And this applies to all humans!
As humans in the western world, we seem to have a very one dimensional model of leadership – authoritative, strong, powerful, action oriented, and although there is nothing wrong with those adjectives, when it comes to leadership, I believe it’s time to add to them.
As an executive and leadership coach, I work with many people at different stages of their career and life and what I find astounding is how many of them have this one dimensional idea of leadership and make decisions as to whether they can be leaders or not depending on whether this way to do leadership is something they believe they can do.
In some circles, different adjectives are attributed to male or female leaders. So the male leaders are strong, powerful, decisive, risk takers, authoritative. The female leaders are compassionate, kind, empathetic, collaborative.
My question to you is how can you be both? What will it take to develop and nurture leaders who are strong, powerful, confident, compassionate, empathetic and collaborative? Right now still, there are times when if a man is seen to be compassionate and kind, he must therefore be weak. and if a woman dares to be authoritative and powerful, she’s a b*tch!
Now this isn’t going to change by including this learning in leadership development programmes, although it has to be tackled there too. This is something we have to tackle at a social level, in schools, in families, in the stories we choose to tell and how we tell them.
It’s very difficult to become something that you cannot see – this is something that I’ve heard in relation to race and gender diversity issues. For example, how can we make it possible for young black girls to become leaders of their countries if they have never seen a black woman in power? Well, the same applies here. How can we make it possible for men and women to be strong and powerful AND compassionate and kind leaders, if they don’t have those role models to follow?
How do we make those changes in society? How to we change the criteria we use to choose our leaders? How do we train our leaders to embrace all those qualities and become the role models we all need?
Let me know your thoughts by commenting below and then come join the conversation on my facebook page at SoniaGavira where you can hear me speak about this and share some of the things that you could do to become this new role model. I also hop on and answer your questions on leadership and leading too.
So let me know – is this how you want to show up as a leader?
Sx
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