How Singular Acts of Courage by Women Ignite their Powerful Latent Networks
Recently a fascinating article from the financial sector found its way to me. It was by Elizabeth Lumley, Deputy Editor of “The Banker” (also recipient of State Street’s UK Press Award ~ Journalist of Year for Technology and Digital Finance 2022).
In it she spoke to the need for banking to embrace change while being sure to not throw out the baby with the bathwater — that the world would be served more greatly through evolutionary change within this immeasurably potent financial fueling system, rather than the revolutionary change of dismantling it. And that this pragmatic plan might draw fire from both the old-school and the new, by respectively either doing too much or not enough. She cited as inspiration an interview with America Ferrera in the New York Times about her famous monologue in Barbie (director, Greta Gerwig) through the character, Gloria. It is the monologue where Gloria, with powerful precision, summarizes the near impossible position that the patriarchy has placed women in. Specifically, Lumley quotes the paragraph about Ferrera being fortified by the documentary, “Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie” (Andrea Nevins, Director), where Mattel’s global head of design, Kim Culmone, worked to deeply diversify Barbie despite slings and arrows from the old school and the new, “…the legacy holders saying, ‘Barbie can’t change’. And from her progressive friends, angry that she cared about Barbie. ‘Why would you care about something that has been so bad for women?’”.
As I read all of this, something profound became visible. I suddenly saw a heretofore invisible collective of seemingly disparate women being formed and activated for significant scaled change in the world. I could see singular acts of courage by individual women igniting a sense of agency in many other women, and so on, until a giant new network of women united by a shared purpose emerges:
Kim Culmone’s courage ignites the courage of Andrea Nevins and Greta Gerwig, who ignite the courage of America Ferrera, who ignites the courage of Liz Lumley, who ignites the courage of women in an industry that holds the pursestrings to trillions of dollars of financial resourcing for other women — all this just one thread of impact while simultaneously the original intention of igniting the courage of millions of girls to believe they can be anything is being fueled by all of them. And these rapidly expanding diasporas of courage-equipped girls and women cascade through countless other sectors and industries. [In transparency, Kim Culmone and Andrea Nevins are women I’m privileged to executive coach].
In business, and society at large, there is a misinterpretation of reality that sadly impedes countless brilliant creations from transpiring — that impact at scale somehow magically happens at scale. And so when the scale part is yet hidden or mirky, the overwhelm from not seeing it often creates retreat. But the truth is that impact happens one singular courageous act at a time. With each new act becoming a force multiplier in how it inspires exponentially more likeminded and like-hearted beings into courageous acts of their own.
In music the analog is “sympathetic vibration” — when a note is struck by one piano in a room full of pianos, the same note will begin to vibrate and chime in them all.
I have found the sisterhood of women, when riding on the energy of courage, to be one of the most prolific systems in activating this principle.
About 70% of my work is with women. From the executive class of F500 companies to survivors of human trafficking. From founders/creators of major enterprise to “lifer” residents of maximum security prisons. All these women are monuments to courage. And when they trust what is being called forward from inside them, and act with courage and no attachment to knowing how or to what extent scale may transpire — only to be first true to that original creative energy — that is paradoxically when the magic of impact happens. And inevitably that impact is scaled tremendously through the courageous harmonics of other women who are ignited to join and amplify them in action.
I am privileged to know Rhonda Leland. I met Rhonda eighteen years ago when she was a resident of Valley State Prison for Women (now it’s a men’s prison). Two years prior, despite being riddled with self-doubt and self-limiting beliefs, Rhonda summoned the courage to trust a vision she had to lift the incarcerated to be participatory citizens of the planet. With no idea how it might happen or scale, her courage alone sent a letter describing this vision out to the world. It was rejected by many but finally found fertile ground. There I was next to her in the prison gymnasium as a volunteer in an organization called “The Freedom to Choose Project” that had been designed and created around her request, as woman after woman stood up, many in tears, to acknowledge Rhonda’s courage and how it was changing their life and their daughters’ lives out beyond the barbed wire. Today the program, fueled greatly by women inside and out, is in every prison in California (women and mens) and Rhonda is now in the free world and working in the Freedom To Choose Project’s educational group while her vision is scaling beyond prison walls into business and educational sectors of the free world.
Again, we see women being ignited by other women answering the call inside of them with outer acts of courage.
My sense is they are ignited less by the act itself, and more by the courage summoned to do it.
Because while the act is a wholly unique expression to each of these women, the courage to do so is a sacred element women know they all share and is alive in equal glorious abundance in each of them.
