Mother Leads Best: 50 Women Who are Changing the Way Organizations Define Leadership

• Mothers Lead Best: 50 Women Who are Changing the Way Organizations Define Leadership
• Moe Grzelakowski
• Dearborn Trade Publishing, 2005

• 1 “The whole concept of unconditional love transforms the underlying basis of your business relationships from emotionless transactions to respect and loyalty…love keeps your group intact and fuels the mission of the enterprise. And nothing teachers you about unconditional love, until you have kids.” Shelly Lazarus, Chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.
• “If you look at the people who lead organizations, you’ll find that they share similar traits: competitiveness, toughness, ambition, and drive.”
• Men are admired for this; women are not.

• 2 Writing on June Cleaver (Leave It To Beaver) being a CEO, “She would lack the grit to make difficult decisions and the drive to push herself and others to their performance limits.”

• Leadership DNA: “energetic, intelligent, competitive, passionately driven, tough-minded risk takers… dominating, decisive, and focused.”

• Women leaders, when they have children, don’t lose their leadership DNA, it goes through a transformation that is spiritual, emotional, and physical. They become warmer leaders, develop superior negotiation skills, and they don’t become so entrenched in positions. They tend to work better with men.

• 4-5 The different stages of motherhood has taught different lessons to a mother:
• Pregnancy: Putting some else ahead of themselves.
• Infancy: Patience and nurturing. Sharpening management skills and being more efficiently.
• Toddlers: Crisis management, multi-tasking, spontaneity
• Elementary school: Networkers and teachers; mastering the art of play, saying no
• Tweens: Staying connected and tuned in; listen attentively, read between the lines, bite their tongue; remain open to ideas; picking up the signals
• Teens: Receptivity, boundary-setting, open-mindedness, negotiation, influencing others

• 6-7 "This isn’t to say that someone who isn’t a mother (male or woman without children), can’t develop these skills. Also, some mothers don’t take the time to be a parent: they delegate, not take responsibility, etc."

• She writes about how fathers don’t seem to go through the same changes that mothers do in parenting. “Studies also show that men do not help out more as women earn more... As a result, men don’t make as many changes because they aren’t forced to juggle, adapt, and carry the burden of responsibility.”

• “Letting go is the fundamental basis for change.”

• Dispelling the Myths of Leadership
• “…women lead better than men, but both men and women prefer a man’s leadership style.” There are seven studies that show women are better managers…”

• She writes about the conundrum that women face: if they are tough they are a "bitch" or "dragon woman" if they take the traditional path they are seen as too weak.

• “I have never seen anyone transformed from a warrior to a wimp.”
• Writing about the need for a balanced live and not being workcentric.
• Letting go of perfectionism.
• Letting the small stuff slide.

• 29 “Being perceived as being overly ambitious is the kiss of death for any executive. Because women are expected to be more nurturing and held to a higher leadership standard than men, edgy behaviors are often judged harshly.”
• 30 Avoiding the high horse syndrome
• 31 “Acting superior is indeed an act, and women are less likely to sustain this performance with nursery rhymes and baby talk running through their heads.
• 36 “…people who eat, sleep, and dream about work do not make the best leaders.”
• 37 “ The drive to do something more, the need to make a real difference, is found in even the most outwardly successful and business-focused executives.”
• 38 “…they (women who decide to be mothers) lead with a sense of purpose rather than just being propelled by a need to achieve.”
• 43 “Having a clear purpose is the type of decision that creates leadership authenticity…”

• 53 Chapter 4: Pregnancy
• Pregnancy traits and how they relate to leadership
• Accountability
• Rational risk taking
• Balanced perspective
• Clarified values
• Emerging softness

• 71 Chapter 5: Babies
• “Both men and women are judged early in their career on how they perform in individual contributor roles. Naturally, they focus on results over relationships, on achieving goals rather than communicating with people. Everyone receives the message that they will be rewarded for achieving rather than nurturing.”

• From Martin Friedman’s book, The Leadership Myth:
• “You have to be big, you have to be strong…any sign of sympathy, compassion, or anything that suggest a warm, cozy feeling about other people- sensitivity, a willingness to be caught up in an emotional moment- suggests to the macho mind the existence of terrible weakness, a great fear that, perhaps, there is a side of the personality which is feminine. The big mistake here is that there qualities have nothing whatsoever to do with femininity. They have to do with humanness. An humanness in a leader is a great attribute.” pp. 61-62

• 74-85 One of the things that keep coming up in the book is that the people she is writing about were achievers first and then they became mothers. These are people with “leadership DNA”. She points out that one of the things that made them better as leaders is the lessons they learned as a parent of a baby. Specifically: the nurturing of another human being. She defines nurturing as:
• Empathy: “Responding to feelings besides your own”
• 76 “Executive women without children have no sense of balance. No boundary lines.”
• 78 “Results are only sustainable if you care about and motivate people.”
• Sensitivity: Being visually and emotionally perceptive
• Caring: Demonstrating your compassion
• 80 “Caring can mean leveling with a subordinate about their weaknesses and insisting that they work on them. This task is painful, but if a leader really cares about another individual, she is willing to raise this difficult subject for the other person’s sake. Caring can also mean taking the time and making the effort to help others with their problems.”
• Warmth: Allowing your natural friendliness and feelings to emerge
• 83 “… being overly cold creates dislike, while being overly warm creates a lack of respect.”
• 84 “If you are warm toward someone one minute and blow them off the next, you will be considered colder than if you had never acted warmly.”
• Patience: Recognizing that you can’t control everything
• 85 “Any strong, dominant leader tends to be impatient. To a certain extent, this impatience has a positive impact, in that it compels the leader to demand excellence, to demand it all the time and with all due speed…Truly wise leaders wait just the right amount of time for events to unfold and trends to reveal themselves before taking action.”

