Lead Like A Woman

This week I’m beginning to explore a topic that I know will have to be revisited in the future. At first I was hesitant to write about this, because there are so many ideas swirling around in my head and none of my thoughts seem concluded and complete. But what thought really is completely concluded? Our brains are constantly changing as we take in new information and live through different experiences. We expand, shift, and dial in our beliefs. So I will begin to write about this now, and we will see how this idea evolves in the future. 

Lead like a woman. What does this mean?

I’m going to start with a little background. The background is closely tied to my anger. My anger is not directed at any specific people, genders or populations. It is directed at the culture that we all hold up. The culture that tells us that women are weak. First by ingraining negative connotations and implications about the symbols of femininity and how they are to be perceived. Let me give a few very specific examples:

• A friend of mine had her boss make fun of her for having her nails painted, saying that she would be “afraid to get her hands dirty”.
• When my boss started sailing she had a captain tell her that she shouldn’t wear makeup on board. 
• My 10th grade English teacher made fun of girls who wore earrings to the gym in front of our entire class, saying those girls can’t be taken seriously.
• One of the women’s sports teams at my school wasn’t allowed by their coach to wear their hair down in roster pictures because it looked unathletic. 

Although these are taken directly from my own life, they likely sound very familiar to many people. The examples that I have given are regarding surface level symbols of women. If we wanted to go a step further we could point out the way in which women’s voices are mimicked as high pitch and whiny, or the perception that a group of women will inevitably act catty and bitchy towards each other. 

Regardless of how it is done – from surface level to deeper cuts – the conclusion is the same: Your femininity diminishes from your power. 

This notion is something that I would love to simply throw out the window, but unlearning is not a fast or easy process. Fortunately, many powerful women are slowly refusing to hold up this narrative. Which leads us out of our anger and into our hope: What does it look like to lead like a woman?

The words of two women really got my mind swirling in the attempt to answer this question. Tracy Edwards was the skipper for the first all female crew in the Whitbred Round the World race in 1989-90. This past January she was interviewed by Emma Garschagen on the On The Wind podcast and she dove into the idea of feminine leadership in a really beautiful way. Garschagan asked her about how deliberate it was to “keep the feminine in there” during the entire race campaign and throughout each leg of the race. Edwards response:

“It was very much a very definite thing that we did because…we don’t want to be men! We don’t want to be male clones! We’re girls! We like being girls! And so the whole image that we wanted to portray was that we could remain female, very feminine, and we could take on the sailing and the strength issues and the tactical issues and everything else without having to come into port looking like we’ve just been to the Antarctic for 6 months…So, you know, we did make a very conscious decision – you know, the white ankle socks, the white reeboks, pink shorts, grey t-shirts, and the HAIR. You see that was also very special because when we sailed into port we’d have cleaned the boat….we’d all washed and washed our hair…so we’d get in and someone honestly said to us once ‘Have you seriously just done 7000 miles or have you just been hiding around the corner?’… But that was very deliberate. We never wanted to be anything people expected. It wasn’t us just blowing everything that people thought about girls capabilities, it was that we didn’t have to CHANGE who we were to become that.”

Wow. The words of Abby Wambach, an iconic retired American soccer player, echo Edwards in a profound way.  Wambach was interviewed by Brene Brown on her Dare to Lead podcast, and at one point they were discussing a time when team USA got a new coach. She says 

“Up until this point, and this is no disrespect to any female coach that I had before, ‘cause they were only doing their best, but what they thought that they needed to be doing was to be the male versions of themselves…So here is this woman showing up as herself completely. I had never seen somebody to do that before, especially in leadership. I thought “Oh she’s not going to be serious, like, how is anybody going to take her seriously?”. Up until this point, we were the serious folks, like we’re USA, everything had to be real and hard core. And now she was giving us this opportunity to be our full selves and to actually enjoy the process.”

So here are these two incredible and powerful women, both having pushed milestones ahead for women in their fields, conveying similar sentiments. To lead like a woman means embracing YOU entirely and unapologetically. It means not trying to morph or fit into a mold. 

Being a woman is not intrinsically linked to strong feminine energy. It’s not about the makeup and the clothing, though those are important symbols. I think we’ve come so far in realizing that every person embodies different balances of the feminine and the masculine. The harmony of both in each person is so unique and beautiful. To lead like a woman you absolutely do not have to embrace femininity in any way that is not true to you. However, to lead like a woman you will not submerge any bit of yourself – including all of the exquisite feminine that IS true to you.   

In incomplete conclusion: I will carry this theory with me going forward. I will notice how it affects my leadership both as a captain and into all other aspects of my life. I urge you to also notice these things. Notice what you are submerging and ask yourself why. Embrace all aspects of both your femininity and masculinity. Regardless of how you identify – go forward and Lead Like A Woman.  

hannahgob@gmail.com

sailingvessel_phoenix on instagram