Embrace the Feminine to Grow Your Business. In Blackboard Fridays Episode 120, Jacob talks about Culture, Growth Planning, and Leadership. Need this implemented into your business? Talk to the international business advisor who can do exactly that – Contact Jacob, Learn More, or Subscribe for Updates.

Who is Jacob Aldridge, Business Coach?

“The smart and quirky advisor who gets sh!t done in business.” Back independent since 2019.

Since April 2006, I’ve been an international business advisor providing bespoke solutions for privately-owned businesses with 12-96 employees.

At this stage you have proven your business model, but you’re struggling to turn aspirations into day-to-day reality. You are still responsible for all 28 areas of your business, but you don’t have the time or budget to hire 28 different experts.

You need 1 person you can trust who can show you how everything in your business is connected, and which areas to prioritise first.

That’s me.

Learn more here. Or Let’s chat.

Transcript

I want to introduce you to one of the more controversial approaches to modern business. The concept of masculine energy and feminine energy and the impact that they have on organizational design and strategy.

The reason I say this is controversial is because it’s very easy to misinterpret masculine energy as meaning men and feminine energy as meaning women, when in reality we are all a combination of both, and even though there’re indeed some overlaps and the feminine energy is more common in women and masculine energy more common in men, it’s certainly not a situation where you can categorize and group them as being 100% overlapped.

So, please don’t send me an email saying that I’m talking about men and women as if they are different. I’m talking about our own innate energy and some of the differences that this may have. Let me walk you through the different characteristics. Masculine energy is linear. It is very outcome-focused. It values problem solving. It enjoys growth from competition, from challenge, being out there and tracking down new challenges, looking and living in the future.

Contrast that with the feminine energy, which is much more present-focused. The feminine energy values connection, processes, relationship, growth through support and nurturing. And as I say, you are a combination of both of these energies. It may be that you recognize, particularly in a business context, one or the other as being more strong and more dominant.

One of the greatest issues facing business in the 21st century is the fact that we continue to implement solutions, strategies, processes that were built by masculine energy, for the needs of the masculine energy.

Let me give you a great example that often goes completely unnoticed by most businesses. Your mission statement. Which is cultural, it’s this feeling thing. But the very fact that we call it a mission statement reflects the fact that it lacks so much else in business planning, org charts, lines of communication, actually comes from a military background. It is a very masculine way of viewing your business.

Our mission, our purpose, our future, living out there. And for a lot of men and some women that kind of future connection is what gets them up in the morning. It’s fantastic. But for a large segment of the population it is a disconnect, it’s way too out there in the future, and I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about where we’re going to be in this business, this organization, this industry in 10 or 20 years’ time. I wake up to do great work today. And when you keep telling me about the mission statement and I keep feeling that the culture of this organization today is not supporting me, I’m not going to connect with your business.

We have a fundamental issue around, again generalization, a lot of women who struggle to come back into the corporate workforce, who are finding themselves with less of a career path, who are struggling to find their purpose within modern business.

And the fundamental reason, I believe this is the case, is because too much in modern business is built for the masculine energy with complete disregard for the needs of the feminine. And I’m completely guilty of this myself. I am very future-oriented myself. I love living out there in the future. And that used to come through a lot in my planning.

I remember I used to run a monthly event and one of the key exercises that I did was I got the whole group to get out. To get outside onto the street and to look at the horizon, and to see their business way out there in the future, and I used to get great feedback from this exercise. It really helped people lift themselves out and look forward to the future. And then one day, I got feedback from a woman, who had come to the event, that she completely disconnected with that.

That that was not the outcome that she was looking for in the business. And my natural temptation was to think that that was her, and then I reflected and looked back at the fact that most of my clients, most of my colleagues were men, and the systems that we were implementing were designed only for that half of the population.

Now I’m much more careful to make sure that in these videos and events we take into account these needs. Because there’s a fundamental opportunity. If these are being discounted, disregarded by a lot of businesses, then there’s an awful lot of clients, an awful lot of team members, an awful lot of entrepreneurs who would be doing amazing things in a business that actually supported that feminine energy.

Making such a change is not easy, it’s not straightforward. It is something that is well within your power to do. Have a look at your business processes. Have a look at your strategy. And ask yourself how much of this has been built to look forward into the future and to promote growth through challenges, through competition. And how much of how we’ve built this business has been done in a nurturing, supportive space to focus on the present, the experience that our team have when they come to work every day.

Both energies can be healthy and can be unhealthy. There is no right or wrong. There is an opportunity for you in your business to say whether or not you’re discounting potentially incredible team members or staff.

And for you as a business owner, especially if you are a business owner who lives and prefers the feminine energy, know that an awful lot of the strategy and the advice that you’re going to get has not been built for you. And if it feels like that’s disconnected, if you feel like you as an entrepreneur are struggling to fully embody your authentic self in the business world, understand that it’s probably because you’re being told you have to be like this.

When you know, deep down, not only that you are like this, but that you can be like this, that you have permission to do this, that you can create a business that embraces the feminine and the masculine energy.

Next Steps

Want to learn more about how this can apply to your business? It costs nothing to chat:

• Email me jacob@jacobaldridge.com (I read them all)
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