3 in 4 women aspire to leadership
By Laura Ashley-Timms
McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2023 report revealed that three in four young women aspire to senior leadership positions. While organisations are seeing more female leaders in their ranks, the report also highlighted management positions are still dominated by older white men, with less of a change since 2018 than hoped for.
Given the prevailing male-dominated world of leadership, women aspiring to senior positions do have a tricky road to navigate. How can they be the boss without being ‘bossy’? How can they show empathy without being seen as ‘soft’? How can they succeed individually without being considered ‘selfish’ and support others?
Let’s look at 5 skills professional women can develop to achieve a successful leadership career:
Adopt an enquiry-led approach
It is common for male leaders to have a ‘hunt-fix-solve’ approach with their teams – they provide directions in a ‘telling/ordering’ manner. Female leaders who emulate this, mistakenly believing that this is the only way to be an effective manager, can, frustratingly, be perceived as ‘bossy’, regardless of their best intentions. Instead, women should develop the ability to help others achieve more through a powerful, but more reflective enquiry-led approach, which means learning to ask more insightful questions of others.
Asking authentic questions intended to stimulate other people’s thinking shows your staff that you believe in their ability to generate their own insights and ideas and fosters deeper, more trusting connections.
As a tip, try to avoid asking ‘Why…?’ questions, which can come across as unintentionally critical, or that you’re assigning blame. Instead, favour ‘What…?’ Questions, which remove the personal inference, taking the pressure off your staff so they can think through the situation more confidently. By developing the capabilities of your team, you’ll be able to find and unleash their unique skills and talents and use these to your team’s advantage – benefiting both your leadership progression and their self-development.
Learn when to bite your lip
In a similar vein, it can be tempting as female managers climb the ladder to want to help people (a particularly female trait) by jumping into staff problems and suggesting answers or solutions based on their experience (wanting to add value by demonstrating their own capability and competence). Yet, having asked someone a powerful question, filling the silence that follows with the sound of your own voice and offering your suggestions can be disastrous for your staff’s confidence and development. Learning to mentally stop and bite your lip when an issue is brought to you is the crucial first step to assess the situation and recognise what question will be most beneficial to help them think the problem through and begin to formulate a solution themselves.
Ace your active listening
Active listening is a crucial skill to develop to foster trust and empathy with your team, two of the most important elements of effective leadership. When a team member approaches you with a problem, be present in the moment and try to sense their state – what is their mood? How rapidly are they breathing? How much energy do they seem to have? Do they seem stressed? Concentrate on how people are speaking and what they are, and aren’t, saying. Afterwards, it’s just as crucial to acknowledge that you’ve heard them and signal that you’re ready to help.
Give appreciative feedback
Let’s be honest, giving (and receiving) feedback can be a tension-fraught business, particularly for women. Most of us associate giving feedback with challenging conversations as we try to share something that we want people to improve upon. If not handled well, it can crush confidence and alienate leaders from their teams. A way to flip the whole approach on its head is by looking out for those opportunities to give your staff appreciative feedback. Deliberately looking for situations where someone has utilised a particular behaviour or strength that you’d like to see more of, instead of only focusing on areas for improvement, can offer a perfect opportunity for you to draw their attention to what went well about that. This is a great way to not only build your confident feedback skills but also to reinforce positive behaviour in others which strengthens their trust and connection with you. Here are some specific tips for giving appreciative feedback:
- Give the feedback as soon as you spot it
- Be sincere and specific
- Focus praise on the action or behaviour (objective) rather than the individual themself (subjective)
- Link the actions to the positive result that you noticed
Take people with you
True leadership is about ‘enabling’ others. Helping those around you to develop and advance is incredibly effective as you progress in your leadership career, where you can only really achieve things through and with others. Taking people with you on your journey by constantly finding, believing in, and unleashing their capabilities is less about ego and more about empowering others – which sits particularly well for female leaders.
Laura Ashley-Timms is the COO of performance consultancy Notion, creators of the multi-award-winning STAR® Manager programme being pursued by leaders and managers in over 40 countries. Laura is also the co-author of new management bestseller The Answer is a Question.
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