A Celebration of Female Leadership

by Sara Mahmood

Last Friday, Ryerson University held its first ever TEDxRyersonUWomen. This event also happened to be the first TEDxWomen talk to take place in Toronto. The theme was “taking a leap: embrace the leader in you”, focusing on how everyone can be a leader.

The TEDx talk was given by Daphne Bennett, who has over 20 years’ experience working as a coach, facilitator, and consultant in diverse sectors in Canada and worldwide. It really stood out to me when she said, “the world needs women”. Men see the world through a totally different lens than women –and that’s ok, but it shouldn’t be exclusive of the other lens. She says last year a team called Customer Interpreter Research looked into what skills determine the best leader for our current time. It found we need people who nurture, unite, and tend to relationships. These are skills and behaviours that are seen as feminine and soft and have kept women out of top positions and now they’re the most important skills needed in our leaders.

Bennett points out that a big barrier standing in the way of women rising to the top and succeeding is that a lot of women think someone else will fix the problem. The gender gap isn’t going away by itself and those who aren’t bothered by it aren’t going to fix it. A resonating theme throughout the event was the fact that we all have to take action and take risks: we all need to have bigger expectations of ourselves.

Bennett also mentioned how in organizations, we’re taught not to care about our colleagues. People are asked to leave their hearts at the door and we’re losing the love and empathy for each other.  A lot of women are afraid of appearing like the mean girl if they speak up for themselves and at the same time, they’re afraid of appearing too soft. Bennett says we don’t need to have a persona for work and one for home; be who you are. We need to learn to lead as women because that’s what’s lacking right now.

After Bennett’s talk, a panel discussion was held.  Bennett’s earlier sentiments were echoed: women shouldn’t be afraid of being themselves because who they are can be great leaders. Annette Verschuren, panelist and former president of the Home Depot, put it best when she said “if you want a great team, you make sure everyone is participating”. A great organization needs a mix of both the female and male perspective to really thrive. Unfortunately, it seems many corporations haven’t figured that out yet.

I think the most important idea mentioned in the talk was that we all need to take risks. Nam Kiwanuka, panelist and journalist, said “If you ever feel really afraid of something then that’s what you should do”. She said anytime she’s done something she was scared to do, it led to great results. Being a leader doesn’t mean you have CEO under your name on a business card or that you’re the person in charge: being a leader is being yourself, speaking up, and taking action.