Lead Like Yourself: Why Authenticity Is a Woman’s Leadership Advantage

For generations, women entering positions of leadership were often given an unspoken message: If you want to succeed, learn how to lead like the people who succeeded before you.

And for a very long time, most of those people were men.

Women learned to adapt. We learned when to speak up and when to hold back. We learned how to be assertive—but not too assertive. Confident—but not intimidating. Ambitious—but still likable. Strong—but never difficult.

That’s an exhausting list of contradictions.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped asking women to fit themselves into someone else’s definition of leadership.

Perhaps the better question is:

Who are you when you lead like yourself?

Leadership Doesn’t Have a Gender

There are qualities we frequently associate with women in leadership: empathy, collaboration, communication, intuition, relationship-building, and the ability to create consensus.

These are valuable qualities. But they don’t belong exclusively to women any more than decisiveness, ambition, courage, strategic thinking, or authority belong exclusively to men.

They belong to good leaders.

And that distinction matters.

For years, we’ve talked about helping women become stronger leaders. Maybe we should also be talking about expanding our definition of what strong leadership looks like.

A leader doesn’t have to be the loudest person in the room.

She doesn’t have to have every answer.

She doesn’t have to dominate a conversation to influence its outcome.

And she certainly doesn’t have to become someone else to earn the right to lead.

Stop Performing Leadership

I have been in leadership roles for most of my adult life—as a business owner, publisher, association founder, community leader, mentor, and volunteer.

And one thing I have learned is that leadership is very different from looking like a leader.

Titles can be given.

Authority can be assigned.

Leadership has to be earned.

People follow leaders they trust. They follow people who communicate clearly, keep their word, make difficult decisions when necessary, and care about what happens to the people around them.

Sometimes leadership means taking charge.

Sometimes it means stepping aside and letting someone else shine.

Sometimes it means saying, “I don’t know.”

And sometimes it means being the only person in the room willing to say, “I don’t agree.”

Authenticity isn’t about always being comfortable or doing whatever feels natural. It is about making sure the person making those decisions is actually you.

Stop Apologizing for the Skills That Make You Effective

There are leadership qualities that were once dismissed as “soft skills.”

Listening.

Empathy.

Relationship-building.

Communication.

Collaboration.

Reading the room.

Helping people feel seen and heard.

There is nothing soft about any of them.

Try leading a team through uncertainty without communication.

Try resolving conflict without listening.

Try retaining talented people without empathy.

Try building a loyal customer base without relationships.

Try creating a successful organization without understanding people.

Those skills aren’t accessories to leadership. In many situations, they are leadership.

If they happen to be among your strengths, don’t minimize them because they don’t resemble an outdated image of what power is supposed to look like.

Use them.

Authenticity Isn’t an Excuse

There is another side to authentic leadership that we don’t talk about nearly enough.

“That’s just who I am” isn’t a leadership strategy.

Authenticity doesn’t mean refusing to grow, change, listen, or develop skills that don’t come naturally.

A naturally collaborative leader may still need to make an unpopular decision.

An empathetic leader still needs boundaries.

A quiet leader sometimes has to raise her voice.

A confident leader still needs to admit when she is wrong.

And a leader who values harmony sometimes has to initiate the difficult conversation everyone else is avoiding.

Authentic leadership isn’t about staying safely within your comfort zone.

It is about stretching without losing yourself in the process.

There Is More Than One Way to Lead

This may be the greatest opportunity we have as women in leadership today.

We don’t have to replace one narrow model of leadership with another.

The goal isn’t to declare that women lead better than men.

It isn’t to suggest that all women lead alike.

We don’t.

Some women are collaborative. Some are commanding.

Some lead quietly. Others walk into a room and immediately fill it.

Some are analytical. Some are intuitive. Most of us are a combination that changes depending on the situation.

That’s exactly the point.

There should be room for all of it.

Organizations become stronger when different perspectives, personalities, experiences, and leadership styles have an opportunity to influence decisions.

And women become stronger leaders when we stop measuring ourselves against an imaginary standard of how a leader is supposed to behave.

What Do You Bring to the Table?

Maybe that is a question worth asking ourselves more often.

Not:

What am I missing?

Not:

How do I become more like her?

Not:

What do I need to change so they’ll take me seriously?

But:

What do I bring to the table that wouldn’t be there if I weren’t sitting at it?

Your experience matters.

Your perspective matters.

Your ability to see something others don’t see matters.

Your questions matter.

Your voice matters.

And yes, your way of leading matters.

The challenge is to understand those strengths well enough to use them intentionally—and to recognize the areas where you still need to grow.

Because confidence without self-awareness isn’t leadership.

But neither is constantly questioning whether you belong.

Lead Like Yourself

Women have spent decades earning seats at tables where decisions are made.

Now we have another responsibility.

We need to make those tables bigger.

We need to encourage the woman who hasn’t yet discovered the power of her own voice.

We need to mentor without creating clones of ourselves.

We need to open doors—and leave them open behind us.

And perhaps most importantly, we need to show the women coming after us that there isn’t one correct way to be powerful.

You can be compassionate and decisive.

Warm and authoritative.

Collaborative and ambitious.

Quiet and influential.

You can listen deeply and still have the final word.

You can lead with your head and your heart.

You don’t have to become a better female version of someone else’s idea of a leader.

You have to become more fully the leader you already have the capacity to be.

And when you do?

Don’t just take your place at the table.

Make room for another woman to pull up a chair.

Heidi Richards Mooney
Publisher, WE Magazine for Women