Navigating and Shifting Power Structures for Women

Thank you again for joining this workshop. This is a series of 5 workshops where we talk about women, we talk about things that can help us take the next step in our own personal and professional growth. Today we will be talking about navigating and shifting power structure for women with Runa Boyouz. We'll start with a very short introduction and then we're just going to let Runa lead us for the rest of the event. So welcome to the Future of Leadership. If you are not familiar with Econo, we are a community of fractional executive women coaches and business owners. This is our small yet growing community, and as you can see, we are across the board from a fractional chief data officer to chief digital creative officer to chief customer revenue and, and chief leadership officer. There's the fractional movement is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to focus on what we really want to do. The mission and purpose of Econoques is quite simple. We want more women in power. And so the purpose of our community is to get together and really understand the dynamic needs of business so we can provide our members with the knowledge and the community so they can build successful fractional coaching and business practices. Now, my name is Virginie Glaenzer. I've been a fractional chief marketing officer for the last 6 years. I'm also the founder of EconoGuide. I felt I needed to be surrounded with other brilliant women who wanted to create an excellent excellence in their work and wanted to always be on the cutting edge of trends and technologies. I'm a serial entrepreneur and I really help leaders with digital marketing, sales funnel strategy, but I really empower them by assisting them to navigate complex situations with a clear and thoughtful approach. That's enough about me. Today, the reason why we're here is to talk about the word power, navigating and shifting power structure for women with Wouna Bouyouz. Wouna is an executive coach and fractional chief Transformation Officer. So before I let Runa share her screen and let and guide us into this workshop, let me give you a little bit of an introduction about her. And that's really very small, but you will be able to find her online and see how amazing she is. She is a visionary thought leader and activator. She empowers future-focused leaders and their team to thrive in a changing world by leveraging her CEO and serial entrepreneur with entrepreneur experience, she unlocks clients' potential for true power and conscious leadership through coaching and navigating shifting power dynamics in the workplace. She's the founder of True Power Institute. She's also the host of the True Power Institute Executive Roundtable and Circle and the co-founder of Social Impact Initiative. She ignites possibilities for well-being and regeneration, and she invites all of us on a journey towards a thriving She's also— Runa is a published author, including co-author of the international bestseller, The Successful Mind: Tools to Living a Purposeful, Productive, and Happy Life. Thank you so much, Runa, for joining us and giving— being so generous in your time, sharing your knowledge. Thank you and welcome.

Thank you, thank you so much, Virginie, and welcome everyone. And thank you, Acorn Oak. Virginie and Acorn Oak are hosting us. I am absolutely delighted to see you and be with you and see some familiar faces here like Pamela. And I think I will just want to, as the introduction has been done, I will just go into sharing with you my, uh, presentation. Want to move this here. Uh, yep, come on, I need it to— I thought I had it on the beginning. So here we are, Navigating and Shifting Power Structures for Women Leaders. And, uh, I need to do the present, and I'm just getting organized here. Okay, can you all hear me?

Yes, perfect.

