Matriarchal

Leadership

Attuned to Human Flourishing

Matriarchal Leadership Theory

Matriarchy, as an organized social system, is reimagined as an internal communications leadership, where women seeking to divest from patriarchy host the agency to operate from sensemaking that respects multiple intelligences. This reclamation of generative sponsorship burgeons an attunement to human flourishing, where everything within her sphere receives mothering.

Masculinity, the default of patriarchal norms, positions matriarchal leadership as a developmental intervention, where women reclaim a sense of self-respect and self-leadership. This ‘voice’ of wisdom compels an unlearning, and relearning, of practices that direct thoughts, behaviors, actions, and beliefs that sustain and advance flourishing from the inside out.

The autonomy of matriarchal leadership provides women with developmental strength, intervention from organizational abuse, proactive defense against unjust treatment, and acts as a shield of protection from internalized misogyny.

“I believe you Mother everybody, not in a cloying, hovering way,

but taking care of what is around you.

We have suffered from building a country on the bones

of the children of the [Native Americans].

So true motherhood is accepting that everything

needs to be cared for,

not just your own child.”

Alice Walker

Neglecting consideration of women’s lived experiences reduces leadership to a mechanical system, where the agency to care for oneself remains under the control of those who hold the power to make necessary and adaptive changes.

To surrender control of change-making is to perpetuate dependency.

Sensemaking strengthens agency by disrupting fixed thinking, firing different neurons in the brain that initiate and promote a growth mindset.

Sensemaking is most needed when our understanding of the world becomes incomprehensible, hopeless, or unprecedented. In times of devastation, loss, or unbearable grief, sensemaking enlarges small and delicate cues, searches for the context of details, and fits all the pieces together to perceive a relational shape, something we can conceive, where reason and responsibility bring forth a response.

Applying an experiential learning design, information travels through four modes of sensemaking: emotional, analytical, practical, and dynamic, incorporating junctures of feeling, watching, thinking, and doing. This ongoing reflection and iteration increases mastery of sensemaking, furthers human development, and unleashes dynamic human potential.

FEELING

The analytical experience of thinking

and watching

THINKING

The dynamic experience of feeling

and doing

DOING

practical

The practical experience of thinking

and doing

emotional

The emotional experience of feeling and watching

WATCHING

Four Flows of Communication Constitution

McPhee’s communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) recognizes culture as “the silent language”, calling phenomena into existence through junctures of communication that identify ambiguity, name actions, and flush elusive behaviors and unclear communications to the surface.

This process of “unmasking” through an intentional flow of communications junctures separates issues from personalities, and people, where they can undergo further investigation.

The flows represent a ‘cycle of life’, within an organization or organism, giving shape to what is, and exist as a framework for communicating the presence of stimulus and response.

• Membership negotiation creates an emotional connection.
• Self-structuring provides analytical ties.
• Activity coordination invites active participation.
• Institutional positioning imagines a launchpad for dynamic engagement.

CCO acts as the sturdy and steady communications architecture capable of protecting, nurturing, and developing an infrastructure of human flourishing.

• Institutional

positioning

• Membership

negotiation

• Activity

coordination

• Self-structuring
  

Leadership Flows

Aligned with four tenets of communications leadership that support multiple intelligence, experiential learning, and the process of sensemaking, matriarchal leadership takes its shape.

• Ethical communication is connective to values
• Strategic leadership aligns intentions
  
• Appreciative leadership highlights what is working well
  
• Adaptive leadership is willing to iterate and recalibrate
  

Most leadership frameworks were designed with a masculine default, where matriarchal leadership reflects that of femme, or womankind, hosting a capacity to mother the human essence while partnering towards the co-creation of new and healthier pathways for human flourishing.

Through experiential sensemaking of aligned leadership intentions, matriarchal leadership measures the degree to which human flourishing exists. Through assessing and anticipating human needs, matriarchal leadership exists in service of the future.

