“Today there are more women in public office than ever before, but encouraging more women leaders will help achieve greater gender equality1”.
SDG goal number 5 is “gender equality” and reading UNDP’s status, it is clear that female leadership is continuously an important matter to discuss and strengthen. With this in mind the professional network “The Gallery ” addressed the topic of female leadership with experienced leader Susanne Woerhle as speaker.
Susanne Woerhle is an experienced leader with more than 23 years of experience from the automobile industry in Germany. Today she is the Vice President of the Korean German Chamber of Commerce (KGCC). Here she is responsible for establishing a mentoring programme for young female Korean and German leaders. Susanne had 4 overall advice for women in leadership:
Be authentic
Make a 5-year career plan
Prioritize network
Get a mentor
In the following we will elaborate on each of her advice but also unfold why it is easier said than done.
Don’t try to be a man
Authenticity is the most important thing to succeed as a leader. This is actually general advice to all leaders. However, it is more important to stress in this context. Because women will more often than men be asked to change their appearance or at least feel an underlying pressure from within or their surroundings to be less feminine. That is because we traditionally do not have the picture of leadership in combination with femininity. A simple google search on chairman or CEO will illustrate this. It is common that female politicians and CEOs get voice training to lower their pitch, the uniform is mens wear and god forbid if you show emotions. You are told that you need to “toughen up” - and many successful women have done just that and followed “the recipe” for success.
But Susannes best and first advice was, don’t try to be a man. Be authentic and then you will be successful - provided that you are also talented off course. This entails allowing yourself vulnerability and actually embracing that female leadership is in part strong because it is different. The strength of diversity is not for women to assimilate, but to contribute with a different approach, style and mindset. Being emotional also can be translated to being empathetic to your employees making it easier to help them reach their potential.
Being authentic also gives you the opportunity to rest more easily in your own skin. This gives you a stronger foundation to meet resistance and even prejudice at the workplace. Often a critique on women in workplaces is that they become shrill when facing a conflict and Susanne recognises that women can have tendency to tense up in meetings when feeling overheard. This can of course be a natural consequence of a general fatigue of being asked to make the coffee, take notes or simply not being invited to important meetings due solely to your sex. However, the more you have confidence within, the shrill disappears and is replaced with more relevant response tactics. Confidence doesn't come from pretending. Hence authenticity is key.
Make a career plan
It sounds simple and in some ways old fashioned. In a modern work philosophy and in general younger generations they tend to turn away from the very planned life and wish to live more in the moment. Nonetheless, Susanne recommends that you as a female leader, aspiring for more, create a 5 years plan. Having a plan and taking time to reflect is a way to ensure that you make the most of your time, also in the busy years with small kids and general higher level of chaos.
It is an exercise where you create a mind map looking ahead. Then every year take time to evaluate and reflect on where you are and ask yourself these questions:
Is this right for me?
What are my next steps?
Who can help me?
If you feel the need to do something different, take more time to reflect. Very specifically that is about creating small spaces where you actually can reflect. This means no kids, no tasks and no disturbances. Consider it an investment and put it in the schedule.
Women are in general raised to hold a very high level of endurance and self-discipline. This can sometimes transfer to the workplace, where we think we just have to stick it out. We work harder to fix what is not working and we don’t want to be considered whining. Therefore, try to be honest. If it isn’t feeling right, work on doing something else. In a busy daily life it can also almost seem too demanding, to make the necessary change - you don’t want to rock the boat. That is why you need to schedule the time for reflection and keep the mind map as a point of reference to yourself.
Network is queen
Women balance their life and prioritize with a knife. In the states, as an example, women spend 37% more time than men on housework. This means besides the tasks you have at work, women in general are also much more responsible for taking care of the house. Adding to that, there is generally a different expectation to motherhood than fatherhood, creating a different pressure both from within and from the surroundings to be present at home.
Networking activity often falls in the category of “nice to do” for women. This is a mistake according to Susanne. More women should prioritize networking as “need to do” and as such take its rightful place on the long list of must-do tasks to prioritize. In Susannes experience, lack of priority too often leads to that female network fades out.
Being successful at work still to a large extent comes down to network. Cliches like the important deals are made at the golf course or out drinking are still reality - in more countries than others but no matter the power of networking is not to be underestimated. You will find that men have a long tradition for networking both informal at the workplace and formally in guilds and exclusive clubs. Therefore women need to get into the networking game and strengthen their networking muscles. This is even proven by studies showing that women who attend Women’s conferences actually see an increase in pay raise and promotions. So go ahead and start prioritizing those after work seminars, women’s clubs and find the right people at work to mingle with - and don’t be afraid to be tactical about who you invite.
Choices and sacrifices
Making plans and having coffee with people seems easy on paper, but in reality balancing work and family ambitions is hard. Trying to do both can wear you out. Therefore Susanne says many young female leaders find themselves with the choice of:
Quitting their job
Get rid of the kids
Get rid of the husband
Be Wonder Woman
Since option 2-4 is not really doable or desirable then the job has to go or change. However, being authentic, making plans and prioritizing your network can help to prevent you from finding yourself in this trap. However, if you do find yourself in this position, Susannes best advice is to dare to lower the blinds of perfection and open up. Talk to your husband about the situation at home and talk to your boss about the situation at work. Solutions are often more doable than you think. Especially if you are a little strategic in the way you present it to your boss.
At the same time there is a question of self perception. Because having a demanding job does require some time away from home. It is for example simply not possible to both have a lot of travel activity and still be home for dinner everyday. This can give a guilty conscience. This can be even worse if you face judgment from your surroundings. For example if it is your husband or your nanny who takes the kids to school or even birthdays. Again the best medicine is authenticity and honesty. Susanne encouraged us all to stick together as women - working and non-working - and applaud each other's choices, help each other out and recognize that no matter the position you have taken it is the result of choices and sacrifice.
Mentoring is a specific tool that can help with all of the above
The final advice Susanne gave was to get a mentor. Because mentorship can help with some of the struggles. Mentorship is a chance to vent your frustrations, build confidence from meeting another competent woman who made it, discuss and create strategies for example how to talk to your boss about scaling down traveling and get inspiration. Having regular meetings with your mentor also creates a natural space to reflect and revisit your 5-year-plan that you off course by now have planned to make. Finding a mentor, it can be a good idea to look beyond your own organization as this creates a more free space to discuss difficulties or desires to leave your current workplace.
Therefore, find a mentor and if you are a woman of experience volunteer to be one. That is also a very concrete way that women can help each other closing the gender gap.
Cited works:
1.Cynthia Hess, Ph.D., Tanima Ahmed, M.Phil, and Jeff Hayes, Ph.D., Providing Unpaid Household and Care Work in the United States: Uncovering Inequality, institute for for womens policy research, 2020
2. Shaw Achor Do Women’s Networking Events Move the Needle on Equality? Harvard Business Review, 2018