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Martha Williams:
Dear culture shifters. Thank you for joining us today at the Culture Shift Podcast where we work to shift the conversation to inspire a more balanced, peaceful, compassionate and collaborative world. Here at culture shifts podcast, we interview thinkers, activists, innovators and artists who are shifting culture by defying the status quo through bold systems oriented, creative work across a wide variety of fields. We believe culture shifts come from a profound change and how we relate to self, others and our planet. We encourage listeners to think about the culture we live in, become aware of their stagnant thinking and the stagnant thinking of others and take joy in cultivating positive culture shifts all around. I'm Martha Williams, your host, and today it is my pleasure to welcome Sean Harvey, the chief compassion officer and founder of Symponia. Sean is a thinker, writer, speaker, and consultant in the field of leadership development. He is forging a new narrative around gender based on the integrating and balancing of the healthy masculine and feminine in the workplace. With that, we welcome Sean Harvey. Hi Sean. It's so great to have you on the culture shifts podcast.
Sean Harvey:
Thanks for having me.
Martha Williams:
I just want to start with a little introduction from you, a little overview of the work that you do. So our viewers and our listeners can get to know you a little bit better.
Sean Harvey:
So I'm a leadership consultant and also do cultural transformation work, but through the lens of healthy gender dynamics in the workplace, really focusing on how do we support men to be able to embrace the gender conversation. How do we create greater balance in the workplace between men and women and include those who are non-binary and trans and how do we start to reimagine organizational systems through a gender-balanced lens?
Martha Williams:
How did you get here in a couple of sentences?
Sean Harvey:
Yeah. So for most of my career I've been a change management consultant. And before my last job I was consulting on wall street and really had a sense of what traditional masculine models of leadership and during business look like. Then I went to work for the company, Eileen Fisher. And in that environment it was if fully subscribed unapologetically to feminine leadership. And it was sort of like for five years I was deconditioning. Everything I learned about business and looking at it through a different lens and all the practices felt different and I just kept thinking, Hmm, what if we take the best of masculine models and the best of feminine models and started to integrate them? And that's how I came to the work I'm doing today.
Martha Williams:
Why does gender matter to you?
Sean Harvey:
You know, it's been something that's always been in my consciousness. I grew up as really more on the androgynous side. Um,and I'm the son of truck drivers. So sort of in a household that was hyper masculine and being someone who really felt connected to both the masculine, the feminine. Uand she's been on my radar, you know, and I just didn't resonate with a lot of the work environments that I was in. It just, it didn't, it didn't connect with the way that I think, the way that I feel and I didn't feel I could be authentic. Yeah. And when I went to work for Eileen Fisher, it just, there was something powerful in that environment that just allowed me to be who I was. And I started noticing that other men in the company were also just going through their own transformation because of the feminine energy that was permeating throughout the organization. Well, I think it's an important conversation is, I think it's just really misunderstood.
Sean Harvey:
I think that one, we we live in an environment and work in environments that have been built on a traditional masculine model, which has favored men and doesn't necessarily understand the contributions that women can make and when they're fully bringing themselves the freedom that men can have when they actually tap into their full selves and can embrace and come into a new relationship with their own feminine and that we have an opportunity to do business differently. I think we are inching into that, but some of the leadership practices and business practices that are starting to come onto the scene. But I think there's still a lot more work that we can do. And I think if we can start to unpack and understand what gender actually is and also the fact that gender has been evolving so quickly, especially over the last decade, right. And there's just so many forces at play that are saying we need to look at this in a new way.
Martha Williams:
What is the conversation that's happening around gender right now?
Sean Harvey:
I think it's on a few different levels and the age of me too, there's been a lot of movement from men to start to talk about becoming allies. There's been a lot of movement around the questions. What can I do? What can't I do in the age of me too? And there's also been men who have started to take a step back and, and I think it's where, where it's problematic is they're saying, you know what? I don't want to meet with women one-on-one. I'm not, I'm not going to mentor women. I just don't want to deal with this conversation. I feel like that's an opportunity. Why I think I'm one as opposed to walking away from it cause we don't understand it. We need to walk into it so we can, we can walk into those conversations so that we can start to actually be an active list. Women account for about 56% of the workforce, but only about 18% of senior leadership positions. So we have a real gap. And what happens when women are in the workplace and moving up into senior leadership? Yeah. We need that, that energy. And we need those voices to really become more balanced in a way that we need organizations.
