Being in Charge: A Quest to Embrace the Role of Both Feminine and Masculine Energies in Leadership, Leaving Duality Behind

Abstract

The author investigates the symbolism of feminine and masculine energies in leadership through an exploration of the Arthurian legend of Parzival and the Holy Grail and Temple’s functional fluency model. Drawing on her experience as an educator, she reflects on a program she delivered for an all-male group in which she became curious about the impact of her presence as a female on their work together. She describes how exploring the “being in charge” role in the functional fluency model gave her a language with which to understand not only her impact on the participants but also their impact on her as they challenged each other’s frames of reference about leadership. She also reflects on how an understanding of feminine and masculine energies enables leaders to draw more fully on both and so experience more wholeness and a greater sense of authenticity in their roles.

Keywords:

• Authenticity
• educational encounter
• feminine
• functional fluency
• leadership
• masculine
• patriarchy
• yinyang
• transactional analysis

Disclosure Statement

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Sarah Lowes

Sarah Lowes, MA, is a Certified Transactional Analyst in the educational field. Having previously trained as an actress and worked as an internal learning and development manager in the private and public sectors in the United Kingdom, she is now a self-employed ILM level 7 executive coach and group facilitator in businesses and schools. Sarah can be contacted at 4 Wesley Street, Swindon, SN1 3LF, United Kingdom; email: [email protected].