Growing Up

For those of you who are regular readers, you’ll know I’ve been exploring the concept of the ‘Good Girl/Boy Syndrome’ over the last few years. It’s key to my work in developing leaders: a good boy/girl can be an effective manager, following orders to ensure others complete a task but they cannot be leaders inspiring great followership based on trust and loyalty. The two key attributes people tell me they want from their boss is that they are fair…i.e. no favouritism… and that they have their back: their boss can be mad at them in private, but they want their boss to have the courage and integrity to stand up for them. Too many bad bosses focus on people-pleasing and managing upwards for their own personal gain and, in doing so, they lose the respect and trust of their people as well as their good reputation.

Much of my work with my clients is this transition from the good boy/girl into an authentic, empowered adult where they make wise decisions for themselves and for their people, i.e. it’s about growing up.

In an interview with Martin, a former client, I asked: ‘A Leader cannot be a Good Boy/Girl: as a senior leader, can you say more about this?

‘I wholeheartedly agree! I found that as I progressed through management into more leadership roles, emotional intelligence (EQ) became a lot more important to build trust and support colleagues and clients. For now, at least, people run businesses and make trading, recruitment and investment decisions, so a strong understanding of both the intellectual and emotional decision-making factors is extremely important.

I’ve also learnt the hard way that you don’t succeed as a leader by just doing more, and that continuing to try to please others - or ‘fit in’ - is also career limiting for a leader. Whilst it can be tempting to work hard by doing more emails, presentations and meetings, it’s much more valuable as a leader to engage with insight, assess with perspective and act with authority. In short: to spend less time doing and more time being As I’ve grown as a leader, I’ve defined my own path and become increasingly confident in how I show up, engage with other leaders, and make decisions. I value my own measures of success much more than the ones others have defined.’ Success: a life rich in kindness, beauty and truth

My first conscious awareness of the expectations of being a ‘good girl’ was when I was 9 years old. I was the middle child of 3 and the only girl. My brothers and I were staying at my grandparents’ house. It was daytime but raining outside and we were told to sit quietly and read in the living room. I’ve always loved reading and would escape to my room and get lost in a book for hours if given the chance, so this was my idea of bliss! I happily opened my book and prepared to dive in, but to my bewilderment I couldn’t. I was constantly interrupted by my grandparents’ chatting to me. Out of context this depicts a homely scene with grandparents affectionately wanting to touch base with their only granddaughter. The reality is they weren’t asking about me…they certainly didn’t want me to respond...they simply wanted me to listen and nod. It’s no coincidence that I became a psychotherapist! Many years later, when I began to teach leadership and was also finding my own, authentic voice, another family member, my father, complained to me: ‘You’ve always been such a great listener. Why do you have to talk?!’

I wouldn’t have noted the incident at such a young age, if my experience wasn’t in such stark contrast to that of my brothers. No-one disturbed them, not for a moment. It was as if they had an invisible sacred shield around them that only they could release and it was permitted, even encouraged by the adults. If I tried to create the same boundary, I was being rude and selfish. I was too young to be aware of gender politics, but I knew this incident was showing me something. I subsequently kept testing this divide in different contexts with the same results: men were encouraged to take the space/time/whatever they needed, and women were there to enable it.

So, as a very young girl, I learned my role was to anticipate and give to others what they needed, even before they consciously knew it themselves. At its best this is called ‘Advanced Empathy’ and it is core to intuitive intelligence: Steve Jobs made billions of dollars on the back of this.

It is also the essence of kindness and compassion. I am deeply thankful I have this attribute of advanced empathy, but I’ve learned there is a shadow side to it. When it comes from a ‘good girl’ dutiful place, my kindness is not clean: it is conditional and controlling. Ironically this shadow aspect of overly giving to and caring for others is that it not only infantilises them, but it is a canny deflection/distraction from looking after our own emotional, physical and psychological needs, i.e. the ‘Do-gooder syndrome’. I know when I go into overdrive in my concern for others…my stress default is always to rescue those who don’t want to be rescued!... there’s something in myself I’m not attending to.