Martha Williams:
Absolutely. I mean, there is a total disparity in the leadership makeup, but I am kind want to go back a little bit because when you talk about men saying, I'm not even going to have a one-on-one with a woman, they're stepping away. What are they afraid of? Or what's the confusion? What's the conversation that we can have with them to help to cultivate the possibility of a change there? Because that seems like a door is being shut, right? So what is it going to take to bring those men out and to open that door again?
Sean Harvey:
Hmm. You know, I often think that it's how can we as men have conversations with other men and how can we create a space or create spaces for men to be able to really ask their questions without being judged and without feeling shame. So a real safe space for them to say all the things that they want to say in an unfettered, on censored way and not be judged and ask the questions without feeling stupid. Yeah. Right. I think it's a combination that there's, there's multiple pieces that we need to be looking at. One of which is how do we create a space for men to be having these conversations? And then also what are the spaces for women to be able to have the conversations they need to have to prepare to come into a conversation.
Martha Williams:
After the #metoo movement hit, there are a lot of panicky corporate board members, right? And they went to their HR departments and they said, sexual harassment training, let's do this. And they started doling it out like candy. Really? So how's that working out?
Sean Harvey:
We spend so much trial time trying to fix the problem as opposed to healing the wounds. And I often think about what are the wounds that are creating these types of behaviors. Yeah. And at the same time, when we try to, when we try to create behavior change, how are we really going deep enough? Why is that how problems are usually approached from the outside? I think it's a masculine way of fixing things as opposed to tapping into the feminine way. And so tell me more about that. What do you mean? Well, I often see a masculine way of, of, of how do we solve a problem is to fix it. And a feminine way is to, it's real look at the healing to really understand what's going on and to go to the, to the deeper level issues and to the nuance that we often either don't allow ourselves or have the patients to look at.
Martha Williams:
So we're using a masculine approach to solve a gender problem.
Sean Harvey:
How am I in relationship to gender in the first place? We are conditioned around gender from before we're born, from a moment someone finds out they're pregnant to people saying, ah, are you going to have a boy or a girl? We're already setting expectations for that child. I think we have to look at what's, what's the, what's at the deeper level that's not going to be solved or rectified in two hour training? How are the rules and roles around gender shifting? How is it evolving and how are we in relationship to it? Yeah. Right. So because we have so much packed into this in so many years of conditioning, it's what we know that this is really, before we even get to the gender equity conversation, before we get to the let's stop sexual violence conversation.
Martha Williams:
So how is your work helping to solve this problem?
Sean Harvey:
So now I'm in the middle of writing a three article series and I'm realizing that that is setting the stage for my framework. And so the first thing I think we need to do is have a conversation around demystifying gender, unpacking it, understanding it, and understanding our relationship to it. The second piece is to start looking at the ways we think about leadership. How do we, what I'm calling create an integrated leadership through the lens of the healthy, masculine and feminine. And then the third the third piece of the approach is looking at how do we create an integrated systems and integrated cultures, right? From your experience, what are people up against or resisting and their own thinking and their own relationship to gender. So when I'm in these conversations in the room, I break it down into four levels. So the first is our biology.
Sean Harvey:
Second is our gender identity and expression. Okay. The third is our understanding of the constructs of masculinity and femininity. And then fourth is the masculine and feminine energy within each of us, right? Usually when I break it down in that way, the room, the people in the room start to open up. Why is that? My sense from what I've observed is that when we start talking about masculinity or femininity those are very charged words. And a lot of times, especially men will take that personally to say when you're, when you are talking negatively about masculinity, you're attacking me. Yes. And so when I bring the conversation to the masculine and feminine, we're taking, we're detaching it from gender. So how do we look at each other, human to human and then we all have these energies. And then one of the questions I often ask is, so what is so charged and what is so scary about talking about the feminine?
