The Strategic Case for Feminine Leadership, with Darcy Winslow | On Connection

Transcript

Transcripts are generated by machine learning, so typos may be present.

Emma Rose (00:00):

[gentle music] Hello and welcome back to On Connection.

We are living through a period of organizational complexity that is genuinely unprecedented.  The challenges leaders are navigating like rapid change, competing stakeholder demands, fractured trust, global instability, don’t yield to the old playbook. They require something different. And yet most of our organizational systems were designed in a different era, for a different kind of challenge, and they still tend to reward a very particular style of leadership, one that prizes certainty, moves fast, and mistakes decisiveness. For clarity, research tells us something interesting about what high performing teams and organizations actually need right now. Amy Edmondson’s decades of work at Harvard on psychological safety and Google’s Project Aristotle, which built on her findings, consistently point to the same set of conditions.

Emma Rose (00:55):

The ability to admit you don’t have the answer, to take interpersonal risk to create space for multiple perspectives, to lead through curiosity rather than certainty. These aren’t soft skills; they are the architecture of high performance in complex systems, and they map almost exactly onto what has historically been characterized as feminine leadership: intuition, emotional intelligence, collaboration.

Emma Rose (01:21)

The willingness to be vulnerable, to say, I don’t know, to lead through influence rather than authority. These are qualities that women and feminine leaning leaders more broadly often bring with them into organizations. And they are also qualities that those same organizations have historically undervalued, misread, or penalized. That’s the tension at the heart of today’s conversation. What happens when the skills a system most needs are the same ones it hasn’t learned to see clearly? And what does it take to lead authentically and effectively inside that reality? I’m joined today by two guests who have each navigated this from different angles and have a lot of wisdom to offer.

Emma Rose (02:01):

Robin Anselmi, CEO of Conversant, who long time listeners will know well, and Darcy Winslow, a long time friend of Conversants whose career is really a master class and leaning through exactly what we’re talking about today. She spent 23 years at Nike where she founded the Sustainable Business Strategies in 1999, ran the global women’s footwear, apparel and equipment division, and LED large scale systems change from inside one of the most competitive organizations on the planet.

Emma Rose (02:28):

She went on to Co-found the Academy for Systems Change, focused on advancing awareness based approaches to our biggest economic, social and ecological challenges, and founded the Magnolia Moonshot 2030, a collaborative that convenes women leaders working at the intersection of climate equity and conscious leadership. She’s also taught at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and she’s currently in the process of writing a book about the women who shaped Nike. In this conversation, we get into what female leadership or feminine leadership actually looks like in practice, the qualities, the strengths, the particular ways of seeing and moving through organizations that tend to come with it.

Emma Rose (03:07):

We talk about power and it’s different expressions, what it means to lead through influence, how emotion functions as data rather than a liability, and the role women play in supporting each other and the next generation in finding their voice and their footing. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Darcy Winslow.

Emma Rose (03:36):

Hello and welcome back to On Connection. I’m Emma Rose and I’m joined today by two lovely guests. So we have Robin Anselmi, CEO of Conversant, who if you have been a listener of the podcast, you are familiar with her and her voice and some of what she might have to say. So hello, Robin, welcome.

Robin (03:52):

Hi Emma Rose.

Emma Rose (03:54):

And then we’re joined by our guest, Darcy Winslow, who has been a friend of Conversant for quite a long time, but has had her own experience in her career that we wanted to be able to tap into some of her wisdom today, specifically around a topic that the entry point is women in leadership.

Emma Rose (04:10):

That’s quite a big conversation to have, but we’ll be able to steer it in ways that we hope you enjoy and find meaningful. But Darcy, thank you so much for being here. How are you today?

Darcy Winslow (04:21):

Thank you for the invitation.

I’m great—happy to be here.

Well, it’s interesting.

As you were talking, I was thinking back to a question somebody asked me.

It may have even been Anne Murray Allen who said, what is your first memory of being a leader, stepping into a leadership?

Emma Rose (05:04):

That’s a good one.

Darcy Winslow (05:05):

And I couldn’t remember.

So I was talking with my mom, this was several years ago, and I asked her that question.

She goes, oh, I know the answer.

And she said, when you were in 4th grade, you know, we would take the bus to school.

And I came home one day and I said, you know, the bus driver is really treating kids horribly.

And I wanted to do something about it.

So one of my life mantras is challenge status quo.

So the next day, I talked my older sister and my dear, dear younger brother into taking alternative transportation to school.

Of course, we didn’t have that word back then.

So my older sister was on stilts, my brother was on a unicycle, and I was on a pogo stick.

And we went 2 1/2 miles to school.

And, you know, when we got there, they…

What are you doing?

