There’s been a disturbing trend on social media and in online leadership articles of late. A trend that sends a misguided message to upcoming and incumbent female leaders. A subliminal ‘call to arms’ for female leaders to adopt traits that are undesirable for any leader. Traits such as being aggressive, bossy, uncompromising, and non-collaborative and normalising this behavior by reframing the language and promoting the female leader as strong and powerful. There is also the notion that women are criticised and even penalised for demonstrating the same behaviors and characteristics as their male counterparts. The same behaviors and characteristics that everyone agrees are undesirable in male leaders. If they are being criticised, it’s because they are emulating the bad leadership demonstrated by many male leaders; behavior that shouldn’t be tolerated regardless of gender.
There are many articles and media posts promoting the idea that these bad behaviors are solely male traits and that women wanting to climb the corporate ladder need to embrace them. Check out this Forbes article by Liz Elting where she discusses the “five traits every woman leader needs to embrace”. Many articles like this have been published in recent times, and we get it! Women want to be respected and treated the same as their male counterparts.
The hard thing to understand is the notion that the bad behavior we despise in some high profile, inept male leaders, the aggressive, arrogant, condescending, and non-collaborative behavior, is somehow what female leaders should aspire to and emulate. Anecdotally, bad leadership is not expressly the domain of male leaders, and every leader should strive to set the moral and character example for their organisation and their community. Too often nowadays, bad leadership behavior is displayed by both genders, at every level of leadership and across both the private and public sectors. What is most difficult to understand is why anyone would think the opposite of bad leadership is worse leadership!
This is not to suggest that women should be timid or passive leaders. The hope is that they don’t try to copy their male counterparts and raise the leadership bar and provide a more empathetic, collaborative, and considered approach to how leadership is performed.
We need to change the message and the language we use to inspire women, and men, to be better leaders. Good leadership is underpinned by good character and we should all be striving to be better leaders, not worse; otherwise, we become that which you despise.
