goWo*Man
Team building & empowerment
Entrepreneurial competencies include creativity, willingness and ability to learn, intrinsic motivation, goal-oriented action, willingness to take risks, ability to innovate, conviction of self-efficacy, sense of responsibility and also the ability to learn from one’s own experiences.
Male and female students possess different weightings of these competencies according to their personalities, but are confronted with different role models throughout their lives. A frequently displayed role model of the start-up founder as a male hero who is strong-willed and assertive in withstanding even difficult working conditions. This role model is seen in the literature as counterproductive and alienating (not only for women), because this image ignores collective and team-based aspects that accompany start-ups. Recent studies show that the majority of successful companies were founded by heterogeneous teams and mixed-gender teams are more successful.
With over 50% of female students at HfG, addressing the target group adequately plays a crucial role. The stereotypes anchored in cultural memory are ideally left behind with the goWo*Man initiative. Stories of mixed founding teams and female heroines are deliberately put in the spotlight, as inspiration and encouragement for originality.
Once a team is founded, its success and persistence stand or fall with the trust team members have in each other. Therefore, the goHfG team offers founding teams the opportunity to conduct team building in order to get to know their own strengths and areas of development as well as those of the team members better. Students can thus more clearly recognize their own contribution to the overall performance in the team and increase their own self-leadership and steering ability of the team. This offer applies to all founding teams. For heterogeneous teams, however, it is appropriate to go further, such as an introduction to gender-specific language and related behaviors. Men may not understand the perspectives of their female teammates and vice versa. In this case, communication workshops are a good way to get to know and appreciate foreign and unfamiliar approaches as well as other frames of reference.
Start-up role models
Gefördert durch
