2131 - Embracing Feminine Intelligence in Leadership with Elina Teboul

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

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1:05With us right now, it's Alina Daboul. Alina, you are the author of the book, Feminine Intelligence, How Visionary Leaders Can Reshape Business for Good. It just came out as of when this publishes, as of when we're recording. It's coming out in a couple of weeks. So congratulations on that. And you are also a keynote speaker. And you do some fantastic work to promote conscious leadership. Alina, it's great to have you. Thanks so much, Josh. show executive to be here. And thanks everyone for tuning in. Well, yes, listen, it's just you and me right now. And our friend that's listening. And my friend is curious what you do for fun.

1:45Like, is there anything you're geeking out on lately? Oh my God, I'm such a I'm such a geek. I geek out on a lot of things. I think right now I'm really geeking out on the longevity space and and reading a lot. I just watched How Not to Die. I think that's the that's the name of the a Netflix documentary about all of the incredible work that's keeping us living to 150. So I'm researching all of the really cool longevity science, listening to a lot of Huberman, and focusing on my ongoing dancing a lot, because that's very good for your health. Dancing? What kind of dancing do you do? Oh my God, just for fun.

2:26I love music, and I just love to go out and really dance. Okay. Well, it's also music, club music. No, no, like club, like club music. Yeah. It's okay. Music. Yeah. And where do you live right now? I live in London. Okay. So you have options. Oh, I have options and it is fantastic. I think there is nothing like, I think I'm the very best version of myself after a night of dancing. Yes. Listen, I, to, to, to our friend that's listening right now, uh, and they have not been out dancing for a while, go do it and just see how you feel. Right. So we just went to, we just went to a local show and it was a tribute band and they were doing Joy Division, New Order and The Smiths.

3:09So not so much The Smiths for dancing, but certainly New Order and Joy Division. You know, there was a lot of like, you know, it was so fun. And like my wife and I, we make a habit of that. Like we really try to go see live music at least two to three times a month. And I'm of the opinion, Alina, talking about longevity, I truly believe that keeps us young. It's just having fun and celebrating and feeling youthful and finding those experiences to do that. So you and I are birds of a feather in that regard. But Alina, tell me about your book, Feminine Intelligence, How Visionary Leaders Can Reshape Business for good.

3:51Great. So I always love to start with welcoming all of the male listeners into the room and reassuring them that this is actually not about gender. This is not about male versus female at all. And this is about feminine energy, feminine intelligence, which is the principles, the values, the strengths that's associated with the archetypal feminine. So about empathy and interconnection and a conscious approach to business and connection with self, connection with nature, and how can we integrate those into business leadership. So I've spent the last decade or so of my career as a leadership advisor, executive coach, and what I've been noticing is that people tend to be really dissociated from this part of themselves.

4:41And we often talk in the leadership space about, you know, the words like empathy or confidence and what we don't really use that language of the feminine and masculine. And it's quite interesting because I think a lot of people are almost averse to that language and think it's a stereotype that's no longer helpful. And part of part of what I wanted to do was kind of reclaim and rebrand the feminine because I could have used the more palatable term, something like interconnected leadership and something like that. But I very strategically use the word feminine, even though many of us are uncomfortable with it, because I'd really like for us to acknowledge that this is a vital aspect of our humanity that we push aside for way too long and really would love to have people re-engage with the feminine.

5:39So good. So it's kind of a catch-all term to describe. Maybe, again, it could be things I would tend to think of it as perhaps a little bit more empathic. I think one of maybe the easiest ways to see where this can differentiate, I think, is in sales. And I'm sure that you have some thoughts on that as well. I can tell you that the old school, And I would argue that I'd say even hopefully, you know, the masculine idea of selling has shifted because the old school, you know, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross kind of idea of masculine bro-y selling, it just does not work anymore. Or like, people see what you're doing a mile away.

