Power of She- Interview 1
I hope you are well. As many of you know, a big part of my work in the last decade has been in supporting men and women to bring their full selves to work and home. With that said, a lot of my work has been supporting women of all ages and stages. I have supported younger women students at Stanford, middle and older age women that are helping professionals who attend my professional trainings at UC Berkeley, thousands of women in my workshops, public classes, and meditation retreats, women leaders at work, and women clients who I support as an executive life coach. I feel incredibly honored to have supported so many women to find their voice, bring their full self forward, lead from what really matters, and change patterns that are not serving them, so they can be their best and brightest selves.
At this time in the world, I am feeling MORE called to support the feminine to rise and lead. Yes! When I say this, I am not excluding men. Men and women each have a masculine and feminine energy.
We as a human race have leaned too far into our masculine energy for the purpose of economic development and power. We can see this imbalance with the obvious demise shown by our economic and ecological debt.
The masculine energy of doing, taking, claiming is not always so sensitive about the long term consequences of its actions. The feminine energy is more collaborative, slower and more responsive about decisions, and more in touch with how decisions impact those around themselves and the earth. In the next few months, I am going to be interviewing thought leaders around topics that support us all to help the feminine to rise.
My first interview in the Power of She series is with my friend and colleague Therese Huston. Therese is a professor at Seattle University, a cognitive psychologist, and researcher. She wrote a wonderful book called How women decide. Whats true, whats not, and what strategies spark the best choices. I highly recommend this book. The interview above shares a lot of the research she learned and also some additional tips. I hope this interview supports you, inspires you to tap into your feminine energy, and encourages you to support the women in your life. https://vimeo.com/207876415
Video and Research Summary:
- When women and men are under stress, men tend to take more risk than women based on their stress response. Women tend to pause, assess the long term benefits and consequences more than men. Research has found that women make better decisions under stress. Due to this statistically significant difference, women should be in more leadership roles at work and also be part of the decision making process.
- Research has found that based on women’s brains vs mens and thus womens ability to process emotions, women overall score higher on emotional intelligence (EQ) than men. EQ is the ability to pay attention to feelings and needs within yourself and then extend this social sensitivity to others. EQ is a core skill that I teach and support my students to learn and grow in all of my courses at work, Stanford and UC Berkeley. I have met many emotionally intelligent men and most of my close male friends and mentors are high on EQ. While women innately are stronger in EQ skills this doesn’t mean that all women are high in EQ and men are not. Regardless of our inherent skills and strengths, we can always learn and grow.
- Research shows that the more gender equality and diversity is in business, the more successful and high performing teams and thus businesses. Woohoo!
- When men and women go into negotiations at work, men are more successful than women. Women and men need to find ways to support women to be just as deserving of promotions as men. Watch the interview for more tips.
- Marc Benioff, the CEO of sales force spent $3 million adjusting salaries to ensure that men and women are paid equally within the company. Now he makes a habit of asking other tech CEOs when they’re going to do the same. Read more here.
