Hello beautiful soul
I posted something this week that I genuinely didn't think was controversial.
I said that a hill I'll die on is this:
Women have brilliant raw material to become phenomenal leaders. Sometimes even better than men.
That's it. That's all I said.
One man kindly took the time to explain that nobody respects or follows women. That nobody finds us to be good leaders or role models. And then he went somewhere much darker that I'm not giving any more airtime to here.
Side note: it never ceases to amaze me how much detail a man is prepared to go into in my comments to tell me all the ways I'm wrong. I take most of it with a pinch of salt. But this one I want to answer properly. Not for him. For you.
Let's ignore the ridiculous statement about abuse. But the idea that women can't lead isn't just wrong. It's out of date.
Fun fact: I don't just coach woman. Many of my 1:1 clients this year have been men, and I spend a lot of my time now in rooms with mixed leadership teams.
Men and women. CEOs. Founders. Heads of functions. And I see the same thing over and over again. The top-down command and control way of leading that most of us were taught? It isn't working anymore. Not in a world being reshaped by AI. Not at this pace of change. Not with teams who are exhausted and anxious and need something more than a directive.
What's working is collaboration. Empathy. Reading the room before you speak into it. Responding instead of reacting. A different kind of leadership altogether.
And the research has been saying this for a while. Zenger Folkman analysed thousands of 360 reviews. So the people who actually work with these leaders every day. Women were rated more effective in 84% of the competencies they most often measure. And here's the bit I LOVE. Two of the areas where women scored highest were taking initiative and driving for results. The exact things we've always been told are "male" strengths.
Gallup found that people who work for a woman manager are more engaged than people who work for a man. And engagement isn't a fluffy number. It shows up in productivity and profit.
So respect. Following. It's already happening. He just isn't looking.
Now I want to go a bit deeper. Because this genuinely isn't a men versus women thing. It never was.
It's about energy.
Masculine energy is direction. Structure. Focus. Decisiveness. Getting the thing done. Protecting what matters. It's the energy that sets the goal and drives towards it.
Feminine energy is receptivity. Intuition. Connection. Flow. It's the energy that notices. That tracks how people are actually doing. That senses something is off in a meeting before anyone has said a word. That tends.
Every single one of us has both. Every man. Every woman. Every human. Neither is better. Neither is wrong. The masculine isn't the problem. A world that only rewards the masculine is.
I know this because I lived it.
For most of my career I led almost entirely from my masculine. At work and in my workouts. Go go go. Prove. Push. Deliver. It made my output undeniable. It also nearly broke me. In my forties I realised the real medicine was in dialling up the other side. The softness. The receiving. Listening to my body before it had to scream at me. And I became a better leader for it. Not a weaker one. (Also a much nicer human to be around haha.)
But that shift was SO HARD and I fought it at first. I wanted to keep running at a sprint because that was what the world had rewarded me for being.
I was about 38 when I first tried to slow down, got better at 42, and from 45+ plus it continues to become more integrated into how I operate.
Most women I work with are suffering from something similar in the corporate world.
But coming back to gender for a hot minute: is there something different about women in how we lead?
I think there is. Research going back decades suggests women on average are better at reading nonverbal cues. Some of that may simply be how we're made. And some of it honestly we learned because we had to. When the room hasn't always been safe you get VERY good at reading it.
This isn't something that is exclusive to women, but I rarely come across a woman who isn't a pro at it.
That tracking. That reading. That responding. It started as a survival skill. Now it's a leadership skill. And the world finally needs it.
But here's the part we need to pay attention to...
Last year Gallup found engagement among women managers dropped by seven percentage points. More than almost any other group.
The women leading in exactly the way this moment needs are running on empty. Because we're doing it inside systems built for the old way. Holding both energies while only being rewarded for one. Doing the reading and the tending and the delivering. And still having to prove we deserve to be in the room at all.
It's not that we can't lead. It's that leading like this inside the old system is costing us our peace. And we ACHE for that peace.
So what I want for you isn't to lead like a man. It isn't to lead like a girlboss (🤢) either. It's to lead like you. With your full range. The structure and the softness. The drive and the knowing. And to still have energy left for your life after five o'clock.
Because women can lead. We already are.
The real question is whether we keep doing it at our own expense.
So the next time someone tells you nobody follows women?
Look behind you darling. They already are.
Rooting for you AND THE LEADER IN YOU always
Ruth x
Ps. There's a chance to vibe with me THIS FRIDAY for Somatic Yoga at 8am EST (12pm UK time, just this week). Join me here.
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