Why female values are in demand like never before

And how to realize their full potential

"The future is female" is the core statement of one of the Dalai Lama's recent books. He talks about the fact that in today's world, companies need female values more than ever; values such as empathy, integrative power and benevolence. We are also experiencing this epochal cultural change in companies and the ever-increasing striving of people for meaning and lived values in the world of work. Proven leadership instruments are increasingly losing their effect and it is not only the younger generation that is making changed demands on leadership. By Cordula Rosenfeld and Edith Beilner

One of these demands, in our view, is a still unspoken yet clearly perceptible “yearning for more humanity”. Against this background, the demands on leadership and managers are changing more and more in favour of female leadership strengths.

MASCULINE AND FEMININE QUALITIES NEED EYE LEVEL

We do not define feminine as the sole quality of women. Both women and men carry qualities that are attributed to the female as well as the male pole. However, time and again we notice how competition takes place between the two poles. Socially – but also originally in each individual. This evaluation prevents a creative tension and mutual appreciation from developing between the two poles. For this to happen, we need a way of dealing with female and male qualities on an equal footing, which is so urgently needed to shape our future. Qualities attributed to the masculine pole are goal and result orientation, competition, focused thinking and linear approach – skills that enable conquering, growing and rational understanding. These have been strongly demanded and encouraged in the corporate world for decades. Feminine qualities, on the other hand, relate more to creating living relational spaces with all the aspects that go with them. They enable connection, protection and peaceful coexistence. In the corporate environment, these competencies often come under the heading of “soft skills”. While these soft skills were often mildly ridiculed as “soft facts”, today they are becoming the new “hard facts” and are crucial, for example, to inspire committed employees for the company in the future, to create a healthy working environment and to use the opportunities of diversity and networking. Women in particular are good at making even critical issues easy to discuss by actively involving employees. They understand feelings as competent impulses for action and give concerns or fears appropriate

space in everyday work. In this way, they create a sustainable relationship in which each employee feels that his or her personality is recognized. This enables the development of potential, increases satisfaction, promotes self-motivation and thus also contributes to the health of the individual. Increasingly, we are seeing hierarchical structures being dissolved in favor of networked cooperation. The call for “agility” is becoming louder in order to meet complex challenges and the demands on leadership are changing drastically. This leads to the following consequence: in a corporate environment in which the ability to organize oneself, to take initiative and personal responsibility, where networked, crossdivisional cooperation at eye level determine success or failure, female qualities are becoming a must-have!

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR FEMALE COMPETENCES

At the same time, as business coaches in companies, we notice again and again: Many women are excellently qualified and yet shy away from drawing attention to themselves and their achievements. Particularly in management positions, the female pole is usually still underrepresented. Yet, especially in these times of high pressure to change, female competences are so urgently needed as a powerful complement to effectively master complex challenges. To overcome shyness and courageously draw attention to yourself, we have the following tips.

HOW FEMALE LEADERSHIP GETS GOING

Three keys as a source of power for the very personal leadership mission:

Identify the personal mission in the female leadership role For women, the first step is to take responsibility for their very own female competencies and to respectfully acknowledge them. For decades, these skills have been ridiculed or taken for granted, and many women are unaware of the value of these

Source: fauxels / Pexels primal feminine competencies or take them for granted as well. It is time to liberate female competences from their shadowy existence! This requires women who stand by their feminine values and take responsibility for them. In this way, an attitude of increased self-respect and autonomy can emerge in addition to their orientation towards relationships. From generation to generation, a victim consciousness has been passed down among women, which still has a paralyzing effect. But being in the role of creator and victim at the same time is mutually exclusive! In order to mobilize their creative forces, women have to make themselves visible. They have to take responsibility for this – no one can take this first step away from them.

What do I stand for? In order to master challenges with joy every day and to generally experience one's own work as meaningful, one needs clarity about one's personal sense of meaning, one's own answer to the question “what for”. Formulating this “what for” in a strong sentence can act like a compass that is powerfully oriented towards strengths, competences and courageous progress. Those who clearly establish their own values and commit to them have a compass in their hands that provides orientation, especially in challenging times.

The following questions can support you in this: • Which five values guide my actions? • Which concrete behaviors embody these values for me? • What do I want to pay more attention to in my behavior in order to live these values?

Exposing hindering thinking styles and transforming them into powerful motivating factors Women are often united by a strong desire for perfection and a high demand on themselves, especially in positions of responsibility. Most of the time, these behaviors have developed in the past and have become a kind of automatism. In addition, it is often taken for granted that one has to look after the well-being of others, so that one's own limits are hardly perceived and it is even more difficult to stand up for them. In this way, however, women gain less recognition than they would like – on the contrary, they appear contourless and increasingly invisible. Such ways of thinking and behaving can hinder further development, like inner blockades, and slow down or even completely undermine one's own work. What is needed here is loving attention and recognition of how much strength and resources can be released when these old ways of thinking are appropriately transformed. Only when women consciously take responsibility for transforming their inner barriers can they realign themselves for the future. As long as they choose to be victims of circumstance, they

Source: fauxels / Pexels

incessantly roll out the carpet of past experiences, walking on the aspects of the past without ever moving forward and having new experiences. This is why it is so important for women to get to the bottom of these unconscious and obstructive behavioral strategies and transform them into new powerful action.

The following questions can give you a clue: • What typical behavioral patterns am I very familiar with? • What skills have I developed from them? What do I succeed at particularly well as a result? • What is not possible because of this behavior? What does this behavior pattern prevent?

WOMEN NEED FEMALE POWER SPACES

In earlier times, women spent a lot of time together – across generations they lovingly supported each other and learned from the exchange of experiences. Women who share in a circle among their peers on a deep, trusting level strengthen their power. They inspire each other, look out for each other, increase their wisdom, nourish and strengthen each other. Even though we live in different social structures today, women could create such circles in which they strengthen each other and grow together. A helpful way to start could be to open such a circle with the question: “What did I do particularly well this week?” or “What am I particularly proud of this week?” “Where did I set a goal for myself and realize that I had beaten my pattern?”

MALE-FEMALE AS AN INSPIRING FORCE FIELD FOR THE FUTURE

For centuries, the world of work has been built on typically male values according to the higher-faster-further principle. The focus on competition, rivalry and maximizing profits has unbalanced our world. Instead of condemning and devaluing this state of affairs, it is now more a matter of recognizing that this one-sided orientation has lost its raison d'être. Now men and women are challenged to grow beyond it together. We need a healthy balance of growth and preservation, of competition and harmony, of autonomy and relationship building, of direction and depth. Above all, it is about connecting male and female competences at eye level and building bridges. In the first step, we could recognize and appreciate the different competences of the other gender. In the second step, we are convinced that if women take on even more responsibility at important interfaces in companies, society and politics, different perspectives and decisions will come about, which our world urgently needs in order to regain its balance.

In this process, men and women must act hand in hand and at eye level! n

Cordula Rosenfeld, Edith Beilner.

With more than 20 years of leadership and business experience, Edith Beilner and Cordula Rosenfeld accompany leaders and teams in change processes and help people in challenging situations to grow concretely and together into the new. Their work with teams in large organizations has inspired them to accompany women in particular to go their own way authentically and confidently. They are explicitly concerned with bringing female qualities more strongly into the company so that these can be effectively combined with male competences at eye level.