Human beings are in their eleventh hour. Wildfires are raging across the globe while temperatures are soaring; a pandemic has taken the lives of millions and no end is in sight; political decisions are being made that are limiting the freedoms that many of us fought so hard to gain, and war crimes are being committed as sovereign nations struggle to maintain their autonomy. These are troubling times and the only way of finding a solution will involve a complete paradigm shift.
A new approach involves valuing wisdom and the more traditionally feminine ways of seeing and being in the world. Only by doing so, can we approach life’s challenges with what I call Whole Brain Foresight™—a more intergenerational, relational macro view of the world that values the interconnectedness of all things and the profound value of the Triple Bottom Line of people, planet and profits.
Leaders across all sectors are struggling to find their footing in our VUCA world. For women leaders who are 40+ this task becomes increasingly more difficult as we face the harsh realities of the conflation of sexism and ageism. Nevertheless, women visionary leaders are positioned to have a great impact in the workplace and beyond. McKinsey & Company found that businesses that had gender diversity in their leadership team had a 25% higher chance of excess profits. Further, research done by the Universities of Glasgow and Leicester found that companies with at least 30% of their executive team being female, outperformed those that did not meet that threshold.
The qualities of the archetypal Inner Feminine are poised to aid in times of uncertainty: the ability to see things through a macro lens, focusing on the bigger picture and how each discrete element affects the whole. The Inner Feminine is fluid, a vessel that is open, responsive; versus a straight line that is focused on one “target.” It is the wave and not the particle. Relational, responsive, interconnected. Its potential is embodied in both men and women.
These times demand we invoke and evoke these qualities as leaders in the workspace, the marketplace and in our own space. It is the mature women of today who have already earned their stripes in the hallowed halls of hard knocks, climbing ladders, creating new businesses, raising families and caretaking all at the same time…women 40+ have already proven we have what it takes. We are already leading the way forward into a more ageless, diverse, model of leadership; one of Whole systems of self-directed future-oriented whole leaders and teams based on a “we” model of intergenerational collaboration where the “Whole is truly more than the sum of its parts.” Encore.org currently runs a program to bring age diversity into schools, communities, workplaces, and more, to create co-generational solutions to everyday problems.
We no longer have the luxury of time; it is imperative to raise our sights (and odds) for a sustainable future by bringing on more Crones who mean business to lead us through what’s emerging from these VUCA times.
There is a growing loss of reverence in all hierarchical systems—where traditionally leaders ruled by power over versus power with (e.g., from SCOTUS to CEOs). That leadership is crumbling, giving way to more self-directed models of how we lead. And these new models are all based on the core descriptors of the Inner Crone, coming from a place of wholeness, and wellness and collaboration to contribute to the bottom line. And that is, more characteristically, the description of mature “feminine leadership.”
Fast forward to today: On the one hand, the urgency and enormity of the leadership task ahead for all of us, most especially mature women, compounds everything we already know about the import and impact of women—most especially those over 40, as experienced honed leaders at the board table, consumers in the marketplace and women around the kitchen table. Yet here we are again: Women’s Rights remain an issue across the globe. Climate migration will impact
women and older generations the most. Mature women are the majority of global caretakers, whilst many of them are also in revered positions of influence and decision-making in every sector. Women age 55 and older are projected to make up over 25% of the women’s labor force by 2024, which is almost double their share from 2020 US Equal Opportunity Commission (2018). BLS Data is projecting that women will represent 82% of the over -55 workforce by 2022.
Now it’s time for more seats at the boardroom table and more choice at the kitchen table so that mature women with highly developed archetypal Crone energy can elevate us all into a new more highly evolved win-win-win futures where the Triple Bottom Line rules. The Deloitte Global Boardroom Program reported that in 2019 the global average for women on board teams was only at 19.7%.
Women leaders in a VUCA world must reclaim their self-sovereignty. Mature women leaders—the wise women and the archetypal Crone—embody wisdom and mastery. Their Inner Feminine offers access to wisdom-mastery and knowing; their Inner Masculine provides skilled-mastery and learned knowledge. The mature Inner Feminine archetypal wisdom is what we all need to source in these times of great transitions.
Now is the time to leverage change to our advantage, to radically reinvent and regenerate ourselves and our world through innovative and conscious businesses and C-suite and board leadership. This means reaping the most rewards by melding a larger visionary purpose into our business models. More people, organizations, and businesses will profit by following women’s innate leadership until visionary future-oriented leadership practices become the norm.
The issues we are facing today impact all generations. We are in the Great Shift into (and hopefully out of) being a global dissipative structure. We have only two choices: dissipate and disappear, or transform and rise to a higher evolutionary level.
By applying a “Whole Brain Foresight™” approach to every issue we face now and into the future, we can make better sense of what is happening around us, so that we can come up with fresh strategies that respond to the changing marketplace, the increasingly diverse workforce, and the new economic realities of staying in business. The critical through-line is to stay ahead of the curve of change and the nuances of emerging futures.
Women are already leading the way into our future—particularly those over 40. We can look to a promising tomorrow to the extent to which we listen closely to the voice of the Crone.
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