With the expedition two months in, this episode focuses on nine of the members. Their experience so far. What they have learnt. What has sent them into a whirlwind of confusion. What has settled some issues in their minds.

For the first two months they have been speaking to women the world over. In villages and in boardrooms. In Nigeria and in Canada. In their teens and in their eighties.

It has caused Katya to think about ‘inner work’ and Alia about ‘leadership perspectives anchored in the global north’. It has prompted Ana Luz’s awe of women in politics and Isata has tried to answer some of the resulting questions. It has brought many doubts about motherhood to the fore for Anna Kuk and even more for Vidya whose conversations have held up a mirror up to her own approach to leadership. Yvette has been speaking to women who have been senior leaders both as men and as women as they have transitioned.

For Yvette it has confirmed one of her core beliefs that “leadership is leadership is leadership” but it has also raised some unsettling questions about leadership. And for Laura, she has been putting everything into practice immediately as she has started a new job.

This is a messy episode. It should be. We are at the early messy phase of the expedition. Have a listen.

Julia Middleton 0:01

Mona 3:20

They are only pinches because but they can alter the taste of what you fundamentally cook, right? Because we all know the importance of adding a dash of this in a pinch of that. For me exuberance is really in discovering possibility. Some of us may feel that the current moment we're in is a disaster. But I feel like it throws us into the present. And it gives us this ability to have a deep sense of connection. And even though it may feel like an unwelcome gift, we have some kind of spiritual awakening where we are close in a way that makes us feel more alive. And that's the exuberance I'm talking about in this.

Julia Middleton 4:00

But it's tough producing that exuberance in tough times.

Mona 4:03

It is tuff but I think we have to look at the end game. It's a long game here, nothing we do is going to be a short term solution. So we have to keep that joy and that exuberance going.

Julia Middleton 4:15

So I understand the exuberance, tell me more about visibility and humility.

Mona 4:20

I strongly believe that visibility and humility are two sides of the same coin. You can be humble about the work you do. But in order to really amplify the change you want to have, as I try with gender equality, you have to be visible, so that people can see what they can be. And they aren't mutually exclusive. It doesn't mean that you are bragging or that you're showcasing yourself, you're really highlighting an issue so people can see the path to change. That's the balance between humility and visibility.

Julia Middleton 4:58

Lots of leaders struggle with this visability, don't they?

Mona 5:00

I think they do. Because it's a false narrative that if you're visible, you're not humble. And I don't think that's true, I think you can very easily be both. And that point was actually pointed out to me because as a child growing up in Calcutta, I worked with Mother Teresa. And someone said to me, Well, isn't Mother Teresa both humble and visible? And of course she is. And I think that just switched it around for me and I realised you can and must be both.

Julia Middleton 5:27

Next in went to Katya. Katya is the youngest member of our expedition, and, and has been really, really surprised, I think about how the other members of the expedition have shared their emotions. And it has made her reflect a great deal on the power of what she calls inner work. So I asked her to explain the concept of inner work.

Katya 5:54

I think my understanding of inner work is taking time to reflect and understand oneself understanding one's positionality, the way that we see the world and why we see it that way. But also understanding, you know, what are our goals? What are our, you know, what makes us feel alive? What makes us get up in the morning? What are the things that, you know, we're excited about that we love, what are the things that we stand for, and everyone that I've spoken to so far on this expedition, both within the sort of expedition team, but also people outside, I've just been, I think moved is an appropriate word, actually, because I wasn't expecting to discuss a motion so much with people and to discuss to really get behind some sort of exterior and, understand the fact that people have been willing to show themselves for who they are on a human level, I think that I wasn't expecting.

Julia Middleton 6:53

And inner work looks very different for different women in different cultures, different positions, isn't it?

Katya 6:59

Some people look to God or some sort of spiritual figure to connect with themselves. Also on a on a deep level, I know that I mean, I do a lot of running in the mountains, right? Like that, for me is a spiritual experience. And that, for me is a way of doing inner work and becoming a stronger, more reflective, self reflective person. Some people garden, you know, like being close to nature, going for walks in the park, just all of these things where you take time to pause, and to slow down. Because I think by doing that, you really, you're able to recalibrate and speaking to different women, as part of this expedition, recalibrate was a word that was used a few times actually, it's like, where's your centre? And how does that guide you? And I think that that's extremely important for leadership.

