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WHY COMPANIES NEED TO EMBRACE
FEMININE TRAITS TO FLOURISH AND
THRIVE
- or in masculine language to expand healthy growth and secure future
profit and survival
by Rikke Flindt Bergstedt, Lisbeth Brix Bøggild and Tina Monberg
People want empathy and to be seen as who they are as whole human
beings. This is basic and shouldn’t be difficult - but the way we have been
used to run our businesses since the industrial revolution, practice of
management and management primarily has been focused on KPI’s -
things that could be measured to show production output. Focus has been
on the WHAT (the results) and not on the HOW “the behavior and culture”
and the process toward the goal.
Nowadays, we understand that if you want to be successful, being a
people manager, or business leader, you need to be able to do much more
than just managing KPI’s and delivering output to have a successful
business that is sustainable where associates want to be, live and thrive.
In today’s world it’s much more complicated the things you need to be able
to master as business executive and people manager if you want your
business to bloom and shine - you need to be able to work with your
people in a way where they feel trusted, worthy and respected exactly as
they are - they expect to be seen as whole humans with both feminine and
masculine traits, not only as production capacity.
“People want to work where they can unfold their full
potential as their whole self – with both feminine and
masculine traits.”
A Culture of Psychological Safety
As business leaders, we need to ensure that we have a culture, where we
are working together, being together in a way where everybody feel
welcome, and where we have a balance that embrace both feminine and
masculine ways of being and behaving. If either of the masculine or
feminine is out of balance, it’s very easy to not feel included, if you have a
preference for one of the other - therefore it’s important that we as
business executives and people leaders become aware of how our culture
are, and if it’s not balanced, we will probably not be able to utilize the
potential of the associates working with us - as there will be a missing link
to who they are and how they see themselves.
What we see in cultures where people don’t feel they fit in or belong, is
lower performance and lower engagement, leading to higher turnover (lost
knowledge and increased cost). Often, we see that people just sneak out
the back door silently without anybody noticing this before it is way too
late.
“The Great Resignation has showed us that even without
another job, people will leave a job where they do not
thrive.”
If we start paying attention to our culture assessing the masculine and
feminine traits of how we are working together, being together, asking the
question if people feel included - to be able to facilitate such a discussion
and assessment, psychological safety will become important because no
one will talk truth and be able to be the whole self if the fundament of
psychological safety is not in place.
Nevertheless, in today's world, where talent is short in supply and is based
not only in the bigger cities rather “everywhere” working in a hybrid or
remote model. We need to step in to the era where empathy, authenticity
and respect is a given for both the masculine and feminine traits -
understanding and assessing our culture to a much bigger degree than
what have been necessary before to be successful - and when that is said
it’s primarily focused on being successful running businesses, but try also
thinking about our society - imagine how much more we could do and how
much more health and wealth we could bring to the world if we were able
to embrace both masculine and feminine traits in a way where both could
be utilized to the max in a balanced way.
“Feminine or Masculine is not important, but the balance
between the two is the issues we need to improve on.”
Feminine and Masculine Traits
The definitions of feminine and masculine are unrelated to gender and are
therefore genderless. Feminine and masculine thus denote certain
characteristics of a human being, regardless of one's gender or gender
identity.
Traditionally, masculinity and femininity have been conceptualized as
opposite ends of a single dimension, with masculinity at one extreme and
femininity at the other.
“Contemporary definitions state that masculinity and
femininity are multidimensional, allowing people, regardless
of gender, to simultaneously have both masculine and
feminine traits.”
#FlyAsOne has created a map showing these traits based on the work of
John Gerzema and Michael D !Antonio. In 2013, they conducted a
comprehensive survey in which 32,000 people from 13 countries around the
world, representing 65% of world GDP, were asked what out of 125
characteristics they perceived as masculine characteristics and what they
perceived as feminine characteristics or finally as neutral characteristics.
Their findings were published in the book The Athena Doctrine: How Women
(and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future.
These findings are illustrated here:
Even though we would like to have much more of the feminine traits to
sustain us on the long run, we do not measure on it, as KPI has a focus on
the masculine traits. And as the proverb goes; you get what you measure.
The Company that will Survive
The company of the future will need all competencies onboard. We are
confronted with wicked problems and are sailing in unknown territories,
where we need all perspectives to take wise decisions. Excluding a bunch
of traits like the feminine will make it even more difficult to navigate.
“We must all see feminine traits not as belonging to one
gender but traits that we all have with a mixed balance -
some are having more feminine than masculine traits versus
others are having more masculine traits than feminine.”
Classification: Public
DIVERSITY ON A TRAIT LEVEL
Resilience
Caring
Open
Trust
Community
Dialog
Holistic
Security
Brave
Goal oriented
Strong
Progressiv
Confident
Action oriented
Competive
MASCULINE
TRAITS –
VISIBLE
OUTER
QUANTITATIVE
FEMININE
TRAITS –
HIDDEN
INNER
QUALITATIVE
MEASURABLE = KPI
Key Performance Indicator
Task-oriented
Direct
PERCEPTIBLE = KAI
Key Awareness Indicator
Relationship-oriented
We are now in a situation like the old joke; the operation was a success,
but the patient died. If we want to survive as a healthy organization, we
need both set of traits – the masculine and the feminine. And in a healthy
form.
This illustration shows that both feminine and masculine traits exist in a
healthy and an unhealthy form. Leadership demands of us to be able to
create space for the healthy form – and spread light on the unhealthy form
by having the difficult dialogue when it shows up in the organization. And it
will show up like weed in the garden.
“Nurture what you would like to see grow.”
Equality vs Equity
For more than 100 years, women have been fighting for equality on areas like
equal pay for equal work, economic equality etc., but we want to state that
this is not enough.
The last years we have started to talk about equity, where equality is given
people the same shoe no matter what shoesize they have, where equity is
giving people a shoe that fits. We will take this a step forward a say that all
shoes whether they are feminine or masculine – being worn by a man or a
woman – they have equal worth.
“The way to equality is through equal worth between masculine and
feminine traits no matter if it is a man who expressed feminine traits
or a woman.”