Your Action Plan: How To Tame Your Power Demons With Intentioning
Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead, offers her latest book, Intentioning, to change our relationship with power and create a life with deliberate purpose.
We all have them and COVID-19 plus the ongoing pandemic of racial injustices complicated many people’s relationships with Power Demons, or the beliefs and ideas that rob them of the chance to become what and who they intend.
In her latest book, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone's) Good, Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead, demonstrates an indisputable case with specific tools to maximize your intentioning and annihilate the Power Demons.
“@GloriaFeldt, co-founder and president of @Takeleadwomen, offers her latest book, Intentioning, to change our relationship with power and create a life with deliberate purpose. #Intentioning #BestReads #BooksForWomen”
The specifics of Power Demons are different for each person and can change over time and circumstances. But they can include internal conflict, ambiguity about your intention, lack of self-awareness , burnout, exhaustion or wasting energy on people and things that don’t advance your intention.
Millions of women can claim these have been particularly exacerbated due to the pandemics.
In her pointed creation of the verb “intentioning,” Feldt writes, “I wanted to indicate to you and the rest of the world that intentioning is different from having mere ambition. It’s more than a state of mind. It’s the conscious act of seizing the moment and creating the life and career that you want—one that benefits all of society by providing greater balance and harmony.”
“In her pointed creation of the verb “intentioning,” @GloriaFeldt writes, “Intentioning is the conscious act of seizing the moment and creating the life and career that you want—one that benefits all of society by providing greater balance and harmony.” #IntentioningBook”
Read more here about Intentioning
With extensive research, history, exercises, in-depth interviews of scores of women leaders, entrepreneurs, authors and icons, as well as anecdotes and insights gleaned over decades in her own leadership of organizations and entrepreneurial endeavors, Feldt lays out a roadmap for how she uses power “to clarify and then claim and elevate my true intentions.” And how you can as well.
“I’ll make the case that female socialization around power and intention, even more than the external barriers and biases that do still remain, is the linchpin holding us back from leadership parity and equality in all forms,” Feldt writes. “Yet that same socialization has the potential to become our superpower when inculcated with intention. And we will need all our superpowers to reach gender parity because if you think about it, transforming our institutions to gender equality will be one of the most profound disruptions in recorded human history.”
Join Gloria for a virtual book event with Tiffany Dufu 9/14
As Take The Lead’s mission is for all those identifying as women to reach gender parity in leadership across all sectors by 2025, Feldt explains that the action of putting women at the center of the economic recovery from the pandemic can make that vision a reality.
“As @Takeleadwomen ‘s mission is for women to reach #genderparity in leadership across all sectors by 2025, @GloriaFeldt explains that the action of #puttingwomenatthecenter of the economic recovery from the pandemic can make that vision a reality. ”
Feldt writes that intentioning embodies the “normalizing of a new future—the future of your choice—because the positive side of massive disruptions such as COVID-19, economic crashes, and racial reckoning is that the borders that previously organized our lives and institutions are breached. Gaping holes in the pre-pandemic structures can now let the light of new ideas in by the power of our intentions.”
Building on the case she made for the 9 Leadership Power Tools outlined in her 2012 best-seller, No Excuses: Nine Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, Feldt offers new 9 Leadership Intentioning Tools divided into three categories, beginning with Self-Definitional, that include the first, “Uncover yourself,” which means acknowledging and expressing that what sets you apart from others can be your strength.
“@GloriaFeldt offers new 9 Leadership Intentioning Tools in her new book #Intentioning, building on the case she made for the 9 Leadership Power Tools outlined in her 2012 best-seller, No Excuses: Nine Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. ”
Feldt advises this category also includes, “Dream Up” and “Believe In The Infinite Pie,” because “when we use our power to build rather than rule over others, we learn the more there is, the more there is.”
The second category of Leadership Intentioning Tools are what Feldt labels as Counterintuitive and include “Modulate Confidence,” “Strike Your Own Damn Balance (and Love Your Stress),” and “Build Social Capital.” This is, Feldt writes, “because relationships are everything and will ultimately help you as much as educational qualifications or work experience.”
Join Gloria for a hybrid virtual/in-person book event in Arizona 9/18
Lastly, the third grouping of Intentioning Tools are “Systems Change” tools including “Be Unreasonable,” “Unpack Implcit Bias and Turn Its Effects on Their Head,” and “Clang Your Symbols.” This final one is “because symbols create meaning, and when you create meaning, you bring others into the story and that’s the most essential function of leadership.”
