Think8 Women

I woke up shaky the other morning, day three of the flu. Back in bed after a shower I pulled my computer on my lap to find messages of encouragement from two of my dearest women friends.

I love women.

I love how supple yet strong women are, juggling nine things at once, not even aware of her own dexterity.

I love in how we talk in spirals, different colored ribbons weaving round and round in the maypole dance of our conversations.

I love that when you lay bare a painful moment in your life your girlfriend’s eyes well up before yours do.

But I also love men. I’ve always loved them.

I love how ‘other’ a man is to me as a woman.

How my husband Mark is neither my girlfriend nor is he my sister; he is the man in my life. His being fully himself as a man allows me to be fully woman.

And being that ‘fully man’ includes for the last three days keeping our home humming, keeping me hydrated with my sore back and feet rubbed, plus handling all of my business load while carrying our other companies.

That’s a real man in my books.

And I have three sons who are amazing men, each very different.

I loved being mother through the rough and tumble of childhood. I loved boy’s lack of complexity. Now my relationship with each has developed as cherish friend, colleague, and with one, as a business partner.

I can lay out my thinking on any issue to get a different angle from the many valued men in my life. Their energy is different. Their feedback is different. Not right or wrong. Different.

This is why the cultural maelstrom surrounding women and men has never made much sense to me.

I’m not talking about the need for women to claim their rights or Sheryl Sandbergs powerful new book and movement urging women to take their rightful place in business.

I was the first woman ABC TV remote director. My crews ‘worked to rule’ for six weeks, which meant if I called for a zoom and forgot to ask for focus, I got a blur. And this was live TV. They hoped to discourage me. They failed. Those were years of important strides for women.

Those days are long gone, but the chatter polarizing women and men seems to have gotten louder. You know, all the books and articles on how much effort it takes to work or live with each other, and how exasperatingly different men and women are and how to cope.

That we are different seems to me to be the good news.

Differences can create balance. Differences can allow you to see 360. Differences can make great partnerships in business or in life.

Blaming ‘man/woman’ differences for failed partnerships is a wrong target.

Great partnerships have nothing to do with the sex of the other. It has everything to do with whether or not you understand how to be a good partner, how to choose a good partner and how to keep partnerships created.

That word ‘create’ is master key to partnering.

When Mark and I spoke on TRUE PARTNERSHP last month at Toronto’s Lean In it was one of the concepts that seemed to strike lightening with both women and men.

The concept is that there are only two modes in any partnership, creating or counter creating. There is no coast.

And it is irrelevant if those partners are professional, personal, or of whatever sex. Like anything else, a partnership is created, choice by choice, moment by moment.

The fact is, a person is always ‘creating.

When you are not creating in your partnership (at work or at home) then you are most likely creating somewhere else, with something or someone else. When partnerships fail it is often because one or the other was not fully committed to creating it.

I wake up every day smiling that Mark and I get another day to create life and work all over again… even if today Mark is the one doing most of the creating.

Be well and create what you want to live together in your partnerships.

 

Nancy