It was a heady, exciting intellectual time. Previously most psychological research was based on all male participants, the assumption being that what applied to men obviously applied to women. To be studying GIRLS was completely uncharted waters and nothing less than revolutionary. The profound finding of this project, that around 12 years old girls were in danger of losing their voices, was an eye opener for parents, educators, and society at large.

During one of my weekly meetings with Carol, she talked about this critical time in a girl’s life and the social pressures they faced to succumb to some external standard of what it means to be a woman at a personal cost to their integrity.  As I listened to her, a bell went off in my head, a memory recalled.

I was twelve years old, a girl who liked herself, who thought she was both smart and pretty.  I was standing in my living room practicing aloud a poem my father had written for me that I would be reciting at a Lithuania gathering. My father listened as I recited it and then he stopped me and said, “Your voice is too low. You don’t sound like a girl. Raise it an octave.” Being the good girl that I was, I did what I was told but it was a bitter pill to swallow. In fact, it felt like a pill that had got caught in my throat, that I could neither spit out or swallow.

When I told this story to Carol, she leaned back and said, “You lost your voice not only metaphorically, but literally!”

That was the first of many such demands to change myself, from my father and society at large. This pressure to be what others wanted me to be in order to be accepted ultimately led me to a divided self, the good girl and the bad girl.  Remembering this moment in that office with Carol felt surprisingly liberating, like an invisible tether had been cut. I was able to reconnect to that confident 12 year old who liked exactly who she was.

I tell this story to explain why the Girl Effect Project moves me so, to tears at time. It moves me to see the Harvard Project on the Development of Girls go to a global level. It moves me to see the watershed time of the twelve year old girl to be use strategically as a global intervention.  It moves me and humbles me to see that for so many of these girls, it is not just about losing your voice, it’s about losing your life.

The Girl Effect is one of those projects that small actions can have a huge affect. When we protect girls, we break a chain of abuse, poverty, despair, not only for girls but for everyone.  Allowing girls to have a life of their own and to realize their potential has a ripple effect that spreads throughout the community.

Eve Ensler of Vagina Monologues once said, “(There is) nothing more important than stopping violence toward women—that the desecration of women indicated the failure of human beings to honor and protect life, and that this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all.”

It begins with girls. Let their voices and desire to be whole resonate in us all. 

Start by checking out  The Girl Effect and write your own blog on http://www.taramohr.com/girleffectposts/

 Back in December, U Conn women’s basketball team, the Huskies, surpassed UCLA men’s 88 straight wins when they won 89 consecutive games. The coverage was pretty underwhelming for such a feat. I can’t help think how that would have been covered had it been a men’s team.

I think about the women’s football team, New York Sharks, owned by Andra Douglas. In an era in which star male performers in the NFL pull down mega-million-dollar salaries, a Shark must pay $750 to take the field. The staff, even medical personnel, volunteer their time. These women take care of their families, work full-time, and bust their butts to raise the money so they can play. They scrape it together for the love of the game. Their reward? The Sharks often get stonewalled when trying to just get a field to play in. ESPN will air a jump rope championship before they would show a Shark’s game. Some think women want to compete with men or prove they are men.  I don’t think they do; they just want to play the game. They don’t expect money or glory, just fun. 

For those who watched the nail biting Women’s World Cup game between the US and Japan, it was a very exciting game to witness; very physical, very talented, very fast and gritty.  There’s a pureness in women’s sports that often alludes the male version. Because they have no huge salaries or big hype or macho posturing, they’re not all caught up in ego issues. You can see they do it solely for the love of the game. I was struck by the banner held up by the Japanese players that said, “To our friends around the world, thank you for your support.” Has a male soccer team ever expressed such appreciation and gratitude?

Women athletes are paving the way for future generations of women to gain from sports what men have always gained: an appreciation for the power of teamwork, the love of strategy and the thrill of competition, and the satisfaction and enhanced self-esteem that comes from winning, not to mention the lessons that come with losing.

 So girls, if you really love the game, whether it be soccer or football, put on your armor and go for it. Eventually this culture will wise up to what a great game you play and see that women playing a great game does not take away from the boys. There’s room for everyone to play.

