The Lifeforce Leadership approach
Why Lifeforce Leadership?
My Feminine awakening and the Lifeforce Leadership Map
Through Lovisa Alsén’s leadership path, Awakening Feminine Leadership, I have awakened to my sensual, powerful, and alive feminine, which has had the most profound impact on me as a woman and as a leader. You can read more about my awakening and the LL map in depth here, but in short, I have discovered what I now see as true feminine leadership, and it has been the ride of my life. By embracing my true feminine, I realized more and more how men and the masculine also started showing up differently; they seemed to respond to a call with deep integrity—becoming the best versions of themselves. These newfound discoveries of both the feminine and the masculine, combined with 15 years of exploration of new paradigm leadership and orginizing, eventually led to the creation of the Lifeforce Leadership map.
The core of Lifeforce Leadership is recognizing the four dimensions of feminine and masculine leadership. There are two polarities within the masculine: the grounded holding masculine and the executing creating masculine. The feminine flows cyclically between the lifeforce creating feminine and the unifying holding feminine. All creative processes begin with the creating feminine sourcing life force, which, when met by the holding masculine, creates direction. The creating masculine then executes this direction, with the holding feminine maintaining coherence and ensuring the cycle restarts with the creating feminine. Most initiatives fail in the digital era due to the lack of feminine life force and holding masculine clarity, leading to a directionless, uninspired, overdoing creating masculine.
Why is strong, authentic Feminine and Masculine leadership needed now?
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. An alive and thriving feminine and masculine leadership is crucial for the key capacities needed to thrive in the digital era; purposeful innovation, authentic attraction and vital productivity.
Innovation and adaptability
In the Industrial Age 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. In this era it has worked quite well to spend most of our time working from the Creating Masculine, at least in traditional measurement of success not taking other factors such as social or environmental impact.
In the decentralized digital age, with its rapid change, peer-to-peer dynamics and information overload, the keys to success lie in your ability to constantly adapt and innovate. Without mastering the creative cycle between the Creating Feminine, Holding Masculine, Creating Masculine and Holding Feminine, crucial for real innovation - you will never be able to reach the depth of creativity and speed of innovation needed to adapt and keep up with the exponentially increasing rate of change.
Authenticity and Attraction
Furthermore, an awakened feminine leadership is needed to create the gravitational field that will pull in the right resources, employees and customers. If you ever walk into an office and get the feeling “wow there is a lot of life here!” - I would bet it is the presence of a strong creative feminine. And in a decentralized world where there are endless opportunities of what to spend your time and energy on, people will want to spend it in the initiatives and projects that vibrate with this energy and that are full of integrity. The initiatives and projects that feel real, meaningful and that touch people's inner worlds. This is what the creative feminine does; allows us to tap into what really matters to us and what the world really needs. Without her, you are chanceless in building the decentralized platforms that will attract the most engaged and skilled people across the globe over the long-term.
Clarity, direction and efficient execution
The whole purpose of business initiatives is to efficiently develop and create products and services that meet customer needs. And the feminine cannot do this alone. She needs to be backed by the Holding Masculine and have a creating masculine executing in service. As the feminine is awakening to her true power, we need the Holding Masculine that can transform the life force coming through us into actionable direction, take charge in the midst of all the chaos and with integrity and in collaboration with the fierce Holding Feminine send the Creating Masculine into purposeful execution.
Does this resonate? I would love to hear from you.
Implementing Lifeforce Leadership
If a strong Holding Masculine and a strong Feminine leadership is needed to succeed in the digital era, how do we develop them? In my work with implementing Lifeforce Leadership, I have identified three parallel areas of focus that seem to be most impactful.
1. Support key leaders to develop their archetype
2. Connect with purpose, discovering the vibrant creative hierarchy
3. Practice Lifeforce Project Management
Support key leaders to develop their archetype
Awakening the true Feminine Lifeforce
You will not believe it until you experience it, but when a woman is in touch with her powerful, sensual and alive Feminine, she radically transforms even the most tense board meetings merely with her presence. And showing up in our Feminine at work is a hell of a lot easier when we are backed by an equally strong Holding Masculine presence.
Having a sufficient level of holding masculine and feminine leadership within the initiative is key. Simply by supporting leaders who embody the Holding Masculine and Feminine archetypes to show up in their roles with greater presence, power, and vitality, there is a significant impact on the initiative towards increased innovation, aliveness and productivity—without changing any collective structures.
