Dr. Sujaya Banerjee

Chief Executive Officer, Capstone People Consulting

Notwithstanding the celebratory sentiments associated with Women in Management, Women in Leadership positions, Women who have triumphed their circumstances and challenges to be anointed “Boss”, Female Bosses continue to evoke mixed reactions from both male and female members of their teams.

While it is heartening to see the number of women in the India Inc workforce and the fact that literacy rates, aspirations to join the “C” suite, willingness to make personal sacrifices to succeed- have all moved North for Women in the past decade, we still have some way to go on emotionally accepting “Female Bosses”.

The first subconscious repulsion comes from seeing a Woman in power, confident, in control, on top of her game. She is not the sweet, docile, caring woman you have generally experienced at home, looks female alright but is not going to take a step backward, suffer silently. She is assertive, focused with the job on hand, unrelenting on rigor, will not allow “chalta hai…: attitudes, will not wink in conspiracy to tell half-truths, is sincere to the point of irritation and will level with you in a manner reminiscent of your schoolteacher or Principal – bringing back memories when you didn’t get away with a prank or poor scores at School. And if she is a sharp dresser and super assertive, then visions of Miranda Priestly’ s devilish antics from “The Devil Wears Prada’ begin to emerge and color all interactions with shades of the deliberate nastiness, verbal abusiveness and alpha female persona that defined Miranda Priestly, the character so flawlessly played by Meryl Streep.

While a large part of Miranda Priestly’ s character from “The Devil Wears Prada” would need to soul search on the reasons for why she found hapless employees and assistants to intimidate and load her impatience on, Miranda is undoubtedly on top of her game, super successful, iconic in her industry and super confident about her competence and talent. While the character of Miranda Priestly is remembered more as the symbol of the tyrannical Boss, there is no denying on some of the outstanding thoughts her characterisation leaves us with:

• That glamorous, confident, competent women intimidate their teams, including women employees
• Assertive, no-nonsense intolerance for incompetence is seen less as raising the bar, more as detrimental to confidence building and great performance
• A demanding assertive boss can get resilient employees to climb a steep learning curve – enough to grudgingly or otherwise accept their competence and good work.
• That in the final analysis, no job is worth it if it destroys the human spirit

Thank God all bosses are not Miranda Priestley but the intimidation with sharp dressers and the apparent confusion between “assertiveness” and “aggression: when it comes to Women Bosses continue.

As a matter of fact, Female Bosses bring their own special touch to Leadership that is high on EQ and commitment to goals.

Female Bosses (as validated by the Forum for Women in Leadership in India) are:

• Fairer and more transparent in communication
• Drive an inclusive approach to build an Eco-system that nurtures talent
• Tend to build more long-lasting relationships with people as opposed to mere social networks
• Are self-critical of their own strengths and weaknesses and tend to rebound gracefully from the setbacks
• Tend to be more intuitive and calculated in their decision making- qualities that enable fair and sound judgement
• Are gifted with the capacity of becoming Mothers, hence Women Leaders seldom make decision that are unethical or harmful to society

Now that is a very exhaustive list indeed on why you must prefer a “Female Boss”. If you have recently been asked to move to a Team lead by a woman – get ready to be lead differently with far greater communication, uncompromising teamwork, high expectations of work ethics and professional behaviours, relentless confrontation when things go wrong but all of this in an ecosystem of nurturing, inclusion, respect for your strengths and willingness to share credit. Female bosses help build self-regard because they know the importance of winning against all odds and are appreciative and merit oriented because they know how hard they had to work to prove themselves right.

Women are multifaceted, expressive, emotional, demanding, caring and make organisations places of Wisdom with greater kindness. Get ready for the most exciting phase in your career with a Female Boss – one you will undoubtedly get nostalgic about when it’s over!