The power play needs to be understood as one graduates towards the next innings of the leadership journey. I found that my recent leadership inning was the toughest; as it demanded a very different behaviour from how I had worked thus far. Some behaviours that required changes – were being empathetic yet assertive (not aggressive) in communication, being more vocal yet listening more all the time, learning to exert your power subtly or directly but yet keeping the compassion, letting go of control and trusting the team on delivery, while not shirking your accountability. This fostered a spirit of camaraderie as our dependancies grew on each other. As I grew into leadership roles, I had to learn to leverage a consensus approach on decision-making in the diverse environment we worked to foster collaboration. But as expected, I had to also ensure that the goals were met by being in charge, if there was a crisis. Different situations require different behaviours and style. My view is that this flexibility of style can be easily imbibed by women given they are so much more used to handling multiple and conflicting demands between home and work! It is about being self aware.
Flexing your style and understanding the appropriate behaviours that foster collaboration and empathy, is the key to getting support from your team and stakeholders. Many a time this becomes a process of learning and unlearning. As I grew into bigger roles, the expectations changed not just from my managers and stakeholders, but also from peers and team members. It was my privilege to lead people and I had to step upto it, by listening to them, supporting them and also challenging them. One of my recent managers once told me that people expect to be led well. This was true as leadership is a responsibility not an entitlement. Depending on the team members, their collective temperament and prevailing culture of the groups, there may be subtle practices and norms which have to be understood and integrated with. As a new leader even if you want to change the culture, it is imperative to understand these unsaid rules and be a part of the team bonds to bring about the spirit of collaboration.
MANAGERS
Managers are a product of what they have managed in the past. To have a collaborative relationship you need to understand them and you have to ensure they understand you! During the course of my career, I have had some great managers who also mentored me, while some who probably needed more mentoring themselves. At leadership levels, you may consider choosing your managers as much as the role if you can, as your success is integrally tied to how this relationship works out. Someone once told me, ‘you are as good as your manager thinks you are. If he or she thinks you are not doing well, then go work for another manager!’
Having worked with quite a few managers, both men and women, I felt that once a working relationship was formed, one had to go through a bit of an education process with them, especially the male managers, about how I worked, my drivers and expectations. Sometimes their management style was driven by what they had experienced in the past with women subordinates, or by their lack of experience with them. At times, it was also driven by their personal outlook about women based on their socialisation and what they may have observed at home or college.
All in all, you need to help yourself by helping them understand who you are and what collaboration you want/need from them to help your career. This dawned on me even more clearly, when I decided to work between cities or countries at different points of time in my career. It was not only a different way for me to manage my work, but also a learning experience for my managers who had never had a chaotic woman employee like me working all over the place! They had to come up the learning curve as well and had changed their work habits to accommodate this new work practice in their life. And they did support me once they understood how committed I was, irrespective of how and where I worked from. It took some candid conversations to set some realistic expectations and patience at both ends to get used to this way of working. Finally the real deal is in how your perform and deliver!
There are various views about how it is to work for a woman manager. I have had one talented, woman manager in my career (there are very few on the top!), whose style was slightly different than mine, in terms of how she engaged with the team. She was much focused on work and very efficient with her time. She was hard-working and always on top of the game. I experienced that same commitment and drive on work from her as I did with the male managers. Contrary to prevaling perceptions, I had more baby talk and family chats with men than women managers who were more focused on getting the work done on time so that they could retrun home timely to attend to their family responsibilities!
At senior levels, most of us need a sense of confidence and trust in our leadership. That usually inspires a leader to lead better. Working in Europe or in the US, exposed me to different styles of leadership, working styles and ways of communication. Gender or culture was less relevant once the leaders set a common purpose and credibly backed the team to deliver it. All managers have some learning to offer. We can often learn by emulating their strengths and also by ensuring that we don’t make their development areas our own! Working with tough managers or those we don’t generally relate to, provides a different kind of learning about what not to do.
TEAMS
It is critical to empower people along the way so they beocome your collaborative partners. A strong team is a reflection of a leader’s strength. The stronger one’s team is, the more one is able to achieve. A leader’s success is not measured by what he or she has been able to accomplish alone, but by his/her ability to identify talent, nurture teams and drive them to excel. In order to achieve more, it is essential to keep building collaborative self-reliant teams. The more leaders do this, the more people want to work with them, leading to greater achievement. It is also essential to have a flexible style, adapting to the needs and development of varying team members. Women managers are naturally well-equipped with many of such softer skills to nurture others. These are core for managing a team well. I have seen both men and women leaders do well here.
