KEY SUMMARY
Consultation and consensus are different choices. A leader can listen seriously and still decide alone. Women are often evaluated on both the decision and the emotional experience surrounding it, which makes the distinction worth naming out loud.
THE BRIEF
- 01
Consultation and consensus are different leadership choices.
- 02
Women are often judged on both the decision and the emotional experience surrounding it.
- 03
Clear authority can coexist with serious listening.
Leadership is interpreted before it is evaluated. The same decision can register as decisive, abrupt, cautious, or collaborative depending on who delivers it and what the room has learned to expect from her.
Consultation and agreement are distinct
Organizations tend to measure the visible decision while overlooking the relational preparation that made the decision possible. Women leaders are often asked to produce both: a clear outcome and the conditions in which others can accept it.
Authority is exercised and interpreted through the expectations already present in the room.
- Name the decision that only the leader can make.
- Separate productive resistance from resistance to the person delivering the message.
- Notice which relationship work is essential and which work has become an invisible tax.
SOURCES / FURTHER READING
- 01
PLG analysis. Observations on authority, consultation, and gendered expectations.