Really, I thought to myself? No leader wants to think about managing vulnerability? It’s not a question of going there. It’s a matter of already being there. In a complex, interdependent global reality, little predictability and little control defines today’s reality. These uncertain times by nature are vulnerable times. How you deal with vulnerability has a lot to do with defining your character and leadership style. If leaders and managers deny their vulnerability, what does that say about their effectiveness and ability to learn from mistakes? How can you expand your understanding of things if you can’t admit you’re wrong?

Michelle Bachmann’s faux pas about the founding fathers, who she said worked tirelessly to end slavery was embarrassing, is a case in point. Here’s a person with a staff who sees herself as a future president, and is either intentionally revising history or doesn’t care enough to know the facts. But even worse were the contortions she went through to justify her statement when she was brought to task. Is it so hard to simply say, “I was wrong? I made a mistake?”

Sarah Palin’s comment on the Paul Revere ride and making it a case for the second amendment is a similar example. What’s wrong with saying, “I didn’t get it quite right but I’ve got it now”? Instead we get all this rationalization, victimization, and fast footwork. And admitting a “misstatement” comes short of owning up. Instead of “man up,” how about “own up” for all the false and misguided statements made?

It’s not to say that we haven’t seen leaders and politicians admit being wrong or making a mistake. The mea culpas keep coming from philandering husbands, from Edwards to Spitzer to Ensign. Admitting wrong for  personal issues seems to have more approval than for a professional issue.

To make a wrong right, you have to start out with admitting you are wrong. 

That’s the problem with many of the law suits that get settled behind closed doors, such as the sex discrimination suit filed against Morgan Stanley (now Morgan Stanley Smith Barney). Sealed deals made with no admission of wrongdoing is not progress; it’s denying a vulnerability and therefore not addressing it in an effective and constructive way.

In order to manage vulnerability effectively you have to be strong enough to admit you are wrong and care enough to do something about it. Admitting you are wrong is not just about a weakness but also about an opportunity to learn and grow. It requires a special kind of strength. Humility.

We need our leaders to model managing vulnerability in a constructive way. Of course, there is always the fear of being diminished or demeaned, and in a culture that so heavily denies vulnerability, this is certainly a possibility. But our future as a society rests in how we deal with all the vulnerabilities we face individually and collectively, how we respond to others being vulnerable. When we can transform vulnerabilities into learning opportunities for everyone, and cast it in a positive light, then that can lead to new strengths.

 As we watch the stunning unfolding of events from Egypt to the Ivory Coast, from Tunisia to Bahrain, we bear witness to a tectonic shift occurring in society, a shift of power. We have seen for generations societies based on domination, where an individual uses power over others to control them. Emerging now in nascent form is a different use of power, a collective power of and for the people that threatens to undermine established “power over” regimes.

 The transformation of power is complex work, requiring wisdom to come from many rather than a few. I wonder who is and will be sitting at the peace table? Who is negotiating the changes? Are women included and equally represented?

To navigate these uncertain waters of change requires many skills, not least of which is the art of collaboration. Effective collaboration requires the creation of an environment of mutuality. That is, mutual respect, mutual interest, mutual benefit, and mutual trust, open communication, and diversity. When these conditions exist, an opportunity presents itself for collective intelligence to emerge, something that is greater than any individual contribution or the sum of contributions. What emerges is almost magical; something greater than the sum of its parts—evolved thinking.

On the other hand, peace-making groups without these conditions of mutuality and a level playing field, diversity, and trust, can easily devolve into stalemates, with alpha males staring at each other, each daring the other to blink. The willingness to give ground is seen as a weakness in these high testosterone equations, and negotiations inevitably go nowhere, as we’ve seen so often, especially in the tortured Middle East. But a willingness to give ground allows light into negotiations, allows critical thinking and an openness to exploring not only common ground but also higher ground.

One thing is certain: the more critical, reflective thinking rather than reactive thinking we see at the peace table, the greater chance for a positive outcome.

Recently social scientists, such as Christopher Chabris at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, Anita Williams Woolley at Carnegie Mellon University, have begun to systematically examine what they call the collective intelligence of groups. Their paper, “Evidence for Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups”, was reported in Science Magazine in October 2010.

What they discovered in their research completely surprised them; it was not something they expected or were looking for. They learned that collective intelligence is not tied to either the smartest person on the team nor to the average intelligence of the members of the team. The one predictor for increasing collective intelligence is to have a good representation of women in the group. So if negotiators are serious about making progress, about finding new common ground, they will ensure that at least half the chairs around the table are occupied by women.

