I call my leadership style feminist. I say it out loud, in boardrooms and in pitch meetings, and I have watched the word land in every possible way – curiosity, relief, a raised eyebrow, an awkward laugh.
I keep saying it anyway. Not to provoke, but because a leader who cannot describe how she leads is asking people to guess. And people who are guessing spend energy on reading the room that they should be spending on the work.
This article is not a manifesto. It is a handful of things I actually do – as an executive, as a board member and with clients – that break with the default script of how leaders are supposed to behave. Some of them will look small. That is the point. Leading differently is rarely one grand gesture. It is a set of habits you are willing to be seen doing.
Name your style, then let people hold you to it
The first act of daring is definitional. Most leaders have a style; few have articulated it, and fewer still have said it in front of the people they lead.
Feminist leadership, as I practise it, is not about gender. It is a set of commitments: listen before you decide, make space before you fill it, treat challenge as a contribution, and take responsibility for the culture you create rather than blaming it on the people in it. It is also about power – being honest about who has it, how it is used, and who gets to change the decision.
Saying this openly does two things. It gives people permission to work with me in that way, and it gives them a standard to hold me to. When I fall short – and I do – someone can say so, because I have told them what I was aiming for.
Do write down, in a few sentences, how you lead and what people can expect from you. Share it. Don't wait until you have a perfect definition. You will refine it by being held to it.
Two minutes of silence before the decision that matters
Board meetings have a rhythm: agenda, papers, presentation, discussion, decision. The rhythm is efficient. It is also a conveyor belt, and the most important item on the agenda arrives with everyone's head still in the previous one.
So before a major discussion I ask the room for two minutes of silence. No phones, no papers, no whispered side-conversations. Just two minutes to put down whatever came before and arrive at the topic in front of us.
The first time I did this the reaction was polite bewilderment. By the third time, people were asking for it. What it produces is not mysticism. It is attention. The discussion that follows is sharper, the interruptions fewer, and the decision tends to be made on the question actually being asked rather than on the momentum of the meeting.
Do protect the transition into the decisions that matter. Silence, a short walk, a blank page – the form is less important than the pause. Don't apologise for it. A leader who introduces a practice while signalling embarrassment has told the room it is optional.
Stopping the exercise to breathe
Crisis exercises are supposed to be stressful. That is how you learn. But there is a point at which stress stops producing learning and starts producing noise.
I once paused a client's continuity exercise in the middle of the scenario. The room had tipped from urgency into panic – people talking over one another, decisions being made and unmade in the same breath, the kind of energy that in a real incident leads to the second, self-inflicted crisis. I asked everyone to stop, and to take three deep breaths together before we continued.
It felt, I am sure, slightly ridiculous to some of the people in that room. It was also the most useful minute of the day. When we resumed, the same people made better decisions, listened to each other, and – importantly – recognised the pattern. Several of them told me afterwards that "three breaths" had become shorthand in their team for "we are spinning; stop".
Do treat the leadership team's nervous system as part of the crisis response. A panicked room makes bad decisions no matter how good the plan is. Don't confuse looking busy with being effective, in an exercise or in real life.
Say what you do. Do what you say.
The most political thing a leader does is manage her own calendar.
If I want a flexible workplace – and I do – I cannot ask for it while modelling the opposite. So my calendar is a public document. It shows where I am: at the office, at home, at training. It shows when I am reachable but not at my desk – on the train, between meetings – and when I am not reachable at all, because I am picking up or dropping off my children. Those blocks are not hidden behind "busy". They say what they are.
And when I work in the evening, it is written into the calendar as a decision: I am choosing to work from eight to ten tonight. It is not the laptop opening itself because I happened to walk past it, and it is not the phone in one hand at the dinner table because a notification twitched.
This matters for two reasons. First, people take their cues from what leaders do, not from what the policy says. A leader who preaches boundaries and answers emails at midnight has just set the real policy. Second, the distinction between deliberate and accidental work is the whole difference between flexibility and always-on. Flexibility means you decide. Always-on means the device decides.
Do make your availability visible and honest, including the unavailability. Do decide, in advance, when you will work outside normal hours – and treat everything else as off. Don't ask for a culture you are not personally willing to be the first example of.
What these have in common
None of these practices require authority. They require a willingness to be seen doing something the room did not expect, and to hold the line long enough for it to become normal.
That is, in the end, what I mean by daring to lead differently. Not being loud. Not being contrarian for its own sake. Simply deciding what kind of leader you intend to be, saying it out loud, and letting the calendar, the boardroom and the crisis room show whether you meant it.
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Maj Britt Arberg is the founder of House of Moon. She has led teams in Big Four advisory and as a CEO, has served on boards, and is a certified yoga teacher and instructor. Her leadership practice is rooted in feminist and inclusive values.