Leigh Buchanan* says the most effective leaders right now — men and women — are those who embrace traits once considered feminine, including empathy, vulnerability and patience.
I came to the office of John Gerzema to discuss his book, The Athena Doctrine, which argues that traits classically considered feminine are essential to effective leadership today.
Gerzema manages the world’s largest database of consumers, and so is well placed to kick theoretical tyres.
Intrigued by the observations about gender, he surveyed 64,000 people in 13 countries on how they felt about Government, the economy, and the (mostly male) leaders pulling the levers.
Two thirds said the world would be a better place if men thought more like women.
Gerzema also asked consumers to characterise 125 traits as male, female, or neutral and to indicate those most desirable in modern leaders.
Topping the list of most desirable traits were patience, expressiveness, intuition, flexibility, empathy, and many other traits identified by respondents as feminine.
The Holy Grail in business today is engagement: Employees’ energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to their organisations.
Engagement has a powerful effect not only on productivity but also on profitability and customer metrics, numerous studies show.
However, it’s not something you can buy.
At a time when chief executives are demanding more from diminished, anxious work forces, they must make employees feel part of something and demonstrate their personal concern and support.
Gerzema says it’s still a man’s world with masculine structures and women conforming to those ideals.
“Feminine traits and values are a new form of innovation. They are an untapped form of competitive advantage,” he says.
Increasingly, the chief executive role is taking its place among the caring professions.
It takes a tender person to lead a tough company.
Let’s be clear: No one wants to slip the Y-chromosome off leadership’s genetic string.
Gerzema’s respondents ranked among the most desirable leadership traits decisiveness, resilience, and confidence, which they identified as masculine.
However, 81 per cent said leaders require a combination of male and female traits.
The ideal leader should be positioned between Mars and Venus, but in an environment of uncertainty and shifting power structures, Venus is rising.
In the past 15 years or so, three factors have emerged to make a softer leadership style more attractive.
Those factors are interdependence, cynicism, and the quest for sustainability.
We’ll start with interdependence. Some business leaders see competition as a sprint and some as a marathon.
For virtually all, it has become a three-legged race that is impossible to win alone.
Chief executives still bear ultimate responsibility for difficult decisions, but it’s less lonely at the top with so many constituencies staking claims to be heard.
Under those circumstances, collaboration and flexibility are essential — and testosterone is not collaboration’s friend.
Cynicism is the natural consequence of watching a long line of corporate dominoes topple over as executives ignored risk to maximise profits.
In their new book, Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman cite research showing that women are risk averse.
They are better judges than men of their own abilities and less likely to play if they don’t think they will win.
The exercise of caution is essential to earning trust — few of us are comfortable with our fate in the hands of someone who takes wild chances.
Finally, sustainability: At first, sustainability pertained exclusively to the preservation of natural resources and the environment.
The concept has expanded to include giving back to communities and supporting and developing employees — not just out of concern for their quality of life but also to improve performance.
A recent report shows that companies with more women on their boards perform better on environmental, social, and governance issues.
Gerzema puts it neatly: “Men tend to be explorers, and women are allocators.”
The effect on leadership of other trends is more ambiguous.
Like everyone else, leaders interact with the world through technology, and in many ways technology encourages a classic male style.
It strips emotion from communication, creates an impersonal global marketplace, and allows people to work in isolation.
Yet technology also makes possible co-creation, collaboration, and the outpourings of compassion.
Then, of course, there are the new generational waves washing up on corporate shores.
Millennials expect to be mentored, respected, and charged with socially meaningful work — all elements of the feminine style.
Gerzema characterises patience, long-term thinking, and community orientation as feminine.
Ambitious growth correlates with masculine traits.
Men, speculates Gerzema, are legacy oriented. Women want to nurture.
Yet even chief executives with aggressive growth strategies can lead with feminine values.
So long as founders are intent on building organisations that endure; that always pay back to the people in and around them, the two approaches are equal.
“It’s not about building bigger companies but about serving something bigger,” says Gerzema.
“There’s so much cynicism that people are out for short-term gain.
“Leadership today is about taking people into a better future. That’s a long trip.”
*Leigh Buchanan is an editor-at-large at Inc. Magazine who tweets @LeighEBuchanan
This article first appeared in Inc. Magazine.