What do women bring to the table that catalyzes new thinking? According to Chabris and Woolley it is a superior social sensitivity in reading non-verbal cues and other people’s emotion, and a fairness in turn taking.

From my research on women in these situations, I would characterize their “secret” as the possession and use of what may fairly be called feminine skills: by this I mean relational intelligence, emotional intelligence, holistic perspective, inclusion, empathy, intuition. All those soft skills are really powerful for true collaborations to succeed and for facilitating the emergence of collective intelligence. Such skills are not exclusively held by women, of course. But on average they are more developed in women, and women are generally more willing to use them.

Merle Lefkoff, an international mediator, whose work has involved Ireland, Bosnia, and the Middle East, misses women’s voices when negotiating issues of peace, war, and conflict. She describes what women bring to the table in this way. “At the back of women’s minds are always the children.  It’s not just the geopolitics, it’s a whole life. Women have a more holistic view and really understand that we are all connected. Women really believe that there is a possibility for connection and will do whatever it takes to hold that thread that is holding them together and nurture it. Some men tend to say, ‘Leave me alone; let’s just act.’ They pull back, not wanting to go into that emotional realm, but that’s exactly where the connection is and women work to unearth it.”

 Most women in the peace-making business would agree with Merle. “We turn to men who plan wars and ask them to plan peace. It’s poor casting,” says Swanee Hunt. “Exceptions aside, women are often the most powerful voices for moderation in times of conflict. While most men come to the negotiating table directly from the war room and battlefield, women usually arrive straight out of civil activism and family care.”

 When the founding fathers of the United States looked for examples of effective government and human liberty upon which to model a Constitution to unite the thirteen colonies, they didn’t find the model in Europe but rather were influenced by the Iroquois Nation. Their Great Law of Peace reflected a profound understanding of the principles of peace and human freedom that allowed them to foster genuine, effective statesmanship.

 Women played an important role in peacemaking and in deciding the future of the Iroquois Nation. Clan Mothers, which became the symbol of women’s leadership, would lead the family clans and raise the chiefs who would come from a matrilineal descent. Women were given the right of holding the chief’s titles and the power to remove dissident chiefs. When men would want to fight, women knew the true price of war and would encourage the chiefs to seek a peaceful resolution.  It was the Counsel of Clan Mothers who would decide when and if the Iroquois went to war.  This was part of their Constitution we did not adopt. Imagine if we had.

 The Iroquois nation knew intuitively what science of collective intelligence is just discovering. If we are serious about peace; if we as a society wish to evolve to greater unity and purpose rather than devolve into entropy and isolation; if we are to evolve to a more collaborative society because a domination-based society is unsustainable; it’s time for women to be a major presence at the peace table, opening our arms to collaboration rather than hold on to confrontation. As Indira Gandhi said, “You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.”

 There are many skeptics who will call this Polly Anna-ish, hiding behind the assertion that humans became successful through the “strength” of aggression and competition, not the “weakness” of collaboration. Well, the Iroquois Nation once again knew intuitively what science is now discovering about what made humans human rather than apes. In the  March 11, 2011 issue of Science magazine, a team of anthropologists led by Kim Hill, of Arizona State University, and Robert Walker, of the University of Missouri, report that patterns of genetic relatedness among modern hunter-gatherer groups cogently imply a long history of collaboration and cooperation among them. This contrasts with the aggression that is so common among chimpanzee groups. We are human, not chimps, and collaboration is indelibly written in our genes, waiting for its power to be unleashed.

 So what to do next? Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her work on landmines, had this advice to anyone wishing to overturn an injustice in the world and replace it with a new wisdom: “Raise your voice in as many ways as you can …don’t be silent about it. …You must be clear and very conscious of the actions you decide to take to bring the change you seek. It isn’t magical and it isn’t mystical-–if you want to live in a better world, you have to decide to act to create that world.”

 Let’s stand together and get women at the peace table.

Trust women. I’ve been going around the country jump starting conversations for women in what we call “Iron Butterfly Circles.” These are consciousness raising groups to increase women’s awareness of how to make an impact on our policies and environment—the opportunities and obstacles. With a self-empowerment focus, women are not alone but are supported in their collaborative leadership styles. It’s also an opportunity for creating bridges between generations of women.

