Claiming your Leadership Status: Accepting yourself for the leader you are.

They missed the “Ellen” after the Rena but I’m still chuffed with a certificate from the University of Oxford!

A few years ago I had the opportunity to attend the Women Transforming Leadership Programme at The Said School of Business at Oxford University.

On the first day walking into the main lecture theatre, I was struggling with insecurities. What business did I have being at Oxford? What was I thinking I could accomplish? All they’ll see is a horse girl from back water Canada. Isn’t that all I am? It was paralyzing.

We were in a lecture theatre that reminded me of the UN, a multi-tiered circular room with light wood paneling and leather chairs for the attendees, the presenters stood at the centre beneath us. The building was new and architecturally impressive and getting into that lecture theatre involved walking up glass lined stairways and through atriums that ramped up my imposter feelings.

When I found my seat I was shocked that each of our labelled stations had microphones ensuring we could be heard no matter what - almost as though our voices mattered…at Oxford… that couldn’t be right, could it?

Looking around the room I found myself sitting amongst over 50 women from numerous countries, spanning countless industries and expertise, all gathered at a prestigious university to dive into our own leadership development. My feelings of inadequacy deepened, I was definitely not in the “horse girl” room.

The program director took the floor and began with what should have been a relatively simple question given the program we were attending: who here is a leader?

No one raised their hand.

Cardio-thoracic surgeons, judges, military officers, Google employees, leaders of NGO’s and so many others were all looking around the room at each other, not raising our hands.

Objectively, we all knew we were leaders. We applied for and were accepted to a program with leadership in the title. Many of us had jobs with leader in the the title and still hands were not raised. We paid for and travelled to a prestigious school to develop our leadership - we knew we were leaders so what was holding us back from raising our hands and claiming the title?

What is it about the title leader that holds women back from claiming it as a part of our identity?

This moment at Oxford changed my life. In that moment I went from feeling inadequate and less than to being surrounded by peers. We all harboured the same insecurities. We were all in the same storm. I had amazing company in my insecurity boat and to be honest, it really pissed me off. What was wrong with us?! Amazing women every single one of us - allowing our insecurities to get in the way of embracing our leadership.

The work I have done with young girls building leadership skills cannot exist without more women (myself included) unapologetically and definitively proclaiming themselves leaders.

Who will model leadership for young women if we aren’t? How will the leadership gap close if we are not the ones closing it? How will young girls see more leaders who embody styles of leadership they can relate to, if we aren’t modelling them?

We were all leaders in that room and by the end of the first day we were all claiming our leadership title and our place at Oxford. It didn’t feel wrong any more, it felt like the truth. The title of leader already belonged to us, it was on us to accept and embrace it.

I left that program with a renewed sense of purpose for my programming for women at HJC and I want you to feel as empowered as I did in that room at Oxford. I want you to see yourself as a leader so that a little girl somewhere can see you as a leader too. The ripple that change will cast in the world is one of unimaginable beauty.

Lead on!

Blind spot power and privilege, a simple metaphor.

I like metaphors. Most of what I do is based around engaging with living metaphors and I’ve found that it helps make complex ideas, especially ones with hard feelings attached, easier to understand. Once we understand things simply we have a much better chance at changing our behaviours.

With that in mind, take a look at the picture posted with this article.

If you were standing in front of these animals, alone, without a fence between you and no cover in sight — how do you think you would feel?

There are 8,000 pounds of horseflesh thundering toward you at speed and here you are, out numbered, with no one to help you.

How do you feel?

My career involves putting people in this situation often, so I have a pretty good idea of what most reasonable people would be feeling. Powerless, vulnerable, fearful, uncertain, weak, ignorant, alone, ill equipped and, working at a frightening disadvantage have all been expressed.

So in this interaction — where is the balance of power? With the 8 horses? Or the one person?

Would you be surprised if I told you, 100% with the one lowly little human?

You see, it doesn’t matter to the horse how you feel right now. Evolution and the natural world has given you, lowly little human, an advantage, a privilege, that you can’t see but the horse can. You are blind to both the privilege and power you possess in this interaction.

Let me explain.

Cave drawings 30,000 years old exist depicting horses. We know humans and horses have had a relationship for at least that long, but only 6,000 years of evidence suggesting domestication. Humans of 30,000 years ago were hunters and horses of the day were the hunted. Both have evolved accordingly — one an efficient predator the other efficient prey.

The horse, even domesticated, is aware of its position in the world as prey. Horses understand that in the natural world they are food for predators. It’s people who have forgotten or become blind to their position as predator (due to both a disconnect with the natural environment and our ability to choose our diet). Predators have both power and privilege in the natural world, prey knows this — because their life depends on the knowing and predators like us forget because our lives aren’t on the line.

Neither human nor horse of today chose the position they find themselves in — this is millions of years of evolution in play. It doesn’t matter if you choose to eat a plant based diet or whether you have any malintent toward the horse — the privilege and power still exist even if you can’t feel it, even if you don’t want it, even if things are challenging in this moment for you, even if you don’t deserve it. It’s there and you benefit – because you get to have a choice.

This is a simple beginning to understanding a complex issue. This example is balanced because it is based on nature and nature always seeks balance, but like I said before – we are disconnected from our natural environment. The environment we are currently living in, we built for our benefit, exploiting what we could along the way.

When power and privilege get out of balance – hunting for trophies or hunting an animal to extinction — it becomes toxic. When greed mixes with power to exploit others and increase our privileges – something has to shift to bring back the balance.

We fail to engage with toxic privilege built into our systems and become blind because we are the predators. The ones whose lives don’t depend on the rebalancing. The ones who get to relax while the rest are fighting for their survival. The ones who benefit from the lack of balance.

It doesn’t matter who you are or whether you would ever misuse your privilege – it’s the fact that you have the choice to do so at all. It doesn’t matter if you feel powerful or privileged or that you earned everything you have, if the person sitting across from you has something you can take away – you are privileged.

Power and privilege will always exist.

Toxic privilege doesn’t have to. Blind spot privilege doesn’t have to either.

To rectify either we have to be willing to change.

6,000 years ago when we decided to domesticate horses – it was us, the ones with the privilege, who had to change first. We had to watch, listen and learn from what was once our prey – convincing them that although for 24,000 years they were nothing but a meal – we could change the world by building a partnership.

It’s a conversation that has continued for 6,000 years, one that I continue to have every time I step into my paddock and ask my horses to partner with me. It’s a conversation I can’t grow tired of. I can’t ask them to “just get over it” our history doesn’t allow for that – so I change.

We need a better world and I believe the more people in it willing to look at their privilege, listen and learn no matter how uncomfortable it might be – are a big part in changing it for the better.

What privileges do you have?

*Article originally published on Medium