Julia Middleton 6:59

So inner work is to find what's inside yourself. Good and bad, no doubt, bad being some of the things that you need to sort of unlearn. You're saying that that is a particular challenge for women?

Katya 8:01

I think it's a challenge for everyone. But I think that there are a lot of things that we as women need to unlearn, a lot of things that, you know, by doing this inner work, and I'll just briefly as a tangent here, I think that this inner work doesn't have to be independent. I think that that's also a key thing that people can be doing this inner work together and learning from each other. And particularly when it comes to this unlearning. I think this is really where we can learn from each other. where someone can highlight for you actually, you're behaving in this way that where you are putting yourself at a disadvantage because you've been socialised to behave in this way, again, is a very basic example, you know, now looking for jobs and preparing for interviews and writing cover letters. Looking at my male friends, the way that they write their cover letters, the way that they write their CVs, I've completely rewritten. You know, how I used to present myself, you know, thinking that perhaps things that I've internalised as a woman, socialised to be humble and quiet, and, you know, hope that people see behind this sort of passive exterior and actually realised that I'm a good candidate for a particular position. No, I mean, you have to be assertive, you have to understand that you are worth it. You know, and there's a difference between arrogance and being assertive in your worth. But this is also something that has come up speaking to women as part of the expedition is that it's so important to know your worth and so important to know that you you have a voice and not all women have a voice you know, not all women are given the chance to use their voice but those of us who can, should you know, and I think that's something that we we need to consciously unlearn is the barriers that we that society perhaps has put up that actually we can overcome collectively.

Julia Middleton 8:01

Next I spoke to Alia, who has also loved being part of this group of 24 women and has loved seeing things through other people's eyes. And a particular thing that she has spoken about that other members have shone a light on is that though we are focused on developing an approach to leadership that resonates with women, we're also in effect trying to cut through the perspectives about leadership that are anchored in the Global North. Have a listen.

Yeah, you know, as I've been meeting other members on this expedition, and also just reflecting on my own leadership journey in different parts of the world, I've realised that many of the sort of prominent models of leadership that we see in the media are in the Global North, often in the United States, or Eurocentric, they're often male. So how do we start to think about leadership that would resonate not only in the Global North, but more broadly, how do we think about leadership that's also not anchored in a world that has to be defined by capitalism as its only modality of being or patriarchy as the only way of being or sort of an east versus west concept as the only way of being. How do we start to think about these things differently. And it's been wonderful to be on an expedition with so many different brilliant people and hear their perspectives. The first group that I was in, had a great conversation with, with Aparna. And we were really thinking about, not just the way that we learn from our minds, but the way that we learn from our bodies, right? And it just made me think about how much wisdom there is in different parts of the world and how we need to almost decolonize our approach to leadership in general.

And that plays back into one of your, one of your deep beliefs that leaders need to learn to play. So I suppose in a way, that's what the expedition is, 24 women playing.

Absolutely, um, you know, I have a deep, a deep love for play and all that it brings, because it gets us out of our heads, it gets us out of our primary modality of, of thinking and doing and it helps us connect with each other in new ways that helps us connect with ideas in new ways. And think differently. I mean, there's actual research out there that shows us that play isn't just good for children, we know it's good for children, we know that it actually play helps develop the prefrontal cortex, which is important for all sorts of things from regulating emotion to building relationships. But actually play is really important for adults as well and can help us build trust, can help us think outside of the box, can help us flip hierarchy and change power differential. And so if we are serious about changing a paradigm and thinking differently, we have to get out of the boardroom, we have to get out of you know only doing things on pen and paper or only thinking with our traditional minds and instead move with our bodies, we need to play, we need to interact with each other differently so that we can reimagine what leadership could and should be.

And now on to Anna Luz and Isata. Ana Luz, who seen something with real clarity. And Isata who tries to in a way respond to it. I'm not surprised you're feeling a certain amount of indigestion at the moment. It makes sense, doesn't it? That that should be indigestion at this early stage of the expedition. We're just accumulating things in the kitchen. We're not trying to pull them all together yet. Anyhow, listen to Anna Luz.