And I told them about the bus driver and that he got fired.

So, you know, just standing up for what you believe in.

And I think that’s kind of guided my life.

 

Darcy Winslow (06:31):

But you know, from a women’s leadership perspective, I think it all started when I started at Nike.

And my educational career is biomechanics, kinesiology, and exercise physiology.

So I started in the Nike Sport Research Lab.

And when I went in—this was 1987—they were doing almost all of their applied and basic research studies, you know, certainly on athletes, but on male athletes.

And I was like, you know, what’s up with this?

Because I’ve been an athlete my whole life.

And so asking that question and really pushing to incorporate, you know, an equal number of women athletes—because women are not small men; girls are not small boys.

We are made differently.

So that quickly changed to where we had, you know, almost equality in the testing.

And that thread just travelled with me throughout my life at Nike—from a women’s perspective—putting together the women’s footwear division, running that, and then challenging, you know, why women’s apparel and women’s equipment and women’s footwear all ran separately.

And so we put together a business case to bring together the global women’s footwear, apparel, equipment division.

And that changed how Nike operated after two years of running this pilot, so to speak, because all the rest of Nike continued to run as-is.

And we kind of had to run it differently, but under the current rules.

And after two years, we proved that that was a better way of running the business.

And so then the president asked me to put together a team to redesign how all of the rest of Nike operated.

So, and there’s lots of women’s stories, you know, unpacked in there.

But then after leaving Nike, that really became kind of the North Star for me: how to support women leaders—certainly through the Academy for Systems Change, our fellowship program—really supporting women in that.

And then starting the Magnolia Moonshot 2030, which is all about women leaders in the space of climate justice, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and equity and equality in all forms.

So it’s very important to me, and really supporting the next generation of young women.

Emma Rose (08:49):

Beautiful.

Well, a wealth of stories it sounds like that we could dig into, so I hope we get to hear some of them.

And do you want to say a little bit about the book that you’re writing?

Because I think that’s very relevant, too.

Yeah. 

Darcy Winslow (09:01):

So my best friend from Nike—she actually ran for Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon.

And she was—that was her first job.

And she and I—we met probably the first day I was at Nike.

And she was a true runner.

So she quickly whipped me into shape—not just to run, but to become a runner.

And our friendship has, you know, existed far past our time at Nike.

And so we decided that, you know, looking at all the books that have been written about Nike, they’re almost all by men about the men.

And having lived and worked with so many amazing women who, you know, broke barriers—they had firsts.

They changed the texture and tenor of the company.

And so our book—it is going to be called Her Swoosh: the stories of the women who shaped Nike.

Emma Rose (10:06):

It’s very exciting.

When is the estimate on when it’s going to come out?

Do you have a timeline?

Darcy Winslow (10:10):

Your guess is as good as mine. We’re hoping by the beginning of 2027.

Emma Rose (10:20):

Great.

Well, something to look forward to for everybody here, but we get a little sneak peek into your stories.

Well, Robin, what would you introduce in terms of your story of women in leadership—or your relationship to that topic—in terms of where you stand today?

Robin (10:36):

Yeah. Well, first listening to Darcy, you know, I’ve known you for so long and I’ve heard you introduce yourself before.

And it’s always so fun to hear people introduce themselves because I think most of us do it slightly differently each time.

And I feel like I learned a little bit more about you.

So thank you again for joining us today.

I, you know, I think most people know if you’ve been listening to the podcast for more than this episode.

I started my career as an engineer.

It’s hard to have been an engineer in the late 80s and early 90s in the United States as a female and not pay attention to females, women’s leadership.

It was such a unique place to be in that particular moment in time.

I actually was telling a colleague the story the other day.

I think one of my very first memories about having this sudden realization about women and women’s leadership…

I was walking across campus—I went to Rutgers, a big university.

There were a lot of people on the campus.

It was freshman year—early days—and I was walking with my friend and everybody kept saying hello to me and calling me by name, but not him by name.

And I turned and I’m like, how does everybody know my name?

He goes, you are one of 10 girls on campus.

Everyone knows who you are.

And I was like, oh—now he was exaggerating. 10 was not the number, but his point was exactly right.

And so I think it was the first moment of realizing that that was odd.

Like I hadn’t thought about it.

But really before then I just sort of dropped myself into engineering because I was good at math and science and that seemed like the thing to do.

And so from there I started joining the women’s leadership groups on campus and the women in engineering—because of really looking for community, right?

Looking for where were the resources or the places to go?

And then I was really lucky in my career early on.

I had a couple of really great leaders when I worked in engineering, and one of them was—when we were building a new manufacturing facility—they promoted a woman into the head of engineering, which was about unheard of in that particular moment in time.

So it was—everybody was… she was Betsy Cutler.

