On Leadership, Vulnerability and the Dangers of a Sticky Floor

Interview with Ilja van Haaren / Women in Business Series

Ilja van Haaren is a business strategist, who has held many executive positions in her career, among which N.V. Royal Delft and Kinderpostzegel (a child welfare foundation). Her most recent position was with The Hague Business Agency and she currently holds several board positions. In 2002 Ilja received national recognition as Business Woman of the Year for the transformation in business and reputation that she carried out at The Royal Delft. She resides in Delft, The Netherlands.

***

Ilja steps out of her office to meet me at the reception. As always, I am magnetized by her soft charisma: an intriguing fusion of generous openness and respectful restraint. I am excited to talk to her - even a little timid – eager to be a student again and learn from someone who has been in the business of leadership for several decades. 

I am observing her body language: a graceful economy of movement that projects unobtrusive confidence. I ask myself if I will have the opportunity to witness that elusive concept of vulnerability, a seeming must-have of the LinkedIn-approved modern-day leadership.

“Would you like some coffee? We have cappuccino here.”

We are making small talk, with the coffee machine efforting in the background. Earlier that month Ilja had agreed to meet me for a chat about leadership, business and success, just days after she announced her decision to step down as the director of The Hague Business Agency to pursue a new path in her career – a study in organizational change (at AOG / Groningen University). I was quick to ask, because I saw a chance to talk to Ilja during a time of personal transformation, a time when most of us present ourselves to the world unguarded, real, timeless.

And yet, I have my own agenda for this conversation.

In my late 30s, a proud achiever of many professional successes and a resume edited vigorously to a snug 4 pages, I have recently felt the need to validate my own beliefs and values about success and leadership. These values represent something that I have been unequivocal and uncompromising about since the time I entered professional the workforce – at the ripe age of 9 years old.

I was never interested in the feminist agenda, gender bias, or equal rights for women, because my post-soviet upbringing taught me that hard work is the answer to all the problems. After living all over the world, I moved to the Netherlands together with my husband and son, where I didn’t find resistance to any of my values and in many ways enjoyed an appreciation for who I am.

And here I am 10 years later, waiting for my coffee in a posh office of The World Trade Centre The Hague, looking for a connection with other women – stronger, more successful, more experienced, more in many other ways – to give me guidance and a new understanding of Ambition that will inspire the next 30 years of my career.

I first met Ilja in 2016 – when my company was hired to help with a project – and I remember making a note to myself about her striking the perfect balance of strength and femininity that didn’t seem to be in conflict with each other.

“Such a pretty jacket you’ve got on,” Ilja says casually, smiling as we sit down to talk, and my Russian soul rejoices. While I hardly fit into the stereotypical box of an Eastern European beauty, I do occasionally wonder if, since moving to the Netherlands, I have subconsciously decided that “too much femininity” is bad for business.

I first met Ilja in 2016 – when my company was hired to help with a project – and I remember making a note to myself about her striking the perfect balance of strength and femininity that didn’t seem to be in conflict with each other. During that first encounter, and all our subsequent meetings, Ilja would speak sparingly, shifting the narrative of the conversation every time she did. More than anything else, she made me feel heard.

Now too. I came over to hear her story, yet Ilja is all ears. She hasn’t had the time to prepare the answers to the questions I had sent her, but now I have her attention. I know that as soon as the office door closes, her story will unfold.

***

“I have been a CEO for so long. Always on top of the mountain, always working very hard, forever pushing to get results.”

Despite my expectations, we get straight to business. Our context – the common knowledge that Ilja is making a turn in her career, an unexpected one, perhaps even misunderstood by some.

“As you grow older, you become softer. You are open to far more subtle possibilities of triggering impact. With my experience in business development, background in marketing communication and current interest in change management, I see myself as someone who could wield transformation and help organizations succeed in the reality of today’s business.”

I ask if the reason for this career switch is driven by the need to have a powerful creative outlet for the skills, intelligence and experience that she has accumulated over time. The sort of outlet, that is not always available to the residents of mountain tops, who are too busy keeping it all together.

Ilja doesn’t answer my question directly. She pauses to think: “I guess I just want to work with very specific challenges now, while understanding the broader perspective. There is great value in that.”

As Ilja continues to share her study plans, with a controlled anticipation of someone who has already had many an opportunity to elaborate on the topic, I can’t but compare her story to my own journey. A marketing communication background, a venture into entrepreneurship, an eagerness to learn. I readily recognize many parallels, my head nodding at her sharp observations.

Nevertheless, I am surprised to find a touch of dissonance in my own reaction to her story. Do I resent the fact that I seem to be looking for evidence that validates my own career path? Or is it my uneasiness with the fact that I am unnaturally comparing the incomparable?

***

As a child Ilja was ambitious, creative and eager to take the world on. She would take on difficult tasks, she would be a class leader, she would stand out: “I knew that I could have added value, that I mattered – and this really motivated me.”

She remembers herself as someone who was not deterred by difficulties. If anything, inspired and challenged to beat the odds. She had a powerful role model, her mother Francine.

