6 things that make male leaders more trustable

This article was originally published on ERA magazine, 2021

As a senior executive, I was often the only female in the room. Over many years of working with men, I witnessed greatness as well as some egregiously disrespectful behaviours.

Post my corporate career, I have mentored 100’s of female executives and have come to understand that the expectations of our male leaders have shifted. We want more. We need more. More great men who will stand tall and help us to create a new paradigm for business and life.

The following 6 points, give voice to women and what we desire most in working with men.

1. Consciousness

I remember my first budget presentation as a newly appointed Executive General Manger. My team and I worked tirelessly on the numbers and plans in preparation to present to the CEO and senior executive team. I was excited and nervous as my allotted time finally came.

As I started my presentation, I saw that the CEO and others in the team, were reading the newspaper. I laughed it off, carried on, but deep down I felt hurt and betrayed. Add to this the numbers of meetings I’ve had with men checking watches and phones, looking like they have somewhere else more important to be.

We deserve your presence and attention. Your full conscious awareness. This is what enables our nervous system to relax and perform at our best – in the boardrooms and meeting rooms. (and special note for intimate partners, this is true for the bedroom too). When you are distracted and not present, we feel disrespected and unimportant, and we shut down. We have 100’s of years and 7 generations of stories in our DNA of being relegated, abused, sold, dismissed, ignored and objectified. As a collective of women, we are healing from this both personally and culturally. We long to be seen, heard, and understood and our trust of you will be directly proportional to the quality of your attention and presence (aka consciousness).

We know we complain, and honestly, we are trying to work on that as a collective (it’s part of our old patterns and habits). 90% of our complaints are based on the moments when you are just not conscious, not listening, not present. It breaks our heart – whether we are aware of it or not.

2. Connection

At work and at home, we want to feel your heart. We want to know the things you believe in and care about. We admire your logical, driven self and we feel most relaxed and focussed when we feel a deeper connection to who you are. We freak out and we love it when men cry. It fritzes our nervous systems, but our hearts rejoice when you let down the armour of having to get it right and look good all the time and show us you feel too. We don’t want to sit around crying with you all the time (like we do with our girlfriends at times) - that is not cool. But all the messages’ boys got about don’t cry because you will look weak (we overheard all those too which is why it’s weird in our nervous system) are simply not true. It makes you look human, and we love that.

I remember once at a conference, during a poignant moment, our CEO wiped more than one tear from his eyes. The buzz afterwards wasn’t about the speaker, it was about the water works from our boss. It was such a relief to see that he did have feelings after all. We admired him for his strength and vision, we trusted him because of his heart.

3. Certainty – (follow through)

I recently started a coaching program with a partner from a law firm. In our first session, it was obvious to me that he was uncomfortable and out of his comfort zone. He assured me he was enjoying the experience, but my intuition knew better. As I tried to book the second session, he avoided my e mail for days until finally I called him. I asked directly if he wanted to cease the sessions. “No” he said, “I’m, enjoying them, it’s just really busy.” Full of excuses, he told me he would call the following week to book, and he was really looking forward to the next session– two months later and still no word from him.

We desperately want to be able to believe you. That you will do what you say you will do. We desperately want to be able to rely on you. To know we can relax because you will tell us the truth and follow through with your word. We are capable too, but we also know there are things you are good at doing. If we can’t rely on you, we just do them ourselves and resent you for it. We want you to know and communicate your own boundaries truthfully- i.e., don’t say you’ll do something you won’t. Be clear with us - we can handle the truth. I can’t do that, I don’t like that - when it comes from the heart, we can respect it. Sloppiness and leakiness with your word is heart-breaking and diminishes our trust in you. We don’t want your excuses, or your “false compliments”. Show up and speak your truth.

4. Clarity

We love clarity. Even though we are capable and able to reach high levels in business, we often have to utilise much of our own masculine energy to do it. For a feminine being, at our core, we like to flow and feel. Your clarity helps us with our own boundaries and allows us to be more creative. Particularly when it comes to things we don’t really love doing. For example, my husband recently said to me, “Babe, I need your tax info.” Now I will flow and feel into a vague request like that for weeks. When he says I need your tax by 5 pm today because…….. (I need to understand why - not just because you say so), that is a container I can work with. And I’ll get it done.

If you (men) are too much in flow and feel, with no clarity, then we must take on the masculine energy and we will start to boss you around. Then you will call us bossy (and other derogatory names) and we resent you. We want clarity that has purpose, not just dictatorial rigid, linear rules, and directions. Clear boundaries and clear expectations help our nervous systems to relax and then we trust you to lead.

5. Conviction

We want you to stand for something. We want to be able to feel your steadfastness (not your rigidity). And we really want you to be a stand and call out the things that are no longer acceptable in our cultural framework. Discrimination, sexism, racism and all inappropriate behaviour really. I was at a meeting with my male boss once and I was passionately sharing a frustration I had with a section of the business. “You are really fired up today” he said, “have you got your period?”. With steely eyes, I replied, “No, you’re just pissing me off”. Now I am an experienced, confident woman and can meet this kind of degradation with strength. What about all the younger, inexperienced leaders that don’t know how to speak truth to power? This kind of derogatory talk about women (or men), diminishes our trust in you. Whether it comes out of your own mouth or when you stand by and let others do it on your watch. We want to know you will stand up for us, support us, have our back. In my first job as a 16-year-old girl, I worked in a family run bakery. I was good at my job and often the boss would go home for a few hours in the afternoon and leave me alone to hold the fort. One day, an older delivery man came to drop off an order of bread. He asked me to come out the back and help him, when immediately he grabbed me and tried to kiss me. I was shell shocked but luckily, I fended him off and ran out to the front of the shop to the safety of a waiting customer. I was one of the lucky ones. But worse still, when I told my boss what had happened, he laughed it off, “that’s just men being men. Don’t worry about it.” I left that job not long after that incident. How many times has that happened to women? The things we walk past is the standard we accept.

And as capable as we women are, we need you to stand up for us and for the good men to call all the men behaving badly up to a new standard. Your integrity is tied to your deeds and how willing you are to risk your own position or comfort to be a stand for something.

6. Curiosity - Work on yourself.

We really want you to start working on yourself. You probably don’t need too many more skills for strategy and business plans but rather for improving your emotional intelligence and upgrading your nervous system. We don’t need you to be right all the time and you don’t need to look good either.

And when you do get things wrong, as we all do from time to time, please let go of the need to defend your stance - did anyone ever get someone to agree with them after they defended their position? Listen to us, we have wisdom for you, we care about your development and your evolution. We want to be in partnership with you, not less or more than.

The time is here and now on this planet for our male leaders to attain a higher calibre of leadership than ever before. The challenges and complexities that we now face as humanity requires healthy, integrated, and conscious male and female leaders. Together, as we heal the wounds of the past, we can elevate our businesses and lives into new levels.