WHY BUILD BADASS WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP?

Why Build Badass Women in Leadership? New era leadership involves everyone willing to take an active role in building successful solutions to better the organization's future goals in which one is engaged as an active participant.??I open this piece with the following questions.??

1. Is there a relationship between social capital, intellectual capital, political capital, and psychological capital in those considered for top rank leadership positions??
2. What role does gender play in organizations achieving their goals???
3. What are the essential attributes of successful leaders today???

The three questions lead me to a possible new theory in Leadership, the?Badass Woman Theory. A Badass Woman understands the different roles she must play based on the positions she has opted into. This means she fulfills her traditional role in reproduction, nurturing, and caring for the family. As well as her part of Leadership, As a woman, she brings an arsenal of strengths, abilities, talents, and intellect to the C-Suite, Board Rooms, and the household business. She brings character traits of honesty, perseverance, resiliency, optimism, and self-efficacy. Combine with innate transformational strengths based on birth as a female. She is a realist in the true sense, understands her shortcomings, and finds ways to subsidize them by using her strengths.

Based on leadership experts like Avolio, Kouzes, Posner, and others, their findings indicate that some individuals are born with specific leadership abilities, just as some athletes are born with particular physical strengths and features. That provides them with an edge over those who are not natural athletes. Just as musicians are born with specific talents that make them realistic for a particular musical instrument, the same applies to Leadership when used with individual skills in a particular set of circumstances or opportunities. Some leaders also have natural abilities that those without must acquire a level of leadership knowledge to maximize the use of their talents.?

?Democratic communities have shaped the way we respond to Leadership for the last 2.5 million years. The theory of evolution provides the premise that we are all products of our past.???As we evolve, so must leadership theory. Both traditional and positive leadership theories speak to a set of circumstances during the particular time of the development of the idea. Our society has evolved now needs to view Leadership through the eye of Janusian Thinking. That means "bringing two opposites together and keeping male and female Leadership in mind and holding them together and at the same time, considering their relationships, similarities, pros, and cons, and interplay. Finally, creating a new theory of Leadership that serves the more educated, intellectual female who wants and desires to quarterback businesses in this new era of the multi-generational, technology-driven workforce in a global economic environment.??

Now we know that business, law, and politics rule the country. Based on this, let's consider some facts, we now have more women running households and small businesses.??Women are now the most educated amongst our populations. However, the woman's role in mainstream business, law, government, finance, accounting, and economics plays a small part in Leadership and policy-making decisions. Those of us in the research say that numbers don't lie.?

So, let's take a look at the numbers. There are approximately 331 million people in America, with 51.4% or 166.7 million identifying as women. Out of the fortune 500 companies, there are 41 women CEOs, which amounts to 8.1% of CEOs represented by women. There are 100 senators, with 24 or 24% represented by women. There are 50 governors, with only nine or less than 20% are women. In the House of Representatives, there are 435 members with only 24 women. There are 669,130 CPAs, with 40% as women but only 21% as partners, the decision-makers. Finally, there are 21,000 economists, with only 26% as women. This is essential information to know because economics plays a huge role in the influence of public policy. This leads to men's voices being the dominant voice in life as we know it.??

We also know that there is a positive relationship between intelligence and leadership effectiveness. Women make up 59.4% of degreed individuals. New era theories of Leadership involve positional Leadership and the role that leaders play in their interactions with the organization's human capital. This evolution leads to a new paradigm in Leadership that calls for leaders who can teach in various situations and at different levels of the organization.??

The most successful attributes of successful leaders include:??

(a)The leader's cognitive abilities,??

(b) Their personality,?

(c) The motivation to lead,??

(d)social appraisal,??

(e) Their interpersonal skills,?

(f) Their tacit knowledge.???

Many women can check off many if not all of these. So, we ask, what's the real problem? Based on my research of the literature on leadership selection, I found the following:??

Qualities lacking among potential women leaders:?

1. The most important quality lacking among potential women leaders is their networking power and influence on male leaders.?
2. Non-shared environmental influences such as being exposed to opportunities for Leadership
3. The emotional stigma tied to women's leadership traits during times of adaptive and expressive behavior
4. Genetics -learned behaviors, social and behaviors skills embedded since birth.?
5. Absence of social and business environments during periods of growth and development??
6. Social Capital -None producing relationships among networks?
7. Lack of sponsors and mentors??
8. Women with power and knowledge of hiring and opportunities prefer engaging with men to discuss those opportunities over women. (Yes, we may be our own worst enemy.)?

We are going back to Janusian Thinking, named for the Roman god Janus, who had two faces that looked in opposite directions. Sometimes as women, we have two faces. Dr. Rothenberg identified traces of Janusian Thinking in the works of Einstein, Mozart, Picasso, and Conrad. The way to use Janusian Thinking is to ask, "What is the opposite of this?" and then try to imagine both opposites existing simultaneously. Ladies, we must pull together and advocate reversing or contradicting currently accepted ideas about women and Leadership to expand the range of perspectives considered.?

It is essential to remember that Leadership is critical and a crucial component to organizational effectiveness.??Leaders, athletes, musicians, and others who have natural abilities must practice and train to strengthen existing skills. Still,?professional sports talent is groomed on new skills and abilities to be successful. Women must train, groomed, and prepared for leadership opportunities. Men don't play the roles thought of for women; however, we play all roles to compete for leadership positions. Viewing Leadership as a fixed set of character traits or as linked to an exalted position is a self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms societies to only seeing male and male masculinity as top leaders. It is far healthier and more productive for us to assume that more women can lead. We must ask ourselves do we want more women to represent our diverse environments??If so, we must search our conscience and check our behavior around the eight qualities found lacking in women seeing leadership positions in the top ranks.?In closing, to help them become Badass Women in Leadership, we must combine feminity and masculinity in building a new model for women in Leadership, including the traits mentioned earlier in this paper and the leadership behaviors needed for the company and positions of power they will hold.????

This fall quarter, I am honored to teach Women in Leadership and work with other women to create a Badass Women of Leadership Movement. The movement's goal is to inspire women around the country to use their strengths, networks, and position of power to engage, nurture and develop voices of action for future leadership positions of power. They offer and give women a say at the table of social policy, government, business, and economic policy. I am Dr. Marilyn Carroll. You can find me on LinkedIn @Marilyn Carroll, Ph.D., and Twitter@DrMarilyn. My writings will focus on Leadership over the next three months. ?