I was thinking about women in activism, and I was thinking about women in politics, which are really important spheres of leadership, where women have had remarkable roles and where we need more women leading and I see, I find it in myself, you know that I would be hesitant to throw myself like fully into those arenas because I perceive them to be ruthless. I think leadership takes many forms. Sometimes it looks like a fight. Sometimes it looks like more coalition building or consensus building, working across difference trying to bridge, sometimes it is quiet, sometimes you have to be loud. And sometimes it's very hierarchical. And sometimes it isn't, then I'm more drawn to the collaborative, you know, bridging kind of work. And I deeply admire the women who have in them this energy to fight. You know, I am here, actually, in South America where I grew up spending time with family and visiting right now with me is an aunt of mine, who is the first woman Mayor of one of the largest counties in the United States, you know, I just see the level of energy and determination that this requires, just talking to her about the work she does. It's really spectacular. It's remarkable. You know, I think some of us are very attuned to our emotions, and in particular, perhaps, seek harmony and want to build harmony among those around us. And so being in a confrontational state, can be difficult and yet probably is a key part of leadership. Through our explorations, we're going to find that there are many, many different ways to lead and when we need them all.

I took it and Anna Luz's admiration and thoughts, to Isata. Isata, the politician who must know a lot on this. And I asked her, to what extent leadership is different when it's when it's about a fight? Because the expedition members are definitely using the word collaboration a lot, and how relevant is the word collaboration when you're in a real fight? But first, I asked, Isata. Does politics have to be a fight?

It's an approach that you need to apply more often than you expect, when you first get into politics, the fact that you have to fight but what you realise very early on is that you have to first fight for the right to be there. And you have to fight for the right to do the right thing. And that's what you least expect, you expect that doing the right thing should be the most common acceptance that everybody has that you'll be able to build a team around that because it's something that's going to benefit everybody, but it involves change. So change means loss to a lot of people. And therefore there's going to be resistance. So whether it's you actually being in a position of leadership means a change to somebody else, that's no longer there, or you correcting some wrongs in society, fighting against some injustice. There's a loss involved, a lot of people have maintained that status quo. So you have to fight earlier than you expect, and more often than you expect. But the fight seems almost natural to women who have chosen to be in an arena of change. Because you understand that nobody wants to change, and you understand why it's so important, that we continue along that change. How you fight makes a difference. Women still fight collaboratively because you realise you're fighting with people you're fighting for. And sometimes you're fighting against people you're fighting for. Because until you you're able to sell that change to them, even though you're fighting for or not in agreement with your leadership or with your position or with your presence.

So fundamentally, the leadership of a fight is no different from the leadership of an organisation or a community. But perhaps it just feels more violent.

It's more dangerous. It's more dangerous. Women in campaigns have been stoned and verbally abused, physically abused, physically locked out of spaces, it's physically more dangerous. And now we have more ways to endanger women, both offline and online. And it's a danger to your character, to your reputation. With a disinformation, it's a fight, you have to be ready for in a very personal way where maybe you don't have the protection of an organisation or community because you're first trying to change a community or you're trying to change an organisation. And it's just something you have to build up your own self preservation. So when you wake up in the morning, and the fight continues, when you go to bed at night, you have to do your own mental calculations and make sure you're mentally, emotionally ready for the next day's fight because those who don't want to change, they don't relent. And you don't want to be fighting alone for the long time, you want to make sure that you know you build resilience and resolve, but build people on your side to be able to help you to do that. So it still needs to be collaborative.

So the ingredients in the kitchen get more and more messy as more and more ideas come in. And many of them push the members of the expedition to think again, to think hard. I had a conversation with Anna. You seem to have questions in your mind on the link with motherhood.

Yes, I think because in my investigation so far, about the features of women, that was the most strongest, the most, the strongest one, the strongest feature, the strongest issue of, of femininity, is, is motherhood as well, when I see women leader, I see very strong woman, but alone, I don't know why I have this picture, in my mind alone. For the stage, we have no connection with her relatives, children, biology of being a mother, because I don't know, I see, you know, a person who's making speech who's strong in the professional environment, where are the children in this picture? Is this the separate word or how can we incorporate it and see it has an advantage in the professional portfolio, not as a thing that we need to put a shelf, you know, this is motherhood, so we need to keep it away, or eventually put it sometimes as an anecdote, or a characteristic of that person, when will be the point when the motherhood will be a normal and very much profitable and treated as a quick point in the portfolio. Somehow, I myself, I got myself that I have a fear of being mother, in the peak of my career. Why as a woman, as a woman, I can't see myself having a child and having like, you know, big, big things professionally. I know, rationally, I totally understand this. But emotionally, I'm scared that sometimes that it will somehow take away my identity. It's so strange. Even for me as a woman I'm I have fear of that in 21st century.

