Lessons on Q2 Leadership from Jacinda Ardern & Cinema's Leading Ladies
Lessons on Q2 Leadership from Jacinda Ardern & Cinema's Leading Ladies
Career and Life Pacing With Q3 in Mind
Cyberspace has been alive this week with news, views and commentary on two related stories turning around women’s leadership.
First, Jacinda Ardern’s tearful goodbye to politics. There is an entire worldful of women (and a few men) shedding matching tears to see her - and her empathetic style of leadership - leave the global stage.
The second, was the recognition of three (sic!) women over 60 who won Golden Globe awards. Between these two tales reside a hint of the path forward for women and how to pace a high-impact life and career.
Ardern first. The global online conversation, including a zeitgeist-deaf BBC headline, turned around whether Ardern’s decision meant women still can’t ‘have it all.’ This muttering of all the things we lose when we succeed has been going on for years. It’s getting tired. More importantly, it’s losing its power to make us feel bad.
The last time it was globally floated was in Anne-Marie Slaughter’s infamous piece titled Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. That was exactly a decade ago. But interestingly, times have changed. The BBC, which led on the Ardern story with a lazy ‘Can Women Have It All?’ trope was forced to remove it after the backlash it caused. A NYT article responded with a riposte entitled Time To Stop Asking If Women Can Have It All. They Can.
I’d add, just not all at once.
Having It All. Just Not All At Once
In an age and where women’s political leadership during the pandemic outshone that of their male peers in a number of countries, and where women currently run the European Central Bank, the IMF, and the European Commission, it seems ever more strange to be debating these questions.
What is true is the pressure too many people - especially parents with young families - put on themselves in Q2. The first half of adulthood, the years from 25 to 50, is full of most of the building blocks of life. Proving you can make it to the parents and culture you come from (or proving you can reject it entirely). And to yourself. Building professional skills and successes while also creating and building a family and/or a network of personal relationships that are the root of all human happiness and resilience. These are huge, foundational investments, crucial to this phase of life. Trying to do too much, too hard and too high for too long at this age and phase causes the kind of burnout we see in Ardern. Not just in women.
The Promise of Q3
What most of us haven’t yet quite registered is that longer lives have gifted us with a second act. An extra quarter of healthy active engagement in the quarter century after 50, what I call Q3.
That’s where my second news story comes in. The three women who won Golden Globes (Michelle Yeoh, age 60, Jennifer Coolidge, 61 and Angela Bassett, 64) would have been inconceivable a few short years ago in a sector rife with both ageism and sexism. In 2019, only three of the top 100 movies featured a leading or co-leading role filled by a woman over 45. These are moments that mark the mainstreaming of a movement.
Yeoh made a moving acceptance speech - taking her time and oozing the confidence she’s earned in her determined ownership of the microphone - about how she’s spent 40 hard years getting where she is today. "I turned 60 last year, and I think all of you women understand this: as the days, the years and the numbers get bigger, it seems like opportunities start to get smaller."
And yet, as these women are role modelling, and as I have been writing, they may just be getting started on their highest-impact-yet Q3 decades. Jennifer Coolidge is astonished by this late success: "I had such big dreams and expectations as a younger person, but they get fizzled by life," she said in her acceptance speech. "I was never invited to one party, now everyone’s inviting me." Angela Bassett won her second Golden Globe almost 30 years after her first.
Older people are learning to age better, especially women. The slowly rising visibility and power of older adults, under the benevolent gaze of an 80-year-old sitting American President, is becoming visible all around. Almost all the women running the big global institutions listed above got those roles after 60. Maybe that will become the new normal in an age of longevity. As Michelle Yeoh says: “What they don’t understand is that I’ve learned some things over the years, and I’m more clever and smarter in how I can sustain my stamina. I’m as fit as I was before, because I know how to look after myself much better than when I was younger.”
Ardern’s Only 42!
So what are all these wonderful leading ladies teaching us? That life is longer than we are thinking or planning for. That we can start adjusting to the new reality by pacing our careers in a slightly different way. It’s not just that Q3 opens up vast new opportunities (and responsibilities) for our fast-ageing friends. It’s also that the prospect of Q3 should allow all the folk in Q2 to pace life and work differently. Have and hold the two babies that most couples say they want. Don’t pour every ounce of energy you have into work and the inevitable burnout or disappointment, but invest in a balanced way in the foundations of a happy, healthy life: work, love, health, purpose, community.
Jacinda Ardern is showing the way, as she has before. She’s tired and she’s taking a break. She’s got a 4-year old kid. Maybe she wants another one. She’s got time to have whatever it is she defines she wants. She’s come to global prominence in a national role. Her skills and smarts are hugely relevant to the challenges the world faces. Her next role is likely to be a global one. First female secretary of the United Nations? Special Climate Envoy for the world? Watch this space.
Ardern is showing us that pacing is possible. She’s not alone, and hopefully this won’t be a lesson taught only by women. For my 4-Quarter Lives podcast I just recorded a wonderful session with two similarly aged male CEOs who are stepping down for a time to care for their young families and gender balance the parenting load (coming soon).
Ardern’s also holding up a wonderful mirror to the (mostly male) leaders all over the world who are over-staying their welcome. Admitting that someone else would lead her country better than she would is the most radical thing I’ve heard in some time. I hope Putin, Xi, Modi, Netanyahu are watching. Perhaps her next job can be coaching them on how to execute a graceful exit? The world would be forever in her debt.
In the meantime, I hope she takes some well-earned time out, offers her daughter a younger sibling, her supportive husband some love and attention, and gets some renewable fuel back into her tank. I’m sure Harvard, where she just gave a stirring Commencement Speech earlier this year, would be delighted to host her midlife transition mulling.
She’s got time. And the world will be waiting.
