TITLE: How Women Are Transforming Leadership Dynamics

Discover leadership techniques that leverage your natural strengths and foster inclusive, collaborative environments.

Are there leadership styles that are unique to women? Do women lead in ways that are distinctly different from how men lead?

Hypothesis: they do. But I wanted to run it past some experts (leadership consultants and some women leaders), so I called on several of my genius clients and colleagues to get their thoughts. What I heard was nothing less than mind-blowing!

I’m Samantha Hartley of Profitable Joyful Consulting. This is part 4 of my 6-part series, The Feminine Advantage. So far we’ve covered the value of bringing more feminine energy into our work life, balancing it with our healthy masculine qualities, and communicating skillfully in emotionally charged situations.

Today we’re discussing how women lead. Four of my clients and two colleagues share their insights, advice, and experiences. You’ll leave with actionable tips you can use right away. Plus, I’ll share a coaching question and journal prompt to get you started—so stay here until the end!

First, an assignment: think about three amazing women business leaders you know. Would you share this episode with them? Let them know they came to mind when we were discussing this topic.

It’s crazy because I know so many powerful feminine women leaders now, but I never worked for one. That's why I questioned my hypothesis about a unique leadership style. Because the women I personally knew and worked for… they led like men. And not in a good way.

We have masculine leadership models: In business, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. In politics, Obama, Trump, Biden. In movies, Speilberg, Tarantino, Scorce​​se - and those all vary in levels of healthiness.

But where are the feminine ones? Like a rare animal hard to find in the wild.

Leslie:

It's so funny as I'm like looking back, especially in corporate, no, I had amazing leaders, but I wouldn't say they were overly like, feminine in their approach.

That was my client Leslie… Her story highlights a truth many of us know so well: we’re often leading with feminine qualities we never saw modeled.

And here’s my colleague Jennifer Frye of Appreciated Asset Business Solutions on this challenge and the better way she’s discovered.

Jennifer:

I've had women that I worked for that were, I would say like submissive, but I wouldn't say that's feminine energy. I think that's in a patriarchal dynamic. I've had some great leaders and role models in my life, but really no one directly that I worked with or for. A big part of this business and starting my own business is like I knew there could be a better way. I knew there could be a better way to employ people, to treat clients, to talk about sales, to do sales. It didn't have to be the way it had always been. And I guess, so that's what we're here to do is find that balance and, and shake it up a little bit.

Yeah, let’s find a better way. Even without those positive role models in corporate, Leslie found a path that feels and works better when she’s dealing with her team. Here's one example.

Leslie: We spend a lot of time like in the car together, going to site visits. and we've had like really deep conversations, not just about how we show up at work, but like our lives. And there's this idea around boundaries and not talking about certain things, and of course that's true, but I also think there's a lot of value in talking to someone that you employ on a really human level and a personal level if it's appropriate. And so I've encouraged her through questions and just like being curious about her, personal and professional life. And I've just welcomed that kind of environment and I think I've noticed like that's actually, I get a better output from her when I'm that way versus when I am really strict and headstrong and like I needed to be done a certain way, very corporate, right? It doesn't get me the result that I want.

My longtime client Patty Lawrence, Founder & Consulting CFO of TurboExecs has done incredible work on herself in the decade I've known her. Completely transformed. Previously in the series, she has shared how back in the bad old days at corporate people were throwing each other under the bus, she was the only woman, it was cutthroat. She's a different leader now.

Patty: I used to kind of listen to people, but I didn't really listen to people. 'cause I had preconceived thoughts in my head that, that just needed to get done and I have the right answer and let me help you with that. So now it's no, I'm really listening to you. I'm taking that in, and I'm taking it word for word because your words matter. And the fact that I'm receiving all of that makes a difference to the person who is saying those words. And I want to make sure that that is received that way.

I wanted to look more deeply into this empathetic leadership style, so I invited my client Cheryl Jekiel to talk with me. She’s the Founder of the Lean Leadership Center with expertise in lean manufacturing with a particular focus on lean cultures in food manufacturing (which I also came out of). Cheryl held senior leadership roles covering operations, human resources and as a chief operating officer for many years, she’s been working with me for over eight years now and I’ve watched her gestate and give birth to a leadership development system called CORE. A lot of what you're going to hear are the ideas, structures, and teaching in that program.

Cheryl is one of the few people I've ever heard use the word love in a business setting. I asked her to explain that a bit for us.

