Advantage Women in Leadership

(Reading time : 8 minutes)

In leadership, women have an ‘unfair’ advantage over men. How ?

For this we may want to look at 3 different threads across history, management and gender: the evolution of our understanding of leadership, what recent research says about what are the most desirable leadership traits, and the differences between masculine and feminine traits. The first two have started clearly tending towards feminine traits over the last 100 years.

If indeed women have a leadership advantage, because of feminine traits, is there something we should/want to do ? We will look at this as well at the end of the article.

Let’s delve deep into each of the above.

Thomas Carlyle’s Great Man leadership in the 19th Century is perhaps the very first theory on leadership. Carlyle said ‘the history of the world is but the biography of great men’. ?According to him, leaders are those gifted with divine inspiration and the right characteristics – basically, Leaders are Born. In the Nature vs Nurture debate, you will see that this theory aligns with the former.

As research in human behaviour and leadership gained pace in the subsequent periods, this theory was criticized and discarded. Management as a science came into being in the early 20th century. Max Weber and Frederic Taylor, though they did not speak about leadership directly, they defined concepts of bureaucracy, authority and rationality as the core of management.

All the above belong to the traditional management view. However, Mary Parker Follet needs a special mention here. Even though she belonged to the same period, she had fresh perspectives on how leadership/power can be shared with people at all levels rather than a strict hierarchy.

Kurt Lewin, during almost the same period, brought in some important distinctions in leadership styles – authoritarian, participative and delegative.

The mid and late 20th century saw further expansion and evolution of leadership theory. It focused distinctly on people – nurturing and motivating them, creating a Vision or Purpose to inspire, and not just focusing on Results. Manager vs Leader, Transformational leadership and Servant Leadership are some flavors of leadership theories that emerged during this period.?

As you can see, our understanding of leadership evolved from being task/goal-oriented/transactional (goals, structures, authority, rewards, processes, etc) to being people/purpose-oriented /inspirational (connecting emotionally, inspiring, human passion, being a servant leader, etc).

We will juxtapose this with masculine and feminine traits in a bit.

Let us now look at what are the most desirable leadership traits according to research done by some leading organizations.?

In a study conducted by Deloitte and the Female Quotient, respondents were asked to select the most important leadership traits. The results were categorised as soft and hard power traits.

What is power and what are hard and soft powers ? Power is the ability to get someone to do what you want them to do. Hard power is based on coercion, manipulation and is more concrete (eg., economic or military might). Soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others (eg., charisma, values). Soft power attracts or pulls, whereas hard power can be seen as ‘push’ power. gx-deloitte-and-fq-us-shift-forward-redefining-leadership.pdf ?

The top 5 in the results have three soft power traits – being communicative (71%), flexible (58%), and patient (53%), while the other two were hard power traits – hardworking (68%) and confident (58%).? Results revealed that today’s workforce prefers a balance of hard and soft power traits. Refer here for the full report : https://tinyurl.com/4r2uze42

An important note : neither hard power nor soft power is better than the other. Each has its own place in life

By now you may be thinking/wondering if hard and soft power traits are directly related to masculine and feminine traits. Before we get to that, let us look at some more research findings.

According to Google’s Project Oxygen, there are 10 top leadership behaviours. Some of them are being a good coach, being result-oriented, good communicator, strong decision maker, has a clear vision/strategy for the team, etc. For a full list, see here Google Says The Best Managers Have These 10 Qualities ( forbes.com ) . The 10 leadership behaviours have a 50/50 mix of hard and soft power traits. For example, ‘being a good coach’ is a soft power trait, whereas ‘strong decision maker’ is a hard power trait.

Let us also look at what McKinsey has to say. It’s 2015 report says the 4 types of behaviour that contribute to 89% of leadership effectiveness are ‘being supportive, operating with strong results orientation, seeking different perspectives and solving problems effectively’. Again, clearly, this has a 50/50 mix of hard and soft power traits. Refer here for the report Decoding leadership: What really matters | McKinsey

Now let’s confirm if soft and hard power traits map directly to feminine and masculine traits.

Historically, in cultures across the world, the differences between masculine and feminine genders have been acknowledged - Yin & Yang (Chinese), Eros & Logos (Greek), Purush & Prakriti (Indian), and so on.

An indicative list of masculine and feminine traits is given below :

Masculine Traits

1.?????? Assertiveness

2.?????? Competitiveness

3.?????? Taking initiative/Action-oriented

4.?????? Ambitious

5.?????? Desire for dominance & power

6.?????? Independent

7.?????? Direct

8.?????? Focused/Exclusion?

Feminine Traits

1.?????? Sensitivity/Empathy

2.?????? Patience

3.?????? Collaborative

4.?????? Nurturing/Caring

5.?????? Humble

6.?????? Emotional

7.?????? Intuition

8.?????? Diverse/Inclusion

If you scroll back up, you can correlate these M and F traits directly to hard and soft traits.