Sean Harvey:
Because I feel like that is the conversation that gets in the way for so many people. And what is so charged about talking about the feminine? Well I think for many we've been raised at the feminine is, is, is subpar to the masculine.
Martha Williams:
Ah, so it's not as valuable. It's inferior, it's inferior to the masculine, it's not as valuable.
Sean Harvey:
And then I think there's what's, what's tacked on to it. Then we can often confuse that with gender. And is that feeling with men and women or is it just with men having the feeling that the feminine isn't as valuable? What we've asked women to do is to conform to more of a masculine standard to be able to be successful in business. Right? So a lot of times that's asking women to reject their own feminine. Yeah. Right. And then it can be a wounded masculine and a wounded feminine.
Sean Harvey:
The women are coming to, to, to the organization with, and then are often bringing a wounded masculine and a nonexistent feminine. But if we really want to create change and transformation, we had to start with the personal transformation journeys for each person. How do they come into themselves? How do they embrace the parts of themselves that they've suppressed, rejected, or are confused and how do they come into their wholeness? Yeah. From that place, what's required to come into your wholeness is your own level of self compassion. If you can't be compassionate with yourself, right, you're not going to be able to really embrace those parts of yourself. That might be your shadow.
Martha Williams:
One of the feminine energies is to have compassion to go inward, right? So it's really a requirement in order to do all of this change of diversity and inclusion.
Sean Harvey:
That's so necessary in our landscape and as we transform as a society, when we're able to come into a balance of bringing our full selves into the conversation, yeah. Then we can start to innovate differently. We can start to solve complex problems both organizationally and societaly differently, and then we can create true transformation that can permeate across the site.
Martha Williams:
I'm curious, with the approach of integration, the masculine and feminine, what have you seen as a transformation and the work that you've done and also and or what sort of transformation have you seen for yourself around the integration of the masculine and feminine?
Sean Harvey:
You know, I don't mean for sure. When I started to notice my own transformation, I started talking to the other men in the company. Not only in Fisher is a company with 17% men. It's just a lot of feminine energy. Yeah. It's a feminine model. And so I started to see how, what, how men were being transformed. And so when I would talk to them, they would say, well, my wife said that I'm more patient. My girlfriend said that I listened differently. I stopped needing to be right and I started to hold space for people in new ways. I started to be more curious, feel so good. I started being more curious. And the men would also notice they started tapping in because they were allowed to be more free with their emotions and to be more honest with what they thought yup. That they were tapping into their creativity differently and solving business challenges in a new way. Interesting. And they could actually do collaborative creative problem solving as opposed to holding it on their own. Now I was experiencing a lot of that. And then I was also experiencing just feeling more comfortable in my own skin, having more confidence in my own voice coming into my full power, but understanding the power that comes with my privilege so that I was intentional about creating space for others so that they could have their voice. I instituted for myself a seven second policy, so in any meeting and all of our meetings were in circle, all of our meetings were without hierarchy. And knowing that I was one of usually one or one of a few men in the room, I would always wait seven seconds for other people to have a voice. I think that's a responsibility that comes with the power and privilege that we have as men. You know, as part of the work, it's talking about this idea of power and how do we move from a zero sum game around power to a new way of thinking about power in a way that that gives everyone a piece of the puzzle and elevates those who have been traditionally voices.
Martha Williams:
Right. So is there anything in the Eileen Fisher model where women are also learning to take a more outward approach or a more active approach to their power?
Sean Harvey:
Well, I think we had a lot of conversations around coming into your full power. I mean, we had personal transformation work, which was in a sense, how do you tap into your authenticity? How do you tap into your purpose and how do you tap into your voice? And one of the things that we did was we use the circle way. So we would, we would have around Robin style where everyone could just have a voice, either chime in on a decision to chime in on where they were energetically in the moment. Yes. Or how they were reacting and responding to what's been said. We started every meeting and meditation and silence. Okay. so if you had eight meetings a day, you had eight moments of silence.
Martha Williams:
Nice.
Sean Harvey:
Then we would have check-ins first with a personal check in and then with a work check-in. So we just put in these, these models to make sure that you had an opportunity to have a voice. That hierarchy, you know, we find the organization as much as possible and that the, you know, the voices of, of women of anyone at any level could be heard.