Diverse teams provide different perspectives and solutions for problem solving. Such groups collaborate well to challenges with creative problem solving. There is a lot of debate about fostering more gender diversity in teams. I have had most of my experience in the HR function. This function somehow has had a higher number of women. Many a time I felt the function needs to have a better balance of men and women. The driver for this imbalance may be due to the fact that HR is perceived to be an internal support function, more intuitive with softer skills at the core, less high-pressure and may be more flexible. Reality can’t be farther away from this. On numerous occasions, across all my HR roles, the complexities that I have had to manage, have been beyond a lot of line managers’ comprehension, the stress or pressure one has undergone have been similar to sales pressure, the risk I have had to tread, put me on the line like any other.
Having a balanced number of men and women in the team is important. In my experience I have found men in HR are very intuitive and adept at soft skills apart from having a great potential to multi-task. I have found that male team members have been fairly empathetic as required by the function. Also I have found when men in the team and peer group are engaged with the diversity agenda, the likelihood of its success is very high. They promote the inclusive approach, propagate sensitisation and help us work through the unconscious biases at work. Different perspectives foster innovation and a collaborative spirit of learning together.
PEERS AND STAKEHOLDERS: COLLABORATION OR COMPETITION!
For anyone climbing up the ladder, the competition is rife across all levels and at each step you take. As you move forward, you realise that for any leadership role, it is the survival of the fittest. Usually after decades of experience you are yet in the race, because you are good at what you do and how you do it. You have cracked the code. From here to the C-Suite role, things get more exciting. It is no more about how well you did in the past but how you step up your game going forward, how you size up the environment and flex your style to respond to it.
What has made you successful till now may not necessarily make you successful in the future, unless you understand this. Peers are collaborators but can also be competition, so these relationships may change and need to be managed sensitively. Women often get caught up between relationships at this juncture when objectivity and keeping an eye on the goal is necessary.
At senior levels neither is everyone a friend, nor a foe. Pick the ones you can trust. You do compete amongst friends and rivals both. For women, I have seen that this results in their competitors underplaying their strengths and maybe overplaying issues. Women need to step up the game here. People may throw many things at you, including gender stereotypes, if that helps their agenda. In the past as I progressed to senior roles, some of the comments I learnt to ignore were, ‘Can you really manage these dynamic bankers and their style?’ Or, ‘Can you manage tricky union issues?’ I never understood why these questions were asked of me. Was it my competence level or my gender? Questions seemed to imply that I was too soft to handle this.
During my career transitions, I learnt that peer relationships that are managed well through continuous engagement, can foster collaboration that will help achieve success. Peers and key stakeholders can be helpful and constructive support if we have some common ground and sometimes common foes! Also, this relationship needs to be nurtured at both ends. It is not right to expect co-workers to collaborate with us if we are not able to add value in return. Offering our own support, inputs and genuine interest in their pursuits, allows us to build a symbiotic network of colleagues – peers, stakeholders and seniors.
We are aware that many leadership or management teams are yet to bring about a balance in styles with more women at the table. This poses a unique challenge for a few (sometimes a bit lonely!), senior women who are there. How they flex their style or adopt appropriate behaviours to influence and make an impact in the senior forums, is key to how the tone is set for other women entering senior management teams. I don’t wish to generalise, but in my career I have witnessed two reactions from women in such situations, though there could be a third one which is somewhere between the two.
– Some senior women debate the appropriate style to manage the male-dominated board room but fall back into a comfort zone by being the calm and nurturing team member. This is usually less effective. In order to make peace, women step back and play a passive role or at best a facilitator’s role in such senior meetings. Either ways they are unable to be decision-makers. In such cases, women are essentially working within a stereotype that is self re-inforced. It sometimes emanates from the need to be accepted by being what a woman is expected to be within the social norms which creates no dissonance and keeps harmony. Standing out of the normal can be intimidating and uncomfortable for this group. They tend to sit back from key debates as it involves conflicts and generates a lot of negative energy, which is not always easy to handle to keep yourself on track. The relatively aggressive behaviours of men can sometimes intimidate women and they are unable to retort vociferously when they must.
– Some senior women tend to change themselves to be more assertive by either using a firm tone of voice and body language, frequent usage of action words and pushing for decisions. I do feel for these women, having experienced this dilemma myself. It often comes down to balancing between who you really are versus who you need to be to command your position. It is ideal when there is no conflict but it can be tough if the demand of the role and the related style may not be natural. Very often I have witnessed, such tough, assertive women are perceived negatively by their colleagues, both men and women. Assertive women are threatening to the traditional persona of a caring, sacrificing and demure woman. I found that assertive women get branded as bossy, self-centred and political, contrary to a man who may be exhibiting similar behaviours. A man with such a style is perceived far more positively and is understood to be a natural leader. A question it does raise, however, is that does a woman need to behave like a man to get ahead? Maybe, or maybe not. I have also witnessed some of these women leaders who flex their style do make it forward though do not always become part of the “boys’ club” and many not feel the need to! Unfortunately, sometimes the bigger issue for ‘aggressive’ women is the alienation from the other women who may not relate to this overt ambition or drive. This is why it can get even more lonely at the top for some women.
