*Female Work Values: Women's Success Explained

Everyone is born with a basic desire to illuminate the world with a unique capability. Our true occupation is to remember our spirit, and to re-embrace who we are at the deepest level possible and bring it on, regularly refueling as we go. The challenge on the horizon is to fuse spirit into organizational life as an expression of our divine essence, and allow work to become a more complete expression of who we are.

What’s Real Success?

Real success today translates into work that is an articulation of our true gifts and a deeply held value set that respects humanity. Calling the shots as our own spiritual entrepreneurs in self-employed scenarios and home-based businesses means reciting the new management mantra: look inside to your Source for your success. Rely upon what you already know. Make more intuitive decisions. Lead with love. And when we get in tune with those thoughts, and allow them to become the foundation for business, we’ll become more than a channel for everyone’s abundance. We’ll be come icons of personal growth, serve the world a huge helping of Spirit, and encourage others to do the same.

Women already own this everyday spirituality, which is a philosophy and a distinctly feminine set of values developed through the art of living and common sense and not necessarily as a function of dogma. As more women-owned businesses propel the nation’s economy, we’ve got to embrace what make women great at the work they do. As female swiftly coaxes in millions in revenue, there something our flipside gender needs to recognize about our success formula: we are running things like we run the home front, embracing female values of nurturing, compassion, and rotating leadership. We’re putting aside our warrior spirit once in awhile in favor of channeling the goddess within. And it’s quickly pushing us way ahead of the curve, in terms of profitability. Yes, women are empowering the economy and becoming a force to be reckoned with in the boardroom, whether in a corporate corner office or in the direct sales corner of home. What have we learned lately that might be uniquely feminine about abundance and opportunity?

Harnessing Female Capabilities: Spirit Power

Since Henry Mintzberg’s observations in his 1973 diary studies of executives, management styles have drastically changed. Old ways, as well as the old boys’ network, have steadily been dismantled in favor of organizational structures that encompass more female-friendly policies and ideas, with the idea of empowering the female through equal opportunity and culture change. Throughout this process, women stumbled on the rocky road to empowerment, adapting to public and private realms still encumbered by unspoken, old-fashioned and traditionally bureaucratic parameters. Women slid into the workforce in a fairly male-dominated environment and believed they needed to adapt. They thought that by managing exactly like men, they would attract power.

But now, as a body of research is developing, we’re learning that we were barking up the wrong tree. Our own woman culture, our entire system of shared meaning and knowledge, is intact. After thirty years we have learned that self-power or empowerment does not happen by riding on the top of the hierarchical heap as a pseudo-man. It doesn’t even come from manpower disguised as womanpower. It comes from a sense of appreciating and knowing at the deepest level possible that we are truly worthy because we are an image of the highest power that exists.

We are beginning to realize that what constitutes our beingness is as divine as what constitutes a man’s, because we are the same soul substance. Although we love God, and we are God, we are also the Goddess. And we’re beginning to love ourselves for who we are, which includes both aspects of a divine equation, because self-love is about demonstrating that which is within, our spiritual power. Female qualities and values that are precipitated from this spiritual composite will someday be demonstrated at the highest levels of organizations with great success. However, for now it seems we must first be more comfortable in our own skin and acknowledge at last that what we contribute has tremendous significance, to society as well as to the bottom line.

The New (and Old) Female Work Style

The changing workplace is experienced by everyone, and we see a distinctly different female work style emerging. Women focus more energy on strengthening relationships, are concerned about the wider needs of their community, don’t care as much as men about the workings of a hierarchy, and certainly see themselves as the center of the web. Is it any wonder? When I first read the research on female-led organizations, describing how women managers are redefining their workplaces with these values in dramatically successful ways, it occurred to me that we are simply rediscovering what we already know: women are beginning to honor their own spiritual composite by no longer needing to see themselves within the corset of old male management structures and philosophies that held them captive for so long. They are transferring what they do well into tangible results, in the form of high profits and customer satisfaction. They are beginning to harness their own capabilities, finding a voice that is true to their calling, and defining a multitude of home-based business that fills a societal need. And here’s the exciting part: today’s women have the capacity to transform the world by making wider changes because they are assuming roles of substantial authority.

As researchers are tackling the subject of women in the workforce, some interesting results are taking shape: feminine leadership styles and values as well as the ancient women’s way of knowing (our intuitive side) are positive features finally being revived in a new management equation: a woman’s way of doing things equals profitable organizations with happier employees. Women believe that people are more productive when they feel good about themselves. Among our inventory of assets: a focus on unity, relatedness, earth, compassion, and intuition. A celebration is in order – our emotional side is finally recognized as a good thing.

Our contemporary common sense tells us that women are not meant to be silent, obedient models of a passive principle; they are pure energy in the flesh, a symbol of the cycle of life, empowered by individual purpose. Women facilitate the web of life through many channels of power and wisdom. They are among the most authoritative and powerful vehicles of transformation through which community happens. They are capable of transferring this power to others to do the same, with great passion, as spiritual or business leaders in any organizational setting, including the family. Our proven track record needs to be told again when we lose sight of the big picture.

Empowered Female

Women have always viewed themselves as the center of the web, as they are the conduits for life and generally have a deep, spiritual connection to it, not just through children and families but in all organic matter, because we know what it feels like to generate and facilitate the life-giving principle. We are life-givers because there is female in everything. And when life itself is abused in our business practices, the environment, relationships, children, or even pets, we feel it down to the depths of our soul. We are committed to keeping it going in all venues because that’s been our job since the beginning. Yes, there’s a reason we blubber at movies. We’re the sensitive, self-appointed caretakers of the universe and the new community glue for organizations.

As men and women revisit the feminine side of our spiritual composite, we will re-embrace the masculine principle in a more balanced fashion. The result will be the institution of a set of values that correspond to who we are and what we do well. If we allow it, our feminine side will begin to reconceptualize leadership roles, in any business venue, that include affirming, dynamic views of our self-development process. Work will be viewed as a unique service to the larger community. This will be done through new policies we set, reflected in our decision styles, and by outlining the long-term objectives of what our organizations need to accomplish in order to make sense from the act of working.

At a very deep level, the glorious aspects that make up the yin side of us are our core competency – and we’re seeing evidence that harnessing those energies in ways that assist one another in our spiritual evolution can make us better in our work. In the future, knowing how we co-create with spirit, and align with such values, will become the mission and vision for organizations that will finally permit everyone, not just women, to fabricate meaning from doing.

© The Goddess Network, Inc. and Charlene M. Proctor, Ph.D. 2007. All Rights Reserved. See http://www.thegoddessnetwork.com/connect.php?page=eshow for more empowering thoughts on the workplace! Register for The E-Show, a series of enlightening lectures!