Bossy Girls Are Not Leaders

If I see one more post, flyer, or article that promotes “bossy” girls as somehow demonstrating leadership qualities, I am going to have to pipe in with some cold, hard truth.

Perhaps the “Bossy Girls” message is intending to encourage girls to speak up when they have something to say or contribute to a conversation. Perhaps the message is to encourage girls to be assertive in their position on particular topics of interest to them. Or maybe it is an off-target means to encourage girls to feel confident in setting boundaries to ensure that they and others they care about don’t get manipulated, abused, or taken advantage of.

Those ideas are all incredible leadership traits that require strength, confidence, and a solid foundational and principled position. Nothing about those leadership characteristics lead any reasonable person to conclude the female is being “bossy”.

Bossy is associated with power, dominance, and bullying. How many people do we know that are “bossy”? Is there respect there? Likely not. Individuals who are consistently demanding tend to be incredibly insecure, and perhaps narcissistic. These people have an insatiable need to exert power and control and are only concerned about that...power and control. They will forfeit good decisions in order to accomplish this as it drives them, because it is their sole motivation. This is the face of “bossy”. Is this what we are encouraging in our girls?

Truth is that young girls need to be shaped properly and they need to understand that being “bossy” is not acceptable. It is NOT a quality.

How can we do that?

1. If a girl is being “bossy” we need to help her understand what she is attempting to communicate and teach her to express herself in more effective and appropriate ways. Not continue to encourage her to demand to get her way and insist through this behavior that bossing others is the proper way to solve problems.

2. We need to help “bossy” girls learn to channel their passionate feelings into productive ways of communicating and addressing issues. That is a far cry from re-labeling “bossy” behavior and calling it leadership. If we continue to do that and somehow believe this is a quality, we are setting girls up for failure and we are inadvertently creating a power-hungry ballistic missile that will cause more damage than we can even comprehend.

What can we do with a bossy girl to help guide her behavior into leadership qualities?

1. She needs boundaries! If she doesn’t receive boundaries in her developmental years that demonstrate being bossy (aka demanding) is generally not an acceptable behavior or form of communication, she will never understand it.

2. After boundaries are set and she is not permitted to behave that way, she needs to be encouraged to express her point. Why does she feel so passionate? Why does she feel a need to get her way? Why does she feel a need to dominate the situation? Then we need to help redirect her approach. Encourage her to express her frustration or point calmly and with compromise and negotiation. Teach her to look for a win-win scenario that is likely attainable. Talk through it with her and allow her to find those solutions with your guidance. She will learn that she is resourceful and can think critically.

3. Encourage her to re-approach the situation with the solutions that she came up with and confidently influence (lead) others in understanding how this is beneficial for all. This will teach her to express herself when she feels she needs to but in a way that is motivated by reason and logic, not dominance. Approaches like this will generate respect from others, not fear or coercion which is the hallmark approach of bossiness.

4. Once she learns to problem solve in this way, it will EMPOWER her to trust her abilities and give her CONFIDENCE in her problem solving and communication with other people.

What is leadership? Bossy is nowhere in any description of that word.

Leadership is the ability to work with others to accomplish a goal and to influence others by recognizing and encouraging the best in THEM, so that the team can accomplish the desired outcome at the highest level. Leadership requires effective communication, problem solving, critical thinking, and confidence.

Bossy does not equate to leadership, and we need to STOP teaching our girls that it does.