The Future of Leadership Needs the Skills Women Excel At…

Today, I wanted to feature three closely related pieces of writing that really highlight the reasons WHY we need to retain senior women in leadership pipelines.

First, this blog post from the CEO of Mindvalley:

“Across the animal kingdom, something fascinating appears.

The most intelligent, social mammals, the ones that rely on cooperation, memory, and emotional bonds, evolve toward female-led systems.

Evolution does not keep anything alive that isn’t useful.

So the fact that women live 30–40 years beyond reproduction tells us something extraordinary:

Those decades are not leftover time. They are mission-critical years.

In whale pods, when a post-menopausal female dies, her sons are significantly more likely to die within a year.

In early human tribes, older women were the living libraries of survival.

They carried memories.

And memory meant life.

So no, Menopause isn’t the end.

It’s the promotion into leadership.

AI is reshaping industries. Climate instability is accelerating. Global systems are shifting fast.

This is no longer a game of conquest.

It’s a game of survival.

And survival doesn’t favor the loudest voice.

It favors the clearest one.

The one who remembers.

The one who sees patterns.

The one who knows when to move and when to wait.

That’s the matriarch.”

Next up, this Forbes piece from Meggen Harris on the leadership advantage conferred by the menopause transition:

Post-menopause we have:

“The ability to feel deeply without being pulled in every direction by it. The ability to pause, process, and respond rather than react. In leadership, those are not soft skills. They are foundational ones.

When you step back, the traits that often emerge in postmenopausal women map closely to what modern leadership actually requires.

Clearer boundaries, more direct communication, less interest in people-pleasing, and a greater comfort with complexity and long-term thinking begin to take shape in ways that feel more instinctive than forced.

These are not traits typically associated with decline. They are the result of experience and, in many cases, a shift in internal priorities.

For women who have spent decades navigating professional expectations, caregiving roles, and social conditioning, midlife can bring a kind of recalibration. The external noise begins to quiet, and the internal signal gets stronger.

With that often comes a different leadership style—one that is less reactive, more grounded, and less concerned with perception.

…organizations that fail to retain and support women through this transition may be losing exactly the kind of leadership they claim to value.”

(She also mentions the work of Dr Lisa Mosconi which I often cite in my workshops. Go read The Menopause Brain, if you didn't already!)

And last but not least, this article from last Autumn in Harvard Business Review:

Paywalled article, but if you can’t access, here’s the TLDR: Women in senior leadership roles who are going through menopause were more resilient, advocated more for themselves at work, and built more support networks that helped them thrive. By talking openly about their symptoms, they also helped reduce stigma and pushed for benefits for future generations.

To talk to us about opening up conversations around menopause in the workplace, or providing invaluable support through 1-1 or group coaching, book your free call here.