The Power of the X Chromosome in the Workplace (Conclusion): On Humility

In honor of BlogHer--which is taking place this weekend!--I'd like to end this series with another inherent aspect of women’s leadership that I found to be quite effective while planning the conference, but applies to any major business or community endeavor—humility.

I can personally attest that not all women are humble. I’m pretty clear that I’m quite alpha when I want to be. But you don’t gather the trust of a community, nor of a gaggle of top bloggers and top sponsors who have heard every pitch in the book, without some humility--or shall we say, authenticity. And in my humble opinion, women do a much better job of falling on their sword. Men, think about it: how many times have you given in to your wives or women friends after they’ve said, “You’re right, Sweetie; I’ll defer to you.”

People can smell someone who's a bit too high falutin like they can smell bad sushi—they know something is off. They don’t trust it. If the BlogHer team had put up a BlogHer shingle and said. “We’re top flight people, creating the ultimate conference. Be there or be square," we never would have paid off the founders' credit cards. For one thing, how could we possibly know what every single person in the women’s blogging community wants? What every sponsor wants? Once we launched our site and began to actively promote BlogHer, we had to be willing to say on occasion, “I don’t know the answer to that. Let me get back to you,” or “We hadn’t thought about that, let’s post it to the Website and see how the community responds,” and then DO as we SAY. We had to be comfortable with being unsure and accommodating.

Let me jump back to trust: I couldn’t just trust my co-founders to make the conference happen, I needed to trust my community, the attendees of this conference. Whenever we had an issue to solve regarding content or user experience we threw it to the Community for comment. Sure, sometimes it got messy, but we took in every opinion and, I believe, came up with a conference offering the most value to the community because it was constructed by it.

One aspect in particular is the conference Room of Your Own (ROYO) sessions. These were built by, and will be run by, attendees who wanted to break out specific blogging niches. I never would have thought of adding Feminist Hip Hop Bloggers to the schedule, but once we opened the agenda to the community we saw there were deficiencies. Once we were made aware of them, we found significant contingencies of women who were ready and willing to advocate on BlogHer's behalf.

Once you trust your community, you can leverage it.

After embracing and trusting the community, all of the roadblocks I had envisioned were blown away. How do we get women to the conference who can’t afford it? We ask the community to sponsor them. We put up a donation link on our site, and to date, registrations for 40 women are covered by foundation sponsors, companies and individuals who offered to put their money into our cause. What about women who need help with travel, lodging, and childcare? We set up links for roomsharing, ridesharing, and babysitter sharing. Women sent us notes asking for nothing, just a chance to help out. I learned something extraordinary: When given the chance, a community will take care of itself.

The skills that we have used here have been, yes, detail work—lots of planning. But in larger part we networked, corralled, spread the word, and removed our desire to control the outcome. We simply steered the conference where it seemed to be going, then helped it culminate into action.

This model has provided a huge amount of freedom for me to move. Having full and open discourse and complete trust in the people I work with, a number of my personality glitches—some of my less attractive aspects—fall to the wayside. For instance, I take things far less personally. Co-founder Elisa Camahort wins the award for being the most “to the point” of the group. Just recently I sent out a missive to her and to Lisa Stone, and it was met with an almost immediate response:

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

Now, something like this used to rock me to the core. It was an insinuation that I didn’t know what I was doing and had to be countered immediately with a full report detailing why I actually DID know what I was talking about, including my degrees, my letters of recommendation, a written refute from my mother, eighth grade report card, etc. I believe many women are prone to a similar interpretation. And it’s a shame. Think of all the time we waste!

When Elisa’s to-the-point note arrived, I thought about it for a moment, thought through the actual issue at hand, and wrote back, “How about this?...” and included a better option.

While I take pains to prepare in order to not waste anyone’s time, I don’t waste energy trying to build up a file that might as well be named, “Why I Am Not Stupid.” It’s assumed that I am intelligent, even when I’m not correct.

To be fair, and in the spirit of everything I write here, I have to admit, Elisa Camahort does not agree with my assertion that BlogHer runs on a feminine-based leadership model. After reading the first installment of this series, she made the clarification,

             “In my opinion the positive experience that we have had working together, and with our board, our volunteers, our sponsors and our speakers on BlogHer is not because we're women. It's because we defined the BlogHer mission first...and from that we defined our objectives and goals. Every time we needed to make a decision we had that framework as our guideline. As long as we're committed to sticking to our mission, that is what made the process relatively easy...not our femininity.

              "I've worked very few places, large or small, where the top-down mission and therefore goals and objectives were clearly laid out for employees. I don't believe this is because the executives were men or women, but because most companies/organizations simply aren't good at this.

               "Was the BlogHer mission itself (and therefore our objectives and goals) shaped by our female-ness? That's another post altogether :)”

To that point, I include this from Evelyn Rodriguez:

“The blogosphere represents the first medium to integrate both the masculine and feminine: a truly androgynous mindset. And integration isn’t a combinatory function but a fusion. More a soup than a salad.”

Perhaps, it is more like Elisa says—good leadership is not enforcing male or female qualities so much as it is about blending them both into androgynous good management, more soup than salad. Perhaps, in the spirit of BlogHer, that is a question that I leave best answered by all of you.

Comments

[Dustin]

Good luck on the conference. Sounds like you guys... err, gals are prepped.

[Marilyn]

Looking forward to reading your take on the conference. Sorry I won't be able to attend this one, but I commend you on all of your hard work in putting it together. As you said (and it's an old 12-step staple)...when one lets go of the outcome, surprising and amazing things can sometimes happen...

[nina]

I'm on my way to the airport soon and I'm so excited (didn't sleep much last night). Can't wait to meet you. Thanks for all your hard work on this.

[Susannah Gardner]

jory, i've been reading your blog since i registered for blogher -- it's great. it is terrific to meet you in person today!
susannah.

[Donna]

Jory, you and Lisa and Elisa are miracle workers as far as I'm concerned. BlogHer was an amazing event - even better than I'd anticipated. Thank you so much for all your hard work in making this happen.

[Jen]

I wish I coulda wriggled my nose and appeared at BlogHer from Australia. I've done some reading and will probably do some more about what transpired at the conference.
Well done everyone.

[http://3scorecomparison.com]

Instead of slashing our pay or merely patting us on the back for this competency, we'd prefer to get the proper credit.