Sociologists tell us that even the most introverted people will influence over 10,000 others in their lifetime. Can you imagine how many people we have knowingly and unknowingly influenced in our lives so far? How can we best leverage this power? How can we become true leaders?
We hear about leadership everyday, but are still left wondering who the real leaders are? Some you can see, some come with an executive job title or might even be well-known business people. But having a great title doesn’t make for a top achiever, and they might even sadly undermine our businesses and society.
Some leaders can hardly be seen, but have some of the greatest impacts. We believe real leadership is when one impact-maker influences another to drive sustainable progress forward.
Riccarda and Manuela’s idea is to create a series of interviews aimed at portraying impact makers and leaders who are driving change and innovation worldwide, and in doing so, are raising awareness on a new successful type of genuine leadership.
New role models who base their success on strategic ‘soft’ skills, such as empathy, creativity, communication, those incredible few who spark energy and strength as they positively impact others and society.
We start with Paris-based Chiara Condi, Italian-American, thirty year-old founder of Led By HER, a non-profit which empowers women who have suffered from violence through entrepreneurship.
I would say that I am at a crossroads of my life right now because I have spent the last ten years of my life working on gender equality and women’s empowerment issues and the last five years building up a nonprofit organization Led By HER, which carries out advocacy and programs for women’s entrepreneurship and women’s rights. This work that we have carried out on the ground over the years was very formative, it has given me new ideas and the willingness to do more. At this time it pushes me to advocate to try to change things on a new level through the visibility that I have gained. It has provided me with new ideas and visions of what we can do that can make a big difference for women and now, more and more, I feel that it is my job to make those ideas heard. That is why I try to participate as much as I can in conferences, media and international dialogues, because I think that it is more important than ever to raise awareness around these issues.
I think that there is no perfect formula about how to divide time in your life. The only thing that has worked for me has been setting priorities and making each decision based on those priorities. That way I never have to feel bad about the choices I made or about saying ‘no’ to something. And I believe that instead of always quantifying the time we spend on things in our life maybe we should be qualifying it instead. I do this in my own life by being fully present with whatever I am doing at the moment, whether that is work or my personal life. Even if it’s something small that I am allowing myself I enjoy it fully. When I am doing whatever I am doing at a given moment in time nothing else matters. When I try to apply this all-encompassing rule to my life I see that I feel much more fulfilled.
Yes. I believe that good parenting, like good management, is all about leadership development. Your role as a parent is to develop your child into an independent free thinking adult who will do his best in life. Much in the same way in companies; you foster people’s potential and talents so that they can be the best version of themselves. That is when they will also give their best. I also think that fulfilled individuals can become a company’s best asset as leaders.
I do not think I have formal role models, but I am very inspired by the women we helped through Led By HER because they taught me that whatever happens in life you can still show up and change your life. And if they believe that every day can be the start of a new life then all of us should. Whenever I think of them any excuse that I build up in my life not to show up falls to the ground.
Embodying your own goals is an important aspect of success. I care much more than I ever did about that and how I treat myself and run my own life. Only once you achieve that equilibrium in your own life can you unleash the potential to carry out great things. And it is not about major things, but rather about how you show up in your life daily.
If we are afraid of management it could be because we are associating it with an old style of doing things. I think that now more and more corporations are realizing that people are their first and most precious resource and that their biggest asset should be cultivating them. I think the best survival skill in any environment is always to be yourself. Whatever decision you make, don’t make it come from your environment but from you; that is the only way you will be OK with whatever happens around you.
One of the greatest qualities of new leaders is empathy. Understanding the people you have in front of you, their potential and where they want to be will enable you to make the best arise out of the people you work with. Great leaders see potential and work with it.
Not asking for their worth. I interviewed many women around the world and I realized that if there was a common denominator in their struggle it was credibility. The truth is that while a man’s work is taken at face value, a woman’s work is not. Women expressed that they have to prove themselves and work twice as much as men to prove that they deserve something.
But we cannot stop there and surrender ourselves. Even if the world is this way and these are our circumstances why can we not work on being so aware of ourselves and know our own worth to claim what we deserve? Every time you are asking for that promotion or negotiating that raise do it, go for it, for yourself and for all women because it is time we teach the world what we are worth and not settle for anything less.
Yes. I think we are moving towards a leadership of questions rather than a leadership of solutions. Good leaders ask all the right questions, not people who already know the answers. Innovation has turned the world on its head because it has taught us that hierarchy does not exist. Good ideas can come from anywhere and the best leaders are those who will be able to seize things rather than impose them.