She was fabulous and wicked smart, and it was really just—watching her and her leadership and how she navigated some of the challenges of working on the construction site as the head of engineering and a woman at that particular moment in time.

So those are some of the things I think.

And moving into financial services was, you know, I think had its own then permutations of that, right?

And what did that look like?

And, you know, a lot of our clients today have some of those similar categories of tech and financial services, and what do they look like, and how do women navigate those places has just always been of interest to me.

And what are the—how do people navigate those?

What are people’s opinions about those?

Which I think also drives so much about how people behave, is how people are perceived when they index one way or the other.

Emma Rose (14:12):

Yeah. Well, and that’s a good segue that we wanted to also qualify what exactly we’re talking about in terms of the potential binary or the spectrum of traits that we’re talking about.

So while women in leadership is the topic that gets, you know, discussed a lot right now—and has for many years at this point—there’s also something about classically or traditionally feminine traits versus traditionally masculine traits, or what’s the traits of the system that women, female-identifying, or feminine-leaning people are trying to operate within.

And so I’m curious how—Darcy, I’ll start with you—how would you draw those distinctions? What is classically feminine that has a hard time thriving in some of these systems as they’ve traditionally operated?

Darcy Winslow (15:07):

Yeah.

You know, when we started the Magnolia Moonshot, there were three qualities that we really wanted to bring forward.

Divine feminine, conscious leadership, and bringing love into everything that we do—and social well-being.

And so we had to really unpack that for ourselves.

And you know, there’s the divine feminine and the divine masculine.

And these are not gender specific, but rather the qualities, you know, that show up.

So for divine feminine, it’s things like intuition and really tapping into inner wisdom; emotional intelligence; being present and aware; creating space to reflect.

You know, too often—certainly in the corporate world—it is go, go, go, go, go.

We never step back and reflect.

It’s always, you know, what’s in the moment.

It’s like that iceberg: what’s the crisis of the moment versus really taking the time to understand the structural system below.

And I’ll come back to the system showing vulnerability.

That’s a really tough one for a lot of people.

And again, in the corporate world and government—it doesn’t really matter what sector—our ability to collaborate…

And then I think the final quality that I’d like to add here—that’s not necessarily critically aligned with divine feminine, but it gets to the system…

And, you know, with all my work around systems and systems change—transforming systems, systems leadership—the very first characteristic of a systems leader is the ability to acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers.

And in my experience, in the corporate world, you get rewarded for having the first answer, the right answer—you know the answer.

And in complex systems, you can’t know all the answers because everything is changing constantly around that.

It’s very different from a complicated system.

So acknowledging that, hey, I need help.

I don’t have all the answers.

Robin (17:30):

Yeah.

I think it’s interesting to hear that combination also, right, and to think about what we see in the movies as a leader—or what we have seen in media as the leader—whether historically or today: the people who come out with a point of view, come out with the answer or the solutions, want to win through data and facts.

And most of those do tend to be men, but also all of those masculine traits—and how we have held those up as being the role models.

I think of leadership as well, Darcy.

So it’s not just where we’ve seen that it permeates, but also that’s what we have said for a long time: that those are leadership qualities, as opposed to really diversifying even what leadership means.

And I love that you brought in the complexity because I think that so much of leadership—particularly again, in my early career—was not from a complexity point of view.

It really was like, what are the complicated systems?

And again, in manufacturing—because most of them were complicated systems that we were dealing with, to be fair.

And so as we start to look at all of the complexity in the world—and needing as many different perspectives and points of view to be able to sense what’s happening and to make meaning of the information around us—and the skills we have to keep developing as individuals…

And so I think it really is this marriage of a multitude of skills—and not indexing just toward, like, “well, that’s what a leader does” or “what a leader looks like.”

Darcy Winslow (19:26):

Right.

And you know, if I can respond to that: working with Peter Senge for almost three decades now, he taught me the origin of the word “to lead.”

And it means to step across the threshold.

So it’s not positional.

It’s the actions that you take.

And so anybody can be a leader.

And then I also like to quote this brilliant woman, as she once said—and probably has said many times—“Be more curious, be less certain,” from the one and only Robin Anselmi.

And I just love that: curiosity is what is going to make visible the next aha.

And by being certain, you know, you just shut down the conversation every time.

And then the other thing about authority…

Again, Peter Senge—he flipped the mirror onto me and he said, you epitomize somebody who leads through influence versus authority.

And so what are the influencing skills that we bring forth?

And there are many—and you know, many are very easy to learn, but not very effective.

So really understanding the best way to influence in the context that you’re in.

Robin (20:56):

Yes. And as a side note to everybody who knows me who’s listening, I do say that.

