An article in the Daily Mail  today introduced the concept of Warrior Women as a new  group to take over from the overexposed WAGs. Inspired by the feats of Joanna Lumley, ( recognised here in an earlier post) , the writer, a woman, nominates  her warriors.

She choses them for being independent, strong, unapologetic with grace and passion. They include Helen Mirren, Michelle Obama, Marianne Faithful, Camila Batmangheildgh, Annie Lennox and Shami Chakrabarti.

All of these would be great in any pitch but may not be available!  However, the concept of women warrior is relevant when it comes to casting a pitch team.

Other things being equal, in terms of role and qualification, teams that are only men or only women, tend to perform less effectively than mixed teams. This observation is based on coaching scores of rehearsals.

Why is this?   It is almost certainly due to the better balance that comes from the differences in the approach to communication. Men, generally, talk to convey information,’report-talk’, wheras women, generally, talk to build relationships,’rapport-talk’. (www.eloquentwoman.blogspot.com).

And, after a pitch, I have found that the women in the team will usually have a better sense of  ‘how it went’. In other words, how was it relationship-wise?