Unpacking the Manifesto – Part 2

Last week I started a three-part series to unpack the tenets of the Women’s Leadership Manifesto. You can read part one here and the full details of the manifesto here.

Today I continue to expand on the individual statements with part two of this series:

We choose not to play by the rules of someone else’s [leadership] game

The rules for how an effective leader looks and acts has typically had a masculine energy associated with them. Those rules worked at one point in time because there were so few women in the workforce and those who were did not hold leadership position.

As more and more women entered the workforce, we tried to play by those masculine based rules and discovered they don’t work for us. Those rules require us to lose the best parts of ourselves. They require us to become someone else and we refuse to be anyone other than who we are.

So we set our own rules. WE decide how we want our leadership to show up in the world and we act accordingly, following our own rules not someone else’s.

We define and pursue success on our own terms

There is no one look to success. No one measure for determining that someone has “made it”. Therefore, we won’t play the comparison game of deciding that one person is more or less successful than another.

We understand that success is different for each person. We don’t feel the need to paint a picture of success with broad strokes. Instead we individually determine what success means for us and we pursue that vision.

We will say yes ONLY when it does not mean saying no to our partners, our families or ourselves

For too long, we have felt pressured to sacrifice our families and our well being for the sake of being labeled a good leader. And for a long time that is exactly what we did. We offered up what was most important to us on the altar of leadership but this is a price we are no longer willing to pay.

We believe that having good boundaries is a sign of a good leader. We believe that caring well for those closest to us allows us to lead better. So we will risk saying no to others when it means saying yes to our families and to ourselves.

We recognize the privilege of leadership and strive to never abuse, manipulate or subjugate those we lead.

Leadership too often feels like a power play for the strongest to show how much better (s)he is than everyone else around them. We don’t buy into the idea that leadership is about the best person winning while everyone else loses.

We believe leadership is both an honor and a privilege. We take seriously the full weight of our responsibility as a leader. We serve those we lead, with no desire to “prove” how powerful we are by making others feel smaller or less than.

I will expand on the remainder of the manifesto next week. I hope you will come back and join me for the final part of this series.

In the meantime, I would love to hear which of the tenets is resonating loudest with you? Share in the comments below.

Here’s to you rising into your greatness as a leader!

From my heart to yours,

If you are ready to explore what it would look like for you to define leadership and success on your own terms schedule a complimentary Discovery Session with me. I would love to talk with you and support you any way that I can.