I have been quoted as saying that.

And the delightful Susan Burgess, who was a coach for us for very many years and a colleague, once said to me that we coach that which we must learn ourselves.

So I also want to acknowledge that while I may say it, I’m probably not always the best demonstration of it because it’s still hard to do.

Darcy Winslow (21:18):

Of course.

Robin (21:19):

About asking more questions and being less certain.

Darcy Winslow (21:24):

I learned the hard way when I was, you know, in the early days of integrating sustainability—this unknown concept—into Nike.

I kept using data and logic.

And if they didn’t pick up on that, I would say it louder and more often.

And data and logic is actually one of the least effective ways to influence people.

And it taught me to become bilingual.

You know, if I was talking about a particular issue or a goal or a path forward, how do I articulate that to a creative, a designer, versus an engineer versus a finance person?

And again, that taught me to become bilingual and to understand audiences and flip the language.

Robin (22:16):

In my early days in financial services, I was working in part of the organization where all of the graphic designers worked.

And I remember learning that I was in an analyst team, right?

And so the analyst team kept bringing them data.

And I finally said to my team at that time, let’s make it a graph as opposed to a chart and see if that helps, right?

Because they could.

So the graph gave them something that they could picture because we kept bringing them Excel spreadsheets.

And so it is sort of the same thing of, like, how do you start to talk multiple languages?

And having been an engineer, everything was in the spreadsheet.

So that made a lot of sense to me, but didn’t make sense to everybody else.

Emma Rose (23:00):

Well, I like that influence came up because I was thinking, as you both were talking about power, that I think leadership and power often go hand in hand—or at least in tandem—in terms of how people are trying to grapple with what it means to lead, how to measure the effectiveness of your leadership, right?

And that power has different expressions.

And so what are sort of more feminine-leaning expressions of power versus masculine-leaning?

And I think a lot of the things that you already said, Darcy, speak to that—you know, there are powerful things that are fitting for certain contexts or certain moments like complexity.

I think it’s a lot about what it’s time for, if you’re familiar with Conversant’s language—to go to some of the systems piece.

I mean, Nike is a great example in the sense that you have different cultural systems and constructs sort of colliding that really do tee up this competitive, hyper-masculine, fast-moving kind of environment coming from athletics—which is super competitive and historically much more designed for men (we’ll just say men).

And then you have something like, you know, the corporate space, and then you have male leaders that are coming in and sort of imbuing their own qualities in the rest of the culture.

So I’m curious what you would say about the systems that those feminine qualities are trying to operate within and why that feels so chronically challenging?

 Darcy Winslow (24:37):

Yeah.

So a lot of thoughts packed in here, but starting with the power: if you look at power, is it finite or infinite?

It’s infinite.

There’s no limit to the power.

And when I thought about finite/infinite, when I was setting up the 2020 goals for Nike sustainability work—this was back in 1999—I asked myself the question: what do we want to take to 100 and what do we want to take to 0?

And what that also does: it throws you into a creative innovation orientation versus a substitution.

Oh, well, let’s use a little bit less of that and a little bit more of this.

And it flipped how everybody was thinking.

And at that time in sustainability, most of the leaders that were popping up were women.

And in 1999, through the Society for Organizational Learning—Peter Senge, Sarah Schley and Joe Lauer—they set up what was called the Sustainability Consortium.

And Nike was one of about 10 multinational companies.

Hewlett Packard was in there—Ford, British Petroleum, Harley-Davidson.

So none of us were competitors.

But in 2002, you know, we’d been together for about three years.

There were a few more companies.

We looked around the room and the majority of us were women.

So we created a smaller subset called Women Leading Sustainability.

Four years later, we’re still together.

And so that collaboration—that support for each other—we have a call once a month and somebody will bring a challenge, a question, you know, something that they’re working with, and how we support each other.

I think that’s just another example of that.

Divine feminine—and so not competitive.

So yeah, power is infinite.

Robin (26:49):

I think in some of the systems… Emma Rose, you know, when we talk about power, we simplify it to break it into three different categories.

So there’s power that comes from hierarchy or position.

There’s power that comes from access to information—or who regulates who gets information.

And then there’s power that comes from credibility through both conversation and who you know, right?

So it could be credibility through association or credibility through credentials, or credibility through conversational quality.

And what are the insights you could add?

And Darcy, we like to say exactly what you just did, which is that particularly that last kind of power is infinite.

You can generate it at any point in time.

I think historically when we talked about power, a lot of it has come overtly through hierarchy or through information and data.

And how do you access that?

And so then when you think about the systems that we’ve operated in, how does data (and the access to data) or hierarchy (and access to hierarchy) either help or impede how anyone progresses through a system?

