Dear Women,
Whenever you are talking about your leadership to reach your goal, it is also carrying 3 basic questions:
Where are you today?
Where do you want to go?
How can you reach there?
I have no problem with the first two questions, my curiosity always continues with the third question – it’s like, I keep asking myself, how can we really make this ‘how’ possible?
With the flow of a less predictable world, our way of thinking, behaving and acting is turning more unpredictable. It is creating a direct impact on how we work with ourself and others – in our life as well as at work. When I started working in Australian market, keeping my “how” word in mind, I gradually realized that the way we used to think about the term called ‘leadership and performance’ is now quite changed. Today’s leadership demands flexibility, creativity and emotional intelligence – in one word, agility.
I got my broader answer of “how”, but it narrowed me down with a series of “how’s”.
Being a team member of Kristen Hansen, who is paving the way of “neuroscience in leadership and performance” in Australian corporates, I am lucky to come across the research-backed approach of our way of thinking, behaving and performing. There I have found truly interesting insights of today’s shift of ‘leadership’ practice. In a nutshell, today’s leadership practice focuses on the following areas:
Leaders are integrative: They bring things together to achieve cumulative value. Beside leadership competencies like – decision making, innovation, persuasion and collaboration, it’s also linked with biology – brain science. It’s an integrative approach to our brain functions and physical abilities.
How do they practice integration?
In work or life there are some sudden situations when others’ language of telling us shuts our brain down. That immediately causes our brain into the threat state, we feel demotivated and that impacts on our decision making, innovation, collaboration and engagement. Which is called amygdala hijack of our brain. Being a leader of today, we do not need to learn how we can collaborate better, rather we need to know the language that activates others to be collaborative, innovative and strategic.
Leaders are focused: The present trend of leadership is simplicity. Leaders are not looking into a set of competencies. They are focused. They know what they expect and they know how to reflect it in 3 to 4 frameworks, rather than having a series of categories to have almost everything. They realise it’s essential to be focused, rather than increasing the complexity that stops the execution.
Leaders see insight: Human beings change their behaviour when they know the insight. Today’s leaders observe different situations, they try to have the insight about the situation and they correlate the behaviour with situations. They also communicate the insights to others which leads others to change.
Leaders can control: They should also be aware of the emotional state of self and others. They have the conversation on clarity by knowing the emotional state of others. And that leads a quality thinking in others.
In summary, to become the agile leader for today, we need to be integrated, focused, insightful and emotionally intelligent.
So, how do you find your fit to this for being the “women in leadership”?
Honestly speaking, whenever I hear the term ‘women in leadership’, I feel fortunate.
You may also agree that we are fortunate because today we have a good number of choices to pick our as a career from. We are fortunate that we have opportunities to get support to pursue our career. We have the facilities, funding and families to take ourselves to a leadership role.
But what frustrates me, is still women are not making it to the top at any profession at anywhere in the world. From Government sector to corporate and even in non-profit sectors, its only 13%, 16%…….maximum 20% of women who could reach the top.
What stops you? What are the problem behind this?
I shall refer the TED talk by the American author, Sheryl Sandberg who mentioned the three ways that we leave ourselves behind to what we truly deserve:
- We don’t attempt to seat at the table. We often sideline ourselves because we feel unworthy and substantially underestimate our own abilities.
- We have a tendency to do far more than what we should for the family.
- We leave before we are ready to leave. We make unconscious decisions that limit our success in the workplace.
In most of the cases we have a problem of positioning ourselves, we have a never ending habit of feeling guilty for not doing enough for the family and kids, and in some cases we start our career with a narrow focused mindset.
Is it the case with you too?
Do you find any relevance to any of the areas above with your thought for your life as well?
Believe me, it’s the time to rethink.
And I have a good news for you!!!
“According to the insights of brain science, women’s brains are already wired for leadership.”
Yes, you have the biological capabilities to hold a C-Suite position.
WOMEN HAVE INTEGRATED BRAIN: Among six major chemicals in our Limbic System that impact our interaction with others, you have larger amounts of the four chemicals. This drives you to keep calm in stressful situations, connect with people, and extend empathy towards customers, clients, colleagues and stakeholders.
WOMEN HAVE BETTER INSIGHTS AND CONTROL: Biologically you are better at expressing emotions with verbal agility, listening more acutely and, as a result, understand more about the actual situation, empathizing with what others are feeling, giving more complete attention to the other person with whom you are in coaching/performance conversation and maintaining respectful boundaries during arguments.
WOMEN ARE MULTI-FOCUSED: Your Pre Frontal Cortex (PFC), the part of brain which is responsible for thinking, planning, organizing and controlling, is comparatively more active. Your brain is intuitive. That allows you to find more insights of the situation and helps to be more creative and persuasive.
You have a talent for language, a capacity to read postures, gestures and facial expressions, a capacity for empathy and emotional sensitivity, an excellent sense of touch, taste, smell and hearing, a desire for long-term planning with a contextual overview and an ability to focus attention on task completion.
What do you need more except for having a growth mind set?
Dear women, there is no reason to seat back. Be focused to your goal, take some brain break to find more insights of your purpose, be your own coach, follow up regularly and keep stretching yourself to keep moving forward.
Just go ahead, with your head!
Published on WIL Women In Leadership – Inspiring Women in Leadership, Issue: April-June 2016, page 49-52