Category: feminine leadership

Leadership at home

Leadership for me came from my experiences at home, as an only child often home alone and later as a single mom with a demanding job and an only child of my own. I grew up exploring independence and freedom, and I matured discovering the challenges of non-attachment. Issues of leadership in the work space felt much easier in comparison, and often came naturally. With hindsight, I believe that parenting is where leadership becomes most challenging and offers the biggest rewards. I long felt that the hardest thing for parents was to allow their children to experiment for themselves and become whomever these children wanted for themselves, first leading and then supporting them from behind. Then I discovered that perhaps the biggest challenge of all lies with appreciating and embracing the opposite of leadership and nurture the needy child behind the leader, not only in a child but in ourselves.

Successful parenting is a balancing act between the requirement to love and nurture our children, on the one hand, and to let go of them at the appropriate time, practicing this challenging non-attachment to the result. We all experience this fierce love that causes us to overstep our boundaries and want to determine what they become in life, pushing them in one direction or another, guarding them to help them feel more secure, helping them with their homework, protecting them from unhealthy surroundings, seeing our children as an extension of ourselves. The more attached they are, the more challenging it becomes to finally set them free, and yet we all know intuitively (even if we find it hard to accept and practice) that true love is giving freedom.

You will be called to let your children go in directions you fear, do not respect, or simply do not understand. You will gradually honor them by treating them as peers who no longer need your guidance, even if they still seek your understanding at times to validate their own feelings. The biggest gift you can offer them is to trust them to know for themselves, to lead their lives the way they choose as equals, making their own way, exercising leadership for themselves. Your confidence will give them wings, and you can trust that the soil you provided for them to grow roots is more than enough to see them find their own path.

You may also have to realize that there is always a needy child behind a leader. I often felt uneasy, even critical towards needy young adults, the same way I would repel any feeling of neediness within myself. I became more lenient and open to this “weak side” within. I can see that this deep resistance to neediness and attachment has ultimately been the engine that propelled me towards leadership qualities. I also came to realize that pushing away and condemning this neediness in an effort to glorify freedom and independence can actually uproot the most nurturing qualities in a leader.

Now more than ever, we need nurturing leaders who will allow for those who rely on others to make their way, fully dependent on their family structure or the social fabric around them. Successful leadership is about accepting both the fiercely independent and free spirit born to lead and the needy child whose vulnerability provides the very soil for nurturing us all. As a parent, you are called upon to raise both and love them equally, and ultimately nourish and integrate both sides within yourself.

If you are ready to explore your leadership instincts and how to lead with emotions, I’d be happy to show you the path and work with you. We are just an email away: isabellefrancoisbe@gmail.com

Empowering women

When I look at the tremendous progress in the last few decades to raise the issue of gender diversity in our work place, in our societies, I feel grateful for the women who took up that cause and fought courageously to raise the visibility and impact of women internationally. As I look back, I realize that the focus has been on numbers: more women in position of power, more women in decision-making circles, more women in the armed forces, more gender advisers in the work force. It originally aimed at equal rights, equal capacity, equal strength.

Today, there is still a lot to be done in ensuring equality and tracking numbers. That work needs to go on. However, beyond numbers and equality lies the issue of quality and specificity. Isn’t it time for gender diversity 2.0?

A woman may not need to step into an assertive role to feel effective and become successful. She does not need to compete with men and become more of a “man” then men themselves to be recognized as equal. No, she needs to be in integrity with her own insights, her own feminine power, to truly demonstrate the depth of her strength, and equally contribute to the world.

It is not necessarily an issue of men and women, as it has more to do with listening to our inner wisdom, our compassionate side. Tapping into energy and ensuring that we connect with this part of ourselves will unleash unlimited strength available to us all as a society.

Women may have an easier time tapping into their intuition openly and relying solely on their inner wisdom or to have the courage to look at a situation with compassion and love. It is not necessarily the case, though. The point is that this is a source of true power that women have a responsibility to exercise and integrate into our daily work place and decision-making circles, as a source of power that will open up the world to creative ideas and inspiration.

This is a world where people will seek to empower themselves and those around them, rather than influence others through their own views and decisions. This is a world where feminine power will have found its place in its own right.

Feminine power

The world has much to learn from feminine power. Strong women in leadership positions have often borrowed from the masculine world from a place of firm determination and will to succeed, from their intelligence and organized plan to exercise power. Yet what makes a woman powerful lies in her ability to listen to her true self and call upon her feminine wisdom. Women do not need to step into assertive roles, organize, plan to be effective. They need to remain in touch with their inner realm, their insights and their sense of compassion to be truly powerful.

Men like women need to resort to their feminine side – their intuition – and cultivate their inner world. This type of energy is often overlooked and it will not be easy to overcome the world’s bias for the intellect. The future of human kind and the fate of the world depends on our ability to tap into our inner guidance, listen to the needs around us, view the world with compassion, and look for ways to reach out and build on what unites us rather than insist on our differences. What separates us will kill us.

Once we learn and allow ourselves to integrate this source of leadership into our decision-making, the world will become more open to new ideas. It will tap into a new source of energy that will empower humans to overcome our global challenges.

 

Building greater connectivity

As a “single mom” for most of my adult life, I often felt proud of my self-sufficiency. There was a sense of showing responsibility in being able to take care of my child and myself and pulling my own weight in society and in the world. However, this often led me to feel isolated and to believe that this was a “mean world” out there. Fortunately, life started pointing to the fact that I needed at times to rely on others. There were first the easy lessons: scheduling conflicts, occasional illnesses; then came the harder lessons: a major accident, losing mobility and independence. This is when I learned to let go of this belief that I had to fend for myself and be able to do it all by myself, finally accepting the help of others.

Human beings are not meant to live in isolation. Nations always pay a heavy price for isolationist policies. This is a sure way to miss an opportunity to practice acceptance and humility. By contrast, trying to escape relations of dependency, we actually generate more of a sense of uselessness and dependency. Developing relations is often the way we go about getting out of isolation. However, we have all experienced how one may feel very isolated, even surrounded by people with whom we have developed relationships. What we are seeking is genuine connection, where we expect to both give and receive, thereby exposing ourselves to a level of vulnerability and opening up to the possibility of being helped. This is a two-way street based on genuine connection without an agenda that enables us to be wiser in our service of others.

The numerous environmental catastrophes in the world today are providing ample opportunities to learn to give and receive, to change roles, and to become wiser in our service of others. It takes wisdom and strength to surrender to your own helplessness. It also brings a deeper understanding of the human experience to accept your limitations to give or to receive. The world needs greater connectivity to help us build the compassion it takes to truly rely on each other.