Women are the Answer
Women are the Answer
Sue Dyer, Author of Trusted Businesses have Trusted Leaders (to be released in June 2021)
A gender line ... helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Ruth Bader Ginsberg stands as a shinning beacon of women that have risen to become trusted leaders. A trusted leader is someone that stands in the dark and shines a light so everyone can now see. For those of us who lead a business, there is much to be learned from her approach. She helped shape this century by her ability to share her perspective – a woman’s perspective. She rose above the barriers that held women of her time in a very small opportunity box. And what the world gained was a much broader, better, and more cooperative understanding of the world. Women bring that to business. As we shift into a new digital age, where collaboration is the price of admission, what we learned from RBG can be enormously helpful. Women have a natural tendency toward collaboration. One thing that women must do, is help change the way business, and politics, are played. It has become a zero-sum game.
In many businesses and industries today, we still are playing by the old adversarial, protection rules. In the zero-sum game, nobody gives anything to anyone without someone giving something in return. The zero-sum game means mathematically, that one-plus-one equals zero. Think about how many resources you're putting in, to get zero. And we wonder why we don't make progress and compete in the global marketplace. Changing the game to trusted leadership brings trust and collaboration to the forefront of your business. Now mathematically, we can get one plus one to equal four or 16, by cooperating and innovating together.
Most business relationships are already highly interdependent, even though we don’t act like they are. In an interdependent relationship, the only thing that is possible is win/win or lose/lose. So, the current leadership model we use for leading our business is way, way, way too adversarial. This also applies when you are working together inside your organization, or working with our customers, or working with strategic partners.
So, when win/win or lose/lose is all that is truly available to you, then you need high trust and collaboration. Other wise you are actually working against yourself. A protective mode in an interdependent relationship ALWAYS leads to failure for both sides. Too often I see people working to make sure the other side loses more than they do. Hey – this also means you lose!!
Here is how the zero-sum game plays out, and how you can gain enormous benefit from instilling a high trust, collaborative approach to leadership.
A zero-sum game can be depicted as:
1 + 1 = 0
When we want something and there is conflict, we are encouraged to “just compromise”. Indeed, sometimes compromise is the best solution, but is not very creative. When we compromise, we split the difference between two possibilities. While compromise does give us a solution, many times people keep score. “I’ve compromised twice before; it is your turn to compromise.”
Compromise can be depicted as:
1 + 1 = 1 ½
The goal of trusted leadership is to create a solution that gives everyone what he/she needs. When you give people a goal, their mind seeks ways to achieve it. When we take the limitations off and allow your imagination to flow, you will be amazed at what you can create.
Creativity can be depicted as:
1 + 1 = 3
When those involved set aside their differences to begin to really care about each other, we begin to work as a team. Now we can co-create solutions. This allows us to bounce ideas off one another and push the envelope of what might be possible.
Co-Creation can be depicted as:
1 + 1 = 30
Those with an adversarial business paradigm seek to divide the pie between those involved. Everyone involved in the issue will be working hard at protecting his or her piece of the pie. From the zero-sum perspective, we need to win in order to protect our piece of the pie. Or we lose it all.
The goal of a trusted leader is to expand the pie, so there is more for everyone. We may even come up with a breakthrough along the way - something that has never been thought of before. There is a collective wisdom is a diverse, focused team. They can co-create something that no one ever thought of before, or that anyone thought was even possible. Together they are open, honest, creative and create amazing things, and then bring it to fruition! That is how business can learn and grow and become exponentially better at helping the clients they serve.
Women need to break out the “gender cage”. I believe that women are natural collaborators and can take on the role of trusted leader. We must be able to understand that a business and team of divergent interests can in fact come together and co-create great designs, solutions, and innovations. Women will naturally shift the leadership paradigm away from the zero-sum game. Just as RGB was a pioneer, I hope you will do all you can to try and teach your customers, employees, vendors, colleagues and associations that business is not a zero-sum game. You can at least explain to them, that yours is not!!
Sue Dyer President
sudyco™ LLC suedyer@sudyco.com
Tel 510-504-5877
Trusted Businesses have Trusted Leaders
People do business with people they like and trust. Without an atmosphere of trust, businesses become dysfunctional and even the best leaders can’t lead.
Everyone gets frustrated, and communication stops. To grow and compete, you need everyone on the same page and moving together.
Our Trusted Leadership model helps you and your business become the trusted leader in your industry.