6:24So I think it's fair to even redefine that that has shifted to a little bit more kind of omni, you know, energy. But if you were to describe how this might look in a sales environment and why I think that, you know, at least embodying those ideas of empathy and listening and taking time to feel things from the other person's perspective. Again, I feel it's unfair to label that as feminine, but here we are. It's a good catch-all term for this conversation. How might we see this play out in sales? Yeah, definitely. It's a great question in sales. And I think in general, if you think about the yin and the yang, something that the terminology people are familiar with, selling is the action.

7:09It's the yang energy. The yin energy is the more introspective piece, the one where you first spend time in silence and contemplation and stillness. And you want to kind of cultivate within yourselves before you even go into that sales conversation. Like, what do I want to get out of this? Is it, is all I want is like an extractive kind of contractual relationship where I sell X and I move on? Or do I want something deeper? Is what I'm selling a part of me? Is it important to me? Do I believe that the world actually needs what I'm selling, right? So it's this inner relationship with yourself and an inner conversation with yourself about your own, you know, purpose and your values around what you're selling in the first place.

8:00I think we very often miss that part. And then it's the relational piece. So do I want to sell somebody something just for the sake of selling it and then I'm done? or do I want to create a true bond, a true relationship with this person so that it's a symbiotic relationship that continues to flourish over time where I'm not selling, but we are actually together creating something more than we have on our own, right? So you're really trying to establish a long-term relationship where you're adding value in a very authentic way. And I think that in sales, we're just focusing on closing the deal.

8:45And that's kind of the very end result of a lot of things that have to happen before. Well, we've talked a bit about defining this. Let's talk about why. Why would a leader want to embody some of these traits? Particularly, and I'll just kind of tee you up here with a major softball. let's say I'm a dude and I'm going to really draw the lines here for you on this question, but let's say that around half of our staff, our clients and our audience are female, but yet I'm just a guy. That's my background. That's who I am. That's who I've been historically. Why might it be helpful to start looking for some of these more some of these traits that we're talking about that we're labeling as feminine?

9:37Sure. So, I mean, I get where you're going here with the leading question. A little bit. Is there a question here, Senator? But let's sort of take it actually back before I answer with the obvious, is that, you know, under the patriarchy that we have sort of functioned over for quite a while, I think that the patriarchy has been equally difficult for men and for women in very different ways. For women, oftentimes we feel this pressure to show up in work environments with a mask on, with being in our masculine energy, because that is what is valued and respected and that's the message that we're culturally told.

10:23but equally so you know when I was interviewing people for the book what was one of my biggest surprises was how many men were really interested into leaning into these aspects of themselves because they wanted to be whole they wanted to feel fulfilled they wanted to find purpose and joy and they wanted to feel like a whole human being as opposed to the stereotypical masculine that is portrayed very often. So I'm a psychologist, right? So there is business success, but before business success, you need personal success. And for men who sometimes feel that they need to be a specific way, you know, what you just described, like I'm just a guy surrounded by women.

11:07So the easy answer is I want to sell to the women and I want to relate to them. That's the easy answer, right? But the more, like when you go just a little bit deeper than that, everybody wants to find joy and meaning and purpose. And this is what we're talking about, right? Before you can be a great salesperson, you want to be just a great person. And I think that connecting with these aspects of yourself is going to allow you a lot more joy in your life before you even become a more successful salesman and entrepreneur. Yeah. I am reading currently, concurrently, by the way, two books that are kind of in a very similar vein.

11:48One is Ryan Holiday's Stillness is the Key. And the other one is No Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners by Noah Rashida. And, you know, they both kind of talk about what we're talking about today. So I don't want anyone to feel put off because they think they're going to be, you know, they're supposed to become all girly. That's not at all who we're talking about, gentlemen. It's really about being at peace with yourself, being at peace with who we are. Not everything is a battle to be won. that, in fact, there's so much freedom in moving with the flow, right? And, you know, finding our own identity and leading as that flow allows, right?

12:38So there might be things that are outside of our control. We can either look at that with great adversity, and it's time to put up our dukes and fight. And again, I agree that that's appropriate. But to the extent that, you know, we're trying to bend things that are unbendable to our will, that gets just exhausting. I just don't know how people can do that for any length of time before they just tire themselves out and burn themselves out. Well, I you know, let me share a very quick story that I that I share in the book, because when we think about, you know, the feminine intelligence is about being girly.

