You are now a role model

We have just celebrated International Women's Day, and we realize more than ever that Dynamic Feminine Leaders are as rare as they are in demand right now. Women leaders around the world are working to bring women into the top of the global power structure, so that economies can tap into a huge potential for positive change in family and in business life. There is a long long way to go, but there are a few handy short cuts and one in particular I'd like to share today. It's about becoming a role model. To be a role model, women have to make sure that as they come into bigger power roles, they are comfortable with their leadership style as well as convinced of their competence. How do you do that?

One way is to follow existing role models. A true role model possesses the qualities that we would like to have and those who have affected us in a way that makes us want to be better people. They advocate for us and represent our goals and take leadership on the issues that we (as women of the world) believe in. For example, British actress Emma Thompson is part of a large group of amazing women activists around the world who are launching the "Endangered Species Women" initiative this Friday, March 18th. It is a campaign of awareness about how the culture and the media truly cause distorted images to be ingrained in our assumptions about how we should be as women, with the result that millions of women suffer from anorexia and other illnesses related to lack of self-esteem and being over-critical of one's physical appearance, like a dependency on plastic surgery. She says, we need to 'take back our bodies' and become warriors for real women who are happy in their own skin and have inner power and live in a healthy, normal sized body.

This is wonderful, much needed, all well and good. However, Hilary Clinton, on the cover of Newsweek this week with her global "war for women" from the White House, points to the need to ensure that women take on a leadership role in the world, not just because there are a few famous politicians like herself doing a campaign and trying to pave the way. Rather, she calls for more responsibility in each and every one of us, at the individual and interpersonal level. It's like a commitment to change that can be carried at every level of society. The question we need to ask is: How can I be a dynamic feminine leader and in becoming so, help others, and in doing so, invite others to go out and take up their leadership, to achieve the changes we wish to see in the world? According to Hilary and her vast network of international associates in politics and business, it is this 'ripple effect' that seems to be the way change works best.

Ok Ladies. Now what about you? How can you harness your own, dynamic, feminine leadership and use it to your advantage and for the benefit of others?

It's not that huge a task, really, even if it might sound like a lot of hard work. You just relax and focus on truly being your Self, and taking care of yourself, not focusing so much on others at first. Then, as you stay in touch with what you feel and honor what you need in your life and show others that you decide, each day at the moment you get up in the morning, that you are going to keep honoring your needs and remain the leader of your own life, your natural, dynamic energy will radiate on others, and people look at you and say, "Wow, if she can do it, I wonder if I can too?" 

If you do that every day, making your self matter no matter how small the matter is you are dealing with, you are showing others how to do so too. And voila, you are now a role model. You have inspired others in own leadership. You don't have 'do' anything else. It works by itself.

You go girls.