That woman who enters the room and turns heads, with her charisma that shines from within and charms everyone in the room. The moment you look at her, you just get a hunch that she can do anything she chooses to believe. She is the woman. The one who owns herself with confidence and elegance. She can be funny without being tacky. When she starts to speak, the tone of her voice catches the whole attention. She sounds like the master of what she talks about. She rules the flow. She is the flow creator and arranger. She is the alpha.
Sounds familiar? You might have that one friend whose traits and behaviour are exactly like what we have described above; even better, you are probably the woman.
Alpha females are known to always maintain their self-respect with confidence that she won’t compromise her principles. With this trait, it is easy for them to bring people together as she is highly influential. They may appear very ambitious and never stop achieving, but deep down it is because they know what they want and what they are capable of.
However, many people often correlate the characteristics of alpha females with a figure of career-oriented women who always wants power and control, whereas, the indication of alpha females does not always equal to highly achievers at work. This is because the term “alpha males” who are oftentimes linked to very strong men emerged way before the appearance of “alpha females” term. Thus, the discussion about alpha females is being identified with masculine traits such as physically and mentally strong, dominance, power, assertiveness, leadership, and the list can go on and on.
The term “alpha” itself is rooted from the very first letter of the Greek alphabet to depict strong animals—or “the dominant wolf”—whose leadership behaviour can inspire other animals to follow the group, and in reality, only the strongest ones that can survive the natural selection; at least a famous ethologist Charles Darwin believed in this pattern of alphas.
In human interaction point of view, an alpha male is known to have similar traits with “the dominant wolf” of the pack. Nevertheless, as the world now opens more opportunities for women to perform equally, there came the term of “alpha females”. Alpha females and alpha males share the similar traits and behaviours such as confidence, assertiveness, willingness to achieve, and owning firm principles. They perform excellent leadership skills that can influence and inspire others, most likely they are often being in the spotlight—sometimes they enjoy it too! Be it as a thinker or executor, they gain respect easily. If a group consists of more than one alphas, one may wonder if there is a subtle competition on who can exert stronger power and control. Can it work well?
We cannot deny the fact that in a social interaction, our instinct automatically determines the possible hierarchy among us, in a way we can recognise the one who leads, who co-leads, who follows, and whose role is only shadowing others. Alphas tend to lead without being instructed to, thus in a group of people, their power are possibly clashed with one another. Therefore, to avoid future problems, we should realise and admit that whenever the group members change, who is the alpha can change too.
For instance, you are the manager of your department. When leading your juniors, the way you talk to them must be different compared to when you talk to your senior manager. The way you convey your opinion is different too. How about having more than one alpha in a mix-gender group? In most of cases, men are hoped to be the leader in a group, but in fact, they are not always the alpha in the mix-gender group, and so are women; and this does not mean you should degrade the level of your “alphaness”.
Imagine there are more than one alphas in a business relations context. They are known as natural leaders by default, they perform equal assertiveness but neither of them willing to decrease their assertiveness when discussing, they attack others’ opinions even provide some facts why their opinions are just better. No agreeable solution for the business issue can be achieved, the whole cycle is then negatively impacted. Again, assuming these alphas perform the same traits and behaviours, but the scenario now is they are willing to be less assertive in order to achieve desirable business outcomes and goals, the group then have very fruitful discussion and decision. Now you see the problem? Yes, the problem is not who is the alpha, the problem is the lack of emotional intelligence. Because the true alphas would gladly drop their ego when needed.
Another case is a dating life of an alpha female. Assuming you are the catch who ambitiously eager to achieve what is the best in the table. One day, a man you are seeing for weeks suddenly disappear, with a friend of him saying that the man apparently feels inferior to you and is insecure being in a relationship with you. After go through a few of gloomy days of losing him, you then realise that you deserve a confident man to be with you, not a man of excuses who left you without making things clear. Let us tell you, it is not because you are an alpha! The absence of sexual attraction is the true problem here. An alpha female knows that sexual attraction can be built with one of them being masculine and the other being feminine. An alpha female can be feminine too—caring, nurturance, loving, cheerful, you name it. Being an alpha female does not always mean you have to behave like a man.
If you are an alpha female, keep being you. Never let people tell you to stop achieving and setting goals. Never feel sorry for intimidating insecure people just because you know exactly what you want, but always sparing a room for you to perform your feminine traits as well. Also, more than one alphas in a group may create more conflict, but as an alpha you must know how to master social skills to prevent you from further unnecessary problems. Remember that you are not always the alpha of the pack under some circumstances or circle, and that is totally okay.