Lately I’ve been receiving a lot of requests and suggestions about developing a leadership program for women. I’m assuming this is because people have noticed that I’m a woman and that I talk a lot about leadership. So naturally I must have the secret formula for making women effective leaders, right?
And they get really mad when I tell them what I think…
There’s no such thing as “leadership for women”.
Now before you all jump down my throat and call me a misogynist, let me clarify. I’m not anti-women and I don’t believe that women make bad leaders. Leadership is about finding a path forward and inspiring others to follow it. The path finding part has nothing to do with gender, race, shoe size or IQ. It has to do with the relentless pursuit of a solution, and the ability to think creatively or partner up with people who can. The inspiration part is about the ability to authentically transfer passion from yourself to someone else and it’s also totally unrelated to what you look like or where you came from.
I know great leaders who happen to be women and others who happen to be men. I also know crappy leaders from both genders and the difference (as far as I have seen) between them is that great leaders refuse to make excuses or allow anything to stand between them and their goal.
So when people ask me what makes a woman a great leader, I say “the woman”. If you start throwing around generalizations about what women are like or what men are like, all you are doing is creating possible reasons for failure. If you start out thinking you’re behind the eight ball because you’re a woman and someone else’s definition of “woman” includes a lack of leadership capability, you will just have added one more obstacle to your path. Why would you do that to yourself?
There are women who are astronauts and CEOs and entrepreneurs. If you are looking for role models, you’ll find them in every field. There are also thousands of women who are not great leaders, but that’s not because they are women, it’s because they haven’t found the desire and the tools to become what they want to be.
So if you’d like me to speak or write or do workshops about leadership, I’d love to. If you want to find the authentic leader that lives inside of you, let me know. But please don’t ask me to do workshops or write books that perpetuate the notion that women need some special sauce to be great leaders.
