PIC No. 23:
• Title: When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them
• Author: Julia Boorstin
• Publisher: Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster (Oct. 11, 2022, 432 pages)
• Management Bucket #8 of 20: The Culture Bucket
Welcome to Issue No. 23 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
There's No Single Best Way to Lead
Julia Boorstin says "We should throw all our preconceived notions about leadership out the window. There's no single best way to lead, and the stereotypical characteristics we've historically celebrated in leadership—being authoritative, fearless, and confident—are not necessarily what works—especially in uncertain times like these."
Oh, my! Read the 20-page introduction—and you’re hooked. Whether you’re female or male, you’ll immediately engage with Julia Boorstin’s crisp analysis of today’s workplace. (It’s not pretty, but there’s hope.) Leveraging her ample street cred as a business reporter (CNBC’s Senior Media & Tech correspondent, Fortune, and more), Boorstin’s book is serious and meaty.
When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them doesn’t hold back:
• Boorstin appreciates the way “female leaders have been able to turn genuine grievance into entrepreneurial grit.”
• Rent the Runway (#5 on the CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list in 2019) is led by founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman, yet “female founders consistently draw less than 3 percent of all venture capital dollars.” Boorstin adds, “The condescension and gender bias she’d faced from venture capital investors had made her persistent and creative and taught her to do more with less.”
• On the lack of female representation in leadership across business: “women comprised 8.8% of CEOs of the Fortune 500 as of May 2022, and represented just 24 percent of all roles in the C-suite, companies’ most senior group of managers, as of 2021.”
Blending bad news with a futuristic confidence, the author’s tone is what you would expect from an insightful reporter. She focuses on women in the startup world and how women increasingly are addressing barriers for their companies “that could have a massive effect on the world.” (It’s not always about the money.)
I appreciated this: “But I didn’t want this book to be a polemic against inequitable systems. Instead, I wanted to understand how some women had been able to become exceptions. I wanted to know how they had done it—and what we can all learn from them.”
Boorstin details the range of qualities in women that might surprise you. She writes, “I’ve found that women’s strengths have often been overlooked or simply not associated with great leadership.” And this: “They have a tendency to be more considerate of data in their risk assessment.” Empathy and vulnerability are also key and “a willingness to ignore expectations and to do things their own way.”
The author’s research (no surprise) is stunning. “As I made my way through dozens of academic studies, I found myself stuck on a particular pile of reports that detailed all the different ways women in business were judged more harshly.” Her conclusions and aha moments are memorable, including the PR executive who hassled her after interviewing Ann Sarnoff, CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group.
The PR flack’s feedback: “I thought you were kind of mean in that interview with Ann…I mean, your tone just felt really harsh.” (Her response and his reaction—must-read!)
The author interviewed 120 women for this book—and the insights are fascinating. Women can learn a lot from other women. Men can learn a lot from women. Peter Drucker (see his five questions) would be blessed to learn that the CEO of Beautycounter went on a listening tour “talking to more than a thousand of her consultants and customers.” (One thousand!) During COVID, the company grew from 50,000 to 65,000 consultants!
After reading the meaty introduction, I skipped to Chapter 8, “Defying CEO Archetypes,” and couldn’t stop reading. It includes a fabulous account of a nine-year-old immigrant from Columbia who excelled at math, but not English. Yet…we can learn from her story:
• How she leveraged her shyness (she’s an introvert) to be a competent communicator.
• How she approached problems. “There’s fifty reasons why it’s a dumb idea, and you just battle them one at a time.”
• What finally convinced her to accept a CEO role—and her contrarian approach to sharing intellectual property. Stunning!
Boorstin’s commentary on five “Learning Lessons” in the Epilogue are must-read. And you’ll find more than 50 pages of notes in the back—pointing you to fascinating research such as this Harvard Business Review article, “Research: Women Score Higher Than Men in Most Leadership Skills.” Yet…as the author follows Gwyneth Paltrow’s journey to CEO of Goop, Boorstin shares this vulnerable response from Paltrow after a “condescending head pat” from a world-famous, successful entrepreneur.
Paltrow: “The girl in me was like, ‘Yay! I’m being validated!’” She added, “And the woman in me, or the burgeoning CEO, she was like, ‘This is incredibly disrespectful. This is a really patronizing comment.’”
Deep research. Deep insights. Rich vocabulary. And don’t skip the social media response to David Bowie’s persona versus Gwyneth Paltrow’s leadership style. (Hint: not fair!)
Six months from now, I may need to write a second review to go deeper on this important book.
PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Culture Bucket, plus other buckets/core competencies.
[ ] One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential, by Shanna A. Hocking (Read my review.)
[ ] Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty & Launch a Brilliant Career, by Christie Hunter Arscott (Read my review.)
[ ] Jump: Dare to Do What Scares You in Business and Life, by Kim Perell (Read my review.)
To order from Amazon, click on the title for When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them, by Julia Boorstin. Listen on Libro.fm (12 hours, 46 minutes). For more book reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting. (And thanks to Fortier PR and the publisher for sending me a review copy.)
© 2022 John Pearson Associates. All rights reserved.
Pails in Comparison is posted every once in a while. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. By subscribing to Your Weekly Staff Meeting, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Typepad.com’s privacy policy here.