In the 21st century, when each day is an unknown and running a business is exposed to such a rapid pace of change as never before, management is no longer a set of rules and principles according to which managers act, but rather a road map of agile leaders who will be able to lead people through an environment full of variability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – through a world of chaos, known as VUCA.
Who are these leaders? How do they differ from managers? And why has their role become so important for the smooth functioning of the organization?
Research shows that great leaders are distinguished by highly developed emotional intelligence, more than technical and analytical skills. In other words, a good manager is an efficient craftsman who has the knowledge and skills to run a business, while a good leader is a kind of artist who, in addition to the tools mentioned above, has a mission and vision and is able to pass them on to others, is able to inspire and positively influence people.
Who more than you has the right combination of qualities needed to inspire trust? It is women who change the world, although they still often underestimate their role. They do not understand what gifts they bring to the economy and organizations through their work and commitment. Previously often criticized female traits, such as missionary, emotionality, empathy, attentiveness and caring, in the VUCA world have become huge potential and have changed the business world forever.
In order to change the patterns of thinking about women in top positions and to appreciate the value hidden in diversity, so that women have a greater impact on the management of companies, we must first of all change the perception of women themselves. So what is the power of women leaders? What are the characteristics of women who have achieved success in the male world of business? Research shows that women leaders, compared to women in general, are more decisive and independent, more motivating and more result-oriented; and also more able to think strategically and abstractly and see alternatives. However, their real success lies in the right combination of several of these features.
The triumph of a multitasking woman
The current vision of a fulfilled woman is not limited to taking care of the house and children, although you can also be a leader at home, which is a very responsible and noble role. However, modern women usually want something more. They develop, climb the career ladder, and combine their work with motherhood in a spectacular way. This is a typically feminine style of management – rightly called multitasking.
Most professionally active women at some point in their lives face a difficult choice – career or children. If they decide to make family commitments, they usually “fall out” of the labor market for a long time, and sometimes even forever, and are consequently less likely to be promoted. No one understands this problem better than other women who have managed to reconcile these two roles and achieve professional success.
It is such women leaders who, by blazing “business trails” enabling them to reconcile the role of wife and mother with the simultaneous development of their professional career, have contributed to the creation of friendly workplaces in their organizations, where employees are not discriminated against on the basis of gender, but, above all, they are appreciated for their competences, creating working conditions for them that allow them to reconcile their roles in life in the most comfortable way possible.
That is why, thanks to these strong successful women, companies are becoming more and more favorable towards flexible work, responding to the needs and expectations of their employees, while showing that what was previously considered a weakness of women turns out to be their advantage, because greater diversity in the company’s structure provides it with better results and financial condition. For this reason, more and more organizations are now implementing initiatives supporting professional development regardless of the gender of their employees.
How does a woman leader think?
Women leaders manage not only the business, but also their own thinking and mind. It is, above all, about being your own motivation. Therefore, the success of each guide belongs to herself. In addition to multitasking, women leaders also need to know their own selves. The way a woman manages is often reflected in her private life.
In the book “The Power of Women in Business”, the authors Aneta Chybicka and Elżbieta Zubrzycka, based on interviews with ten successful women who have made a dizzying career and hold the highest positions in various companies, list in one breath the features thanks to which the heroines of their book achieved success. The characteristics common to all women leaders include: accuracy, meticulousness, diligence, honesty, focus and modesty.
The authors clearly emphasize that the features that distinguish the most modern women leaders are soft skills. These ladies are, above all, caring, they care about others and they know how to listen and hear what their colleagues say. Good leaders pay great attention to how their actions affect the people around them, and they are interested in whether employees are satisfied with performing the duties and tasks entrusted to them. Many of them claim that their role is to build employees’ self-esteem, encourage personal and professional development, and promotion, while the primary value is the team and its well-being, cooperation, and not individual self-creation.
However, these features do not in any way deprive leaders of their strength in dealing with crisis situations; on the contrary, thanks to their ability to empathize and innate flexibility, they do not feel the need to emphasize their business position or surround themselves with “insignia” of power. To reach the top, they had to have great breakthrough power.
Making mistakes is an element of success
Each of us makes mistakes. The feminine management style includes, among others: a unique ability to turn failures into successes. It is said that women are characterized by greater empathy and sensitivity, i.e. features that are in opposition to the typical male leadership style – a tendency to take more risky actions, pay less attention to making compromises or building good relationships and trust. It is thanks to this attitude and the ability to communicate effectively that women leaders achieve success many times.