In the initiatives I work with I run courses for women in awakening their erotic, mystical and natural intelligence of Feminine Leadership and how to call in and collaborate with the Holding and Creating Masculine; Leading as Lifeforce.
I also run courses for Men in Holding Masculine leadership and how to be in service of and collaborate with the Feminine and Creating Masculine; Leading with power and integrity.
As these archetypes become ever more grounded in their authentic leadership, I offer workshops and experiences where we practice leading in complimentary polarity with each other. This is when the real, profoundly lush magic starts to unfold.
Based on Peter König’s source principles, I support founders in rediscovering the original inspiration behind their initiatives and clarifying their vision. This true vision—the deeper reason they started the initiative—reflects their calling in this world. I help founders fully embrace their role as source, connecting deeply with the initiative’s creative vision, knowing what is in and out, and understanding the big-picture next steps. By clarifying this vision, others can step in and take responsibility for the parts that in turn, are what they are here to do. These individuals become specific sources, and will have the same role and natural authority and responsibility for that part of the initiative, creating a pattern of nested fields. Using this lens we can map out the creative hierarchy of the initiative in nested circles, clearly showing who is responsible for what and who is helping who - and how everything and everyone is connected to the larger vision of the initiative. This alive, authentic, and creative hierarchy, gives the initiative the often-missing Holding Masculine backbone of clarity and integrity. This isn't about official organizational structure, but about who has the natural authority and responsibility for the initiative’s creative development — regardless of their official title.
2. Connect with purpose, discovering the vibrant creative hierarchy
Honoring the Holding Masculine backbone
Example of a creative hierarchy mapped out in maptio.
The paradox many don’t understand when thinking about new paradigm organizing is that self-organization doesn’t eliminate the need for leadership or clarity. In fact, the opposite is true: authentic clarity in service of lifeforce is fundamental and allows self-organization around that clarity to happen. And "in service of lifeforce" is key; what we are looking for is the natural creative hierarchy that emerges when leaders really feel into what is theirs to do.
Without this backbone, the creative masculine has nothing to build in service of and no common direction, leaving us with a scattered, over-doing, frantic, creating masculine do-ocracy culture, where the feminine gets more and more squeezed out. This disconnects us even further from true life force and vision, creating a vicious cycle that takes us further and further away from the original call as the initiative grows. With a strong source and a clear and alive creative hierarchy, the full creative autonomy of everyone in the initiative is unleashed, creating a vibrant organism where everyone, in their own often unexpected way, is contributing to a mesmerizingly complex dance of creation.
3. Practice Lifeforce Project Management - an emergent and fractal approach
Unleashing the Creating Masculine execution
The last aspect I support initiatives with is to implement Lifeforce PM with product and project developments teams. The whole purpose of business initiatives is to efficiently create and develop products and services that meet customer needs. Yes, as discussed in the intro, in the emerging digital era this value needs to be in service of life, but still, if we are not able to efficiently deliver in the creating masculine, we are not creating value and will, rightfully so, be outcompeted by another initiative who is better at generating value.
How do we kick-ass in creating masculine execution and delivery, whilst ensuring that this delivery is in service of feminine lifeforce and aligned with the deeper vision of the initiative?
During my years of leading the tech and marketing team with Viktor Ansund in Daniel Mülbach’s ecommerce company, we developed a team and product development approach that is emergent and fractal. Instead of trying to include hours of exploration of feminine inspiration and the holding masculine direction in each weekly retrospective, you should iteratively implement small improvements each week that align the creating masculine more and more without killing autonomy and momentum. The foundational process that drive these iterations is simply asking the quesitons “What did we do well last period?” “What will we do better the next period?”. Asking these questions each day, week and month and year allows feedback from what the creating masculine is learning while delivering in the real world, adjusting the feminine inspiration and holding masculine direction along the way. The smaller the time period we are looking at the less time we spend on reflecting (leaving more time for doing), and vice versa. In other words, the closer we get to delivery, the more we lean into the creating masculine; the earlier we are in the process, the more time we allow for hearing the call of the feminine.
Tap into the four energies iteratively in each fractal
Since then I have implemented this approach in a wide variety of teams and now run courses. The experience of unleashing the full epic potential of the creating masculine in service and witnessing the team achieve increasingly amazing results, while all the different archetypes within the team feel more and more seen and valued, is truly profound.