Feldt defines the benefits of intentioning in these ways:” Intentioning prepares you to lead change, be change, and sustain change. Intentioning helps you to remain aware of the consequences of your actions and to flex as needed. Intentioning 100 percent improves your impact in meetings and presentations. Intentioning is a proactive practice that builds habits to sustain your leadership journey and helps you avoid derailers or ‘power demons’ as I non-affectionately call them. Intentioning allows you to turn your obstacles into assets.”
“@GloriaFeldt defines the benefits of intentioning in these ways: ”Intentioning prepares you to lead change, be change, and sustain change.” #IntentioningBook #leadership #activism ”
In addition to practical calls to action and specific tools to activate intentioning, Feldt offers up in the book fascinating stories, origin narratives and personal framing of power from the thoughtful interviews and ancedotes she gathered from successful and inspiring leaders.
Read more in Take The Lead on Nathalie Molina Nino
These leaders include Debra Sterling, founder of GoldieBlox; Rupa Dash, cofounder and CEO of Dash Global Media and CEO of World Women Foundation; Nathalie Molina Nino, author and managing director of Known; Katica Roy, CEO and founder of Pipeline; Cindy Robbins, former president and chief people officer at Salesforce; as well as Elma S. Beganovich, founder of Amra & Elma, plus so many more. Feldt offers up the personal insights and life stories of these leaders who frame their lives with intentioning.
“In her new book #Intentioning, @GloriaFeldt offers up fascinating stories, origin narratives and personal framings of power she gathered from successful and inspiring leaders, including @Katicaroy, @ElmaBeganovich and @CindygRobbins.”
Join a Luminary book event with Gloria 10/12
Feldt quotes Dash here, “Her advice to other women leaders is, ‘As humankind is under siege, everything we know is invalid, and it is time to unlearn and embrace new kinds of thinking. We are not entering to [a] new future, but we are creating a new one; women are architects of the new world order.’”
Read more in Take The Lead on Rupa Dash
All these exceptional leaders populating the book, Feldt writes, embrace their power with “confidence, authenticity, and joy.” Feldt advocates for everyone to do so because, “This enables us to bring the locus of power inside of ourselves rather than respond primarily to external forces, such as what others think of us. Then and only then can we elevate our intention to become all we are capable of being.”
Profiled in the book as Intentional Women are Marina Arsenijevic, the globally acclaimed composer and pianist who recently performed in Take The Lead’s Women’s Equality Day Concert; Dr. Nancy O’Reilly, Take The Lead board chair and founder of Women Connect4Good; Julia Pimsleur, filmmaker, author; Tiffany Dufu, author of Drop The Ball and founder, CEO of The Cru; Selena Soo, publicist and communications entrepreneur; Charlotte Jorst, founder of Kastel Denmark and Bianca Caban of Heartland.
“Profiled in @GloriaFeldt ‘s new book #Intentioning as an Intentional Woman is Marina Arsenijevic, the globally acclaimed composer and pianist who recently performed in @Takeleadwomen ‘s #WomensEqualityDay Concert.”
Read more in Take The lead on Katica Roy
Articulating the wide range of backgrounds, identities, ethnicities, experiences and narratives of these leaders points to the values of inclusive leadership and a culture of racial and gender equity.
“Diversity is a plus, equity a necessity, and inclusion is the process to achieve the desired culture where each of us can contribute to our highest and best intention. Valuing differences provides solutions,” Feldt writes.
Read more in Take The Lead on Tiffany Dufu
Solutions are essential at this pivot point in history, post-pandemic (even with the Delta surge) and during the recovery from the economic and social justice reckonings of the past 18 months. Reorienting the relationship to power is crucial.
“The power paradigm shift from power over to power to is at the heart of it,” Feldt writes. “Before we can fully set about intentioning at our highest and best vibration, we must deconstruct the power paradigm as we have been socialized to know it and transform power as a concept.”
““The power paradigm shift from power over to power to is at the heart of it,” @GloriaFeldt writes. “Before we can fully set about intentioning at our highest and best vibration, we must deconstruct the power paradigm as we have been socialized to know it.” #genderparity”
She adds, “My clarion call to women is to refrain from ‘keeping calm and carrying on’ as we’ve done for so long, and instead to ‘be bold and carry out.’ There is simply no more time or leeway for apathy, inertia, hesitation, excuses, or giving in to stereotype threats that penalize women who appear powerful for this unequal state of affairs to last another precious moment.”
As millions of women reassess their purpose and goals, creating intentioning to achieve it all, Feldt is precise in her admonition.
“Remember, ambition is the fuel. Intention uses the fuel to drive to the goal.”
“As millions of women reassess their purpose and goals, creating intentioning to achieve it all, @GloriaFeldt is precise in her admonition. “Remember, ambition is the fuel. #Intention uses the fuel to drive to the goal.” #IntentioningBook”
