Part 1 : Feminine leadership in business

Socially constructed and biologically anchored gender 

Before I move on, let me lay out my view on gender. I believe that gender is both biologically anchored and socially constructed. My stance is that women and men have both the feminine and the masculine within us — including the two sub-poles of the masculine and the cyclical feminine. Thus I embrace a socially constructed view on gender, as well as acknowledge the deep damage that can come from throwing biological arguments at dynamics stemming from social constructs.

At the same time, the biological difference between men and women, such as differing genitals and hormones, does make us wired differently in important ways. If we do not acknowledge how women’s bodies are different from men’s, we will keep designing societies mainly fit for male bodies. Since true feminine leadership is sourced from our bodies, such scenarios are severely disempowering for women. Moreover, the elimination of the feminine polarities will in the long run be harmful for societal development at large. Without embodying and thriving in our differences, we will not be able to unleash that creative potential that lies between the polarities. Thus, I believe that the way forward is the ability to hold both the social constructs and the biological differences to be true at the same time.

The four energies of life

It was through years of studying Lovisa Alsén’s teachings, witnessing other women on the path, hours of exploratory conversation on the topic with Lovisa as well as years of practicing and experiencing the feminine and masculine in different leadership and business contexts that I could identify the often lacking dimensions of the creating feminine and holding masculine, and lay out the full polarities map. Through Lovisa I was also introduced to fellow teachers, priestesses and sacred seductresses such as Layla Martin and Mama Gena, all supporting the return of the creating feminine in women, and to Sally Kempton’s work in Awakening Shakti where she explains the life creating collaboration between the creating feminine of Shakti and the holding masculine of Shiva.

As the dimensions became increasingly clear in my lived experiences, I realized that the map of polarities had been growing in me for a long time. I had been looking through different lenses that uncovered the dimensions within it for years. For example, in my master’s thesis I applied Ryan and Deci’s Self-Determination Theory (made popular by Daniel Pink) to adult development theories like Robert Kegan’s framework and Spiral Dynamics and discovered the cyclical flow of development between autonomy and relatedness, and the linear development flow of competence. It wasn’t until I reconnected to the feminine in me through Lovisas teachings, that I was able to connect the cyclical and the linnear to the feminine and masculine and synthesize the full picture. 

As the four dimensions of the cyclical feminine and linear masculine started emerging as a mental model for me, through experiencing them in my business and leadership contexts, I started to recognize them also in the other teachings on leadership I had taken in over the past ten years, adding further nuance and validation to the model. I found the four energies, polarities, or dimensions in the four gods of Bard and Söderqvist's Syntheism, in the four Jungian archetypes of Mankind Project and Women in Power’s Shadow Work, as well as in the four polarities of Kastenbaum's Diamond Leadership model that I was introduced to during my time at the management consulting firm Centigo. Lastly, the model is influenced by Peter König's work around Source, taught to me by Tom Nixon over the past 8 years. The source perspective supports the polarities map and has deepened my understanding of the creating feminine and holding masculine and how they collaborate to initiate creation.

Ever since I discovered these four energies, I find them everywhere, in practice and in frameworks across all fields – they seem to be the core energies of life. The creating feminine is the autonomy and the void, the holding feminine is the unity and the everything, the holding masculine is the stillness and the creating masculine is the movement. They are the fuel and the process of life. The cyclical and the linear. Tension arises when we are only seeing and sourcing from one or two of them, and making the others wrong, rather than fully unleashing each dimension in its full power, in collaboration, and with the right dimension leading the right phase of a creative endeavour.

The collapsed mothering feminine and toxic boyish masculine 

The more I experienced them in the progressive business world, the more clear these four dimensions became. After yet another typical conversation with a colleague about an organization that he was supporting, the last puzzle pieces fell into place and I understood and felt how the creating and holding feminine and masculine, fit together in the creative process. And how we suffer and struggle when any are absent and/or unbalanced. 

The organization my colleague was helping was stuck in obsessive doing; there was a lack of direction, people were burning out and the climate felt harsh and destructive. His evaluation was that they needed more of the feminine in the organization because he observed them having too much of what I now call the creating masculine energy. Soon I realized, however, that he was only requesting the holding feminine, totally missing out on the creative feminine. I instinctively knew that this alone would not sustainably solve the organization's challenges. 

