“Masculine is better. It’s more powerful and more likely to succeed.” As a child I absorbed this bias, and it insidiously shaped my perceptions right into adulthood. I subconsciously perceived of motherhood as limiting.
But then I held my newborn daughter. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to learn the fine art of being a mother. I recognized my new role as sacred, not sacrificial, and appreciated the wisdom and power of women in a whole new way.
How did this change happen? My perception changed and I experienced the world differently.
I’m generally fascinated with how perception shifts. For over three decades I’ve observed the process and set up the conditions for shifts in leaders and their teams.
Perception involves seeing, hearing, or becoming aware of something through the senses. It’s the way we see the world and relate to our experiences. As we acquire and interpret information about both our surroundings and internal environment, we reach conclusions that determine the choices we make.
It's hard to change how we behave until our perception changes. Research shows that the way we see the world is influenced by prior beliefs, which can become fixed mindsets or lock in as bias. Outside of conscious awareness, these beliefs shape the way we make sense of the present, based on past experiences.
Shifting perception is essential to growth. Catalysts arrive in many ways – a personally meaningful moment, a crisis, an insightful book, or in-depth meditative practice. One minute we confidently know what is “real”, the way the world works. Then, we receive a new piece of information, and become aware of what we were missing.
For instance, my 94-year-old dad woke to unconscious and systemic bias when reading the book Caste. As he handed the book back to me, he said, “I had no idea that’s how things worked.” Unexpectedly, he grasped a new reality.
The Process of Change
I’ve come to recognize 4 stages common in shifting perception: Reacting, Inquiring, Healing and Completeness. Here’s how the stages look through explorations around the feminine and what it means to be a woman in leadership and in life.
1. Reacting: Behavior is conditioned through the filter of fears. Past conditioning drives unconscious, less effective responses to women and to men who employ more of the feminine.
When I first wrote this in 2005, America was enduring several political figures in the reaction stage. At the Republican convention Dick Cheney demeaned John Kerry for being “sensitive to terrorists” and Schwarzenegger challenged the Democrats with “don’t be a GirlieMan.” These habitual reactions represent norms of our families and assumptions of our culture.
At this level our perception remains fixed, reactive, limited. Repeated conflicts, divisive relationships, disempowering self-talk, and restricted opportunities for women and men result.
Something happens. We wake up. We begin to value difference. Willing to challenge judgments about more feminine approaches to business, leadership, and life, the process of change begins.
2. Inquiring: We become curious and more independent in our thinking. In this phase, questioning becomes our superpower. When we question, we grow and learn.
There are many possible reactions to the word “feminine.” In this stage we ask, what is the feminine? What does she sound like in my life? What is the wisdom of the feminine? Who embodies a strong, accomplished feminine leadership?
We notice reactions, question assumptions, detect stereotypes, release past conditioning.
A Senior Vice President in the stage of open inquiry said, “I’ve spent my whole business career listening internally to His voice. It is high time I listen to Her voice as well.” Moving into the next phase, we discover a fabulous feeling of wholeness.
3. Healing: Appreciating the feminine as essential to the way we live and lead, we begin to feel complete and capable of developing a true partnership with our masculine attributes, a partnership based in mutual respect.
In March 2004, we hosted a Forum on the Wisdom and Power of Women Leaders at the World Business Academy Global Mind Change conference. In the Forum. Of the 175 participants, 75% were women. The men were asked to listen, rather than speak, to open hearts and minds in soft curiosity.
Michael, founder, and CEO of a tech firm in California’s Silicon Valley, spoke about his dramatic shift in perception. He’d really listened as women speakers shared the good that happens when they trust their feminine way of understanding and relating to the world.
Listening in such an open way, a new understanding emerged, unexpectedly healing a division from childhood in Michael’s mind and heart. Remarkably, this shift also illuminated a solution to a difficult business problem that had tortured him for months.
When a healing like this happens, we show up more confident, ready to lead, and empower others to do the same.
4. Completeness: In this stage, settled and steady, we keep learning. We can objectively observe reactions, tell the truth to ourselves and others. With an expanded positive regard for women, we find new ways to powerfully employ the feminine side of our nature in service to others.
For instance, rather than writing about the women who supported the men during World War II as is commonly done, award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah writes intimately about WWII from inside the experience of women, their struggles with the invasion, the 800-calorie months that left their children skin and bones.
Reading The Nightingale woke me up to leadership that has been largely invisible for almost 100 years: women who sheltered and led dozens of downed airmen to safety over the Pyrenees mountains and relocated Jewish children while German officers billeted in their homes.
Food in their larders dwindled and treasures disappeared - grandmother’s favorite chair, the pearl necklace saved for a daughter’s wedding - yet they persisted. As the heroine, Vianne, nearly 100 years old at the conclusion of the book, says to her son, “For us it was a shadow war. No parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.”
Blinders that narrowed my vision were gone. I didn’t even know my perception was limited! With this new understanding my respect grew, as well as my curiosity about what else I don’t see.
Use these stages as an opportunity for awareness. As uncomfortable as it can be, recall times when you recognized your own bias and how it imprisoned you in adapting, pretending, or performing instead of fully engaging your feminine side.
This month celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD) invites us to #BreakTheBias, to discover bias in workplaces, schools, and communities. As IWD says on the website, “Whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead.”
Today, we face an unprecedented opportunity and responsibility to actively call out gender bias, discrimination and stereotyping each time we see it. Perception is shifting, but these embedded beliefs are tricky. I still occasionally catch myself granting more legitimacy to a masculine rather than a feminine approach.
My hope is that these four phases will inform our work to shift a variety of unconscious perceptions, whether about gender, race, color, shape, or age. Let’s look for reactions, our own and others. Invite inquiry. Seek healing where none resides. I’ve heard it said, “If you want to be powerful, be complete.“ Let’s do whatever it takes to complete the past.
Stepping out of reaction and into wholeness, we can know ourselves as complete, free to live and lead from our nature.
As a young woman my perception changed ,and I experienced the world differently. Parenting was joyful and powerful. Today, I take great pleasure in seeing our daughter, an intelligent, creative, and deeply nurturing mother.