Judith Baxter - The Language of Female Leadership

I am deeply grateful to my husband, Brian, for patiently reading drafts of this book, often several times, and providing me with encouragement, support, constructive criticism and advice. Without his inspiration, this book would not have been achieved.

My thanks also go to all the senior people who supported or took part in the research studies discussed in this book. Special thanks in particular go to: Nancy Badoo, Mike Caldwell, Peter Erskine, Martyn Lambert, Sandra McCleod, Rhodora Palomar, Tessa Raeburn, Steve Robertson, Ian Ryder, Dave Smith, Meryl Strang, Jonathan Turpin and Gemma Webb.

Note: Punctuation is not used to indicate sentence, clause or word boundaries as in conventional written discourse.

• Speculating, hypothesising, questioning
• Consulting; seeking help and advice from others
• Establishing status, position in the organisation, expertise, who you know
• Being confrontational, e.g. confronting a person who is being difficult
• Listening
• Dialogue and debate
• Self-promotion: reminding/informing others of your experience, achievements, contacts etc
• Being assertive: making assertions, holding to your opinion
• Being polite and courteous
• Rapport building: aiming to connect, engage, find common ground, empathise
• Extolling a vision
• Being able to give orders and instructions appropriately
• Networking/making and keeping contacts
• Expressing support and solidarity with other people, their views and actions
• Giving praise: complimenting people
• Using humour: witticisms, irony, sarcasm, wry comments, taking the mick, jokes
• Being open: expressing uncertainty, admitting mistakes, problems, weaknesses; expressing feelings
• Arguing and developing a case
• Persuading others to your point of view
• Being able to give a speech, presentation or an extended talk in public
• Telling stories and anecdotes

This scene takes place in a boardroom of a large multinational company in the centre of London, UK:

In this short extract, Jan, the Managing Director of the companys UK Division, reaches the end of a long discussion with her mainly male management team in which they have been arguing over the need to improve communication in the business. By this point in the meeting, Jan looks exhausted and has to go outside for a much-needed cigarette. She looks visibly shaken by the experience. Her colleagues avoid her during the meeting break. An hour before, she opened the discussion by saying:

Communication in the business is clearly an important agenda item meriting a full and exploratory discussion among the team. But could the meeting have gone better? During the meeting, Jan was not overly heavy-handed and consulted team members at every stage. From the limited evidence of this extract, the male members of her team were not being deliberately difficult: Tim accepts his bosss point of view. So, was it the judgemental way in which Jan opened this agenda item that caused the protracted discussions among her team? Could she have presented and sought the opinions of her team in a more inclusive way? How should senior women use leadership language? Is there any difference in the way they should go about it compared to their male colleagues?

You are unlikely to find answers to these questions in the hundreds of business and management books published on leadership each month, or even within the increasing number specialising in female leadership (e.g. Eagly and Carli 2007; Hayward 2005; Vinnicombe et al 2009). A central issue explored in many of these female leadership books is the glass ceiling: women are still missing from the top of business corporations, which has implications for women at every level. Many of these books on womens leadership examine the barriers blocking womens career paths to leadership and consider what can be done to ensure a faster pace of changes so that more womens talents are utilised by their organisations to their mutual benefit. The focus is upon the economic, socio-cultural and political reasons for the challenges that face senior women, such as a lack of female role models, insufficient mentoring or networks for women, an inflexible working day, the work-life (im)balance, organisational politics, poor impression management, and so on (Singh 2008). A commercial by-product of such literature is the burgeoning body of self-help guides offering roadmaps for career women to help them improve their chances of being appointed to boards and once there, establish their authority with their (often) male colleagues (e.g. Thomson and Graham 2008).