Before I leave you wondering about the title, I assure you it\u2019s metaphorical. I did not actually walk in heels because if I did, I probably would be missing a few teeth by now.<\/p>\n
Barring the one year I spent working for a community newspaper pre-NYSC, I\u2019ve only ever worked with female CEOs \u2013 two of them \u2013 so if I said I don\u2019t exactly know what working for male bosses feels like, I\u2019d be relatively correct. I\u2019m pretty sure good leadership isn\u2019t a quality that resides more with one gender. However, I also think that there are nuances in how women lead that make female bosses different from men and would like to share three things I\u2019ve picked up.<\/p>\n
The female bosses I\u2019ve had are brilliant, driven, creative, visionary, fierce, competitive, and so much more. That\u2019s normal, right? What\u2019s unique is that they all retained their femininity and didn\u2019t feel a need to \u2018act like’ men to be heard or respected. They smiled, laughed a lot, and still got things done. This showed me that you don\u2019t necessarily have to become someone else to excel in your chosen field. A better version of yourself? Definitely. But not someone else.<\/p>\n
One thing I never used to do well as a guy, was asking for help or reaching out when I needed support (I still struggle by the way). But with these women, I saw how they got more done by retaining a good support system of family, close friends, and colleagues. This could be me helping the kids out with homework or anyone doing something else but they could travel, hold meetings and do so much. It makes me wonder why anyone would even try doing it alone when it wouldn\u2019t hurt to ask for some help.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen and heard two women talk about the remarkable things they\u2019ve done, like building companies from scratch, launching transformational projects, etc. This may not be a gender-specific thing but I think I\u2019ve heard more women talk about starting from a place of uncertainty \u2013 almost like building the plane while flying it \u2013 than men. It\u2019s not like they didn\u2019t have a plan, but I imagine that in a world where women have to push harder for opportunities, 1+1 isn\u2019t exactly 2. As a woman, you don\u2019t know what would happen if you took a break off work to raise kids with the hopes of getting back to your career; you don\u2019t know how you\u2019ll be received in a new industry, and so on. Many people hesitate in taking their next big step or following their dreams mostly because they don\u2019t know how it would play out. But the bosses I\u2019ve had showed me that it\u2019s okay to do it afraid and start by modelling for the magazine you\u2019re starting or by building a top healthcare company from a \u2018BQ\u2019.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure that if I think about it, there\u2019ll be way more lessons but these 3 rank top of mind for me. I hope that they resonate with someone out there as well; man or woman, it doesn\u2019t matter because knowledge doesn\u2019t have a gender bias.<\/p>\n
Happy International Women\u2019s Month!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before I leave you wondering about the title, I assure you it\u2019s metaphorical. I did not actually walk in heels because if I did, I probably would be missing a few teeth by now. Barring the one year I spent working for a community newspaper pre-NYSC, I\u2019ve only ever worked with female CEOs \u2013 two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6485"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6494,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485\/revisions\/6494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}