Insights on gender balance in leadership from Birna Dröfn Birgisdóttir

Meet Birna Dröfn Birgisdóttir, a creativity specialist and co-founder of the brainstorming tool Bulby. With over a decade of experience as a consultant, coach, educator, speaker, and workshop leader, Birna brings a unique blend of academic research and real-world insights to her work. In this interview, Birna shares her perspectives on the importance of gender balance and diversity in leadership, the unique challenges and opportunities for the next generation of leaders, and her personal journey in building and sustaining confidence in a leadership role.

As a creativity and innovation expert, I see diversity as very important, especially in leadership positions. Growing up with a female president had a great impact on many, including me. Because of her and other women who have been great leaders, it was always easier for me to see that as an option for myself. We need role models of any gender to unleash hidden potential.

It’s often said that AI users will be the most successful. But I believe those who can go slow in a fast world will be more successful in the long run. AI can help us run fast, but if we’re running in the wrong direction, it won’t help us. Slowing down can help us think clearly, create better solutions, and see the right direction.

There are great opportunities ahead of us, and I love that the role of the leader is changing. Before, employees worked for the leader, but I believe the leader should be working for employees. It used to be that the leader knew more and was there to tell people how to do things. Now, when knowledge grows exponentially, it changes things, and I believe we need more servant leaders.

The focus should be on facilitating small wins. Dr. Amabile and Dr. Kramer conducted extensive research that revealed how powerful small wins can be in enhancing creativity, a prerequisite for innovation.

The leader’s role is not to know everything but to be brave enough not to know and ask good questions. Being brave can actually be contagious, and I love learning from brave people like Brené Brown, who talks about how vulnerability is the other side of the coin of being brave. Feeling nervous about something and being excited about it feel the same in the body, so I like to use that trick to tell myself that I am super excited about something when I feel nervous.

However, I learned that placebos create real changes in the body, and there is research on how we can use placebos, for example, to enhance creativity. So, smelling a cinnamon stick and saying out loud that this can enhance your creativity can increase your creativity.

I loved hearing how NASA employees eat peanuts for good luck. They have a tradition of eating peanuts before significant mission launches, a practice that began in the 1960s with the successful Ranger 7 mission. This ritual is believed to bring good luck, similar to the placebo effect. Although peanuts do not directly influence mission outcomes, they can boost team morale and confidence. Believing in the peanuts’ luck can create a positive mindset, improving performance.

The story of orchestras addressing gender bias in hiring practices is quite fascinating. In the past, orchestras like the Sinfonia used to hire predominantly male musicians. To counteract this bias, they implemented blind auditions where musicians played behind a curtain, ensuring that judges could not see them and thus reducing visual bias.

However, even with blind auditions, bias persisted. Subtle cues, such as the sound of women’s heels, could still influence decisions. When this was realized, additional measures were taken, like asking musicians to remove their shoes before entering the audition space. This small change further reduced the gender bias, leading to fairer evaluations based solely on musical performance.