For example, Patience which is an F trait appears in the soft trait in Deloitte’s research. Similarly, ‘Independent’ which is an M trait appears in the list of Deloitte’s hard power traits, and so on.

In the evolution of our understanding of leadership too, we find that the shift has happened from predominantly M traits towards F traits. That is, scholars have recognized the need for F traits along with M traits for organizations to have successful leadership. For example, being competitive and also being collaborative. Similarly, being assertive, and also being humble.

A few caveats before I proceed further. Though we tend to map the masculine to men and feminine to women, it is not an absolute mapping. Some of the masculine attributes can be commonly found in women (such as independence, ambition, etc), and some of the feminine attributes can be found in men too (such as humility, empathy, vulnerability, etc).

Because of biology and evolution, men and women tend to have masculine and feminine attributes more pronounced naturally. Culture and parenting too play a role in deciding the combination of traits that men and women have.

Another important note : neither F trait nor M trait is better than the other. Each has its own place in life

To sum this up, we have seen how (1) leadership as a subject has evolved from being transactional to relational, ie., from a predominant hard power orientation to soft power orientation (2) the top successful leadership behaviours are a mix of hard and soft power traits and (3) and how these map to the masculine and feminine gender traits.

Synthesing these 3 together shows a strong pattern where the feminine aka soft power traits are more preferred and needed in leadership. Hard power traits are required but we have emphasized this exclusively for so long to the detriment of everyone. Organizations that promote and reward only M traits, become toxic workplaces and ultimately fail.

It is in recognition of this fact that more and more organizations today want to train their leaders in F traits, such as empathy, listening, collaboration, etc. You hardly have them asking for training in being competitive, or ambitious, or independent !!

This is a clear shift, I would dare say a paradigm shift that is underway in leadership.

That’s not it ! We find Generation Z, having expectations of their workplaces to provide a diverse experience and work-life balance (this is irrespective of the Gen Z gender) and wanting leadership to be more sensitive, ethical and transparent. They are clearly rooting for a more feminine leadership and workplace !?

The bottom line is that women are at an advantage because they have these soft power traits as a natural gift, and therefore are better poised to lead. Women are good the way they are !

But hold on ! I hear you saying the reality on the ground seems to be different ! There is only a handful of women in leadership roles across the board – in corporates and in the public space. We also see a significant population of women dropping off in the middle of their careers. So what’s wrong ?

It’s the way organizations are designed and run !

Modern organizations emerged from the idea of military and are structured to keep order, achieve goals, accumulate power and benefit shareholders. And are very much so even today.

Historically, workplaces have been designed for men – long work hours with no work-life balance, internal competition, willingness to travel and relocate. They prioritize and reward masculine behaviours such as being aggressive, ambitious, and action-oriented with a penchant for power. No one has been rewarded in corporate history, for being empathetic, collaborative and humble !

Sure, the world is changing, so are organizations. Today there is greater awareness for diversity & inclusion, work-life balance and safeguarding women’s interests (POSH, for example). Efforts are being made to avoid a toxic culture, and bring in changes to avoid burn-out and support overall wellbeing of employees.

This is a change in the right direction, but efforts are falling short. This is because the feminine values are idealized in principle and devalued in reality ! Value of soft power is devalued in the race towards goals and shareholder value. Organizations are still at ‘fixing’ women rather than learning from them.

Corporate history is well littered with major failures because of the fact that their management practices and leadership were too tilted towards masculine traits. A few examples are Satyam, Boeing, GE and Byju’s.

What’s the solution ? What organizations should do to promote F traits and make life easier for women ? Here are some suggestions :

1.?????? Allow and support women to craft their own path to success

2.?????? Reward collaboration, not internal competition

3.?????? Support the unique skills women bring and get others to practice them

4.?????? Break the alpha-male culture and bring in diversity

5.?????? Give space to voices that say they are devalued & and disrespected

What women can do ?

1.?????? Stop being apologetic about your feminine traits?

2.?????? Know what motivates you, and success means to you

3.?????? Not just build relationships, also leverage them

4.?????? Develop and own up hard power traits

5.?????? Own up your ambitions and be proud of them

6.?????? Do away with your need for ‘being liked’. It’s not possible to please all

7.?????? You need to hang around to bring about change

As a final word, organizations becoming more inclusive of feminine traits is not just a women’s development agenda/diversity issue, it is a survival imperative in an ever-changing, complex world.

Inspired by :

Articles by Ashok Malhotra , author, EUM Framework

Videos/books by Sally Helgesen , author

Lean Out, by Marissa Orr , author

Bridge Partnership research reports