# Masculine vs. Feminine Leadership Traits

- **Episode:** [229](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/229.md) (2025-09-04)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** masculine, feminine, leadership-traits
- **Time:** 6:24–9:39 (start 384s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/229?t=384](https://truthliesandwork.com/229?t=384)

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[6:24] Meghan French Dunbar: I think we've bifurcated some concept of masculine and feminine characteristics or skills or traits, and in reality they're just human traits. And we've had societal conditioning that makes women feel like we're supposed to and allowed to be vulnerable and listening and communicative and compassionate and all of these things. And that men are, you know, they're all the business skills, that their leadership qualities, that they're supposed to be decisive and confident and—
[6:53] Al Elliott: Yeah
[6:54] Meghan French Dunbar: competitive and aggressive and all of these things. And we do a disservice to every single human, regardless of gender identity, when we say, you men can't access these particular traits, these are feminine traits. All of that to get to vulnerability and talking about things that are personal is something that anyone can do regardless of gender identity. I mean, my brother and sister-in-law had a very sincere fertility journey as well, and I immediately think of my brother in that situation. If Vanessa had mentioned the challenges they were going through, you know, men often feel like they have to be a little bit more closed off in general as I've worked with them. But my brother could have 100% related to her or asked her questions about it. I mean, that's the thing
[7:48] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[7:49] Meghan French Dunbar: There's either opening up and being vulnerable and relating to people if there's something there that you understand and can develop that connection via empathy because you know you've been there, you've done it, or it's just active listening, like asking human beings to go a little bit further or share anything more that they wanna share about what it is that they have brought up. Instead of immediately changing the topic because it feels uncomfortable, active listening is the go-to. And it's, of every leader that I've interviewed, the number one skill across the board that people say has made them the most effective at leadership, regardless of industry, type of business, is genuinely listening and actively listening and asking people to tell more about whatever it is that they want to talk about. I learned this at a leadership program that I went through, and there, There's kind of 2 main principles with active listening. One is if you are active listening, literally don't do the thing that I first mentioned about empathizing and bringing it, relating to them with something that you've experienced. Active listening, when you, most of us, we autobiographically listen. You say something, I went to Greece this summer. Oh, I went to Greece 2 summers ago. And that like, we feel like we're building connection by finding some sort of mutual shared understanding of something. So But when you take the— when you say that, then you're bringing the attention to your story. Active listening is, the main principle is, how do I keep the— how do I keep listening to the person who is speaking? So you don't say the autobiographical thing that you want, your brain naturally comes up with. Keep the attention on them and then avoid yes/no questions. And like all of the follow-on questions are—