Four principles of leadership from the feminine part
This post isn’t about the leadership of women. It’s about tapping into your feminine side and its leadership, whether you are a man, a woman, or you define your gender in a different way.
What characterises the feminine part within you? Based on author and teacher Michelle Cross and according to tantric teachings, the masculine energy also described as yang or Shiva represents that which is strong, steady, solid, constant, directional, active and dense. The feminine energy on the other hand, yin or Shakti, on the other hand, is fluid, flowing, changeable, liquid, resting, vast, timeless and eternal. So where masculine is all about the left brain and the doing, the feminine is about the right brain and the being. Where yang is assertive and striving, yin is receptive and becoming. Shiva penetrates, Shakti surrenders and receives, and in this way a balanced universe is their co-creation, their dance and their lovemaking.
If either of the energies is dominant for too long, an imbalance occurs, and the union of both principles which allows us to access flow and long-term sustainability is no longer possible. In our society, the feminine energy is often repressed hence why I want to focus on harnessing it here so we can become more wholesome leaders. How does the leadership from the feminine energy manifest and what are its principles?
The starting point of the kind of leadership I’m referring to is openness to the other, invitation aimed at the other to step into their own power and partake in the complex task that leadership itself is. One who leads from the feminine part knows very well that the best thing they can do is to open up ways for power to flow in the collective, rather than limiting it. From my perspective, there’s an enormous relief that comes from the knowledge my team are also invested in the success of GrantTree, like Daniel and I are. The fact that I’m good at hustling and getting a company off the ground doesn’t mean I have all the skills needed to scale it. My business would never be what it is today if we didn’t choose to create opportunities to distribute power early on, didn’t continue to practise this over the years, and didn’t explicitly reject the temptations of leadership through division.
Within the paradigm of feminine leadership, hierarchy doesn’t make much sense because underneath all the titles we are simply naked humans, with fears and traumas, but also unique strengths and talents. According to Anna Betz, a coach and author who writes about and studies collaborative leadership in organisations, including self-management and teal, the collective intelligence provides a new, qualitatively different source of leadership for organisations. In the age of the feminine power rising, this makes a lot of sense to me. We all have different flavours of awareness, ability and mastery and they can often be channelled more effectively when we come together. Those of you who have experience working on boards or panels know that there is a different and a surprising level of wisdom and insight that can emerge when a few people with inner authority come together with no ego-driven agendas.
2. Surrender to powerlessness
I’m truly fascinated by how the concept of power changes in the context of leadership from the feminine principle. The ultimate power comes from surrender to powerlessness. This, when truly embraced, has dramatic consequences. The feminine leader within you already knows that a sense of control over your company or your life is an illusion. Of course, our choices do matter. We can move towards things that attract us and evolve past personal limitations. We can achieve things we previously thought were impossible. We can choose A over B and every choice we take has tangible consequences. Yet while these things are true, in the bigger scheme of things, the sense of control they may give us is an illusion. There are bigger forces and dynamics at play. The more I try to force things to go along with my plan, the more they resist. The more I’m in touch with myself, the more I recognise I’m happiest when tuned into guidance on where and how my talents are best used, surrendering and listening in other than trying to pursue a plan I created for myself. As I act from this place of attunement, things flow with me instead of resisting.
When you are prepared to move out of the way, and truly recognise your powerlessness, paradoxically a sense of deeper power and agency emerges. This doesn’t happen instantaneously. You need to be prepared to sit with the silence within, and listen. More often than not, you’ll be tempted to fill the silence with some sort of a plan or new agenda because it’s very uncomfortable for my mind not to know. But if you hold out, sooner or later there’s a sense of clarity about the next steps, which emerges from a place beyond your personal agenda, beyond your desire to be recognised as decisive and effective. As your inner journey evolves, and trust in yourself increases, you will start to move from a place of surrender and listening in more and more, both in life and in business.
