By Nicki Gilmour, CEO Evolved People Media (New York City)
Women seek meaning in work while men seek status and pay and that gives women an advantage over men in the workplace.
So declared Joanna Barsh, a director at McKinsey and co-author of the McKinsey report “Centered leadership: How talented women thrive” in a lively keynote speech at the Forté Foundation’s annual corporate best practices conference hosted by Ernst and Young in NY on Tuesday, April 30th.
According to the report, the McKinsey leadership project – “an initiative to help professional women at McKinsey and elsewhere – set out four years ago to learn what drives and sustains successful women leaders….It’s about having a well of physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual strength that drives personal achievement and, in turn, inspires others to follow,” says Joanna and her co-authors in the report. More than 85 women where interviewed worldwide. From those interviews a model was created with 5 broad and interrelated dimensions of leadership – Meaning (finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of an inspiring purpose); Managing Energy (knowing where your energy comes from, where it goes, and what you can do to manage it); Positive Framing (adopting a more constructive way to view your world, expand your horizons, and gain the resilience to move ahead even when bad things happen); Connecting (who can help you grow, building stronger relationships, and increasing your sense of belonging) and Engaging (finding your voice, becoming self-reliant and confident by accepting opportunities and the inherent risks they bring, and collaborating with others).