When a woman enters the workforce, we see the world differently. In some ways, we have an advantage. Yet in many, we are at a disadvantage.
Our best advice to you as an influencer – be aware, be savvy, and know what you are up against.
The 5 Rules highlight the potential hazards. Know yourself, and know that others need your support. See the video for a more detailed description of each.
The 5 Rules of Women’s Leadership
RULE 1. Leverage your instincts
Don’t bury them. Instincts may be one of the more differentiating assets we have from that other half of the species. Listen to your intuition and gut feelings.
RULE 2. Take control of your image
Define what leadership looks like for you. Consider your flair, your voice, your experience, and your role models. Within those sources lie the leader that you are, and the leader that you are becoming. Because those characteristics are all genuine, you can now see your confidence back them up.
RULE 3. Support other women
Okay okay, I am not advocating that you unilaterally give women the thumbs up simply because they are women, but listen to your true intent when you find yourself pushing back against another woman. Are you feeling threatened because she is a woman? Does it have to do with your own insecurities? It’s complicated …. pay attention. Let’s help each other level out the playing field.
RULE 4. Practice leadership, own it
You know … lean in. In other words, develop others, give them the environment to grow, and be the essence of a leader that inspires and influences. Don’t sit around the table without an opinion. At least pose a thought-provoking question. Although you may be excellent at sensing undercurrents and intentions, learn to jump in and take action on those internal clues. Insight without action is useless.
RULE 5. Watch your balance
Balance is a discriminator. In work-life, in assertive communications, in managing emotions, in collaborating with decisiveness. An awareness of which option to choose will determine how others define you as a leader. Be aware, and embrace the direction you choose.
Video Transcript
Katie: It’s your monthly Hot Flash, which is a women’s leadership video training.
Carol: Absolutely. We are coming to you from The Mandalay Bay, in Las Vegas, Nevada where we are at the annual convention for the International Spa Association.
Carol: This is so fabulous, one of our favorite products here, Moroccan Oil Treatment, and they are right behind us, they have a big booth.
Katie: In the merchandising portion of our video.
Katie: And I’m laughing because there is ooh, ahh kind of music going on in the background so if we get interrupted by something, you’ll just know that that’s what the deal is.
Carol: There’s actually a person getting a massage right over here. That’s how cool this is.
Katie: We should flip the camera around and show them what this place looks like.
Carol: Okay so what are we going to talk about Katie? We’re going to talk about the five tenants of women’s leadership.
Katie: Carol and I defined recently what we believed based on our past experience with women like you, what are the pillars of how women need to be leaders? What do we need to remember?
And we defined from that question, we defined five tenants. Those five tenants we want to bring to you today.
Carol: So the first one is, don’t bury your instincts. Women are so blessed with the fact that we are instinctual beings and that we’ve kept that part of ourselves for the millennia and we need to embrace that. Remember to not bury your instincts because they are usually right and more often helpful to you.
Katie: If you are in a male dominated workplace or if you are in a male based industry, it’s very tempting to –
Carol: To bury that?
Katie: Yeah that is why we wrote this. You know who you are where you feel like you are not being true to yourself. You are not being natural because it’s not the way we do things around here. Male based workplaces definitely but also sometimes it’s not just because its male based, maybe it’s because people just do things differently.
Carol: One thing is if you are in a male dominated workplace you really don’t want to say, “Oh well I feel like this is the right thing to do.” You have some basis for what you are saying but also if you feel it, know it to be true.
Katie: Bring it out enough in a way where you are relating to the rest of the workplace.
Secondly, kind of along those lines define what leadership looks like for you. I am awed not in a good way, by how many different leadership techniques there are out there. Maybe it’s good because then you can pick up with anyone but you know I tell the story often about how I was coaching a guy and he was in the middle of reading Good to Great and he was all hot on it.
Carol: He said, “This is what I’m going to do. I’ll take this back to my office.”
Katie: Exactly and “get the right people on the bus.” And the next time I called him to have a follow up session, I thought maybe we’d be continuing with that leadership characteristic and he was like, “Oh God that was like the old book I was reading. I’m onto a new one.”
There are lots of leadership techniques that are out there. There are lots of models that work great. What is it that works for you? There is no best one. There is a great one for you. There might be several that work for you.