Yeah, they're muted. So I want to start by putting out a statement and say, imagine a world where women leadership is the norm and not the exception. I know it's a very bold and transformational vision that shakes up the status quo, but I think that's exactly why we are here and what's happening in the world. So let's hold on to that vision. But talking about women's leadership, just like Virginie mentioned, it is not about just women. We have feminine attributes and archetypes within all of us, whether we are male, female, or something else, or identity, or sexual orientation. So what we are really calling for is to embrace all of us as one humanity, as individuals, just the way we want to be, our whole selves, in order to be able to create a world that works for all. But we have been in a place for millennia, for a few thousand years, where we have been in a system which we can call patriarchy and, or the old guard, and we can see that the structures of these old guards, of this castle, is a little bit starting to crumble as we speak here today, just with what's happening in the world. This particular structure, we know it all very well, we know it too well, which focuses on command and control, domination, hierarchical structure, and oppression, but particularly oppression of women and minorities. We can classify this as, from a power standpoint, as a power over, where those that are in leadership are powering over the people below them, lower down in the pyramid. We also see this as powering over nature, extracting resources from nature without giving anything back. And so this is very destructive. And we also see a lot of abuse of power, whether that is in the business world or in the government or just even in society. This kind of system is fear-based. It's based on scarcity mindset, where people believe that there isn't enough to go around for everyone and that they have to hold on to whatever they have, whether that is power or fame or position. So, and as I say, we see this today as one side of the coin, and then we want to present to you a different side. But this is exactly what we see in, say, in the US, in the political arena now. We have had two old white men as candidates for the presidency of the United States, and the people didn't like it. The people said, we want something different. This is not what we want to continue to do. We have done it long enough, so we need something new. So the impact of patriarchy on women has been enormous. It means that women have had less opportunities to become high-ranking leaders within organizations or within governments. It means that there has been an underrepresentation. Often we see that women in the lower ranks, they don't get promoted. Men are more likely to get promoted than women. And that means that the funnel for women to choose women for higher positions is very small. That minimizes the ability for women to get to the high leadership positions. And then of course, we see their perpetuation of stereotyping. We see, and we see this on a daily basis, reinforcement of racism, sexism, misogyny, and harmful stereotyping of women and minorities. And those of us that are here in the US, we see this on a daily basis in the politics. So, We have moved forward somewhat. 20 years ago, women's participation in, in top leadership positions was about 20%. Last year, 2023, it had reached 28%, which is not very high, but still. But what we are also seeing, which is very alarming, is that during the last year, 25— there's been a 25% drop of women in CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies. And this is kind of taking us backward. And when these women, I asked why they are stepping out, the answers are different for each one of them. But here are some of the things that they say. They feel that the pressure of being under scrutiny all the time, particularly being under scrutiny as women leaders, is very toxic and very difficult for them and families. Another reason they gave is literally occupational burnout. And then others have caregiving, uh, that caregiving responsibilities that they can't get away from. And, uh, so women, uh, and plus there's one more thing, women are not as, um, how can I say, they are not as interested in power as men. It's easier for women to let go of power positions. So, but this is not— this is a development that is going in the wrong direction for us, at least in this particular category. But we also have companies that have a structure and culture that is not very welcoming to women. So it's difficult for women to find their footing and being able to, to bring their whole selves to the table. And just like Virginie Glaenzer was mentioning before, She was trying to change herself into men's behavior in order to fit in, but that's actually not what we need right now. We need something opposite. So if the change goes as it has been going for the last while, it's going to take us to 2227 to get equality for women and men. In the business world. This is according to Melinda Gates, that is a, a great ambassador for women in leadership. Uh, so do we want to wait until 2227? Uh, that is a question I want to point out to you because we have been trying to do this by breaking the glass ceiling, and there are so many articles about women breaking the glass ceiling, but I want to pose the question: do we really want to break that glass ceiling? Is that glass ceiling taking us to where we want to go, which is into a world made by men for men? It's a private club that values and honors men's attributes and not so much women's attributes. So is this really a good strategy and use of our energy to try to break the glass ceiling. Just a thought. But I also want to say that we are being helped by evolution because a new dawn is rising, the rise of the feminine power. And I want to take you back to a prediction coming from Mongolian shamans that I learned about through my Native American teacher Oki Forrest. When I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was instrumental in me starting to focus on this