The Yin and Yang of Leadership

In Chinese medicine there is a concept of Yin and Yang energy. Yang represents male energy and Yin represents female energy, however the two different types of energies exist in each of us and need to be balanced for good health. This same principle can be applied to sound Leadership.

With the recent collapse of the banking industry, people have been asking "what went wrong and how?" Some of the answers have indicated that the attitude and behaviour of those in the banking industry was aggressive, short term view and greedy. These traits have been attributed to men, as women are seen to be more collaborative, cautious and take a longer term view. "Now is the tim", the newspapers shout, "for women to play a greater role in the industry". This basic explanation is predicated on the stereo-type that society creates of men and women and doesn’t account for the fact that men can also be collaborative, cautious and take a longer term view and that there are plenty of examples of aggressive, greedy women that take a short term view of life!

The way we bring up our children, in a society that believes that women have certain personality traits and men have others, means that we condition boys and girls to comply with only showing the traits that are associated with their gender. This leads to Leaders, (men and women) having an imbalanced way of behaving. There is too much Yin or too much Yang and therefore, fewer options for the Leader to chose from when reacting to a situation.

My work is to add more options for the Leader to take and this involves them drawing on both their innate Yin and their innate Yang energy. (I’ve used the terms ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ because even using the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ energy leads to confusion and resistance in many of my clients.)

A good leader will be in touch with their male and female labelled energy and therefore be more flexible and adaptable than their staunch counterpart. We’ve all come across the extremely masculine leader (whether they are actually a man or a woman) who is inflexible, predictable and the cause of many of their own problems.

So perhaps the collapse of the banking industry was attributable in part to the attitudes and behaviours of a predominantly male group. The wise leaders in this group will look to their own behaviours and realise where there is a lack of balance. They can either start to value their own innate ‘female’ energy and bring balance to their Leadership or they can create balance by adding people who exhibit these more ‘feminine’ traits to their board or management team. Unfortunately, ‘female’ energy has not been valued in Business to date, and this change of attitude may take some time – possibly several generations. The ground breaking Leaders will begin to search for more balance now.

Rebecca Watson has worked with a wide variety of coaching companies, organisations and leaders to empower them to deliver through high performing teams. Click to find more Coaching Articles.