Gender, Leadership and Change

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Gender, Leadership and Change

• Georgia Duerst-Lahti
• Tirana

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Women As Symbol
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Leadership can be

• Holding a position
• Holding a singular position
• Having followers who follow
• But, perception..

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Gender Paradigms

• Complementarity
• Individuality
• Corporative
• Civic
• Egality

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Complementarity

• sexed-bodies recommend gender roles
• gender roles exist regardless of who fills
• advantage in gender dualism pleasure in sex
  difference
• orthodoxy of roles and power relations
• masculine public, feminale home

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Individuality-Corporative

• interchangeable humans with potential
• gender roles are mere functions and choices
• desire a gender irrelevant public world
• blind to difference and structural constraints
• inequalities from individual action and choice
• free within extant masculinist system

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Individuality-Civic

• individuals more similar than different
• individual gender options within ordinary bounds
• deal with gendered inequalities
• masculine can learn from feminale
• approach change from inside extant masculinist
  system

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Egality (Gender Mainstream)

• uncouple gender roles from sexed bodies
• move beyond gender orthodoxy
• increase value of feminale
• change boundaries of masculine
• add more sex-gender options
• construct new system

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Perceive Womens Leadership
Complementarity Individuality-Corporative Individuality- Civic Egality Gender Mainstream
Out of place Do it like a man Compete but change All types of humans lead
Some issues for women Mostly issues are for all Some issues for women All issues are gendered
OK if home is fine Up to individual Up to her, with help Recast ideas of a leader
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The process of change
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Precursors to Change

• Multiple versions of same point
• 80/20 principle (Vilfredo Pareto, Richard Koch)
• Accomplish most, with modest but well placed
  effort
• not 50-50 rule Equal effort to all parts
• Mental Representations
• Content (basic idea)
• Form (way content is presented)

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More on Content

• Concepts
• term, closely related entities
• Stories
• narratives of events over time
• Theories
• formal explanations of processes
• Skills (form and content)
• procedures know how to carry out

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7 Rs of Mind Changing

• Reason
• Research
• Resonance
• Representational Redescriptions
• Resources and Rewards
• Real World Events
• Resistances

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Truisms About Mind Changing

• It is never easy Resistances
• 6 Rs combine in various ways
• Is unlikely to occur when resistances are strong
  and other factors do not point strongly in one
  direction

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Intelligences and a Mind Change

• Involves a change in mental representation
• How one thinks about an idea
• What (concept), how operates (theory), do (skill)
• Appealing to more intelligences increases chances
  of mind change

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Some Types of Intelligence

• Symbolic Analytic
• Linguistic, logical, mathematical
• Noncanonical
• Musical, spacial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist
• Personal
• Inter, emotional, intra
• Existential
• Why? meaning

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Learned Earliest and Best

• Humans primed for some theories
• Correlation causes, reinforcement entrenches
• Early theories especially difficult to alter
• Conserve what we know naturally
• Predilection for parsimony

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Factors that Entrench

• Emotional resonance and commitment
• Easier
• Public commitment
• Personality
• Rigid and certain (authoritarian)
• Learn by conserving ideas

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Factors that Impel Change

• Proclivity to adopt a stance
• New environment powerfz ul, resource-rich option
• Mastery of current mental representation
• Superior mental representation
• Strong desire to understand better
• Competence
• Scaffolding (just enough support, willingness)

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Match Audience with Strategy

• Large change, diverse audience
• (e.g., nation)
• Large changes, shared audience
• (e.g., agency)
• Intimate
• (e.g., one key person)
• Yourself

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Change Large and Diverse

• Recognize, acknowledge, undermine current story
• Develop new, good story
• Construct evocative symbols
• Tell over and over
• Embody with action and symbol
• Help audience understand why better

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7 Rs Large and Diverse Change

• Identify which representationsstories
• Imaginatively use reason, multiple
  representations, resonance with experiences
• Mollify resistances (anticipate, address)
• Take advantage of real world
• Marshal whatever resources possible

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Organizational Level

• Common knowledge, experience
• Shared purpose, common destiny
• Simpler changes trump complex ones
• But, complex easier in contained setting

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Steps to Changing Minds

• Learn from others (research)
• Challenge resistances in each key constituency
  (directly and not)
• Initiate new practices (resources, rewards)
• Have good new story (redescription)
• Work resonances, real world, and reason
• Time, toil, and trouble

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Failures of Org. Change

• Hyperbole in story
• Too few details, supporting facts
• Blinded by own aspirations
• Wrong resonance, reward
• Dont embody story

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Hallmarks of Effectiveness

• Intelligences
• Instinct
• Integrity

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Intelligences

• Know how to create right story, communicate
  well, change if need be
• Understand others motive, listen, respond
• Existential pose and answer own big questions,
  share vision
• Also logic-math, know oneself, hire smart
  people, clear goals, act consistently, draw upon
  shared, address schooled and unschooled mind

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Instincts

• Right move in particular situation
• Become aware of gut
• Put intuition into words, test on trusted others
• Learn from mistakes processes not blame
• Crises create opportunities

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Integrity

• Take time for daily reflection, analysis
• Go to the mountain top occasionally
• Be open to real world changes
• Be sensitive to valid strains in counter stories
• Commit deeply to mission
• Have humility about actual potency

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Think Different(ly)

• E.g., from telephones to information
• Provide info constantly
• Discuss difficulties frankly
• Commit to help land on feet
• Stories excite, resonate with reality, embody
  truth
• Have integrity

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Innovating in Public Organizations
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Qualities of Innovators

• Personal involvement
• Strives to achieve
• Sees self as instigator
• Plenty of imagination
• Critical and analytical thinker
• Leads and manages well

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To Lead Innovation

• Proactively seek improvements
• Broker power
• Know who and how
• Timing
• Find resources
• Gain support
• Trust, trust, trust
• Champion and Negotiate
• Listen, generate, ideas and strategies
• Encourage and sponsor (empower) followers

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Stages of Organizational Change

• Establish sense of urgency
• Create guiding coalition
• Develop vision and strategy
• Communicate change vision (over and over)
• Empower others
• Generate short term wins
• Consolidate change to produce more change
• Anchor new approaches in culture

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Skills to Master

• Creative problem-solving
• Visioning and strategic planning
• Framing and agenda setting
• Dialogue and commitment

• Analyze feasibility
• Pilot and experiment
• Empowering followers
• Redesign the organization
• Assess and get feedback

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Accounting for WomensLeadership Success
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Capable women, and..
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Success Formula

• female voters
• individual desire
• public policy
• implementation advocates
• time
• - tradition
• - backlash
• time (pipeline, comfort, reputation)
• Current Success

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Transgendered Elements of Success

• Hard work
• Perform beyond expectations
• Resilience
• Make self visible to policy makers or top
  management
• Take risks and act boldly
• Grow thick skin

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Why Bother? Women

• In office care more about womens policies than
  do men.
• Tend to have a more open style and democratic
  than men
• Bring life experiences to the table for all
  issues
• Democracy and legitimacy are at stake.

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Advice

• Choose battles wisely
• Take responsibility for your own development
• Use institutional resources you have
• Build your policy resources
• Run for office, get appointed.

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Only you can change your own mind

• Sometime events precipitate
• Usually happens gradually
• Slowly accumulate new info
• Intuit change more than decide
• Can do deliberately
• Desire
• Effort
• New mental representations

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And Finally

• Work on issues you care about
• Passion makes you willing to work
• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
  committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
  it is the only thing that ever has (Margaret
  Mead).