Martha Williams:
I'm sort of curious what would happen, do you think if you took this circle model to a male oriented, structured organization?
Sean Harvey:
The clients I have tend to be more masculine model. So in finance and technology, and I do it through it a few different ways. You know, some organizations aren't ready for the masculine feminine conversation, but they are ready for the integrated leadership conversation. And we can do that through a few different ways. But what it looks like in some organizations is how do we create head, heart and, and body. So head, heart and hands to be able to tap in. And what comes through our work is a lot of men asking, how do I tap into this emotional thing more? Yes. And I think that's a first step. So it's not even a why, why do I need it? It's just how do I tap into it, right? Cause that has really, I think, been beaten out of us. I usually have to ask three times, how are you feeling? Or what do you feel about this? And you usually, the sentence will start off. I feel that. And which is always an indication you're thinking. Yes. So by the time I'm like, it's just one word. How are you feeling in this moment? And just to have those reminders that it's really one dimension of, of basically five different feelings. So if we have happiness, sadness, anger, fear and shame, it's like the five basic emotions where we're allowed to show is often anger or it's okay, I'm fine or I'm angry. But fear, sadness and shame are often more, we're not able to access those emotions. I think it's what's, what's what, what people what's kinda connotated with it. Um.
Martha Williams:
That it's actually weakness. It's, you're going to be like a girl if you cry, if you're sad, if you're shameful.
Sean Harvey:
I think we don't even know how to tap into and understand shame yet. It is often the, the what, what keeps us holding back from doing anything outside of the norm. Cause that's gonna make me different or that's going to get me best. That. And then I think, you know, for fear and sadness, you know, we're not allowed to cry. We're not allowed to. Yeah. So I think that giving men permission to know that, that they can express. And often when I say is, if you don't understand your emotions, your emotions are going to manage you. Yeah. As opposed to you being able to manage, you're really be able to manage your own emotions.
Martha Williams:
So how are women approaching the gender conversation?
Sean Harvey:
What I've seen is women are talking about gender with other women, but I don't think see men and women having the conversation together and I still think there's confusion around gender fluidity and trans and we're not necessarily including them in the conversation as well.
Sean Harvey:
One of the realizations I had Eileen Fisher was that because the model was based on feminine leadership, we weren't asking women to act like men to succeed in business. Right? When I go back out into companies that are not only efficient, I see how women have bought in to the notion that in order to succeed in business, you have to act like a man. You have to be aggressive, you have to be assertive, you, you have to get things done quickly and sometimes you need to take a step back. Sometimes you need to create spaciousness. Sometimes you need to tap into mind, body, heart as you make decisions as opposed to just being, you know, focused on your head and be focused on logic. Right. And so I find that sometimes there's, there's more resistance from women to talk about how women can tap more into their feminine in business, but then certain women from certain women.
Sean Harvey:
Yeah. And that just because we're talking about individual change, if the system and the culture doesn't allow for people to bring their authentic selves to work, you know, I hear this so often, the movement now to create human first human centric cultures. Yes. But the reality is when people bring their authenticity to the workplace, is the workplace ready for them to come in and show their authenticity? Is it going to support them or is it still going to give them informal clues that that's not how we do things around here.
Martha Williams:
Like, I would want to come in late. I don't want to wear whatever I want. I would definitely be crying a lot. Yeah. I would have tantrums. Yeah. That's what I would do.
Sean Harvey:
Well, and where I came in with that realization was I as a change agent, there's a lot of care, there was a lot of transformation happening in the company. And I often found that when I was in a room with a leader, they might start crying and I just would push over a box of Kleenex and go, okay, take your space, do what you need to do. A friend of mine was, was in a conversation at a different company and a leader, a female leader, was, was crying. She said, please don't tell anyone, please, they can't know that I'm weak. And that was the moment I said, Oh, so we really were giving permission to just be your full self. And it's okay. It doesn't mean weakness. I mean, the more I believe, the more you can embrace the full range of your emotions, the stronger you're going to be. And the more and more informed you're going to be when you make decisions. Because one of the other pieces is when you, not just use your head, but you can use. So how do I feel about this? And what does my intuition say? Those can be really powerful barometers and how you make business decisions. But we are so not accessing that in so many organizations.
