Most organizations were built to reward a very particular style of leadership — one that moves fast, projects certainty, and mistakes decisiveness for clarity. And yet what high-performing teams actually need looks a lot more like curiosity, psychological safety, and the ability to hold complexity. These are qualities women (and feminine-leaning leaders more broadly) often bring naturally. They’re also the ones that organizational systems have historically left undervalued, but are now critical to develop in order to keep up with the challenges of the world today.
In this episode, guest Darcy Winslow joins Emma Rose Connolly and Robin Anselmi to talk about what it looks like to lead from these qualities and why they’re a strategic asset: leading through influence without relying on authority, using emotion as data rather than a liability, engaging with ambiguity, and finding the value of your strengths (and those of others) inside systems that haven’t historically been designed to celebrate them.
About Our Guest
Darcy Winslow spent 23 years at Nike leading large-scale systems change from the inside, holding senior roles including founding the company’s Sustainable Business Strategies, Global Director for Research Design and Development, GM/VP of Nike’s Global Women’s Footwear, Apparel and Equipment division, and Senior Advisor to the Nike Foundation.
She went on to co-found the Academy for Systems Change — focused on advancing awareness-based approaches to economic, social, and ecological wellbeing — and founded the Magnolia Moonshot 2030, a collaborative convening women leaders working at the intersection of climate, deep equity, and conscious leadership. She has also served as a Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and is a board member for The Carbon Underground, The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education, and Regenerative Earth.