Cheryl: There's lots of kinds of love and obviously we associate it often with like romantic love and or love we have even for family or friends, like as if we have this close relationship. I think of this more like people are animals and they know energetically where we're coming from, it's like they can tell, it's like are we in love or fear? And so I always say to people, when you're leading, if you go in your heart and lead from your heart, there's the thing you say, but there's your overall energy. The other person feels the difference. So if like someone said today I have some feedback to give somebody and I don't really know how I'm going to give her this feedback.

And I said, don't worry so much whether you say it right. Focus on coming from the place. I really care about you and I care about your success. And when your heart's in that place, she'll let you say a lot of things to her 'cause she'll know you mean her no harm and that I'm invested in you. And from there many things are possible.

So both in corporate America, all my corporate roles, I felt like no matter what the job was, it was important to be the message partly of it's perfectly effective to be heart-based. Because there was certainly a period of time I got this reputation for being too soft, and I'm like, first of all, that isn't true. I'm really good at figuring out if there's a problem and if it needs to be handled. But that's not a reason not to be kind and not to be considerate. And those kinds of things, it's just better.

“It’s perfectly effective to be heart-based.” And look at Cheryl rebuffing the positioning that she's too soft and countering it with a strength. That's the way you stand up for yourself when someone's trying to put you in a box. I wanted to hear more about leading from the heart. She’s connecting it to the woman who asked her about giving feedback to someone.

Cheryl: I don't know whether this is the masculine to feminine, is more about logic an d like, that's what I'm saying even when I was speaking to her, did I say the right thing as if it's a set of tasks, like I'm going to do this, this, and this instead of… Love in a way is, is literally like just being aware of our positive intention towards others and that sense of caring about others.

The truth is it's our responsibility to care about everyone in our path, and that's the benefit of it. But if we approach people in our path, like they're a task to be accomplished, the whole premise of leadership being about get people to do what you want, you know, like they're a means to an end, that is not humanity. I mean, I don't think of this as anything more dramatic than treating people as the sacred creatures they actually are and just acknowledging that.

The weird thing I think is interesting, all the angst or worry people have, the fear people have of I don't want to say this or have that conversation like she was saying, “I don't know how I'm going to say this” goes away when you come from your heart, it just becomes easier. It's not harder. It's easier because it's like your energies where it belongs, and coming from the right place. When you come from the right place, many things can get said. Many things can happen. When people are fearful like, I'm going to say it wrong, or maybe you're not going to like it, or you're going to get mad at me if I say this thing, that's like all mind stuff.

First of all, I think the heart's closer to the gut. The mind, we can overthink things. It's kind of like, don't be so mentally like logic-ing it all out. Sometimes just really get clear where you're coming from. Then the right words will come to you what to say.

I asked Cheryl how she came to believe these things. When did she first discover all this? And I was not prepared for this answer. Hold onto something while you listen.

Cheryl: You know, it was interesting when you brought up this topic today. I have fairly distinct views of what is the feminine advantage, advantage to leadership and this is not science. First of all, if a listener was like I know the science of this, I'm like I'm not saying I know the science, but here's what I think. I think basically in the genetics of women in the way we are designed in most species, not all, but most, is we're able to kill for our young and we're able to nurture our young. And we have that duality in us. We can, I mean, I've seen me do things that many people like they don't have the stomach for, but so do most women. It's like there's a role in the feminine nature, which is to do really tough, sometimes gross, sometimes difficult, like really hard things. But when it comes to protecting the young in our cell structure, we're designed to do what we have to do when we have to do it.

And I've seen a lot of times the advantage of that is I would see other people really struggling to take action and I'm like almost instinctively, when I let my instincts take over, I can take an action. And then on the other side, I've been in situations that were really big and tough. One of the biggest ones when I knew I was different was we had a horrible accident in the plant I worked in. Somebody died and somebody was disabled. It was a horrible day. But I was all about prayer. I brought in a priest to bless the plant. We, I knew there was people that thought there was bad jujus in the air. I did a lot to care for the people. I was really went into how to nurture and support every single person in my path from the people who were injured, their families… And that was like my most natural state. So I was like, I just realized when the chips were down, I had the spectrum to work from that I was like, I don't think I see people around me having that much breadth from really hard to really gentle to bring it in. And in this instance it really mattered. And so after that, I knew that there's a power in this that people don't grasp right away.

We find out who we are when we’re tested. Look at the strength Cheryl had when she needed to support the whole plant after a tragedy. It’s a make or break moment.

