Women want to lead and women can be leaders

Recently, I visited a large company as a consultant for diversity and corporate culture that would like to see more women in management positions. The meeting was attended by representatives of the management, the HR department and some executives. They had hired me to advise them on their project to promote gender diversity.

So there I sat in front of a group of interested people and noticed that the women in the room seemed particularly interested. I began by asking the crucial question: “What problem situation are we looking at here?”

The answer didn’t surprise me: “We simply can’t find any women who want to take on management positions here.”

After further enquiries, I learnt that around 45% of the company’s employees are women. When I pointed out that it was remarkable that no female leadership talent could be found and that no women were considered competent enough to take on leadership positions, there was silence in the room.

Unfortunately, I have experienced this situation frequently in recent months.

• Where does the assumption come from in management and HR departments that women obviously don’t want to lead if they don’t apply for the relevant positions?
• What basic assumptions about women exist in the company?
• And why are no female talents emerging?

Management and HR departments are often at a loss and cannot answer these questions immediately. This is where I come in and do some translation work. I make the following statements:

Women think about it first and weigh up the options

Many ambitious women want to help steer the fortunes of their company. They want to exert influence and be given responsibility. Because they trust themselves to lead.

In the study I conducted entitled “Women want to lead – but under different circumstances”¹, which was published at the turn of the year 2021/2022, almost 90 per cent of female respondents said that they would definitely take on a management role and the responsibility that goes with it.

But if you go on to ask why they are not currently managers, you learn a lot about the reasons. Basically, women doubt whether they are recognised as competent managers. They have experienced that they are not seen and valued as competent managers, but are viewed critically. They are mistrusted and people look very closely to make sure they don’t make a mistake. And if they do, this is often accompanied by the statement: “It was clear that SHE couldn’t do it.”

It is also interesting to note that men are often measured by their potential in selection procedures. And women are often judged on their current abilities. A big difference in the assessment of who has the expertise and skills for a management role.

If we change our perspective and recognise that women feel this great pressure to prove themselves and very often have to deal with unjustified assessments, then it is more than understandable that they are reluctant to take on a leadership role with pleasure. Being constantly under observation and feeling the doubts almost physically that you are not trusted with the management job does not make you want to take on this task.

One is the loneliest number in the world

If you are the only woman in a management group, you can feel lonely. Women often feel like an alien among other people in male-dominated groups.

Men can easily understand this if we turn the situation around: After many sessions, I know that men also don’t feel particularly comfortable participating alone in a female-dominated round. It’s easy to make nervous comments like: “Am I the cock of the walk today?” Or: “Are there any other men joining us?” This shows very clearly that there is a feeling of unease here too.

Yes, one is the loneliest number in the world and this is also true when you are the only person of your own gender in a meeting or at an event. You should know that women generally think, feel and communicate somewhat differently to men. And that they usually make decisions based on different criteria. And this difference is often met with a lack of understanding in all-male meetings.

Women are often told: You can join us, but please be like us! So they are allowed to join in if they conform to the others. And that doesn’t create a good feeling. Because in order to fully realise your own potential, you need an environment that conveys the message: You’re ok the way you are. You need an environment in which you are perceived as an asset and not as a disruptive factor that doesn’t quite fit in.

And because women are often not perceived as an asset because they are different, they become lonely in male-dominated leadership groups. And they don’t enjoy using their skills here.

Women favour a different leadership style

There is a third point: women prefer the servant leadership approach as a management style. And this is generally not the leadership style that is promoted and practised in most organisations. Many of the women I interviewed for my study and my book² want to practise servant leadership because they feel it suits their feminine nature. However, they do not feel that they can practise this leadership style without comment or criticism.

The servant leadership approach involves the following:

You put your employees’ needs before your own and serve the team. You encourage their growth, independent working and decision-making in order to increase the satisfaction of all employees and team performance. This approach requires a great deal of empathy on the part of the manager. It emphasises active listening and fostering a collaborative, supportive work environment.

When women in organisations do not have the opportunity to practice such a leadership style, they reject the leadership role; they do not want to adopt a patriarchal or hierarchical dominant leadership style.

What can HR and executives do to encourage women to take on management roles?

In order to find and inspire more women for management positions, you have to work internally. And I have three tangible tips for this.

1. a maybe is a yes

The moment a woman has a “maybe I’ll do it” in her head, she is already thinking about the job. She thinks about it and sleeps on it for one or more nights. She weighs up everything that has to do with the job. Women think about whether they get enough respect, whether they are seen as competent, whether they are allowed to make mistakes without immediately being seen as incompetent. And they also think about how they can reconcile their management role with their private life.

And this is exactly where the HR department and management are called upon: talk to your female talent. Encourage her to take on the leadership role. Tell her that you see her in the role and trust her 100 per cent with the task.

Don’t see this reflection as weakness or a “no buck” attitude. Women face completely different hurdles than men when making such decisions. So go the extra mile, seek dialogue and give them security and trust.

2. it stands and falls with your support

Support the woman in her womanhood. And don’t judge yourself according to old role models. Be aware that women are usually judged according to predominantly male behaviour patterns. And at the moment, in many companies we have the imbalance that male leadership behaviour is seen and valued more highly than female leadership behaviour. This may be due to the fact that male leadership behaviour has been known for much longer because there were very few female managers in the past. But not everything that has been around longer is automatically better or right.

If you can authentically convey that female leadership behaviour is just as valuable and important, you will strengthen your female talents and create an environment in which a manager is not judged according to old role models. This is how you really live diversity, because everything else is egalitarianism.

3. women want to lead differently

Respect the fact that women need a management environment in which their skills and competences are fully recognised. They need an environment in which they can practise their leadership style – which in most cases is servant leadership. And in which they are not subject to daily criticism and negative comments.

So create the parameters in your company so that women can practise their preferred leadership style. Give them maximum freedom to do so. And in doing so, you will pave the way for the “female way of leadership”.

We want to find women because …

How did my initial story continue?

I worked with the company, which wanted to bring more women into management positions in order to gradually achieve parity in management, to work out and deepen all the points. Not only did we discuss facts, figures and data in depth, the representatives of the management, HR department and executives also got involved in researching the needs of women in relation to management positions. In the process, we also reformulated the sentence “We simply can’t find any women”.

Their conclusion was: “We want to find women because we know that they can lead. Now we are doing everything we can to ensure that women also want to take on management positions with us.”

Notes:

Lilian Gehrke-Vetterkind will be happy to support you on your path to gender diversity. Simply arrange a free initial consultation.

[1] Here you can download the study in German.
[2] “Frau kann Chef. Mit Freude und Gelassenheit in Fuehrung gehen” (Women can be bosses. Taking the lead with joy and serenity) is the title of Ms Gehrke-Vetterkind’s book, which is well worth reading.

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