Carol: Figure out what it is that works for you, embrace it, and use it.
Katie: If your best friend isn’t doing it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It might just be different for you.
Carol: Okay, now number three. Support women. That’s it period. Just do it. Don’t hold back on this.
Katie: Madeleine Albright, do you want to tell her quote?
Carol: You go ahead.
Katie: Madeleine Albright recently was heard saying, “There is a special place in hell for women that do not support other women.”
Carol: And it was a Ted talk so if you are into Ted talks please look it up. It’s a great interview with Madeleine Albright and really there is a special place in hell for women who don’t support women. It’s difficult. There is a competitive nature about being in a workplace with another women but it doesn’t have to be nasty. And I got to say, Katie does this so well. She supports women. She’s the Women’s Suffrage League. What is the league you are in?
Katie: I am– Junior League? (Laughs) We’re going to get the vote sooner or later.
Carol: No but just do it.
Katie: Well here’s something that I really want women to think about because I, talk about suffrage, I suffer from this too, even with me, I feel like I’m a pretty confident person but sometimes I falter and I sit next to somebody that’s got a kickass outfit on and she’s saying all the right things. I get a little bit jealous and I have to draw back to my own head and say, “Am I feeling something a little mean towards her?” And “where is that coming from? And is it a natural instinct or is it a – why do I feel that way?” Nature does that to us. It makes it kind of competitive and actually maybe I was just jealous because she had prettier shoes than me. That doesn’t mean I hate her. That doesn’t mean I try to sabotage her. That happens all the time in the workplace and ladies, I want you to think about those negative emotions when they crop up.
Carol: Are they real? Can you think about that other person in a different way that would make you feel better about being friends with her, about just uplifting her?
Katie: So supporting other women – I love that concept and I just want to make sure that everyone has it in front of them as a reminder pretty regularly. So that’s number three.
Number four. Give your followers the environment to grow, to develop, to build those sorts of leadership skills or just become a better employee.
Carol: Now by followers, you mean employees, you mean people who may report to you or –
Katie: For those of you that have direct reports, have employees reporting to you, definitely but almost all of us, in fact I would guess that if you are on Skirt Strategies you have some level of influence, whether it means you write their annual review or not. So we live in worlds where we’ve got influence and we’ve got authority to a certain degree but we definitely have some sort of impact on others and we can influence them.
What is it that you are doing to give those followers, for those that definitely do work for you and you can control their environment, make sure that they have the opportunity for continuing an education. Do they have a mentoring network? Do they have an outlet where they can talk about their challenges maybe if it’s in a male based work environment? That’s what we mean.
Carol: Okay then the last one is watch your balance.
Katie: Don’t fall off your chair.
Carol: We are – we find ourselves very unbalanced in these days and times. There is so much to do. There are so many things to get done in a day and we’re not managing it all. So work life balance, yes.
Katie: I would also say it’s gender balance in your workplace.
Carol: If you have anything to do with that and you have the possibility of having more gender balance, put that into your workplace.
Katie: Make it so. There is the whole balance around, are you a task person or a people person? Do you see your workplace as one where you give people the chance to grow or the people – do you tell them what to do or do you help them make a decision more quickly.
Carol: Here is the thing. If you are watching your balance, you are better able to help them with theirs. It’s the same thing in your family. If you are giving all of your attention to your family and not any to yourself you are out of balance and you are not in balance and it’s important to watch your balance.
Katie: There is an aspect of putting yourself first that’s important. We feel bad doing that because we think that we should have some guilt over that. But if Mom ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy. So manage that. So that’s the five tenants of women’s leadership.
If the world were just resonating around this and being in a spa convention every week…
Carol: I heard ohm earlier.
Katie: I’m hearing African music and ohms and people being rubbed down, whatever that sounds like. We’re going to leave it at that.
So at Skirt strategies you are always welcome to join our monthly membership which is only $8 a month and for that you get a free, it’s not free, it’s $8, you get a weekly assignment. We send it straight to your inbox on Sunday night and it is for your Monday refreshment. We call it the Monday Morning Detox, a small little assignment and a podcast that has to do with whatever the monthly topic is and of course this month being around the five tenants of women’s leadership. We just – we are digging it. Thanks for following us.
Carol: Take care.
(Music plays)
[end of transcript]