I recently read an article in the Washington Post called “What Men Can Learn From Women About Leadership.” Its central premise is that male leaders could stand to learn a thing or two from their female counterparts. While this premise seems true to me, I’m wondering how useful it is.
Here’s the problem I keep encountering. Once we put issues of leadership style into the gender frame, the conversation goes awry. The conversation about male and female leadership might be productive if we knew how to have it in a productive way. But from what I can tell, focusing on the differences between male and female leadership behavior – even if those differences are statistically borne out – seems to have more downsides than up.
- First: it feeds an ‘us vs them’ mindset that diverts us from more pressing questions of contemporary leadership.
- Second: as gender roles and expectations evolve, more and more women are operating in a stereotypically ‘male’ fashion. Likewise, more men are leading with styles that are stereotypically ‘female.’ Thus, theoretical generalizations about gender quickly collapse under practical scrutiny.
- Third: at least among the leaders I coach, neither gender particularly aspires to become more like the other. So why keep making the argument that male leaders should learn from women if it does not motivate them to do so?
The quest for greater leadership effectiveness is what compels my clients to do the hard work of personal change. I have helped many hard-driving, demanding leaders of both genders to integrate more collaboration and compassion into their leadership style. They didn’t do this work because they aspired to be more like women; they did it to become more effective. I have also helped many collaborative, compassionate men and women to lead more firmly and assertively. They, too, were motivated not by the desire to adopt a more ‘male’ style, but by the promise of greater leadership potency. (Recent research out of Stanford shows that leaders who master these multiple leadership styles – especially women – enjoy better career success.)
In other words, for many leaders, greater effectiveness lies not in becoming more like a man or woman, but rather in achieving a better balance between assertiveness and receptivity. I find that focusing on the qualities themselves, vs. on the gender of who supposedly brings those qualities, is a more accurate and useful frame for the developmental work that my clients are doing.
As long as we remain fixated on ‘men do X’ and ‘women do Y,’ we’ll continue to be be distracted from the very issue that the male/female conversation is intended to surface: How do leaders you know skillfully balance the forces of achievement and relatedness, so that our organizations are healthier, our global society is more just, and our planet survives? What is your personal experience? Have you seen this polarized dialog reduce effectiveness? Or the reverse create leadership capability?
Leslie Williams, MCC, Executive Coach (read posts)Leslie’s career in executive coaching and organizational change has been driven by a single compelling question: How do we make the world of work as generative for the human spirit as it is for the bottom line? Read Leslie’s own blog and follow her on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.
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Leslie, I really like this post. I think you are exactly right. There is a broad continuum of styles for both male and female leaders, and looking at leadership styles from the concept of assertiveness and decisiveness vs. collaboration and receptivity takes out alot of non-useful emotion around gender roles. Thanks!
Thank you, Kathy, for your comments. I think it’s critical to establish language that leads us INTO productive dialogue, not out of it. While I wish that gender-based language and distinctions did that, they often seem to divide more than unite. So we keep looking for terminology that enlarges the conversation.
Hope you’ll keep following the amazing things happening here at InPower Women!
Leslie, you are so right. Corporate America AND Non-Profit America have needed this insight for a long time. Great leadership should be genderless. I would suspect that the “women in leadership” topic sends men running in the other direction. I think the very concept of defining leadership at a 5,000 foot level (not the grandiose 30,000 foot level) is the beginning because it’s the very definition that is gender-biased.
In my not-so-humble opinion.
You rock. May the force be with Grit and Grace!
Susan
Susan, I really like your notion that great leadership should be genderless. I think leadership itself is a profound journey of identity and self-discovery. The aspects of ‘grit’ and ‘grace’ are available to all of us, male and female. Bringing both aspects on-line and into balance within ourselves – regardless of our gender – is what creates powerful leadership.
Leslie – kudos and I agree with Susan and Kathy that the world very much needs this insight. Based on your wise insights here I’m going to be experimenting with approaching my corporate clients about building “Gender-Balanced Leadership Cultures for maximum productivity” (or something like that). Have you experimented with other terminology like this? What flies? I know that “Grit and Grace” came from your own struggle to find good vocabulary – and the vocabulary is a challenge because everyone wants to discuss duality!
Hi, Dana. I’m eager to see how your “Gender-Balanced Leadership” notion is received. Corporate lexicons are always evolving, such that corporate cultures may be ready for this language now. I’ve focused my language on issues of style (shying away from including ‘gender’ terminology). This is just a hunch, but I wonder if organizations would have a stronger appetite for ‘gender-neutral’ leadership cultures than for ‘gender-balanced’ ones.
I hope you’ll keep us posted!!!
Great subject, Leslie. I honestly don’t know what the appetite will be for various vocabulary. I’ll definitely keep you/us all posted. My only issue with “gender-neutral” as a descriptor of people is that it’s not terribly realistic since people’s gender is such an integral part of their identity. I certainly agree that leadership characteristics/behaviors should be gender-neutral, but the people themselves not so much. Since in my corporate pitches I’ll be focusing on management teams and their group dynamics, it will be interesting to see how this vocabulary and the concepts behind it play out. More interesting discussions ahead! Thanks for writing such a great article and being part of our InPower Women adventure!
Interesting perspective, Dana. I was keying in on the ‘culture’ part of your phrase, ‘gender balanced leadership culture.’ I wonder if the language will change based on whether we’re talking about a leadership culture (which is impersonal) or leadership itself (which is highly personal). I agree that the challenge is to find language that neither erases nor obsesses over gender. The philosopher Ken Wilber, whose work is at the foundation of my own work, talks about the need to “include and transcend” – in this case, pointing to the need to include gender in the conversation while ALSO transcending it to arrive at a more universal understanding.
Leslie – This conversation is beginning to feel like a koan, but yes I agree. Wilber is so brilliant. “Include and transcend” is exactly what we’re trying to do. I don’t know how the vocab will manifest but I do feel the tension between working to help leaders and working to help build cultures. My own practice is sitting squarely in between these things. Sometimes I think that’s a strength and other times I’m not so sure. But that’s why it’s an adventure!
Thi s matter was discussed at length about 7/8 months back, so why it is coming back again. There was concensus that women should be given equal opportunity to be on Boards of any Companies whether big or small.
I wouldn’t say there is “consensus” necessarily about women in leadership. Even to the extent there is agreement, however, cultural stereotypes change slowly. We need to keep the information flowing to help build the case for change.