cruel vs kind female leadership

Depending on when and where you were born, we grow up with varied pictures of what a strong leader looks like. Strong? Tough? Kind-hearted? High EQ? Definitions fly around, with younger generations increasingly leaning toward more empathy-driven, trust-based leadership. Throw in the topic of female leaders, and the conversation gets even more polarising. Should you be kind, but not too kind? Firm but not too ‘bossy’?

As a female founder of award-winning virtual assistance agency Heartworks Solution, I’ve thought a lot about these labels. My personality has always been more gentle, and subdued. And my strengths? They come from a place that’s deeper than a loud voice and the ability to strike fear in my employees.

When I was about to start Heartworks Solution five years ago, someone (a well-meaning person, I assure you) gently encouraged me to give up on the whole idea, citing my shy and withdrawn personality as one of the biggest disadvantages. I’ve been called “too nice”, too gentle, too sweet and much more.

But as I said before, my super power is inner strength. Something amazing happens in my brain when someone says I can’t do it. It’s as if my whole being shifts gears into go-getter mode and I move heaven and earth to make my dream possible.

Five years later, Heartworks Solution is thriving, serving a range of clients with a team of VAs who are dependable, reliable and totally aligned with the vision of Heartworks based on trust, gratitude and, well, heart.

As a founder, I’ve done things that leadership books will balk at. I’ve paid VAs upfront to convince them against job scams. I’ve poured my time, effort and, many times, money into building people up, not tearing them down or furthering my own agenda. The result is I’ve led a team that’s built on gratitude and trust. Genuine connections take time, that’s why they’re personal and real. And the higher you climb as a leader, the harder that is to do.

As it turns out, I’m not alone in this conviction, and the data backs it up. A global survey by Catalyst found that almost two-thirds of employees with empathetic leaders report being innovative at work, compared to just 13% of those without one, and more than three-quarters say they feel engaged at work under an empathetic boss, compared to about a third under one who lacks empathy. Kindness, it turns out, isn’t the soft option. It’s a competitive advantage.

This isn’t just a feel-good talking point either. It’s measurable in how women lead specifically. Research using the Leadership Circle Profile, drawn from thousands of assessments worldwide, found that female leaders particularly strong in mentorship and building caring connections scored higher than their male counterparts across every “Creative” leadership dimension, including Relating, Self-Awareness, Authenticity, and Achieving. In other words, the very traits I was once told would hold me back may actually be the ones driving Heartworks forward.

And the impact goes deeper than performance metrics. Catalyst’s research on workplace inclusion found a striking gap: when managers showed low empathy, only 9% of women felt a sense of inclusion at work, compared to 22% of men. But under high-empathy managers, both men and women experienced inclusion at the same rate of 42%. For a team like mine, built on VAs who’ve often faced real hardship before finding Heartworks, that statistic isn’t abstract. It’s the whole point.

Maybe that’s the real leadership flex in 2026: The real and rare discipline of relating one-on-one to your team, understanding your customers’ pain points and bridging the two seamlessly. Not despite being kind. But because of it.