And even though competition is equally present in the world of business, both male and female, women have developed a women-specific way of dealing with typically male obstacles and “neutralize” their competitors or opponents not only thanks to their hard skills, but also, and often primarily thanks to an innate combination of soft skills, including a much greater ability than men to have a flexible approach to a given problem or issue. For businesswomen, nothing is ever black or white. This gift of looking at every issue from many perspectives and the natural ability to look for alternative solutions allow women to solve business problems that previously seemed insurmountable. Such holistic views on the issue, often from a completely unusual perspective, turn out to be the most revolutionary and fresh approach to management in a VUCA environment.
Capitals of female leaders
The appreciation of women leaders is also facilitated by the fact that for some time now the importance of the resources that women have at their disposal has begun to be recognized and they have been divided into individual capitals – not only financial, but also social, intellectual and cultural. The spreading perception of the multitude of types of capital means that women, although from a global perspective they have less financial capital than men, can activate other resources related to intellectual capital, because they are more likely than men to have higher education or a social resource defined as the so-called social networks. Women are also often perceived as having better communication skills, attentiveness, a sense of responsibility for others and greater openness in negotiation processes or contacts with clients – i.e. resources in the field of the so-called “soft skills”. Changes taking place in the labor market that are beneficial for women are also related to what is often called the knowledge-based society, a new approach to management (e.g. flexible working time), but also the emerging awareness, especially of those involved in design. expenditure from public money.
Currently, many changes are noticeable resulting from globalization processes, forcing the flexibility of solutions, or the fact that a certain logic of actions considered typical and lucrative in the area of management has been modified by the unpredictability associated with the economic crisis. Research has shown that the current difficult period has made women and their visions more often perceived as valuable and worthy of implementation.
The effect of these trends may be to strengthen the position of women and popularize social acceptance of their leadership styles. An example of such processes that increase the presence of women leaders, although not necessarily clearly favorable to them, may be the mechanism called by M.K. Ryan, A. Haslam and C. Kulich “glass cliff”. This is a metaphor referring to the mechanisms in the labor market promoting women to positions whose tasks are burdened with the greatest risk of almost certain failure, and it was observed in times of crisis on the example of the processes of appointing women to managerial positions in companies in a very difficult economic situation.
Trying to understand this process, it should be said that on the one hand it is a threat for women with almost certain failure and responsibility for the faults of previous managers, but on the other hand it is an opportunity for the most enterprising women. An example of such nominations of women recognized as charismatic leaders is Marissa Mayer – CEO of Yahoo!, who, among others, offered her co-workers meals at work and extended maternity leave in exchange for giving up “teleworking”, i.e. remote work, claiming that working in a group is more creative, or Mary Barra – from January 2014 the new head of General Motors, which is drowning in debt, being entrusted with this position was likened to the “kiss of death”. However, we should also remember about leaders such as Christine Lagarde – Head of the European Central Bank, Ursula von der Leyen – President of the European Commission, or Sanna Marin – Prime Minister of Finland, whose spectacular careers are the best example of women’s determination and hard path to success.
A change in attitudes towards women leaders
The change in the approach to women leaders is happening before our eyes, and women leaders themselves and their ways of acting, due to the fact that they are an increasingly frequent phenomenon, may in the near future make it impossible to ask what kind of leader a woman is: because it will be obvious that research and at least half of the leadership conclusions will apply to women.
Women can now be found in many prominent positions, which is why they are changing the difficult, male world of business. They are also more and more often invited to the largest business events, where they appear as experts. Unfortunately, the difficulties and challenges they have to face every day are still rarely talked about, and the price they pay for it is high. It is worth mentioning the stress and fatigue they face on a daily basis. Therefore, it is not without reason that movements such as “GIRL POWER”, “Women’s Academy”, or “Polish Business Women’s Association” are created, which support and bring together women and motivate women to act.
Man is an essential social person. We live and function as a collective. There are leaders in every human community. It is a natural, evolutionarily developed phenomenon. However, not everyone is born with the same predispositions to be a leader. Some people turn out to be natural leaders when they are young, while others develop leader qualities when there are breakthrough events in their lives, when they have to take responsibility not only for themselves, but also for others.
There are no leaders more dedicated and wholeheartedly committed to their work than the Lord. Nature has programmed women in a way that makes them always and unconditionally perform each of the roles entrusted to them in life with 100% dedication. It does not matter whether we are talking about motherhood, taking care of the house or managing a large team of employees. If a woman leader gets involved in something, she always does it with total dedication. Women cannot be “a little”, nor do they accept the phrase “half-assed”. It is conscientiousness, courage and commitment that have led many current women leaders to the top of their professional careers, as some of them talked about in interviews conducted with them for the book “Business Leaders. How to win and change the world.