In today’s business world, as we are developing beyond the creating-masculine-dominated  industrial paradigm, the situation my colleague came to me for help with is very common. My story as told in the beginning of this text is not unique. I am far from alone in acknowledging that we have “too much” of the creating masculine on both a personal, organizational and societal level. The overdoing that “excess” creates is often referred to as toxic masculinity; we are moving too fast, getting too focused on money, lacking a meaningful purpose, not taking care of our people and making priorities too short term – quite literally we are burning up the planet.  

And just like my colleague, many would agree that the solution is to bring in more of the feminine. And just like for him, the only feminine that we know of, and dare to invite, is the holding feminine; we talk about listening more, slowing down, following our intuition and being more caring. But when the holding feminine is not sourcing her power, or “filled up”, from the creating feminine, who in turn is not supported by the holding masculine, what we are left with is a disempowered holding feminine. This energy manifests as a collapsed mothering figure that is just trying to subdue the toxic creating masculine. Rather than being a feminine leader in her power, she just wants to slow things down and overemphasizes  making sure everyone feels heard, feels safe, and gets along – similar to a stressed mother who is trying to get her kids to behave.

The struggles of the unguided Creating Masculine and disconnected Holding Feminine 

This disempowered version of the Feminine will not be able to make much difference. Most organizations that are trying to bring in more of “the Feminine” are really struggling. Without the Creating Feminine and the Holding Masculine, huge tensions arise between the toxic Creating Masculine and the described collapsed Holding Feminine.

Most “feminine” initiatives in the business world will never work, because they aim to remove the masculine instead of understanding how to empower both the feminine and masculine and grow a thriving collaboration between the two. In the name of moving away from a toxic results-driven culture we focus on creating a caring culture. With the Creating Feminine and Holding Masculine absent, this ultimately leads to stagnation, lack of direction and a destructive slowing down of the core business. Aggregated to a societal level the disempowered Holding Feminine creates a politically correct wet blanket over creativity, entrepreneurship and ultimately autonomy and free speech (societally reflected in the radical left). 

Soon, with too much of this Holding Feminine, the masculine feels shamed and excluded and as red numbers in the bottom line start showing, the toxic Creating Masculine reacts by kicking in again with even more force (societally reflected in the alt right). This cycle repeats again and again, with at best constant tension between the two, and at worst societal cultural war between radical feminist at one extreme and alt-right incels on the other. 

This dysfunctional dynamic lies at the root of most common struggles in progressive and decentralized organizations, who are trying to bring in more of the feminine, such as struggling to focus on results and on a caring culture, a flourishing bottom line and purposefully contributing to the world, individual autonomy and collective unity.

The potential of polarities unleashed 

Dark indeed, but, let us not lose all hope for humanity just yet. The stark contrast between this common situation my colleague was describing and the thriving teams I had experienced, made me realize the patterns that are at play when collaboration between the masculine and the feminine is flourishing. I have seen what is possible when we are able to step into a flourishing and supporting collaboration between the masculine and the feminine and have experienced the profound impact in terms of creativity, efficiency and collaboration within a team. The times when I and the other women on the path of Awakening Feminine Leadership have stood fully in what I now call the creative feminine, the energy that we embody seems to call men into stepping into the Holding Masculine. This is the dynamic that we need more of. When synthesizing observations and experiences, I see clearly a pattern of how the four dimensions interact in all flourishing creative processes. 

A creative process starts with the creative feminine embodying the life force. By being and embodying the life source, the feminine opens up the creative field. This creates attraction, and opens the creative energy to be able to flow into the project. When we initiate a project from a deep embodiment of the creative feminine, life force, creativity and energy is flooded into the project. If you ever walk into an office and get the feeling “wow there is a lot of life here!”, you are about to witness the presence of the creating feminine. All effective processes of realizing something need to start with this creative feminine being the call. It is the creative feminine that can tap into that which we do not already know, and without her we cannot create anything truly new. Only when a process is initiated by the feminine that embodies this life force, will it become truly creative, purposeful and in service of life. 

