Episode 154: Straight Talk + Empathy: Women, Men, and Leadership in Crisis
/“Some of the emerging women leaders are offering a new tone and some really inspiring leadership, and I think that’s just a wonderful thing to keep in mind as we all go to our voting booths in the next few years.”
Photo credit: Evgeni Tcherkasski
“If you look at Merkel’s style, it’s very tough, short, concise, fact-based communication, very different not just from Trump but Andrew Cuomo, who spends an hour a day talking to us about his mum and recipes for pasta.”
avivah wittenberg-cox
You’ve probably seen some of the stories: women leaders around the world are “stepping up to show the world how to manage a messy patch for our human family.” I’m quoting one of this week’s guests, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, from her Forbes piece on women leaders’ success during the pandemic. She and other writers on this topic make the same point: when you look at countries with the best coronavirus outcomes so far, they often have one thing in common - a woman at the top.
tomas chamorro-premuzic
In this week’s show I meet up - online, of course - with Avivah and another former guest, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, author of Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
We discuss the leadership styles we’re seeing during this global crisis, why Andrew Cuomo can chat about recipes on TV where Jacinda Ardern probably couldn’t, and whether today’s successful female leaders will change anything for women in the future.
You can also read a transcript of the show.
Further reading: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic’s piece, also in Forbes, on whether female leaders might be better at managing the pandemic.
I also reference this Washington Post article by Zoe Marks during the episode.
The Pandemic Has Revealed the Weakness of Strongmen by Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.