Iron Butterfly Circles are places where the question unfolds: “What happens when you get a bunch of powerful women together with the full intention of transforming the meaning of power, leadership, success, the world?” It’s creating conditions for women to actualize their collective power and to evoke their collective wisdom. It’s exciting, it’s fun, and it’s urgent!

Another way I might characterize these influential women leaders is that they aren’t women who would tend to seek out women’s groups. If pressed I think some would say they don’t really trust other women. Why is that?

Partly it goes back to a long history of women competing with each other. But it wasn’t always that way. Historically, it’s fair to speculate that women had a different role in hunter/gatherer societies; their work was not gender driven but egalitarian. As gatherers, they provided 80 percent of sustenance (20 percent came from hunting). They had resources, a revered position as creators of life, and power to determine the band’s movement and location.  I write about this in the second chapter of my book.

However, the past 5,000 years of uncompromising patriarchy changed all that. Those five millennia witnessed a relentless effort to eradicate feminine wisdom and power through a systematic economic and political subjugation. After all, it was a little over a hundred years ago that women were allowed to own property and even less time to earn the vote in the US.

Consequently, women competed against each other for resources and for men. There is a long history of women not supporting each other and a deep distrust among women for these reasons. Certainly, older generations can quickly conjure moments they felt betrayed, hurt, disillusioned by women. It seems as if these hurts feel more painful because they were inflicted by a sister. I myself have felt bewildered when I found myself standing alone when I expected to be standing with other women.  I wondered as I scratched my head why there was so little traction for working together, so little effort for supporting each other. I flashback to junior high school when all those issues of inclusion/exclusion are so painfully played out with girls. On the other hand, discovering the power of a collaborative effort with women is simply thrilling.

The younger generation has a much better start because of the opportunities that the woman’s movement opened for them. And their involvement in team sports taught them to cover each others backs. They have access to resources and they don’t rely on men in the same way.

Women supporting women is revolutionary, and a profound shift happening as we see a plethora of organizations and programs dedicated to supporting women and cultivating their leadership. Women are learning about collective power: they can collaborate with each other to compete.

True collaboration requires an openness, a trusting of the other as you find mutual ground that benefits both. So, if in this journey of learning to collaborate with each there are remnants of distrust and pain in women’s relationships to women, women will find themselves in an environment that can heal. Taking the risk to trust other women is a necessary step as they lead the way in developing more collaborative and humane environments, at home, at work, in their communities, and in the world.

 That little bumper sticker. “Trust women.” Two words that run deep.

 The winter solstice, December 21,  approaches, the shortest day of the year. With the darkness comes an invitation to sink deeper into ourselves, to visit the stillness within. As a culture, I think we are starved for the stillness where deep truths lie, where the pulse of Mother Nature throbs within us.

 This time of year is like the cocoon phase of the Iron Butterfly journey. We all know the hero’s journey and how s/he embarks on an adventure, learns lessons along the way, and returns home to share them. An Iron Butterfly’s journey is a journey into the heart and mind and soul and it often begins with a personal crisis, an unexpected event that rocks her/his world and stops her/him in their tracks.

 For many this manifests as depression, a sense of being lost, alone, disoriented. It’s a very vulnerable time, when all that was held true comes into question, where beliefs once held dear to one’s heart are abandoned, where realities once clouded and ignored, come full face.  It is a time to be, to pause, to honor the pause so that new growth can emerge, a more authentic self can come into being, and when one’s purpose can become clear. It is a time of emptying out all that is not you.

 When we are in this cocoon phase, it often feels like nothing is happening. But actually a lot is happening. In the stark wintry landscape of the soul, we can come home to ourselves, uncluttered.  

 In our fast-paced, action-oriented, always-connected culture, we don’t value pauses like we value action, but they are equally important. I cannot stress enough the importance of honoring the pause in the rush of life. At this time of year, it seems even Mother Nature in her own way reminds us to sink deeply into the dark, the quiet, the still, so when the spring comes we will be renewed and refreshed, when the seeds sown in winter begin to sprout. 

As I listen to the stillness within me, it makes me a little sad. Why have I neglected what most nourishes? But then I let it go and let it be.

The problem with fewer women in Congress is not just a woman’s issue. It’s a man’s issue as well because it leaves the Congress comprised largely of men, and perfect conditions for even more posturing. We saw what happened on the male-dominated Wall Street, where there are few women’s voices to temper a testosterone-driven culture. Boys always behave better when girls are around.

