Over Christmas we watched the latest series of The Crown, and enjoyed it very much. The portrayals of Charles and Diana were believable. Everybody likes to vilify one of them and sanctify the other, but I have believed that they were both victims of nearly impossible circumstances. In particular, Charles was let down by his male role models. To its credit, the series pulled few punches, though I would have appreciated or more edgy portrayal of Prince Andrew. Perhaps we can look forward to that in the last two series.
The timeline for the series coincided with the decade that Margaret Thatcher dominated British politics. She is another character who divides, in that most people either adore her or hate her. I lean towards the latter, but I do accept that some of her reforms were timely. We left-wingers tend to gloss over the winter of discontent and the hegemony of Jones, Scanlon and Scargill. A correction was needed, just not a correction of the scale and heartlessness that thatcher provided.
One of the funniest moments in the series came when the Queen sought a clubby companionship with Thatcher by pointing out that they were both women of a similar age, and how remarkable it was to have such power in the hands of women. The Queen then asked why Thatcher had not appointed any other women to her cabinet. Thatcher replied with a misogynist remark that in her judgment (or experience, or opinion), women were not up to the job. Olivia Coleman’s face spoke volumes. I have no idea whether the conversation actually took place, but it does seem consistent with Thatcher’s personality.
Thatcher did not really consider herself a woman, at least not in the aspect of competence for senior executive positions. She was certainly a phenomenon. As a woman, we could also call her an impersonator. Her route to success was to behave like a man, indeed an extreme version of masculinity.
While we were watching the series, I got into a family conversation about our worst bosses. In Shell I had over twenty bosses: most of them were not very good, and the later ones tended to be worse than the early ones. I believe the role of boss is under-trained, misunderstood and also under-resourced, in that most bosses are expected to do so much else that they usually can’t find the time to do their boss job properly.
It was easy to decide my worst boss, an unfortunate gentleman recruited from outside into Shell who was comically out of his depth. At least, it was comical when we could overlook the damage his appointment did to the business, his team and to himself. He certainly was a major contribution to my breakdown in 2000.
What struck me was the winners of the silver and bronze medals in the terrible boss competition. I awarded those accolades to my only two female bosses.
The first was a bit of a Thatcher character, ruthless, ambitious and uncompromising. Those attributes are not always disastrous, but in the case of this woman they were allied with selfishness and some paranoia, leading her to betray her own team and others with some regularity.
The second was completely different. She was a delightful, charming woman, not lacking in insight, but promoted out of her depth and revealed as unable to make decisions or to lead. As a subordinate, I was faced was a blockage above me whenever I wanted to get anything done.
This last boss feels like a classic example of a third archetype I might call a kitten. Her femininity had drawn favourable attention of men throughout her career, and they were seduced into promoting her. She was the sort of woman that men were delighted to have as a peer, a pleasure to be round a no real competition to their own ambition.
In the case of female leaders, I suspect these three archetypes used to be typical of the few who first made it into the higher ranks. There were a few phenomena, immensely talented women who could not be stopped, and who were great motivators to other women but not really good examples of role models, since most simply lacked their talent. There were rather more impersonators, able to succeed by being like men, suppressing their femininity. And then we had the kittens, welcomed by men but ultimately ineffective.
Sheryl Sandberg is a good example of the impersonator category (though also quite phenomenal), and she wrote the famous instruction manual for other ambitious women, Lean In, with the basic advice for women to suppress femininity. I always thought this was disastrous advice for most women. Why try to succeed by developing the one attribute where you are likely to be inferior to male counterparts, masculinity?
Women suffered many impediments on their journey to being respected and promoted as leaders. Their education used to be worse, their parents steered them into limiting professions, panels full of men selected against the criterion of people like them, i.e. more men, and women in relationships are often still the ones expected to sacrifice career, especially when they become parents.
Those are the fundamental reasons why women have taken a long time to rise to the top, despite belatedly effective diversity policies in companies. Perhaps we are now past this misleading edge concept, in which the first women to break through were phenomena, impersonators or kittens.
My suggestion is that it is important not to take the wrong lessons from the misleading edge. I think Sandberg’s book did damage. I think the kittens did more damage, by making men feel good when they should have felt guilty and by perpetuating myths about female unsuitability when they were over promoted. The phenomena are wonderful (unless called Thatcher), but can hardly be replicated.
Instead, companies need to push diversity as long as it takes for real breakthroughs, even if the early results disappoint. And women should follow my favourite general advice, to be themselves. I believe women will ultimately be superior leaders, just as the current crop of female political leaders are showing. It will just take perseverance. If my career started today, I expect that my female bosses would be more numerous, and among the best rather than the worst. The leading edge are necessary, but they are not sufficient, nor indicative, nor necessarily good examples to follow.
This week Bagehot in The Economist gave praise to Britain’s Tory party for its diversity success. They have given us two prime ministers and now the most diverse cabinet in history. However, I do wonder if we are still witnessing a misleading edge. The ethnic minority success stories, while impressive, feel a little bit kittenish to me. I hope I am wrong.
If I am right about the idea of a misleading edge, it would apply equally to other facets of diversity, for example racial and sexual diversity. I could argue that the first out gay men to emerge in public were kittens like Larry Grayson. These trailblazers are good, so long as we don’t declare success too early, or try to clone them too closely, or assume that those that follow them will have the same attributes.
Inequities are still legion, but there is also much to celebrate in terms of diversity in societies in the developed world. But let us be careful not to fall into traps posed by the misleading edge.
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