Millennials, women, and the surge of pro-democracy initiatives throughout the world are beginning to reshape the philosophy and practice of business leadership in the U.S.
This is the second excerpt from a dialogue about leadership between Bob Vecchiotti, senior vice president of leadership development and president of strategic initiatives at BeamPines, a talent management firm, and Diane Merlino, Editor in Chief of Travel Weekly PLUS.
Merlino: You recently conducted a study of women in leadership positions.
Vecchiotti: I hesitate to call it a study because there wasn’t a lot of rigor in the research. What I wanted to do was hear from successful women how they defined their leadership style and what forces contributed to their success.
Merlino: Did anything particularly surprise you?
Vecchiotti: I was surprised at how much overlap there was with what you might consider qualities of men, from the role models that we have and from leadership examples. Most of our leadership studies and ideas about leadership qualities were originally associated with just men. That’s why we have that tremendous emphasis on autocratic behavior, controlling behavior. Those are a lot of the influences that came from the male stereotype. That’s breaking down. So even though I was surprised at how much overlap there was with men, there were some different points of emphasis with the women.
Merlino: Give us an overview of what you found.
Vecchiotti: The women talked about having a longer-term perspective and yet paying attention to detail. They talked about using their intuition and abstract reasoning to approach some of the issues that they face. They talked about their willingness to say when they didn’t know something and to ask their team for an answer. They would say, “I don’t have a clue,” and literally mean it. Men would be more tentative about saying that.
The women also talked about focusing on similarities rather than differences. And they talked about their network. They try to build a strong network both internally and externally. Because of that network, and because of their openness to listening, women have a greater advantage in terms of having up-to-date information.
Now I say that with a grain of salt, because sometimes the network doesn’t always produce what it’s supposed to produce; it also produces gossip and other stuff. But usually, because of how wide the networks are, you can begin to see some crosschecking and cross-referencing. What helps with modifying the internal network is the external network. Men tend to have a good external network and not a good internal network. That’s a generalization that doesn’t always hold up, but there’s a tendency for that.
Merlino: Did you find other common differences between men and women in leadership style or focus?
Vecchiotti: Women have a greater focus on helping people develop and grow, and on taking time to do that. So I was also surprised when they said who was the dominant influence in their lives. Many of the women talked about their fathers and, whether they were in business or not, how they appreciated the direction and the advice of their fathers. A few said mothers, so it’s not universal. But that was interesting.
Merlino: Was anything you discovered from talking with these women CEOs particularly telling?
Vecchiotti: What was really unexpected has nothing to do with the content of the material. What surprised me was the amount of time women were willing to give me to talk about the 10 questions that I asked. I asked for 45 minutes. The longest interview was four hours, and the shortest was an hour-and-a-half, and many of them were in the two- to two-and-a-half-hour range.
The other thing that surprised me was that the skill sets the women talked about in terms of their perspective and their style seemed to complement what’s needed today in leadership positions in today’s business world. The climate is less autocratic and more collegial, with more focus on the development of people and greater collaboration at the top. The skill sets the women talked about really complemented the challenges facing leaders, and there are many of them.
Merlino: What are some of your ideas about the impact of millennials on leadership in business?
Vecchiotti: The older members of that cohort are beginning to become managers, and some are already in the management ranks in some companies. With that, I think you’ll see a flatter, more team-based organization. They won’t have too much of a hierarchy. Some of that exists today in the high-tech firms.
When the millennials come into leadership positions, access to the people at the top will be easier because they’re so used to working as group. They like to be with each other, and they make no distinctions between men and women; men and women in the millennial cohort have the same desires for work/family balance as women do now
You can probably forget about nine to five as standard work hours. They might run something like 10 to 12, one to four and then again from two in the morning to five a.m. You’re going to see those kinds of differences to accommodate personal schedules, personal needs, but also get the work done.
Merlino: We’ve covered a little about how women and millennials are changing leadership and the workplace. What other changes do you see coming?
Vecchiotti: It will be a more democratic workplace, where employee engagement will be greater than it is now. I’m not suggesting that a CEO has to ask everybody to concur on every decision, but there will be a more participative, collaborative sense of direction and implementation of goals and objectives. We’ll see a more democratic process, and I think that will be forced on us by other cultures and their desire for democracy. They want to see it practiced, and they want to see it evident in some of the institutions that we have besides the political.
ALSO SEE: Part one of the interview with Bob Vecchiotti, New Perspectives on Leadership