On May 17, women leaders will converge on Canberra for the annual She Leads Conference. Women’s Agenda is pleased to once again support this exciting women’s leadership event as Media Partner. We will be sharing articles over the coming weeks from some of the amazing women who will be speaking at the Conference. To find out more, or to register to attend, visit the She Leads website.
Lucy Perry is not a woman to pull punches. She has been leading organisations and movements successfully for years, and is now the CEO of Sunrise Cambodia.
But despite her illustrious career, her clearly demonstrated expertise and her constant goal-kicking, some men still can’t seem to take her seriously.
“I haven’t suffered from gender barriers to leadership in my career. I’m a CEO so I obviously made it to the top. I didn’t have to fight any men for this job,” Perry says. ‘What I have seen time and time again, is men attempting to obstruct my ability to do my job well now that I am at the top, or refusing to deal with me because I don’t have a dick. That makes steam shoot out of my ears.”
Yep – most male leaders prefer to deal with mirror images of themselves. In fact, a meta-analysis of 99 studies that examined perceptions of female leaders found that male leaders were more likely to rate themselves as being more effective than female leaders were, although other people were likely to rate female leaders as more effective in general.
It’s an infuriating aspect of leadership in current workplaces that continues to place the onus on women to somehow conform to the male model of leadership, rather than being valued as individuals with the skills and experience necessary to do the job.
But Perry’s solution is simple – give them what they want (kind of).
“Sometimes I have had to give in and use a man to do the communicating to get something done. I’ve found that sometimes old white men only listen when another older white man is speaking. So I hired an older white man as my gun CFO and 2iC and he talks when I need him to. Same message, same result, someone else delivering it to the boys.”
This pragmatism is part of Perry’s success as a leader – combined with her passion for what she does, and her confidence in her abilities.
Being a ‘leader’ is something Perry is entirely comfortable with, and is a role she has inhabited since she was appointed to her first CEO role. But she’s also not afraid to denounce the title if it interferes with her reality.
“I don’t mind wearing the label of leader as long as the world is willing to accept that I am not perfect. If being a leader requires that I be well behaved and perfectly proper, I will give my badge back,” she says.
Being passionate about her work is the driving force behind Perry’s achievements, and is the biggest lesson emerging women leaders can learn from her trajectory – being driven to reach your goals is the best way of ensuring you do your best work, and achieve the highest possible outcomes.
“At Sunrise Cambodia, it is the people we serve who motivate me to fight the good fight. I look at a collection of their faces on the wall above my desk and I get tears in my eyes when I think I am not winning on their behalf and I grin at them when I feel like I’m kicking ass,” Perry says. “I ran a creative services firm for 20 years and one of my most lucrative clients sold hinges. Yep hinges. It was so unimportant to the world it made my eyes bleed. The day I switched to using my super powers to make the world a better place, I never looked back.”
To hear more of Lucy’s insights, and to learn from a line-up of inspiring women leaders, register to attend the She Leads Conference on 17 May at QT Canberra here.