I had two memorable conversations this week: One was with a female employee and the other with a female stakeholder. Why they stuck with me was because I saw so many behaviors and attitudes in them that reminded me of myself in the past.

With the first girl I had my first ever 1on1 in my new role and she talked me through the area she is leading: Transformation. Throughout the whole conversation I sensed a strong drive in her, but an unnecessary need to defend and convince me of the necessity for her culture and people work at our corporate. When I asked her though, whether she would help me transform our own company with HR together, she appeared reluctant.

It seemed that doing HR work was beneath her, despite that culture/people are two huge chunks of HR and that doing HR work would undermine her somehow as a woman (HR being "stereotypically female"). More interestingly, she also seemed to have the attitude of "my way or no way", and it was prominent in how she wanted to have her Transformation lens on the company's strategy going forward. I wondered if she was ready to let go of her need to optimize for her own area only and help me with building our company as a whole...

The second conversation was with a woman from our corporate side and who had also applied for the MD role. She introduced herself as a "strong, fearless, young woman of only 29" and sought for similarity by pointing out that she was sure how it must have also been difficult for me to be surrounded by old white men in my career. I felt that she was projecting and overdoing the "strong woman" card. She became very vulgar, using words such as "fuck those old guys" or "these white dudes always compare their penises in the board room" and I was honestly quite shocked of how unprofessional she was.

She also told me that the MD role had been promised to her, and I sensed that she wanted to feel me out in this conversation—the person that snatched away something she believed she rightly deserved. In general, she seemed rather overconfident, thinking that she not only can have it all, but that it is somehow her right to have it all, and that in a male dominated world, this isn't granted to her because she is a young woman...

I don't think I ever reduced myself to my gender when it came to my own personal career, but in the past I did have similar tendencies towards wanting my way, or believing that I should be promoted because I deserved it.

I look at it from another angle now, and realize that humility and being likeable (and living in ruthless China) were the ingredients that truly helped me transition and advance in my career, not my stubborness, selfishness or overconfidence. 

Two thoughts I had during the conversations, which I didn't get to voice, because there was no openness for advice, which I want to share with you though:

Strong leadership doesn't come from trying to fit in (ie "I try to be guyish"), but to be ourselves, to know our strengths and weaknesses and to build alliances with people that compliments our weaknesses.

The further we advance, the more important it is to be likeable—people want to like working with us and they want to like helping us, we don't achieve likability through arrogance or selfishness.