Martha Williams:
Yeah. So there's like an untapped power. Untapped, a expansion. Right. And I, I hesitate from using the word power because the word power is so assumed to be about hierarchy. And what I really mean is the expansion. Like power to me in a feminine perspective is expansive. Right. And there does seem to be this paucity of human experience because of this break between the masculine and feminine.
Sean Harvey:
So as soon as you talk about that, I think of, we were so often talking now about moving from power over, which is our current model to power with. Yes. And I think we need to spend more time on the power from within and we can, when we can look at that internal power as most of us do not even know what that looks like or what that feels like. For me, when I came into my full power, right when I was, when I really tapped into my feminine and I tapped into my healthy masculine, I realized one that the feminine helped me become healthier and stronger in my masculine. And then, well, wherever I had fear or shame that was holding me back and I said I couldn't do it or that led to the ego and insecurity where I was less than. And then I was able to let all of that go and then come into what am I capable of, what am I not capable of and how do I speak a truth that, that can resonate for others? And when I started noticing that people were listening to the, to my truth in a different way, that was an indication of, Oh, I'm coming into a different power.
Martha Williams:
Right, because often fear and shame you know, bring us into some sort of violence because we can't deal with it. It brings us into a smallness, smallness, and I say violence because it's, it shuts the door, it makes curt decisions. It's it shaming other people. We kind of throw the fear back at other people. Right. So by including that you're saying that we're, we're bolstering this expansiveness.
Sean Harvey:
Yeah. And we moved from instant, instant reaction to thoughtful response and then we can thoughtfully respond to what's coming at us as opposed to having knee jerk reactions that are coming out of a place of fear, anxiety and scarcity as opposed to a place of full power, expansiveness and, and, and wholeness.
Martha Williams:
Right. So what do you think are the challenges ahead in terms of rolling out integrative leadership and practicing integrative leadership and creating gender equity and balance in the world? And how long do you think it will take?
Sean Harvey:
I think it's going to take a lot less time than we think because I think more, and what I'm, what I'm excited by is seeing more and more people have this conversation. I'm seeing more men having this conversation with other men. I'm seeing more men and women coming into the conversation together and I'm seeing the voice of those who are non-binary and trans being elevated in ways they weren't a decade ago.
Martha Williams:
Yeah. Well that's happening here. I feel like we live in a little bit of a bubble. So New York is a bubble. This is where we're filming from and this is where we're recording this podcast. Where do you see it going in other parts of the country?
Sean Harvey:
If we do this work through multinationals that can create, that can create a movement that can really propel the conversation, add dimensions to what's already being done. Yeah. And then create an opportunity for more people across across this country to be exposed to, Oh, so, so why are we using these pronouns lie? Why or what? What does it mean to be non-binary? It still confuses me, but they have a space to really to, to ask the questions and hear from their peers, not just a facilitator what the answer is. Right. You know, through group consensus and group consciousness that can create a different level of awareness. Yeah. And those safe spaces are golden where people can have these dialogues and discuss and grapple with and talk about all the things that they're afraid of your fears and your bias are free. What I'm seeing is we're moving from the conversation with safe space to how to recreate brave space because I don't think we can always, we can always guarantee safety. But what we can do to, to really show up in a brave space and speak our truth, but hear other people's truth and then to be able to work with it as opposed to walk away or run away from it. Right? So that's actually why created another initiative called facilitator edge, which is how do we help facilitators of these spaces hold brave space across difference, not just gender, but also race around politics, around sexuality, those places that have divided us. How do we create the bridges to you to unite us and how do we hold space for that?
Martha Williams:
Right? So what does brave space look like?
Sean Harvey:
I think it's, I think it's taking what's being done for safe space, but just also acknowledging that you may not like everything you hear. How do we walk into the resistance that, that the tension that exists as opposed to trying to placate it. Sometimes there's something that is important in holding that space and asking people, okay, so we just have this situation. Let's, let's keep like one, how do we work with us? How do we, how do we understand what's happening?
