Connecting With Purpose

A conversation with Julia Middleton, founder of Women Emerging from Isolation

What happens when a leader who has successfully advanced community- based leadership on a global scale for three decades gets locked down — along with the rest of us — in early 2020 and experiences isolation with her mother-in-law on a remote Scottish island for three months? How about a global cross-cultural network of women emerging from isolation, connecting across continents and cultures, one conversation at a time.

In March 2021, Julia Middleton was on the last flight to Heathrow out of Boston as London, and soon the world, entered that first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband met her at the airport and they drove non-stop north to Scotland, where they caught the last ferry to the Island of Colonsay, to be with his mother in her final days.

As the founder of Common Purpose, a global community-based leadership development organization that has reached more than 100,000 individuals since founding in 1989, Julia had been a constant traveler. And as author of two books on leadership, “Beyond Authority” (2007) and “Cultural Intelligence (2014), she has thought about, workshopped, created models and spoken about leadership in a global context for 30 years. Yet in that extended period of isolation, in which days became weeks and then months, Julia got to thinking about leadership. More precisely, she felt something: a need for change and a persistent, gnawing gap.

Looking to a wildly uncertain future, Julia realized “When we emerged from isolation, we had a job to do to make sure that things do change.” And thought to herself, “If we were going to learn anything about humanity through COVID, we needed some new players coming in. And that seems obviously to be women because we come with a fresh eye.”

Acknowledging tremendous global advances in gender equity, the fact remains that men still run most of the world. And put simply by Julia, “If you have a more combined and a stronger voice for women in the world, that’s got to be good.” So, how might we bridge the gender gap in leadership that exists in nearly every sector in every country?

Julia is first and foremost a woman of action, she launched “Women Emerging from Isolation” (WEI) and then began building it, one conversation at a time. The network on LinkedIn is now 4,200 strong, and includes content on YouTube and Twitter. WEI is a growing collection of provocations and wisdom on how women are emerging from the isolation of Covid.

The big idea is a connected journey of self-discovery, “We want to make it so that women discover what kind of leaders they can be, realize that they don’t have to be like other people, they can be themselves.”

WEI is a burgeoning global community of women creating new way of connecting, imaging new models of culturally conscious leadership that help us meet the global challenges we face alone, together.

Looking ahead to 2022, Julia envisions an expansion of WEI into a multimedia collection that will present diverse perspectives at all levels and meet women where they are in terms of language and learning styles. “It’s beautiful because you can find the elements that work for you and put it together for yourself.”

In my estimation Julia’s superpower is her ability to connect authentically, whether she is interviewing a CEO or scientist, artist or city mayor, she shows up with genuine curiosity and listens fiercely. I interviewed Julia via zoom in early October 2021, a year and a half — and more than 80 recorded interviews! — into Women Emerging from Isolation.

What follows is an edited version of our conversation.

Please be in touch if you’d like to join WEI! Connect with us at: LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/32v61ix | Twitter: @WEIconnect & @JuliaMiddleton | Youtube: https://bit.ly/3qpv0M8

Contact me at: Patricia Finneran, Story Matters | Patricia@StoryMattersMedia.org | @TriciaFinn

A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY ON AN ISOLATED ISLAND

Patricia Finneran: Your life’s work — aside from your family — is Common Purpose, you founded it in 1989 in the UK and then expanded it around the world. It is purposeful, it has intentionality and outcomes. Women Emerging from Isolation is intentional, but unlike Common Purpose, it has no “program.” There are no financial transactions, no set of desired outcomes. And, it is beautiful!

Women Emerging from Isolation is a wonderful manifestation of the best things about the internet — it is global, free and widely accessible. WEI emerged from the pandemic. We all experienced some degree of isolation during lockdown at the beginning. What was your experience of that time, as a person that travels a lot and is out connecting with people all the time.

Julia Middleton: Tricia, you’re wonderful for doing this. I had a particularly weird one because, as you quite rightly said, as my father would have described me as the flying dead, I was flying all over the place, landing, moving, picking up things, picking up ideas, doing things. I arrived (home) on the last flight out of Boston. There were two of us on the plane. It was eerie. I got to Heathrow, met my husband who said his mother was very close to dying and lockdown was about to happen. We got in the car and drove as fast as we could, slept in the car in the icy cold, and then took a two and half hour ferry ride, which turned out to be the last one we could’ve got on.

