Two Things you need for Balanced Leadership

Women are still largely underrepresented in top management and boards. The dominant culture at the top is a masculine culture, putting forward masculine qualities, values and behaviors. Metaresearch by Catalyst revealed that corporate culture is a stronger factor for predicting leadership effectiveness than gender. In other words, dominant masculine corporate cultures “produce” predominantly masculine leaders (both men and women).

However, feminine qualities and values are missing at top levels. Some examples: the ability to connect with increasingly diverse customers and (younger) employees, the ability to listen, to take a step back, to think long term, the drive to take up a societal role through sustainable businesses with respect for people and planet, to create the right conditions for creativity and innovation by putting together diverse teams, etc…

Until now, a lot of energy has been put in “selling” the women (make the business case), or “fixing” the women (get women to play the political game), in order for them to advance on the corporate ladder.

As long as we do not confront and try to change the dominant masculine culture, neither approach will work. In a dominant masculine culture, women are expected to act in a “feminine” way (taking care behavior) while men are encouraged to behave in a “masculine” way (taking charge behavior). There is little room to fundamentally question these stereotypes which are holding back both women and more sensitive/feminine men.

Men and women have an inner masculine and feminine pole (as already described by C.G. Jung).
Every individual has the potential to develop both sides and thus achieve personal balance.
Balanced Leadership is about recognizing, valuing, developing and using those inner masculine and feminine qualities.
It’s a way forward for men and women to grow as an individual and a leader, beyond gender stereotypes and stereotypical definitions of leadership. It’s the kind of new leadership we urgently need to develop if we want to be ready for the future challenges of our planet.

Balanced Leadership requires two things:
1. A new definition of leadership, combining feminine and masculine qualities to define excellent leadership, this implies rewriting leadership competencies and models and rethinking leadership development modules
2. A new look at gender: seeing it as an important and valuable part of an individual, but not limited to the “gender roles”, this implies talking about gender roles and not sweeping them under the carpet

Read more on the website of The Centre for Balanced Leadership.