Third principle of leadership from the feminine part - 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.
Read about other principles of leadership from the feminine part here