Achieve Work/Life Balance by using Masculine and Feminine Power

Is Success Running You Ragged?

“People around me are impressed with my success, but I don’t really feel successful, and I don’t know if I can keep this up!” Does this sound like you? It’s a constant refrain among many go-getter women. We’re doing a lot, but it has us spread pretty thin.

by Michele Lisenbury Christensen and Sara Harvey Yao

Michele Lisenbury and Sara Harvey Yao

One of the perspectives that helps women like you (and us) is the recognition that in our pursuit of career and personal success, we may not have been using all our power.

Traditionally, we have spoken of power using terms that describe masculine traits. For instance, powerful might mean assertive, decisive, independent, driving, and pragmatic.

Words like relating, gratitude, caring, inclusion, or curiosity didn’t seem to fit with our definition of power.

These words describe more feminine aspects of power. In order to use all of our power, we have to incorporate both masculine and feminine Elements of Power into our sense of what’s powerful.

Move from Stress to Ease

After coaching male and female leaders for ten years, we developed the 12 Elements of Power as a tool for ourselves and our clients. The Elements were our way of articulating and understanding the feminine traits we intuitively knew were powerful, but that haven’t been defined as such.

We discovered that when we are able to integrate both feminine and masculine Elements of Power, we move from stress to ease.

12 Elements of Power

There are six pairs of Elements of Power. Each pair relates to one key area of our lives and work and has a feminine and masculine Element of Power. Masculine power is assertive, observable and directive. Feminine Power is receptive, subtle, and contained.

It’s not a man/woman thing, rather more like Yin/Yang. Everyone has all 12 Elements of Power available at any time.

Elements of Power in Action

The Elements describe behavior, attitude or energy in a given situation. For instance, Nurturing and Providing are the feminine and masculine elements, respectively, in the How We Relate to Others pair. When someone tells you about their day, your behavior and attitude may be focused on making room for them to talk and feel their feelings, demonstrating nurturing. Or you may offer ideas, solutions, and perspectives, which would demonstrate providing.

Which one is better? Neither. What matters is whether you used the Element of Power that met the needs of the moment.

In many situations, we’re conditioned to use our masculine power. If that doesn’t work, we turn up the intensity. Our clients learn and demonstrate that putting the feminine power first conserves their energy and makes more room for those around them.

Letting someone vent, for instance, often allows them to come to a broader perspective on their own, and it’s a lot less work than “bringing them around” by providing. Other times, once they’ve vented, they’re ready to hear your good ideas for how to proceed.

Balance Creates Ease!

It’s been said that a strength overused becomes a liability. This recognition helps explain the source of many of our headaches and struggles at work and at home: when we overuse one Element of Power, it goes funky on us. For instance, a quality like assertiveness can turn into aggression when overused.

Any aspect of your life that isn’t working can be traced to an under-use or over-use of your power. But once you understand all the power that’s at your disposal, you can quickly correct for these imbalances by activating new Elements of Power and picking the right tool for the job at hand.

Experiment with your power, and enjoy the ways you can have success without it running you ragged.

Michele Lisenbury Christensen and Sara Harvey Yao are founders of Working with Power, LLC, a consulting and training firm dedicated to helping companies retain and develop great people and great teams. To learn more please visit their website, WorkingWith Power.

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Posted on 15. Oct, 2009 by SFWJ in Work/Life Balance

Tags: motivation, work/life balance

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

The New Path to Job Security: Bringing Feminine Power to Work | San Francisco Womens Journal - 29. Mar, 2010
[...] first, women can be afraid to bring more of their feminine power to work. Women think of their masculine power – driving, pragmatism, focus, providing, and so on [...]
Rick Snyder, SF Life Coach and Therapist: Feminism is Dead | San Francisco Womens Journal - 18. May, 2010
[...] Men and women are different, yet we need to learn how to embody our natural principles instead of fighting them. For more insight on what this model could look like, check-out There Is No Such Thing as a Negative Emotion by Daniel Barron. And take a look at this article on the elements of feminine and masculine power! [...]