Chapter 6: The Toddler Years (Managing Chaos)

• 89, “Instead of working harder, they learned to work smarter.”
• Being the mother of toddlers helped them to develop the following traits:
• Hyperdrive: The ability to summon a higher level of energy
• Being appropriately organized
• 93 “In organizations, the best managers of chaos are the ones who occupy the middle ground, who know when to rely on structure and when to go with the flow.”
• Clear priorities
• 96 “…as a mom you prioritize and reprioritize in real time based upon your goals, controlling chaos in a way that is meaningful rather than arbitrary.”
• Creative problem solving
• 98 “Executive mothers also acquire another problem solving skill from their toddlers, one that is atypical for most leaders: They learn to ask for help.”
• Adaptability
• Letting go
• 100 “The best leaders let go of mistakes, confrontations, and other emotionally charged events that come with the territory.”
• Being calm
• 103, “In a world where change occurs at a lightning pace, sometimes the best response to problems at work is to remain calm. This doesn’t mean refusing to make a decision or never becoming worked up. Wisdom is often gained by keeping your wits about you and observing, taking in information and ideas, and then making a decision.”
• Chapter 7: (109) Elementary School: Developing and Motivating Teams
• Empowering others
• 111 “Amal Johnson said, “True leaders are the ones who enable all sorts of people to have moments of leadership. If you give people a chance, they are capable of making decisions, if they feel enabled and it is expected of them.”
• Embracing differences
• 113 “It’s not that leaders consciously reject differences among team members, but rather that they unconsciously favor those who have backgrounds and points of view similar to their own.”
• 114 “For leaders to embrace differences in people, a powerful emotional experience is usually required.”
• Showing tolerance
• Inspiring personal growth
• 120 “Sophie Vanderbroek, Xerox’s chief engineer, “ The key thing I have learned from my children was how to influence without direct control… (121) Inspiring others is all about connecting with them at a deep human level.””

Chapter 8: Tweens Listening at a Higher Level

125 “Contrary to expectations, you won’t find many CEOs or other senior executives of large companies who lack basic listening skills.”

126 As a result of working with the vulnerable tweeens, mothers become very good at the following leadership skills:

• Operating at full attentiveness
• 128-9 “If you establish a reputation as someone in an organization who pays attention to others, people are likely to come to you first with ideas and news… my male peers and bosses were always amazed that I know about things, good and bad, before they did.”
• Reading between the lines
• 131, “Without children to remind them to read between the lines, leaders can fall into the trap of being overly literal minded. They focus on exactly what is being said and ignore the context.
• Biting your tongue
• 133, “Biting one’s tongue is another trait that is counterintuitive for many leaders. Executives often feel compelled to use their considerable verbal prowess to persuade.”
• Matching wavelengths
• 135, “Unlike in the past, most leaders today are surrounded by people who come from different backgrounds and have different perspectives. Success as a leader depends upon being able to see the world through your customers’ eyes or through your coworkers’ frames of reference.”
• Being open to others
• 138, “Not only do leaders need to be open to news and ideas, but they must also be open to criticism. For ultrahigh achievers, criticism is often the last thing they want to hear… many top organizational people develop a false sense of infallibility and, consciously or not, discourage criticism.”

Chapter 9: Teenagers Coaching with Unconditional Love

• 143, “No doubt, many top executives try to coach their people. Some of them, though, are coaching without the necessary training or experience; a significant percentage of executives reach top positions with limited skills sets in this increasingly important area.”
• Earning Receptivity
• Build trust
• Cut them some slack
• Respect their loyalties and their point of view
• Praise their good behaviors
• Show they care
• Use diplomacy
• Connecting on their terms
• 150, “To coach someone, you have to connect with them on their terms…They want analogies and anecdotes that are pertinent to their interests.”
• 151, “Connecting isn’t just a matter of figuring out other people’s interests and concerns but making an effort to communicate with them in language they understand.”
• Establishing rules of engagement
• 154, “One of the most challenging tasks for leaders is setting and enforcing boundaries for subordinates. This is almost as much an art as it is a skill. You need to have a sense about when you’re being too strict and when you’re providing too much freedom.”
• Becoming a positive influence
• 157 “If they (best leaders) want something done they are much more innovative than leaders of the past in motivating, providing resources, and establishing an environment that yields results. While many executives understand intellectually that command-and-control no longer is the best management style, they sometimes have difficulty integrating this understanding into their behaviors.”
• Being indirectly effective
• 160, “The strongest leaders aren’t always the most aggressive or direct. They learn how to use their power selectively, and sometimes an indirect method yields better results, especially when coaching is involved.”

Chapter 10: The Character of a Leader

• Selflessness
• Confidence
• Humility
• Groundedness
• Honesty

Chapter 11: Applying the Lessons of Maternal Leadership

• Recognize that not all personal change is self-induced
• 184, “Deep change often comes from deep experiences… if you’re not a mom, watch for other, experience-based opportunities that foster meaningful change… Training and development programs have taught too many businesspeople that change is a conscious, cognitive process. Leaders need to take a cue from the mothers in this book and recognize that often, the most meaningful changes in how they think and act “just happen”.
• Accept that the most powerful, leadership-changing feedback often comes from people you love rather than from people with whom you work.
• 185, “Corporate feedback mechanisms are often too subtle… it is too easy to rationalize the feedback you receive from colleagues or to respond defensively…This type of feedback doesn’t always penetrate the outer layer like children’s honest-to-goodness bluntness.”
• Real leaders have real lives, so recognize that workaholicism detracts from rather than adds to your leadership ability.
• Embrace the possibility of excelling in more than one role