But when a man does it … There’s no shortage of content on LinkedIn about how unfair the world is to women. A typical complaint is the “bossy” thing. E.g., “When men do it, it’s leadership. When women do it, it’s bossy.”
There may be some truth to some of these claims, but from my perspective, it sounds more like a combination of self-justification and being a martyr.
Consider this. I used to live in a house with a guy who spoke Arabic. I asked him to teach me a few things, and sometimes he would say a word, and then I’d say it, and he’d say I had it wrong, and he’d say the word again. I was (then) a good musician, and had a good ear, but I couldn’t hear the difference between what he said and what I said.
It would have been childish of me to say, “I’m saying it exactly like you! You’re only saying I have it wrong because I’m an American.” The truth was that my ear wasn’t trained to hear what he was hearing. There are subtleties in language that non-native speakers don’t get.
When a woman is called bossy when she does (she thinks) “exactly what a man would do,” I have no reason to accept the premise that she did “exactly what a man would do.”
Actually, maybe she did. Maybe she did exactly what a bossy man would do! (Men can also be bossy.)
If a man were to say, “But I did exactly what Frank did, and you don’t call him bossy”? the response would be on the order of “you’re not as good as Frank.”
There are a lot of things to consider when you distinguish “leader” from “bossy” — like experience, knowledge, tone, style, and body language. It’s not some binary “men are leaders, women are bossy.” There isn’t any reason to assume that when a woman’s attempt is judged “bossy” it’s only because she’s a woman. Maybe she just doesn’t have the right style for delivering that sort of message.
Boys and girls grow up in different worlds, and they learn different skills. Maybe boys are more likely to learn the nuances of leadership than girls, just as girls are more likely to learn the nuances of some social settings than boys. Or maybe women who are called bossy really are bossy, and they’re grasping at a cheap excuse.
Bottom line: the “bossy women are leaders” meme is not very persuasive.
Another thing about this is that if the people you’re trying to get to follow you are reading you as “bossy,” you’re not ACTUALLY succeeding as a leader. Is it possible that men have a tendency to read women’s attempts at leadership as “bossy”‘ unfairly? Sure. It might even be likely. But the only real-world test for whether you’re a good leader is whether people follow your leadership in a constructive manner. If there are issues about men making unfair assumptions about women, that needs to be addressed, but it’s not a free pass for women in leadership not to have to worry about the quality of their leadership skills.
“You’re not being good followers! You have to change your evil ways!”