Men Too, Can Be Good Women: A Conversation with Dr. Helene Gayle
By Michael Mensah
When first reading the resume of Dr. Helene Gayle, MD, MPH, feelings of admiration and intimidation might follow your initial astonishment. She’s been President and CEO of CARE, one of Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women, one of Newsweek’s Top 10 Women in Leadership, and has received thirteen honorary degrees. After meeting Dr. Gayle however, a sense of surprise and reflection may follow. Why the conflicting reactions?
This cognitive dissonance may be a byproduct of the paradigm shift away from exclusive and hierarchical ideas of leadership. Speaking as one catalyst of this shift, Dr. Gayle gave her perspective on leadership during the final Voices in Leadership Series interview of the school year, led by Professor Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
To start, Dr. Gayle spoke at length about her 10 years as President and CEO at CARE, one of the world’s largest anti-poverty NGOs, and how her team brought people together with the “centrality of making a difference in people’s lives”. While at Care, she led the organization’s reorientation “to attack the underlying forces of poverty”, and described the influence of the position of women within society on her epidemiological worldview. As Dr. Gayle said during the interview,
“Women and girls are the most impacted by poverty around the world…if you can make a difference in the life of a girl or woman, then you can have catalytic change that goes beyond that girl or woman.”
It was this evidenced-based insight that led to CARE’s holistic approach to empowering women and girls against poverty. [1]
When asked about her leadership style, Dr. Gayle spoke about how the way women lead “is much more suitable for today’s world.” Leadership today requires a bifocal vision: one concerned with each team member’s “emotional mindsets [and] overall needs.” She describes her approach to leadership as “more horizontal than vertical.”
At face value, this idea may seem like a broad generalization; however, Dr. Gayle’s comments are evidence-based. First, emotional intelligence may be more common in women than in men.[2] More specifically, research by world-renowned psychologist Daniel Goleman suggests that a leader’s emotional intelligence and mood greatly impact their team’s performance, among other things, and thus separates great leaders from merely good ones.[3] Thus, if aspiring leaders utilize horizontal leadership and engage their emotional intelligence, then team performance will improve.[4] Keeping true to her ever-inclusive leadership style, Dr. Gayle lightheartedly made clear that,
“Men, too, can be good women!”
Now tackling new challenges at the McKinsey Social Initiative, Dr. Gayle believes that we continue to think about large global problems “in silos”, thus ignoring their interconnectedness. Discovering convergent interests among normally disparate parties inspired a McKinsey-Danone collaboration employing local women to sell healthier and environmentally safer products door to door in their communities. This model not only provided a needed service to the community and a livelihood for local women, but also opened a new market for the company. According to Dr. Gayle, “renewable capital as an engine of social good” can improve businesses and their surroundings.
Dr. Gayle’s commitment to commonality reminds us all that we are all human, and thus all intrinsically valuable. Tearing down the tower of exclusive, vertical leadership, she instead assembles an inclusive, horizontal model of leadership. One day, hopefully soon, her accomplishments and demeanor will no longer provoke any cognitive dissonance, but rather continue to provide growing inspiration for emulation.
[1] CARE, Inc. “Strong Women, Strong Communities: CARE’s holistic approach to empowering women and girls in the fight against poverty ” 2010.
[2] Mandell, Barbara and Pherwani, Shilpa. “Relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership style: A gender comparison.” Journal of Business and Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 3, Spring 2003.
[3] Goleman, Daniel. “What Makes a Leader?” HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence. Boston, MA: Harvard Business, 2015. Print. 1–23.
[4] Goleman, Daniel, Boyatzis, Richard and Mckee, Annie. “Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance.” HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence. Boston, MA: Harvard Business, 2015. Print. 23–43.
For more from the Voices in Leadership (@VoicesHSPH) series at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (@HarvardHSPH), visitwww.hsph.harvard.edu/voices.
Story edited by Emilia Ling. For more on Emilia, check out her twitter page @emjling
