Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg* says knowing how to manage their mental energy can improve women’s chances of success once they have reached the top.
Photo: Jeremy Thomas
For women with leadership ambitions, there is no shortage of advice for how to reach the top.
But what happens after the promotion?
While top-level jobs are tough on everyone, the transition to senior management comes with extra challenges for women.
Some are psychological, pertaining to gender differences in risk-taking and self-confidence.
Others are structural; in parenting, for instance, childcare and domestic duties are still disproportionately shouldered by women.
While these barriers affect women at all levels, they are particularly pronounced in the pressure-cooker environment at the top, putting women at a disadvantage.
My work has given me some insights into how women leaders can improve their chances of success once they have reached the top.
At the centre is managing your mental energy.
Below are three tactics that my female clients have used to succeed in a top-level job.
- Know your psychological superchargers
The idea of maintaining a work–life balance at the very top is fictional.
One management team I worked with had the motto “Deliver or Die”; there was little doubt as to where “me time” belonged in that particular team’s list of priorities.
Given this brutal reality, how do female top leaders manage to recharge their batteries?
Part of the answer lies in realising that not all sources of energy are equal.
Some activities are what I call “psychological superchargers” — they yield a disproportionately bigger energy boost than others.
The nature of these varies, but the most successful women I’ve worked with figured out what theirs were and tapped into them regularly.
In looking for your own superchargers, keep two things in mind: first, set aside culturally mandated ideas about what women are supposed or not supposed to gain energy from.
Second, indulge your inner hedonist.
Many of the female leaders I coach are highly conscientious people, a trait that served to get them into the top job, but they also have a tendency to forget having fun and enjoying life.
- Find a work ally
Your personal life, of course, is not the only source of energy; under the right conditions, your work can also contribute to your mental reserves.
The problem is, those conditions are generally not present at the top.
Senior leadership teams are often political, and failures typically have much larger consequences.
What, then, can be done to create a psychological work environment that helps maintain your energy?
The answer is to abandon the idea that your team as a whole can serve as a safe place.
Instead, concentrate on gaining a single close ally — that is, a person in your team that you feel free to discuss things with and use as an outlet for any inevitable frustrations.
With luck, you may have an ally on the team already.
But if you don’t, there are ways you can speed up the process of creating such a relationship.
First, don’t necessarily focus on gender.
What I’ve found to be more important than gender is shared values: that the other person is someone you can relate to on a deeper level, and someone you can feel free to share a laugh with.
Second, make your own particular passions known.
Regularly bring up the things you care about and seek out the individuals who respond to those things, building relationships based on authentic commonalities.
Finally, create opportunities to talk to people one-on-one, outside the usual work setting.
This could be sharing a car ride to an offsite or making sure you get a seat next to each other on a long flight.
Daily routines can help too: some of my clients have built alliances through exercising together or carpooling, using that time to discuss new ideas or how to cope with the political game around them.
- Overcome anxiety by channelling your values
Risk-taking is part and parcel of corporate careers, and few people, men or women, enter the top ranks of the organisation without having made a bold gamble or two along the way.
But at the top, the nature of risk-taking changes significantly.
There is a lot more at stake.
In my experience, women struggle with this a lot more than men, to the point where anxiety becomes an overriding emotion in their new role.
This creates a double handicap.
Anxiety becomes a major energy leech, constantly siphoning off your mental surplus.
At the same time, when your anxiety level is high, it is difficult to take chances with new approaches, or even to see the situation with clear eyes.
So, how should female leaders find the daily courage to step up to the plate, make tough choices, or stand alone on an issue — all while not allowing the pressure to drain away their energy?
It’s all rooted in your larger motivation: do you focus on your career, aiming to maintain or even improve your position in the group?
Or do you focus more on making a difference?
Paradoxically, women who focus on their career as their main goal are less likely to be truly impactful as a leader.
When your biggest aim is to avoid visible failures, the temptation to play it safe can lead to a career dominated by perpetual anxiety, and a tendency to shy away from tough, career-defining calls.
In comparison, the successful women I’ve coached didn’t see their career as an end goal.
Rather, they saw it as a tool to create results and breakthroughs around things they really cared about.
Their focus on doing what’s right created a mental bulwark against extreme anxiety, allowing them to keep calm under pressure.
The ability to have the courage of your convictions is essential, as is having the nerve to follow a path.
The tactics I have outlined can make a real difference in terms of managing your energy and succeeding at the top.
Unfairly or not, women who enter top management face the added burden of showing they can perform as well or better than their male peers.
It’s not enough to shatter the glass ceiling.
We have to make sure it stays shattered.
* Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg is an executive coach to senior-level leaders.
This article first appeared at hbr.org.