The creating feminine embodies the energy that initiates any creative process, and by that, she is calling in the holding masculine, to step into service and to hold space. He is called in to set up the container that the feminine can surrender within, and allow the life force and creative power to come through her. One man explained this as “when I am around that energy it makes me want to become the best version of myself”. The more the masculine can hold, the deeper the feminine can surrender into being the call. And the more the feminine embodies the call the more the masculine is called in to hold – to become the best version of himself. 

When the creating feminine is embodying the creative life force, the holding masculine is able to sense and receive the vision for the endeavor making the intangible creative energy tangible and actionable. When the two meet, a project is born and direction is created – a will and vision for something that wants to come to life. These experiences are aligned with the principle from ‘Shakti tantra’ where the feminine is seen as the life source and the masculine as the holding consciousness. From here the Holding Masculine can sense the clear, meaningful direction and actionable vision that is truly serving what wants to be born, at a deeper creative level than simply what will create the most short term profit. 

When the Creating Masculine in turn is guided by this deeper vision and purpose, he is free to fully unleash all of his creative manifesting building power into the endeavor, without him becoming toxic, but rather being truly in service of something larger than himself. 

In this manifesting phase, and as the feminine is more and more filled up with life force, she gradually shifts from embodying the call to embodying the whole, which keeps the energy of the project collected and the group united. She also has the role of knowing when the end of a process is approaching. She will discern when the vision is complete, when the project has been built to its full scope, and when it is time to start the creative cycle over again.The Creating Masculine, with his passionate and driven energy will just want to keep building. He needs direction from the Holding Masculine to build the right thing and the guidance from the Holding Feminine to keep on track and to stop in time. 

When the Holding Feminine is empowered, she keeps the team connected and guides and guards the life cycle of the project like a panther, who has the respect of the Creating Masculine simply through her pure powerful presence. When the Holding Feminine stands in her power, the Creating Masculine will neither want nor dare to stray away from the deeper purpose in pursuit of money, power or fame.

A Feminine and Masculine lens 

This way of telling the creation story is a feminine one. From a cyclical feminine perspective all creative processes start with the creating feminine sourcing the life force. When she is met by the present consciousness of the holding masculine direction is created. This direction can then be executed upon by the creating masculine. During the execution phase the creative energy is kept together by the holding feminine that also makes sure we go back to the creating feminine when the creation process is done and it is time for the next creative cycle to start. Illustrated the flow looks something like this:

However, when I shared this story with men, I was sometimes met with confusion. I realized that the same story can also be told from a linear masculine perspective. From a masculine lens, creation starts with the masculine grounding in the holding masculine. When he is present and grounded he is ready to surrender into the unknown and receive inspiration from the creating feminine. From here he goes up into the holding feminine to look outward and make sure the inspiration he received is truly serving the whole and turn the inspiration into actionable direction. With this direction he moves into the creating masculine and executes. When the execution is done this creative process or project is over and he can again step into the holding masculine to receive inspiration for the next mission. The illustration then looks like this:

Both are equally true and are always happening at the same time, like the particle and wave, depending on what perspective you are looking at a creative process from. As we move from abstraction back into practice, you will always have to choose one lens. In my writing I will mainly keep using the feminine lens, as it is more unusual and most longing for a voice. Either way, which dimension comes first is not as important as always keeping the polarity between the creating feminine and holding masculine in the first phase and the polarity of the creating masculine and holding feminine in the last phase of a creative process. 

Stories of polarities in action

In order to make this model and perspectives less abstract, here are two stories from women who have been practicing Awakening Feminine Leadership the past years. The feminine is best understood through experience, and cannot and should not be measured. Thus, I am aware that they are highly anecdotal and I do not share these stories to prove anything. But hopefully, hearing their stories can give you a better felt sense of how these masculine and feminine energies play out in the business world. 

