< PreviousSMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINE - PAGE 19HOW WOMEN LEADManagement Research Group (MRG) has studied behaviours and competencies in 13,100 leaders from more than 15 countries and found that women place more emphasis on three clusters of skills: • Behaviours that support transparency and connection: including enthusiasm, feedback, communication, and empathy • Accountability and results: including goal attainment, leadership responsibility and the willingness to be forceful • Execution: being organised, attending to details, and following up to ensure implementation is on track.- PAGE 20 - SMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINEHOW MEN LEADBy contrast, men believe leadership is about:• Thinking strategically: contemplating both conservative and innovative options, and acting independently • Being cooperative, asking for assistance, and delegating to others • Persuading others to endorse their ideas and proposals. These are all important leadership competencies, and it’s clear that any leadership team will be stronger if it embraces all of them. But if the frameworks to identify and select future leaders are defined by men, then women and their skills will continue to be under-represented. Research by Catalyst, the not-for-profit group promoting inclusion and equality, found in research by Annika Warren on talent management systems that organisations’ leadership frameworks and talent management processes are designed in ways that both reflect and continue to support stereotypes of current leaders.The result is, even today, they disadvantage women, creating a vicious cycle in which traditionally men continually dominate leadership positions. The data showed that talent management professionals and senior leaders collude, all be it inadvertently, to perpetuate gender gaps in senior leadership.SMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINE - PAGE 21WHAT MAKES AN EFFECTIVE LEADER?Which “brand” of leader is most effective? When you look at the data it’s hard to understand why traditional men continue to dominate leadership when women (and men with ‘feminine’ skills) actually out-perform them. Assessed for competency by their bosses, their peers and their direct reports, women were rated higher than men on twelve out of the twenty-two skills measured by MRG. Including various forms of interpersonal effectiveness and credibility, and the two overarching leadership skills: overall effectiveness and future potential. Men scored equally with women on seven and were rated higher than women on just three leadership competencies: business aptitude, financial understanding, and ability to see the big picture. (Note: the criteria for promotion commonly cover many skills, but these are usually set as the key determinants for promotion.) - PAGE 22 - SMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINEAnd in other research, leadership development consultancy Zenger Folkman has analysed feedback on nearly 16,000 male and female leaders worldwide and found that women were rated 3% higher on overall effectiveness, compared with men. (This may not seem an impressive advantage, but on a sample of this size it is statistically significant.)This is powerful evidence of how stereotypes override evidence of actual effectiveness: the media and myths override the facts. Women take heart: not only can you do it, you are doing it. What’s more, women appear to have a valuable ability to keep improving. According to Bob Sherwin, COO of Zenger Folkman, women’s significant improvement after the age of 40 can be attributed to achievements in a competency called “Practicing Self Development,” which is a measure of the extent to which people ask for feedback and make changes based upon it. Men get worse at doing this as they get older. Women get better at it.THE BOTTOM LINEA 2016 study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and EY analysed results from 21,980 publicly traded companies in 91 countries and found that having women in at least 30% of leadership positions adds 6% to net profit margin.According to McKinsey, companies across all sectors with the most women on their boards of directors consistently outperform those with no female board members – by 41% in terms of return on equity, and by 56% in terms of operating results.So there is cause to stand tall, be proud and stick to your way of leading. Z Z Z- PAGE 24 - SMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINESMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINE - PAGE 25 by Kathy FrayINTRODUCINGTHE UTEROSEXUALWe all know the terms heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual and transsexual. And society has continued to require more terms, such as solosexual, asexual, demisexual, pansexual, and the epitome of affluent urban male lifestyle, the metrosexual. Let me introduce you to my term: the strictly female, lesbian or straight, uterosexual! - PAGE 26 - SMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINEThere is a collective force rising up on the earth today, an energy of the reborn feminine . . . She remembers our function on earth. . . This is a time of a monumental shift, from the male dominance of human consciousness back to a balanced relationship between masculine and feminine. The Goddess archetype doesn’t replace God; she merely keeps him company. She expresses his feminine face.Marianne Williamson — A Woman’s WorthSMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINE - PAGE 27SO WHAT IS A UTEROSEXUAL?Explained in simplistic terms, a uterosexual is a woman who is able to publicly acknowledge the precious and immense importance of her femaleness and the rewarding friendships she has with her close female friends.A uterosexual is a woman who is very proud to be female. And often Motherhood can be the trigger that allows a woman’s uterosexuality to, as they say, truly come ‘out of the closet’ for the first time … because before then, they had simply been a female in a unisex world, but now they’re a woman in the woman’s world dominated by pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. Thousands of years ago, before the patriarchal god(s) of most of today’s religions, there had always co-existed reverent beliefs in the uniquely feminine powers, such as the many Celtic, Greek, Roman Egyptian and Hindu goddesses. But over thousands of years this slowly changed, to the point that nearly all of man’s gods came to be depicted as male; and the status of women slowly and violently declined. Females were no longer sacred, mystical and powerful — no, they were impure, unclean and stigmatised. Eventually, most women around the world were seen to be part of their husbands’ chattels, because their bodies were sinful and unclean, and their intellects inferior. They were expected to ‘love, honour and obey’ their husbands.She’s a woman in a woman’s world and all that entails.aaa-PAGE 28 - SMART HEALTHY WOMEN MAGAZINEThe first modern wave of the movement to vehemently oppose the long- held belief in women’s second-class citizenship came with the suffragettes winning the right for women to vote; later, two world wars saw women doing the work of men.The second wave came in the 1960s and ’70s, with women’s liberation, the sexual revolution, widespread use of contraception and economic equality. It was the prophesised ‘dawning of the New Age of Aquarius’ (which saw patriarchy being slowly forced to give way to matriarchy).The third wave of feminism was the 1990s’ giddy era of Girl Power, as strong womanhood became revered and normalised with envelopes being intentionally pushed. Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues; Sex and the City’s Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte; Spice Girl’s Ginger, Scary, Sporty, Posh and Baby; and the decade’s catchphrase “You go girl!”Next >