Building Resilience for Women in Leadership

“Achievement is the product of talent and effort, the latter a function of the intensity, direction, and duration of one’s exertions towards a long-term goal.” – Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. 
In 2003, women everywhere struggled with lower salaries, had more trouble advancing within their career, and had more to do every day then there was time to do it. That year, I was invited to speak on women and leadership in Cape May County for the Chamber of Commerce. Although we reached no conclusions, we spoke openly in a public forum about a dilemma faced by half of the working population.
This week, 14 years later, I was invited to be part of a panel discussion on resilience by the Women in Cell Biology group of the American Society for Cell Biology, which convened in Philadelphia.
In 1993, I co-authored a book on women in leadership with Dr. Lourene Nevels. “Powerful Wisdom” highlights how thrilled female highly trained family therapists are with their careers, and at the same time, documents that these women were deeply dissatisfied with their treatment on the job.
Gender Differences in Leadership Styles
In “Powerful Wisdom,” we interviewed 182 distinguished women psychotherapists who were also senior faculty, researchers, and highly respected authors. Nearly 20 years ago, when this research was done, we found clear gender differences in leadership styles:
1. Women leaders were more democratic than autocratic.
2. In female-dominated professions, women leaders were as achievement-oriented as men.
3. Women leaders received higher negative bias from subordinates.
Need for Role Models
Our findings indicate that skillful female mentorship was lacking in 1993. As Jeruchim and Shapiro said, “an important reason that women have difficulty breaking the glass ceiling is the absence of role models to guide the way. Each woman must break the ground for herself.”
For example, when I became senior clinical faculty in the department of psychiatry at Penn, there was few other female senior faculty. Now the leadership of psychiatry completely crosses gender lines.
Like my colleagues, national leaders in cell biology of all genders face the trauma of preparing grants and having them underfunded, despite their extremely high qualifications. For this reason, they made resilience in female leadership a key topic in their 2017 annual meeting.
To add key information, I selected Angela Duckworth’s New York Times bestseller, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.” Duckworth is a positive psychologist and faculty member in the graduate department of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where I am a clinical associate. For good reason she recently received $650,000 as a MacArthur fellowship, informally called the “Genius Grant.”
What Is Grit?
Many of us think of brawny males when we think of grit, but in fact, grit has to do with personality variables. According to Merriam-Webster, grit is “firmness of character; indomitable spirit.” Duckworth emphasizes that perseverance and passion are necessary ingredients for success. 
Two Key Personality Dynamics
Grit looks very different as handled by different individuals. What can we say about resilience, or “grit,” that applies to the lives of all women in leadership? All researchers on grit agree that tenacity and resilience are often related to two key personality dynamics:
1. Practicing challenges: An early female leader was Eleanor Roosevelt, who practiced what she suggested to others: “Do something that scares you every day.” Duckworth reports that tenacity and resilience are muscles that can be built through practice. People operating successfully year after year tend to have the courage to try new things even though they may not succeed the first time.
2. Demonstrating leadership: We need to replicate a pattern of successful leadership to be believable. The women in my clinical research study were conscientious and responsible, which created a foundation for their leadership. In addition, however, they set goals that were challenging, and they met them.
Leadership Trends Reflect a Pattern
In the final analysis, male and female leadership require similar attributes. Research tells us that female leadership is more easily accepted in areas in which women dominate the field, while male leadership is more easily accepted when men dominate the field.
Typically, the hard sciences, like psychological research or research in cellular biology, have been more frequently populated by men. So, it is hard to tease out how much of these colleagues’ frustration is due to the unfortunate reality that they are not the same gender as many of their senior colleagues.
One thing is clear: we gain strength by joining with one another. In unity strength triumphs.
The bottom line is that we can learn skills to build resilience. One of the skills is to seek and gain strength in one another.
To consider: When in your lifetime have you needed true grit? How frightening was it to know that you might fail? Did you have the courage of your convictions? If so, congratulations. If not, what might it take for you to develop this?
To read: Angela Duckworth. Grit. Simon and Schuster, Inc. New York, 2016;
Lourene A. Nevels and Judith M. Coche, Powerful Wisdom, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1993.
Find Dr. Coche in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia and in Stone Harbor. Reach her through www.cochecenter.com.