Excellent Leadership is Both Communal and Agentic
I saw brilliant women talk about leadership at Wisdom 2.0 beginning with the statement that both men and women need to incorporate both Agentic and Communal leadership to be effective. Forget the terms feminine and masculine and all the leadership characteristics we may associate with these terms and replace them with Agentic and Communal, which are categories of characteristics for all leaders.
Communal leadership is the ability to pull the best from everyone and to generate new ideas. It also includes building relationships and fostering community. Agentic leadership is the ability to drive toward a goal taking the risks and demanding the standards to reach excellence. Leaders need both. One without the other does not get the job done.
Using this type of leadership language helps us move beyond biases about men and women in leadership. It is one thing we can do to move towards more conscious leadership.