More on leadership

There was a great article in the New York Times over the weekend and a commentary in Salon

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/?last_story=/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/11/mean_girls/

that followed it on women and their behavior in the workplace.  (If you follow the Salon link you will find the link to the original Times article.  They make a nice pair of readings.)  I recommend this for reading for both genders.  It started me thinking about the idea of what we truly expect of women in leadership roles.  Since this is a passion of mine, I follow research on this and see many positive things about how women have led leadership to become more collaborative and collegial and that androgynous style is the new model for success in leaders.  But in truth, I hear more about how we have not moved far.  So I am left to wonder if we are still fighting - all of us, both men and women - an old model that values competition and aggression, especially in times of scarce resources? To the degree that we still use that model, we inevitably create a sense that to "win" you have to have a loser.  

So I ponder, even for those of us who feel enlightened, how often we have scrambled to get our share without recognizing how we have bought the old model?  When we turn on each other, even subtly, we are continuing the legacy.  When we do not confront bad behavior, bullying, gossiping as a sub rosa tactic to put someone else down, then we are perpetuating competition at any cost. 

Our leadership challenge is to create, model, implement a culture that fairly evaluates individual effort but also values sharing of scarce resources and teamwork.