Female leadership: mixing power with femininity

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on September 11, 2019, 1:17 am

Ladies and gentleman,

I have a new best in class example of leading and enforcing power while also retaining femininity.

Here the quick story:

I have recently been back training martial arts.
Now, you'd never guess, but one of the trainers is a lady. And while usually she supports the male trainer, this other day she was alone.

Albeit not 100% my type, she is a quite cute lady and I know a few of the guys fancy her quite a bit.

But let's stick to leadership and femininity.
Was she going to be able to pull off feminine leadership, and combine power with femininity?

She was doing well.
Very well.
But as they say, everyone's good when the going is easy. It's when the game gets hard that you really test people's mettle.

So you can't imagine my excitement when a typical "leadership defining moment" came up.
A leadership defining moment is when the leader needs to enforce authority. In this case, the trainer was talking to explain a technique, but some of the guys were still talking to themselves.

From a power dynamic, that devalues the leader because it says those guys didn't respect her enough to stop talking.

How the leader responds in those cases says the world about the leader.

Leaders who get angry and raise their voice are enforcing their power with a strong hand.
But they also communicate the possibility of defensive fear and, most of all, they showcase a short fuse and quick temper that don't really belong to the makeup of the "ideal leader".

Of course, raising one's voice would be even worse for a woman, who'd come across as too forceful and slightly too mannish.

So, how was she going to handle this?

The way she did it stunned me.

I had never even thought of the possibility, let alone witnessed it.

Here is how she did it.
She stopped talking and said:

Feminine leader: Haaaalllooooo

The trick?
She did it with a singing inflection, really going up with her voice, which showcased all her femininity even while she was dressed as a martial artist trainer, training a group of mostly men.

To put the icing on the cake? She was perfectly on tune.
Like a siren.
I wish I had a recording to show you.

Everyone stopped chatting, giving her full floor and attention.
And giving her back the power, which she now increased while also increasing her femininity.

I was floored.
That was one of the best power moves I have ever witnessed.

I think that now I fancy her, too :).

In the picture: Ulysses and the singing sirens.