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Lean In to Bossy: Musings from a Bossy Lady

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The word “bossy” and I go back a loooooong way. All the way back to Kindergarten, actually, when it first appeared on my report card. It pretty much showed up on every report card in elementary school along with “chatty” and “lacks attention to detail”.

Today, it would say “demonstrates leadership skills” is “social” and “thinks strategically”.

Last week Cheryl Sandberg, in partnership with the Girl Scouts, unveiled her new initiative to ban the word “bossy,” arguing that when boys are dictatorial they are called leaders and when it’s girls they’re called bossy. Celebrities go on to declare that by middle-school, there are few girls in leadership roles and imply that there’s a link between calling girls bossy and their diminished involvement in school and life politics.

Uh, really? Because I have a couple of middle-schoolers, one male and one female, and that’s not what I’m seeing. Nor are most of the parents I test (inflict?) my sociological/psychological observations on during school pick up/drop off.

At my daughter’s junior high school, there’s a leadership club that does all kinds of stuff, from planning school dances to fundraising for social justice campaigns to attending conferences. It is made up primarily of girls.

When the girl-child relates stories about her classes, it seems that the girls are the ones raising their hands and speaking out and generally engaging with their work, their peers and their external environments. The boys are the ones being quiet.

She recently turned 13 and I keep hearing horror stories about girls this age, how they lose their voices and get boy crazy and start starving themselves and wearing push-up bras and generally turn into nightmares. But I’m not seeing this within her group of friends or on any of her social networks. Generally, these girls seem to be loud and proud, with strong senses of self, actively involved in their schools and extracurriculars, on the honor role and generally believing and acting like the world is their oyster. They tell each other how smart/pretty/funny/amazing they are all the time. And they are all super bossy – and sometimes they get annoyed with one another, but they always seem to find a way to negotiate a middle ground, a process that has become increasingly more fluid the older and more experienced they have become

And it’s super cool to watch, that process of learning how to listen to someone else’s voice without losing your own, of becoming confident enough to open yourself to an alternative opinion or way of doing things without taking it so damn personally. There’s so much less foot-stomping now then there was on the Kindergarten playground, back when all of them were “bossy.”

These girls are fearless and fierce– and those are just some other words for bossy.

My sons’ elementary school also has a students’ council for the Division 2 grades. Again, most of the kids putting their names forward are girls. I asked my son why he didn’t choose to run and he looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“Then I’d have to spend lunch hours sitting around and I want to play outside.”

Duh.

So I’d be curious to see actual statistics on this, because from what I see, it’s the girls taking charge and the boys quite happy to let them do it.

This boy of mine is more laid-back, less keyed-up. His teachers call him a leader as well, though because I’m used to a more in-your-face-style, I have a harder time appreciating his instinctually calm and open style. He corrals his fellow soccer players on the pitch and basketball players on the court gently, using suggestions rather than orders. He has never been called bossy. We are not much alike, and sometimes I find his easy-goingness frustrating even while I admire it. It comes easier to him, or perhaps as the middle child he’s less invested in being “right,” more practiced in compromise.

To call someone bossy is usually an insult hurled by a child who hasn’t felt heard, who feels steamrolled and needs to voice their concern that hey, I’m here too – LISTEN TO ME!

And to be called bossy can be very hurtful, mostly because in my very personal experience with the label throughout my life, there’s a grain of truth to it. Bossy people can come off as disrespectful to others and dictatorial, unintentionally crushing the spirit of more gentle souls.

And part of becoming a good leader is learning how to manage that. You need to learn how to harness all that energy and fire and position yourself in a way that makes people want to listen to you. You also need to develop enough self-awareness to understand that others have good ideas too, and maybe need a little more time and space to come forward and if you’re going to lead, then you need to be the person who makes that space available to them.

But it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and growth and experience. And yeah, sometimes it takes being called bossy enough times to give you pause for thought.

The 13 year old and her friends are getting there.

Bossy isn’t a word that is used exclusively for girls, by the way. My Grade 1 son came home livid the other day because one of his best friends called him bossy.  Which he totally is. Like despot-style bossy. Like told his teacher she wasn’t the boss of him style bossy.

I could have soothed him and assured him that he was just too smart for the other kids, and obviously his way was better and he just shouldn’t play with those other weak kids anymore and he’s such a special snowflake and so unappreciated in his 6-year-old circle and here’s a medal for being so amazing. And that would have continued to feed his tyrannical streak, and it certainly wouldn’t do him any long-term favours where getting along with his peers and making friends is concerned, let alone 30-year-old him who is friendless, partnerless and jobless and thinks the problem is everyone else’s and he has that medal his mom gave him in Grade 1 to prove it.

I could have also spoken with all my pent-up hostility at being on the receiving end of his bossiness for the last few years and gone the opposite route, encouraging him to just go along with everyone else and be quiet and silence his voice in fear that he would be disliked, and oh-my-god isn’t that every modern parent’s nightmare – that our kids won’t be “liked”?

Instead, I asked him what happened, let him vent, and said, “Well sometimes you are bossy.”

Oh, he didn’t like that at all. But I tried to explain to him that it’s always better to say please and thank you, that people are happier to do things with you and for you when you are polite, that sometimes it’s better to ask rather than tell, and that sometimes, if you’re going to be part of the group, you have to let other people have a turn at making their ideas happen too, that we’re part of a family and a community and that means being respectful, and usually people call other people bossy when they don’t feel respected and was it possible that your friend wasn’t feeling respected?

He kind of grunted and then ordered me to make him a sandwich. I made him add a “Please,” obviously, before I scurried off to the kitchen because I’m not a perfect parent, and he can be quite authoritative.

I don’t think all of it sunk in, but maybe some of it did and I suspect it won’t be the last time we have this conversation anyway. Apple/tree and all that.

I wish I could love this campaign, I really do. I mean Beyonce is in it and Jane Lynch and Condoleezza Rice and my fantasy BFF Jennifer Garner and they’re all pretty fantastic. But I don’t, because being labeled bossy over and over and over again (and stubborn and loud and aggressive and a bitch) didn’t silence me. It helped me learn how to work with other people. It helped me understand that yeah, sometimes a leader needs to be quiet too, and that not everyone’s the same. My passion could be perceived by others as pushy, and no one likes to be pushed, but you shouldn’t temper the passion, just the delivery. And you get more support with “Please.”

Oh, and also? In my experience it’s not usually the bossy kids who end up succumbing to negative peer pressure or victimized by others in power. Bossiness, when it’s funneled correctly, can be protective.

Constructive criticism and strong personalities are often confused with bullying behaviour. We do our children and ourselves no favours when we disregard difficult observations and opportunities to grow from them. Being called bossy isn’t a death-sentence for future leaders, female or not. I mean it didn’t hurt Cheryly Sandberg or Condoleeza, or Jany Lynch or Beyonce, all of whom are now advocating for its ban. It didn’t hurt me, and although I’m considerably less famous/rich/successful by conventional standards, I’d say I’m a fairly productive member of society.

Being called bossy is a wake-up call, an opportunity to learn how to work with others. Being bossy is a crude, undeveloped demonstration of strength and purpose and passion and yes, leadership. And it’s on us to “lean in” to the word, to use Sandberg’s own phrase, and help mold that trait into something that will benefit that kid and society at large, not ban it.



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