The Power of Feminine Leadership - Mandi and Womina's Workplace

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Dr Felicia Clark, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Many workplace environments believe a “good employee” is one who exhibits masculine leadership traits. This is because, traditionally, the workplace was almost exclusively led by men. Although female leaders have become more commonplace in most work environments, employing female leadership strategies is still sometimes viewed as incompetence. In my experience, masculine women repremand women who lead with a feminine style far more harshly than do men, although both give pushback. Therefore, many women learn to trade their femininity for upward mobility, validation, or survival. But, what if feminine leadership is powerful, just different from masculine leadership?

We have all seen it in action – the feminine professional woman who doesn’t follow status quo but achieves her goals including being in a high ranking position. How does she do it? Did she sleep with the boss? Does her dad own stock in the company? Did she slip through the cracks? Or, does she know something about leadership that you don’t?

Do you wonder why some women seem to always get what they want with ease and grace personally and professionally while other women simply go without while harboring resentment? Have you worked really hard to get something only to see it go to someone who seemed less deserving? Would you like to know how to get what you want without being overly aggressive, stressing, or making enemies in the process? Did you know that women who are happy, successful and fulfilled understand the power of femininity? If you are intrigued by any of these questions, then read about Mandi and Womina in the workplace.

Two colleagues, Mandi and Womina, were each seeking funding for projects during fiscally lean times. Mandi went into masculine mode and wanted to outshine Womina. Mandi aggressively pursued her goal expecting for her hard work and dedication to be rewarded. She worked long hours to create a compellingly persuasive presentation as to why departments should redirect funding to support her deserving project. She volunteered countless hours of overtime giving her presentation to anyone who would listen. The departments to whom she presented liked her work, congratulated her on her outstanding presentation, but did not restructure their fiscal priorities to offer her funding. Mandi stayed the course believing that working hard enough would eventually make someone feel that they owed her a break. Mandi knew that Womina wasn’t working hard at all or putting in any overtime which Mandi viewed as undedicated. Mandi constantly proved she could do everything by herself and believed that her capabilities were superior to Womina’s. Mandi worked harder, looked more professional, dedicated her life to her job, and was talented enough to never ask for help. Mandi believed that Womina was an air head who always needed help, grossly incompetent, “skating by,” and got promoted because she was pretty.

Womina approached getting funding using feminine leadership tenets and checked to see what funding was available as a first step. People readily helped Womina because she greeted everyone daily, routinely offered to pitch in and help when there was no benefit to her, and she had a pleasant attitude. Womina spent 30 minutes meeting with the fiscal managers, who were happy that she stopped by. They offered to provide her with a list of the departments who had enough funds to finance her project. She was grateful to receive the help and thanked them for the time that they saved her. With the fiscal report, Womina asked each department with funds if they were currently funding new projects. Some were and some were not. Of the ones who were currently funding, Womina needed to approach them the right way. She read their annual goals and showed them how her project fit those goals. She adjusted her presentation to fit the department she was approaching and got several funding offers without doing any overtime. Her presentation was not flashy but it was thoughtful, targeted, and highly effective. Womina simply went with the flow of where funding was available and requested funds from departments where they had a common purpose. She received multiple funding offers with little effort.

Mandi’s approach used these leadership tenets that are natural to the masculine: aggressive focused pursuit, competitiveness, individual effort (working alone), rejecting help as it is viewed as a weakness, and the desire to be 1st place. These leadership actions work sometimes depending on what you want to accomplish within the appropriate environment. This approach would be preferred if there truly were no identifiable funds available, no fiscal experts to help, and the only option was to get departments to restructure their funding priorities.

Womina used these leadership tenets that are natural to the feminine: observing the environment before taking action, openness, looking for good timing, working in cooperation with others, adjusting in order to be effective, receiving and appreciating help, expressing gratitude, and focusing on others’ needs. These leadership actions also work sometimes depending on what you want to accomplish within the appropriate environment. In this case, feminine leadership moves worked because funding was available and experts who wanted to help knew where to find it. It was simply a matter of identifying and getting support from people who already wanted to fund a project like hers. This process was simple, effective, and built relationships whereby Womina would likely be helped again.

Mandi assumed getting funding would be hard, was up for challenge, and prefered work to be hard so she could demonstrate as well as develop her capabilities. Womina observed with openness and learned that funding was scarce for some but not all. Mandi knew that Womina did not work hard and wondered if she “used her looks,” cut corners, or cheated to get funding so easily. Womina felt confused because she did not understand why Mandi was pushing herself so hard making what was easy so difficult. Mandi hoped to make a come back and beat Womina next time (masculine competition). Womina hoped that she and Mandi could collaborate next time because she located extra funding that she could have referred to Mandi (feminine cooperation).

What Womina knows is that sometimes a masculine approach is needed, sometimes a feminine approach is needed, but most of the time the two styles need to be blended together to cover all bases. That is why Womina is successful and gets what she wants while being happy and making allies in the process. Her ego and where she ranks is not her primary concern, she simply wants to be effective and compensated as negotiated. Even though Womina does not fit the traditional beauty standard, and Mandi does, Womina’s positive attitude continuously attracts people who compliment her and enjoy working with her.

What Mandi doesn’t understand is that masculinity has a natural belief in scarcity and masculine leadership actions are based on getting to scarce resources first. Therefore, masculinity must obtain resources first before sharing (e.g. providing). This can create undue stress with an intense pressure to perform when other approaches may work better. The feminine has a natural belief in abundance whereby there is enough to go around. Therefore, femininity wants to share ongoing. Feminine leadership is therefore collaborative. Scarcity means that there are winners and losers. Abundance means that everybody can get what they need and multiple approaches can acheive the same goal. Womina wasn’t competing. She was just trying to complete a task and adjusted as needed. Womina knew how to check for situational appropriateness to see which approach worked best: masculine, feminine, neutral or blended. Sometimes resources are scarce and sometimes they are not. The masculine, or the feminine, approach is the best approach depending on the overall picture. In many cases, either approach can produce effective results but the methodologies will be different. Therefore, Womina respects masculine leadership tenants and uses them sometimes. However, Mandi thinks that using feminine leadership tenets are weak, discreditable and an admission of failure and incompetence.

Is your organization producing optimal results from the employees that you have? Are employees inspired to contribute or are they controlled and micromanaged into compliance? Could you benefit from collaboration but fear not having domination and control? Does your organization have hidden gender bias whereby you reward and value traditional work ethics while devaluing strategies that could push you to the next level? As an individual, do you have high levels of self-imposed stress because you believe that there is the only one way to succeed? Dr. Clark coaches organizations and individual leaders to help them restructure for success, increase productivity, relationship build, and effectively place and transition employees.

Sign up for a free 20 minute consultation to see if Dr. Clark can help your organization better realize its vision while increasing profits.

Email felicia.clark29@yahoo.com for more information or visit www.ebooklifecoach.com.