“Soft power,” a term coined by Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, Jr., is widely taken as the next natural step in leadership. Soft power is the ability to lead and influence using “tools of appeal,” – relationship, collaboration, inspiration, engagement, communication, and emotional appeal, In the November 2008 issue of HBR, Nye points to an interesting paradox about soft power women:
The United States makes it particularly difficult for women to use smart (soft) power in public life, in part because of the macho myths that dominate American culture and in part because of the climate of fear that followed September 11. Look at this year’s Democratic presidential primaries. … A woman seeking public office still has to play against the gender stereotype that women are soft. So Hillary Clinton spent a good deal of her campaign proving that she was tough and experienced. That meant that Obama was able to be the candidate who could use soft power. He could appeal to people with a message of hope, a new beginning, a new future.
To be sure, Obama was also criticized for not being “tough” enough.
I indirectly addressed this paradox in my post, Women, Leadership and Power – Leading form the Margins. In it, I point out that marginalized groups bring badly needed skills, knowledge and insight to the center. All too often, the pressure on marginalized groups is to move to the center, to appease the mainstream and reduce the fear of their “otherness.” This is for sure the fine line that Obama must walk and contend with in his campaign – to bring forth and utilize the special knowledge and experience he has gained by virtue of his marginality, while reassuring the public that he is in fact, like them. Affinity and not only policy sways the voters.
But for women leaders, the challenge remains. Women leaders are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they are strong and tough, they are called ambitious and bitchy. If they display so-called “soft power” traits, their leadership and capacity is called into question, or they are accused of using feelings to manipulate. Women in leadership positions have to constantly assuage the fear that they aren’t capable, are too soft and emotional. So, women, the natural spokespeople for the ‘soft power’ movement, instead of leading the revolution, are trailing it. To many people during the Democratic primary contest, Obama was the spokesman for the new leadership, and Clinton looked like business as usual, an old time politician.
It is time for women leaders to stare down the barrel of the accusation that they are soft, emotional, or yielding, and question the assumptions that tough, hard power is the preferred leadership quality. Why not champion leadership that is collaborative, engaging, and inspiring, that appeals to people’s better selves, rather than leadership that divides, threatens, and plays upon people’s fears and prejudices? Colin Powell said in his interview on Meet The Press that both Democrats and Republicans are missing a chance, that when Obama is wrongly said to be a Muslim, the real answer is not, “no, he is a Christian,” but, “what if he is?” Similarly, for women, the challenge is not to assert toughness in the face of the accusation that they are too soft, but to question the question itself.
1 Comment
January 20, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I am just reading “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell’s new book. I got so excited about this exploration of cultural aspects of power dynamics and rank issues in the chapter “The ethnic theory of plane crashes” .
He cites the Dutch psychologist Geert Hofteede (“Cultures Consequences”). Hofsteede developed the “Power Distance Index (PDI) that helps understand how some cultures have a high or low power distance index – cultures from a high PDI have more hierarchy and therefore have an harder time speaking up when of lower rank, such as in the examples given, about first offcers speaking up to a airplane pilot in an emergency situation. They investigated plane crashes and listened to the black box to hear the power and rank issues amongst the first and second officer but especially to the air traffic controllers.
It makes sense to me and reminds me of using my rank of awareness as to when necessity calls to use direct (hard) power or not.
Anyway – I wanted to share that as it is a fascinating read …