The One About The Fuel of Female Leadership

My journey through this podcast, even though it has just ten written episodes and seven published, has been insightful and enlightening. I’ve been able to understand more about crisis, transformation, agency, culture, community, and women in general. What I love about this project is that it pushes me to think, read, question, listen, chat, wander, connect, and discover new angles and different narratives.

And that’s exactly how I want to start this episode, with a different angle to understand female leadership. We already know the benefits of female leadership. What we rarely ask is: what fuels it? Where do we need to focus, and in what order, to let it flourish? And is female leadership something that lives in the org chart, or is it something we build in the halls, in the meeting rooms, and inside ourselves?

Now, let’s start with the textbooks, the research, and the analysis. According to my research, we can identify five macro-fuels for female leadership, which we can categorize into:

		Intrinsic	Extrinsic	Relational
1	Identity & Self-Concept	x
2	Capabilities & Skills	x
3	Social Architecture		x
4	Community & Collective Identity			x
6	Autonomy & Ownership	x	x

Intrinsic fuels shape female leadership from within. Extrinsic fuels shape it from the outside, they determine how much leadership can be expressed without punishment. Relational fuel is the big differentiator from male leadership. Female leadership is not hyper-individualistic; it is relational, communal, and collective.

The magic happens when all three dimensions [intrinsic, extrinsic, and relational] are aligned. That’s where female leadership thrives.

To understand these fuels better, let’s phrase them as questions. This makes the exercise more tangible, personal, and practical:

		Question
1	Identity & Self-Concept	“Do I see myself as someone who can influence, guide, and decide?”
2	Capabilities & Skills	“Do I have the muscles to lead?”
3	Social Architecture	“Does the system/environment allow me to lead?”
4	Community & Collective Identity	“Am I alone in this?”
5	Autonomy & Ownership	“Do I get to choose?” & “Am I allowed to choose?”

Let’s unfold these macro-fuels, just to ensure we are all on the same page.

1. Identity & Self-Concept: Women step into leadership when their inner narrative shifts from “I hope I can” to “I know I can influence what happens here.” Identity is the engine: when leadership feels aligned with who we are, not who they are expected to be, their presence becomes stronger, steadier, and more grounded. This is why role clarity, purpose, and self-definition matter so deeply for women. And because identity grows strongest in environments where women can show up as themselves without punishment, psychological safety becomes the quiet but essential condition that allows that identity to expand.
2. Capabilities & Skills: Empathy, collaboration, attunement to team dynamics, listening, conflict de-escalation, and shared sense-making are not “soft skills”; they are empirically linked to high-performing teams and transformational leadership. On top of that, strategic thinking grows through exposure: recognizing patterns, anticipating consequences, and navigating complexity are capabilities built through lateral roles, cross-functional challenges, and learning in community. When women strengthen these relational and strategic skills, they don’t just “lead better”, they lead in ways that elevate entire systems.
3. Social Architecture: Leadership does not thrive in a vacuum as we saw with Pau Navarro, it is shaped, amplified, or restricted by the system around it. Women’s leadership expands in environments where psychological safety is protected, feedback is structured, opportunities are distributed fairly, and decision-making criteria are transparent. Sponsorship matters just as much as skill: when someone in power advocates for a woman, resources and visibility flow in ways that unlock her agency. When systems are inconsistent or biased, leadership feels risky; when systems are clear and supportive, leadership feels possible.
4. Community & Collective Identity: Women lead stronger when they are not alone. Community offers the emotional resilience, shared language, modeling, and collective courage that make risk-taking feel less dangerous and experimentation feel more welcome. Belonging reduces self-doubt, buffers women from workplace politics, and expands the space in which identity can be safely expressed. Community is not a “nice-to-have”; it’s a key fuel for female leadership because it recharges energy, normalizes ambition, and creates the conditions where leadership behaviors become sustainable.
5. Autonomy & Ownership: Autonomy is where internal readiness meets external permission, the point where women can finally translate identity and capability into actual leadership behavior. When women have control over their time, priorities, decisions, and ways of working, they experience themselves as leaders rather than contributors. Boundaries, negotiation, role definition, and decision rights all play a role here. Autonomy is the behavioral expression of leadership: it’s the moment a woman starts designing her path, owning her choices, and moving with intention.

Now, the crucial point, not just for understanding but for action, is the order in which these fuels activate. This is called the “activation order”:

1. Identity → internal permission
2. Community → borrowed courage
3. Capabilities → practiced confidence
4. Autonomy → behavioral agency
5. Social Architecture → sustainable leadership

In other words:

Women begin leadership from within, activate it through community, strengthen it through practice, express it through autonomy, and sustain it through supportive systems.

Enough theory, let’s move to the real and juicy stuff. How do we move from inner permission, through the development and exercise of skills and capabilities, into a strong, sponsored, sustainable leadership?