Now to Vidya. For Vidya, the expedition has really, so far has has held up a mirror for her. She wrote in a recent piece that nurturing with too much empathy is harmful. I asked her what she meant.

I think it was a, perhaps it was it came from what I've seen of myself, where when there's too much empathy, that's too much, putting yourself in the other shoes. To the extent that you find yourself always finding excuses for somebody else's underperformance or lack of understanding of your vision or the way you know, you expect things to get delivered. And so you're always giving a lot more room than is required. And therefore I felt nurturing had to be to the extent that to enable people to become the finest versions of themselves, but not so much that you keep compensating for what they don't do or that they don't understand. This is been my personal journey where I feel that I suffered from complete lack of aggression, which I took refuge in because I felt aggression, it's I don't like that trait. It's not only masculine, but it's something that I cannot be, but because of that I was neither assertive. And so therefore I had to fight and ineffective and a not a very articulate battle for what I felt should be the way things should either be run or projects should be executed. And I think as I found myself to the journey to be assertive, I also felt that I was just sometimes just giving too much rope. Because I felt, oh, this is my new self. But maybe you know, they don't. A lot of people told me that they saw a very different me, and they liked it, but I felt I need needed some way to explain why this new smooth found me was being assertive. And in that sense, I was also being too nurturing. So I'm sorry, it's sounding very confusing and jumbled.

I absolutely love that at this point in the expedition, we are jumbling and feeling our way. Because if we knew the answers to them all, we wouldn't take months and months to do the expedition. So in a lot of sense, and the conversations you're having with guides, is helping you weave through this.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

If you're exhausted, keep going for a little bit longer. This is this is a long expedition, there are a lot of people on it. And hey, I'm only speaking to 10 members of the expedition, there are 24. Think of it. So next Yvette. Yvette has very strong clear views on what leadership is. Absolutely clear in her head. But over the last few weeks, she has been speaking to a number of leaders who have transitioned from men to women, who were really senior male leaders, and are now really senior women leaders. And I asked her how much these conversations have shifted her thinking about leadership. Yvette, when we first met you talked to me about the things that you fundamentally believe about leadership. It's not gendered.

That's correct. In my opinion, at this moment, in my journey, I think leadership is leadership is leadership. I think approaches might be different. I think styles might be different. But leadership, the ability to influence, take a team, organisation, person to through a journey and get the best out of them to achieve a common goal. Leadership is leadership is leadership.

It's it belongs to everybody. So I believe in this one, too, so much, everybody, everyone's a leader, you believe that? Fundamentally, don't you? It's a lifelong pursuit.

For me it is, I don't know if it is for everybody else. But when I say that, that lifelong pursuit of excellence and leadership, it to me is really about, I don't have all the answers all of the time. And it's such a rich and beautiful, for me anyways, topic. I'm always trying to be better, trying to learn more, taking account of, how I'm leading at certain points and understanding. There's so much room for learning.

But it's a hard, lifelong pursuit.

Oh, yeah, leadership is hard. And anybody who tells me that it isn't, you know, I would question them and I questioned their particular approaches. Leadership, you know, it's just hard business, it ain't easy.

Now as part of the expedition, you have been talking to a number of people who've transitioned from men to women, and, and they were very successful leaders as men and very successful leaders as women. That is completely, I mean, I wish I'd been a fly on the wall on all of those conversations, because they must be fascinating. But I suppose, give us a glimpse into how much those conversations might be sort of undermining or putting question marks beside some of the things that you believe about leadership or even adding a few more to it?

