Women in Leadership - Overcoming the negatives
This article was originally published in the MJ on 15th November 2007.
Women make great leaders – if they can get over their inner critic. Heather Jameson reports
from the Women in Leadership conference in Manchester which offered advice to the females –
and males – of local government
Women are, apparently, their
own worst enemies. It certainly didn’t
feel that way at the second Women in
Leadership* event from Veredus, held
in Manchester at the beginning of
November.
In fact, the Hilton Hotel was awash
with strong, confident and highly-successful
women from the public sector.
Leadership expert Professor Beverly
Alimo-Metcalfe explains: ‘Women are
great at lots of things. But what they
are particularly good at is talking to
themselves in a negative way.
‘If you had a friend who talked to you
the way you talked to yourself, would
you still hang round with them?’
Tameside MBC chief executive, Janet
Callender, agrees the ‘inner critic’ was
her biggest obstacle. ‘I don’t know
where it came from,’ the usually-confident
leader told the conference.
But the good news is that women
don’t have to behave in that way. Ms
Callender ‘extinguished’ her inner
critic and has moved on to run an excellent,
award-winning local authority.
When she joined Tameside, it was
already ‘excellent’, ‘with a strong culture
of continuous improvement’.
But it wasn’t enough – it needed to go
through a culture change and risk losing
that reputation for excellence. The
senior management team was exclusively
male, as it had been for at least a
decade. There was a very ‘macho culture’.
It was hierarchical, with a tendency
towards micro-management,
and a culture of confrontation and
blame.
Perhaps most damagingly, there was
no acknowledgement of achievements
or successes. Ms Callender tells of her
experience in an early meeting with
staff, where she asked them to give
themselves a round of applause for
their achievements. She was greeted
by silence. It was only when she jokingly
explained how to clap that she got
a response.
After the event, the feedback was just
as bad: ‘Someone wrote, “chief executive”
– not Janet, but chief executive –
“we should stop being so self-congratulatory
and get on with the job in
hand”.’
Ms Callender accepts tthat the previous
chief executive probably had to use
his strongly-masculine style to get the
organisation to where it was, but it was
time to move on.
‘Members were clear about what they
wanted. Even the job description had
said there was a macho culture,’ she
told delegates.
‘There were six men and me on the
shortlist. They obviously thought,
“Macho culture – that’s for me!”,’ she
laughed.
Her choice was to fall in line with the
culture, and continue to be excellent,
or to take on the culture in Tameside
and risk losing that. She opted for the
latter – one of her mantras is ‘be true
to yourself’, so she had little choice.
Her advice to other female – and
perhaps male – managers is: ‘You’ve
got to find your champions early on.’
As we move into an era where a more
feminine style of leadership is
accepted and probably even preferred,
Prof Alimo-Metcalfe points out
women’s leadership styles have proven
to be more effective.
She says women in the public sector
often come across the question: ‘Are
you going to achieve your targets, or
are you going to be pink and fluffy?’
It is a no brainer. ‘Read my lips, stupid,
you can do both’. In fact, research
has proven the so-called ‘fluffy’ leadership
style of women is more effective
in modern organisations.
The professor urged the women present
to remember one acronym – CIA
C – change what you need to change
I – influence what you can
A – accept the limitations of the
organisation
The session closed with a networking
session. As Ms Callender says: ‘I am a
great fan of networking, of the culture
of “bring and boast”, or as I like to
think about it, “nick and steal”.