Sorry Girl Scouts, love your cookies, but being bossy is—and always will be—bad. If anything, we need to call it out as we see it MORE–not less–often.
“Bossy” means telling people to do things your way, immediately, with no consideration for their feelings or input. “Bossy” means being pushy, overbearing and rude. “Bossy” means taking charge at the expense of others.
As adults in the workplace, the supervisors (dare I say, “bosses?”) we complain about are the ones who employ those “bossy,” intolerable attributes.
Let’s be intellectually honest…the intent of the GSA’s initiative is good, but it is off-target.
The assignations of “bossy” (as the Girls Scouts suggest is the more often girl-child directed word/the adult version, “b*tchy”) or “bratty” (perhaps the more boy-child directed counter-criticism/the adult version, “d*ckish”) are condemnations incurred by poor behavior. They are not declarations doled out for the precocious demonstration of leadership behavior as the Girl Scouts are hyper-defensively interpreting.
“Bossy” is not leadership squelching, it’s ill-behavior correcting. As parents and society, we need to ban bossy behavior, not the use of the word.
My daughter—like so many daughters, and sons—-is a leader by nature. She has imaginative, creative ideas. She persuades. She encourages. She listens. She acts with confidence. She’s decisive. She is—as her brother says complimentarily of himself—“like a boss.”
If either of my children—female or male—act “bossy” in the traditional, rightly-accusatory sense of the word, please, please call them on it.
If either of them—male or female— act “like a boss” in the 21st century sense of the phrase—take charge leaders who are creative, persuasive, collaborative, decisive and considerate—please, please compliment them on it. Those are the qualities we admire and desire in our leaders for tomorrow.
[So grateful for inspiring examples of leadership to whom my children have been exposed…including RPS’s Linwood Holton Elementary principal, David Hudson, pictured above.]