Cheryl: When I've mentored women, I encourage them to lean into it. Like this is your, basically your God-given nature. You were born this way. This is no more than lean into your nature like it's in you already. You don't have to become it or learn it or go to a class for it or get assertiveness training. You have assertiveness built into your cell structure if you can tap it. One of the things I've done in the workplace is say, think of things like they're your young. Like if you're protecting your team or you're protecting the work or something you think is, it's for you to protect, you call on what you are given to protect something, and it is ferocious.

I mean, it's capable of a lot of things once you're in your protective mode. And so some women, they haven't just maybe learned – men and women – haven't learned how to tap that part of us that was designed to protect and do whatever has to be done to protect something.

I wanted you to hear that because if you haven’t had to call on that part of yourself, you’ll be able to think about it now. Thank God it doesn’t always have to be in the from of tragedies for us to find the protective parts of ourselves. Leslie shared this about showing up in a way that sets the tone for her team:

Leslie: Going into working with clients, that's when it gets tricky because there's a lot of personalities so I try my best to like use the mantra that we worked on and created together, which is like showing up relaxed and confident, which I think is two things that pair really nicely, like to be confident in the service I'm providing for my client, which I am, but also to be relaxed, like to take the feedback or the challenging personalities and just like let it roll off. And I notice that when I show up that way, my team around me can also take a deep breath. And if I'm frantic, then everyone feels frantic. So there's so much power in that. That's very important to me.

One of my favorite quotes “The organization takes on the character of its leader.” Very often it takes on the energy as well. Communication and C-Suite Leadership Coach, Kara Levy, shared some of the challenges and strengths of women leaders with me:

Kara: I think it's impossible to talk about leadership without talking about gender. Just because the environment in which we operate is a gendered environment, and there's all kinds of bias and a proliferation of systemic issues that arguably make it harder to operate as a female-identifying leader, but I think there are things that we see a lot from female identifying leaders that we can say are true either because of those constraints or just because of some of the people who we've seen come before us who model those traits: A failure to be concise, or put differently, a proclivity for overexplaining ourselves might be another thing. Worrying a lot about likability and personal perception as opposed to just leadership perception.

Samantha: What are the three things that are, that women do uniquely well as leaders?

Kara: I think women tend to be incredibly good at leading through curiosity because we haven't been conditioned by society to be able to just land on one answer and claim it as the right one. So we're used to having to explore multiple possibilities, and I think that makes us not only creative, empathetic, and curious, but it leads to some really excellent business outcomes as well.

I think in terms of the overexplaining and likability piece, one of the things that I think many women understand instinctively is that relationships matter. They matter a lot in the workplace, and so does your reputation, and without framing it as being liked, another way of doing it is how can I make my counterpart feel liked? How can I make them feel appreciated for being in this conversation so that I can get the most out of them in terms of what they have to offer? And in terms of our mutually constructed relationship, that could be really valuable in many ways going forward. This I often find with many, but not all many, but not all of my male clients is thought of as a soft skill or a nice to have rather than a must have. And many female identifying people, I think, know that working around all the societal constraints requires strong relationships. So we've had practice doing that and that's a strength I think that is underestimated in business.

Marcy Browe, my branding photographer, who’s also a keynote speaker and a champion of women leaders, brought this important insight.

Marcy: I think most women in leadership come at it from a nurturing space. Things that men might not even think about, conversations that I have with women when I'm planning a photoshoot schedule, I say, “Hey, are you even able to go to five or six o'clock in the evening? Or do you have school pickup?” That's a question that I don't think men would even ask. So I think just observing and, and looking at the ways that women have to fit their lives and their business into the family is still part of our culture. We want to think, “oh, well, we're, we're equal,” but, but we're not.

Because when it comes to where I live, there's not a lot of public busing. So guess who's doing those school drop offs and pickups? It's the moms. I certainly don't want to pain too broad of a stroke, but most of the dads don't have that burden that falls on them because women, if they're working in an entrepreneur type setting, they might have flexible hours. So with those flexible hours comes school drop off and pick up. And I am seeing in these worlds of women's leaderships is other women are conscientious of what we each are going through.

The childcare crisis in our country affects so much of women’s participation in the workplace so the consideration Marcy’s talking about here cannot be trivialized, even though it so often is.

