Women and Leadership - Part One
Angels, gods, processing ick and the "mom-itude" - some framing for this series
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As you might imagine, I have a lot of thoughts and observations relating to my very specific experience as a white woman of a certain age leading in the independent school world, and even more specifically for me, leading in a New England boarding school world, a tiny, discreet subculture all its own. And as I said here, although I know from feedback a lot of readers would like me to write on this topic, my past attempts have felt… meh? Inadequate? Not sufficiently personal and not sufficiently universal?
And just a little more throat-clearing before I begin:
From watching the experience of and supporting women of color as new leaders in environments where established cultural norms are powerful and diversity limited, I fully appreciate the privileges I’ve had that they did not have. It is very much not easy to be a “first” anything. School cultures can be tough to change, even if people are well meaning.
I don’t want to make this some kind of woman vs man discussion. Not generally helpful and there are many leaders with such a range of styles, some who conform to traditional gender stereotypes and some who don’t. We’re all people. I would not be surprised if some of my thoughts resonate with people who are quite different from me.
I also feel compelled to share that one of the most impactful conversations I had in my career was had at a formal dinner where I was only somewhat acquainted with my table companions, most of whom were male heads of school and all of whom opened up in deeply moving, honest and vulnerable ways about their own personal and professional journeys. It helped me get to the other side of something where I felt, in my bones, profoundly stuck.
My vision is to provide some framing in this article as to what has informed my outlook and what questions have been raised for me as a woman in varying roles of power in school environments. Then I will go on to write three more articles on specific topics.
Gods and Angels
A few years ago, I came across the lyric from Boy Genius’s song Not Strong Enough, “Always an angel; never a god.” Boy Genius is a rock trio of women and they appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in a homage to Nirvana’s 1994 cover. (I know; my Gen X is showing.) So these are three crazy talented young women who are unapologetically rock stars, not pop divas.
Even in our current cultural moment with a competitive female presidential candidate, I suspect the default is to picture a generic “leader” is a man, as was described in this 2018 NYT article (gift link). It makes me think of the scene from Succession where the media magnate Logan Roy tells his daughter Shiv that if he is going to name her as his successor, they will have to navigate around the fact she’s a woman. When she protests, he responds impatiently, “I didn’t make the world!”
Is it still hard wired to expect males to be comfortable possessing and wielding all the power, godlike in its expanse? Angels are powerful (but not all powerful) and can even be aggressive (I tried to do a little angel research and boy - that’s a deep dark internet rabbit hole I previously did not know existed!) but only in specific circumstances. Otherwise they are beatific, gentle, helpful, reassuring, only pulling out the thunderbolts very occasionally. Do angels need to earn, through humble service, the right to hurl thunder? Are men limited by the expectation they are comfortable wielding hard power and are women limited by the belief that soft power and influence are their only viable tools?
I don’t think there needs to be definitive answers - we can all see many threads in a bigger, complicated picture.
Modeling, mentorship - and yet…
I came up in the late 90s. There were lots of female leaders at Walnut Hill School for the Arts and I am eternally grateful for the incredible mentoring relationship I found with a female head who had spent a long time intentionally puzzling out what it meant to lead that organization effectively, at that time, and in her own way. There were female senior admins and department heads who were compassionate but assertive and possessed tangible powers of both the hard and soft variety.
And I also came up in a boarding school island of an arts school. I wouldn’t describe it as a “feminine” environment but a lot of traditionally male-coded values were not as prominent. I suspect this had to do with the influence and leadership style of the head as well as the absence of team athletics - I had no idea it was such a central factor in mainstream boarding school life until I because a mainstream boarding school head. The imbroglios between the director of theater and the director of dance over use of the performing arts center were about as “locking horns” as it got.
But even at Walnut Hill, there was stuff. I had an male admin colleague for much of my time on the senior team who was the same age and I can absolutely say our experiences as leaders were quite different - about how we were treated by those in authority, about how he asserted himself in ways I naively and, in retrospect, sanctimoniously thought somewhat unbecoming and forward at the time but now I see were smart and professional. He definitely had opportunities I did not and I think this was in large part because he just put it out there that he was interested and was expressed confidence he could do it. I thought I would earn opportunities through dedication and competence, waiting patiently to be recognized.
And to be clear, I was promoted and given plenty of opportunities, and I am not congenitally wired to be a shrinking violet. But life is short and if I had one piece of advice to give younger me it would be raise your damn hand if you want something. In retrospect, although I was keenly studying the gender dynamics at play, I doubt the people making the decision were and it would probably had made a difference if I raised my damn hand.
Ick #1 - Invisibility
This one may be very unique to me. I did not expect to so often feel so invisible among my peers, especially early in my tenure. I’m not someone who generally subscribes to “oh I’m a middle aged woman, no one sees me anymore!” It wasn’t that at all. It’s more that I often felt there was an immediate sizing up of being “not relevant” that felt like it had to do with me not being part of the “boys club” aspect of the culture of New England boarding schools. I wasn’t part of it as a female leader or as someone who went to public school and spent twenty years at on the arts school island and because I lead a small girls school that had virtually no impact on prep school athletics. I was also a single woman, which is rare for heads in boarding schools, so I didn’t have a kid who was playing athletics against the other schools, etc. All three combined so that I was a stranger in a strange land.
In my first year as a head, I attended a dinner for the Western CT Boarding School Association hosting educational consultants. The only other female head in the area at the time couldn’t attend. I didn’t know anyone in the room and I could not break into any of the conversations with other heads during the cocktail hour. The sea of blue blazers was absorbed in talking to each other and my efforts were probably feeble but I ended up being saved from social isolation by a female comms person from the host school. When we sat down to dinner, a male head at the table said, not unkindly, “Oh, I assumed you were a consultant.”