When I was working in financial services, I was interviewing for the job and they were hiring a tremendous number of people at the time.

So they had this hiring machine where you’d go into the hotel—there would be 50 of you.

You sat down and you took a math test with a pencil.

So you had to take a math test—and it was 50 questions… no, 30 questions in 30 minutes.

And then there was a case study, so…

Robin (28:20):

I finished the case study.

And I’m sitting there by myself, like, waiting.

And I had been referred by a friend who was on the interview panel.

He had not interviewed me, obviously, because we were friends.

But he came in and he said, do you want to know why you’re still here?

And I was like, yeah. He said, you got the right answer, but you didn’t get there the way they expected you to get there.

And they don’t know what to do with you.

Emma Rose (28:45):

That’s so interesting.

Robin (28:46):

So I think…

Robin (28:48):

I actually went back after that.

I went back and, like, when I got hired, I went in and said, like, we have to change this hiring process, right?

Because I guess that intuition component, right?

Like, I could just see the answer.

I couldn’t tell you why I could see the answer.

I could just say, this is the answer.

And they did not like that, right?

They wanted A to B to C to sort of progress the same way that they were thinking.

And whether that’s the feminine or just the weird way my unique brain happens to work.

But in places where we sort of only look at information and we think information all says the same thing, and we’re not allowing different people to sort of weigh in and think about those challenges differently, right?

If you think about that group of women that has been together, the power of that is having all those different perspectives that can look at it and see a problem from 20 different perspectives—and see 20,000 different solutions as a result.

And so I think whether we’re talking about women’s leadership or the feminine and the masculine, what organizations miss out on is the ability to actually see that there are so many different solutions possible to the biggest, most unwieldy challenges we face today—and that we don’t have to go down just a singular path.

So that’s what I was thinking about in the systems and the institutions that we operate in.

And I get it—we want to be data-driven; we want to be science-based in all of our solutions.

We want to be science-based in all of our solutions.

And yet there is the humanity of: what is our body telling us in those moments?

What is our body telling us in those moments? I’m thinking about one of our clients in particular right now.

We’re so data-based that, yes, we can lose sense of: how does it feel to be in the system?

What does it feel like to be an employee here?

What does it feel like to be a potential employee here?

And how are we treating people, and how does that impact the actual work product that comes out of it?

Darcy Winslow (30:53):

Robin, you reminded me of a funny story about, you know, just how we show up.

I had this one boss who is a dear, dear friend to this day.

But we had our dust-ups through the years.

And so this guy was like 6’8″.

You know, I’m 5’4″, and he came up to me one time.

And this is when I was really, really passionate about, you know, innovation and sustainability.

And he’s looking down at me and he goes, “Darcy, you have to learn how to bring all your passion without the emotion,” as he’s just turning beet red.

And I just started laughing at him.

You know, it was just so ridiculous.

But you’re not showing any emotion, Mr. So-and-so.

And then while I’m laughing, he goes, you just said it, Robin, “I just don’t know what to do with you.”

I don’t know where you come up with these ideas.

How did you get there?

2020 goal.

How are we going to do that?

And I said, “I don’t know, but that’s where we’ve got to go.”

And you’ve got to go with your gut when you really, really, really feel you know that that is the right path with everything in your DNA.

You know, you have to follow that, and the outcome is almost irrelevant.

Robin (32:13):

Emma Rose, I’m going to turn the table to you for just a second, because Darcy and I have been talking quite a bit.

Robin (32:21):

You have entered your career and the workforce a little bit behind us.

And so I’m just curious: what are the things that you notice that maybe we’re kind of blind to today? I find—Darcy, I don’t know if this is true for you…

Robin (32:37):

I find the stuff I just tolerate and put up with because it’s just always been that way, and I don’t question it as much anymore.

I think because I’ve just been like, well, it’s better than it used to be, right?

My first engineering job—there was no women’s bathroom in the building that I was in.

I had to literally walk across the campus to find a women’s bathroom.

And so, you know, I look at that and I’m like, well, that wouldn’t happen anymore.

It’s improvement.

But I think that means I put up with stuff.

So I’m curious—what’s your experience?

Darcy Winslow (33:15):

Great question.

 Emma Rose (33:17):

One thing that’s coming up for me in this conversation—and I can maybe circle back to it because I think it’s relevant to my experience—is I haven’t ever thought of adaptability as maybe a feminine quality, but I think I would likely categorize it there if we were picking today.

And I think that can be both positive and potentially damaging, depending on what you’re trying to create.

What’s the experience you want?

What’s the experience you want women to have?

Or, you know, what do you want that reality to look like?

So, Darcy, like you’re saying: what’s the goal?

But for me, I think, you know, I grew up a relatively privileged white person—grew up in Colorado—which is not the most diverse or lacking in resource.

