Demanding AND Supportive

 
Reading an article this morning, it had an extract from Ravi Gupta's blog, so here's a blog about a blog.
 
Well, not the whole blog but the key point of it – which is summarised beautifully here:

​"Most people think of demanding and supportive as opposite ends of a spectrum. You can either be tough or you can be nice. But the best leaders don’t choose. They are both highly demanding and highly supportive. They push you to new heights and they also have your back."
 
As a leader, we’ve all seen the stats and heard the rhetoric that there’s a gender bais where women have to been seen as ‘warm’ and ‘credible’ to be perceived as capable, but for men it’s all about the ‘credibility’.  They can be aggressive and pushy and that’s seen as okay by all genders.
 
So how do women lean into being both demanding and supportive? No easy answer here, style and timing will play a role of course, but it’s more so about choosing to be. You can choose to be liked, popular, ‘warm’, and be a leader who endlessly gives to others, or you can lean into the moment, adjust your style to suit the context and that means at times the way you give to others will be hard, gritty and results focused – basically, whatever is effective in helping them lift performance in the best way.
 
That means your style will flex – for the times when there’s a helluva road ahead and everyone needs to step up, or you’re aligned in achieving something great, that’s often the time for a different leadership style than when it’s plain sailing and you’re achieving, and it seems Ravi (and he credits Adam Grant for this concept) has nailed it with being both demanding and supportive.
 
Ravi’s blog talks about his experiences building InstaCart where they were burning a stupid amount of money each month and needed to really turn things around. He then sums this concept up further as:

What I’ve come to realize over time is that, far from being contradictory, being demanding and supportive are inextricably linked. It’s the way you are when you believe in someone more than they believe in themselves.

Read the full article: https://rkg.blog/demanding.php