Female leadership
Posted by Cristina Andersson on September 13, 2009
Can a woman become a powerful leader without becoming “one of the guys”?
One of the many topics in the Globeforum in Stockholm two years ago was the question of Female Leadership in the Emerging Markets. In the roundtable seminars the topic was widely discussed with Nordic women as facilitators. One of my comments was “What do we Finnish and Swedish women really have to give to the women in the emerging markets when we are quite accustomed to hold leading positions and when many of us have become ‘one of the guys’ abandoning our natural female way of making things click. How can we help if we have alienated from the problem?”
Law of attraction is a very popular term nowadays when the movie “The Secret” has conquered the world with it’s message of hope and positive thinking. Attraction is, to my understanding, a female force. Women are not by nature used to push things forward but rather to use different means to attract things to happen. For example when we communicate we don’t go straight forward saying: “I want a cup of coffee” but rather “Oh, how tired I am, I could really use a cup of coffee” or “what a nice coffee shop there is….”. In order to achieve higher positions in the organization women are taught to become more straightforward in their communication, they are taught to say “bring me a cup of coffee, please”. This kind of communication is of course timesaving and efficient, that by the way everyone must be able to use in situations of emergency, but the price is that the woman loses her natural female attractiveness and gains the attraction of power instead, and eventually become one of the guys.
Law of gravity might be used as a metaphor for male leadership. Men tend to send things forward with such kick and force that the one selected target is reached without deviations and attuning operations. The people around are seen more as pawns that can be ordered and moved in the “name of the task” than individuals that could be attracted to participate an inspirational challenge. Offering a big sum of money and bonuses is a male way to gain commitment when on the other hand offering initial participation, inspiration, growth and learning is a female way to attain commitment.
Unfortunately when the number of female leaders increases in the companies the systems are not developed to support, empower and promote female leadership. The systems remain “male” and women have learned that the true appreciation and acceptance comes from reconciling oneself into the “male” system. Therefore the real change for female values, we might call those values here as “soft human values” do not take place in the companies. I worked as a business consultant for a decade and saw many ‘womanly women’ give up their womanliness and become one of the guys, for the sake of survival and success in the company. The question is: “does this kind of mental castration bring true happiness and fullness of life and does it really create better workplaces and more successful companies?”
One more question: “If we are to learn tolerance and true appreciation of diversity, are we really doing it by making everybody to fit the system? Are we really incapable of creating systems that allow people be themselves and give their best talent, true self-expression and natural creative force to serve the common good?”