3. Lightness and playfulness
The feminine doesn’t particularly care about the rules of social and political correctness, she flies above what’s considered appropriate also in the business context. Just over a year ago, I got invited to join a prestigious panel of experts in the space of engineering and technology whose aim is to influence Government’s policy for the benefit of the sector and to create thought leadership around key issues in the space. The invitation came directly from the panel’s chairman and I was honestly a little confused to receive it. I even tried to send a senior member of our grants team instead as I felt I didn’t have enough experience or expertise to offer. It didn’t work, I learnt that the invitation was strictly personal. As I arrived at my first meeting of the panel in one of the stunning boardrooms of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, it turned out I was quite possibly the youngest person around the table. Even though a little intimidated by the calibre of my colleagues’ leadership in the sector, I realised it was down to my inner sense of worthiness to decide whether or not I could add value. Needless to say, I decided that I could, and started to participate in the discussion with eagerness. One thing that still bugged me though was how I ended up in this prestigious group.
After the formal part of the meeting, we all enjoyed a beautiful three-course dinner in an adjacent dining room. It was then that the mystery was finally solved. I sat next to the panel’s secretary who mentioned the chairman saw me deliver a “really engaging talk” at one of the industry conferences and decided to invite me to join the panel. Nothing would be extraordinary about this if it weren’t for the subject of the talk, which was a variation of a TEDx I’d delivered earlier, titled The Businesswoman and the Stripper. The talk I gave, which the chairman saw and remembered, involved drawing parallels between what I learnt as an open-culture company leader and the skills I gained performing on nightclub stages as a burlesque diva. It was the first time, in this risqué talk, that I decided to bring these two very different aspects of my life and personality together and show up, with no care for political correctness, in the full spectrum of my talent and uniqueness. I received plenty of great feedback on my talk and yet it was an amazing surprise to learn that it also earned me a seat on IET’s policy panel. The talk later became a cornerstone for the up and coming book.
4. Inner authority
According to one of the spiritual authors I follow, Alana Fairchild, feminine authority comes into place when power is tempered with mercy, wisdom, compassion and love. Empowerment trumps control. Through living your truth and integrity, you lead by authentic example, claiming your own power from within in every moment, rather than using “power” that was granted to you from elsewhere. In this paradigm, there’s no sense of unhealthy responsibility for another, which creates dependency and disempowerment. What comes with the claiming of inner power is recognition of your authority which has nothing to do with your position in the external hierarchy, levels of social recognition or material success. When you step into your authority in the feminine way, your talents shine through. There’s no shame and no need for false modesty on one hand or PR coverage on the other, you simply live what you are, on a level of deeply personal and embodied power.
It’s because of the lack of feminine leadership that so many of us, often underneath all the signs of power and external success, feel completely disempowered and unworthy. An authentic sense of power can never be granted from elsewhere, and that’s one of the key lessons of the feminine part. It’s found deep within, underneath the chatter of the mind. It’s a place of deep alignment with ourselves and, if you experience it that way, a power way bigger than you which feels transpersonal and universal. To me, it’s beyond where we can go with mindfulness. It’s a place of inner wholeness, in other words divinity. But you may experience or frame it differently and that’s just as valid as what I experience. When you act from that place, there is no doubt or hesitation. There is just a gentle, non-urgent knowing which flows through you without effort. A sense of pristine clarity.
To say more on leadership from the feminine aspect within us, we have admittedly, as Wendy De Rosa points out, hidden and covered up feminine energy by associating it with weakness. But the feminine principle is rising within all of us. We are, collectively, shedding shame, speaking truth and communicating with integrity. The masculine element within us (and within the collective field) is also waking up to how the feminine has been suppressed and objectified. The feminine has re-emerged as a wounded consciousness but is refusing to stay wounded – the healing process happens through courageous exposing of the truth, as seen in the #MeToo movement. When the feminine rises, it unearths whatever has suppressed or held us back and so may involve a challenging process. Ultimately though, both on the individual and on the collective level, the feminine rising points to liberation, permission to be our authentic selves and to live in truth.
I am launching a book about open culture, leadership and… stripping early next year. Join the waiting list to secure your copy.