At a time when finesse and relational skills of collaboration are most needed, skills developed more in women on the average than men, we find ourselves with a Congress ill-equipped to navigate these waters, and many men at a loss as to what to do. We teach our men and boys to dominate, not cooperate. Men often deal with this deficit in the skills of cooperation by posturing, becoming more aggressive and unbending as a way to protect themselves and to deflect attention should someone spot any hint of hesitation or uncertainty. Attack the other guy and let them feel the dreaded feelings of vulnerability. As the well known sports metaphor teaches, the best defense is a good offense. When someone forces their vulnerability onto someone else as a way of drawing attention away from their own feelings of insecurity, I call it the gladiator defense.

When the gladiator attacks, he attacks a hidden part of himself: Eliot Spitzer, crusader against prostitution rings, gets caught having spent a fortune on a prostitute; Reverend Ted Haggerty, defender of the faith, denounces gay rights only to see his own homosexual affair make headlines; Representative Mark Foley, a battler for laws against Internet sexual exploitation, ends up text-messaging sexually explicit messages to minors working as congressional pages. And on and on. 

In the domination-based society that we live in, where power is exerted over others as a way to elevate oneself, the gladiator defense is an adaptation some men develop because they don’t know how to deal with their vulnerable feelings in a constructive way. Why is that? Because, by and large, a domination-based society fails to empathize with men. We expect them to be invincible and invulnerable; they can be heroes but not human. And it begins at an early age when we tell our boys, “Boys don’t cry.” Boys are under a lot of pressure to emulate strength and consequently feel they have to disconnect and deny their softer feelings, leaving them unprepared for dealing with the complex feelings like uncertainty, fear, confusion. Those hidden feelings can pop up in unexpected and not constructive ways, like the gladiator defense.

Obviously this defense is not limited to men; we’ve seen plenty of women engage in the gladiator defense as well. However, it’s the boys who are still in power and running the show. This aggressive, rigid posturing may look like leadership but it isn’t. The gladiator comes from weakness not strength, insecurity not confidence. Calling the gladiator on his game often ends up exposing that behind the fire and brimstone, like the Wizard of Oz, is a frightened little man. Maybe if voters learn to see through the disguise they’ll choose more wisely and seek leaders who can master the softer skills of collaboration. Because really, soft is the new hard.

(This blog first appeared on Huffington Post 11/11/10).

 Isn’t reluctance to embrace peace an example of femiphobia, a fear of the feminine? After all, peace is associated with the feminine side of the psyche. We have Eyasha, the Santherian Goddess of peace, Pax, the Roman Goddess of peace, Eirene, the Greek Goddess of peace. There is no God of peace. That’s why peace is a woman. Life is born from a woman’s body, nurtured at her breast, protected under her wing, so that life can flourish. Women will think first about the children, the family, the community, and will think long and hard before sending their children to kill other mothers’ children, or be killed themselves. A domination-based culture shackles men in having to prove their manhood, putting them under enormous pressure to emulate strength in a way that women aren’t. As violence grows in the world, women must stand for peace in order to break the global cycle of hatred and war. Currently there are about 50 armed conflicts occurring in the world.

Having said that, there are also strong men who are not preoccupied with their macho appearance and are not afraid to stand for peace. There are the Iraqi Veteran’s Against War, and Veteran’s for Peace, all working for peace and justice through non-violence.  The irony is that President Eisenhower, one of our less militaristic presidents, was a General, showing that a true soldier is the last one to want to go to war. In 1953 he pointed out the great price of war when he said, “Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

 We will not have safety and harmony in our communities unless we have it in the entire world. As long as there is hunger and desperation, there is no safety. As long as we funnel our resources into amassing weapons instead of addressing world poverty, there is no security. If a domination model of society doesn’t change, the likelihood of perishing from war or from what we are doing to the environment only increases. We need to change direction–now.

 Peace is not a just an absence of war, it is all those things that Iron Butterflies stand for–health, education, freedom of speech, open communication, economic parity, participatory democracy. These are the conditions that create peace. Susan Collin Marks, international mentor of conflict resolution, described it this way: “Peace is a circle, a circle of wholeness. When that circle gets fractured, when it gets broken, then we have ‘not-peace.’ We, as peacemakers, are trying to mend, to heal, to bring those fractured pieces back together to make the whole and have the healing. At the heart of it is connectedness, inclusivity, a spirit of engaging the whole. What leads to violent conflict is that each group wants to defend its particular piece of the whole.”

