Last week, I described how I got started in women’s leadership, a journey that began when I published The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership in 1990.
I wrote the book in order to help organizations understand the value that women had to offer as leaders, strategists, and decision-makers. Before The Female Advantage, nearly every book, article, and seminar aimed at women with ambitions advised them to basically copy how men did things. Women were never encouraged to pursue their own ideas or to figure out what they might have to contribute.
Being the first in its field, the book caused a stir. By garnering controversy it got a lot of press so sales were strong. Yet I had almost no success in realizing my primary goal. It turned out that helping organizations to recognize women’s leadership potential was going to be more of a long game than a light bulb moment. The only response from organizational leaders came from the US military, which was looking for ways to move more women into their senior ranks.
The first letter I received about the book (this was the snail mail era) came from General Perry Smith, then on the faculty at the National War College in DC, who wrote that he was ordering the book for all his classes. I later received a similar letter from the colonel in charge of leadership development at West Point. (State your reaction here- I was surprised and grateful? ) But that was about it in terms of organizations.
I did however quickly began hearing from individual women who wanted me to know that the book resonated strongly with them. One letter in particular convinced me that The Female Advantage was going to have an impact, even if it was different from the impact I had anticipated.
It came from a woman in Kansas who managed the office at a small agricultural insurer. She told me that she’d always assumed she would never be a leader because she didn’t do things the way her father did. He ran a farm equipment company where he “always let people know just who was boss.” He told her that if she wanted to get anywhere in the world, she was going to have to get comfortable laying down the law. She said that wasn’t in her nature as she didn’t enjoy treating adults like children. Especially people who worked with or for her.
It wasn’t until she read The Female Advantage that she realized, “I could be a leader and still be myself.” I pinned her letter to my wall.
The mail increased, becoming a flood. Within six months of publication, women began writing to ask if I could come speak to their group or network, or with their female colleagues. Because organizations almost never sponsored the events these women put together, they had virtually no budget. But I had a lot of air miles, so as long as I was able to sell my books at their events, I felt it was worth a trip.
It took another year before I figured out that I could actually earn money giving these talks, or that the effort I was making to support the book could grow into a kind of business. By then, many of the networks had secured some kind of support, so things took off.
Being the first to write about something is magical. You are showered with recognition and notice to a degree that is basically impossible once your topic becomes popular, unless you have huge resources and great connections. But it’s also challenging. You get criticized a lot. Often when I spoke, a woman would start haranguing me for stereotyping women. Or a man would lecture me for somehow disrespecting male leaders, or for being naïve because I seemed to imagine that things would change– which to me seemed likely because one half of the human race was now taking their place in the workplace and assuming jobs that had been previously held by men. Academics savaged my journalistic “methodology” and challenged my credentials. I found all these attacks embarrassing and painful.
Yet I never considered quitting, because I urgently believed in the message I was trying to convey: that women had something of great value to contribute as leaders and that their participation would change organizations.
This belief intensified as the 1990s proceeded and the technologies of work shifted to a more networked model, sending organizations on a search for new, less hierarchical ways of leading. Within five years, The Female Advantage was being hailed as a classic. It has remained continuously in print for 34 years.
This is how the simple act of observing during my speechwriter days that working women were being undervalued ended up giving me a mission, a purpose, and a career. More importantly, it help spur an evolution in the wider business culture that was indeed my goal in writing the book.
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Thank you Bill. I am always grateful for your support. I do intend to keep writing.
Sally, Keep on writing and sharing your knowledge and experience. The world needs your voice and the voice of others who believe better decision come from working together v. power and ego. You write it, I'll read it, and spread the word. Namaste'