Modesty: The Undoing of Women?

By Smruti Patel

Behind every powerful man there is a woman. Often, this has meant a familial relationship filled by the traditional role of a spouse or a mother with an acknowledgment of the support they provide in the home. While this role is not to be underestimated, we must also acknowledge that for leaders who wish to reach their highest potential it is quite simply not enough. In this age, behind a modern leader, irrespective of gender, the perspective and voice of professional women must be an absolutely integral part of how you do business. If not, you are losing out on your essential development as a leader and a significant margin of profitability. The data shows it over and over again. Not high performing, but outperforming teams, stocks and organizations engage professional women leaders and are strongly influenced by them.

With that as a backdrop to our conversation, a few weeks back I facilitated and led a roundtable on women leaders in an emerging Africa at the U.S. Africa Business Summit in Ethiopia. We had 20 highly accomplished and powerful women from both the private and public sectors made up exclusively of Africans and a handful of Americans. Our imperative was to understand and discuss how we could impact the rise of women leaders in Africa. With the wealth of experience before me, I planned to first ask these women to identify one skill and characteristic that had helped them rise to the top. Thereafter, we would discuss the barriers. As a leadership coach, I wanted to make this an activity of group introspection, an excursion of self-discovery. I wanted these incredible women to dig deep, see themselves differently in all their glory, and, identify how they would be able to strategically impact the lives of other women in a way that would drive results. What did we discover in the two hours?

Unsurprisingly, the skill sets that had taken these women to the top were performance and execution based, and in my experience of working with both genders, no different than from male leaders except they had to prove themselves repeatedly. Performance is the absolute benchmark that has to be established on the journey to leadership. It’s simple: low performance, poor execution, no leadership.

The strongest self-identified skills ranged from legal, financial, analytics to innovation, pattern recognition, writing and organization. Interestingly, strategy and negotiation were identified as the most recurring skills that these women indicated were their defining strengths.

Next we turned to defining characteristics. A marked differentiator began to emerge from my experience in working with both genders. In common were tough characteristics such as bravery, persistence, aggressiveness, passion, boldness and risk. However, a list of characteristics I have not heard many men use to describe themselves also began to emerge: flexibility, emotional maturity, consensus driven, patient, relationship builder, persuasiveness, curious and crazy. Yes, crazy. Doing and taking on that which is seemingly impossible and perceived as inappropriate. With that in mind, it will be of no surprise that the most recurring characteristic essential for a woman leader, it was discussed, turned out to be resilience. It is well documented that both socially and professionally women face an onslaught of barriers, often daily, and the characteristic that had helped these women cut through them was the sheer force of resilience.

While many women possess such characteristics what had the leaders present learnt to overcome but still required active management on their part? Several barriers emerged but two received the greatest attention.

The first was a reluctance to self-promote and talk about their achievements. All the women agreed that the notion of doing your work quietly and getting noticed is outdated. The author Daniel Pink, describes each one of us as sales people. We are. As leaders, we must talk about ourselves realistically, with confidence yet remain humble. Moreover, and this applies to both genders, we often conflate modesty and humility. Humility is steeped in equality, an understanding that you are no better than another yet have an appreciation of your own worth and that of the other. Modesty however, is understating one’s value. It is also misinterpreted as a lack of confidence. Women have a tendency to default towards modesty which in turn leads to a perception, especially in the professional world, of their skills being of lower value. This is a classic mistake women make when negotiating salaries or fees. It is a failure to recognize one’s own worth. Women also simply fail to prioritize their development with professional guidance, a critical step in building awareness of their strengths, abilities and power. On the path to leadership, this awareness is a necessity not a luxury.

The other barrier was a reluctance to seek out support. Yes, women can have it all chimed several women leaders but only with a solid and expansive support structure encompassing social and professional networks. One that surpasses those of male leaders, the best of whom are known to have excellent networks. As we unpacked the reluctance, rhetorical questions emerged. Are women conditioned to strive towards perfectionism? At its loudest, the feminine voice of the self-critic is difficult to appease let alone satisfy. Does this drive women to demonstrate they can do it all single-handedly and make it harder for them to delegate? One of the most important leaps from manager to leader is to demonstrate the ability to delegate and manage a work product from a high level. Is this a barrier that women find too high to scale because of their reluctance to seek out support? Is the height of the barrier exacerbated by women not prioritizing mentoring relationships which could help guide the way?

As we closed our discussion, we reflected on the power of partnerships and it came in dual form. The first was a partnership with other women. It involved placing oneself in the mindset of a sisterhood and building responsive networks. It began with keeping a single question at the forefront: how can I support another woman and help her shine? The second was a partnership with men. There is a mutual learning of behaviors that brings great benefit to both genders in rounding out their leadership styles. Additionally, the complexities of the modern world’s challenges are such that only a diversity in perspectives can bring meaningful solutions. Operating to the exclusion of any one gender is irresponsible. As President Obama put it in his address to the Kenyan public a year ago, “It’s like playing with only half a team.”

With the lens of leadership then, as a man or woman, increasing the breadth of your network especially of professional women has become an imperative. Consider, which women must you get to know better? Perhaps to empower, may be to seek counsel but most of all, for no other reason than to widen your perspective of the world.

Let’s start with International Women’s Day. Which woman will you ask to lunch?

This article was published in Business Daily (East Africa’s premier financial newspaper) on 8 March 2016.