 Peace is a state of mind, a force for life in all its interconnectedness. Peace creates a crucible for self-healing, for restorative rather than retributive justice. Peace is standing for what we are for, rather than reacting to what we are against. Peace is a verb, an action that strips away the illusion of finding security and safety by dominating others.  Peace is like the moon–it sheds a soft light on our inner intuition and instinct that urges us to be human and humane, to cast away the glaring light of war and seek the soft glow of peace. As peace activist Maguerita Brakitse from Burundi says, “We are candles. It is better to light a candle than sit in the shadows.”

 The Tea party waves the flag of individual freedom, personal liberty, free market, and espouses the inalienable rights of individuals.

 Westboro Baptist Church feels it has the undeniable right to picket military funerals and carry posters proclaiming, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” while parents are in the midst of burying their children. They claim the individual right of shoving their beliefs into the faces of grieving parents.

 After a rampage of greed and self-entitlement on Wall Street that brought the world economy to its knees and required citizens’ taxes to bail them out, big banks turned over even greater profits while they dropped the guillotine of foreclosures on homeowners. They are merely asserting their undeniable right to evict borrowers who missed payments. Then we discover banks may be exerting this right by using fraudulent documents, without clear ownership. Alas, inextricably entangled in a web of their own making.

 When morality is defined only by individual rights then we create conditions for a culture that’s all about “me, me, me,” a dog-eat-dog world where everyone is out for themselves. Who cares about the other guy? Why should we care about the less fortunate when I had to struggle? Why should we restrain ourselves and take into account the feelings of grieving parents at a funeral, when we have the right of free speech? Why should we think twice about avaricious and inhumane business practices when we have the right to make money? It’s my right to do whatever I want as long I contort myself like Cirque de Soleil gymnast to stay within the limits of the law.

 No wonder 30 percent of teens in the US are involved in bullying, either as bully or target of a bully. Look at their role models of posturing in politics, business, and religion. It’s my right to say whatever I want and never have to consider how my words or actions might impact others. Apologies, shame, admission of harm—these words are not in the self-righteous vocabulary.

 Without a counterbalance to individual rights, we promulgate a care-less, careless culture that cares less about others and carelessly squanders or hoards resources because they think only of themselves.

Decades ago psychologist Carol Gilligan wrote the book, “In a Different Voice,” where she heard voiced a different morality from individual rights and justice in the women she interviewed. She heard a morality of care and responsibility. This morality considers how our words and actions impact others, a dimension of morality barely heard in the current discourse. Without care, success becomes confused with prosperity, individual rights with entitlement, ambition with avarice, and a pursuit of happiness becomes a demand of happiness. Why haven’t you fixed all my problems!

Now, obviously, not all women exercise the morality of care and responsibility articulated by Gilligan, women such as Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies, renamed by Maureen Dowd as the Republican Mean Girls. When individual rights implies, “I have mine, you’re on your own,” it does sound mean, especially when voiced in the snide, belittling, sarcastic remarks we are hearing so much these days. Do mean girls who pitch to tighten government spending mean to make life harder for working moms by cutting away at child care, health care, elder care, after-school care?

When you limit morality to individual rights then you don’t watch out for the greater good, nor do you think we need a government to do it either. But a morality that focuses solely on the individual does not consider that the individual is also a citizen in a community, a country, a world, a web of interconnection whose integrity depends on caring for each other as we care for ourselves. One might have imagined that, as Christians, the Mean Girls would have understood and embraced that viewpoint.

Care implies a capacity to empathize, to feel compassion. The capacity to feel these emotions evolves when we are connected to our own frailties and vulnerabilities. Without a sensitivity to one’s own vulnerabilities, people become rigid and their capacity to feel compassion becomes stunted. 

Do the behaviors of tea baggers, big banks, and the people of Westboro Baptist Church, with their lack of compassion for others, betray a denial of vulnerability in themselves? Have they become hard without realizing they have become rigid in their views of others? Is the source of the mean streak a resentment that no one watched out for them? Are they perpetuating a system by adopting the very behaviors that hardened them in the first place?

Has the espousal of individual rights become a code word for selfishness?

Without care we become care-less and a careless society. We need a feminine sensibility to restore balance to a culture that has gone for too long mucho macho. And we certainly don’t need women jumping on that rickety old bandwagon.

