Last weekend I attended a two-day Intensive with Steve Chandler in Arizona. For those of you who don’t know, in some coaching circles Steve Chandler is referred to as “The Godfather of Coaching”. He has been a coach for forty years and brings a wealth of experience and wisdom to the work. Given his advanced age – he is 81 – I wanted to utilize the opportunity to be in the room with Steve, knowing that I might never get this opportunity again.
I’ve been coached by Steve before, and even had the opportunity to interview him last October, and yet, this time was different. I was coming to the conversation, not as a wide-eyed beginner coach, excited to meet her hero, but as a professional coach who is also established in her work, and also brings wisdom and experience to the table.
What struck me over the course of the two days was the absence of the feminine voice in the room. And I’m being deliberate and intentional with my choice of words here. What I’m longing to see more of in the coaching industry, is the emergence of the feminine voice…
There are many female coaches. In fact, globally, female coaches significantly outnumber male coaches in the life coaching industry, with estimates consistently showing that roughly 67% to 72% of all coaches are women. While men are more prevalent in executive or business niches, women dominate the life and wellness sectors, making up roughly 70–75% of the total coaching population.
This is unsurprising, given that coaching is a profession that invites us to step into presence, compassion, empathy, deep listening, and care with other humans – things that are naturally feminine. And yet, so many of these female voices perpetuate the presence of masculine language, energy, and approaches to coaching. Drive, commitment, determination, energy, enthusiasm, purpose, logic, strength, assertion, direction, action, going after what you truly want. These are all masculine qualities and there is tremendous value in these things.
And they represent only one side of the equation. Without recognition of the feminine, we find ourselves constantly out of balance. Feminine qualities include nurturing, empathy, compassion, sensitivity, emotional expressiveness, cooperation, collaboration, receiving, and intuition.
If you had asked me what was most important a few years ago, I would have probably sited masculine qualities, because I tend to run on masculine energy a lot. I also know that I’m not alone in this, because so many women I talk to bring a lot of masculine energy too. It’s a symptom of operating in a male-dominated world, where we often feel we must be masculine to be successful or to stay safe.
High achievers tend to focus on grit, focus, determination. They don’t allow much space for presence, flow, intuition and receptivity, because their lived experience has showed them that they can accomplish a lot by being single-focused. However, for women – running on masculine energy alone is incredibly detrimental to their overall health and wellbeing – and ultimately unsustainable in the long run.
Over the past seven years, I have come to appreciate what is available when we also make space for the feminine, and I have come to understand how we limit our range, and what we as individuals, groups, organizations, and communities could be capable of if we made space for the feminine.
Traditionally we have valued empathy, compassion, emotional expressiveness, collaboration, receiving, and intuition as less valuable, and yet, without these qualities we miss out on true connection, on full expression, and on our own inner wisdom. The feminine invites us into openness, exploration, trust, and receptivity. It invites us to connect with our essence, and with each other in ways that bring us closer together and probably makes us more powerful.
Many countries in the world are celebrating Mother’s Day this Sunday, so this piece feels timely. Regardless of whether you are mother or not, I want to celebrate all women this week. What makes us mothers is not whether we have birthed children or not, but whether we have tapped into our sacred power as women. We tend to take for granted what we bring as women, because we do it naturally, so we don’t consider it special. Yet, if you slow down to consider everything that is occurring in the world right now, you will see how great the need is for greater compassion, empathy, wisdom, and perspective…
So, regardless of whether you are celebrating as a mother, celebrating your mother, missing your mother because she is no longer here, or choosing not to have contact with your mother this Mother’s Day, I want to invite you to take a moment to consider the sacred gift YOUR presence is in this world. Your care, your patience, your loving, shifts conversations and relationships. Your wisdom, presence, and compassion can help someone feel seen and heard.
It’s sacred to be the vessel that brings forth life – whether that is physical life in the form of babies, emotional life in the form of love, care, and compassion, or aliveness through beauty, creativity, and individual expression. If you have been hiding your feminine qualities to fit in or survive in this masculine world, I see you. If you are longing to reconnect with your feminine qualities, and you don’t know how, I see you. If you are living in full expression of your feminine qualities, I see you. Thank you.
Bringing more of the feminine forward starts with being willing to consider that perhaps these qualities are truly valuable and needed, especially right now. We are selfish when we choose not to also embrace what makes us beautifully feminine and gives us our sacred power.
Feminine isn’t better than masculine. It’s needed to balance out the masculine. It truly is the yin and yang, where both energies are needed to create a dynamic and balanced whole. May you celebrate the balance of these energies within you today and may you step into greater power and presence over the coming months…