It was pretty empty. Where my mother-in-law lives is an island off the west coast of Scotland called Colonsay, where there are doctors, but really no medical equipment.

And then we­­ — my husband and I — looked after my mother-in-law as she then took three months to die. Well, during that period I sort of discovered my mother-in-law. She had made our marriage pretty tough for the first 10 years, because she adored her son, my husband, and didn’t really want the interference. She was a very difficult woman born of a different generation and incredibly different class from me. We’d had a really tough relationship for years. And then we became very close during those three months.

Being with such a remarkable woman who, as with all women, you have sort of tussling conversations and tussling relationships, I recognized that it is a very deep and extraordinary thing to be a woman. I was there with her when she died; she was a remarkable person with a remarkable story. And it slowly unraveled for me. It was immense. I was completely overwhelmed by the power of women in an extraordinarily intimate one-to-one situation, because she was in a lot of pain and it took a long time. I was reminded of the extraordinary power of women, reminded that things change.

Women Emerging from Isolation pretty well came out of that.

WE ARE GOING TO NEED TO REFRAME LEADERSHIP

Julia: In my twenties, I was completely passionate about the subject of women. I joke that I’m the only person I know who swam in all the fountains on Capitol Hill, I worked on the Equal Rights Amendment march, when I was about 21.

When I started Common Purpose, there was a gap and people said, “why aren’t you doing work for women? Why aren’t you running leadership programs just for women?” I would say that’s not all that I’m passionate about. That’s not what Common Purpose is about. I’m the Chief Executive, I’m the Founder, so, you know, ring-fenced not interested, not doing it. Yet.

But having handed over (leadership) to the amazing Adirupa Sengupta who was my successor at Common Purpose and having the freedom to think again, I went back to the issue of women. I kept hearing everybody saying that this was an enormous shock to the world and that everything would change after COVID.

The truth is that the cynic (or the older person) in me knows perfectly well that everybody always talks about change, but it never really happens, even with a shock like COVID. If we were going to learn anything out of COVID and learn anything about humanity through COVID, we needed some new players coming in. And that seemed obviously to be women because we come with a fresh eye.

When we emerged from isolation, we had a job to do to make sure that things do change. The isolation of COVID became a metaphor for thousands of years of being isolated. There is something really important that we’ll need to do differently. As we come out of COVID, we’ve got a fixed deadline that we’re all facing: you know in 30 years’ time, we all fry.

You know, the pressures of change are extraordinary. But the pressures to go back into the old ways are also extraordinary. I think women must emerge from isolation, but to be heard, there’s going to have to be a combined voice.

THE VALUE OF INSTINCT

Patricia: I had expected something less dramatic. But it was a really profound shift to the most basic experience especially for women — of caregiving. With regard to Women Emerging, did you have a goal in mind when it started?

Julia: When I was first pregnant, someone gave me a book that had 46 chapters, a spread for each week of maternity. The first shock to me was I thought that it took nine months and I suddenly realized it was ten, sorry, not nine months. Ten. That was a bit of a shocker.

The second thing I realized that a group of extraordinary women read the whole book. Right? And then there are women, like me, who read just the spread that they’re in. If you read too far ahead, you might not get pregnant at all. Certainly, if you read the stuff after the 40 weeks, you’re absolutely guaranteed not to do it. Right?

The truth is that I try very hard to go on instinct, and that has over the years served me very well. Instinct, let’s face it, is usually based on experience and an ability to trust that instinct. So, there was a certain amount of trusting in it.

The second is an entirely selfish thing: I was thinking, how can I serve the interests of women the best? That was my biggest objective. How can I use the fact that because of Common Purpose, I know an awful lot of people, in particular women…quite powerful women.

I’ve never thrown my weight around so people probably wouldn’t assess that this was all about me.

There was an important thing to be done here, I spent a lot of time thinking about leadership. I’ve written a couple of books on the subject. I know reasonable amounts about leadership. So how could I add value?

Because to me, it’s undeniable. If you have a more combined and a stronger voice for women in the world, that’s got to be good. How can I help that happen? So that’s what I came to.

ADDRESSING THE PROGRESS GAP

Julia: If I’m really honest, I was a bit sad that I’d been diverted for 30 years of running Common Purpose, and yet not a hell of a lot of progress had been made in that 30 years. Well you know, you could see there’s some progress.

