A Leadership Quality Men Lack
A key leadership quality men can learn from women. INTIMACY.
Intimacy – the ability to connect with people at all levels in an organization. Your audience at every level wants to know who you are and that you care for them as individuals. The components for intimacy are empathy, self-awareness, openness, humility and authenticity.
It’s unfortunate that men grow up in a culture that promotes aggression. “Men don’t eat quiche,” “Real men don’t cry,” are a few of the common expressions delineating the difference between men and women. We are a strong, confident and non-emotional species. We can’t show vulnerability. We thrive on aggression as a key leadership quality.
There are increasing numbers of studies showing that women are better than men in building relationships, collaborating, taking initiative, solving problems and analyzing issues. Women range higher in the leadership qualities of compassion and creativity. Women bring to leadership a more complete range empathy, self-awareness, openness and authenticity. (It is important to note that I’m not refering to women leaders who model themselves after men).
So why do women represent less than 20% of executive positions in companies?
Simply put, men are bred to win, and women to connect.
It’s about time men, as leaders, learn how to eat quiche and cry openly. It’s about time women step up and lead with humanity.
In today’s digital and virtual world it is becoming increasingly difficult for everyone — male and female — to develop the intimacy necessary to connect with one another.
It’s time to think about how to develop a new generation of empathetic leaders.
As a coach, trainer and consultant, Larry Blumsack partners with people and organizations on the move and those already there to accelerate their communication, presentation and speaking skills to be on par with their ambition. Through one-on-one coaching and group training Larry helps leaders and aspiring leaders elevate their presence and communication skills to influence more people, sell more products-services-ideas and inspire others more successfully than they ever imagined.
Larry is the bestselling author of Face-to-Face is The Ultimate Social Media and founder of Zoka Institute and Zoka Training®. Zoka Training® — Mind/Voice/Body/Mindfulness in sync — is the result of Larry’s 45 years as a coach, acting teacher, actor, voice-over artist, theater and TV director/producer, radio & TV commentator and show host, speaker, trainer, serial entrepreneur, and syndicated columnist. Larry was a founding member of the theater department at Northeastern University.
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