Don’t let anyone try to fool you. Leadership is hard work. Plenty of people are not cut out for it – and too many people find themselves struggling in leadership positions – wondering what to do.<\/p>\n
Then there are some people that just make it look easy. The secret to doing so – is understanding that leadership is purely a function of performance – or how we perform the role of the leader. Performance takes practice and an understanding of what it is we need to accomplish. At the highest levels, it requires grit – our need to get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable, and conscientiousness – our understanding that what we are serving something beyond our own personal needs or interests. These two factors – are why I believe the best women leaders are so fully competent.<\/p>\n
Motherhood is just one way (and far from the only way) that women become prepared to perform brilliantly as leaders. There is a biological readiness that is informed by impending parenthood that is generally more pronounced and urgent in mothers than fathers – due to their physical relationship to the process – well beyond the emotional and logical considerations that affect all parents.<\/p>\n
The idea of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is fully obvious. Anyone who has watched a woman you love progress through pregnancy, the delivery of a newborn and the care it immediately requires can speak to the physical, mental and emotional demands. Being a good mother requires grit. And the concept of serving another’s needs and interests becomes the foundation for how children are nurtured and cared for. It isn’t that men cannot fully participate or even take over the full parenting role – it’s just that, in my experience, we are playing catch-up with the women in our lives. I want to make clear that not every mother is a superior parent – and there are incredibly conscientious and competent fathers – it’s just a generally different process of preparation.<\/p>\n
Another factor is the gaining of significance. A successful leader is measured by the meaningfulness and significance of their accomplishments. Meaningful is the basic measurement of the quality of what we contribute through our actions. It is defined by whom we benefit and how. Significance is the latency of those contributions. Our significance if formed over time and judged historically.<\/p>\n
Again, without making overreaching generalizations, societal norms – particularly in business – have meant that women have needed to work harder to demonstrate significance in their accomplishments and achievements. In most of modern Western society, men have long assumed power and been given credit beyond that of our women counterparts – who have too often been discounted, marginalized, repressed and even vilified for demonstrating superior abilities and attributes.<\/p>\n
Rising to these challenges and demonstrating what it takes to not only excel in their own accomplishments – but also to drive exceptional performance in others is no easy task. Yet the legions of women leaders who have done just that – is proof positive that women are not just “cut-out” for leadership, they are fully made for the challenges.<\/p>\n
Successful business leaders are heroes who strive to lead truly competent organizations and leverage that success to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the people they touch. They understand that their abiding sense of duty and their\u00a0commitment to their purpose is both the cause and effect of their success.<\/p>\n
I salute the women – who among my heroes have demonstrated that business leaders do more to improve the social, economic and cultural needs of our communities and society on the whole than politics, government or public policy ever has or ever will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don’t let anyone try to fool you. Leadership is hard work. Plenty of people are not cut out for it – and too many people find themselves struggling in leadership positions – wondering what to do. Then there are some people that just make it look easy. The secret to doing so – is understanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12206,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205\/revisions\/12206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}