Martha Williams:
You're taking that, that inside insight into the space and making a contribution and making the inside, okay. Right. Making that feminine. Okay. Right. Yeah, and I think that's a beautiful term. I love that. I think so much of this is about re languaging, you know,
Sean Harvey:
Totally. Before we get to the bridge building work, that's why the integration work has to happen first because it's for us to come into our own maturity to be able to speak our voice from a place of her full capacity. Right. And also what happens in that integration work is also the, the understanding our relationship to our ego, to understanding our relationship to our shadow. Right. You know, and I think by doing that work up front, then you're preparing yourself to coming into the bridge building conversations in a more mature way.
Martha Williams:
That's a really big ask. It is. It seems to me like there's going to be a, there has to be, and this is my culture shift mind going on, is that there's going to have to be a group of people who are willing to do this kind of big work, right? That will then make it safer in the larger culture to do this kind of work and to really flip what is shameful, right? Because right now there's a whole slew of things that are shameful around gender and, and in fact, I would argue that look at where their shame and you look at where that culture needs to shift.
Sean Harvey:
I love what you just said. W the place we have to look is where the shame is. Yeah. And I think that is at the crux of so much of this, so much for men, so much for women and what all of us have endured as we try to come into our full selves to be our authentic selves. Yet there's so many messages that come from how we should be, right? So as opposed to how we actually are, right, and the permission for each person across the gender continuum. Yes. Regardless of race, culture, sexuality, say who am I authentically and how do I see others in their true authenticity and how do we work together on a different way? Yeah.
Martha Williams:
Yeah. That's what my maturation process has been. The the falling into acceptance and self love really, and including all the parts of me. Right. And part of that for me was accepting my feminine and I think that I was one of those people, like most women who were devaluing the feminine side of me. I got those messages that I shouldn't be crying. I sh I was too emotional, I was too changeable. I was not serious enough. I got all those messages just like most women do and we all react in different ways to it. Right? But yeah, I love that idea that there's a full spectrum that all of us are going to get to experience through this kind of work. And it just, I'm so impressed by your work and so excited about what you're doing. And I really am wishing and hoping that there are many, many people who are blessed by the trainings that you give and we hope to help you in whatever way we can for that. And I have one last question for you. How do you imagine scaling Symponia and your ideas?
Sean Harvey:
Okay, so I, it's actually the reason I created facilitator edge. Okay. Because in the beginning was last year when I started talking to people, it would get to a certain conversation where I would say, so tell me about your facilitation style. And I was either talking to coaches who facilitated like coaches or people would say, well, I only facilitate a little bit. And I'm like, wait, how are you going to hold space? So, as we've talked about this, there's something about a facilitator's ability to hold space for these types of conversations is very special, very unique and critical for this to happen. So by creating this, this pull of, of facilitators who are equipped to look at their own masculine feminine to them, be able to hold space around the integrated masculine feminine. That's one way. And then so certify on facilitators to be able to do this work. The second is that I'm looking at both fortune 500 companies and I'm looking at high performing, high growth startups, right?
Sean Harvey:
And then where we can start getting success and working, really start seeing impact and those become the case studies that we can start to bring to other organizations. And when I look at developing leaders, developing facilitators, and creating a space specifically for men, yeah, I see these as three channels to be able to start scaling this message. Right?
Martha Williams:
So where can people find out about Symponia? They can come to my website and that's Symponiainc.com. Uh and Symponia is actually the Greek word for compassion. Okay. And so in a sense, the work that we're talking about is, is going to help us deepen our level of compassion for ourselves, for our relationships and for the organizations that we, that we work in.
Martha Williams:
So thank you so much, Sean, for this conversation. It was very insightful and I hope it's not our last. We very much look forward to seeing where Symponia goes and thank you so much and we'll see you next time.
Sean Harvey:
All right, terrific. Thank you.
Martha Williams:
Thank you so much for joining us today for our interview with Sean Harvey on the culture shifts podcast where we dig into critical conversation with those who are shifting culture by defying the status quo, the transcript and links related to this podcast as well as other episodes are available cultureshiftagency.com. Please help us shift the conversation by sharing this podcast with the people in your life. See you next time. On next month's episode.