Day-1

Welcome to Day 1 of our transformative 7-day journey, designed exclusively for the brilliant women stepping into their power. My name is Uta, and I am thrilled to embark on this adventure with you.

I believe that time is our most precious resource and I am so greatful, that you decided to spend it with me.

Today we want to start this 7 day journey by exploring, how your brilliance can shine into this world by utilizing agility with confidence and feminine virtues.

Most probably your vision for the outcome is still vague and needs sharpening. It might be a new inspiration for a product you are currently working on, a new job or a new project or your big vision of impact. This is exactly what we want to do together, to get you started.

For a moment, perceive for yourself, which traits do you regard as feminine and which ones as masculine?

As women, we are not aware of the power of the feminine within us, especially in the business world. This is cultural. At its core, men and women should have masculine and feminine traits in balance. The feminine is perceived as weak. In the narrative of women’s roles within society, there’s a particular aspect that often comes to the forefront, celebrated for its intrinsic value: the nurturing, soft, humble and friendly helper. This portrayal, deeply embedded in cultural narratives across the globe, underscores the compassionate and supportive roles that women frequently embody.

This is only half the story. The feminine part is also the creative, intuitive, flexible, curious, expressing. It is the cooperative part that communicates and has a holistic view.

In the book “The Athena Doctrine” John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio have published their worldwide research of what is perceived as feminine and what as masculine. It is cultural.

Traits that are perceived as masculine are strong, dominant, arrogant, proud, analytical but also confident, competent and competitive. When men are selfish, then it is perceived as a positive trait. On women it is rejected. They are expected to be loyal, giving and selfless. The Athena Doctrine found, that this is similar in all cultures.

I see women have to overcome feelings of not good enough for their inspiring endeavor. They fall into procrastination because they feel unsupported and alone.

Your biggest barrier might seem to be finding time for your dream.

What is the feminine agility model and how it can help us.

Agile management came into our world because of the rising complexity, mainly fostered through digitalization. At the core of digitization lies software. The software development domain were the first to cultivate agile frameworks for leadership.

Agile management is a new form of collaboration that prioritizes interpersonal relationships. Everyone is part of the whole, and each contributes to gradually and empirically approaching a common vision. Teams are self-organizing. We do this together. This management style first emerged in software development and is now expanding into other areas. The most well-known agile framework is Scrum.

I get asked, why I describe Agile management as inherently feminine?

Agile principles build on self-organizing teams.

Its emphasis is on cooperation, community, empathy, flexibility, and responsiveness – characteristics that most people associated with feminine qualities.

The opposite is a command and control management, masculine traits, that worked well during the industrial age.

Looking closely at the feminine traits, there is a power in it. Claire Zammit calls it feminine power in opposite to the masculin power.

These feminine traits contribute to the effectiveness of the agile approach by promoting a work environment that values open communication, mutual respect, and adaptability. This allows everyone to contribute their creative potential to optimally meet the needs of the customers.

In the digital age, we live in a world that is disruptive, complex with high levels of uncertainty. It is not enough to create a plan and execute it. We need to approach our visions with feedback, inspection and adapting to the new insights. The feminine traits are the amplifiers for true Agility.

I want to tell the story how this course came into life.

During the Covid years everybody learned how to use online training tools, like Zoom. This gave me the opportunity to work with hundreds of women online to explore what they desire and what are the biggest challenges and frustrations they face in the tech domain.

I found that technology itself is not the primary issue for the women I interviewed. This challenge comes in at a much later stage. The biggest challenge is self-confidence and not finding time for what their true dreams are. Some people call it work-life-balance. I found that this lack of self-confidence of these brilliant, gifted women has its root cause in our cultural gender-bias. There is a term “imposter-phenomen” that was first applied in a study in 1978 with high performing women. That study and others that followed have shown, that many ambitious female leaders experience overwhelming worries that they are not qualified enough for their work. These issues are mostly felt by groups that are traditionally marginalized in the power structures of corporations and society.

Bias and exclusion logically foster self-doubt.

In the Agenda for this mini course over a week, you have to invest 20 Minutes daily.

Today we started with why the agile Mindset fits well into the feminine traits. What is feminine power vs masculine power?

How can we use this realization for our endeavor of the next week? How can we embrace our feminine power for the quest? Think about this.

On the second day we want to look at our vision for our endeavor of the next week. What shapes an empowering vision? What type of vision do we need for an agile approach? What is the difference between a classical management approach and an agile approach? How does this go together with feminine qualities?

Come back tomorrow with a vision for your quest. Think big! Don’t be shy. We will expand your vision tomorrow.

Day 3 is homework day. Crafting your personal vision for your endeavor.

Day 4 is all about bending time. When you look at your life, the first barrier that will arise is creating time for your dream. How can we make time for what is important for us? I call it bending time.

Day 5 is all about inner barriers that hold you back in your endeavor.

On day 6 we will explore how to find support in your team, your group or your pod. How can you make your vision to being a common shared vision? How can your agile team get self-organized to approach this vision?

On the last day it is all about holding you accountable in approaching your set goals in baby steps, sprint by sprint.

If you want to have a deeper experience, where you can be supported by other brilliant women, I invite you to join our next immersive Agile & Feminine with self-confidence. You will find the date for the next event on this website, feminineagility.com. Participants enjoy to have like minded women as sparring partners.