Hello beautiful soul
I hope that you have been able to rest and really be in reverance to yourself and your loved ones this past week.
Today I want to meet you there. In the softest place in your heart.
I want introduce you to feminine leadership — or feminist business principles — the best kind of F bomb there is.
I’m not talking about gender. I’m not talking about softness without strength. And I’m definitely not talking about replacing one hierarchy with another.
I’m talking about how power is held, how systems are designed, and whether leadership requires self-abandonment to succeed.
Because that model?
It’s done.
Here's our 2026 flex, already laid out as a roadmap to make it simple to follow. Plot reveal: you are already great at most of it.
Principle 1: Leadership begins in the body
Feminine leadership starts with embodiment.
Not self-care as a lifestyle accessory — embodiment as responsibility.
How we lead is shaped by how our nervous systems learned to survive. Burnout, people-pleasing, over-functioning, control — these are not flaws. They’re survival strategies shaped by systems that reward self-abandonment and call it ambition.
So instead of asking How do I perform better?
Feminine leadership asks: What capacity do I need to lead without disappearing myself?
Principle 2: Embodiment is political
Embodiment doesn’t make us smaller. It widens our field of care.
As Farzana Khan, Founder of Healing Justice London, so powerfully shared in a lecture I attended recently, “The more embodied I become, the more I hear my sisters’ cries in Africa.”
Not as overwhelm.
As responsibility.
Regulation doesn’t numb us. It makes us more available — to truth, complexity, injustice, and each other — without collapsing or hardening.
Principle 3: Power is relational, not positional
The old model concentrates power at the top.
Feminine leadership understands power as something that moves — through trust, integrity, lived experience, and accountability.
This doesn’t mean chaos or the absence of structure.
It means conscious structure — designed to serve people, not dominate them.
Principle 4: Care is infrastructure
Care is not a perk.
Care is not a “nice to have.”
Care is what allows systems to endure.
Feminine leadership treats humane workloads, psychological safety, boundaries, and repair not as extras — but as foundational design.
Principle 5: Capacity matters more than performance
Instead of asking How much can one person handle?
Feminine leadership asks What does this system create over time?
Pace, time, money, growth — none of these are neutral.
They either support life or erode it.
Principle 6: The myth of the neutral worker is over
Bodies matter.
Cycles matter.
Caregiving matters.
Trauma, illness, ageing, culture — all of it matters.
Feminine leadership doesn’t design around an imaginary, disembodied worker. It tells the truth and builds accordingly.
Principle 7: Success does not require self-abandonment
This is the one that breaks everything open.
You do not have to harden to lead.
You do not have to shrink to belong.
You do not have to silence yourself to succeed.
Leadership should expand identity — not erase it.
Principle 8: Receiving is leadership
Women are exceptional givers.
But leadership that only gives collapses.
Feminine leadership understands that receiving support, rest, resources, collaboration, and being held is not indulgence — it’s sustainability.
And it’s something many women must relearn.
Principle 9: Leadership must serve the leader too
Feminine leadership is not martyrdom.
It doesn’t ask you to disappear into service of the collective.
It understands that leadership that doesn’t also nourish the leader becomes hollow, resentful, or extractive.
You matter inside the system.
This matters now is because the old models are breaking.
Burnout is everywhere. Women are leaving systems that refuse to evolve. Leadership without humanity is no longer survivable — for people or for organisations.
And a different way is already emerging.
In January, I’ll be inviting you to step into your leadership with Women Who Lead. We are the change the world has been waiting for.
Not just to serve the collective.
But to serve you. FULLY. To get a little self-ish.
To lead without self-abandonment.
To build capacity, not just output.
To take up space without apology.
To get fucking paid. Whoops, one real F bomb there.
THIS is the work. THIS is the moment. THIS is the movement.
And it’s only just beginning.
Rooting for you always
Ruth x
Ps. Did you review your year yet? If not, I got you! Do it here.
Here's what someone just pinged me about it: "It is amazing. Seriously next level. It became my best friend and I ended up saying things I don't think I've spoken to anyone. That was so damn impressive. I feel so ready for 2026!"
Bloom in 2026 and get your FREE Glow Up report here.
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