You may want to think what style you want to leverage. There is nothing right or wrong as both have some benefits and some costs. The question to reflect upon is what sits well with you and what is most effective in the circumstances that you may be in.
I have tried both these styles in various roles in my career. The first one was easy, uncontroversial, collegial and acceptable but is not the leadership play, especially in boards or management teams. The second one is tougher. You don’t have to be abrasive but assertive and must have the right intent. In this case, the mould has to be broken and hence, there can be negative consequences, misperceptions and branding that you may not like. However, the opportunity for you to get to a decision maker’s role is possible. Over a period of time you need to build allies and a set of people who understand and appreciate your intent and any negative perceptions may fade away. The issue is that it takes time and one needs to have the conviction to be able to withstand some tough times until then. But then again, a leadership journey is not meant to be easy!
MENTORS
Apart from direct managers, with whom my straight conversations and explicit statement of emotions experienced, helped bridge the gap, I also benefitted from some great mentors and sponsors. I think in a male-dominated world, you have to first understand the rules of the game even before you can think about changing them. These mentors were tremendously supportive. I have made a constant reference to them in my journey. In my experience my mentors who have been men, have helped me interpret and crack the code.
To engage with mentors, you need to gauge your chemistry, mentor profile, impact and reach out to people you feel comfortable with. Ask them to be your mentors. If you don’t know them, have a colleague or HR facilitate. Most organisations have mentoring programmes that you could volunteer for. You could also reach out to people outside work.
My mentors have helped me by being explicit and direct (some times much more than my female friends) about what worked or not, what I did well or didn’t. This was done in a non-evaluative way and hence it worked. I have some important takeaways as below, from these mentoring sessions.
– Firstly, I learnt that objectivity is a wonderful quality to cultivate especially when you deal with problems. Being objective enables your constructive thinking. Getting it straight was easier to comprehend for me. Most of my male mentors were less emotive about the feedback they gave, especially when I did not get something right
– Secondly, I was taught the value of commitment at work to achieve the larger goals. However, with commitment comes focus, leading to a no-nonsense attitude which I saw more in men than women. I learnt from them the value of being intolerant of bad behaviours, practices or distractions, if I was doing the right thing with a hundred per cent commitment. Work hard and play hard.
– Thirdly, they helped me look at the big picture more clearly. With one of my mentors in New York, I remember being told how I needed to sometimes step outside the bubble at work. This helps to look at interconnections between different parts at work, playing of various interactions and connections between multiple people and departments. I often apply this and it really helps.
– Lastly, I was taught not to underplay myself and be ready to position myself rightly for the appropriate opportunities. Men market themselves better. Women are usually more self-deprecating and look for perfection in most things including themselves. My male mentors always advised me that when you are ready about sixty per cent for the next leap, then jump! You will find yourself growing fast into the next opportunity so long as you are convinced this is the right one for you!
From
my experience, I think working with any mentor is helpful. However, I found the experience with men mentors particularly helpful in learning the operating styles on the banking floors, understanding thought processes around the table, and hence I was better prepped for dealing with business problems in a male-dominated environment. All the men who mentored me had seen me at work that mattered to them. They did not mentor me because I struggled at the workplace on the basis of gender!
I remember when I moved into one of my leadership roles overseas; my announcement was to be released to business seniors in a few days. The business heads, who had also been a mentor came forward, and decided that he would induct me in the business by introducing me to all the major stakeholders in person, across the floor rather than sending an e-mail. I was unsure what that meant but went along with him. He took me from one office cabin to another, giving each one a short description of what I was expected to do and how important that was! He did not have to do this. In retrospect, this was a great intervention. His short, but face-to-face introduction, gave me the right positioning that made my transition and induction extremely smooth. It got me at the table right away!
Like other individuals I have had my fair share of low points in my career. Sometimes I felt one worked hard but did not get rewarded enough. At other times, I did not get promoted when I felt deserving of it. I have been a victim of politics and fell flat on my face sometimes, not knowing how to deal with it. Even more difficult times were when I struggled with new managers or was unsure of how to expand my network or circle influence beyond immediate colleagues. In all such situations I benefitted from a lot of support from all my mentors. Their most significant contribution was to help me understand environment, colleagues, managers and peers and giving me the requisite advice to deal with them. Sometimes they stood behind me like a rock when I hit the bottom and ensured I resurrected myself. I would like to acknowledge their contribution and express my heartfelt gratitude to them.
Can I Have It All Page 16