Is it time for a revolution … starting with feminine leadership?

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, lynne mctaggart, The Bond, Video Interview

I have just been reading Lynne McTaggart’s latest book The Bond. In the intro she talks about the world we have now which, post Global Financial crisis of 2008 and other significant events in the last decade, quite clearly, no longer works. It really does not serve humanity in the way it should. Right in the introduction she points out that “We urgently need a new story to live by……. We need some new rules to live by. We need another way to be.”

In a nutshell that is what our latest video is about in the conversation series between myself and Dr David Paul, a Sydney-based expert on global leadership and complex change. Because of his expertise in complexity and his gift for expressing his ideas in such beautiful, clear and simple language, David has often been called on to give advice to world leaders and senior government leaders all over the globe.

If you think about it, the problems we face today are indeed so extremely complex and go way beyond the expertise that any one single person could now be expected to provide. It’s as if the solutions are destined to emerge from many sources rather than already residing somewhere and our job is simply to find out where and who has the secrets. No single source has the answers now……. but together, using different thinking, we have a chance of bringing forth some new answers.

Lynne talks about the current world order which is failing us having grown out of three Revolutions which originally held such promise (the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s and the two Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries). A culture of what she calls “competitive individualism” is what we have now created and this has disconnected us from a much saner, fulfilling and holistic existence.  I mention Lynne’s book here because in this video you will hear David calls for change and says that in actual fact, another revolution is what is needed now. He says we have gone so far down a path of destruction that the system is way beyond tweaking. Now, only radical, revolutionary reform will bring us back from the brink. And he feels that this next new global revolution needs to be in the hands of women who are the only unheard voice left.

I was quite taken aback when David first said this. I have had these stirring thoughts in my head for some time now … what would that revolution look like? How do we start it? If we as women take leadership, then how do we enrol the men in it for it is not a revolution against men. It’s more a push-back against a patriarchal system and masculine way that has trapped and failed the majority of men too. So even though I don’t yet know what the revolution will look like, I am clear that it is feminine leadership that is most needed to get it started and maybe see it through….

The conversation on the video is about how women are leaving middle management in droves and so removing themselves from the pipeline that supplies the most senior women to join organisations at Board level. David talks about the choices that face women and how they often opt for a work / life balance so they can accommodate the needs of family and their many roles. These choices often lead to taking a part-time option which is generally seen as giving less commitment to the corporation (in favour of family) and so is penalised by taking those women out of the frame for the top leadership jobs.

In pointing out that change is usually most effective when it comes from the bottom as a grass-roots initiative or movement, David is again challenging us to think about what we, as women, with our different thinking, different perspectives, different needs can bring to bring to the table. What new questions can we ask… what new ways of being and working can we model so that we indeed spark a revolution and so actually start to bring forth what Lynne McTaggart calls for in her urging for a new story for humanity?

I’d be interested in your responses and ideas …… I am not letting this drop. This is not a throwaway line in a conversation although it is true I could just have left it at that. But no, it is time to create change, it’s a call that I cannot ignore. Can you?  It’s time to be a leader in change and model new ways of being, living, working and leading … the feminine way. I know you have been thinking about how YOU would do things differently. It’s time to share what you are doing in your own life or enterprise or inside your corporation that is going to create this new story, this new way of working, living and being.  Men and women … we have to find a new way. Answers on a postcard please …….. email me … comment .. tweet me … let’s continue the conversation.

Love from London

Gina

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why have women left management?

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, where are the women leaders?, where are the women on boards?, women in business, women in management, women leaders, women leaving management, women on boards

The third video in the series of conversations on Feminine Leadership with Dr David Paul…

While I was in Australia a report was issued by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency presenting census data from the last decade showing what little progress women have made in the upper ranks of corporate Australia. Subsequent media coverage trumpeted the headline:  ‘Reform Key to Women’s Progress.’ Unless something radically different is done, most commentators were saying that change is just never going to happen.

 

63% of the top 500 companies had no female senior execs at all
63% of the top 500 companies (on the Australian Stock Exchange) had no female senior execs. None. And Australia trails its overseas peers with only 9.2% of female board directors (in ASX500 companies). Compare with the UK which has just 13.2% of females on the boards of the top 250 FTSE companies and 16.5% in the USA on Fortune 500 company boards.
The CEO of ANZ Bank Mike Smith was quoted as saying  ”More radical approaches are called for … to drive more women into senior leadership positions … Businesses need to take the time to understand what is needed and  take direct action to ensure more women thrive and advance in our workplaces”.

It is clear that companies need to implement structural change to appoint and develop strong pipelines of female talent.  When a top male leadership team wakes up to the shifts happening across the planet and decides to appoint women they find the queue of women waiting outside the boardroom door has gone. Those who were actually waiting for a boardroom place probably weren’t standing in the line anyway, but they became impatient and left .. some went downstairs and elsewhere in the organisation to part-time roles so they could juggle family life, others walked out the building, some even left their industry … all so that they could find other creative, flexible, more rewarding and nourishing ways to express themselves and make a living.

Why are there less women in management waiting for those top positions?
I asked Dr David Paul why he thought there were less women in management and therefore not waiting in the pipeline of talent for the top jobs. His response is captured  in third video in the second series of conversations on Feminine Leadership.

David said that women have realised that they don’t want to play the male political game anymore, they just want to do the job, get on with it and get home. They don’t want to spend every night working late as many executives are unreasonably expected to do. The masculine culture does not work for them so they seek employment elsewhere often starting their own enterprises. Certainly in the UK & USA, women are behind more start-ups than men. David says this is a huge loss of talent which also impacts the culture of a business when senior and promising women leave.

“There’s a huge gap and now we’ve gone back to the military style of leadership which is, you’ve got a general at the top and we’ve got all the forces down below. Whereas now, we’ve passed that metaphor. We need to say, “How can we partner? How can we expand? How can we grow together?  I think part of the problem with women’s slow progress, with some of the articles that we’re seeing, is that men are fearful of what do we have to give up. Women are fearful of what do we have to give in to?”

What we need in order to see more women stay in management is a whole culture change. Even the chief executive of the ANZ, Mike Smith, is talking about taking a radical approach. We need to involve women in creating a culture change. What’s up for reinvention is the whole nature of work and finding a way to make it a more nourishing and compassionate workspace for women and men.

David continued, “I have a feeling that if women were at senior levels, they would say, “Let’s all take a pay cut at the senior levels but let’s keep the people that we have.” I’m not talking about the corporate deadwood. I’m talking about people who actually add value to the organisation.   I think we need to smash the notion of thinking outside the box, as well. What we need to do is smash the box and start with a completely new shape and say, “What can we create together?”

The article headline in The Australian newspaper says “Reform key to women’s progress”. Let’s take this a step further and turn this the other way round … women ARE the key to reform. Do you agree?

Dr David Paul is a Sydney-based expert in global leadership and complex change.

Watch the video