Ilja describes her mother as a source of inspiration and her father as a source of support, the two conditions that enable positive growth and a mentality of life-long learning.

Francine came from a very poor family and didn’t have many opportunities in her youth. She married Toon and together they had three children. It was a strong family, and in contradiction to the expectations of society in those days, it was also a solid foundation for Francine to pursue a career. She managed to combine a full-time study and a full-time job while raising three children.

“You couldn’t wish for a better role model.” Ilja smiled. “She was so happy, you know.”

“She always said to me – I couldn’t have it then, but I can have it now. It’s never too late”. Ilja describes her mother as a source of inspiration and her father as a source of support, the two conditions that enable positive growth and a mentality of life-long learning.

“My mother taught me a lot about leadership.” Ilja’s left hand is resting on the table, her right - occasionally tapping with soft precision to accentuate the rhythm of her narrative. “There are enough leaders, managers out there, who are forceful, aggressive even. That’s not my style – I believe a lot can be achieved with respect, interaction, the act of listening. I’d like to think that we can all be nice to each other.”

This suddenly reminds me of a book I read a few years ago - Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. The research presented by the authors hit several sore spots in my psyche and had an empowering effect on me. At the same time, I appreciated the empathic approach which did not necessarily advocate that women overcome gender stereotypes by employing traditionally male strategies, and instead develop effective negotiation tactics that worked comfortably for them.

I catch myself wondering whether I am being complacent by not challenging my own preconceptions and immediately labeling Ilja’s approach as a trait of successful female leadership. To be honest, it is hard not to have the bias, for I have a history of working with Ilja – close enough to observe her leadership style, but always from a superficial distance: strategic meetings, project briefings, events. She formulates her thoughts carefully, and presents them as conclusions, summaries, bridges and directives – rarely have I had an opportunity to see her thoughts play a loose game of brainstorm.

“Very quickly in my career, I realized that all the interesting stuff happens at the top and that I want to be there, but of course you start where everyone else does.”

Ilja is 59, a beautiful woman, always impeccable in style and bearing. When talking, she looks you in the eye, her expression revealing both keen interest and a degree of guardedness. I am hesitant to ask uncomfortable questions.

I raise the issue of age and age bias. Is it more difficult to exercise a leadership ambition in a professional environment when you are younger? Or can these challenges be written off as lack of experience?

According to Ilja, leadership – in its different forms – is needed at all levels of an organization, so even in the early career we have the opportunity to fulfill a certain level of that ambition. She laughs: “Very quickly in my career, I realized that all the interesting stuff happens at the top and that I want to be there, but of course you start where everyone else does.”

In her first job, Ilja was a sales executive in a hotel chain, recruited directly from a hotel management school. A little while later, the hotel launched an international traineeship program, to which only her male colleagues were invited. She didn’t think twice about asking for an invitation to compete for a place in the program, ultimately getting a spot.

“You simply ask. You take that initiative, even when it is scary. It is also a form of leadership. They say the worst that can happen is a ‘no’, but in my experience even that can often be avoided if you present your case intelligently”.

“I really do think that there is a difference in the way men and women think about exercising their ambition. Men have no problem asking – whether for a raise, for help, or to get additional budget for their project. Women are less comfortable with the prospect of rejection. Believe it or not, but in my whole career I have not had a single woman come to me, asking for a raise simply because they felt they deserved it.”

***

The need to be liked.

There is a whole market of services and experts out there promising a cure to this implicitly female problem. Amazon lists endless pink-tinted books teaching assertiveness and no-saying, offering to relieve the readers of the imposter syndrome. I intuitively agree with the vast body of evidence which suggests that women have a long way to go in their quest for equality – with most of the work needing to take place in the depths of our minds.

However, the rational me rejects the idea of gender inequality as something that still needs to consume so much of our attention. Can’t we all just move on now? I personally know so many women who completely disregard the notion of gender inequality, have achieved professional success and are continuing to build on it, not to prove that they could do it despite being a woman, but simply that they could do it.

Ilja comes from a few generations before me and I wonder what she makes of it.

“When I entered the executive world, most of the time I was the only woman in otherwise all-male teams. Now it is much more diverse.” The tempo of her delivery picks up, but her voice does not lose its softness.

“But we still have such a long way to go.”

Ilja points to the fact that we are already stuck, having achieved the 30/70 ratio of women in c-suite positions, “which is a shame, since we have gotten this far”. In my notebook, I quickly scribble down ‘personal quest’ to remind me of the fact that in every generation there have been women who felt it was upon them to advance gender equality. Ilja seems to be one of them.

“I have witnessed several waves of emancipation. The brave mid-60s, with people like my mother rocking the boat. In the 80s, the shift was inspiring and pretty noticeable for me - likely because it was the time when I was proactively building my career and I could take part in shaping the professional landscape in my industry.”

“We need another wave of emancipation: we are not done yet”. Inadvertently, I feel addressed as a representative of the generation that has come of age and can now exert considerable influence of its own.

