Advertisement

Want to get ahead in business? Be like a woman

Sheryl Sandberg, Amber Rudd and Ella Woodward have all taken different paths to success
Sheryl Sandberg, Amber Rudd and Ella Woodward have all taken different paths to success

Would the world be better off if more of our leaders were women, or acted like them? Heather Hanbury, head of the Girls Schools Association said so this week. She argued that “the world would certainly be a more generous, happier place with more empathy, sympathy and collaboration in it”, adding that “soft skills” deliver results at work and in politics. It would be easy to point to the leadership of Liz Truss, or Cressida Dick to instantly show that female leadership is no panacea. But many business leaders are now being taught to be more “empathetic”. Here, leading women from business and politics tell us their stories.

My style of leadership is completely female – even when butting heads with Philip Green at Top Shop. I suppose I am empathetic and collaborative because I want everyone to like me – and there’s nothing wrong with that or wanting to have people on your side. In fact, I think being likeable makes you a good leader. If you can’t charm and negotiate with someone to do something for you then you have lost. If you have to bully someone, make them scared in order to get them to do something, then you are a hopeless leader.

Of course when I was up against Philip Green, and he was ranting and raving, I’d pretend to be an aggressive monster because he didn’t respect any other kind of behaviour. I’d shout at him, but then come out of the meeting and put my arms round my team and say “We’re better than this – let’s do this thing brilliantly for us, not for him”. It is about knowing who you need to be to get things done. That is real empathy.

It was tough and exhausting trying to take all that on from him and not spread that down further. But it would have been anathema to me to act in that way. I thought he was an idiot.

It would be daft to generalise on which sex is more assertive. Wanting authority, being assertive is not just a part of being a man. Women can be assertive and still be women. I take Heather Hanbury’s point – I think women are more collaborative and that is fine, but if you want to have power you need to be assertive too if you are going to get results. The truth is that people don’t give away power, ever. You have to fight for it, even if you are brilliant. You have to have confidence and use your opportunities to fight for power. You have to say: “Shove over, I’m coming in” – it’s the only way to get power. No one is going to say “Come here little girl, we’ll budge up so there is room for you” – it just doesn’t work like that.

Women still don’t have power – think of Theresa May at the G20 surrounded by a sea of blokes, or the shot of the Security Council in Geneva last year which was ALL men. The most effective strategies if you are a woman and you want to become a leader is that hard work beats raw talent and you need be noisy and effective at getting noticed. Younger MPs would always ask me: How do I get on? I’d say get yourself on Question Time or Newsnight. Speak up on your passion projects. Tell your story, work hard, be brave. Don’t avoid conflict. And spot someone who will pull you up the ladder – everyone likes a protégé.

I agree that it is good to develop girls to lead in their own style. But I don’t think all men lead in a certain way, particularly not younger ones, particularly now. We have to be careful about falling into stereotypes about how men and women lead which can be sexist too. Particularly in a social media age, authentic leadership, where what you see is what you get, is crucial.

As a female leader I try to influence and persuade, not command and control. I think that leads to a more inclusive workplace culture where you develop everyone’s potential and are able to listen to the quietest voices in the room and tease them out. I find it works best not to communicate like an arrow, which can be a more male tendency, heading straight for the target, but in a more female way which is to speak more in a spiral which leads into discussions. Of course that can be a disadvantage in a very masculine boardroom but it usually leads to a more positive outcome.

To help more women become leaders, we females in companies are often sent on “assertiveness training” – teaching us how to be more like men, so that we can learn the traditional male model of leadership. But that is such an old fashioned approach and increasingly less relevant now. Today’s world is less “vertical”, less command and control and much more networked. It is important that we are valued for ourselves rather than being seen as a poor relation, or imitation of, men.

The neuroscience backs up the intuitive argument that women and girls are – on average – more empathetic, more collaborative, more emotionally intelligent. While men are more systematic. We are equal but different. Of course there are plenty of exceptions – and I would argue many female leaders have become more macho than the men in order to get where they have. There is no point in having diverse teams at the top if no-one is allowed to utter a different kind of opinion, we have to be open to different points of view.

The data is clear – companies still have a long way to go to achieve gender equity. Today, only one in four C-suite leaders is a woman and just one in 20 is a woman of colour. We are also in the middle of a massive cultural shift in what employees expect from their employers. People expect companies to be committed to employee wellbeing, diversity, equity and inclusion. Women are already leading this cultural shift by being ambitious business leaders and strong people managers.

This is where women leaders excel and this combination of critical skills will help drive better overall management, employee retention and business outcomes. That’s why it’s so important that companies fix the broken rung by promoting women and men into management at equal rates and then nurturing strong managers into great business leaders.

In the early stages of our business there were definitely people who were inherently biased against me, who never expected me to say that I owned my own business and assumed my husband had much more professional expertise than me. When raising money for our shareholders, I went to many male-dominated meetings. In the end I decided to wear fuschia shirts and embrace my position as the only woman in the room, rather than trying to fit in by basically pretending to be a man.

I don’t think that there's one way to describe female or male leadership. That said, women can lean towards certain tendencies – qualities that, at the beginning of my career, I felt I needed to hide. Whereas in the past being a leader and getting ahead in business was all about being strong in a really traditional way, qualities such as vulnerability will be the future. It takes bravery to be vulnerable – to show the “weak” sides of yourself. But ultimately this is what endears us to each other as humans and what almost makes us trust one another.

Men could learn to take on these qualities. Wherever your base, whatever your industry, whatever the company, teamwork is everything and bringing people together creates a sense of trust and connection.

Having daughters has made me passionate about trying to create a positive force in the world, so they can grow up and feel like they can lead. It’s not a finished conversation by any means, but there are so many women now who are really changing what it means to be a female leader.

In the workplace, women are like boiled eggs. We’re either too soft or too hard – never quite right. I don’t believe that change for women will come by embodying the perfect balance of “feminine qualities”; it will come from changing the system.

Our current system still stacks the odds against women. We earn less, secure less investment and receive fewer opportunities to develop and lead. The way that I act as the leader of Starling Bank, therefore, is by disrupting this status quo and creating a workplace that is equal for all genders.

There isn’t just one solution here. Women need to be paid fairly, they need access to company benefits and a culture that supports them, and they also need access to opportunities that boost them into leadership and technical jobs that are valued and highly paid.

The more we create a system that works for women, the less women and girls can worry about how they fit into the system.

When I first started out in business I was extremely shy and softly spoken and people didn’t take me seriously. Less senior male colleagues would often overrule me. Many years ago, one male board member told me that my quietness unnerved him. At the time, I thought that meant I had to try and be louder or more confident, but I soon realised I didn’t need to be a table basher or chest beater. I also used to try and dress in an assertive way, in suits with big shoulder pads (it was the 1980s). I was then told that I looked like a politician and I realised I didn’t need to dress this way anymore or try to act like my male colleagues. Since that day, I have dressed for me and developed my own leadership style.

I’m still softly spoken but I’m never afraid to stand up for what I believe in and voice my opinion. I am proud of my femininity and I think it’s important to show other women that you can be both feminine and successful.

My biggest advice to women is if you don’t feel you can be your authentic self within the business you work in, then choose an organisation that aligns with your own values – they are out there.

Jane Shepherdson is among speakers and panellists at The Telegraph’s Women Mean Business event on Wednesday, November 23. 

Eleanor Mills is founder of noon.org.uk, a platform for women in midlife