13:10That's certainly not what I'm advocating for, even though nothing wrong with being girly. I'm girly. But that's not what we're talking about. So one of the opening stories in the book is about Lieutenant Colonel Chris Hughes, and he was a soldier in Iraq in 2003. And there was an incident that was reported where he was walking with his men. And I mean, you can just picture this, right? Like you're in Iraq. It's hot, like, I don't know, 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and you're carrying 95 kilos on your back. and you and your men have been walking for days and you're exhausted right and you've been far from home and so all of a sudden you have a small boy that approaches you're like okay from the village and then another one approaches and then another one and and sort of like within moments you're outnumbered by a large group of townspeople so this is what happened to them so they were this battalion of men they're walking through the streets and the townspeople descend on them and the masculine approach again nothing to do with being of male gender any of us would be follow your orders take out your guns assert your dominance what happens if you do that bloodshed bloodbath which is normally what happens in conflict what chris hughes did what is exactly what i call feminine intelligence he looked at his men and he told them to kneel in the dirt and to drop their weapons.

14:47They could have been ripped apart by these townspeople, but he trusted his intuition. He created space between stimulus and response. And he believed in the goodness of humanity and he put down his weapons and all of his soldiers and they knelt and they waited. And within moments, the townspeople began to disperse and there was peace and there was no bloodshed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, I think you're illustrating, you know, what we often see in dumb social media activity with the backfire effect, right? So it's just like, if you come guns a blazing at someone, guess what they're going to do right back?

15:26They're going to come guns a blazing at you. And so when really all there are just points of view, right? There's my point of view. Here's your point of view. And then, you know, if we have empathy to hear one another, that doesn't sound like a bad thing. Alina, tell me about the work that you do aside from the book. Right. So I started my career actually as an attorney. So I was practicing investment management law at one of the big firms in New York. And it was always kind of shocking to me that these kind of traits were something you don't learn in law school and you don't really learn as an attorney.

16:01I think for any practice, whether you're a doctor, you're an entrepreneur, you're a lawyer, these are foundational skills that should be taught. But that didn't happen. And so then I transitioned into organizational psychology. So I work as a leadership advisor and I work individually with founders, with leadership teams as well. And a lot of these topics come up very often. Right. And sometimes like I'll give you one story of of a recent client that came to me and she was the CEO of a tech startup in New York. And she she was a really high performer, very, very high performer. But her board wanted to fire her because she because her team was scared of her because she was leading entirely with her masculine energy.

16:54So she was performing, but she's exactly one of those people that was the toxic good performer that makes everybody else feel terrible, even though they're brilliant. And she came to me and I explained feminine intelligence and getting into that part of herself. And like many, many senior women, her first reaction was, I don't believe in these kinds of stereotypes. If I show vulnerability, they'll eat me alive. and I've worked for too long trying to fit in. I can't afford to seem weak in any way, right? These are all of the things that people think about initially when they think of leaning into feminine intelligence.

17:36And slowly but surely, when we went through the inner work, we understood social cultural conditioning. We understood her personal background and what caused some of these triggers and limiting beliefs. It's a big part of my work is helping people make the unconscious conscious and then bring that back into their leadership. So now our organization is thriving. Her team is happy because she is able to lead in a completely different way. Doesn't mean that she doesn't have to step into her masculine and execute. That is equally important. We're not saying here that the feminine is ever any more important than the masculine.

18:12What we're saying is that our society has over-indexed on the masculine and that what we need is integration and wholeness. And this is the kind of work that I do with clients. Alina Tabool, your book is Feminine Intelligence, How Visionary Leaders Can Reshape Business for Good. Your website, alinatabool.com. To our friend that's listening, very easily. You can just kind of click in your podcast app right now and you can go right to Alina's website. And by the way, it's on, it's everywhere, the book. and you also have an audio book. So thank you for doing that. Alina, thank you so much for joining us.

18:46Thank you so much, Josh. Pleasure to be here.

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