So from that perspective, I think that I had this assumption that we were growing up in sort of a post-feminist movement world—you know, that it had gotten so much better.

And we’re past all of that.

I don’t think I really came to an awareness of my own place in that experience until I was older.

And, you know, I worked in fine dining restaurants for a long time prior to being in this work.

And that is so steeped in certain decorum, traditions, and behaviors. And there’s a way to do it.

I think even that is sort of—I don’t know if that’s masculine or not. Anyway, I’ll have to sit in some of these questions.

But there’s a rigidity to it.

I guess that’s my point.

And that there were ways women showed up in that environment and there were ways that men showed up in that environment.

You know—how you dressed?

I remember when I first started as a hostess at one of those restaurants that we had to wear heels.

And that was just sort of the owner’s view on how he wanted people to show up.

But then even just being a female that was serving or as a hostess or in those kinds of service-oriented roles, where there are a lot of very powerful, very influential men that come into those spaces and expect to be treated a particular way.

And I think that was probably one of my first run-ins with being much more aware of what’s still very, very present in the world.

And this undercurrent that seems subtle, but does affect how you think about yourself and your place, how you think about the world, and what’s available to you.

And I think even in consulting or in the corporate space, there’s been a little bit of that, right?

And it came from a slightly more traditional consulting firm compared to Conversant.

But I think that my experience is this sensed tension between you and who you know yourself to be—or your tendencies—and the context that you’re in.

And I don’t think that that’s gendered.

I think anybody can have that experience of feeling like…

Emma Rose (36:30):

I have this thing I want to express, or a place I want to be, or a gift I want to offer, but I don’t feel like it fits here.

And how do you sort of reconcile that dissonance?

One, I think, is I’m a—and Robin will laugh—I’m a fairly emotional person.

And so just sort of moving through my own experience in my career of, OK, well, where is it time to sort of hold back?

Where do you need to manage yourself a little bit more to get by or to influence others or to, you know, play the role that you need to play?

And when is that actually OK?

And it’s not something you should deny of yourself.

And so I think very much on the individual level, it’s that sort of experience.

Like, how do I honor the things that have a place in me very naturally and have an eye on, well, what’s the place I want to go?

What’s the thing I want to impact?

Who are the people that I want to learn from?

That then should inform some of how you choose to show up or what skills you call on, I guess.

But I am still very aware of the challenges that exist.

Emma Rose (37:44):

I actually think that it’s harder in a world that people assume…

Emma Rose (37:49):

It’s not that hard.

Like, you know, that’s not exactly the conversation we’re in.

I don’t know if currently in the world, it does seem like we’re backtracking a little bit.

People might read that differently depending on where they sit, but there’s a bit more of a conversation about it right now.

And I think one of the things I did want to talk about too is: what is the role that women need to play in their relationships with each other in order to support more of these expressions having a home—or those gifts being leveraged, like you’re saying, Darcy, in complexity?

That’s the world now.

You know, that’s most businesses, regardless of the industry that you’re in.

And so we need so many of those qualities.

But how do women play a role with each other rather than waiting for men—or whomever is in power—to sort of open the door to us?

And we were talking a little bit before about how competitive women can be with each other, too, and I don’t think that that’s really helping.

So that’s one of the questions that’s coming up for me.

I don’t know what either of you would say to that.

Yeah, you know, I want to go…

Darcy Winslow (38:54):

Back to, you know, the emotion: because we are emotional creatures, and you know, going back to “bring all the passion without the emotion”—you just can’t separate those two.

But one thing I did learn is: when I do get very emotional and passionate about something—or if something comes at me really strongly—how do I take a breath and make sure that I respond and don’t react?

Darcy Winslow (39:23):

And that was a hard lesson learned over many, many years.

And the other thing was to name something in the moment.

Darcy Winslow (39:31):

And that also took a few years to learn.

It took courage, and it took time to build up that courage.

An example there would be: there were countless times when I was the only woman at the table and I would offer up a strategy or a solution or pose a question…

And it would just be as if I was silent.

You know, if somebody had hit my mute button, five minutes later another guy would offer up exactly what I had just said.

And they would go, yeah, yeah, that’s it.

And I would sit there and I’d go, I just said that.

And it took a couple of years before I just said, excuse me—stop, stop.

Did you recognize that I just said that?

And I had to do it a few times.

And it was very uncomfortable.

But, you know, women have to stand up for each other as well.

And you know, we used to often say: when there’s one woman in the room, it’s her.

If there’s two women in the room, it’s them.

When you get three women in the room, then you’ve got a fighting chance.

And so we would always work to make sure that there were at least three women in the room, and we had to be in support of each other.

