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Episode Description:

In this episode, Julia speaks with Nora Madjar, a researcher and professor specialising in creativity, negotiation, and team dynamics, about the impact of hostile environments on women’s leadership styles. Nora explores how environments of resistance and criticism can destabilise women leaders, often leading them to stray from their natural strengths of collaboration, creativity, and empathy.

“When women step back, observe, and use their innate skills of collaboration and perspective-taking, they create win-win outcomes that redefine success in even the most challenging environments,” said Nora.

Nora delves into the unique skills women bring to negotiation, emphasising the power of incremental innovation and soft influence. She shares insights on leveraging flexibility and adaptability, facilitating team contributions, and empowering others to thrive.

Listen to this episode to understand how women can translate their essence into action to lead effectively, even when facing resistance and criticism.

About the Guests

Nora

Nora Madjar is an Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs at the University of Connecticut School of Business. She received her Ph. D. in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She was also a Fulbright Scholar in Bulgaria in 2011. Her main expertise is creativity in the workplace and her research examines the social and contextual factors that stimulate or hinder creative performance and what stimulates creativity in negotiations. Her scholarly work also explores different ways to structure jobs to facilitate creative work and facilitate the creative process. She has multiple articles on creativity published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management and Academy of Management Journal, among others. Professor Madjar teaches courses in organizational behaviour, managing creativity and innovation and negotiations for both undergraduate and MBA students.

About the Host

Julia Middleton

Julia Middleton is the host of the Women Emerging podcast and a best-selling author of “If that’s leading, I’m in” as well as two previous books: “Leading beyond Authority” and “Cultural Intelligence”. She is deeply committed to helping people from all backgrounds to find their own approach to leading.

In 2020, Julia launched Women Emerging and in 2022 she lead an expedition of 24 women to find ‘an approach to leading that resonates with women’. She now leads expeditions with women all over the world based on 4Es methodology, discovered in the first expedition.

Prior to that, Julia was founder and, for over thirty years, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, which grew to become one of the biggest leadership development organisations in the world.
Julia is also an Ambassador for the Aurora Prize based in Armenia, on the boards of Alfanar Venture Philanthropy in the Arab World and Equality Now, which operates globally, and on the Advisory Councils of Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil and Synapse in Pakistan.

Born in London and brought up in New York, Julia was educated at French Lycées and graduated from the London School of Economics. She is married, with five children and lots of grandchildren.