Women readers...this column is going to make you feel good. Men...this column may make you up-tight, upset, even angry. It's about all kinds of studies showing that women make better bosses than men.

Now the caveats.

(1)Not all female bosses are good. (2) Not all male bosses are bad. (3) What the studies really show is that the best bosses for today's workforce are people -men as well as women -who have leadership styles most often associated with women and more often possessed by women than by men.

Just what do the studies show? And what are the implications for you and your work-place?

The Hagberg Consulting Group study. This consulting group, in Foster City, CA, examined evaluations of425 high-Ievel executives. Each was evaluated by about 25 people. The women execs won higher ratings on 42 of the 52 skills measured.

The Personnel Decisions International study. This consulting firm, in Minneapolis, MN, examined 58,000 managers. It gave women the advantage in 20 of23 areas.

The Lawrence A. Pfaffand Associates study. Pfaff, of Kalamazoo, MI, examined evaluations from 2,482 execs and found that women outperformed men on 17 of 20 measures.

The Management Research Group study. Robert Kabacoff, vice-president at the Portland, ME, organization, conducted the study. He compared male and female managers at the same firms, with similar jobs, at the same management level, and with the same amount of supervisory experience. He examined 1,800 supervisors in 22 management skills. The women outranked the men on about half the measures.

The Janet Irwin study. She's a California management consultant. Her study involved more than 6,400 questionnaires. Women ranked higher than men on 28 of 31 measures.

The Copernicus study. The survey of marketing executives by this firm, in West- port, CN, reported that 73% of respondents said men make decisions without input from others...while only 20% said the same thing about women.

That's six studies, done in a variety of ways, among a variety of people, in various parts of the U .S. All, excepting the Management Research Group study, conclude that female bosses have an edge over male bosses. And that study ranks them even.

What's important, though, are the skills and characteristics that women excel in.

Some of these skills and characteristics where women have the edge in today's work- place environment: coaching, teamwork, empowering employees...sharing information, sharing responsibility, consulting rather than dictating...motivating others, fostering communication, listening to others...producing high-quality work. Males are more likely than females to have command-and-control behavior styles. Women are more likely than males to be team builders and communicators.

Think of the strengths and skills associated with men as the hard skills. Men are conditioned by society (and their genes seem programmed for this) to be tough. Until about 1950, men in developed nations were the "warriors," the protectors, the "hunters" of society. This started changing in the 1960s. Think of the strengths and skills associated with women as the soft skills. Women are conditioned by society (and their genes have evolved for this, too) to be mothers, to share and to cooperate, to reduce tensions.

Now, the crux of this topic. What's the value of having workplace leaders who have these softer leadership skills and characteristics?

Employees today want to work where they are appreciated and where they are listened to. Employees today don't want to take orders. They want to get guidance and have opportunities to achieve on their own.

Consider just one area of a workplace leader's responsibilities: Retaining good employees. Two studies (one by employee retention specialists with Integral Training Systems, Menlo Park, CA, and one by the Gallup Organization) show that an immediate supervisor's or manager's behavior is crucial in the decision by employees to stay or to leave an employer. Most employees don't leave a good job because they're upset with earnings or with benefits. Most leave a good job because they're upset with their boss!

And most employees today want a boss with the soft leadership style, not the hard leadership style.

Does all this mean, then, that an employer should hire and promote only women into leadership positions? Certainly not. It means the employer should hire and promote those people who have more of the softer leadership skills and characteristics. It also means that smart employers will coach both women and men on how to develop these soft skills, if they don't possess them, and how to use them more.

Men and women with the tough, what I call the dictator, approach can change. I know, because I did. I started managing people -male employees -more than 40 years ago. In the early '50s. Back then, employees expected to get orders. They took orders. And I did the ordering. By the '70s that was changing. Employees' expectations were changing. I was mellowing. Gradually I learned that I was smarter to give employees opportunities to use their brains, make decisions, even make mistakes.

Each of us has a dominant behavior style. Men in leadership positions tend to be more dominant in the command-and-order, the "dictator" style. The traditional male idea of leadership is the coach who calls the plays. Women in leadership positions tend to be more dominant in the friendly, social styles. The traditional female idea of leadership is the coach who suggests plays to the team and listens to input from the players. In sports, there aren't many coaches like this. But in today's workplace, that's how most employees expect the workplace coach to deal with them.

What to do, then? Coach your people in leadership positions to use their softer skills. Hire people for leadership positions who have more of the softer strengths.

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