Exploring the influence of contextual elements on women leaders paradox mindset

Abstract

Women still face challenges in attaining leadership positions. One of these challenges is due to an incongruence between how society perceives the leader identity and the gender identity. This incongruency can cause women to experience internal conflicts in the form of agentic and communal tensions, a paradox. Contextual individual and organisational elements, have been found to influence how women experience agentic-communal tensions. This qualitative study therefore sought to understand how these contextual elements, could help facilitate the application of a paradox mindset which literature has suggested as an option to managing tensions. Findings reveal that authenticity and awareness are key anchors that enable women to adopt a paradox mindset. This was achieved by one of two strategies: either adapting to the environment, or curating a sub environment. The study reveals that, if done authentically, through own agency, a woman could influence interactions that could make it easier to manage tensions within her environment, and in so doing embrace a paradox mindset. This study has implications for women leaders and the coping strategies to apply when faced with these tensions as well as for management and the development they offer female employees