Managing Leadership^®

There are two core, and related, reasons why we - both men and women - tend to instinctively lean toward selecting - even deferring to - certain types of men for leadership positions, as opposed to other types of men or women.

The first is the rather obvious but unavoidable truism that we are still psychobiologically wired to our (not-too-distant) past. In a world - even the premodern, or preindustrial, world - where mere survival was always near the surface of many daily calculations in our lives, physical strength, at times a sort of in-the-moment boldness, and general intelligence were of high practical value. Evolution has taught us to find clues to survival attributes in the physical presence and bearing of people, and modern science has shown us that the conclusions we unconsciously arrive at on the basis of these clues can be remarkably prescient.

With respect to the leaders that we needed to protect us in that age, these clues seemed to point to men who are tall and strongly built signifying dominating strength, square-jawed signifying strong will and determination, with large foreheads denoting intelligence, of imposing bearing indicating a sense of command and direction, and with a stentorian voice showing force and presence.

In an age when most of these characteristics are not only not as necessary as in the past (if at all), we still are viscerally swayed by them. Since men tend to have more of these characteristics (the visible cues - not the underlying strengths putatively suggested by them), and to a greater degree, than women, we unconsciously gravitate toward a reliance on men in leadership/ positions.

The second is also related to our experience in the past, wherein we habitually associated institutions with their individual leaders. The prince was the head of state, the commander of the army, and the religious leader (or certainly struggled for dominance in that field in European history). Our political, military, and religious history - in all regions of the world - is replete with examples of our yielding to a single individual who was - or who represented - the full power of our institutions and, just as importantly, in whose hands the fate of those institutions rested.

Again, then, despite the changing of the times, the tremendous shift of sovereignty, authority, and control of our civil and private institutions from princes and aristocrats to private persons and institutions, we still habitually associate the control and fate of an organization with the person at its head.

Put these two together, and you have a strong, unconscious bias toward placing men into what we think of as positions of individual leadership. The truth, however, is that we are in an age where most elements of both of these assumptions are wrong.

On the one hand, we no longer need to rely on physical strength and intimidation to protect ourselves and our institutions, or to advance our causes. Indeed, it can be (intelligently) argued that intelligence is vastly overrated, and - especially in today’s world - can be an active danger to an organization led by one who possesses it if that person doesn’t also have certain other ameliorating characteristics (women seem to be better equipped with these. Moreover, the same trends that create the aggressiveness so prized in men diminish the value, in them, of their possession of these other, vital characteristics; but that is another topic).

On the other hand, our institutions - particularly our business organizations - aren’t technically supposed to be controlled by, or have their fates dependent on the singular ability of, their bosses anymore. Owners are supposed to exercise strategic control, and delegate execution of their policies to managers.

Much of the difficulty with corporate scandals that have bedeviled us in recent years arises from our confounding our habitual reliance on the singular individual leader at the head of organizations with the fiduciary environment that makes the way we do that troublesome, to say the least. A plain example is the tendency, most pronounced in the US, to double-hat the same person as CEO and Chair of the Board.

The argument for this is that it streamlines authority, increasing flexibility and dexterity and makes organizations more effective and efficient. The truth, however, is that by making the boss his (or her) own boss it puts the fox in charge of the hen-house, muddles the chain of command, clouds accountability, and commits the serious modern era of disenfranchising owners of the right to have their interests properly and actively represented on the board.

Why do I bring all that up in a discussion of women leaders? Because I believe that if we are able to lessen the emphasis on individual leadership of our organizations and return it to proper management of them, we will begin to see more women in the very top positions, due to their unique abilities in this area. The instincts that cause us to select men for “leadership” positions tend to be misplaced in the modern world and to cause us harm.

Moreover, the continuing instinct by men to give expression to these traditional “leadership” characteristics perpetuates these errors. The antidotes to this sort of thing aren’t the so-called nurturing or communicative leadership skills that women presumably have; it is their generally superior future goal-orientation, and their ability to exercise focus in the context of a broader situational awareness.

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Note: In a recent post I pointed out that the Managing Leadership Blog is now available on mobile platforms such as your internet-capable mobile phone or pocket computer. I should have mentioned, and am at pains to do so now, that I have Mike Sansone, author of Converstations, to thank for the informative item that led to this development. Thanks Mike!

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