How is a woman’s perspective on her leadership identity different than a man’s? This question goes DEEP, but Dana uncovers a fundamental distinctions between inner and outer definitions of leadership that often leave women at a disadvantage in identifying how traditional leadership advice applies to them. – InPower Editors
If you’ve been playing the in leadership space for more than a few minutes on Google, you know that one of the old saws about what makes a great leader is that it’s a fuzzy idea called “character.”
Don’t get me wrong, I happen to agree with that old saw, but it isn’t very informative in my work helping aspiring leaders—especially women—craft their leadership identity and actually learn to lead. In fact, for many of my female clients trying understand what a good leader looks like, the answer “character” seems a lot like saying “well, you’ll know it when you are it” and the culturally obvious examples of leaders with great character—Generals, CEOs and dead Presidents – are mostly old, male and white.
One of the challenges that women have accessing leadership advice like “build leadership character to be like those old guys,” is pretty clear. One glance and you know we can’t be like those old guys no matter how hard we try. No matter how many biographies of Lincoln, Patton and Steve Jobs we read, we’re not likely to get much closer, either. But I believe there’s another dynamic at play that complicates things even more.
The traditional, trait-based, approach to building a leadership identity is an outside-in perspective. Taking this perspective, a person looks at someone else from the outside and worked to become more like them externally in the hope that their internal mechanisms will come along for the ride. Those who take an outside-in perspective are traditionally not very adept at describing what’s actually going on inside this mysterious leadership character everyone reveres so much. They just do it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this outside-in approach is more masculine in character.
By contrast many women tend to come at identity work from the inside-out. Stereotypically speaking, those comfortable with a feminine perspective are more self-aware, more comfortable in the intuitive, right brain space and seek to understand what’s going on inside someone else—and ourselves—and then work to bring it out into the world. Nothing is that black and white, but I see enough of this pattern in my coaching work to declare there is some truth to this stereotype.
So women—and some men comfortable in the feminine perspective—often struggle to define their leadership identity without the benefit of external role models and without the benefit of an inner strategy to figure out what “character” really means to them. Many of us fail before we figure it out. My own first management job many moons ago was just such as experience of being thrown to the wolves to see if I could survive. Did I? Eventually . . . after being eaten alive several times. I was a living example of The Peter Principle at work. With obscure guidance like “lead with character” as my primary management training and no vision of a feminine leadership style, I stumbled around in the dark, and got promoted to my level of incompetence pretty quickly.
[Tweet “Looking for leadership “character” is the executive’s version of self-help. via @DanaTheus”]
After many more years of experience, and decoding and recoding leadership character to help clients build their leadership identity, I’ve come to believe that becoming a true leader—the kind of leader we would describe as having character—is actually a personal journey into one’s self. If you don’t figure this out at some point, and get on the inner journey of self-discovery, you fall prey to The Peter Principle sooner or later—just like I did.
The good news for women is that taking inner journeys is something we’re good at.
Whether a journey into leadership identity, a journey to “find yourself” or a spiritual journey to “find truth,” all these self-help journeys look very different on the outside, but on the inside they’re extremely similar. Regardless of the path they follow, women and men on an inner journey are honest with themselves and take responsibility for becoming better human beings; they strive to be more impactful on the inside and on the outside; they do the work to know themselves well; and they define success broadly to include the success of others.
This is one of the main reason executive coaches are such a huge help to senior leaders. They are guides on this inner journey to self-knowledge. But too often, coaches and executive clients spend most of their energy deprogramming poor habits learned in the wolves’ den of middle management and not enough energy finding the self-enlightenment that looks like “character” to the outside world.
[Tweet “The crisis in women’s executive leadership starts in middle managmenet. via @DanaTheus on #InPower #Women”]
The wolves’ den of middle management is big a problem for women and the companies they serve, and not just because it forms poor leadership habits. From a my perspective, the crisis in women’s leadership in the executive ranks starts in middle management when women learn that playing with wolves is not only dangerous, but doesn’t leverage their strengths, values or interests. Many women fall prey to the wolves (and sometimes the Peter Principle too) and decide to proactively crawl out of the fray to pursue happiness, purpose and meaning somewhere where wolves don’t prowl the halls quite so plentifully.
What I’ve learned since my own days in the wolves’ den is that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are inner paths to strong, feminine leadership styles that will help you survive and thrive even where wolves are present. For women, these paths all start with letting go of your victim energy and replacing it with confidence. Wolves only prey on those who look vulnerable to being preyed upon.
An Invitation: Do you want to decode your leadership character to see where you stand on your own inner journey? Take the free InPower Peter Principle Diagnostic to see where you are vs. where you aspire to be.
