Gender

Differences between men and women has long been a topic of debate. Indeed within the Team Management Systems network, there have been many requests for data on gender differences. In response to these requests we have analyzed the worldwide database of over 73,000 respondents to determine what differences, if any, exist between males and females.

While the ethical guidelines which are agreed to by every accredited/certified trainer, make very clear that the Team Management Profile Questionnaire never be used as the sole criterion for selection, appraisal and placement decisions, and the nature of TMS methodology is to stimulate further discussion rather than be prescriptive, it is nevertheless very useful to be aware of the relationship of gender to work preferences as measured by the Team Management Profile Questionnaire. Development samples for the Team Management Profile Questionnaire included a large proportion of females and the items were screened carefully for any gender bias. To a large extent this has assured a test that is free of bias.

The sample analyzed here is comprised of subjects who have completed the Team Management Profile Questionnaire as part of training programs, specific research projects, and on an ad hoc basis. They represent a wide variety of professional areas, industries, functional areas of management and nationalities. All subjects from the worldwide database who provided information on their gender (n=66426) are included in this report.

The table below displays the breakdown of role preferences in the total database for males and females separately.

As can be seen, there is very little difference between men and women.

Within this sample therefore, it seems that females are more Practical and Beliefs based than their male counterparts. Many reasons for this can be forwarded, but it is important to note that while these differences are statistically different, again they are not high enough to be of much significance.

Reliability testing was conducted on both male and female samples during the development of the Team Management Profile Questionnaire. It is interesting to note that among the group of females tested, Cronbach Alpha values approached or exceeded those of the male sample, suggesting that females were answering items more consistently (in psychometric terms) than males.

While there are some small differences between the work preferences of males and females as measured by the Team Management Profile Questionnaire, these are quite small. The most significant difference is the more Practical and Beliefs based mean scores for the female sample. An analysis of the reliability of the Team Management Profile Questionnaire scales for women suggests that the items of the Team Management Profile Questionnaire are being perceived in a similar way by both men and women.

Age

This analysis is not a longitudinal study in that the same subjects were assessed at various times of their working life, but a cross-sectional breakdown of the over 73,000 subjects included in the Institute of Team Management Studies worldwide database where information on age was provided. This is a sample that includes a cross section of functional areas of management, industrial and professional areas and nationalities collected over a 9 year period.

Previous age research has shown that the Team Management Profile Questionnaire is reliable for all age groups. Additionally, reliability increases with age, possibly due to the greater chance of workers experiencing several types of work and being in a better position to identify their preferences consistently.

This data uncovers some interesting patterns. If we ignore for the moment the lowest (0-19) and highest (70+) age groups which have particularly low sample sizes, we can see that the proportion of role preferences in this sample vary in some cases quite significantly.

While the proportion of Reporter-Advisers, Creator-Innovators, Explorer-Promoters, and Upholder-Maintainers remain fairly consistent, we can see that Assessor-Developers and Thruster-Organizers become less evident as the age groups increase, and the number of Concluder-Producers and Controller-Inspectors increase.

The second Table displayed below shows the means and standard deviations of the major Team Management Profile Questionnaire sample broken down by age groups. It is useful here to ignore the lowest and highest age groups due to the minimal sample size.

Here we see the mean score for Extroversion-Introversion becoming more Introvert with age and the Practical Score (with the exception of ages 20-29) appears to increase with age. The Analytical score also declines with age as people become more beliefs-based. There is also a slight shift in the Structured-Flexible scores towards being more Structured.

In interpreting these results, care should be taken to remember that we are not measuring the same people over time and factors such as the changing management beliefs and methodologies over the past 60 years have not been taken into account. It should also be noted that the differences found are small and the effect may be negligible in many circumstances. Nevertheless these results may facilitate useful discussion on age and work preferences.

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More comprehensive analysis sets can be found in the Team Management Systems Research Manual.

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