Changing The Leadership Paradigm
Posted on Wed, Oct 05, 2011 @ 02:31 PM
We've known for a long time that women make effective leaders. It's not a big secret. So why is it that every time we're considered for a very visible senior position, so much news coverage is devoted to our gender rather than our qualifications?
When Christine Lagarde was being considered as a potential candidate for managing director of the International Monetary Fund earlier in the year, I found myself gritting my teeth during most of the coverage. As the IMF scrambled to find a replacement for Dominique Strauss-Kahn—who had been charged with sex crimes in New York City—Ms. Lagarde's name rapidly rose to the top of the list.
In spite of her stellar career as a high profile lawyer and later as France's first female finance minister, much of the news coverage emphasized her love of skirt suits and silk scarves. Even NPR devoted an inordinate amount of time to her wardrobe instead of her track record. And I still don't know what Mr. Strauss-Kahn's sartorial preferences are. Is he a Brooks Brothers guy, or does he favor Italian suits and English wingtips. Frankly, I don't know and don't care.
Bela Szandelszky / AP Photo
Considering our lengthy track record of effective leadership, why are we still viewed as something of a novelty when we break into male dominated boardrooms? It has to do with leadership stereotypes and about what makes effective leaders. As long as leadership selection rewards aggressiveness and a certain amount of recklessness in decision-making, we will either tend to imitate that behavior to bridge gender differences or risk standing out. Changing the leadership paradigm could go a long way in moving more women into leadership positions.
For women of my generation, getting ahead sometimes meant acquiring a certain masculine ruthlessness in the workplace. And even though that was an effective tactic at times, it now does us a disservice by sacrificing what some of our best leadership attributes may be. In imitating men, we often gave up some of our most effective leadership tools of collaboration, compassion and empathy.
A look back at the economic bubble of 2008—and the resulting fragmented economic landscape we still inhabit—should be an indication of how effective our current leadership paradigm really is. Bringing real collaboration and empathetic understanding to boardroom decisions isn't just a postmodern fuzzy notion either. Every bad decision leading up to the financial meltdown could have used some collaboration and a measure of empathy in addition to cold financial calculation.
It's not as if the financial calculation proved correct anyway. But the pay packages that are offered to CEOs reward individuals with bad track records of risk-taking without matching accountability. Unnecessary risk taking ties into the aggressive male leadership paradigm and it hasn't been especially useful as a leadership attribute for anyone—least of all investors and the American middle class. If we want to move toward a more cautious and risk-averse corporate culture that avoids monumental economic collapses in the future, changing the leadership paradigm to reflect the innate skills that women offer makes sense.
Jesse Langley lives near Chicago. She divides her time among work, blogging and family life. She advocates for online mba programs and has a keen interest in women's leadership roles in contemporary society. She also writes for www.professionalintern.com.
