Parallel Pandemics, Convergent Solutions

Issue 129 — June 1, 2020

We are in a profoundly disruptive time. A time when just a week ago, I could see many opportunities to reshape a better world post-pandemic. That’s until another pandemic, a pandemic of racism was laid so bare that layered on top of COVID it feels like a leaden blanket we’ll never be able to throw off.

As New York Times contributing editor Roxane Gay says, “Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but black people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism.”

Yet however difficult the task, we must seek a cure to stop the kind of violence that took the life of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others.

I stand and Take The Lead stands, firmly for equality and parity, and against racism and injustice. Making that declaration is not enough. I’ve been thinking about the role we can play as a women’s leadership organization in eliminating racism for all.

Our 9 Leadership Power Tools course designed to help all women reach their highest career intentions was set to launch this week. I wasn’t sure whether we should go forward.

I can only speak from having led one of the most controversial and conflict prone organizations in the world, Planned Parenthood Federation of America during a time when many of my colleagues and I were being harassed, stalked, vilified, firebombed, vandalized, and even murdered. My home was picketed; I received neo-Nazi language death threats, and sometimes had to travel with bodyguards.

That experience taught me how important it is to Embrace Controversy (Leadership Power Tool #4) as the opportunity to be heard. For if an issue becomes controversial, it means that people are listening, and you can use the energy of the conflict to engage in conversation that propels your cause forward.

I learned the necessity to choose the positive use of power courageously to make social change, and above all, not to let perpetrators of hate and violence get into my head or deter me from my mission.

But now I realize there is something deeper, more fundamental that needs to change.

In conflict situations, everyone is operating from fear. White supremacists fear they will lose their power, while Black men and women fear for their very lives.

Racism and sexism are always joined at the head. Both are tools of the patriarchy determined to maintain its privilege.

While Take The Lead’s main purpose is to advance diverse women in leadership in this struggle, it is nevertheless true that all struggles for equality and justice are fundamentally about power. None of us are free unless all of us are free. So it has never been more important to have more women and people of color sharing equally with white men in the power of leadership.

But the traditional narratives about power are dysfunctional. It is feeling powerless, after all, that so often motivates people to become violent. These behaviors are a scream for help, for relief from the pain of an emotional pandemic.

That’s why the transformation of how we define power, how we know our power, and how we use power has never been more relevant.

Perhaps we were meant to start on this day. Perhaps the women in this course are the very people who will provide the leadership that the world needs now — positive, inclusive, and empathetic leadership that embraces power as the “Power TO model, and that underlies the entire curriculum. Perhaps this is the moment when together we can lead from the power TO create more justice and more abundance instead of leading from fear — whether fear of losing privilege of fear of losing our lives. We can change the narrative and show the world that there is no finite pie, and when we help each other we all can have more.

We can open space for leaders to have conversations about how people are feeling and thinking. We can take that clear stance for equality and parity, and against racism and injustice.

And when we have normalized diversity, we will value it and fight to maintain it.

We need a full out rebalancing and resetting of the power paradigm, from the old oppressive power over model where whoever has the strongest arm or army, or the most money, can control everyone else — to the generative, creative, innovative power TO make the world a better place, like #BlackLivesMatter, SpaceX, healing medications, and the #Metoo movement.

We need even more to understand and to teach that there is no finite pie of that human capacity to innovate, create, generate. If I have more freedom, it doesn’t take away from yours; it means we both have more of it. If you have a successful business, that means there is opportunity for me as well.

Right now, while so much remains uncertain it is exactly the right time to take stock and learn powerful new ways of thinking and leading in these parallel pandemics.

GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker and expert women’s leadership developer for companies that want to build gender balance, and a bestselling author of four books, most recently No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she teaches “Women, Power, and Leadership” at Arizona State University and is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Tweet Gloria Feldt.