Wise-Compassionate Leadership

“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.” – Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook)

Women in leadership. I would love to know what your reaction was just now, when you read that sentence. Women in leadership has been a somewhat controversial topic for decades now. In my nearly 15 years of working with various leaders, both men and women, I have encountered abuse of power in both genders but I have also experienced the positive, productive and empowering use of power in others. Which leads me to believe that power is indeed neutral as we discussed in our previous blog, does that not also mean that leadership is neutral?

The Myth of women in leadership

For centuries, there have been a strong believe that women are simply not cut out to be leaders, which has led to a somewhat unconscious bias that women don’t belong in senior level positions. Leadership was defined strongly by behaviors more common to men and therefore women were seen as inadequate. However, we have seen a change in the past decade. In a 2012 research project, the findings revealed that women were perceived as “every bit as effective as men” in leadership. This study was updated in 2019 and again women were perceived as just as competent as their male counterparts. Surely then, there is value in both men and women in senior level leadership positions. As Xpand we are very much in favor of co-leadership between men and women, in today’s blog we will focus on what unique leadership qualities women bring to the table and next week we will look at the unique leadership qualities of men.

What about the confidence issue? 

What was interesting about this study was that women scored quite competent and in some cases higher than men in the capabilities assessed, but when it came to self-assessment, with regards to confidence, women rated themselves significantly lower than men did. Could this be because they think they need to measure up to the male-dominated leadership behaviors, which might withhold them from being the truly effective leader they can be? In a 2013 Harvard Business Review article the authors commented that this might be because the fundamental identity shift hasn’t really been addressed and so women struggle to see themselves or to be seen by others as leaders. This rises a new question, could it be that we should not strive for equality in leadership, but rather co-leadership? Where women bring their unique contribution to leadership and men bring their unique contribution to leadership.

Women’s unique contribution

Now, some might argue that the way leadership has been done in the past, has been effective. Whether that is true or not, we know without a doubt that the past two years has called for something different than how it has always been done. And I would like to argue that women have something unique that we should allow to flourish, but can also learn from when it comes to leadership.

In a recent multi-year study of both leaders and employees conducted by Potential Project, employees said that women leaders are able “to do hard things in a human way” This study was done by about 5 000 companies from close to 100 countries. Clearly one of the biggest needs for employees from their leaders is emotional and mental support. They are in need of someone helping them navigate grief, anxiety and uncertainty, someone who can help them stay healthy mentally, someone who is not afraid to show their own vulnerabilities and grow together.

Two key traits that this study identified that is needed is wisdom – defined as the courage to do what needs to be done, even when it is difficult. This is a trait that both male and female leaders indicated they want to grow in. The second trait is compassion – defined as the care and empathy shown towards others, combined with the intention to support and help. The study discovered that male leaders does not show such a big interest to grown in compassion, whereas female leaders valued growth in compassion as very important. When it comes to traits such as compassion and empathy (spoken about in last week’s blog on power), it’s clear that these invaluable qualities come more naturally to women, and we need to realize that they are important to incorporate into healthy leadership today.

Some tips to start incorporating the unique strengths that women can bring and prepare for a healthy future in leadership:

1. Co-leadership mindset vs Either-or mindset – As most things in life the change need to start with our own mindset on leadership, women-in-leadership and one-man-only leadership. The question you need to ask yourself and really be honest is: How can I make space for the unique strengths that BOTH men and women can bring to leadership within my business?

2. Intentional opportunities to grow together – Create peer coaching tribes where men and women can learn and grow together in wisdom, empathy and compassion.

3. Develop wise, compassionate leadership – Wise compassionate leadership is essential for the future that we are stepping into and fortunately it is possible to grow in both these traits whether you are a male or female leader. A good starting point could be to bring more care and kindness into your day-to-day leadership.

Doris Kearns Goodwin said: “Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.” Whether you are a male or female leader, let’s start building cultures within our workspaces where unique contributions from both male and female leaders are welcomed, so that we can grow to a future where “there will just be leaders”.

May we all see the beauty and strength that male and female leaders bring to the table. Let us know how we can serve you and your organization in this important topic.

This blog in the series was written by Chantal Ferreira and Marelize Dippenaar.

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