Visualizing Balanced Leadership

Balanced leadership is the call for a healthier, more sustainable future by more fully embracing a sometimes-unheralded resource, the feminine energy. So maintains club member and our lead participant, Maria Brinck, executive coach as founder of Zynergy International and author of the just-published, The Leadership We Need: A New Mindset for a Brighter Future.

Our focus piece is a distillation of her thoughts by way of a recent interview she conducted with Authority Magazine (click: The New Portrait Of Leadership) and Fast Company (click: 3 Management Styles) with reference to her book (https://a.co/d/fqLpUN2). Regard the points raised as catalysts for a meaningful discussion. Maria is seeking an honest assessment. We shall oblige.

Note, first, that feminine energy means something different than matriarchy which often evokes visions of ancient, women-led societies where mothers or female leaders held primary authority. Even some examples e.g. The Iroquois Confederacy, with its matrilineal kinship system, featured a gender-balanced governance dynamic.

Maria advises each new leader to a behaviour that balances the full spectrum of masculine and feminine energies. Step one is that famous Socratic injunction to Know Thyself, a mindset of understanding one’s own patterns, triggers, values, and blind spots. Self-awareness leads to that place of grounded, conscious presence, where leadership begins. Its absence leads to unconscious reflex over reflection.

The healthy balance calls for us to more fully value the feminine energy: compassion, collaboration, care, and a deeper sensitivity to people and the planet. Beyond self-awareness, other traits demonstrated by effective leaders are the courage to evolve (what got you here won’t necessarily get you there), interdependence (discard the myth of the self-made leader), systems thinking (tribal mentality drains creativity), and the capacity to hold complexity.

While Maria acknowledges the historical need for dominance in the old leadership tribal dynamic to fight off threats from “barbarians at the gate,” such distracts us from solving problems in this new age. More than ever, we need to resist those old patterns as we embrace emotional intelligence, humility, and the capacity to listen.

There’s no place for that old instinct to choose leadership based on that subconscious projection of strength, certainty, and dominance – as a side note, she cites as an example tallness as a determinant leadership factor. One random point for discussion includes who says there are no longer barbarians at the gate?

Don’t different social structures – say agrarian versus industrial – demand different leadership qualities? After all, the cited example of the tribal circle in Cameroon deciding whether to cut down a tree is not quite the same as Elon Musk driving yet another start-up adventure. While there’s always a spotlight on the heroic leader, there’s also a place for the manager of an HOA.

Please note the following RSVP Policy for Member Monday: RSVP sign-up opens up at 11:00am on Fridays via the City Club weekly Newsletter. Seats are first-come, first-served: the first 14 secure a spot at the table, the last 3 on the couch. Cancellations must be made 24 hours in advance or the standard Social Lunch rate applies.