One moment you are still the inspired woman who stands for something. The other moment you hear yourself using words that don’t feel entirely your own. Your voice has gotten a little heavier. Your patience a little shorter. It chafes.
I’ve been mentoring women leaders in The Women’s Leadership Program for years. And I can tell you what I hear coming back most often there. Women find themselves hardening. It’s constantly about performing and being on, and preparing every conversation in advance as if it were a negotiation.
At the number one spot is that one word: harden.
Recently I was interviewed with Arieke Boersen, Leonie Gorissen and Nancy Kabalt by MT Sprout on exactly this topic. Four women at the same table with very different stories. And yet with a shared thread: the masculine monkey rock as a pitfall, and the way back to yourself as the real payoff.
What is masculine leadership anyway?
When we talk about masculine leadership, we are not talking about men versus women. We are talking about the dominant leadership model on which virtually all of our organizations are still built. A model in which qualities such as result orientation, control, decisiveness, political sensitivity, competition and rational thinking skills are structurally valued higher than qualities such as empathy, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, intuition and people orientation.
And let me be clear: masculine qualities are not wrong. On the contrary. The problem arises when masculine leadership becomes the norm. Or actually remains the norm, because that’s what still happens in many organizations.
Just look at how leaders are still selected, trained and promoted today. Despite all the talk about diversity, the vast majority of leadership teams are still made up of men, or leaders who have adapted to the masculine leadership model. Moreover, research by Belle Derks, Francesca Manzi, Colette van Laar and Naomi Ellemers shows that in masculine organizations, women are more likely to be valued when they support the existing status quo, while women who discuss inequality or seek change are more likely to encounter resistance.
This creates a very limited picture of what constitutes “good leadership.”
Feminine leadership starts from a different place. Not from power over, but from connection, awareness and presence. For me, therefore, it’s not about either masculine or feminine leadership. The real movement is in integration. In leaders who can combine decisiveness with empathy. Direction with connection. Results with humanity.
“When you come out of a meeting completely drained, you’ve lost yourself one”
How do you notice hardening as a female leader?
With most of the women I counsel, it goes step by step. First there is that one difficult meeting where you had to get tougher to make your point. Then it becomes a pattern. Before you know it, you’re constantly in your head and increasingly suppressing contact with your feelings and intuition.
You don’t just notice the impact at work; you also notice it at home. The connection with your partner and your children feels different than you would like. And you don’t feel good enough, which makes you insecure.
You are constantly concerned with who you need to be to be taken seriously. And you get tired of struggling, tired of not listening to your own boundaries.
A very clear check you can do on your energy level. If you come out of a meeting completely drained, you have lost yourself a little. There has been a leak. You have not been true to what you really wanted to say or do.
How do you find your way back to authentic leadership?
That road often begins with reflection. By consciously dwelling on what is really happening, women start to see more and more clearly where they are making themselves smaller, adapting or not speaking out. And that very awareness gives air.
Many women are advised to work on their visibility. But visibility, as far as I’m concerned, is not about joining the roost. It is about daring to express yourself. About becoming visible in what you stand for, what you believe in and how you want to lead.
In my programs, I see women slowly begin to appreciate themselves more – even the way they lead. They discover that it is their own perspective that shows leadership. That they do not have to adapt, but that they make an impact by looking, feeling and acting differently.
In concrete terms, this means, for example, not putting the business case first, but first daring to see the dream together. Not immediately sending a lawyer to an angry client, but picking up the phone yourself and starting the conversation.
Thanks to that personal growth, women also remain firmer when resistance arises from within the organization. They learn to lead from their own norms and values, instead of from adaptation. And that is precisely what is ultimately felt and appreciated. That is leadership in which people want to move. And that is exactly where the positive spiral originates.
The question I want to give you
In what situations have you set yourself up differently because you thought it would make you be taken more seriously?
And if you had sat there fully as yourself (as a leader from your own values and strengths) what would you have said or done differently?
Often you feel the difference immediately in your energy. When you come out of a conversation or meeting feeling drained, there has been a leak somewhere. That’s when you lost yourself a little along the way. You withheld, modified or did something that wasn’t quite true to what you really felt or wanted to say.
Stopping adjusting brings uncertainty. But realize: you are not alone in this. And it’s not up to you.
Realizing that you are not the only one helps. Connecting with other women in your organization helps even more. Talk about it. What do you run into? What do you notice? Where do you find yourself shrinking or not fully expressing yourself? What mask are you still hiding behind?
Because that is exactly where awareness begins.
Those blinders have to come off. You have to be willing to look at what is really happening. In the culture as well as in yourself. Otherwise you can’t change it either.
Read the full interview
In the MT Sprout article, Arieke Boersen (M&A and Venture team at Eneco), Leonie Gorissen (managing director Protime Netherlands and Germany), Nancy Kabalt (partner at Windkracht 5) and I talk about the moments when it chafed. About what was hardest to let go of. And about what we want to pass on to other women.
Read the full interview on MT Sprout: From monkey rock to authenticity.
Want to work on your authentic leadership yourself? Then see if The Women’s Leadership Program is for you, or send me a DM on LinkedIn with your story.