But the fact is that you remember what computers were like 30 years ago and how much that’s changed in 30 years? If you tracked the rapid progress on almost all fronts in the world, it is an extraordinary speed of progress. The one thing that didn’t change much, frankly, and certainly not at the speed of the rest is the progress of women in the world. I accept that there’s some progress, but I cannot say it’s the speed that everything else has been changing.

I looked at it hard and I thought there were two things I could add value on.

One, this illusion that women don’t work together. In my observation, that’s ridiculous. Women work extraordinarily well together, but could be even better at it if more women understood what it’s like to be a woman in a culture that’s not their own.

Having written a book called “Cultural Intelligence,” it was obvious to me that there was a possibility of trying to increase the ability of women to work together by increasing their cultural intelligence. The WEI films are with women so that we can see the world through another woman’s eyes. (The films are recorded conversations posted on LinkedIn and YouTube)

The second one is there is an abundance of programs to empower women. Then you get on the leadership program, and the reading list is largely written by men. There are definitely a lot of leadership books written by women but the vast majority of them are about how to succeed in a man’s world, which has never been in any great interest to me.

If we could engage many women from across the world — and not just women from the Western world, lecturing everybody else on what it is to be at work — but across the world working together to try and redefine leadership in a way that is attractive to women, then you could get young women to say “if that’s leadership, then yes, of course I’ll do it.” And, so that more established leaders say “you may not even have to do it the man’s way.”

I think we can do a little reframing of leadership as something that resonates for women, and it has to be said in my experience, an enormous number of men who also don’t quite fancy the current M.O.

Women Emerging had to have some really clear objectives, which was to attempt the impossible. It’s a huge ambition: Can we reframe leadership in a way that it makes sense to women and in so doing add value to the world, and second get more women to understand each other so that they are a stronger voice all around world?

START WITH FIERCE LISTENING

Patricia: You have this enormous network from Common Purpose in the work and travel that you’ve done. How did you decide who to interview and what order?

Julie: I tend to follow instinct and inherent in following instinct is experienced, and also is the ability to really, really, really, fiercely listen to other people.

I am occasionally accused of being too fierce, a listener which I take as a compliment. Usually when you talk to people, they say something in passing, when you go back to them and say, ‘what did you mean by that?’ When they really unpick it, it’s completely intriguing.

The only really strategic thing is that I want voices from all sectors, from all ages — that needs a bit of work — and all parts of the world. And that’s been a joy to do, to be honest. But lots of people are really thoughtful on the subject of how women haven’t emerged from isolation.

PAY ATTENTION TO CULTURAL CONTEXT

Patricia: Your process is intuitive and deeply informed by experience and values, right? I suspect that you chose people who in your Cultural Intelligence framework have a clearly defined core and an ability to flex. You were able go deep in these conversations. What themes emerged, what bubbled up that you hadn’t expected?

Julia: Maybe I had expected the sort of reminder of how lucky I am to have had parents who never fed me all that rubbish . . . they gave me all the confidence that I needed and never gave me the imposter syndrome. The imposter syndrome and the lack of confidence, those attitudes are still deeply embedded in many different cultures. That is changing incredibly slowly.

And I was reminded just how unbelievably grim many women’s lives are. They are particularly grim when they’re brave and they stand up. Think of all those Afghan judges in Afghanistan who stood up to be counted, and now where they are? The unbelievably tough lives that many women lead.

I was surprised and maybe slightly ashamed that as a white Western woman, I must play my part and I hope I don’t play too big. I think that there is a sort of feminist imperialism out there, and by definition I must be part of it. We’re kidding ourselves that we’ve made enormous progress (in the West) and if everybody else just followed up everything would be marvelous, which is so far from the truth.

I’ve just been interviewing a young woman violinist (in Eastern Europe). And she was saying, I was brought up to be tough and independent, and that’s part of the trap of feminism because it wouldn’t allow me to be soft and kind as well. And it’s taken me a long time to stop being tough and independent or regard anything that’s soft and gentle as less.

One of the most wonderful exchanges (on WEI) is between a very famous actress in India, who amongst all her extraordinary achievements has spoken very openly and clearly about skin color in India and all the Korean creams designed to whiten skin. (She spoke with) a woman called Lola Young who is a very powerful and absolutely wonderful footballer who is a woman of color in the UK. They were talking about skin color.

