5 Insights Into Female Leadership from Watching Borgen

A great way to get students and managers to think more deeply about leadership issues is through the use of fiction. Movies like Lincoln, Braveheart, and Monty Python’s Life of Brian tell something important about charismatic leadership, for instance -- sometimes in quite a comical manner (Brian: “I am not the Messiah; now fuck off! Audience: ” How shall we fuck off, oh Lord?”). For great lessons about dark and destructive leadership I get students to watch parts of “Wall Street” or a popular TV series like Lost or the Walking Dead. These are all Anglo-American productions, and perhaps not too surprising they all center around male leadership and dominance.

Yet there is a captivating new TV series from Denmark, called Borgen, in which the leading figures are women. Borgen is now being broadcasted in many countries around the world. Newsweek called it recently “the best TV series the US has never seen.” I think it is now being broadcasted in the States, and there is even talk of a US-remake.

Borgen -- meaning Castle, the name of the Parliament building in Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital -- centers around Brigitte Nyborg, the leader of the Moderate party, who at the start of the first series becomes the Danish prime minister after her party has narrowly won the Danish elections by everyone’s surprise. Nyborg heads a coalition government with two other parties, the Labour and Green party.

Borgen gives a fascinating insight into leadership and the sexes. The makers of Borgen succeed in both confirming and dispelling many stereotypes about women leaders. Here are some key story lines from Borgen viewed through the lens of the science on leadership and the sexes.

The first theme concerns sex differences in leadership style. The way Danish politics operates one almost always ends up with a coalition government after an election. This means that any prime minister has to work with other parties on key issues. The science says that women should be better at this than men because women tend to lead in a more democratic and less hierarchical way than men do. Perhaps that is why women politicians are common in countries where coalition governments are the rule. Indeed Nyborg starts with a highly participative style of leadership, trying to reach out to other parties in Parliament to get support for her policies. However, as the series progresses she becomes more and more authoritarian in her political style, clearly conveying to her ministers that she makes the final decision on key issues.

The second theme concerns the public and private roles of women leaders. Borgen gives a fascinating insight into how Nyborg negotiates the political and domestic aspects of her job, which is not easy. She wants to be a top politician and model mother, but quickly finds out that the two are incompatible. Even when she promises her family to go on a work-free holiday together she keeps checking her Blackberry and calls her staff. What makes matters worse: Her children and husband don’t show a great deal of appreciation for this nor the fact that she is the most powerful person in Denmark.

There is a third theme here which characterizes the struggle of women in powerful positions. Do they get the support from their husbands? There are great examples of top female politicians and business leaders who are single, have no kids (Merkel, Gillard) or a supportive husband (Thatcher). Yet the norm is that men find it difficult to cope with a high status spouse, and this is no exception in Borgen. Nyborg’s husband, a university professor, finds it exceedingly difficult to play second fiddle in the relationship and take on the main domestic roles. And when Birgitte Nyborg demands from her husband to refuse a job offer as CEO of a major electronics company -- because it may jeopardize her political interests -- he leaves her. This is a perennial problem with possibly deep evolutionary roots: Men find it hard to deal with powerful women.

A fourth theme is how leaders respond in political crises. On average, women politicians are more liberal and less likely to start a war. This is confirmed by psychology studies, which show that voters prefer male leaders during war and female leaders during peace. Congruent with this, Birgitte Nyborg initially wants to stick to the electoral pledge to return all the Danish troops home from Afghanistan. Personally she feels this is the right thing to do too. Nevertheless, after consultations with senior military staff she backs down and decides to keep the Danish troops in Afghanistan for a little longer.

A fifth theme concerns sex differences in conflict management. On the whole, female leaders tend to have longer memories for interpersonal conflict, emotional battles and emotional stresses than men do. Women have better memories than men for particular highly emotive situations and also remember the relational details better. This makes it a bit more difficult for women to forget conflict and betrayal which are rife in politics. This emotional memory system works both in Nyborg’s favor when she dismisses her deputy Prime minister, Hoxenhaven, after he betrayed her by taking the lead during a hostage crisis. However, her greater emotional involvement is a nuisance when she reveals -- perhaps with too much honesty -- to her coalition partner, Dwian that she plotted against him. After this confession of hers he gives up his position as party leader.

These five themes show that there is a convergence between the science and fiction on leadership and the sexes in Borgen. The series offers a great platform to discuss the similarities and differences between female and male leadership. The sad conclusion is that while Birgitte Nyborg starts out as a prototypical feminine leader, as the series progresses we see her adopt a more masculine leader style. Is this what politics does to women?