I had the chance to give a conference about this lately recently in Cape Town for the aviation industry, which is an industry that faces great challenges in renewing itself for the future. There is potential for all industries as long as people’s voices are heard and they are included in the process. When people lose sense of their work is when they feel that their work is disconnected from what is happening around them. There is no such thing as an organization and its employees, they are just one—the organization is its employees and therefore they have to feel with every ounce of their bones that they are part of it. That is what we all want, to be part of something greater than ourselves, and organizations that miss out on providing that sense of purpose will miss out of the future.
That nothing is permanent; that I am replaceable and not to be attached to any single outcome in life. There is no single solution, but when I started I had very fixed measures of success. When you do that it makes it impossible to just be happy with whatever is happening right now and to trust that even if something is different from what you expected it can still be great.
I also realize that sometimes you start someplace and then life takes you somewhere else, and I used to fight against that, but now I have learned to listen to it and to embrace it.
I never believed when I was younger that I mattered more than what I do, but now I do because I understand that is the only way to make a difference. You can only give fully from that place of abundance, so I try to create that for myself daily.
It takes the form of daily yoga, Pilates and meditation with visualization and journal writing. And then taking longer moments of distance from my work through travels that nourish my soul. I love seeing what I have never seen before and it replenishes me entirely.
Feeling that I left the world a little better than it was yesterday.
If I can say that to myself then I can sleep well at night.
I used to think that impact was a big word and impact meant millions of people, that everything had to be big to matter. Actually Led By HER taught me the opposite. Impact is much more about doing small things in a big way. Impact is about the intention and magnitude with which you do every little thing– and that is what will move mountains. I learned that you change a world one person at a time and each of those small revolutions will foster others.
Make sure that the first person you serve is always yourself because that is the only way you will truly help others.
“How can I have more women in my management team? We have thirty-five team members and all of them are men. I want to boost our company’s gender diversity”.
A Japanese manager asked me this question while I was on a Japanese tour. I was on a business trip, visiting prestigious universities and big companies that were keen to learn more about the revolutionary ideas behind our program.
So, of course, my natural response was to talk about Lifeed.
Despite the cultural distance, I discovered that Japanese women are very similar to us. They are natural allies in our efforts to bring about change in bringing gender diversity to the workplace. Just like in Italy, the Japanese birth rate is at an all-time low. 60% of women don’t return to work after maternity leave. What’s more, their culture is also very traditionalist. It’s considered a national emergency, but perhaps it’s also a good time to change the rules and perspectives when it comes to the world of work.
There were fifteen women and one man in the room. All of them were managers in big companies. We’re in a workshop about stereotypes.
I said, “Raise your hand if you have power”. They smiled at each other, feeling embarrassed. Not one single hand went up. In all the years that I’ve been asking this question, it was the first time that this happened. I’m in Japan, and for the first time I realise that Japanese women are worse off than their Italian counterparts. Even if there are numerical similarities in terms of employment, gender diversity and representation.
So, I decided to see if the “empowerment” mechanism that I’ve experienced so many times in Europe would work in Tokyo too. I said, “Raise your hand if you have responsibilities”. They smiled at each other and all raised their hands. This time, their smiles were liberated: they had already understood where we were going. I didn’t need to say it, but I said it anyway: “You can’t have responsibilities if you don’t have power in those same areas”.
It’s so typical of women. They don’t link power and responsibility. They know they have the latter, but don’t feel that they have any power. But when we think about the powers at be, the reverse is opposite. Many people in power fail to link it to responsibility.
Finally, I ask them to raise their hands again if they think they have power. This time every time goes up. It works in Japan too. Perhaps I could say that it’s a universal principle. Women accept the notion of power if it’s clearly linked to the concept of responsibility. I’ve learned a lot about Japanese women during this trip. In just a few days, I’ve met with companies, students and the media.
Japanese women are similar to us. But they are probably also angrier. Because ultimately, they are locked into an older culture that’s still quite traditionalist. It makes it hard to enjoy being a working mother. By the end of the workshop, everyone in the workshop had glittering eyes. Perhaps it’s easier to accept that the formulas needed to activate change have come from somewhere else. Maybe it needs to be that way.
After the workshop, I talked to a second-generation Japanese businessman, the one who asked me the question at the beginning of the article. How can I have more women in my management team? How to be diverse?
