Where is the alpha female?

Stemming from a discussion with Durreen about a recent women’s leadership meeting that she attended, I started to think more about the what role women can play to support other women.
McKinsey sponsors this Women Leadership conference where they bring together women professionals for a networking and management-training event. Now I consider myself an experienced “networker,” although I refer to it as “connector.”

I attended this McKinsey event in Stanford GSB, and one of the exercises at this event was to map out your mentors with various instructions. I had a page full of mentors, but realized that with very few exceptions, they were all men. If I were to do this exercise today, my map would look very different, with many female mentors on the list.

One of the insights from the women’s leadership meeting referenced by Durreen was that women don’t support one another. We can trace this back to our childhood recess activities where, in an overwhelming generalization, girls talk in small groups while boys play. What often happens is that on the first day of school (or work), the males take time to determine who is the alpha male, and once that is established, then everything is peaceful.

In the meantime, women do not determine who is the alpha female, they sit in small groups to discuss this, they examine the contenders, they pick their sides, there will be tremendous infighting, and they may end up with no leader to emerge from all of this activity. Meanwhile, the men are off to the races.

What needs to change is not necessarily the evolution of an alpha female commando, but what if we were to support each other more, and how might that happen, what are the constraints, and what might that look like….