Women Leaders and Conscious Mothers Impact The Bottom Line.
"Companies in the top 10% for financial performance have more women leaders, with 29% women leaders compared to only 23% women leaders in underperforming companies." - DDI World.
What defines a great leader? I believe it is the action of leading by example while simultaneously evoking the best from a person in all facets of their lives. A true leader is unafraid to stand at the frontier of the unknown and forge a new way forward, seen by some as brilliance and others as crazy. Women are not strangers to this dynamic.
In nature, what drives its evolution is what works for the whole. It is free to abandon old forms and functions that no longer work and turn towards new ways of doing things to evolve and thrive.
Old and outdated patriarchal paradigms around the 8 - 5 were designed by men, for men. It is an extractive and self-serving paradigm. Imagine how quickly things would change if men had to birth babies and breastfeed throughout the night. The world has changed. It's time to evolve.
I have been in roles as a steward for wellness and regeneration, where motherhood has posed a cost - both to my well-being and to my financial standing, in the current workplace paradigm.
I am fully aware that not all women are mothers, but for this article, I just want to focus on the benefit of including motherhood in leadership.
Women leaders focus on employee engagement.
Being a conscious mother is a bit like being a zen teacher. For that, you need your own teacher to keep yourself in check. Why?
"The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again."- Krishnamurti
Conscious mothering is about extending invitations to children to evoke their own questions and engagement with life. It’s not about projecting your ideas and beliefs onto them, suffocating and disempowering them with endless advice which can only diminish their self-esteem (micromanaging) Our job as mothers is to create safe containment for them to explore the world and learn for themselves, through what we call in biomimicry, feedback loops. At first, I wanted to assign the word ‘mistakes’ when describing how they learn but really, to offer ourselves and them a refuge of equanimity is key. We do this without tainting things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but rather just calling the mechanism what it is - a feedback loop.
In nature, a feedback loop is just the process of cause and effect and as mentioned, nature evolves that way by abandoning what is not working and moving towards what does.
Parenting is a path destined for broken-heartedness. It has to be so, or we would never be able to touch the depth of divine love we do. Parenting is also about empowering our children so much that they no longer need us; The opposite of what our humanness grasps for sometimes. Leadership gold right here. But it is that love that we get to touch, that gives us a certain depth and opens us to our well-spring of wisdom and power, much like how Mother Earth continues to nourish and resource us.
A conscious mother will soon see that It is important when raising children to encourage our children to practice a deep inquiry into all the facets of who they are instead of telling them what you think they are. It's about becoming so radically self-aware and growing into your own actualisation that you can become a mirror for them to see themselves, so they can continue to grow into their highest potential. This can only help them evolve and authentically emerge in the world, with their unique gifts and talents.
It’s taken me almost forty years to unravel from a childhood of projections and distortion so that I can emerge into the world and converse with life from my deepest essence, learning to be unafraid to share the gift of me, for those who are ready to receive it.
More women leaders support a more inclusive environment.
A zen teacher once said, “The whole universe is my personality”. A conscious mother has most likely visited many seasons and phenomena within herself to understand how important diversity is to build resilience for the hive to thrive. If you look at nature, it banks on diversity!
As Dr. Tamsin Woolley-Barker says, “Superorganisms have a special knack for creating abundance within the kinds of landscapes of scarcity that typically exclude other creatures.”
... which leads me to my next point. Superorganisms have a shared intention, and 'legacy' is usually its beating heart.
Conscious motherhood is all about leaving a legacy. It's about raising healthy and whole children who will thrive in the world and end generational trauma.
Not only that, mothers are true agents of evolution. Daily, we are practising being locally attuned and responsive. We are resourceful and opportunistic. We run on cyclic processes. We are the epitome of resilience. So, if you want to step forward onto the precipice of a higher future, let's bring motherhood into the conversation.