***

When it comes to my Russian heritage, I am hesitant to speak of gender-based division of roles. My family was all but conventional, with both parents working long hours – all of the time. I used to hang out at my mother’s work more than at home: a vocational education college with a population of students coming from troubled (read: criminal) backgrounds. I remember hours spent in the photography studio and my first experience with film production on tape. Eventually my mother ended up in journalism and this is how I also landed my first ‘job’ – a young reporter for a regional youth newspaper – all before turning 10. Late nights, layouts drawn out on paper with a ruler, typewriters soon replaced with Quark Xpress and a Pentium 286. Post-soviet Russia saw an influx of some very helpful technology, and I had the opportunity to dig right in. For my mother, work life was not separable from private life, everything flowed in and out of each other.

I can’t remember having any awareness of professional expectations placed on me as a result of being a girl. I could do and be what I wanted, provided I worked hard and not expected too much from life (the silver-age fatalism of the deep Russian soul). I was deeply intrigued the first time I heard about the concept of the glass ceiling, sometime in my mid-20s.

Many people today think – I have a nice job, nice colleagues, a nice life – that is enough.

“Everyone always talks about the glass ceiling, but I don’t really believe in it at all.” I am taking a sip from my second cup of coffee which has just arrived on a tray. My conversation with Ilja becomes more upbeat, less retrospective.

“But I do think there is a sticky floor.”

I laugh, visualizing myself walking barefoot on the cola-stained linoleum in the kitchen of my youth.

“Maybe it’s as simple as that?” A genuine question thrown into the air. “Many people today think – I have a nice job, nice colleagues, a nice life – that is enough. Ambition is not always considered a positive trait today, and that is something quite new.”

My next question is rather predictable: are men more ambitious than women?

“Men are changing too, you know, at least here in the Netherlands. They strive to have a high quality of life – family life – and it is as important or even more important than their career. Modern men will also take care of the children, will work four days, share responsibilities with their partner 50/50. They are also a lot less explicit about their ambition than men from the generations preceding theirs.”

***

The definition of success is changing and it seems like both men and women have a level playing field here. If our success is measured by the quality of life we are enjoying, and that includes a good balance of personal and professional, then many of us can rejoice and live happily ever after. I don’t quite like where my thoughts have taken me, because I don’t recognize myself in this definition.

People ask me sometimes what it’s like to live and work in a foreign country. In the strong tradition of self-depreciation comedy, I frequently write off my quirks as side-effects of being a Russian (with a rolling “r-r-r”), but essentially, I feel at home here.

However, once in a while I feel like a misfit. I am still in love with the image of a mother/business owner/partner who can do it all, while walking with an office dog on a leash in one hand and a take-away coffee cup in the other. That’s no longer a popular image of female success and Sheryl Sandberg's message of leaning into one’s ambition is being replaced with Ariana Huffington’s caring advice on the importance of leaning back into better mental health. I settle for a simple thought – everyone knows what’s best for them, and for now I will follow my gut feeling about how to get to “success”.

Ilja’s approach is more pragmatic and gives me food for thought.

“You can full-heartedly follow your ambition and have a balanced private life. Yes, I think so.” Ilja is leaning back into her chair and it feels like we have moved out of the interview format and into a mid-morning café conversation. “But you can’t maintain the intensity for 50 years of your working life.”

“I think that it comes down to good planning, ability to delegate, a strong support system and giving up perfectionism.”

“Luckily you don’t have to. The time when parenthood must be intensively combined with a career is on average 15 years or so. And yes, you have to trade some things in during that time – but it is only a short period of time in the entire career trajectory. I think that it comes down to good planning, ability to delegate, a strong support system and giving up perfectionism.”

The beauty of life is in the fact that it changes continuously, one phase succeeding another, each rewarding us with its unique challenges and successes. Ilja elaborates further, now moving on to discuss how our professional development has phases of its own.

“I love change. I could never settle for one thing, one activity, one job, one career. I believe that every ten years or so we need to readjust and make a turn. Education plays a big role in my life, and at all milestone events in my career I have set time aside to study, to prepare myself for the phase ahead.” Ilja brings up some examples, helping me to colour in the outlines of her professional profile. An intensive six-week programme at INSEAD to support her executive positions, a study at the Erasmus School of Economics to kick off a career with advisory boards and now a study in talent and organizational development..

We spend a few more minutes talking about the daily grit of success. Indeed, you simply have to make the miles, we say to each other, you got to put the time in. I am easily motivated and admire Ilja’s success and the conviction of someone who has walked the walk. I am also a tad weary, pensive. Looking at the year that has passed I feel like sometimes running a mile can turn into running a marathon: a demanding albeit exciting job, a family that gives my life meaning but keeps me on my toes, a list of goals: some achieved and some put on hold.

“No one said it’s going to be easy,” Ilja echoes my thoughts. “But the opportunities are out there, all laid out there for you, if you are willing to make use of them”.

Originally published on www.happy-folk.com

From the author: They say, "there are many paths to success". What are these paths? Does success look different at the end of each path? Does gender play a role here? Do we choose a path or does the path choose us?

A while back I realised I need some help finding answers to these questions and the idea of this interview series was born.

This series aims to explore the notion of leadership through the stories of women who have had a fascinating career and are keen to share messages of personal and professional growth.