In recent weeks the British people have seen a potentially defining moment in it’s political history as two opposing parties came together to form a coalition government as they take on the challenge of stabilising the country.

There are sceptics, doubters and experts that see nothing but failure. How can two parties with such opposing views really work together?

What I am wondering is would it make any difference if the two leaders were women?

Would the tactics have been the same? Would we be looking at the possibility of a successful government in a more positive light?  Come to think of it would we have voted any differently?

Before you answer, consider the following.

A few years ago I came across quote in Business week from Bruce Nussbaum who said “We are in the midst of a cultural shift that involves leadership shifting from the voice of authority to the voice of understanding. Listening, understanding, connecting and communicating are the key skills the business culture today and the essence of true leadership”

If we are to believe that this is the case, then when it comes to skills like listening, understanding and connecting women simply have the upper hand. They rock.

In her book  The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing The World, Dr. Helen Fisher argues that “The twenty-first century economic community are going to need the natural talents of women. …Women have many exceptional faculties bred deep in history: a talent for words; a capacity to read non-verbal cues; emotional sensitivity; empathy; patience; an ability to do and think several things simultaneously;…a penchant for long term planning; a gift for networking and negotiating; and a preference for cooperating, reaching consensus, and leading via egalitarian teams”

There are countless other books and pieces of research which bring out similar ideas.

Tom Peter’s author of the best seller “In search of excellence” describes in his later work that there is a set of attributes found more commonly in women than in men.

• Women practice improvisation skills with greater ease than men
• Women are more self determined and more trust sensitive than men
• Women appreciate and depend upon their intuition more than men do
• Women, unlike men, focus naturally on empowerment not on power
• Women develop relationships with greater facility than men.
• Women are far less rank conscious than men.

Men like structure. We like boundaries and rules which define or describe ‘our place.’ Which is why I commonly find that men relate to being a leader as a position that you hold as oppose to a behaviour you exhibit. Men see leadership is a task of tangible outcomes and not the emotive animal that it is.

So would the coalition government stand a greater chance of success if the leaders were women?

Well, I guess we will never know for sure but I do believe we could say that a female leadership team maybe better equipped to lead a collaborative team than their male counter parts. They would probably connect with greater ease and comfort than their male counter parts and listen far more.

There is one factor to consider above all of this that could pour cold water on to some of these arguments. The corporate world is still very male dominated and the danger would be that in order to get ahead women in more senior roles are having to take on the traits of their male counterparts, forced to operate in manner that is the opposite of what is required in the ‘new’ economy.

So what do you see in your organisations and businesses?

Do you see difference between male and female leaders? Do you agree that those differences exists and indeed are they important in today’s world?

This week I was delivering a leadership workshop with a partner company to a group of senior managers working within a large blue chip organisation.

One of the questions we asked the group to contemplate was “What is the leadership mindset?” The question drew out some interesting responses. Some described it as a set of beliefs, values and attitudes to empower people, whilst others talked about leaders being born not made and that the “mindset” was either there or not.

For me the mindset for leadership is a simple shift in thinking and in priorities which moves you focus from ‘you’ to ‘them’ and therefore I side with Robin Sharma when he says “leaders can be trained” as I believe leaders are made not born.

The glory in leadership comes not from what you achieve but from what you help others to accomplish. It’s a selfless journey into empowering your people to better themselves and perform to their greatest ability. The priority of a leader is to remove the interference that gets in the way and instead create pathways which lead to peak performance.

More than that though, leadership is about authenticity. It’s about being real.

The problem is that in many businesses and organisations ‘leadership’ is something people think that you do. Leaders are ticking boxes or carrying out a set of functions rather than actually leading. Why? Because as much as companies may demand that people be themselves at work, but the ‘unwritten rules’ in organisations stop that from happening.

People become fearful of being the real them and instead create a ‘persona’ which fits the bill and keeps them ‘safe’. Which then perpetuates a culture where people fail to be transparent and adopt strategies to look after themselves first.

The further you journey into the world of leadership the more you have to be real. People can spot a fake a mile off. I am sure you know or have known with people that claim to be one way but in reality are very different, if not look to the world of celebrities for countless examples. To lead you must be the same person ‘off stage’ as you are ‘on stage’ to truly win the hearts and minds of the people. Your teams will notice even the slightest of inconsistencies between what you say and what you do. This video from www.50lessons.com is a great example of who a CEO stood for one thing in all that he said but his actions failed to match.

As leader you drive the culture. It is your actions that define how people around you will behave and respond.  If you demand people have a particular stand but you fail to hold up that same standard then you lose credibility and you know how incredibly difficult  it is to win it back.

So ask yourself, how real are you as a leader? If you were in the audience with your people watching you, what inconsistencies might you see? Do actions match your words?

Yesterday I was at a networking meeting where a friend shared the results of an interesting study about the impact of mental conditioning on life expectancy. Before I tell you about that, I want to give you a little background.

He began talking about his recent trip to Australia’s Steve Irwin Zoo and how he witnessed a miracle in the tiger enclosure. He saw a young trainer swimming about in the man made pool with not just one but several tigers playing with her in the water.

I am assuming you have seen and appreciate how big tigers are. You really don’t want to be messing about with them!

So amazed was he that he asked one the other trainers how this was possible. “It’s all about attitude” he was told. “You have to have positive mental attitude because these amazing cats can smell fear.” He was told that the training team approach the tigers with love each morning and play with them and at night before they sleep the same happens. He was also told that if on any day any member of the team was not feeling 100% they were not allowed to interact with the tigers.

So what has all this go to do with business?

Well, isn’t it true that at times we feel like the people out there we do business with are like tigers on the prowl? Now, if you were to approach these people whether they are sales prospects, suppliers, debtors or partners with an mental attitude which was even just a little negative, what do you think happens?

Human’s can ‘smell’ that fear too. We can see when someone is not 100% confident. We get a gut instinct that tells us that something is not right. don’t we?

So a key to our success is adopting the a positive mental attitude. We have to think and act like a champion. I say act as well because just thinking it is not enough.

What happens when you try and sell when you’re not feeling 100% in your mind? What happens when you try and have those difficult conversation and don’t believe 100% in what you are doing? How much time do you spend giving yourself “love” or do you spend all day beating yourself up?

Mohammed Ali always told himself “I am the greatest” win, lose or draw. AND he acted like the greatest. He trained like the greatest, he spoke like the greatest, he walked like the greatest, he thought like the greatest, what did he become?

The Mayo clinic in the US did study that showed that optimists are healthier, recover fester and live long then their pessimist counterparts. It was calculated that on average some one who is an optimist will out live pessimist by 16 years!

Just by adopting a more positive attitude in life can increase your life expectancy, all you have to do is think about it!