I knew quite a few of the things that talked about, but lots of the things I hadn’t really understood. Listening to them, to be honest, I thought “Aha! Okay. Got it. I shouldn’t have done that…”

Because you’re seeing things through other people’s eyes. It’s a surprise to me that not more of that has happened.

UNPACKING POWER DYNAMICS

Patricia: There’s a larger discussion to be had on the history of feminism which was led by white women early on, we need to acknowledge intersectionality, there’s a lot to unpack. One thing I’ve learned in this last year in terms of conversations on race and identity is that, broadly, if it feels uncomfortable, it’s probably good.

Listening to some of the WEI conversations, as a white woman living in the US, I recognize my own privilege. Hearing from women from places where I have a general contextual awareness, I was struck by what I learned from their personal stories. I felt a kind of urgency — and I might get in trouble for this — for more young women in the US or in places of relative privilege in terms of gender equity, to hear these stories and connect with their peers whose lived experience is so different in terms of the environment in which they’re growing up. And I’m wondering, how do we make those connections?

JULIA: I think I’d slightly pushed back on the premise of the question because I do think we can kid ourselves about how much progress is being made. In the US, when your presidential candidate got off that bus and said those things about women. I thought, as did probably many women all over the world, “that’s the end of his candidature,” but it seemed to do the opposite.

Recently I interviewed, Maria Anker Andersen who is in Denmark. Very often people say things are much better in Scandinavia. Maria, who is in her early 30’s starts by saying, ‘ I honestly don’t recognize the progress that you’re theoretically describing,’ and ‘we have the laws, but they are way ahead of the culture.’

We have made a lot of progress in Europe and the US, but not as much as we think. It’s really interesting to take women from here (the West) to talk to women from some African countries that have been matriarchal for centuries. And the American women are gob-smacked by it, right? Because they are completely unaware of this fact.

To me, there is a lot more messiness. A friend who is on the board of a swanky American university said to me ‘I saw some of the South Asian films and they were fascinating, Julia, but they really don’t speak to my experience.’ And I said, ‘if that’s true, why are you so quiet at the board meeting?’ And she went very quiet and she said, ‘well, that’s a very good question.’

The same things that are plunged into a woman’s mind in South Asia are being plunged into American women’s minds. They may look and feel different, the laws may be different, the intensity and the age at which it hits you may be different, but it’s really important that women recognize that we are all on a journey, and at different places. And nobody has got there yet, even remotely. The people who think they are further ahead may not be quite as far ahead as they seem. And by the way, things can go back. We learned that with Trump.

JUST JUMP IN ALREADY

Patricia: What you’re talking about is a journey that we’re all on, and in different places on it. That recognition is valuable, and leads me to think about power. Embedded in the notion of wanting to make it better for other people, is some sense of relative power, the power to lead change. I sense that you’ve thought a lot about negotiating power dynamics, and you’ve actually done it.

JULIA: It seems to me that we all have power. You know, our power comes in different forms, there is formal power and then there is informal power. The real question is how do I add my energy to all of this?

I see a parallel in my head to people who stand on the side of a swimming pool saying, ‘what’s it like in there?’ Get in the water, things will begin to happen and you’ll see things. If you stay on the side, you are saying ‘how can I use my superior power?’

The first thing is to realize, ‘I haven’t got superior power. I just got some power and lots of other people got other powers. So how do we combine up?’ First breath.

Second point is: “jump in the pool, jump in the lake, the water, the puddle, whatever it is, get in there!” That’s where it’s happening. Which leads to ‘This isn’t about me. This is about everybody, so where can I most usefully add value?’

THE PROBLEM WITH PROBLEM SOLVING

Julia: In one of my favorite WEI films, a woman talks about villages where the women carry all the weight of the water back to their homes. Then when there’s a water system going in it’s the men who decide where the pipes go. That’s crazy. They’ll do it in the wrong place because the people who actually carry that water aren’t at the table.

If there is an innovation challenge about the circular economy, it’s men who win the prize. There’s something wrong with that because the circular economy pretty well circles around women. We’ve got a problem if we haven’t got women at the table.

If we’re going to design digital payments, which are so important to the future of the world, right? It seems to be a group of men doing it. If we’re going to figure out transport problems, again it seems to be largely men, even R and D is pretty heavily male.

