Self-Regard: the conundrum of women in leadership

Self-Regard is an emotional intelligence competency that is often touted as central to effective leadership. But how is self-regard shaped by cultural currents, social norms and the complicated lives and environments that women exist within?

Last week Jill Cory held a webinar on self-regard and women in leadership. Cory is one of the co-facilitators of Heart and Science of Leadership for Women and in this excellent webinar, she combines her anti-violence expertise to deliver a vision for how we can begin to move forward with women in leadership.

“The conundrum is how do we, as we move forward into 21^st century leadership, begin to value the things that are often associated with being a girl or women, when historically those are the very things that have not been valued.” – Jill Cory

Cory poses this challenge and then gives us some of the conceptual tools we need to avoid getting stuck around it. Self-Regard is one of fifteen dimensions measured by the EQ-i 2.0 and as an emotional intelligence competency it’s often conflated with “how we see ourself.” Cory asks us to consider the way self-regard is a social construct which does not exist in a social vacuum.

Some of the key ideas in this webinar are:

• how social norms and environement shape self-regard
• rising discourse of affirmation
• the problem with the dominant constructions of women’s self-regard
• how to disambiguate “self” and “worth” in “self-worth”
• how to move forward into leadership given historical valuations of women
• too little or too much self-regard impacts emotional intelligence
• how self-acceptance, self-improvement and resilience are shaped by culture
• gender differences in Self-Regard, as measured by the EQ-i 2.0
• how self-regard relates to other competencies, including social responsibility, interpersonal relationships, empathy and reality testing
• gender differences in leadership

Enjoy this recording and don’t forget to sign up for a reminder of our next webinar.

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