As military women, it may take us a little longer to embrace a leadership style that works for us. In this article, I’m going to draw from anecdotal experiences from my cohorts, and then I’ll provide how-to steps on how to balance your energies as an effective revered leader in the military.
For the most part, young women are still figuring out their stance in the world, finding their voice and perhaps working extra hard to keep up physically with their peers. Mentally and emotionally, we may have social advantages, due to our early developments of emotional processing, (women learn to express and process emotions more openly from a younger age).
But when it come to assertiveness and decisiveness, it takes us sometime to come into those masculine traits.
Here I am in Seattle, about to embark on my first duty station. I didn’t realize how rapidly my self development would grow as I learned how to be empathetic and assertive as a leader.
When I say masculine traits, these are typical traits that have been socially attributed to it:
- Strength (emotional, mental, and physical)
- Decisiveness
- Resiliency
- Assertiveness
- Rational Thinking
- Ability to take higher level of risk
- Highly competitive
From my observations as a Corporal in the Army, young women struggle with the above traits all due to their lack of confidence in themselves.
Trying to One Up Them:
Some may overcorrect by embodying masculinity to it’s fullest extent at work (trying really hard to “outrun” the boys in every task). They put an exorbitant amount of stress on themselves to prove they can be just as good if not better. But it comes off as overconfidence if it’s done with a cocky attitude. It can be perceived as arrogance to their male peers unfortunately. This makes it difficult to relate and connect with them as a team.
Let me be clear though, there’s nothing wrong with being better than your peers, but it is wrong to boast about it. Train them to be on your level if you have the skills they do not possess. You know the saying, we are only as strong as our weakest Soldier in the team.
Staying in their comfort zone:
Other young military women, fall back to their feminine traits that they feel more comfortable with. They usually try to steer away from work that may be strenuous, without even realizing it. For instance, when an Non Commissioned Office says, “Hey! I need three to help push these GP Medium Tent!” These tents are extremely heavy and can require anywhere from 10-20 individuals to move it.
Some women will watch from the sidelines, because in their mind they don’t see the need to overexert themselves when there’s perfectly capable men around. This is most definitely noticed by their peers.
I am not trying to vilify these women either, because they have been socialized to be this way their whole lives.
Being in the military is a unique experience, where the Soldier to the left and right of you is to be equal in fortitude because battle does not see gender. You are to take care of your battles (colleagues) and lessen the burden as a team whenever you can.
The Quiet Struggle:
And there’s women who struggle to find their footing, but keep that struggle to themselves.
They start to feel they have to put in more hours than their male peers if they want to even be comparable. So they put a lot of pressure on themselves to be better and keep up for the physical training aspects. They can overtrain and become disheartened quickly when they experience injury just when they were about to improve.
They do not know it’s okay to improve at a more slow and steady pace. They are also nervous to speak up perhaps to their male supervisors because they may be construed as being too emotional. Their own self-limiting beliefs govern their indecisiveness and they choose to brush it off instead of face it head on to avoid uncomfortable confrontation and repercussions.
How to succeed as a female leader
By balancing the feminine and masculine energy in your leadership
1.Be comfortable with your authentic self
This means allow your personality and mannerisms to be at ease with your peers. Being too stoic and distant is not good for team dynamics.
Trying to be JUST like your male peers in all their hobbies and traits is doing a disservice to you.
You HAVE to be genuine and professional of course. But people will feel much more comfortable when they are individuals who are confident in who they are. The authenticity makes you much more approachable.
If being authentic, means being the Matriarch of the team-so be it!
Your subordinates and colleagues will appreciate you for your genuine care for them. So do not be afraid to the be Mama Hen in the group if that’s YOUR way of showing care.
Your purpose in the team is to build each other up and ensure we are all mentally engaged to be a stronger fighting force! If that means your maternal style of care allows for them to approach you with issues, then that's even better.
