook for our training which identifies our gender lenses and competencies–giving both appreciation for what is value added and freedom from what may be limiting, and in the process, turning liabilities to leadership.

I look forward to meeting with you and expanding on how our differences add value.