When I think of 10 year old Nora with long stringy brown hair and glasses, I remember being bored, physically and mentally restless and often speaking up with ideas for how things could be more interesting or more fun. Was I a bossy girl or a natural leader?
Lucky for me, I was good in school, so I didn’t get punished for my “helpfulness”. But, I was often told that I was bossy. I probably was. Being the youngest, I had to speak up and fight for attention at home and took that with me out into the world.
Smart girls didn’t have a lot of role models in my generation.
Half way through my MBA program at UCLA, I made the decision to join my Father as an executive in the family manufacturing business. 2 weeks after I started, I got pulled aside by one of the clerical staff. She looked angry. I thought she was going to scold me for not taking my turn making the coffee in the morning with the other “girls”. I began to explain that I don’t drink coffee. She brushed aside my apology with a brisk, “we all know you don’t drink coffee”. (Of course, they were watching everything I did.) She wanted to share the conversation she had overheard the night before. After I left, the Sales Manager who was 72 years old, went into my Father’s office and asked him why, if he had to bring one of his kids into the business, did he have to bring in a “girl”? My Dad answered “because she was the best person for the job.” My Dad saw the leadership potential in me and gave me the opportunity to prove I could lead. With time, the women in the organization, the sales team, the shop managers, the warehouse supervisors and the rest of the team aligned behind my vision.
My challenge to you is to look for the bossy girls and boys in your organization and give them an opportunity to take charge of something. Let them try something you “already know won’t work”, or can’t see why it would matter. Maybe, this one won’t. But they will learn under your mentorship and you may have grown your next generation of leaders.