Are you an Iron Butterfly? And why would you want to be one?

Contributed by Dr. Birute Regine

After writing the book, The Soul at Work: Engaging Complexity Science for Business Success, with science writer Roger Lewin, I realized that the great majority of the very successful, complexity-science oriented leaders we interviewed were men. Their leadership style shared an unusual attribute: a dynamic balance of traditionally feminine and masculine skills and values. They focused on relationships as the core of their management model, and argued that this would lead to healthy bottom line numbers. It did. One leader we interviewed had Maslow’s pyramid on his desk, except that at the bottom of the pyramid were “relationships,” rather than need. I wondered how the interplay between feminine and masculine skills might look like in women leaders.

I ended up interviewing sixty successful women from eight countries, and from many walks of life. They included: a Noble Peace Prize laureate, a famous novelist, a federal judge, lawyers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, artists, CFO, doctors, nurses, educators, and even a wine maker in Tuscany. What, I wondered, would I find in common in these women across this great sea of diversity?

I discovered four traits: paradoxical ways, “gatherers” of community, holistic thinking, relational intelligence.

1. Paradoxical ways.

The way the dynamic feminine/masculine balance played out in these women was in paradoxes, being both tough and empathic, flexible and orderly, patient and timely, diplomatic and candid, competitive and collaborative.

We often think we need to choose between opposites, but these women contained opposites. Rather than “either/or,” it was “both/and,” an approach that contributed to a wealth of resources being at their disposal.

I named them Iron Butterflies to capture their paradoxical ways: a will of iron and the touch of a butterfly.

2. Gatherers of community.

Gathering manifested in their overriding strategy to simply bring people together, believing that organizations with no weaving of positive relationships unravel into dysfunction. This approach redefines the meaning of power. Our society is domination based, which uses power over others to achieve goals. Iron Butterflies use their power with and for others to achieve shared goals; power is distributed and shared.

3. Holistic thinkers.

Holistic thinkers see the obvious, read the writing on the wall, but more importantly they see beyond the obvious by making connections between things. Iron Butterflies educate people to see the whole picture. They take the time to sit down and explain the whole picture to their people—here is what we are working on, here is where you are, here are the interconnections, here is what we want you to do—and then let them do it. This process takes longer up front, but it is faster in the end because people are more powerfully engaged, both technically and emotionally, and are therefore less dependent on directives.

In addition, Iron Butterfly leaders invite the whole person to work, their personal as well as work successes and struggles. Therefore they are very adept at building trust, a key element to creating a successful business and a productive and creative culture.

4. Wielders of relational intelligence.

Iron Butterflies hold high standards of behaviors for themselves and for others. They see that the integrity of relationship is everything. They demonstrate their relational intelligence by being sensitive to context, reading individual body language and social mood, adept at clarifying issues, deep listeners, willing to be both compassionate and confrontational. All these behaviors increase their capacity to connect with others.

Why would you want to be an Iron Butterfly?

Why would you want to be a cutting edge leader? And why do these attributes contribute to a woman’s success? Complexity science explains why. Organizations are complex adaptive systems. In complex adaptive systems, agents interact and when they have a mutual effect on one another something novel emerges. Anything that enhances these interactions will enhance the creativity and adaptability of the system.

In human systems this translates into agents as people and interactions being relationships that are grounded in a sense of mutuality: mutual respect, influence, and interest. Even if not equal in power within the organization, people are still mutual. In other words, relationships and the world of the “between” is the bottom line in affecting positive change in an organization. Paying attention to and developing relationships is often dismissed as a waste of time, but actuality it is your best investment of time.

The four Iron Butterfly traits all serve to enhance and create positive connections between people. Their paradoxical nature reflects a non-linear approach, which in complex systems is the most effective. The traditional linear command-and-control management is ill-suited to such systems, and inevitably impairs their efficacy in terms of creativity and adaptability. As gatherers, Iron Butterfly leaders invite diversity and create opportunities for those unexpected connections that can lead to unexpected results. As holistic thinkers they see the organization as a whole entity and are aware of the connections and potential connections within and beyond. They recognize that manipulating something in the system has a ripple effect on everything else. And as wielders of relational intelligence Iron Butterfly leaders know how to positively connect to a variety of people and are eager to connect them to each other.

So, if you are an Iron Butterfly, welcome to the club. If you are an Iron Butterfly-to-be, welcome to the journey.

Dr. Birute Regine is widely published in professional journals and blogs for Huffington Post and Forbes 85 Broads. She is the author of Iron Butterflies: Women Transforming Themselves and the World (Prometheus Books, 2010) and The Soul at Work: Embracing Complexity Science for Business Success (Simon & Schuster, 2000). Iron Butterflies received the Nautilus Silver Book Award in both social change and women’s interest. For more information, visit www.ironbutterflies.com.