Executive Summary
Despite advances in gender equity, research shows that women are still dramatically underrepresented in senior leadership positions. While there are a whole host of systemic environmental factors underlying this issue, the author focuses on some of the specific things women can do to position themselves for success. As a two-time CEO with over 30 years of experience working with many of China’s top CEOs, the author identifies four traits that often hold female leaders back: insufficient ambition, excessive perfectionism, conflict avoidance, and excessive emotionality and insecurity. She then offers several key strategies that women can leverage to overcome these hurdles and cultivate their leadership skills.
The Harvard Business Review recently published its 2019 Top CEOs list. Of the 100 global CEOs listed, only four were women, and HBR China’s list wasn’t much better — it listed a total of five female CEOs. What are the barriers facing female CEOs, and what can we do as women to overcome them?
For almost 30 years, I have been researching and interacting with China’s leading CEOs at close range, and I’ve served as a two-time CEO myself. Over the course of my career, I’ve identified four traits that often hold female leaders back:
1. Insufficient Ambition
All too often, women’s careers advance to a certain level, and then they give up on or significantly reduce the scope of their goals. A recent study from Harvard Business School examining the goals of women in the workplace found that “compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable.” The study goes on to suggest that women tend to have more non-work-related life goals than men do, meaning that a smaller proportion of their goals are related to professional advancement. This can keep women from pursuing promotion and leadership opportunities as proactively as their male counterparts.
2. Excessive Perfectionism
In pursuit of excellence, women can sometimes get caught up in their own self-imposed high standards. If you are unwilling to accept imperfection, you can end up wasting time and resources, sometimes even losing sight of customer requirements and forgetting your actual goals. A good leader needs to focus on the end goal, and be willing to accept some imperfection in the process. When it comes to recruiting, I have found that female leaders’ perfectionism can be even more harmful: In my experience, excessive perfectionism can make it hard for women to find candidates that meet their high standards, they can struggle to reach consensus with their teams, and they can become so focused on candidates’ shortcomings that they fail to notice the positives.
3. Conflict Avoidance
Leaders must face a great number of conflicts, both internal and external. In their book The Why Axis, economists Uri Gneezy and John List describe a series of experiments suggesting that men tend to enjoy competition, while women tend to avoid it. Psychological research also suggests that the average female leadership style is more “interpersonally oriented,” while the male style is more “task oriented.” All too often, female managers are unwilling to face conflict — they would rather coordinate and cooperate, offering service and support, than get involved in unpleasant interpersonal situations.
4. Taking on Emotional Labor
Psychological strength and emotional stability are extremely important in the role of CEO. But many women struggle with self-confidence, and they often have to deal with stresses not just from work, but also from domestic responsibilities, making it even harder to maintain the psychological fortitude necessary for good leadership. According to a recent study, women spend nine more hours a week on housework and child care than men do. In China, research examining the impact of 2016’s two-child policy on the mental health of working women suggests that it is becoming increasingly difficult to balance professional responsibilities with raising a family. All this extra labor leaves less mental energy for the office, causing women to exhibit more emotionality and limiting their capacity for professional self-development. Furthermore, research shows that a mentally taxed or overly emotional boss will struggle to obtain the support of her team, cooperate effectively with her colleagues, and recruit top talent.
What can women do to overcome these hurdles? With the support of the Mulan Charitable Foundation and Peking University’s National School of Development, I helped establish the Female Leadership Research Center: an organization dedicated to cultivating women’s leadership skills that has trained nearly 600 outstanding female leaders to date. Based on my experience with this program, I have found a number of areas where female managers can focus their efforts for self-improvement:
Don’t abandon your dreams
All too often, women’s careers advance to a certain level, and then they find themselves feeling pressure to give up on their dreams. Your dream determines the path you take, the extent to which your enterprises can grow, the heights to which you can climb in your time on this earth. Female managers must never stop fanning the flames of their dreams; they must not carelessly abandon them or doubt their purpose. They must use their dreams to motivate themselves and their teammates to achieve great things.
One of the women on HBR China’s list was Dong Mingzhu, CEO of global air conditioning manufacturer Gree Electric. From the very beginning, she has steadfastly pursued her dream of “making the world fall in love with Chinese manufacturing,” and this dream continues to drive her forward to greater and greater success.
Focus on your responsibilities, not your gender
When women become leaders, they must understand and fulfill the responsibilities associated with their role. They must focus on these responsibilities, not on their gender. As a female CEO, I have too often seen people use gender differences as an excuse for poor performance. This can make it seem as if women are receiving preferential treatment, and it can also lead people to attribute problems in the workplace to gender issues, instead of identifying and resolving the real underlying problem.
Male leaders and female leaders alike are charged with the responsibility and the mission of developing the business. If leadership is considered a masculine trait, then female leaders may be deemed “mannish” — so be it. When female managers take on leadership responsibilities, they should forget that they are “women,” they should not attribute the challenges they face to gender issues, and they should instead focus all their attention on their work.
Recruit people who are better than you
A strong team is the key to success. You must constantly seek out top talent, conquer your own insecurities, empower others, and build trust to help everyone improve. As Laszlo Bock, Chief Talent Officer at Google writes in his book Work Rules: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead, “hiring is the single most important people activity in any organization.” As he explains, managers should strive to “hire only people who are better than you,” since those candidates will have the most to offer both their manager and their entire team.
Learn to cope with loneliness
Indra Nooyi, the female CEO who led Pepsi for 12 years, has said: “Being a female CEO might be one of the hardest, most lonely jobs in the world. If you become a CEO, and especially if you’re a female CEO, you will be looked at differently, you will be subject to different standards.” On the one hand, this loneliness stems from the fact that any CEO — male or female — must assume responsibility for the entire organization on their own. But women will also have fewer female peers the higher they climb, further isolating them.
To cope with the unique loneliness of being a female CEO, women must cultivate not only an outward appearance of calm, but also real inner wellbeing. There are a variety of strategies I’ve found can help: focusing on the long-term instead of getting distracted by short-term gains and losses, cultivating self esteem and mental strength, practicing mindfulness techniques such as yoga and meditation, and building a supportive, loving home environment are just a few. As a female leader, you have to figure out what works best for you — those women who have become top CEOs have no doubt found their own methods for effectively dealing with solitude.
For a woman to become an excellent CEO, she must have a supportive external environment, but she must also forge her own inner strength. Be proactive, dream big, and take whatever path you choose. If you don’t limit yourself, you will be poised to flourish.
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from a feature that ran in the May 2020 edition of HBR China. It was translated by Dagny Dukach.
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