Why I Couldn’t NOT Say This
Issue 244— October 30, 2023
On Thursday morning, October 26th, in the sunny Arizona desert setting, my heart was full of joy because my nonprofit organization, Take The Lead, committed to intersectional gender parity in leadership, had finally risen from pandemic setbacks to launch a cohort of our most powerful and impactful leadership program. It’s called 50 Women Can Change the World, and this cohort is our first for entrepreneurs.
You can still register for the virtual version of 50 Women Can Change the World in Entrepreneurship. Door closes November 4 at 11:59 pm to get all the content videos, virtual coaching, community, and investor roundtables.
A core differentiation in our programs is that we start with deconstructing women’s often ambivalent relationship with power and reconstruct in a healthy way that women embrace, shifting the paradigm from oppressive power over to generative and innovative power TO.
At the beginning of these programs, which have been proven to accelerate rather dramatically women’s trajectory into leadership roles and higher pay, we line up physically and place ourselves on a continuum of 1 to 10. One is “I feel powerless or am not comfortable with power because it has negative connotations,” 10 is “I love power and I feel fully powerful.” The numbers in between may be chosen for any number of reasons.
It’s a very revealing exercise. It requires vulnerability and trust in the safety of the group to share what one’s power number is and why. It often brings up tears and breakthrough insights that have never been articulated before, let alone telling them to 70 people — 50 in person and 20 virtual — whom they had only just met.
Once all participants had had a chance to share their power numbers, it was only fair for me to reveal mine.
In a flash, I realized I had to UNcover myself, to myself and to the people with whom I was about to share the leadership framework and actionable tools I’ve developed over a lifetime of social justice work, especially advocacy for women’s rights and racial and gender equality.
They had trusted me enough to speak their truth to me and each other. And so I said honestly that in my work I’m 9 1/2. But in my current emotional state, I’m barely a 2.
I typically keep religion or political matters out of the training. After all, we serve people of all political and religious stripes.
But on that day, with trepidation, I shared an important part of my story for the first time. All four of my grandparents emigrated to America in the early 20th century to escape exactly the kind of violence and disruption that happened in Israel on October 7.
I am old enough to have seen their tears over losing family in the Holocaust. I knew that in the US during my parents’ lives, Jews used to be excluded from schools, clubs, hotels, and homes. And only three years ago, I learned that in Lithuania, where our family had been deeply embedded, upstanding citizens for hundreds of years, thousands of Jews, including members of our close family, had been taken into the forest, and shot in a mass grave they had been forced to dig.
Because our cohort is deliberately very diverse in all ways, I had no idea how the participants nor the other trainers and team members felt about the situation. So I didn’t know how my honesty would be received.
Mayim Bialik, who will be known to “Big Bang Theory” fans like me as the comedic character of Amy Farah Fowler, wasn’t being humorous when she shared this personal video on Instagram. I found myself acknowledging similar raw feelings. I think Jews are so accustomed to being targeted that we tend to suck it up and move on. But we can’t get away with that now.
So for three reasons, I couldn’t NOT say how I felt personally about Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel and how it follows a pattern of antisemitic violence and expulsion repeated over and over throughout Jewish history.
First, leadership is about authenticity. Effective leaders know themselves and show themselves. Leadership Intentioning Tool #1 in my most recent book Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics and How Women Will Take the Lead for (Everyone’s) Good, is “Uncover yourself.” I realized that I couldn’t do business as usual. I had to speak my truth even if there were people in the room who saw the horrendous situation in a completely different way.
Second, even if there is disagreement, controversy can be a clarifier. I have learned from leading arguably the most controversial organization in the country, Planned Parenthood, that though the normal human reaction is to back away from it, controversy can actually be turned into positive energy. It can be a platform to express your ideas, to teach and share at a time when people are paying attention. And once you have people’s attention, you have hope that conversation can lead, if not to agreement, at least to greater understanding and often to new solutions.
Third, for me, it’s about personal integrity. If I don’t speak my truth, I can’t live with myself. I would be compromising the trust I have earned over many years of work. You can agree or disagree with me, but you know where I stand. And in the long run, people follow people who have a clearly articulated point of view rooted in their sincere values.
So wherever you stand on any issue, as a leader, it is incumbent on you to uncover yourself, embrace controversy, and speak your truth, with power TO not over. Only then can we aim for to #tikkunolam, repair the hurting, bleeding, world.
GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.