Energy + Motivation (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series) by Harvard Business Review

Energy + Motivation (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series) by Harvard Business Review

Author:Harvard Business Review
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2022-06-09T00:00:00+00:00


8

How Women at the Top Can Renew Their Mental Energy

By Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg

For women with leadership ambitions, there is no shortage of advice for how to reach the top. By learning to lean in, speak out, negotiate, delegate, and a dozen other behaviors, women everywhere are launching themselves through the glass ceilings of their organizations, landing jobs at or near the C-suite level.

But what happens after the promotion? While top-level jobs are tough on everyone, the transition to senior management comes with extra challenges for women. Some are psychological, pertaining to gender differences in risk-taking and self-confidence. Others are structural; in parenting, for instance, childcare and domestic duties are still disproportionately shouldered by the female partner. While these barriers affect women at all levels of the organization, they are particularly pronounced in the pressure-cooker environment at the top, putting women at a disadvantage.

Dealing with this challenge is something I am deeply familiar with. I am a certified organizational psychologist with a PhD in business economics. For more than 20 years, I have served as an executive coach to hundreds of senior women leaders, many of them working in heavily male-dominated environments such as banking, the military, and the police force. My work has given me some insights into how women leaders can improve their chances of success once they have reached the top.

At the center is managing your mental energy: how to gain it, maintain it, and not drain it. The three tactics that my female clients have used to succeed in the particular context of a top-level job are knowing your superchargers, finding a work ally, and reducing your anxiety levels.

Know Your Psychological Superchargers

Like it or not, in all but the most evolved organizations, the idea of maintaining a work-life balance at the very top is simply fictional. As Alexandra, a U.S. hedge fund partner, told me: “If you want balance, go be a yoga nidra instructor.” Another top management team I worked with had the motto “Deliver or Die”; there was little doubt as to where “me time” belonged in that particular team’s list of priorities. Given this brutal reality, combined with the extra domestic burdens imposed on many women, how do female top leaders manage to recharge their batteries?

Part of the answer lies in realizing that not all sources of energy are equal. Specifically, some activities are what I call “psychological superchargers”—that is, activities that yield a disproportionately bigger energy boost than others. The nature of these superchargers varies from person to person—I’ll share some examples shortly—but consistently, the most successful women I’ve worked with figured out what theirs were and made sure to tap into them regularly.

In looking for your own superchargers, keep two things in mind: First, set aside culturally mandated ideas about what women are supposed or not supposed to gain energy from (spoiler alert: spending time with kids is not always a net contributor to your mental reserves), and look instead to your quirkier sides. One leader I worked with got her mental boost



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.