You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Stop labelling female leaders as ‘frightening’ and ‘formidable’
Since forming Eastlight Community Homes, chief executive Emma Palmer and chair Hattie Llewelyn-Davies have been described as “frightening” female leaders. Stereotypes of women leaders are damaging, they both write
It is incredible to look back now and think about how the two of us had never met before July 2019. Almost exactly a year later, we successfully led the merger of Greenfields Community Housing, where Emma was chief executive, and Colne Housing, where Hattie was chair, to create 12,000-home Eastlight Community Homes.
We are still beaming from having formed a trailblazing organisation, with empowered residents who have a real say and influence over services and strategic direction.
“Being labelled – as women in senior positions so often are – with words that make us seem cut-throat and intimidating is not at all helpful”
However, we are fully aware that when discussing how the two of us achieved this, some have put it down to us being "formidable” or, worse, “frightening” female leaders.
READ MORE
This is neatly outlined by Catalyst, a global non-profit organisation which aims to build workplaces that work for women, not the housing association. “Women leaders are seen as competent or liked but not both,” it states.
The two of us have got a lot of work still to do, so being labelled – as women in senior positions so often are – with words that make us seem cut-throat and intimidating is not at all helpful.
Like many other women in careers where having a public face is part of the job, the pair of us would admit to having learned to appear to be pretty invulnerable – it’s necessary in order to function. However, we hope we also remain open, approachable and dedicated to the job in hand.
It is still unusual to have two women in an organisation’s top two roles, and we think it is a big advantage. We want to create an organisation where the leadership is challenged and where those in senior positions listen to and absorb what others are telling them.
When the COVID-19 crisis and lockdown hit, other mergers paused, but we cracked on with the creation of the largest ever community gateway organisation. With the support of our board, our people, our advisors and our residents – for which we are extremely grateful.
As a community gateway, resident oversight is integral to the way we operate. Despite the pandemic and the associated difficulties around communication, we found we were able to maintain momentum around resident involvement in merger activity and decision-making.
We couldn’t meet with our people face to face (we both fell into the shielding category), but we engaged with our residents, teams and key stakeholders well enough to be able to create a new community gateway, which will not only benefit our residents but also members of their wider communities across Essex and Suffolk for years to come.
Addressing the combined workforces of two organisations via Zoom actually helped to establish our authenticity. When your cat wanders in front of your screen or your child can be seen playing in the background, it only serves to demonstrate you are a real human being managing many of the work-life lockdown challenges we all faced.
Effectively inviting those we work with into our homes and gardens, we believe, has led to us achieving far greater legitimacy, and this has helped us connect with our teams and help them to feel inspired by the formation of Eastlight.
During our many virtual meetings over the past six months, we have got to know one another well and we’ve discovered that we have a lot in common. Our family situations have been similar and we have shared perspectives on many things, including the reasons we do what we do.
“When your cat wanders in front of your screen or your child can be seen playing in the background, it only serves to demonstrate you are a real human being managing many of the work-life lockdown challenges we all faced”
Could there potentially be a risk that our unconscious biases lead us to recruit to type? It’s something we’re both very aware of.
Eastlight needs to be a truly diverse organisation, in which diversity of thought is encouraged and part of our DNA. The last thing we want is for everybody at the organisation to be just like us.
We’re both goal-orientated and can be impatient, and that’s not always appropriate. We must have people around us who feel comfortable challenging us, helping us to see things differently and to frame Eastlight’s future in this wider context.
We’ve both worked our way up to where we are today, and we have first-hand experience of being overlooked and our ideas not counting because we don’t fit the mould. When you’ve been there yourself, you’re much more aware of how you treat others. This knowledge has helped us to shape the new organisation.
With Eastlight, we’re creating a new culture within an organisation where everything we do focuses on our communities.
We’re certainly not “frightening” but we are determined – and we know that Eastlight Community Homes is going to be a pioneer for UK housing in so many different ways.
Emma Palmer, chief executive, Eastlight Community Homes; and Hattie Llewelyn-Davies, chair, Eastlight Community Homes and PA Housing