Let’s return to Cheryl. In first episode of the series, I talked about three actions women leaders need to have when they bring in the feminine: willingness to be vulnerable, collaboration with others and trusting divine guidance. Intuition is a superpower for women leaders, and Cheryl is stellar at using hers. I asked her to share how it comes up in her work:

Cheryl: When I even first went into business, I said I don't consider myself working for myself. I call it I work for the universe. All that really means is I listen for intuitive, signals so to speak, but they're just basically intuition. They're not like weird woo woo stuff. I mean, it's just like I get a sense of make that call, do that thing. I trust. It's definitely a big difference between like, people say it's a numbers game or it's you gotta do the right stuff. Are you working hard enough? It's really the antithesis of a lot of through brute force… I'm really clear I do not think the best results come from brute force. Like I make it happen. It's much more I'm receiving, I'm waiting to receive the right messages to allow the right things to happen. That's a very different energy. And so I remember even when we first met, I had to literally regularly keep supporting that feminine side.

First of all, 'cause we keep being told that we need the other side so much like you can make it happen. I'm like, (scoffs) well, you can. I always say my favorite thing to say is surprise me. So truth is most of the things I receive completely go beyond anything I would ever naturally ever think of anyway. So my best thinking about making things happen would be way less than what would happen if I was receiving the greatest guidance for it.

Samantha: And that's a great way to be self-leading, yeah? That's your personal leadership.

Cheryl: Yeah,I guess my job is to be attuned. To not see myself as the source of the source, you know, like it's all from me. Like I inside of me know the answer. Like, no, the answer's outside of me and then when I relax, it'll come in and let me know, like I'm listening. It's really a difference between speaking and listening in a way. Like I'm listening, waiting to hear, and then I act on things that feel like that's the right type of an impulse to act on.

The feminine is receptive. Are you open to guidance from God, or the Universe for your business? Do you make time for listening? And when you hear divine guidance, do you act on it?

Samantha: If you were to encapsulate what your leadership that you're teaching others is known for or what you want it to be known for, what would you say is the kind of the essence of it?

Cheryl: You know, it's interesting sometimes I wonder if I somehow am not as vocal or focused on working from the heart as I might want to be or should be. If anything, what I've developed is kind of systemic. It's got a lot of logic and steps and there's a model that it's like keep going back to the model, but in the middle of the model is work from the heart. That none of these are in and of themselves just follow this step, say this thing, do this thing and it'll work. You have to listen to your own gut level sense. I'll have leaders say, “well, what about this and what about that? If I follow your rule system, should I say this?” Like, (mumbles) this is not my rule system. Nothing replaces your own inner sense of what's appropriate to say to someone at any point in time or how to handle a situation. You gotta be listening. Do what you think is right. These were meant to create some touch points about how to kind of get you where am I at in terms of, but I still consider everything in my work is about being clear, being intentional. People always say that's kind, clarity is kind. So clarity is a way to show respect, to show care, to show love if if that's the term to be loving in the workplace. Here's the thing: A lot of times in HR there's been this debate whether the way we carry out the duties of how we deal with people, especially if there's problems or we're doing a layoff or whatever, there's a big difference between how those things happen when you're fear-based and you're protecting yourself. And so people shut down their emotions. They get cold, they get like, they're not listening. They're overriding a lot of that. And so things go wrong and a lot of negative things come out of it.

I've always shown up in my heart every day that I know how, certainly in my corporate life, and I had to do a lot of hard things. But when we do that, the right things happen. I just know between human beings more right stuff comes out of treating each other with care and kindness, and love. It'sour nature to be receptive to that. I've had people, it's just felt brutal to me when they get cold and hard about something that's not cold and hard. Like, why are you talking to me like that in a time would be the last time I would expect you to treat me like that? So first of all, it's smart. It's just smart. Any day of the week, I would advocate. It is just better business to work from the heart. It just is all day long.

So many of my clients and listeners are consultants in people-related fields like leadership, culture and team development. Even those in finance, marketing, and tech are dealing with people inside companies. It’s so encouraging to hear Cheryl use this terminology and advocate for the love-based, not fear-based, way of working. One specific tactic she finds objectionable is disciplinary actions.

