Leading Our Way

4AUTHENTICITY: Diane von Furstenberg

by Jesse Frohman

YOU KNOW WHEN SOMEONE enters your life exactly at the right time? Diane von Furstenberg was that person for me.

I was going through a rough couple of days at work. Those type of days where everything seems to be going in the wrong direction. I felt as if I lacked energy, motivation, hope that we were going to manage to transform our organisational vision into reality, into real change on the ground—not because of anything to do with the actual work, or my team, but because of a few disruptive (due to insecurity, to feeling threatened—especially by confident and competent women colleagues) people (men, as it happens to be) in the team who managed to dominate the whole dynamic because of their senior positions. Putting the focus on them, on their power struggles, on their authority, on their role—and, by doing so, creating frustration (starting with myself, owing to short‐sighted and unproductive discussions), and managing to undermine rather than amplify the work we were doing—thereby redirecting organisational energy to power and control issues rather than to actual work.

I was clear on what was happening: we were witnessing a backlash from the more old‐style, more macho and actually also less competent senior managers, due to the fact that we were advancing things, female and male colleagues together, without, however, ...