particular topic that has since then been really dear to my heart. And she shared with me that the Mongolian shamans see things in cycles. And we have over the last millennia been in a cycle that they call Era of Men for 5,400 years. So no wonder that women are getting tired. But at the moment, we are in the beginning phase of a transition where we are going over, rolling over to the next cycle, which happens to be the era of women. And that is why I think we are feeling that something is happening, like Virginie was mentioning, something is in the air. And why there has been, even though we would like to see more progress with more women in leadership, at least we are moving somewhat forward. Here is Gloria Steinem, who we all know as a fierce feminist, and she says, "We don't think about women fitting into the world, but think about making the world to fit the women." And that's exactly what I want to talk to you about. I see things that we need to do in two areas. First is we need to change the system away from the pyramidal hierarchical model to a more circular model where everyone can sit at the table. And this is very much in alignment with indigenous people that talk about working from a circle model. And the second thing we need to do, we need to change ourselves. We need to expand our consciousness. We to expand our mindset and the way we behave and the way we think, the way we feel, to a more expansive version of ourselves so we can usher in these systems change. Einstein has told us that if we use the same way of thinking that created the old system, we are not going to get any changes. So we need to change our way of thinking. And literally, I think that that is really the consciousness revolution that we are also in. Goes hand in hand. So in a way, we are playing a new game. So the rules of the old game of the patriarchy, of the hierarchical model, will gradually— is my prediction— gradually move away, and they will be replaced with new rules of the game. Rules like more relational rules. We are moving away from an era of competition and success to a more relational context where instead of being transactional in our dealings in the business world where we are only focusing on the bottom line, we are going through a transformational phase where we are realizing that just focusing on the bottom line or on money or profit isn't very, very satisfactory. To our health and well-being. So we want something more. So we are going through this transformation and we are going into a relational context where we are thinking about the collective well-being of everyone. And our leadership approach is based on creating a world that works for the people, for the planet, for profit— we need to have profit— and also for our purpose of bringing meaning to what we do. So we are also, we can also say that we are going into a new system instead of the domination system. Rhiannon Eisler, who is a famous feminist and futurist who wrote the book The Chalice of the Blade, she talks about the new system being a system of partnership, which is much more about collaboration, cooperation, co-creation. It's about the abundance mindset versus the scarcity mindset, and it's about care that we start to value and measure. The care that is now not valued, all the caregiving that is, that is done mostly by women, whether it's in the home or out in society, needs to start coming in and being part of this partnership system. And we can talk about a new game of economy. I use the word well-being economy here. Sometimes people call it abundance economy, and actually Virginie has a book called The Economy of Abundance if anyone is interested to look that up. I was so lucky to be in Iceland in June where there was a summit about The Wellbeing Economy, and where leaders from all over the world, particularly Europe though, but we had Canada, Australia, and the US represented as well, politicians and leaders of organizations sharing with the audience what they are doing in their respective countries or cities to bring, to measure the care work that needs to be done and measure the human capital to transform the economy away from that transactional system to a system that creates thriving for all. And the new game is also about you. It's about you taking responsibility for who you are and stepping into your power so you can be part of, or we could say, an active participant of this new paradigm shift that is happening. I put together a few things that I see important in this paradigm shift where we are really going away from what we have called power over to what I want to call power to or power with. Power to the people or power to the individual and power with, meaning that we are sharing the power, we are empowering each other, we are making decisions together. In a shared distributed way. And we have mentioned some of these things, but I want to say, I want to point out, for instance, we are going, not that we stop doing things, but we are starting to honor also our state of being versus just doing. And in fact, what happens when we are in the creative process, the universal creative process, we really need to start with the being state. But too often we have done it like the male orientation does, which is start with the doing and then going to the being. And I also want to say we are moving from fear, which is what we see so much in our society today, fear and hate, and we are moving to love. And we are moving from it's all about me and mine to it's about me and you, and it's about all of us. I also want to talk about ego because ego is a big challenge within the business world and in life in general. And when people are coming from a power-over position, they usually have some kind of woundedness that they haven't managed to heal. And the more we work on ourselves and take responsibility for who we are, then we start showing up with an ego, because we don't want to get rid of the ego. We need the ego in order to implement the vision of the soul, we could say, so to speak. But we need the ego to be healthy. And one more