Cheryl: We want people to feel motivated in their work and give it their all instead of their like just cooperating with us. They do the bare minimum. So it's kind of well known everything is better, more profitable, more efficient, more everything if you can tap into people giving things their all. Well, that's a human to human interaction. If you want them to give your heart and soul to their work, you have to give them your heart and soul as a way. You have to create a condition that would make that what a normal human being would do. And this is where none of it lies. They know when they're being treated like a number. They know when they're being treated with respect and when they're not. And tthat heart does not stay open. That's why like disciplinary process and stuff, those are horrible. It's like taking a sledgehammer to a piece of equipment. It's so damaging for what you get out of it. So I'm not finding this hard. If people just get people, which is like, you are one. What motivates you is what motivates that person. We all know what we hate and we don't. None of us like to be treated like a number. None of us like to be manipulated or people to be disrespectful. That's all this is. Like, it's not weird. I think there is an ever-increasing understanding that we need to figure out what people really need to be happy and feed it to them for the most successful business possible.

Discipline is bad parenting masquerading is leadership and it doesn't belong in the workplace. So how do we, you and I, take the first steps to leading from the heart?

Cheryl: There's a woman, Renee Smith. So Renee runs A Human Workplace, and she's helped me understand one way to keep it this simple is if you think about something you're about to do, nboard someone, hire someone, move someone, put in a new strategy. I don't care what you're about to do. Think about, in terms of love versus fear in the workplace. What would I do if I was afraid? And what would I do if I wasn't afraid? Love also translates, like in a place of trust, in a place of I think the best of people. I think the best of likely outcomes instead of I'm afraid of what could happen. I'm aware of what can happen, what's the opportunity instead of what is there to worry about? So when we shift that, I would start paying attention when you are planning and doing things, and be really aware when things are done from protection, if that really works against you.

Like I have to say this in case they do this, and I have to do this in case they do that, you know, and we gotta make sure we get all these policies signed to make sure, you know, if they break a policy – like that's all fear-based energy compared to like, I want them to be comfortable and I want them to feel at ease, and I want these people to feel connected to other people, and I want them to know that I care about them, that it's going to give you a completely different set of actions to take. So in the end, it's actually not that complicated, it's just getting more clear which is which.

Finally, I wanted to hear about a leader Cheryl has worked with.

Cheryl: 20 women showed up in my head at one time. I'm like I have to sort through and find one. Yes, there is one by, by the way, that I always think about. She's the head of a plant, also a big job. She has a very different style than a lot of other leaders who are much more like here's my strategic plan and it has six parts and three sub points, and like, you know, here's my eight step plan sheet. She really kind of recoils from some of that. She's kind of like, I've done that and it doesn't go that far. You get a lot of people who like read the plan, looked at the plan, heard what you said to them, and nothing happens.

She's much more, I'm out here working with people, a person at a time, creating real change by dealing with them as individuals. But I've seen as she's worked with some of the work that we've done, she feels like she has kind of a system to follow. It has helped her get more systematic about that, but it's rooted in how people really are, which is still a human to human interaction. You can't interact with a thousand people like it's a thousand people, so I'll just do one thing and it'll work for the thousand. I'm like, that's not how it works. It's more about conversations, and so I think she's leaned into that part of her style and realized that creates real buy-in and now she knows her way is a good way to lead and she's doing more of it. And that coaching style, she's really done really well at how to coach like her and her team read The Coaching Habit. Let's all learn to be better coaches. Let's ask more questions as a group.

She'll tell me all day long I've been asking more and more questions, but now, so that's her style with more skill doing what she knows is right, which is to get more from the person. What did they think? Get them to do what they think is right, tap into their talents, and yeah, I'm a huge fan.

It seems like she's getting great results as well. A key focus of Cheryl's CORE leadership system is building coaching habits within organizations. Even though it's so often associated with hyper-masculine sports like football, coaching, which involves helping team members find the answers within themselves and develop confidence in their problem-solving skills, is a fundamentally, feminine skill.

Cheryl: This is a really fun conversation because I don't think there's enough discussion in some ways what the feminine strength of leadership really is.

Samantha: Nor do I. Maybe we'll do a part two.

Hmm, should we do a part two? How about you let me know? I always love feedback from listeners and a good way to share yours is to visit SamanthaHartley.com/super, click on the LinkedIn button and connect with me there.

And now, today's coaching question:

Where is your biggest growth opportunity with your leadership style?

A Journal prompt:

Think about three leaders you have respected and admired. What qualities did they have that especially inspired you? And in what specific behaviors did they display them?

Affirmation: "It’s perfectly effective to be heart-based!"

That’s it for today. I've loved sharing these ideas with you. I hope they'll encourage you to access those deep feminine gifts within yourself. To find more tools for growing your consulting business, visit SamanthaHartley.com/Super. And with that, I’m wishing you a profitable and joyful consulting business.