It was my psychotherapeutic training many years ago that was the beginning of challenging the good girl in me. I entered it wanting to heal/save the world, and, like many healers, I had learned to ignore my own needs and well-being, seeing any focus on me as selfish and irrelevant. To my astonishment, I was told my own healing and self-care were an ethical requirement enabling me to be ‘cleanly’ present for my clients and that I would be of no help to others until I began to heal myself and integrate self-care into my daily, lifelong practice. I now teach this to leaders: key to great leadership is making the right decisions and we cannot do this if we are overstressed, exhausted or miserable.

I have spent a lifetime… including a lot of deep personal work… trying to let go of the good girl in me, both my own internal injunctions and also those expectations put on me by others. Within 3 weeks, I shall be a grandmother…I know! Surely at my age, I can finally be free of this insidious syndrome? (In another article, I discuss how interlocked the ‘Critical Parent’ is to our ‘Good boy/Girl’ and how harmful this to our inner confidence and self-esteem: https://www.cascad.co.uk/post/overcome-self-doubt-and-speak-your-truth)

And yes, I have grown, and I am not the same person I used to be, but I’ve discovered that each stage of life brings fresh challenges and expectations, both in myself and also from others. I am now experiencing even more complex injunctions and expectations as an older woman: those good girl roots run very deep.

As part of my digging down this particular rabbit hole, a close friend, Loren, shared the following with me:

‘I first became aware of a particular phenomenon about a year ago, during a FaceTime call with my sister. I was challenging her on something and, as soon as I started speaking, I noticed something strange—she pressed her lips tightly inwards - what I would describe as 'clamping shut'. At first, I thought it was a fleeting expression, but it kept happening throughout the call. It unsettled me.

Because my work involves communication, I’m trained to pay attention to body language, and this subtle gesture stood out. I didn’t mention it then, but I began noticing it in all our one-to-one interactions—and not just with her. I saw it in group settings too. Then I started seeing it everywhere: mostly in women, and particularly older women. On public transport, walking down the street, on discussion panels on TV—tight, sealed lips while listening, or waiting to speak.

I began to wonder if this was a gendered behaviour. Over the past year, I’ve only noticed one man doing it. And then I caught myself doing it too. Is it just a nervous tic? Something contagious, like yawning? Perhaps. I now consciously stop myself when I catch it happening. But the unease I felt that first time hasn’t gone away. It’s made me wonder if something deeper is going on.

The mouth is always expressive: it can show love, anger, amusement, desire, defiance. So, what does it mean when we clamp it shut? Are we holding something in? Or unconsciously signalling that we’ve accepted being silenced and invisible as older women?’

This is fascinating: both this troubling mannerism and also Loren’s questions. Why do so many older women clamp their mouths shut? What might they say if they truly expressed themselves? And why do they feel it’s not safe to do so?

I think it’s partly because we’ve no coordinates for how to be an older woman at this point in our history. We know the stereo-typical versions: a frail, nurturing, sexless, omni-patient, invisible ‘granny’; or the bitter, wicked, vengeful crone. But these aren’t fitting the women who have grown up differently to our mothers and grandmothers. Women in increasing numbers who have learned to voice and share power with men in the workplace. Yes, there were matriarchs, but these women only held power in the home and family, often granted by men. What is changing is women in positions of societal and political influence.

In my work with women and leadership, I describe women’s psychological evolution as moving from a ‘Princess’ energy, i.e. the good girl, to a ‘Queen’ energy and then, as she really steps into her power, an ‘Empress’ energy. This is a very powerful narrative, and no wonder people are scared: those men who attack and those women who clamp their mouths tightly shut. There are many unconscious psychological processes at play with women in general: add her accumulated wisdom, expertise and confidence to the mix as she gets older and who knows what she could say or do!

This is not the time to be invisible and little. The world, our chlidren and our grandchildren, need women to step up and share our voice, experience and wisdom.

 Hannah Elizabeth Greenwood