Leadership. WoW Leadership!

Today we celebrate International Women's Day and I am very keen to draw attention to some of the most important traits women exhibit in their leadership roles.

We are used to the stereotype of the male leader, overconfident and talkative, dressed in a suit, and delegating tons of tasks to the people around us. This is '60s style, but I am sure that even today many could imagine a leader looking and behaving like this. We could step into the next decades and look for the leaders dressed in hoodies or black t-shirts, obsessed with customers and products, visionaries, and iconic figures.

We do not talk enough about the leaders who are moving the world. The leaders who are influential, but not stepping up in front of the crowd. The leaders that keep the momentum going, even in difficult times. Many of these leaders are women (and mothers). All of these leaders are exhibiting 3 traits of leadership:

• resilient leadership
• compassionate leadership
• Resonating leadership

Resilient leadership

Even though my mother was never in a leadership position, I learned resilience from her, and helped me in the most difficult moments. A resilient and hard-working leader would be able to compensate for the bad mood of the team, by continuing to work when the motivation is low and show a good example. I remember the time in my childhood when we helped with preparing cherry jam. It was a boring task and we got bored after a while, so me and my brother said "We are bored!" and we wanted to leave. She said: "You are not allowed to be bored!", and after a second or two we started to laugh all of us. The resilience in her was displayed in the most pure form, but we got the momentum going for a mundane task. We need such leadership traits as our world is not only about sending rockets to the moon, it is also about making your bed, cleaning your desk, finishing boring tasks, and moving over routine periods with grace.

Compassionate leadership

It is a well-known quote: "People come for the company and leave because of their managers". There is some truth in that and I dare to say that a good leader is empathetic. Listens well and can comfort the people in his team when they go through a tough time. They can resonate with a person in depression, giving him/her the needed help. They will refrain from pushing to hard when someone is in pain and will think thoroughly about how to create value working with Average Joe. Everyone can create great results with A-Teams. But only A-Leaders can move B-Teams to great success.

Women are more authentic when they show compassion and they are interested in the well-being of team members. Many flourish when they get a bit more attention and they create such nice positive surprises. You just need a bit of a nice touch, emotional intelligence, and focus on building good teams.

Resonating leadership

This is more about the role of a leader in a leadership team. We are looking many times to leaders as we look to alpha wolves. the best-performing teams are rather formed by complementary personalities. In many situations, women have this trait, to act as a resonance box that makes a great sound. Either means finishing the tasks in a team of visionaries, summarizing the conclusion of a difficult conversation in a very nice sentence, inviting for a project review, or to kick off an initiative with good energy, they are behaving as the resonator and amplifier of the team.

I want to celebrate the women I had as managers or peers and who are showing such traits.

Shout out to Oana Alexandra Teslariu , a great leader who is also very humble!

Shout out to Helen Clergeau , a great boss and a great technical leader!

Shout out to Bettina Siener , who makes the world move without effort!

Shout out to all the great women leaders!