Feminine Leadership: Intuition as a leadership tool
Female Leadership is one of the trending topics and to me it feels like one of the hottest buzzword in business right now. Don’t get me wrong — I am a strong supporter of women in leading positions. Yet, what I also experienced so far is that the pure fact of having a woman as a leader does not necessarily create a change in the way things are done. We still fall for the HOW — the outer appearance — and oftentimes we do not have a closer look at the WHAT. Quite a number of leading women grew up in an absolute masculine and male dominated environment.
Leadership is no ego shooting
While in the 80ies a lot of women started learning the masculine codes — remember suits with shoulder pads — now is the time to give space to more feminine expressions of leadership as well. It brings us to the foundation of leadership: is it intellect or intuition based? Is it coming from the mind or the heart? Is it exclusive or inclusive? Is it based on fear or creating safety and love?
While masculine leadership is exclusive and lead by the mind, oftentimes pushing and demanding, feminine leadership is inclusive and lead by heart, including care and empathy.
Change your CEO
One core aspect of feminine leadership is the active use of intuition as a decision-making tool. As Albert Einstein said:
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
In the corporate world it translates as: it is time to kick the intellect aka rational mind from the executive chair and bring intuition back to its rightful place. Because the truth is: the intellect was never meant to be the leader. It was supposed to be the executer, the operator.
The real leader is intuition. “She” is the one with the truly visionary energy, the one that gives us the hint before the intellect even knows what is going on, the one that whispers the answer before the question is asked.
Intuition is your CEO. Intellect is your COO.
Following Albert Einstein, we should all start putting our soul back to the CEO chair. “She”, our soul, is the one that creates the vision and sets the direction. Our mind is the COO. “His” task is to execute the strategy created by the soul.
When we open up for our intuition as a leadership tool, we are creating new opportunities for our businesses, companies and teams as well. Because from that moment we start focusing on the WHY and not the HOW anymore. As long as we rely on the mind, we will repeat what has been done before. The mind can only draw conclusions based on past experiences. We might change the color of the lines, yet we still draw the same lines. The limitation of the mind is its strength at the same time: we know what to expect and feel comfortable with it.
Our intuition asks for trust. She is the one who carries the visions, which can be described as the memory of the potential future. She is the one who leads us on the unknown path. We can never be 100% sure how things work out, and at the same time they will work out perfectly.
Use your inner GPS
The easiest way to include intuition as a leadership and decision-making tool in our everyday life is to listen. We have all the answers within ourselves, yet most of the time we are too busy, or it is too noisy for us to listen. Taking a moment to check how we feel about something can do the magic.
While for a lot of people intuition is hard to grab and seems to be a very mystical thing, it is actually easy to apply, when you know how. It requires two things: listening to our body and following its advice. Whenever you are about to decide, you can feel into the different options. Do so by finding a calm spot — I personally love toilet stalls — and visualize one option after the other. While doing so, focus on your body and its reactions. Generally speaking you can say: if something tightens it is a no, if something opens it is a go.
For most of the women I am working with, it is quite easy to learn how to communicate with their intuition — yes, there are some more tricks to it — the bigger challenge is to follow the direction your intuition is pointing you at. It means to trust yourself — sometimes more than the so-called obvious signs — it asks you to sometimes walk the hidden path instead of driving on the well-known highway and it leaves us with nothing that a feeling. Yet this feeling is so much more than any logical argument. Because it taps directly into our feminine wisdom, the space where we are more deeply connected than anywhere else.
Be what you believe in
Our intuition asks us to act upon the things we believe in, not what seems to be true. To me that is a big part of leadership. Leadership means to model what I believe in. It means to show up in the ways, we would like others to show up, we would like the world to be. Thereby we are actively creating our vision of the future and if all works out well we even take others along with us. Leadership means to act out vision, to create save environments and to act from the heart. That is feminine leadership.
Leadership is not limited to the workplace. It is not just a job, yet a decision we make. We can lead by example in every part of our life — as boss, mother, friend, colleagues, sister, volunteer, neighbor… you name it. To understand that the way we carry ourselves and embody what we want to see in the world is actually changing the world.
And what is your opinion on the change in leadership culture?
This article is part of a series of guest contributions on the topic of Female Leadership. You also have an interesting thesis you would like to share with us? Feel free to contact us!
Articles already published:
- “New Work: People x Technology x Collaboration” by Judith Gabbert, Porsche Digital Lab
- New Work: Networking and Knowledge Transfer — the Digital Transformation in the Automotive Industry by Alicia Metz-Kleine, Tandemploy Gm
- Break down old structures. Become a role model! by Thea Feuerstein, Porsche AG
- Living a dream contrary to social expectations — the story of two successful female racers, by Anja Hendel, Porsche Digital Lab
A guest contribution by Kaja Otto, intuition expert, women leadership coach, spiritual mentor and host of SoulWave Radio. As status quo shaker she supports women all over the globe to find their truth and to realign their lives and business to it. Kaja does not believe in “either or”, but “more off”, and lights up people through her unique blend of modern-day knowledge with ancient knowing. She believes that now is the time for us to reconnect to our real truth and thereby create a life we truly love. Kaja for more than a decade and bring more than 30 year of experience in energy work to the table. She worked with over thousand women online and offline in workshops, experiences and private sessions. Please find more about inspiring men & women on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