It is really suboptimal if 50% of the population isn’t there and it’s a particularly useful 50% of the population, both at coming up with the ideas and then implementing them.

There is almost no important or unimportant table anywhere in the world that doesn’t need a few more women at it.

EMBRACING THE ONLINE OPPORTUNITY

Patricia: Coming back to the post-pandemic word: referencing both Common Purpose and Women Emerging from Isolation, what’s your thinking on balancing the hybrid space vs the ‘in real life’ connection? Especially in this work of sharing information and knowledge around leadership?

Julia: Common Purpose has been hybrid for years long before COVID, which is why it’s done well and succeeded, it pivoted with extraordinary speed and quite a lot of ease. Women Emerging from Isolation is online not because of COVID, but because it’s by far the best way to do it.

You want to get women from around the world together? I’m sure you can pay for all the flights, but it seems very expensive both to the planet and the pocket, so it makes no sense whatsoever.

(To Patricia) I have never actually physically been in a room with you, and I don’t honestly feel any closer or more distance from you. I find no difficulty whatsoever in forming relationships on zoom. I know other people do.

But to me it is a joy because you are not exhausted, especially after having been on a flight for a long time.

Women Emerging from Isolation is very much online because that’s the preferred route. To be pragmatic it will be online because it’s really important that a woman leader from the Maori nation in New Zealand hands on her knowledge, questions, insights and her beautiful wisdom to somebody who’s in Chicago and is dealing with some of those same problems she addressed a few years ago.

I’m big online and I think it gives women a kind of edge in my experience. Women are much better at creating relationships on Zoom.

WHAT’S NEXT? AN EVOLVING, ACCESSIBLE COLLECTION.

CREATED BY WOMEN. ENVISIONING THE FUTURE OF LEADERSHIP

Patricia: My final question is about legacy, and what’s next in both content and form. There’s something about publishing a book, you can hold it in your hand. Here’s my copy “Leading Beyond Authority” which you wrote in 2007. One of the ideas that really resonated for me is around circles of influence and authority. Understanding your own circles ­­ — personal and professional, the organization, society, and where you have authority, versus where you have influence which really matters, is essential.

Cultural Intelligence, which takes us from IQ (the original intelligence quotient test) through EQ (emotional intelligence) and then to a third level which you call ‘Cultural Intelligence’ and the ability to move between cultures with ease. It talks about understanding your “core” — what’s essential for you, and “flex” where you can learn and adapt and evolve. Those are tiny takeaways from whole books.

We are nearly two years into Covid, which for you began with a return to your profound interest in women as leaders and the launch of Women Emerging from Isolation. What’s next?

Julia: Looking back, I thought leadership was for men, and I thought it was for women who went to swanky schools that I didn’t go to. It took me a long time to realize that I could be the kind of leader I wanted to be, not the kind of leader that I saw everybody else being, right? (The question now is….)

How can we help an enormous number of women to reduce that space, get to that point quicker than I did?

I think 2022 is devoted to working with a group of women to produce a collection of work, which might be books, it might be plays, videos… music. I have no idea. What they will do is frame leadership in a way that other women say, “Yes, I’m a leader or I will be a leader, and I’ll be a different kind of leader.”

The offering has to make sense to a lot of women, and it has to be said, an awful lot of men too, because the old way doesn’t work for them either.

It’s really important that it be a collection because I’ll see it from my perspective and other women will see it from theirs, wherever they are in the world or whatever sector or generation they’re in.

It has to be something that people do more than just read. I’m disappointed in both of those books in that they’re hardbacks and only in English. It should be in a mass of different languages.

And it should be multimedia, and obviously in a downloadable form so that lots of women can access it.

We want to make it so that women discover what kind of leaders they can be, that they don’t have to be like other people, they can be themselves. It’s beautiful because you can find the elements that work for you and put it together for yourself.

I believe that how you lead is almost as unique as your DNA. You put all these bits together and you make your own DNA as a leader. I would like to achieve that in 2022.

Patricia: Yes, a collection that’s multimedia is important, because we each learn differently — we can be visual, aural, reading or even kinesthetic learners, where we need to learn by doing. Meeting folks where they are in those terms, and with language is key. A book has a deliverable, you know when you’re done. What you’re talking about is like a big whiteboard full of great ideas, but as with a whiteboard it will continue to evolve. Right?

Julia: Yes. It has to. (Evolve) And that will be the gift.