2.Be patient and think of the end state in times of confrontation
Be comfortable in your feminine side of empathy. Try to gauge if there was any real malicious intent if someone in your team was too abrasive with you (and it wasn’t called for). More often than that, people don’t realize the impact of their actions unless you point it out because they never learned to process THEIR emotions properly.
Do not meet them at that heightened level, wait for things to cool off. And then approach them with a side bar conversation, expressing how their actions affected you and to clear up the misunderstanding.
The goal is to work better as a team, and if they have never been taught on how to treat colleagues or subordinates, they're going to learn today, respectfully. :)
3.Understand HOW to speak up
Enlist the mentorship of a Senior Leader (outside of your immediate chain of command) who can guide you on how to address any issues with your Supervisor or Senior NCO.
IF you keep pushing the issue to the side, you’re showing your inner psyche that it’s okay for you to think less of yourself . You want to practice speaking up now before it continues to happen everywhere you go because you allowed that treatment.
Do not dismiss yourself before others even have a chance to hear you out. You do not know the impact you may have.
Speak with purpose. Always think. "What is my message here and how best can I effectively deliver that to this person". Do it calmly and pointedly. I would recommend even coming prepared with bullet points on a notepad if that helps you organize your thoughts. It conveys how serious you are.
4.Lean into opportunities
Confidence is not built overnight. Work on it every chance you get.
Come prepared though when you speak up in meetings, groups and seminars. However, do not speak just to be noticed. Speak with intention and value add in a succinct manner–allowing others to speak and reflect on your thoughts. THIS creates productive dialogue.
Enlist in volunteer opportunities, clubs and assigned leadership positions that spark passion in you, in order to further sculpt your delivery of messages, assertiveness in program management, and decisiveness in the absence of orders.
Leaning in to these positions, builds your rational thinking, resiliency and fortitude as you deal with unique issues with these volunteered opportunities.
5. Continuously work on self awareness & improvement
Improve your physical fitness as much as possible. Take it seriously with goal markers! Get on a program that best suits your goals. I’ve utilized the fitness training plans and nutritional videos by Natacha Oceane and Rachel Aust. Natacha is great at simplifying the science of functional fitness, fat loss, and weight training. Rachel Aust does a great holistic job of nutrition, meal prep, and cultivating just a more peaceful space.
I would also highly recommend signing up for runs or training events. I did the Army 10-miler and was quite surprised at my own capability! I was proud of 1 hr 40 min time. Especially was able to run a mile before I joined in one stretch.
If you have any self limiting beliefs, talk to your closest confidante on it, reflect on it through writing. I would recommend books such as “The Mountain is You” (audiobook is 5 hrs) for much needed revelations.
6. Make time for self care to balance the strains of work
It’s important to make time for upkeeping with your self care desires; however that looks like.
For instance, during lunch go get your eyebrows done. On Friday evenings, right after work get your nails done (AR670-1 cute). Do a self care Saturday, where you re-engage with your feminine side of a softer living. DO NOT constantly be ON to working and thinking about work. You need your balanced off time to explore fun and soft ways of care in order to get right back to work Monday refreshed.
If you shun your self care needs to the side too much, you will depleted as you are not pouring into your own cup. You have to ensure you are doing things that boast your inner self confidence.
7.Surround yourself with like-minded proactive individuals
These mentors, colleagues, friends or partners will truly bolster your confidence & self improvement endeavors.
A good community of people (or even two or three) can really expedite your growth process. Especially individuals who are not self-serving but are generous with their care and non-judgmental with their mind.
The overall goal of this article was show you how you can exhibit feminine and masculine traits as a great leader in the military. You can still be yourself but also grow into an amazing strong individual who is patient yet very brave.
As for myself, I run a Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers unit program and a Soldier Women’s Mentorship Program. So I have leaned into/created these opportunities because I was very dissociated before due to not knowing where I belonged in the Army. But with the great experiences I’ve garnered from these programs, I wanted to share my lessons learned to be kind of your older Sister-in-Arms. 🙂