thing I want to talk about is the machine organization. The way traditional business can be classified is more working like a machine, where the people working in the organization are just like a cog in a wheel, and we want to transmute that to what we call a living organization, where we are thinking about the well-being of the whole system. I also put a list of attributes of the new power game, and I'm not going to go over those. I know all of you will recognize these attributes because it's something we have been, as women and women leaders, have been working on within ourselves and talking about with others for a long time. I just wanted to put it there to remind you if you want to go back and see the presentation, at least you have it there so you know what kind of attributes we are or I am talking about. And I would be surprised if you wouldn't agree with me. So I want to talk now about power. Because like Virginie said, power is a very, very complicated issue, very complex, and it is something that we don't talk much about. We talk much about leadership, but power we don't talk so much about. So yeah, the topic of power is really a taboo topic. So what I feel we need to do as we are going through this transformation, we need to mystify what power is and how we can source power and how we can use power in a positive way. We need to claim our own power and we need to redefine power from the lens of the partnership model, from the lens of masculine-feminine attributes. But like I said, power is complicated. It is very sensitive. Women, it was interesting, there is a book called The Power Code and the authors, they interviewed women leaders from all over the world. And what they were stunned to realize was that so many women asked them not to use their name, names when they were telling their stories. And the reason was that they didn't want to get into trouble with their bosses. Or get into trouble with their spouses or their partners. Because as we gain power, we seem to be threat to mostly to men. And so what a lot of women do, they try to squeeze down their own power. They are very uncomfortable talking about their own power, talking about their paycheck. Some women are earning more than their husbands. Or their partners, and that is a sensitive issue. So women are very, very uncomfortable and frustrated with knowing how to talk about power, and that's something we need to change. Another issue around power is that the structures within, whether it's in organizations or institutions, are very complex, and it's, it's like a maze. We don't know how to navigate it, and that means that often we don't seek power because we don't have the tools and the strategies to know how to navigate. But if we want to change the paradigm and we want to bring more power to women in leadership, we need to start putting a light on what power is and learn about it and become comfortable with it. I also want to say that, and this surprised me, that apparently the topic of power is more sensitive than the topic of sex or money, uh, which, uh, surprised me. But here we are. Come on, my button is not wanting to move. I apologize for this. Oh, I don't know why they— I'm stuck. Let me just exit to come back in.

Or yeah, just maybe stop sharing, or no. Yeah, no control in Zoom whatsoever.

No. What's going on? Okay, oh, here we go. Might have been just stuck. So power, yeah, it pulled up. Power is, I want to talk about the origin of power. It's a Latin word, potere, which means to be able to, to be able to have something, do something, or make something happen. And here is a very simplistic definition of power that I created more with the context of physics, where power is the ability to change a system or a situation within a certain time frame, meaning that the shorter time frame it takes us to change the system or change the situation. The bigger the change. So I want to put this lens on the 200 years that we have to wait to become equal to men in whether it's in organizations or say governments or society in general and say that the more power we have, the faster we can make the change happen. So this is an invitation again to all of us. The authors of the book Power Code, they are kind of working on a new definition, a more power to, power with definition. But their traditional definition of power is the ability to exercise one's will over others to make them do something that they would otherwise not want to do, meaning coerce them to do something. Where the new definition or working idea for a definition is the ability to exercise one's will to influence others, not coerce them, and to affect change. So this is where they are moving us to a more level of the feminine. To understand power dynamics, we have to understand that there are external dynamics, which are the systems, the institutions, the structures that we work in, And then we have the internal power, or we could call it our personal power, which are the power over our thoughts, our, our mind, our behavior, our, our mindset. We have a lot more power than we think we have, but this is often the area that women are not so strong in, and that's why it's difficult for them to navigate the external power structures. So we need to balance both of these out, and this is why we are doing this kind of workshops to help women to understand the importance of learning about power. So I wanted to tell you a little bit about power itself. Like Einstein said, everything is power, and maybe I'm coming talking about power here more from a metaphysical perspective, but we can see power as energy. Which flows continuously, just like electricity does. And it can be used and it can be transformed. A lot of people think that power is bad. But in fact, power is neutral. It's neither good nor bad. It, it becomes what we make it become, meaning that the intention behind how we use power determines the outcome. Also, people, some people think that they have no power, they feel disempowered, but in fact we all have power. We have much more power than we think we have, and