A Well-Resourced Woman & Leadership

A couple weeks ago, I decided I was going to do a special podcast focused on the well Resourced Woman. And after some thought, I decided and recording a few of the episodes, I thought, no, you know what, I want this just to be on Leadership is Feminine. This belongs here, doesn't belong somewhere else. And so the first episode dropped a couple of weeks ago and now we're going to start releasing each one of the episodes going forward. So thanks for tuning in.

Well, hi and welcome back to the well Resourced Woman, this special podcast series that I'm hosting as a part of my Leadership Is Feminine podcast. So if you are here, I'm thrilled you found me in this little special spot that we've curated. And today I want to talk to you about one of the resources that I know a well Resourced Woman leverages that I didn't really ever think about in the way that I now think about it until I had recently been at a retreat and I had to do a writing prompt and I wrote this whole article, blog, whatever you want to call it about when I was really young and my parents got divorced. And the very short of the long, because if you're a podcast listener, you've heard me talk about this, is that my mom and dad got divorced when I was pretty young, I was seven. And my mom had been working. She had worked off and on. She went to college, she got her degree at Cornell, and nutrition and home economics. So she had been the dietitian at University of Michigan when my dad was at school there. And so she had worked prior to my parents splitting up. But in 1976, 77, women still didn't have a lot of opportunities for things. She couldn't get a credit card, she had to have a friend give her some money and yada, yada, yada, a lot of extenuating circumstances. But nonetheless, she and I moved into a two bedroom apartment and she knew she had to work full time because my dad was not at the time providing any spousal support or alimony again. Seventies, by the way. As a side note, I, I don't think women realize today how difficult it was as a woman just 40, 50 years ago to suddenly find themselves single. And the resources we now have available to us, the ability for personal agency that we now have, my mom didn't have on those days where you're feeling a little bit like people are getting a little wily in this feminism movement and all the feminists, can we remember that it really was feminists who secured even your freedom to do Most of what you do today, especially if you're a business owner, get a loan, buy a building, have a business without a man co signing it anyway, I'm not going to go too far down that rabbit hole. But nonetheless, my mom had to figure it out. She got this apartment. I don't know who signed the lease for the apartment because I don't think she could have by herself. I'll have to ask her that. She hired a woman, young woman, she was 18 to come and live with us. She was a student. So I would have someone who would take care of me. And so in exchange for rent and room and board, this woman did that. So my mom didn't have to pay her. And she was lovely. She was from Ecuador. She's still a dear friend of the family. But my mom was able to get a job and she was able to get a job at a leadership level. And the reason that she was able to do that is a, she had a little bit of experience, but B, she knew how to lead people. She knew how to corral the hearts and the minds and the hands of other people to get work done. And when you can lead, you can come into an organization, you can come into a level of whatever that is and achieve more, get paid more, have more influence, have more responsibility. But because she was able to do that, she was able to secure a salary and a position. That was how we were able to survive and live and be fed and have clothes in a life. And so it wasn't until recently that I kind of put that together, that I inherently understand the value of being able to lead other people because I lived the experience of a daughter of a mother who could do that. And so when I started working and I, even when I was younger and I would just watch women abdicate their, their, their voice. So to me, that's what leadership is, is that I get a voice, I get to, I get to claim space that I want to have in the room. Whether you like what I have say or not doesn't matter to me. I get to have space. And I realized even at a young age, there were so many young women who didn't want to do that, didn't know how to do that, and didn't trust themselves to do that. And so the next podcast I'll do will be on personal agency, because these two go very closely, hand in hand. But leadership, knowing how to stand in your feet, in your body, with your voice, to achieve something through other people is a superpower. And if you are running a company right now and you consistently abdicate your voice. You consistently insult yourself in your own head about how terrible you are at leading people. You consistently talk about how you wish you just didn't have to do the stupid people part. You consistently insult your beliefs about how people should respond, the expectations that you should be able to hold. If you are constantly in this swirl of self doubt about how well you can stand in front of others and