Last week at Tuckernuck – ILT

During my last week at Tuckernuck I stepped back and tried to look at the company, my experience there, and leadership to really reflect on the big pictures and themes I saw. Tuckernuck is a company of about twenty individuals, all of which was women with the exception of 2 male employees (our editor and head photographer). I saw different forms of leadership every single day and I really looked up to everyone I worked with. leadership in many ways can be defined and thought of as the process of being perceived by others as a leader. As I thought about the process of perceiving others as leaders my mind immediately jumped to the implicit leadership theory, gender, achieving legitimacy, and World congruity theory. In the West our ILT has the standard model of leaders as Male and white individuals. Therefore women and minorities do not fit these preconceived notions of leaders and ILTs, that revolves around masculinity and being white. Therefore it is difficult for individuals who do not meet this to achieve legitimacy. For women leaders there is the “double bind.” If they appear to be and act “too feminine” they may be criticized as insufficiently decisive and authoritative. If they appear to be and act “Too masculine” women may be criticized as insufficiently nice considerate. This all connects back to world congruity theory in that for men the leader role is congruent and for women the leader role is less congruent.

I think that being in a female dominate and run company turns a lot of those theories on its head. We as a society may still find men more congruent with women, but when you stepped into the doors of Tuckernuck that sort of melted away. People were looked at as leaders due to their experience, contribution, and title. Perhaps this is because the company is already established and the founders have achieved legitimacy already. The company and founders faced a lot of adversity when they first started out.They were part of a program called Mountain View Startups. They were the only women and no one took them seriously at first, but as time when on they proved themselves and established themselves as real contenders. At Tuckernuck they have been able to turn “too feminine” into a strength. An example of this is that two of the founders and a buyer are all pregnant and instead of hiding it they decided to capitalize on it and create merchandizing campaigns around it include maternity friendly styles and gifts and styles for baby showers. At other companies female employees would potentially shy away from publicizing their pregnancy because they could be perceived as not being fully focused on their work. 

So much of what we study in Jepson and how the business world operates has men at the centerfold so I found it so interesting to intern at a company that was the complete opposite of that because it gave me an entirely new perspective. I think in a female run company our ILTs are altered.