Self-Care & Feminine Leadership
Imagine this scenario: Last Saturday, during my "Build Your Professional Confidence" workshop with the wonderful Lisa Kays, a group of professional DC women settled into a circle of comfy couches and began confessing the current challenges of their work lives.
These women spoke about achieving the pinnacle of their career aims and realizing they still didn't feel satisfied. They talked about their fear of making a major professional transition, even though their current work environments weren't making them happy. One woman shared about a lauded manager and how he spoke authoritatively during a meeting on why not to start a sentence with "I feel" because emotions didn't have a place in their work culture.
The more they shared, the more everyone in the group nodded along. Despite how personally these challenges affected each woman, once spoken aloud, it became clear how deeply relatable they were to the other women in the circle. As we sipped tea and shared more, we relaxed into the understanding that we really weren't alone in our self-care blocks.
It's profound moments like this that keep me coming back to leading workshops and coaching groups on the importance of self-care. In my work, I always want to be careful not to idealize how I spend my days as a self-care coach and facilitator. I definitely have my hard moments when I get stuck in structuring a new offering or find out I didn't get the contract I had hoped for or lose a day of work when my son gets sick. Like all of us, I have my bad days.
However, these experiences--when I can watch a group of women have the collective "a-ha" that THEY'RE NOT THE PROBLEM, but rather it's societal and cultural structures that are failing them--that I know I'm doing exactly the right thing with my life. It's in these moments that I began to taste the solution to the many, many problems that lay ahead of us.
These are times that I understand the depth and power of transformative feminine leadership.
Five years ago, when I started teaching people about the importance of holistic self-care, I never imagined that practicing this kind of self-care would lead to a whole new understanding of leadership. Rather, it was my clients that began to show me the potential of using self-care to not only create their own personal healing, but to actually transform everything and everyone within their orbits. After watching these results happen over and over, I began to put a name to what I was seeing. This was leadership, but it looked almost nothing like what I had been taught about being in charge.
As I studied further, I learned a lot. Here are a few of my observations:
- This leadership had nothing to do with whether or not someone considered themselves a "leader." Rather, it was about the initiative and risks they were willing to take in the moment for their own personal healing and the common good of everyone present.
- This leadership wasn't about knowing anything in particular or having any kind of prior experience. Instead, it came from the brave choice of being vulnerable when they could have gotten away with being guarded and inviting others into a deeper conversation alongside them.
- When they practiced this kind of leadership, the energy in the room viscerally changed. Others in the room would visibly relax and when they spoke, the pitch of their voices had lowered into their bellies. (This is going to sound a little woo-hoo, but I'll just write it: It was simply BEAUTIFUL to watch this leadership energy emerge. Some kind of deep beauty radiated and amplified and everyone shone a little brighter.)
- Even when conversations would last for hours and edged into challenging subject matter, the energy never lagged. It felt like there was an ever-renewing quality of using this kind of leadership to bring new wisdom and insights for the group. It held us through defensive moments into something that felt a lot like transformation.
- I've come to understand that feminine leadership has nothing to do with whether someone considers themselves a man or a woman. (I could write a whole missive on what I see as healthy masculine leadership, but I'll save that for another time.) Rather, feminine leadership is about a willingness to practice radical self-care through: listening to intuition alongside intellect, honoring the intelligence of the body, setting transformative boundaries around dysfunctional patterns, feeling the whole range of human emotions, and shifting into a growth mindset while slowly disabling their perfectionist tendencies. Although some of these shifts sound simple, they are most definitely counter-cultural and will most likely feel "off" by a lot of people's standards. Thus, even though this leadership is undoubtedly powerful to witness, it's just not going to feel like a very secure move, especially in today's current society.
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This brings us back to our Saturday workshop, the comfy couches, and the emerging feminine leadership. Lisa, who is a brilliant therapist and improv coach, had us try two experimental theater games to process our experiences. The first exercise was for each of us to write out the burning question that seemed like it was underlying our lack of professional confidence. I wrote: "How do I balance my ambition for more and my acceptance of what is?"
Then, each of us randomly picked another person's question and did our best to embody the "expert's voice." For one minute, we had to share our advice to that question-asker from an unshakable perspective. We were right and our job was to express that to the group.
We giggled as each person went. We sat up a little straighter, uncrossed ours legs, and shared our perspectives loudly and forcefully. It was out of character for most of us, but also interesting to see. A lot of good advice was given. I had the thought that we should start our own motivational speaking circuit!
Then, Lisa had us switch gears. We each wrote out a new question, the deeper question that was beneath our first one. I wrote "Am I really allowed to orient my work and my life from self-care?" Again, we each picked another's question and shared our response to her. The difference was that this time we were supposed to share as vulnerably as possible and our responses weren't going to be timed.
It felt so different to go around the circle this second time. No one needed to change her posture to speak. We each paused thoughtfully before offering a response. What emerged was usually very personal life experience and a few tears to show the profundity of a big life lesson. Each story felt like a real gift and I know I'll carry this shared wisdom with me for a good long time.
I see this as feminine leadership in action. It was so beautiful to see each person open up and risk themselves in the name of healing for the whole group. We didn't have to pretend to be powerful, because in being so real and so open, we just were powerful. We just had to be ourselves and let others see that raw beauty.
Reading all this, you still may not believe what I describe is leadership or think my framing of it is correct. That's okay with me, but I'm still going to call it that for now. More than knowing it, I can feel potential for this kind of transformative leadership whenever I experience it. In those moments, I know we need more of it in our world. Right now, when it seems like the dominant systems around us are collapsing under rampant greed and abuses of power, I'm just desperate for any flicker of hope I can experience.
And more than a flicker, this generative power of applied self-care feels like a steadily building flame. As more of us ignite it within ourselves and share it openly with others, the fire grows. The more of us that experience its immense warmth, the more we can come together and truly change culture. This change doesn't come from the outside in, but rather the inside out. It's not about us becoming someone different than who we are, but rather embracing the deep power of the authentic self.
To me, this is the greatest reason for and application of self-care. To me, this is why I continue to create space for my own well-being and that of those around me. It's where I'll place all my bets for change and show up in wild celebration for the beauty and joy of what's possible in this life.