this is very important to understand, that we can cultivate our power in different areas, whether it's in that external system or the internal inner game of our power. We need the balance again. If there is a blockage in our— we could say it's nearly like we need to be plugged into the power source. And if the cord that is plugging us in is twisted, maybe the flow cannot go so easily through, and that means that we are imbalanced. So it's really, really important to understand that we need to be plugged into energy or plugged into power. And also we need to understand that power is renewable. There is endless supply. There is nothing that we need to hoard. And this is just the basic, my basic understanding of seeing power as energy. Power also has many different forms. We are very familiar with positional power in role, CEO, president, managing director, teacher, and so on. We have expertise power. A lot of us on this call are experts. We are coaches, consultants. We have a certain type of knowledge, which is valuable. We have experience, which is more comes with, with going through life. Often at the older phase of our life, it become easier for us to have wise judgments and insights. We have social power, which is what kind of power structure are you born into. Are you born into a structure of being a prince in the UK, or are you born into being a teacher somewhere? We have informal power, which is more about what kind of power we have within communities, within our networks, within groups. We have personal power that we have talked a little bit about. It's how we can harness the multidimensional energies and powers that we can plug in It's, it's about our purpose, our intention, our vision for how we want to live our lives. We have body power, which is more about physical strength or our health, our energy level, vitality, or how comfortable we literally are in our skin as being women leaders. And then we have charisma power, which often is talked about as the it factor, or we could say we talk about leadership presence, and that's something we all need to cultivate. Men and women perceive power often differently. Men are more interested in power in general, and they are more looking at it as a tool to achieve control and maybe even prestige and fame and money. Women are, have a much wider interest level. They are interested in, yes, they could be interested in advancing their career, but they're also interested in oftentimes, and more often than not, of having good relationship and creating a family, having good friendships, communities. They want to take care of their body, go and do their yoga. They want to continue to learn and grow. That's why we usually have much more women than men on workshops like this. So women have a much wider focus on what they want to do in life, and power isn't always the number one thing. So we literally have different perception of power and what we want to do with it. So now I want to ask you, what's going to be your contribution to this power shift? That we have talked about. In the beginning, I invited you to entertain the idea of a bold vision for the future where women leadership is the norm and not the exception. And how can we move forward together to make that happen? To do that, I believe we need courage. And I am encouraged, and I want to share with you some good news. And starting with courage, because in Iceland where I come from, we have a newly president that took over on August 1st. Her name is Halla Tómasdóttir, and she wrote a book called Courage because she has been a very strong advocate for women leadership and feminine leadership for decades. And we were so lucky that she became the president of Iceland for the next 4 years. So I'm giving you some good stats also about women leadership, which is kind of opposite what I said in the beginning. But at least in Iceland, the first 3 candidates of 12 candidates for president of Iceland were all women. And they got collectively sent 75% of the votes. Which is absolutely fabulous. Hattla had a role model which is so important, which was Vítís Finnbóðardóttir, which was the first female president of Iceland and the first female president of the world. And she stayed in power for 16 years and became beloved. So it shows how role models are important. Mexico also got a new female, first female president this year. Claudia Schenbaum. And those of us in the US, we are on a daily basis watching our vice president, current vice president Kamala Harris, be on track to want to become the president of the United States and the most powerful person in the world. And wouldn't that be a milestone? Wouldn't that be exponential change if that would happen. And we can see how she is bringing a lot of these more feminine attributes to the table in, in the things that she values. And she wants to bring power to the people, the freedom, and we also see the joy. You saw on my list the word joy, and we are experiencing, or people are describing her campaign as joyful. So I am inviting us to be part of this paradigm shift and to lead with power, and not only with power, but with our authentic true power. But to do that, we want, we need to want the power, we want, need to own it, and we need to enjoy it like Kamala Harris is doing. To summarize what we have done, we talked about creating a new vision for the world. We talked about where we have been, or the old guard, what we are moving away from. We talked about what we are moving towards, which is the new dawn of female empowerment. And we talked about the importance for each and every one of us as women and as humans to start embracing the feminine attributes within all of us. And create a new future together. And I want to close with my favorite quote, which is: be the change you want to see in the world. This is something that I have tried to do, and I try to do in my teaching, because it's not enough to have things in principles and a good idea, but we literally need to cultivate the beingness of the change we want to see. So that's what I have for you today.