Before Christmas, Galia and I borrowed a small mountain of books
from the Auckland University Library. Four of the books in my stack
had the theme of leadership. Two of them were under 200 pages long
which made them shoo-ins for my priority summer holiday reading.
They looked a little lighter in tone as well as in grammes than the
other two. I've already reviewed the Secrets of Connecting Leadership & Learning
with Humour by Peter M Jonas.
This time, I'll cover Women Leading by Sue Hayward, a UK
journalist and TV presenter.
Published in 2005 by
Palgrave MacMillan, it's in hardback and sports a mildly surreal
dustcover picture of a professional woman in a desert contemplating
a glass ceiling, hammer in hand. Though short, the book's exterior
suggested it would be serious stuff.
In fact, it turned out to be lighter than the froth on your
average cappuccino. This is the perfect book if you want, for
whatever reason, to look as if you're holding something erudite
while in fact enjoying a breeze of a read. As long as you're
prepared for its light style you can probably overlook some of its
shortcomings.
Hayward claims no expertise in women's issues but has spoken to
many people who are. Her strength is evidently in getting people to
talk and her approach to the book is to let women's experiences and
comments by informed parties tell the tale.
The title contains the word "leading" and Hayward sets out to
explore it through a number of lenses. She looks at women's success
in the financial and corporate worlds in terms of their share of
senior management seats, the barriers to advancement and different
models for 'making it work' that women have carved out. She reviews
women's changing careers and roles in the media, inside
relationships and on the international stage. She also looks at the
skills and strengths women have that they can rely on to be
effective leaders.
Read Women Leading for the stories and the quotations.
As an ex-Unilever employee, I particularly enjoyed reading what
Unilever's CEO Niall Fitzgerald, and other senior staff had to say.
Fitzgerald's comments came from a 2003 speech in Geneva in which he
talked about the "tide running in [women's] favour" because women
are highly skilled in both the emotional and spiritual field, areas
where business is changing most rapidly. He also noted, with a
subtlety not always seen in discussions on the topic of gender and
leadership that "there is a feminine approach to leadership which
is not of course confined to women."
Linda Emery, Unilever's UK Diversity manager, has championed the
introduction of the Mum's CV, which lists skills that mothers are
likely to develop and use at home that will have value on their
return to the workplace. If you've read Galia's interview with John Palmer and my recent advice on "Career breaks" you will
recognise this idea!
Another aspect of the book that I appreciated was Hayward's
willingness to include the concept that not all women want to be
CEO or Board Director and that their choices are as valid as those
of women who put their career squarely first.
She touched on a number of other interesting points that I would
have liked to see her expand on and find compelling stories for.
These include observations that:
- Women are less ego-driven in their leadership style
- The 'power' model of leading, based on authority and position,
is yielding to the 'strength' model based on internal
characteristics
- Women with families lack the time to network
The links between some of Hayward's points and the examples she
uses to illustrate them are weak. Allow yourself to become
pleasantly absorbed in her discussion on work-life balance,
however, and you may not wonder what it is doing as the main topic
in a chapter entitled "Leadership Skills". The fluff on Hollywood
marriages and the references to stereotypes like the ball-breaker
and the flirt, will, I hope, wash over you. Lastly, the fact that
Hayward is not experienced in business will perhaps not escape you,
as it did her editor, but you may, nevertheless, forgive it.
Let me wrap up on Women Leading on a positive note, however! She
finishes with a chapter of the most inspirational quotes and advice
she gathered in the course of putting the book together. There are
some real goodies in here. The one that resonated with me was by an
author called Jane Wenham-Jones, who said,
Network, network! Nothing is wasted. Everything is
an opportunity."
Women Leading is available at Amazon
© Professionelle Ltd 2008