And if, you know, something happened to that woman and they didn’t feel comfortable naming it, we would name it.

And so that’s just one example of how we have to be supportive of each other and to bring along the next generation of women leaders.

I mean, that is where my passion sits right now: to find them and support the heck out of them. 

Robin (41:18):

Beautiful.

Yeah, I think, you know…

Robin (41:20):

Darcy, I love this because I think a big part of our job is to amplify the voices, right?

So it is a lot harder for me to say, “Hey, I just said that.”

It’s a lot easier for me to say, “Can we go back to what Emma Rose just said?”

And with the title that I hold, it’s easier for me to be in that conversation.

I’m very cognizant of the power that is associated with that.

And the thing that keeps me up at night is: am I part of the problem?

Because there are some habits that you just start to take on whether you mean to or not.

And so I think it is looking at how do we keep amplifying others’ voices, provide guidance and counsel for others, and also provide some air cover for development.

I think normalizing emotions in the workplace—because I just said you can’t get the joy and the happiness and the passion and expect me to leave at home the anger and the sadness and the…

I’m sorry, I can’t actually bifurcate my being that way. 

Robin (42:23):

Emma Rose: all emotional.

I think I join you in the crying on a regular basis.

So at least there’s that in the workplace—and for people to understand that that’s an equally valid emotional response as any other that somebody might have in the moment.

And that, to your point, is just being present to: this is happening because of something I’m reacting to, responding to, in what’s happening.

And so what is that thing that we need?

Maybe my body is telling me what we actually should be discussing or talking about right now in the conversation.

I also think that there are places for us within client systems to help point out things that they don’t always see.

So I think that’s another place.

How do we, because we are that external voice, bring in and help people to see some of the blind spots that they might not have otherwise?

So those, for me, are some of the things on my mind about how do we actually be the folks that support some of the differences that might be in the room.

Emma Rose (44:12):

You know, something that’s coming up too is for those of you that are familiar with our distinctions—how we talk about authenticity and that. And Darcy, I’d love to hear what you’re hearing from some of the younger females about this.

But you know, especially in the age of social media, I’ve seen in the last decade or so a very strong shift towards this, you know, true to self, true to me, self-expression kind of space—and a bit of a movement, if you will, in people’s own relationship to how they’re going to show up in the world and what they deserve.

And I think some of that is very, very needed.

And a lot of that is also a pendulum swing going almost too far in another direction, depending on what we’re talking about wanting to shift.

But Darcy, you were saying earlier about speaking the language of the system, if you really want to influence it.

So authenticity for us is about what’s true to me and true to what we’re in together.

Like, what’s the thing that’s at the intersection of those things?

It’s not void of relationship.

It’s not me against the world, and it’s not me at all costs either.

And so the combative relationship that people sometimes approach movements for change with—sometimes called for, but you know, that’s sometimes what the moment needs.

But a lot of the time I think we fail to meet the system where it is in order to actually be in a conversation with it—to move it somewhere.

And I’m curious what you see showing up in younger women that you meet with nowadays—and if that feels relevant, or what else has come up?

Darcy Winslow (45:14):

Well, to get to that question, I want to go back to a paper that Peter Senge and Catherine Coffer wrote years ago.

It was called Communities of Leaders or No Leadership at All.

And very simply in that, they talk about executive leaders—which the majority are men—line leaders, those who are running different parts of the organization or business.

And then network leaders—and network leaders are the ones in the organization who don’t have authority, they don’t have title, but they have reputation and they have the ability to garner momentum towards what is wanting to happen, needing to happen.

And so I wanted to put that out there because, to me, they’re the heroes in the system that are often invisible.

Well, the Magnolia Moonshot has now birthed what is soon to be online: the Blossom Collective.

And actually, they’re already on Instagram.

And it’s all about finding change makers around the world.

And again, these are not “the ones on the stages,” but change makers who are, you know, passionate about making the world a better place.

And their stories are absolutely amazing.

And you can go to the Blossom Collective on Instagram to find some of these young women and what they’re passionate about and how they’re going about doing it.

And to create this, you know, this web of interconnectedness where they’re learning from each other, they’re meeting each other—whether they’re in South Africa or India or Pakistan or Colorado.

And I think that what’s critical in the world is to make these connections so that, you know, that work gets stronger and stronger.

It goes back to, in some ways,Paul Hawken’s book, Blessed Unrest.

Darcy Winslow (47:15):

Years ago, he estimated there were about 2 million nonprofits in the world trying to make the world a better place.

But they were small and they were unconnected.

So they were making a difference, but not as big as it could be.

So how do we become these web makers and create these connections?

And again, it goes back to the divine feminine—to collaborate, to make these connections.

