Recently I co-hosted a session at the B Corp Leadership day with the inspiring Monica Meldrum. We’d been briefed to run a session on Women in Leadership.
Monica started by stating some facts from a KPMG report on gender diversity. (Yes, only 5% of CEO’s of the ASX 100 are women. Not much has changed since 2011.)
We both felt there was nothing new to share on the topic of Women in Leadership. We were compelled to have a radically different conversation. We shared the idea that the path to gender equality and more women leaders is actually through Feminine Leadership.
Today there’s an overabundance of negative masculine leadership in the world. The traits of ego, power, greed, competition, aggression and control dominate the business landscape. Maybe the reason women are not stepping into their rightful roles as leaders is because they’re not willing to conform to the negative masculine paradigm that prevails in leadership today?
Or maybe it’s because many women are actually stuck in the negative feminine states of subservience, victimhood and unworthiness?
Our great opportunity, as both men and women, is to redress this imbalance. We can work together to bring forward the positive feminine traits of leadership; [being of] service, compassion, co-operation, receptivity, vulnerability, love and intuition. And we can work together to bring in the positive masculine traits of leadership too; discipline, strength, focus, direction, stability and protection.
Now before you shout me down, I know this is not a gender issue, or even a feminine or masculine issue. It’s actually a human issue and these are actually human traits.
But what the world needs now is love, sweet love, driven by the feminine. We need leaders like Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada who is a proud feminist. (The definition of feminism by the way, is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.) Justin is a humanist with powerful positive feminine traits…and his cabinet has equal representation of men and women.
I truly believe the path to gender parity is through the healing hands of the positive feminine traits in all genders.
Behind this is the deep understanding that a higher purpose than profit must prevail, a purpose that is not about being ‘the best’ but about ‘being better’, for the world, for women, for men, for all of humanity.
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The Purpose Project is a program that uses human-centred design principles to help you unearth, articulate and activate purpose in your company. The methodology involves everyone from every corner of the organisation.
We help you:
- Co-create a meaningful company purpose statement using a proven framework and a deep understanding of higher purpose and it’s purpose.
- Unearth the behaviour you require in your company in order to activate purpose by co-designing and then producing your company Manifesto.
- Develop personal Purpose Maps for each employee that ties directly into the company purpose and their own purpose and passion.
Find out more about the public workshop Click here
