The world needs the leadership of women, leading as women from their feminine wisdom. And yet, this kind of leadership remains underutilized and often misunderstood by both women and men. Why?
Two questions are important to consider:
Why is women’s leadership underutilized?
Why do we step aside from leading as women?
I’d like to consider the second question first, to start with where we have the capacity to immediately make change. Why do we step aside from leading as women? Why did I pull my hair back and wear severe suits as I began my consulting career in the early 80’s? In the executive meetings I facilitated, there were very few women. I thought the only way to lead, to be heard, to get things done was to act like a man.
How do women lead when matching a masculine leadership style and tone? We lead like men, which is not a bad thing. Men are great leaders.
But why do women and men assume that leading like a man is the way to success? I know that I did so in order to be effective in a predominately masculine culture. I still catch myself coaching a new executive to lower her voice, lean her elbows on the table, carry more gravitas.
Yet, I now wonder - how does this assumption feed a certain hesitation in stepping up and out, an anxiety about being too visible that many women strive to overcome? What does it cost us? Does a lack of confidence arise because we are faking it, trying to be different from who we are?
In a March 30, 2019 opinion piece in the New York Times, Tina Brown—Editor-in-Chief of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and currently host of my favorite new find, the TBD podcast—recently linked women’s wisdom to the future of the world:
Women have accumulated rich ways of knowing that until recently were dismissed in male circles of power...Until very recently, that kind of wisdom was banished to folkways or deprecated as secondary. But as women step into their new roles, the value of that wisdom is beginning to emerge in unexpected ways…In drawing on women’s wisdom without apology and pushing that wisdom forward into positions of power, we can soothe our world and, maybe, even save it.
The first question: “Why is women’s leadership underutilized” has many answers. One that is worth considering is that we want to see wise leaders in positions of authority. But, there is a problem.
Look up “wise woman” in the dictionary. In most dictionaries, it’s not there. My 1986 edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary puts wise women out in the woods making charms: “A woman skilled in magic or hidden arts; a witch, sorceress, esp. a harmless or beneficent one, who deals in charms against disease, etc.”
A wise man is a “discrete and prudent man well versed in the affairs of the world.”
Do you remember the famous line from the movie Ghostbusters: Who You Gonna Call? As a corporate executive, when times are tough, who are you going to call? As a project leader seeking new ideas to overcome sticky obstacles, who are you going to call?
A discrete and prudent man well versed in the affairs of the world or a woman in the woods making charms?
Increasingly, leaders recognize that inviting diverse wisdom is a business imperative as well as a personal imperative in today’s fast-changing world. We face unprecedented ecological and social challenges. Women, men, families, and organizations suffer when female wisdom remains untapped or underutilized—but it’s hard to see beyond our unconscious bias, so perfectly captured in outmoded dictionary definitions.
Our global economy runs on principles familiar to women: collaboration, cyclical change, and the power of community. While gender equality in the workplace has been seen in the past as an issue of social justice, today it is an economic imperative and critical for a sustainable world. It makes good sense to recognize, invite, develop and fully utilize the skills and approaches of wise women leaders in our own work, teams, and organizations.
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