The recent experiences of Julia Gillard and Sophie Mirabella got me thinking about the way women in leadership roles can be treated and how they manage this treatment.
Whilst I’m not on a national or political stage, I have a leadership role in a university. As part of my role, I recently spoke at a forum for women working in universities who have leadership ambitions. In my talk, under Chatham House rules, I included fairly frank commentary on the fact that not everyone wants you to succeed as a female leader.
I believe that it’s important for women to know about the nasty side of leadership and to be prepared. I shared quite a few examples of how people had tried to thwart my success over the years. I spoke of underhand attacks, rumour-spreading, deliberate exclusion and outright lies told about me. I could see some of the audience was shocked by the anecdotes. Two of the women in the audience looked stricken. One had her hand over her open mouth.
I then showed them how I had used humour, at least in part, to deal with these situations and to succeed as a leader and in my career, despite theses sorts of challenges.
In one case, I adopted an alternative name for the protagonist (in my pretty dispiriting situation of being bullied and mobbed by a group of colleagues at his direction). His new name was close to his real name, but was also the name of a well-known, ditzy, reality TV show star. Every time I refer to or think of him, I use that name. I shared the name with the women in my leadership audience. The woman who had had her hand over her mouth earlier in my talk laughed loudly, along with the rest of the audience.
Psychologists call what I have done with this name ‘cognitively restructuring’ or thinking about things differently, to help me feel better. If this man has the status in my thoughts as an airhead, D-grade celebrity, it becomes easy to wave in a friendly way to him across a room at a work function, as I did recently.
I should point out that I did also report his behaviour to his seniors while it was happening. They did nothing and he’s since been promoted. But in my mind, he’s pathetic and I swear I saw his knees buckle slightly when he saw me waving and smiling at him in that room recently. More importantly, I have moved on and have also been promoted outside the organisation in which I worked with him.
In another case, I wrote a satirical article about an insecure and incompetent supervisor who had created an intolerable situation in my workplace and who had declined all opportunities to address the matter. After I left the job, I ran the article past my lawyer before sending it to a magazine editor. It was published and, despite not naming him or the company, it went viral within the organisation in which the protagonist in question is a senior staff member.
The use of humour in this case gave me great satisfaction and a sense that I had achieved some retribution for the injustice I had suffered, as well as a sense of pride that I had possibly prevented others from having to experience the same mistreatment.
In a third case, a couple of women publicly excluded me from an important initiative that I should have been invited to join based on our previous work together and my expertise in the area. They later invited me to join them and then allocated me very low-level tasks to support their public appearances. In this case, I have had some help with using humour and cognitive restructuring.
On hearing of their nasty behaviour, my husband coined the term ‘the ugly sisters’ to refer to them. He’s never met them so it’s not a reference to their physical appearance, but rather their characters and their pettiness. Rather than being intimidated by them, how much more empowering is it to think of them as story book characters known world wide for their attempts to prevent someone else from being happy?
Using humour is not a panacea for dealing with leadership challenges but it is a one very powerful tool in a large toolkit. Other useful tools from my experience have included knowing how and when to say ‘no’ and ‘enough’, establishing and maintaining networks of support inside and outside work, including mentoring other women, looking after one’s health and wellbeing and fostering reflective practice and resilience.
But it can be very empowering, not to mention great fun, to have a laugh about your challenges and the people who create them for you.