Women, Composure, and Leadership

When we recently wrote about inner confidence, we received lots of appreciative feedback from clients and other readers. The topic definitely struck a cord in that readers seemed to concur that inner confidence will help us immensely in our leadership, our relationships, and our efforts to accept that we can be better and should strive for improvement.

What is composure and how does it help?
The dictionary defines composure as a “controlled state of mind.” A controlled state of mind certainly helps us cope with challenging situations and when under stress. Composure also helps us make sensible decisions without being inappropriately influenced by emotions, e.g., feelings of anger, fear, panic, helplessness or inadequacy.

Composure is an important quality for leaders. People admire, respect and have confidence in a leader who tends to be composed.

Female leaders and composure
That said, even the best leaders may lose composure. While both men and women are overtaken by their emotions at times, I find that they do so differently. Speaking very broadly, when losing control of their emotions, women are somewhat more likely to shed tears and men are somewhat more likely to lose their tempers.

Now I may offend with my stereotypes here, but stick with me, I have a good point, which is that if a woman loses control and sheds some tears, but is able to take a walk, etc. to regain her composure, so what!

It’s all about regaining composure.
If a woman is able to own the fact that she has strong emotions that may cause her to lose her composure once in a while, but knows that she can regain her composure, what have we lost, maybe 20 minutes?

Further, let’s be sure to recognize that if we think a woman’s crying is a weakness, which it is not, a man’s losing his temper and flying off the handle can be much worse! I suspect that emotion in the form of tears does not result in broken relationships as frequently as emotion in the form of anger.

Emotions are a good thing!
Being emotional is not a sign of weakness. Just the opposite. Emotions are a major part of many women’s DNA, which is a good thing that fosters some of the best leadership qualities.

Because of their access to emotions, women offer so much more to organizational leadership. They have a heightened willingness to ask questions, to listen to learn, to have conversations, to nurture relationships, and be more inclusive, which are all important leadership qualities. Female leaders also have a sharpened ability to grasp and confront the emotional issues that may be troubling their peers and employees.

These qualities are important to engaging our teammates, who want to feel appreciated and heard.

I hate that I often hear that “women are not good bosses,” but, when I ask why, someone simply names a single woman who was not a great boss. Yet while there are thousands and thousands of bad bosses, and most bosses are men, I have never heard that “men are not good bosses!”

The point we’d like to make is that we do not have to be someone we are not.
If we have strong emotions, own that. Certainly we should try our best to be composed as often as we can. That is important. And if we lose our cool and emotions take over, let’s recognize and accept that fact, try not to make decisions in that state, and have a prepared plan to help regain our controlled state of mind.

Women need not be ashamed of their emotions, nor do men. That is who we are. We don’t want to try to be someone else, we want try to be our best selves!