There is more to human existence than valuing the individual, independence, autonomy and a morality of rights and justice. We are individuals entwined in a world of relationships that can only be strengthened positively by a morality that cares for others and takes responsibility for our impact on others. Without the feminine counterbalancing the masculine, without care balancing rights, without community balancing individualism, the human spirit languishes as a one-winged creature unable to soar.

(First published on HuffingtonPost Oct21,2010)

 Years ago, I visited my daughter Rasa at a wildlife camp about 10 miles south of Nairobi, Kenya, where she was studying wildlife management. Rasa’s three months at the camp, closely connected as she was to nature, transformed this beautiful strong young woman, and I was no less affected by my own brief experience there. There is something inexplicable about East Africa: its endless skies dotted with puffs of clouds that seem within arms reach; the smell of dry brush on the savannah; the billowing dust on rutted dirt roads; the screams of a hyrax; the way the sun, cartoon-like, suddenly pops up at dawn and as quickly drops down at the same time every evening.

 Africa gets in your blood. Its rhythm stirs you out of a deep slumber, awakening you to our profound connection to Nature and her cycles. In Africa, you feel part of a web that has no weavers, part of the intricate interconnectedness of life. Instinctively you sense where human life began. I was talking to a Kenyan who worked at the camp about the beauty of his country. He said to me, “We have a saying here. ‘I am because we are.’”

 That phrase stuck with me. I later discovered there is a term for it—ubuntu. Desmond Tutu wrote about it in his book No Future without Forgiveness. This is what he wrote:

 ”Ubuntu… speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, ‘Yu, u nobuntu’… Then you are generous, hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life. We say, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’ It is not, ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather: ‘I am human because I belong. I participate. I share.’ A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.”

 The great leaders of the twenty-first century will have ubuntu. Leaders with ubuntu recognize their interconnectedness and how their humanity is inextricably bound to others—if others are diminished so are they, if others fail, so do they.  They take pleasure from other people’s success knowing that their success is everyone’s success. At some core level we all know our ultimate dependence on one another:  we don’t stand alone, nor do we fall alone. When we accept our interdependence and recognize we are part of a greater whole, then it is in our interest to be generous, cooperative, and caring toward each other. When ubuntu guides leaders, they realize that we are more alike than we are different. As the Dalai Lama said, “If you see yourself in others, then whom can you harm?”

 And yet many organizational practices deny this reality and reflect a blindness to seeing this interconnected and interdependent world. We’ve watched as corporations frantically merged, to become ever mightier in the global marketplace, or downsized, to shed large portions of their workforce, all with little consideration of the communities and bonds of trust that they ruptured in the process. The global economic melt down, initiated by avaricious and risky practices on Wall Street,  exposed a stunning lack of appreciation for how profoundly the global economy is interconnected, and the devastating  impact, like a tsunami, it had, washing over millions of lives.

There are, however, leaders who have ubuntu. Leaders connected to ubuntu use their power to heal, restoring and nurturing a fragile web of human connection. Chile’s former President Michelle Bachelet and Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf embraced their feminine virtues to heal their countries as they emerged from the heartbreak of tyranny and strife. Sirleaf, who favors the nickname Ma Ellen, compares Liberia to a sick child in need of a loving mother’s tender care. Former President Bachelet sought to heal her society and reconcile the Chilean military with the victims of its rule.

These women heal their countries from a place of experience since both women had suffered for their political beliefs. Sirleaf served two years in prison and narrowly escaped rape and execution under the dictator Samuel Doe. Bachelet survived jail, torture, and exile under dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Her father died in jail after he was tortured. These women didn’t turn their hurts into revenge but transformed them into an opportunity to heal.

As the U.S. election season comes upon us with the bombardment of sound bites, let’s listen for whose leadership is guided by ubuntu. Who inspires us, eliciting from us our highest capabilities? Who uses their power of compassion and empathy to dispel fears, rather than induce fears and use them to divide us? Who focuses on the “between,” the quality of how people interact with one another, and stress and model the importance of respecting each other, of working together, of considering the greater good in the choices we make? Who encourages social responsibility that pays attention to how words and behaviors might affect others? Who are the bridge builders, collaborators, connectors? Who leads from a knowing that “I am because we are?”

 These qualities of ubuntu are not the attributes we generally associate with leaders, but they are what we need in our future leaders. As Mother Theresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We need leaders who can remind us.