Promoting Excellence & Ethics In Coaching

10/05/2010

By Dr Ho Law

How can coaching psychology help Alpha females become champions of leadership and corporate social responsibilities?

Alpha females play special roles in the gender hierarchy and have specific strengths and problems. Coaching intervention could help them develop and sustain their leadership positions, having broken through the ‘glass ceiling’.

Coaching Alpha females can be the most challenging and rewarding experience for coaches and coachees alike.

Complexity in the Expression of Alpha Female Personality Type. Alpha females share similar personality traits as their male counterparts, described by Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) as ENTJ (Extraversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Judgment). However, their expressions...

...tend to be more subtle. Because they are not obvious, they often go undetected.

Whilst gender differences exist due to the different social challenges that female leaders face within a typically male dominant society, Alpha females tend to maintain more balanced dynamics of personality expressions.

While they are assertive, confident, decisive, determined, dominant, efficient and intelligent (the same traits in Extraverted Thinking type as their male counter parts), they sometimes underplay these attributes and substitute them with their more gentle characters, belonging to their shadow type character (Introverted Feeling).

As Ludeman & Erlandson (2006) observe, compared with Alpha males, fewer females reach the top: the ‘glass ceiling’ for women. With equally high emotional intelligence, Alpha females are clever enough to play the corporate game. They understand that traditional gender norms imply that, being women, they are expected to play caring roles. If they appear too aggressive in their communication, their performance will be ‘judged’ less favourably than their male counterparts.

Combined with skills to strike a more appropriate balance this insight can only be mastered by a few Alpha females: in Chinese parlance, they do the ‘Yang’ job but soften the rough edge with a... continued on page two >

 

 

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