One story is from when I was leading the marketing and the techteam at a company, I was co-leading them with a man who is also deep into men’s work. Leading the team together made it possible for him to lean more into the masculine and me to lean more into the feminine and still hold all relevant perspectives for both teams. It wasn’t really something we consciously decided or spoke about, it just emerged that way. We worked in sprints and for each sprint we would start each sprint by slowing down, really listening and making sure that we were grounded in what was to be done from this deeper place. When we had clarity, this would then set the team into doing. When the team was in execution mode I was more in a place of holding space. I didn’t really consciously try and do something specific, it was a more state of being. Simply by me holding that feminine energy in the team created a sense of unity and alignment. It helped the team to be able to really lean into executing mode because they knew that they were working within a container that was being held, and that when it was done there would be closure and we would start the process again.

Another woman shares: 

“My strongest experience of my feminine lifeforce seeding creative fuel, direction and clarity was when I supported a CEO of a large tech company. He had a big, highly complex vision for his company that he had been working to realize for 10 years. He was very much operating from executing energy of the creating masculine and was deep into the everyday operations of the business. During these years he had never seemed to be able to unite the organization around the vision. When we started working together and I stepped in with this awakened feminine energy, it called him to start step away from constant doing and instead lean back into a more grounded masculine. From there we worked together on clarifying the larger vision and a strategic 25-year road map for the company.

When we presented it to the rest of the organization from this place I got the feedback that for the first time in ten years, they fully understood what they were actually part of building and how what they were building now fit into a long term vision. And it wasn’t just that they understood it with their minds, people were sharing how it was the first time they could feel the vision, that they felt drawn to it. This work laid the foundation for unleashing the kind of organization and way of working that the CEO had been longing for and dreaming about for years.”

In this story you can see the intangible quality of the feminine working in the deeper layers, creating a deeper motivation and creative guidance. How she calls the masculine into stepping into a more grounded place. And how when the two meet, the direction that comes out has the quality of guiding in a way that fuels motivation, supports creative authority and provides clarity and common direction without stifling autonomy.  

Keys to the new paradigm of business

The more examples like this I experience or hear of, the more clear it becomes how crucial  the powerful presence of all four dimensions are for businesses today to succeed. Having a thriving collaboration between the four dimensions has always been beneficial to an enterprise. However, in the emerging decentralized paradigm of the internet age, it will be difficult to survive without it. The industrial paradigm has been run mainly by the creating masculine. Which in many ways worked well; in the industrial age you basically needed one good idea to build a creating masculine production machine that could produce that product ever more efficiently. Creativity was initially needed to identify the market need, but once that was done, to succeed in penetrating the market, success came down to execution and grit.

As we are leaving a machine-like production era and entering a network age where those who can attract people, data and resources are the ones that will succeed. We need to become highly adaptable and innovative to keep up with the rate of change that is unlike anything we have seen before. In the network age, with its information overload requiring attracting relevance and rapid change requiring adaptability, success lies in the ability to constantly be innovating and repeating the creative cycle between the feminine and masculine.

Without the lifesourcing creating feminine at the core, backed by the holding masculine we will keep seeing more of the power struggles, loss of motivation, fragmented direction and burnt out employees as decentralized initiatives attempt to grow. An awakened feminine leadership is needed to create the gravitational field that will enable you to most efficiently utilize the decentralized world of the Internet and attract the right resources, employees and customers. A creating feminine that is supported by the holding masculine to tap in to the creativity that will fuel your initiative as well as create the direction and clarity needed to navigate and thrive in the chaos and information overload of the attention economy. 

Potential lies ahead

Discovering and unleashing the four dimensions of the masculine and feminine has been a wild ride. What happens with people, groups and organizations around me the more I start showing up in my true embodied feminine is, often intimidatingly, magical. I have seen how creating with all four energies in place makes profound business results possible, and vastly increases an organization’s capacity to navigate uncertain waters. At the same time, we are making possible healing, expansion and love between the feminine and the masculine – a healing that most of us are deeply consciously or unconsciously longing for. 

In one way it can be deeply disheartening to take in the amount of misunderstanding between the masculine and feminine as well as their suppression in the business world and in society at large. But, in another way, imagine all the lush, heart-expanding, fierce, creative potential we have yet to tap into…

This text has been edited from rock to diamond by the brilliant writing queens Hannah Ohm and Åsa Jonsson. 

Part 2