Most senior leaders have a theory about what makes a great executive team: complementary skills, shared values, healthy debate. The usual answers. What’s actually missing is co-leadership — the deliberate integration of the different cognitive styles men and women bring to leadership. Not a mandate. Not a talking point. A performance strategy. The organizations that build it consistently outperform the ones that don’t.
Most leadership conversations about men and women get the question wrong. They start with stereotypes and end with policies. The neuroscience starts somewhere different — with data on how men and women actually perform, where the real gaps are, and what’s driving them. Eleven years of research with more than 1,500 executives tells a clear story. The organizations that act on it consistently outperform those that don’t.
Most senior executives can describe how they lead. Very few can describe how they lead when things go wrong — and that gap is where decisions get distorted, teams stop pushing back, and leadership effectiveness quietly erodes. The style that carried you to the C-suite has a shadow side, and at the top, that shadow side is almost always what limits what you build next.
The traits that got you to the C-suite aren’t always the ones that keep you effective there — and in my experience, the gap shows up in three specific places most senior leaders would rather not examine. I’ll show you exactly where to look.
Your brain reacts 165 milliseconds before your conscious mind catches up. For senior executives, that gap is where leadership is won or lost. In this installment of Cultivating Leaders, I explore how attention, mindfulness, and the science of reframing give leaders access to their best judgment precisely when pressure is highest.
Peter J. Dean: 610-246-6422
Molly D. Shepard: 610-955-5452
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