“How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing & Dirty Tricks!!”

Not so long ago I wrote about ‘Soft Leadership for a Global Market Place’. My riff was that whilst technical skills are always important, the edge in today’s competitive world would go to those who can combine these with more adaptive, softer-type skills.

A wee while ago, The Athena Doctrine: How Women (And The Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule The Future, was №2 on the New York Times non-fiction best seller list. The authors, John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio had surveyed over 60,000 people world-wide about attitudes to success at work and guess what they found?

Yes! Softer skills, or characteristics regarded as being more feminine — for example being a team player, being reliable, being popular and kind — came top again and again on respondent’s lists for being absolutely vital to business success.

Whilst behavioral traits and characteristics regarded as being overtly masculine — such as being dominant, arrogant and ambitious — were all given an unequivocal thumb downs.

The big data the authors collected from a sample balanced between men and women from diverse cultures and economies, spread across 13 countries, made a telling point: “Feminine values are the operating system of the 21 Century”.