I replied, “If you really want to bring women to the table, you have to change everyone’s habits. Starting with you. If you don’t want women who are the same as men, you’ll have to be ready for different questions, different incentives. For example, a nice car might not work. Women prefer to have the benefit of time, of flexibility. Women are different and they’ll shake things up. Are you sure that’s what you want?”
He listened carefully. His father is head of the company and he’s going to be retiring in two or three years. He wants to make a lot of changes and women can be his best allies. Possibly the distance between Italy and Japan (an eight-hour time difference and a twelve-hour flight) allowed him to ask bolder questions. He also allowed me to give braver answers than either of us would have accepted from our fellow citizens. In short, it’s the same with the women I meet: less mistrust than we often find among Italians, a more immediate desire for alliances. Perhaps precisely because we are so different in appearance yet so similar in substance.
This article was originally written by our CEO Riccarda Zezza for Alley Oop, Il Sole 24 Ore. To read the original article in Italian, click here.
Motivating people to overcome obstacles can make them stronger. If you think about it, it makes sense. In fact, management schools often favour the idea of “empowering people” through their content. In her book “Lean in”, Sheryl Sandberg encourages women to make a step forward in life. Many companies cite it as part of their key diversity and inclusion messaging, in an attempt to help people to overcome gender discrimination and boost workplace diversity. Her message is so popular that her 2010 TED talk has been watched 8 million times! Sandberg offers a recipe that encourages women to raise their hands, to raise their tone of voice and to trust themselves. Essentially, her message is: even if the world is not tailor-made for you, you can still overcome obstacles and succeed.
It’s a question that Duke University researchers worked on. They asked 2,000 people about their experiences when they were advised to “Lean in” compared to seeing objective data about the gender gap in the workplace (for example, data on the pay-gap, work-life balance and the glass ceiling).
The results were surprising… and also quite worrying. Participants that were exposed to empowerment messaging believed that women could do it. But the women also believes that it was their responsibility to resolve gender discrimination. Some women even believed that they somehow caused the discrimination.
Harvard Business Review published the research results, suggesting that “enabling” women generates an illusion of control which is not realistic. The research proves that women cannot, individually or directly, resolve the challenges that discrimination brings. It’s the system itself that needs to change.
“People don’t love injustice and when they can’t adjust it in a simple way, they make a mental exercise to make it more acceptable. Blaming victims for their sufferings is a typical example: that person must have done something to deserve what happened”.
As women, how often have we been asked to follow instructions such as:
Be assertive, but lower your tone of voice
Ask for a pay raise, but do it with kindness
Be clever, but don’t feel superior
Show your skills, but don’t be intellectually intimidating
Be ambitious, without bothering with excesses of self-esteem
Dress nicely, without standing out!
As the journalist Quartz Ephrat Livni said:
“We cannot and must not absorb facetious messaging that says we created and can fix failings that are not of our own making—and that we might somehow shape-shift until we fit perfectly into fundamentally flawed workplaces.”
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza for the Alley Oop blog. You can see the original article here.
Hands up who is happy with their boss! Most of the time, we find it hard to fathom how that person managed to land the role they’re in. Can we replace them? Would we be good leaders? The American author Peter Bregman wrote a new recipe for being a great leader. In fact, it’s a good way for us to sense check ourselves to see if we have what it takes to become a leader. We can ask ourselves three simple questions, all centred around the letter C.
Do you trust yourself? We’re not talking about ambition and presumption, but rather something much more subtle: the ability to be able to Care for ourselves. It’s impossible to be confident when we constantly need the approval of others. We can solidify our position when we’re kind and tolerant with ourselves, especially when nobody else is validating what we’re doing.
Are you a confident leader that knows how to care for yourself when you need to?
Do people sense your trust, even when you don’t agree with each other? It’s about being open to others, encouraging others to be themselves, even when they do things differently to us. Good leaders cultivate a Curiosity that keeps their ears and eyes open, stopping them from rushing to conclusions about others.
Are you a leader that knows how to be curious about others?
Can you take risks? A good leader is a person who takes risks, on the basis of their trust and openness with others.
Taking risks means going beyond your comfort zone. It means allowing yourself to become vulnerable indefinitely. Courage is an emotional dimension. It’s about being open to discomfort to explore new paths.
Are you a courageous leader, not because of your strength, but because of your willingness to be vulnerable?
If you answered yes to all these questions, you deserve to know that behind those words – Care, Curiosity and Courage – the root is the same: they all come from the word “cor”, which in Sanskrit means “heart”. Yes, Care, Curiosity and Courage are all talents of the hearth. To be a good leader, you need to follow your heart.