Yeah, I think what I learned was this that that my baseline assumption, my baseline belief, that leadership is leadership is leadership, was hardened. And I think both of those women would say that that did not change for them. One of the things though, that the question marked, is I keep hearing the word empathy, come up over and over again, people want empathy from their leaders, from their bosses. Leaders want to be more empathetic. But in the case, for example of one of the people that I interviewed, she talked about when she was a male, in a male dominated field. Yeah, yeah okay, empathy, shm-empathy. It was all about just getting the job done, task at hand, being adversarial, challenging, and in fact, had question when she started to transition had said to herself, I want to be more empathetic, and started to become more empathetic. She clearly says, some of that might have been the hormones I was taking. But really, some of it might have been the woman that I was hiding. But she went out on a journey to be more empathetic, considerate, caring, understanding. And one of the things I thought was interesting was, she called it worrying. She said, as a male, I didn't worry about nothing. You know, I did my job, here's a task, let's go, you know, charge the hill. As a woman, she found herself worrying after duty hours, about the people about the mission at hand, the achievements, et cetera, et cetera. And I just, I thought that was interesting.

The word worrying, is a sort of negative word. But was she using it as a negative? Or was she actually no, she? She wasn't she wasn't using it negatively?

No. And I'd say the way that she talked about it was more about consideration, you know, synonymous with consideration and consideration about more things than just going to, you know, charge the hill, so to speak.

The other thing that I've been picking up from you is, is women do women challenge? Do men challenge too much? Talk to me.

It interestingly enough, one of the key things that, one of the women, transgendered women that I interviewed, absolutely brought up, what she noticed on the other side, so to speak, and that is that women aren't as challenging as men. So she gave me this particular example that when you know what she's now she, is now she, she is running her business, in a male dominated field, the same field that she was in as a man, and, you know, very challenged first day with a client, you know, challenging what their strategy and where they want to go in the business, you know, this, you know, that's part of their job is to do that, she'd invariably get calls later in the evening by the women on her team that said, you know, hey, can you believe what that guy said? Or, you know, you know, I think that we should have said this. And, of course, she said, Hey, why don't you bring that up in the room? Why are you waiting now to tell me and putting sort of the monkey on my back? And as she said, that I started to think about in my own life, where I'd seen those examples.

So these conversations, they're putting a few question marks around your core assumptions, aren't they?

They are, I still hold on to leadership as leadership.

You see how lucky we are with our guides, some amazing guides, who are who are adding so much of our thinking, this was fantastic. Perhaps to just a tiny snippet from Laura, she, she started a new job recently, and has been putting a lot of the expedition into practice.

I started a new role at the beginning of July, in a new organisation. And I've had to make a huge effort in order to stay myself, which appears to have inspired people and got them excited about the future already. You might ask, why is that important? I was hired to do the job, right? No, actually, I was hired to bring the best of myself and use that to influence the organisation to change. And it's therefore absolutely vital that I don't assimilate to the company culture, especially in his really early stages. And I've realised that's actually really difficult to do that. And I feel really quite tired.

It's completely exhausting, isn't it? Also a company that's predominantly male in a sector that's predominantly male, isn't it?

Absolutely, yes, there's about 20% of the workforce is women in this company, but also in the sector, in fact, that the amount of women is a lot less than 20%. So to turn up as yourself in a predominantly male environment in culture, really takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy.

But it's worth it.

It's absolutely worth it, because I've already seen the impact that it has on people, that they are excited about trying to capture a huge opportunity that we see developing in the UK with the energy transition.

But you also think that women have become good integrators. So actually, it's sort of almost counterintuitive for women not to try to integrate.

It's totally counterintuitive, because I think as, I think as human beings, but women in particular are so good at adapting to new situations, and it's been a strength for evolution, and has helped us survive many situations. But in order to create change, we really need to avoid this assimilation and really bring our true authentic self. And that has been really powerful. And I think because it's not our natural go to position, it also been really quite exhausting.

So you see, the kitchen is pretty full, a massive ingredients all over all the counters. And I leave no doubt, completely full of indigestion and exhaustion. We certainly are, but we're raring to go for the next phase, the 24 Women are back out, seeking more ingredients. With no attempt at this stage to make sense of it all. We're just collecting ingredients. Just to repeat, thank you for coming to the live session yesterday with Aisha and as I say in three weeks time, it'll be with Hinama, date to be confirmed, date and time, but it'll be the week of the 15th of August. You can ask Hinama a mass of questions on the subject that she's chosen to go deep into, which is loosely motherhood and leadership. Look forward to talking to you next week on our next podcast, which I promise will be less indigestible. Lots of love.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. We would love you to follow the expedition and provide your own stories and perspectives. You can do this by subscribing to this podcast and joining the women emerging group on LinkedIn where you can have your safe.