• Aligned to personal & professional values
• Reflective of ORG values
• Alert and Aware of alignment
• Responsive to misalignment
• Generative
• Heart-centered
  

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

Moral Ownership

Moral Courage

Moral Efficacy

Moral Potency

• Aligned to personal & professional Intentions
• Reflective of ORG strategies
• Alert and Aware of alignment
• Responsive to misalignment
• Generative
• Logic-centered
  

Strategic Leadership

Situational Analysis

Problem & Opportunity

Goals & Objectives

Messaging

Evaluation

• Aligned to What’s Working
• Reflective of Successful Practices
• Alert and Aware of Alignment
• Responsive to Misalignment
• Generative
• Process-centered
  

• Aligned to Opportunity
• Reflective of Change
• Alert and Aware of alignment
• Responsive to misalignment
• Generative
• Future-minded
  

Adaptive Leadership

Observe

Interpret

Intervene

• Self/Others identity
• Onboarding
• Belonging
• Ongoing expressions of value
  

• Self/Others responsibility
• Analyze performance
• Evaluate intentions
• Ongoing education
  

Matriarchal leadership increases the capacity for embracing tensions as a natural and welcomed element of human flourishing.

This capacity then acts as a cohesive,

creating rich understandings of experiences, filling gaps between partnerships, and supporting thriving relationships between people and processes.

Increase capacity:

• Intervene

• Create an environment
  

• Set the tone
  

• Encourage dialogue
  

• Observe
  

• Listen to learn
  

• Honor experiences
  

• Align values
  

• Design the culture
  

Human-centered methods for sensemaking, and frameworks the encourage greater alignment between human beings and human doings, conceive a living leadership, one attuned to the elements of human flourishing.

Where ‘matriarchy’ is an organized social system led by women, a matriarchal leadership is imagined as an internal leadership that exists and operates apart from that of patriarchal authority.

Through a matriarchal leadership, the increase of agency places power back into the hearts, minds, hands, and feet of those most impacted by the outcomes of choice - the human at the center.

Through relationship between experiential sensemaking and communications leadership, the partnership between masculine and feminine governance is strengthened, and able to represent a commitment to the care of - and responsibility to - another.

Matriarchal

Leadership

Attuned to Human Flourishing

Nearly two decades ago I began wrestling with the phenomena of matriarchal leadership. A lived experience of solo parenting offered the opportunity to operate as head of the house and chief of well-being; with no patriarchy to submit to, no adherence to a hierarchy, and no masculine defaults to align with, I led our family unit as both mom and pop. Breaking these rigid gendered norms produced a grit that refined my character and strengthened my resilience for living out an organic and holistic leadership attuned to human flourishing.

In my work with trades education, I was introduced to Kolb’s experiential learning model. Applying this process of moving information through a cycle of feeling, watching, thinking, and doing, baked sensemaking into the landscape of my leadership. Through this ‘experiential sensemaking’, I advanced beyond fear, frustration, loneliness, and hopelessness into greater dignity, clarity, self-respect, and autonomy. I changed my role from ‘single mother’ to ‘solo parent.’

As agency increased, so did my vision and version of leadership. The invisible systems of anti-feminism that planted seeds of misogyny, began to weaken and fall away. Internalized patriarchy became compost for the burgeoning of a leadership balanced with love and logic - practicality and imagination. This yes, and… leadership bolstered my stability to stand on my own two feet even while operating under the leadership of patriarchal systems.

I had found a thriving within the cancer of patriarchy.

When Leukemia came knocking at my child’s door, I left my career to provide full-time caretaking. While living in the hospital, I applied this same ‘experiential sensemaking’ to help me move beyond the spirals and cycles of grief. Personal leadership became a tool of survival, and influenced the daily choices of a child attuned to her own measure of human flourishing. Together, we discovered a thriving within the experience of cancer itself.

Building upon my undergrad research, where I portrayed how women and mothers are impacted by limitations within patriarchal workplace culture, I took this capstone opportunity to begin theorizing and designing the infrastructure for a women’s leadership style that harnesses the dynamic power of communications attuned to human flourishing.

Applying the framework of the communicative constitution of organization (McPhee, 2015), the four flows ‘ecosystem’ of communication initiates a membership to the leadership of self, exercises strategic intention, appreciates what works well, and embraces continuous adaptation and advancement. In this sense, ‘matriarchal’ is strategic for decentering patriarchy and recentering human dignity by increasing the value and agency of femme, or liberated, leadership.

This project helped me form ‘the bones’ of matriarchal leadership by laying down the theory-building research necessary for a solid architecture capable of protecting what is truly at the heart of this theory: human flourishing.

As words create worlds, and given this historical moment of great human suffering and deep societal ills - a leadership that is both protective and nurturing is just the prescription for establishing personal balance and restoring organizational health.

Attuned to human flourishing, Matriarchal Leadership takes its shape.

What could that shape look like for you?

Melinda Cadwallader

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