Leading is always a challenge; leading change in the face of resistance is an even greater challenge. Leading change as a member of the minority culture of an organization can be an extraordinary challenge. One of my first director's messages for ELAM was titled Women's Ways of Leading and was named after the opening exercise of the ELAM fellowship, which introduces fellows to the ambiguities and tensions of leadership as a woman in an organizational world that was neither created by them nor for them. The lessons begin several weeks prior to the fall session with exercises in observing leadership in action at the fellow's home institution. The goals of these observations are 1) to practice non-judgmental observation as an important leadership skill in environmental scanning and understanding the organizational culture and 2) to deconstruct a meeting or two to attempt to "see" how power, team/group structure, and agenda-building play out in organizational outcomes. We also use this introduction in ELATE at Drexel®, the new program for engineering and science faculty, and several of the inaugural ELATE fellows have commented that they have difficulty seeing gender differences in behavior beyond the potential power differentials of their positions. Are they blind to gendered behaviors? Not at all. For most of them, there are no other women in the room! That makes it very difficult to see differences in patterns of behavior and communication between men and women.
Many of the behaviors observed by fellows of either program (or by any of you if you sit back to take an ethnographic view of your meetings) are related to management and leadership skill in convening groups of faculty and staff with diverse perspectives and experiences, bringing their ideas into expanded options, and moving action agendas forward. What continues to be unique for women is the paradox created by societal expectations that we be both agentic (strong and assertive) and communal (nurturing and connected).[1] When we manage to be both assertive and nurturing, we paint a picture of how the women's leadership paradox plays out as strength; when we are unsuccessful, the incongruence of the roles as society defines them magnifies the errors. The way we play out the many paradoxes of leadership can be managed as polarities much more successfully than looking for algorithms of solutions to problems. After three years of being program director, and in response to the urge to freshen the lesson as a new program opens, we have new information to add to this discussion — new literature, new approaches, and three years of insights transcribed from the opening sessions, which I will present in two parts. Part I (this column) describes how managing the paradox of role incongruity and holding leadership roles plays on our strengths. Part II (to be published in a few weeks) introduces a new tool for managing the tensions that make organizational leadership so interesting.
Good Management Potential
If I'm seen as assertive,
I'm seen as aggressive.
If I'm aggressive,
I'm a bitch.
I won't be promoted
Let's try it again.
If I'm nonassertive,
I'm seen as a patsy.
If I'm a patsy,
I won't be promoted.
Let's try it once more.
If I'm very careful,
I can go unnoticed.
If I'm unnoticed,
No one will know
I want to be promoted.
Any suggestions?
Natasha Josefowitz. Is this where I was going?
Warner Books 1983
Fellows in the past few years have seen one of my favorite poems about this paradox. I discovered it in the mid-1980s when I was trying to be model mother, physician, teacher, scholar … well, you all understand — it was impossible. I was browsing through an airport bookstore, and spotted a book titled "Is This Where I Was Going?" It was not a travel guide, not a 10-step program to career success, but a series of poems by Natasha Josefowitz about life's journey in all these roles. The poem is reproduced here and still resonates with academic women across ranks. It never fails to get simultaneous chuckles and groans of recognition on opening day of ELAM.
The recent publication of an article titled "Hard won and easily lost: the fragile status of leaders in gender-stereotype-incongruent occupations" [2] brings to attention the spotlight that shines with celebration when a woman is recruited to the CEO role and the same spotlight that casts her flaws as shadows across her competence when she fails to meet goals and expectations. The study compares judgments of 75 men and 127 women responding to scenarios of men and women police chiefs. Participants were randomly assigned to read scenarios in which the chief erred by sending too few officers to a community protest rally or responded by sending an adequate number of officers to the protest that continued without incident. Results showed that men and women chiefs were given equal status when there was no error, but women were judged as deserving of less status, respect, and power under the conditions of having made a mistake. The experiment was repeated with scenarios of women college presidents; in situations of error, the judgments of status diminished more for the men than for the women. While overt discrimination is against the law and we are making progress (albeit slow) in recruiting for diversity, stereotypes are thriving. This is the world in which we work as academic women in a stereotypically masculine world. This is the paradox we must manage as we lead.
In the discussions of Women's Ways of Leading on opening day, we use Conversation Cafes to explore the wicked question, "How is it that apparent barriers can be strengths?" to explore how the apparent barriers established largely by stereotypes actually strengthen our leadership. The responses posted at the end of our conversations are insightful. Here is a sample from 2011:
- Overcoming obstacles/adversity pushes us to be creative and adaptive, leading to more effective leadership strategies. Survival selects for fighters and resilience.
- Observing politics teaches how to negotiate political landmines.
- Getting "stuck" with difficult tasks/jobs can lead to a broad understanding of academic medicine; the skills become part of our leadership toolbox.
- Family life is demanding and yet a source of significant support and skills development, e.g., conflict management, time management, and multitasking.
- Recognizing your own barriers is the first step in developing a plan to manage them, exploit them, change them, and results in growth as a leader.
- Our experiences of being "unnoticed" provide us with the opportunity to observe and learn so that when we are given the opportunity to lead, we are ready.
- Use stereotypes to your advantage: an observer's surprise when your communications and leadership style defy the stereotype leads to attentiveness.
- Paradox is our power! Harness this vulnerable strength.
Our impressions of strength from managing barriers are supported by scholars of leadership who describe leadership as an art, and in particular a performance art. [3] The tools of the art are simple yet sophisticated, practiced and improvisational. One author describes leadership improvisations as the "dynamic syntheses of apparently contradictory behaviors in the process of leading a group." [4] Thus, leadership itself is a skill in constantly managing ambiguity and contradictions to find resolution and opportunity. Becoming skilled at the improvisational acts of leadership requires harmonization of seemingly disparate beliefs, behaviors, and approaches. Fortunately for most women in the health sciences this is something we all have been practicing since we were 13 when some nut told us that "girls were not good at math" so we should learn to be better cooks. (Aha! We realized that cooks actually are chemists with good knives — and so we pursued chemistry and surgery!)
Of course we all need a variety of tools to manage the creative tensions that provide substrate for effective leadership. Polarity Management [5] offers some interesting insights as to how apparent contradictions can actually be supportive. You will be able to learn more about this tool and how we are introducing it to the fellows in the next column… (to be continued)
References:
1. Catalyst, The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership: Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don't , 2007
2. Brescoll VL, Dawson E, Uhlmann EL. Hard won and easily lost: the fragile status of leaders in gender-stereotype-incongruent occupations. Psychol Sci 2010;21:1640-1642
3. Bennis, Warren G. The Seven Ages of the Leader. Harvard Business Review, Jan. 2004: 46-53. (Good descriptions of the infant executive, schoolboy, etc., playing on Shakespeare.)
4. Yip, J. Leading Through Paradox, Ch 13 . In Hannum, K., McPheeters, B., and Booysen, L. Leading Across Differences: Cases and Perspectives. John Wiley and Sons, 2010.
5. Johnson, B. Polarity Management: A Summary Introduction. Polarity Management Associates, June 1998.
ELAM is a core program of the Institute for Women's Health and Leadership at Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pa. The Institute continues the legacy of advancing women in medicine that began in 1850 with the founding of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, the nation's first women's medical school and a predecessor of today's Drexel University College of Medicine.