Dr. Gloria Wu Podcast: Women Versus Men in Leadership
Introduction:
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Gloria Wu, MD:
This is Dr. Gloria Wu. I want to talk today about how men and women lead. Dr. Karen Nichols, an author, and she’s been leader of various major national medical organizations. She said that men are more transactional in leadership versus women, which are more collaborative. That for men it’s much more about setting a goal, accomplishing that goal and power. For women, it’s collaborative in the sense that they see consensus, they look at the big picture, they want to think about the environment, have more sense of social awareness, to think about the employees, the whole global picture of the company or the organization. For us as women, when people look at us on the podium, they’re going to view us through the prism of gender. That multifaceted definition that the World’s Health Organization defined as multifaceted and intersectional. It involves roles, gender norms, culture, society, and how historically society has had these gender norms kind of placed on all children when they’re very young.
When we are seen, we have to, as a leader, we have to make sure that we call the males in the audience by their titles, as well as the females. Call everybody by the titles, call them the same way. Sometimes many male doctors will address the female doctor in the room as Susie, rather than Dr. Susan Smith. We should not make that mistake either. Or you can call everybody by the first name. You just have to be consistent. But it is important to note that in many situations, nurses will call us, women doctors, by our first name, but address our male colleague as “Dr. so-and-so.” If that’s the case, please say, “Oh, please address me in front of patients as Dr. Judy Jones. Thank you.” You want to kind of just make it very professional, have no emotion attached to it. Many times people still say that when patients meet a woman doctor, they said, “Oh, you’re the nurse.”
It’s very easy to wear a name badge that says MD on it, and you have it printed. The MD stands out alone as an extra little toggle piece on your name tag or have your white coat embroidered prominently. Dr. Judy Smith. I always wear a white coat that has my name, Dr. Gloria Wu, embroidered on it. I’ve done that since I was a fellow. It’s important that we do these simple things. What is very important all of us to understand as women leaders? It’s situational. We have to have situational awareness. As I said in a previous podcast, we have to have emotional intelligence. That means self-awareness and situational awareness. We have to be a leader for every season, for every situation. Remember that the optics of a female leader may be different than that for a male leader.
But remember, it’s okay. We have equal brains, we have a lot of social skills, and we have social awareness that culturally we’ve learned very young as young children. Now, the other thing is that in discovering your leadership styles and your philosophical bents when you are giving a talk, have somebody video it and then you can watch it and see what you look like. That’s usually very helpful. Or what you can do is practice your talk in front of a mirror so you know that you speak in a certain way, you stand up in a certain way. That’s also very useful.
These are little tricks of the trade. As always, if you’re giving a big talk, you’re nervous, you right before, the 1 minute before, in the prep time, in the ante room, before you get to the podium, stand up tall, take a big breath, lengthen your spine, pull your shoulders back. Then you breathe in and out, 1 and 2, and then breathe out 3, 4, 5, 6. Do that twice at least. Then you’ll be amazed. You’ll be really transformed. Your neurotransmitters will be at a happier place. With that, I leave you and join us again if you like this. Thank you.
