Gentle

There it was. “Gentle.” I was surprised, heart-warmed, and convinced all over again that the world is ready for us to bring our full set of human gifts, that the world is longing for and needs us to do that.

This drove it home all over again.

Here’s what happened.

We were gathered in a virtual meeting to introduce our team from A Human Workplace to our new client’s team for a long-term contract. They are a department of about 600 people in a male-dominated field embedded in a large organization of about 14,000 employees.

The department deputy was explaining why they are working with us and how they came to choose us. He talked about their human-centered cultural goals and how critical it was to support employee well-being and psychological safety to create a workplace where everyone belongs. He said that while they’d interviewed many vendors, they chose us because,

“Renee was gentle.”

The key factor in their decision was that I was gentle.

Please let that sink in. Our strategic competitive advantage to win this major consulting contract for an organization in a highly masculine industry was gentleness.

I am sharing this with you today not to boast but to encourage you, especially those of you who bring what we think of as feminine qualities to the world. Your naturally human and caring way of being is needed and people are drawn to these qualities. People are literally dying for lack of social connection. There are highly sensitive people who are struggling. We know people are suffering from a lack of kindness and compassion and want more in their lives and work.

Your loving demeanor can make it possible for others who are struggling under the stress of daily life to hear and receive the other gifts you offer. Those gifts might be a project plan, an improvement approach, an employee strategy, a way to get a task done, or anything you are tasked to bring.

In the past, we’ve been told to “drive the decision”, to push ourselves, to angle for control, to be the dominant voice. In essence, to bring more “masculine” energy. Except if you are a woman; don’t do that too much or you risk being labeled unfavorably. Feminine qualities have not traditionally been associated with leadership; they were perceived as weak or too soft.

But new leadership studies, a review of the motivations behind the Great Resignation, and our own recent lived experiences demonstrate that times have changed. We are more aware of the human needs of those around us and of our own. We now realize that what I call Essential Human Skills are well essential! These are often misnamed “soft skills” and include things like listening, welcoming, harmonizing, collaborating, developing others, conflict resolution, intuition, creating belonging, relationship building, appreciating, and more. And associated with these are qualities such as respect, kindness, compassion, care, challenge, and trust.

I want to encourage you today, whether you are a man or a woman, to bring forward with confidence your feminine qualities and to own the full value of your Essential Human Skills. You are surrounded by people who need you to bring who you are and what you naturally do to the world and to work. Those ways of being that you’ve always wanted to not leave at home? Your team needs them. And even if in the past, you’ve been overlooked or warned that those are not the qualities of a leader, today we know better. Today the world is waiting.

Go gently and see what happens.