I was emailed an article this week called Ways Women Lead. Published in the Harvard Business Review it compares a “command-and-control” leadership style, usually attributed to men, to a “transformational” or “interactive” leadership style, more consistent with women leaders. Though hardly exhaustive, it’s an insightful study and I found it incredibly “true” to both my experience and my desire.
You can read an excerpt of this article by Judy Rosener, the author of the study, at http://www.emergingleader.com/article9.shtml. The whole text is available for purchase through Amazon.com.
Rosener says, “In general, these leaders believe that people perform best when they feel good about themselves and their work, and they try to create situations that contribute to that feeling.” Four contributors to such are: encourage participation, share power and information, enhance the self-worth of others, and energize others.
I find myself thinking about these four things – as well as others articulated in this article – in the context of midwifery again. (I know…my last post was on such.) They seem to compliment one another: interactive leadership and leadership as a midwife. Doesn’t a midwife encourage participation? Indeed – without participation, no birth occurs! Her work is toward the participation of the birth mother – toward the life that is yet to come forth. Doesn’t a midwife share power and information? There is no need for her to keep to herself any knowledge she holds that will somehow influence or impact the birth mother. She has no need to hold the power of knowledge to herself. Rather, her job is enhanced when she shares her knowledge – and her power – all on behalf of another. Doesn’t a midwife enhance the self-worth of others? Indeed! It is her encouragement and her confidence in the strength and capacity of this soon-to-be-mother that enables and enhances the very experience and celebration of birth! And doesn’t the midwife energize others? It is her own energy that calls forth stores of energy from an exhausted and weary mother – translating into the endurance needed to give birth.
OK…enough. I’m just really hooked on this. There’s something uniquely powerful about women as leaders – and leaders as midwives (whether women or men) that has much to offer our understanding of and experience of leadership. What life might burst forth if we chose to abandon the old models and give birth to the new?!? AND…I’m painfully aware of the labor required for such to be so. May there be amazing midwives alongside those of us who are laboring for something new and desperately needed in our midst! And may we be midwives to those struggling to give birth to ideas and realities yet unknown, unseen, and even undreamt!