have a voice, then this is your investment right now. Because a well resourced woman knows her leadership voice. She knows what her values are, she knows what her expectations are, she knows what her vision is. She has confidence in the invitations she extends to other people to come into her queendom. She doesn't settle, she doesn't tolerate. Because I believe we were crafted to be leaders. I don't think that there's just, you know, some women are better at it than others. I really do believe that women were crafted to be leaders because women were built to be mothers. Now not all women are biological mothers and that's fine. I don't think the two are required at all. I just think you're built for it, that's all. And because of that, that means that we have this, this innate knowing of how to guide, nurture, mentor. Listen, I don't think that that skill, that part of who we are, that innateness is necessarily something we have to build. Well, let me say that differently. I don't think it's a skill you have to go get. I think you have it, you just have to nurture it, you have to develop. It needs to be developed in you. And it's developed through your self discovery, your own knowledge of yourself. I actually think the opposite is more true. I think that all of us innately have very strong leadership skill. But the world, the cultures we live in, the society we're in, the religions that many of us practice, teach it out of you. They teach you not to believe it, not to trust it, that you aren't meant for it, that men are meant for it, that men are meant to be leaders and women are not. And that in fact women who are leaders are unattractive, are unfeminine, are antithetical to what womenhood is, which you have to understand is a lie. And how do we know that? Like how do I know that so deeply? Right. Could we just look at modern society and find evidence that maybe I'm wrong? Sure. But let's go back a few thousand years where we know that women were actually regarded as the leaders, as the inspirers as the holy spiritual guides of communities, the matriarch. Now, I'm not suggesting that the world should just stop having men be in leadership and women should take. That isn't my mission. My mission is simply to help you thrive in your voice as a woman. I don't need the men to be squashed. I don't know why so many men and women think women should be squashed. I don't get it. Everybody can have a leadership voice and then here's the best news, especially when it comes to corporate space, company space, business space, people, I. E. Team members, they'll choose who they want to work for. That's the whole reason we interview. They will choose. So the best news is the better you get at being who you are, having your voice, knowing your values, knowing your invitations that you're going to extend to people standing firmly in who you are as a leader. The best news ever is you just get more delicious people who want to come work with you because they feel that alignment with you. Sure, when you first started your business and you were just trying to get people to come work and help you, like you didn't know what you were doing. And that's why you. You ended up with lots of people that work out, of course. But that's not because you're bad as a leader. That's because the world did not show you, teach you, give you permission for, give you pathways for how, how to lead as you authentically, genuinely, with confidence and competence and courage. I should have never, ever succeeded. Honestly, if you look at how I was as a new manager, leader in the company that I worked in, I should have never succeeded. I was a train wreck, Emotional, insecure, mad all the time, so frustrated, so, so boggled by people. I was so inept. I should have never succeeded. Too sensitive. And it's honestly by the grace of the fact that there just wasn't a lot of training that I had to figure it out. And the only way I knew how to figure it out was to do it the way that I knew how to do it. And then I got rewarded with some success. And that's all we need, right? It's just a little bit that says do it this way and you do it that way and it works. Well, maybe I'll try that again. So this is what I want for you. I want you to understand that I teach people how to become better as leaders, has women, women who stand in their voice as a leader, how to conduct yourself, how to make decisions, how to bring people into the team how to let people go from the team, when to say yes, when to say no. What is the best way for you? This is what I spend every day of my life doing. And I do it because this, to me is a core to your joy and your freedom as a. As a woman who is living on this planet. To feel capable of achieving what you want is freedom. And you don't have to look like him or her to do it. You can be you. But we have to first acknowledge that, that a lot of you listening to this don't know what that is. You don't trust your voice as a leader. You doubt yourself every day as a leader. You don't even think yourself as a leader. You're the business owner. Surprise. You're in front. You're the leader. So a well resourced woman, she understands who she is as a leader and if that's work you need to do and I'm so glad we've met. I'll talk to you on the next episode.