And I think that is a lot of our work in the world.

Emma Rose (47:47):

I love that…

Emma Rose (47:47):

I’m having sort of a weaving image coming to mind—like, what are we weaving together. Robin, what about you?

What’s on your mind about what you notice in the younger generations?

Robin (48:01):

Well, I think you’re right—and I think in some ways I’m seeing it go back the other way because of so much of the cancel culture that’s happened, right?

So they think that, yes, there has been this desire for folks to bring their whole self to work or be fully authentic.

And then because of some of the backlash that then happens, I worry about it going totally the other direction.

I think, Emma Rose, to your point: when we think about authenticity, I think that’s the thing that’s missing—it’s not me and my point of view and my needs above everything else that’s happening in the moment.

And sometimes I think that’s how it occurs, right, when folks are talking in that way.

And how do you sort of move with the system?

So how do you be appropriate for that moment?

I was listening to some friends of ours’ podcast yesterday, and they were talking about authenticity and they used a slightly different definition. But it’s interesting because it’s about living your values.

And there are a lot of different ways that can look.

And so I like that as an alternative, right?

Because it’s not inside of this.

It’s not about me not being true to myself, but finding the methods or the ways to express that that are appropriate given the setting that I’m in and the responsibilities that I have and what the system actually needs from me in that moment.

The system doesn’t need from me all the things that my family might need from me, right?

And at a given moment, that doesn’t mean that the things that I care about in my family don’t show up in my work.

Those of you who know me know that my family shows up every day in my work.

And so, but it’s in different and hopefully more appropriate ways for that moment.

And so I think that’s a—in some ways that’s a life lesson, Frank—that takes a little bit of sometimes getting some skinned knees along the way of trying to figure out like, who are you in the moment that’s actually appropriate to the moment and not feeling like it’s all or nothing.

They also, in this podcast, were talking about the difference.

It’s not transparency.

Full transparency is not authenticity, right?

Like me having to say everything about who I am.

And so how do you sort of navigate that?

And some of that, I think, is the life lesson of having been through a couple of different places where you bump into things, right, and either skin your knees or knock something over, and learn that there might be a different approach to it.

So for me, Emma Rose, my biggest thing is for folks who are saying that they want to bring their whole self and be authentic at work to not give up on it, right?

To not go like, oh, well, I got bumped or bruised in that one.

And so to just say, like, see, it’s not possible or it’s not safe—like there’s 800 other ways to do it. Can you find another one maybe inside of that?

Darcy Winslow (50:55):

Yeah, I used to always say how do you recover from a face plant?

That tells a lot about you—about what it does.

Emma Rose (51:03):

Yes, it does.

I think, you know, just to…Say that we’re talking about it in the…

In the context of women—and we see that that’s most leaders’ work, right?

And I mean, I think it would be a great pathway for women to find authentic ways of showing up in their full power and leadership in ways that are really needed.

And that is the work of everyone in leadership, at least from the Conversant perspective.

Emma Rose (51:28):

And so, well, we are winding down on our time—that blew by—and we may have to have a Part 2, Darcy, when your book is closer to coming out or something, because we could talk about this for, I mean, a whole series, you know?

But what would you like to leave people with?

Anything—any words of advice for leaders or anything you’d love for our listeners to keep in mind as they’re sort of haunted by this conversation?

Darcy Winslow (51:56):

Well, I think I would just like to emphasize what you just said—and it’s where the Magnolia Moonshot started as well—is to find your voice, to find your power, and to help young women find their voice, find their power, and fully support that.

My third life mantra, I think, is also important: take everything you’re passionate about seriously, except yourself.

Emma Rose (52:25):

I love that.

It’s going on my bathroom mirror.

Robin, what about for you as we close out today?

Robin (52:36):

I guess mine is more of a hope.

Robin (52:41):

I keep hoping that it doesn’t require courage for us to bring both the feminine and the masculine to work—right? To bring the combinations and to see the value in both of those.

I keep hoping that there’s a moment in time where that is just accepted and that it’s not an act of courage.

Emma Rose (53:05):

Well, and that goes to the sort of declarative commitment to a future that—who knows where we’ll end up—but I think that’s also part of how change gets made and, in a way, feminine energy gets utilized.

But don’t be afraid to declare the future that you want to create.

And we’ll see where we land, I suppose, if we’re all committed to it.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

And we’ll, I’m sure, have you back.

And we’ll make sure that people have access to information about Magnolia Moonshot, the Blossom Collective, and of course your book when it comes out.

But thank you for joining us, Darcy.

Robin (53:43):

Darcy, it’s so great to see you. Thank you for being here with us today. Yeah. Good to see you again.

Emma Rose (53:48):

All right, bye.

[Audio ends]