While organisations continue to evolve their leadership and organisational cultures, too many overlook a key underlying challenge: their prevailing leadership concept. According to the scholars, Kim Turnbull-James and Joanna Probert, the leadership concept is the common perception throughout a workplace of what makes one suitable as a leader. This organisation-wide archetype inevitably prompts some compliance with it amongst those who aspire to leadership positions. However, in many organisations, this is gendered, and leadership is perceived as a masculine-centred role. This can make it particularly difficult for women to ‘fit’, since they have inherent conflicts between the demands of leadership roles and their lifestyles, and identity as women and as leaders. Such are these tensions, that many female entrepreneurs report that the gendered nature of leadership progression was a key prompt for leaving employment and starting their own firm. Correspondingly, when they do start their firms, women have also reported that they seek to define their own working environment differently from traditional cultures, and in so doing, tend to lead differently.
Certainly, there are observable differences between how most men and most women behave in virtually all cultures. Whether biologically or socially determined, as the political philosopher Judith Butler[1] theorises, we tend to behave – or perform – within prevailing socio-cultural expectations. Consequently, research throughout the last 30 years has tended to find that while leadership norms such as directive and authoritative approaches, often most demonstrated by men, still dominate many organisations’ leadership concept, women have better communication and social skills and greater emotional intelligence. But while the leadership rates for women are still woefully unequal with those for men, as per LeanIn, McKinsey & Co. and Grant Thornton, all report that women make up less than a third of those occupying senior leadership positions, the tendency for women to apply participative styles of leadership might be perfect for organisations.
In the modern, globally connected world, there is general recognition of the benefits of valuing and developing people through social and relational approaches to leading, and that this motivates and enables engagement and excellence. The Covid pandemic experience heightened awareness of this amongst organisations because it forced them to consider new ways of maintaining staff engagement when they were working remotely. The key at that time was to develop communities amongst their people, connected by expedient use of communications technologies. Additionally, flexible hours, working from home, ongoing use of technology to connect people, all assisted in maintaining performance, and these new work modes have changed expectations amongst people. For many organisations, there has been a return to business as usual since the pandemic though. For many, this no longer satisfies appeal and expectations of work. Young people and women are amongst those most affected, and there is observed demand for work to fit better with the other parts of life everyone experiences. This includes well-being and the need to feel valued and part of a team effort, and relational approaches to leading are most effective for this. As such, better social and emotional abilities are key assets.
Jannie Tam, a prominent business leader and a talent development expert, knows this well. Jannie started the training and talent development company GROWDynamics in Hong Kong. She was well aware that a new firm could not compete with large or established businesses on wages, and she knew she had to offer other incentives to recruit great staff. At the outset, therefore, she took a leadership approach based on a notional co-creation of the firm, where it would develop as a consequence of her first employees “buying into the idea” and contributing to its success. Jannie was, and continues to be, passionate about her business, and she inspired enthusiasm amongst her first recruits by conveying that passion, knowing that excitement about the prospect of being part of the opportunity would attract great people. Jannie maintains an inclusive approach to this day. She claims a key part of this is always taking the ambitions of her employees into consideration, so that as they flourish so too does GROWDynamics. To this end, she consults on opportunities and challenges, encourages staff to develop ideas and solutions, operates a no-blame culture, and uses inclusivity to build community. The outcome is that staff understand they are contributing and are motivated to contribute more, and indeed, according to Jannie, they engage in a shared vision for the firm via a collective sense of emotional ownership; as Jannie puts it: “my role as a leader is to help them succeed.”
This approach to leadership is very different to that most often applied in organisations. Typically, hierarchy, conformity and direction have characterised the leadership concept, and especially in business. But organisations with ambition to develop might well be missing a trick. Traditional views on leading may be limiting organisational fortunes, may even be counterproductive for firms with aspirations for growth and innovation. As Jannie demonstrates, if an organisation is a community of people working towards strategic goals, then leading the development of that organisation is best achieved by valuing and developing those people. Recent leadership research finds consistently that the modes most effective for this are those that are relational and people-centred. And women have the socio-cultural edge here. Certainly, like many other women-led firms, this has allowed Jannie’s organisation to thrive:
“Women are important. We are more empathetic. …I don’t feel like it is important or necessary to fight to do all things like men. …I would say the highest level of leadership is to be able to connect with people.”