And a story sticks with me I heard from a (male) senior admin at a coed school a few years ago. The name of a (male) boarding school head came up and he told me how the first time they met, they took “an instant dislike” to each other and got into an argument. What I found so amazing is that this was a head I met on a number of occasions and every time, I had to be reintroduced as if we had never met at all. I think I was so far down the boarding school pecking order to be completely unremarkable and thus unmemorable. And it’s worse feeling completely unmemorable, below notice, then to be instantly disliked.
Ick #2 - Wearing Power
Probably the most common ick I’ve heard from other women leaders and experienced myself are the backhanded compliments or (only very slightly) veiled negative commentary on wardrobe or appearance, always from other women. Or even not so veiled - at Walnut Hill, I had an alum tell me my dress was terrible because it showed I was getting a dowager’s hump. (Look it up! You don’t want one!) One new head had a parent say, “You really like to wear pants, don’t you?” I had someone comment acidly on my choice of pants versus a dress at an event and early on in my headship, I got feedback that older alums thought the sandals I wore at reunion were too casual. I could not jump in my time machine and change my footwear. Or you go to an event feeling like you’re rocking a new outfit only to have someone say, “Well that’s an interesting color choice.”
I’m sure men get an occasional comment on a new haircut but I seriously doubt their wardrobe gets the kind of scrutiny a woman’s does. On the stage of leadership, our bodies are somehow open for public feedback. And receiving this feedback makes you walk away feeling about as confident as a piece of used chewing gum.
Underneath both the invisibility and the criticism of your physical being I know that I fear that I am not being seen as three dimensional person but as a creatures who exists only in relationship to everyone else. And I underscore the word “fear” here, because I don’t intellectually believe this is the objective reality but the fear itself has power. When one of these incidents happen, there is a horrible suspicion that all the positive responses you get is the fakery and that the negativity is indeed “how the world works” and you’ve been a big dope to think otherwise. That “people” writ large really believe you're below notice or a giant clod among the swans or a ridiculous striver. Certainly neither an angel or a god, but some pathetic pretender.
These feelings, of course, pass, and the longer you’re in leadership (and the older you get) the more you can put them in perspective. But the stress between your self-concept and knowing how hard you’re working and then experiencing people’s perceptions can be very tough. It’s hard to have all the authority and still be feeling you’re hiding that imposter.
What’s Your Mom-itude?
As a leader in a school setting, there is no getting around the “momness.” There are women leaders who are moms and are not “maternal” in their leadership style. There are childless female leaders who are. There are leaders who love the family analogy, although I am not among them. I think there are powerful ways people can bring their parenting experiences to inform their leadership and it’s a relatable quality to a school community since our constituents are families. It can be a core of your persona in a very effective and positive ways.
And if you are not a mom, it might feel like no big deal but it also can feel like you’re pushing around its absence like an empty stroller. One of the very creepiest parent meetings I had was a decade ago when, as a senior admin, a parent told me I couldn’t possibly understand his problem because I didn’t have children. I didn’t mind him stating that - what I did mind was this was someone I barely knew! How did he even know anything about my personal life? Clearly, someone was out there, discussing it, maybe calling me a childless dog lady in the worst way possible. Yuck.
It’s messy. It’s a thing. Can a mom hurl thunder or is she stuck being a sweet angel? Is a non-mom an unsympathetic god hoarding power? And as a female leader, I think you have to do some reflecting as to where you stand in relationship to the thing. People used to tell me “you have 180 children” or whatever the enrollment was - and I used to protest because I think the analogy contains some whiff of personal sacrifice that is just inaccurate as far as I’m concerned. And it’s not the same as having children and it feels vaguely disrespectful to actual moms.
But I stopped protesting. Those comments were about the speaker trying to be generous. I let them be generous and smiled in response.
And So?
Men have their stories, too. School leadership is hard, complicated and lonely and only getting harder. And I hope they gather in groups to share their horrific, and, softened by time, hilarious stories over many glasses of rose.
And there are many lessons from being a woman in the world that can inform our leadership for the better. We are socialized to be (slightly) more comfortable exposing our vulnerability. We are socialized to be people-focused. The more ways you’ve had to struggle, the more empathy it can give you for others struggling. I can choose to wear pants or a dress while men are stuck with one option, generally. And I am marginally less allergic to conflict than a lot of people but I don’t want to learn how to lock horns.
Always an angel; never a god. Maybe I want to be a god with angelic properties?
I believe you have to bring every part of yourself into a leadership role. You don’t have to do this every day and not every piece of yourself is going to be as celebrated as others, or be relatable to parts of your community. You won’t feel seen or known in every single instance. Sometimes it’s worth enduring the disconnect to be yourself. You’re fighting a losing battle if you try to pack away parts of yourself when doing an all consuming school leadership job. The lock will break; the dam will fail. It will be messy and not in a good way. It’s not easy to figure out but it changes and morphs over time and your reflection and intentionality will pay off in understanding very clearly where you end and your role begins.
So here’s how I see this series unfolding:
a piece on the “authority effect” and imposter syndrome
a piece on“the mom-itude”
a piece embracing the advantages of being a female leader
And I think there’s actually a lot to be said on women leaders and wardrobe, but I don’t think that’s my wheelhouse - if someone out there wants to write it, let me know!
We’re off into another school year! It was always so nice by the end of September to be back in the routine again. Thinking of you all in your fall transition.
Julie
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