[This Is Not About More Women In CXO positions, but it Could Be]

[This Is Not About More Women In CXO positions, but it Could Be]

There is this story of masculine and feminine that applies really well to business.

Masculine doesn’t mean male rather it means defining a vision of the future and doing what it takes to get from A to B. It’s watching the numbers and getting the sales, creating systems and processes to get things done. It’s the raw practicalities.
It requires focus and clarity and strong business skills.

Feminine doesn’t mean female either it means looking after the people. Creating autonomy, connected and creating processes to allow each individual to work in and grow their competence. It requires strong people skills.

A business requires both of course. But it’s very clear when they get out of balance.

When it’s become masculine dominant toxic behaviours proliferate, there is a high staff turnover and a stressful, competitive and high pressure environment in which some WIN and many struggle to think or function at all.

When the feminine dominates, meetings and emails multiply but produce no new action feeding more communication. More and more products appear and direction is lost. Everyone is busy doing something they enjoy but rarely on something that will move the business forward which is ultimately stressful and overwhelming too.

I’ve seen businesses heavily in the masculine discover they have a stress, autonomy and connectedness problem hire a head of people but not give them enough authority to do what’s necessary to fix toxic behaviour.

I’ve seen start ups over run with products, creative projects with no budget considerations, ideas, floods meeting, emails and pointless work fail because of lack of clarity, direction, focus and strategy.

This is clearly more of a book than a social media post but I want to boil it down to this.

Where ever your business is right now, masculine dominant, feminine dominant or a imperfectly perfect marriage doing your best to consciously balance both.

Where you are is NOT random chance. It is a manifestation of what it looks like at the top and will only change when change is made at the top.

That might mean more masculine skill, more feminine skills, it might mean balance within each individual at the top.

Which ever your business is, STRESS is the fuel ⛽️ that pushes it further off balance.

I’m curious, can you see your company in this story somewhere?