women’s leadership
What will motive men to push for gender balance?
Could men’s (and many women’s) silence around women’s leadership and resistance to gender balance not only be gender bias or an unwillingness to do the hard work of movement building… but also a sign that we’re missing a pretty huge piece of the puzzle?
Women’s Leadership: Moral Obligation or Good Business Decision?
Marino cited a Japanese business principle “kaizen”—which directly translates as “improvement,”—saying that kaizen is actually quite a bit more than just improving a work process. It also means agitating one’s company in ways that it needs to be agitated. This includes agitating the organization around issues of gender bias. What kaizen is really about, he says, is “waking up every day trying to make things better.”
Diana Nyad’s Real Victory: Fewer Heroes, More Swimmers
Everybody wants a hero—heroic leadership has been all the rage for centuries—but truly, sometimes we really don’t need one. All we need is a 64 year old author/journalist/distance swimmer named Diana Nyad to fulfill her 35 year long dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage… emerging from the water after 50 hours to remind everybody, “It looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a team [effort].”
5 or 6 Coping Strategies for When You Don’t Feel Heard
Ever have a really interesting idea at work or in the world, share it, and notice that you don’t get much of a response? Either because people just don’t seem excited about it or say they don’t understand it? And then a dude, maybe someone you know or don’t know, maybe someone who came up with the same idea, or someone who is intentionally trying to support you, shares this same idea and everyone responds enthusiastically? Yeah, me too. Weird, right?!
If Men Don’t See You, Are You Really There?
“How many of you think you have to be seen by men before you can be seen?”
Nilofer Merchant asked this question at a fantastic conversation/salon I attended in New York earlier this year led by Merchant and Ellen McGirt. The topic was women, work, and visibility—and the concept of “onlyness”—our unique contribution as women and as individuals, in the workplace and in the world.
Follow Your Real Work Inside and Outside of Institutions
Given the state of the world and our institutions, what work (paid or unpaid) do we really want to be doing? As individuals and women leaders, what work are we uniquely well-suited to do? What contribution can we make and do we want to make? I’m reminded of a line from Margaret Wheatley, “The leaders we need are already here.”
Dreaming 5 Ways the World Could Change for Women…
Sometimes this question of when the world going to change for women feels so complex and daunting, all I have energy left to do is dream! And it’s a bit of a paradox because dreaming ultimately is what gives me energy to get back to activism. So here are a few ways I dream the world could, just might, if we can help it, change for women.
Take the Lead, Change the Narrative
One of the most exciting things about movement building is watching a new story or a narrative, or a new powerful idea, emerge in our collective consciousness and take clearer shape over time. In the women’s movement, this is usually a new story about women or gender, our relationships to each other as citizens, what leadership looks like, or how change happens. This is not a process in which we are passive; we must be active players in the creation of new stories; but many of these stories are emergent.
Women’s Leadership and the Likeability Trap
Do we want to focus on the problem of powerful women being so darn unlikeable? Or do we want to work toward a solution: gender balance in the workplace, our communities, and all of our major institutions, which will inevitably mean new visions of leadership?
What Makes a Movement?
Movements don’t happen as a result of one individual or organization, but rather from the cumulative, coordinated, and uncoordinated efforts of many individuals and groups. If movement building feels chaotic, that’s because it is. And, as a mentor of mine reminded me recently, in other ways movements are very much controlled and rightly so.
