INTREPID Leadership
A self-limiting lexicon has quietly built up around women’s leadership.
Glass ceiling. Sticky floor. Messy middle. Glass cliff.
We repeat these phrases so often we rarely question them. Yet language does more than describe reality. It shapes expectations, behaviour and belief.
I chose to look through the other end of the telescope. Away from defensive strategies and towards positive agency. That question became the foundation of my Masters research. I sought out women who had already broken through, across sectors and continents, from London to San Francisco. Different industries. Different cultures. One question:
What is your secret sauce?
What emerged was not a list of tips. It was deeper. A set of recurring patterns. Mindsets. Ways of showing up that consistently accelerated progress.
I call it the INTREPID toolkit. A practical set of leadership behaviours designed to strengthen self-trust, expand possibility and turn agency into action.
Organisations use INTREPID to develop female talent, improve retention and strengthen leadership pipelines at critical career stages.
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©️ Caroline Drummond, 2024
I is for ‘Inside out learning’ where ‘Inside Learning’ is about cultivating inner resources or psychological capital. Outside learning is about learning socially through others.
T is for ‘Thick skin, thin skin’. Knowing when you need to wear your thick-skin to weather adverse events and thin-skin when you need to bring empathy, compassion, care and sensitivity to others.
R is for ‘Reboot'. This is the ability to reset after personal or professional critical incidences such as redundancy or budget cuts. It’s being able to move-on-quickly, maintaining forward momentum and not be derailed by emotions from adverse events.
E is for ‘Elastic leadership’ and encompasses a range of different leadership approaches these successful women leaders deploy. None of these leaders lay claim to an innate leadership capability that they were born with; rather it is a learnt or earnt skill. Leadership is something they DO.
P is for ‘Power for good’. This is about connecting efforts to something wider and more enduring than a short-term objective. A broader purpose that feeds hope, motivation and resilience – a never give up mentality.
I is for ‘Inspirational storytelling’. This encompasses both internal and external storytelling. Internal storytelling is the scripts that we allow to run in our heads, it’s harnessing our inner emotions to create a coherent narrative that builds a leadership identity. External storytelling is a powerful tool to make sense of ambiguity, emotionally engage and motivate teams.
D is for ‘Dare-to-do’ – empowering oneself to seize opportunities and increase one’s tolerance to risk. This ‘dare-to-do’ mindset encapsulates all the behaviours and is fuel for action.
The INTREPID toolkit offers a positive, practical way forward, explicitly identifying key success enablers which empower aspiring women leaders as they strive to reach the upper echelons of leadership.
I use this INTREPID behavioural toolkit with organisations tailoring workshops, webinars and bespoke programmes.
If you’d value a thoughtful conversation
