This text is part of the special Feminine Leadership notebook
In 2023, we are certainly talking more about “feminine qualities” of leaders than about “feminine leadership”. Discussion with the honorable Liza Frulla.
Liza Frulla’s professional career is enough to make you dizzy. For the record, here are a few selections from a long career: first female journalist to interview a Canadiens player (and none other than Guy Lafleur) in the team locker room; first woman to head the marketing department of a brewery in North America, in this case Labatt; vice-president and general director of CKAC; Minister of Communications and Culture under Robert Bourassa (artists owe him the creation of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec); Minister of Canadian Heritage and Minister responsible for the Status of Women; collaborator at It’s just TV, on ICI ARTV. Since 2015, she has been at the head of the Institute of Tourism and Hospitality of Quebec (ITHQ), which promotes two important facets of Quebec culture: hospitality and gastronomy. We are out of breath for her!
Fighting it was, fighting it remains, because “once we have broken the glass ceiling, we must deliver the goods!” ” she says. Except that the world is changing, and so is the delivery method. Not so long ago, women were rare at the top. “It was therefore necessary to qualify this leadership as feminine so that they position themselves and take their place in a context where there was none,” she believes. And as it remained fragile, this leadership… “It was enough for one woman in a position of power to fail for it to have repercussions on all the others,” remembers the leader.
But the situation is different in 2023 and the best manager is perhaps the person who demonstrates human qualities often attributed to women, such as “kindness, listening and the ability to take care of their organization and his teams,” observes Mme Frulla. One thing is certain, we could no longer describe as a “declawed tigress” the one who says she is proud to contribute to making this society more and more egalitarian!
Lead yesterday, lead today
Yes, the time is long gone when the boss dictated his will to his subordinates. “Today, you have to initiate a dialogue, listen, convince, and it’s more difficult than imposing your ideas,” notes Liza Frulla. Perhaps even more so when you come from an authoritarian background and have character… “For example, after the pandemic, it seemed normal to me that everyone came back to work five days a week, we were going to adapt later, she recalls. Should I tell you that I haven’t had much success? We had to get along! »
The charismatic leader underlines it in broad terms: her best asset is those around her. “In politics, in the media, my strength is the people around me who know me well. I’m impatient, they weigh me down! And as a manager, you live or die by those around you. »
Among her other strengths as a leader is certainly the fact that her “value” is a “very strong desire to succeed” and a “clear vision” of the direction to take. At the ITHQ, she made the recognition of tourism, catering and hotel professions her main focus. “Concretely, this involves university degrees and exchanges of knowledge, professors, students and research between Canadian universities” with these study programs. “We are part of an international network of the best schools in tourism and hospitality, but we don’t talk to each other in Canada! » deplores the general director. She intends to remedy the situation with the establishment of a Canadian university network, which is currently underway.
Another project she is working on is the creation of a “real management and research campus” in downtown Montreal in order to free up space in the current building, where we are starting to find ourselves at narrow.
Clearly, the one who is also president of the board of directors of the Canadian Tourism Commission is not idle and even says she is already up for another mandate as director of the ITHQ in 2025!
A prejudice called ageism
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Duty, relating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.