# What feminine intelligence looks like in practice

- **Episode:** [197](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/197.md) (2025-05-15)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** listening, receptiveness, feminine-intelligence, leadership-skills
- **Time:** 17:57–23:07 (start 1077s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/197?t=1077](https://truthliesandwork.com/197?t=1077)

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[17:57] Elina Teboul: The, one of the first things is listening. So listening again is about receptiveness. It's about curiosity. It's about compassion. It's really trying to understand what's going on for the other person. What is that person's subjective reality? The person that's not tapping into their feminine intelligence is probably either driven by power or fear, and they are the ones that are insisting that something must be done in a certain way without an acknowledgement that there is no sort of objective truth that we are all living our subjective experiences and that we're all coming together. And what's good for one individual might conflict with what's good for the collective. And they're not thinking about the collective. They're not thinking relationally, and they're not listening to find out what actually can create, instead of a zero-sum game, a situation where everybody thrives. And listening is We all think we're good listeners, but it's fascinating how terrible people are at this. And I've led so many different kind of like group coach, team coaching experiences where I simply would do active listening exercises and I would pair people together and I would say, okay, well, one person has to speak for 3 minutes about what their biggest challenge is or what's driving them at work or what are they seeing. The other person has to listen and then just play back, play back what they heard. This is so incredibly hard for people. It's amazing actually how hard it is for people to just say, what I think I hear you saying is, because if they don't agree with what you said, then they want to resist and they wanna say, that's wrong, that's not true. Your perspective, it's wrong, it doesn't matter. And you don't need to do that. You just need to come with curiosity and wonder and say, well, what is this person's subjective reality and how can I understand it and unpack it so that we can really reach an agreement in a situation where we're all thriving? And if this person is feeling this way, then maybe other people in the organization are feeling the same way. And so there is an element of empathy and compassion. Which it's actually really difficult when you feel maybe attacked in the active listening exercise. If someone says, well, it's all your fault because you do all of these things, then the organization is falling apart. And instead of saying like, how dare you say that to me? I'm saying, what I want you to do is say, what I think I hear you saying is that the organization is suffering because of these behaviors that you see me exhibiting. I'm not necessarily agreeing with it, but I'm curious, like, oh, this person thinks that these behaviors, that I'm doing this, or I'm doing this intentionally. And for me, this is where it gets really interesting, is that we're so stuck in our own ego that doing this kind of active listening exercises is really, really difficult, and people resist a lot. And I think this is one of the, like, first telltale signs of being able to approach with feminine intelligence and curiosity and compassion and receptivity and intuition, just to say, like, when this person says something, where does that land on me? How do I feel about this?
[22:05] Leanne Elliott: The audio destination for business professionals
[22:46] Elina Teboul: It can
[22:50] Al Elliott: I am. Go and listen to Lunch Break wherever you get your podcasts
[22:54] Leanne Elliott: But come back
[22:55] Al Elliott: Yeah, come Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in
[23:01] Leanne Elliott: Welcome back. Let's rejoin Al and Elina