Balance & Beyond
Balance and Beyond is the podcast for ambitious women refusing to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your own terms.
Balance & Beyond
Power & Politics: Why Women Must Play the Game
Power isn't something bestowed upon us—it's something we reclaim. For too many ambitious women, the path to leadership has been paved with burnout, invisibility, and frustration despite exceptional hard work. Why? Because we were never taught to play the game of power and politics.
From childhood, we've absorbed the message that power is something dirty or manipulative, something wielded over others rather than harnessed within ourselves. We've believed the fairy tale that exceptional work will eventually be recognisedrecognized, while watching others advance past us. When we do try to step into leadership positions, we often mimic male power structures that feel fundamentally inauthentic, becoming what might be called "pink men" in leadership roles.
The truth is revolutionary: your nervous system dictates how much power you can hold. When you're constantly seeking external validation, perfectionism, or approval, you'll never fully step into your authority. The signs are everywhere—over-explaining, softening your voice, asking for permission, backing down. These aren't character flaws; they're symptoms of a nervous system that doesn't yet feel safe holding power. True power looks different. It's holding tension without discomfort, disagreeing without defensiveness, making decisions without seeking permission, and setting boundaries without guilt.
Women possess extraordinary tools for authentic leadership—intuition, emotional intelligence, and sensitivity that become superpowers when properly harnessed.
Ready to transform how you lead? Join our new six-week program "Elevate: The Art of Leadership" where you'll learn to develop executive presence, regulate your nervous system, and lead with your authentic feminine edge. Your journey to reclaiming your power begins at balanceinstitute.com/elevate.
To view the Transcript from this week's episode, visit our Balance & Beyond Podcast webpage: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast/2025/92
Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself!
If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, here are our socials where you can discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women create a life of balance.
Website: www.balanceinstitute.com
Podcast Website: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast
Email: jo@balanceinstitute.com
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/stonejoanne
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betterbalanceinstitute/
Instagram: @betterbalanceinstitute
Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!
Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here we're committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your terms. I honor the space you've created for yourself today, so let's take a breath and dive right in. Before we jump into today's episode, a quick reminder about Rise, the future of female leadership, our free workshop series currently taking place. Day one was amazing and you can register now for instant access to the replay and all the details on how to be there live on the 11th of April. We're talking about new rules, how to actually step into your power and ditch this life of hustle that we have been taught. Save your place at balanceinstitutecom forward slash future. I'll see you there.
Jo:Now back to the episode. There was one game I was never taught to play as a kid, and I think it's something that actually harmed me a lot in my career. It's something very few women are ever actively taught, and yet it damages us, it impacts our potential and it causes us untold burnout and all kinds of craziness in our lives. What am I talking about? I am talking about the game of power and politics. If you want to be successful in leadership, then unfortunately or fortunately, you have to learn to play the game. And leadership in itself it's a power game. It's about who has the power. It's about who has the attention, whether we want to see it that way or not. Avoiding that leadership is a game, avoiding the fact that power and politics are games that you must play if you want to be successful, makes us invisible and can make you much more susceptible to putting your head in the ground and subscribing to some old rules of leadership that you think apply but actually don't. I have seen so many women and I can say this with integrity, because I fell into this same trap as well who grew up of the belief that hard work, put your head down, put your bum up, do the thing, put your hand up that will get you recognized. You do all of that and eventually someone will see you, they will promote you, they will see your talent. Well, it turns out that was a load of BS, and there are so many women who now come into my world who are working their butts off. They are trying so hard. They're doing multiple people's jobs, doing it incredibly well, to an exceptionally high standard, and yet they are not seen, they are not valued and they feel invisible and overlooked. Instead, what I have seen, this hard work mantra.
Jo:Yes, I know you will probably say that many men subscribe to this as well, but men, even from a young age, any men that are listening or people have partners here, particularly in the 80s men are actually subconsciously taught more about power and influence and positioning than women ever are. Mainly because of how women perceive the word power, we assume that power is a dirty word. Many women and I know again, I've had many women in close proximity to me that it's about power over that. Power is about dominance, it's about aggression, it's about power over that. Power is about dominance, it's about aggression, it's about manipulation.
Jo:And when you've been conditioned to be a good girl and be nice and keep the peace and not rock the boat, well then it's going to be very difficult for you to assume something that is already within you. That is an inherent characteristic of who you are, already within you. That is an inherent characteristic of who you are, and so you can become so incredibly reluctant to step into your power because you have all of these associations with it, and usually you will have had people in your life who have had power over you, whether that was a parent or a teacher or a sibling or something like that and so you have all these negative connotations with power and ultimately you haven't felt safe being in the presence of power because people had power over you. So you avoid it altogether. You don't play politics. You want your hard work to speak for itself. You want to just put your head down, you stand behind the team, you push the team up in front of you because of all these negative associations and, ultimately, a whole stack of nervous system instability where you can't hold it.
Jo:So the first mindset shift I want you to make around power is that power isn't something that is given to you. There's no ceremony where somebody says hello, dear one. You have ascended to X level in the company or an X level in life. You now have your power back. You can now make decisions. You don't need to ask for permission anymore. You can now speak up without being asked.
Jo:Unfortunately, as much as I would think we need one of these, there's no ceremony, there's no rite of passage where we are reminded that actually we already have power within us. We just need to learn to hold it. And that is on our terms. No one can make us own and hold that power. We have to rediscover it for ourselves. Of course people come to work with me because they want to feel more powerful. They want to hold that power. We have to rediscover it for ourselves. Of course people come to work with me because they want to feel more powerful. They want to hold more power, because with power comes influence, it comes impact, it comes income at the same time.
Jo:So power is synonymous with getting what most women want, but they're too afraid to actually use that word. So what we typically see is that women struggle to make this mindset shift, and what they do is often when women try to and I use the word try intentionally here step into their power or become powerful. They have only ever seen a man take power. They have only ever seen a man take power. They've only ever seen a man be aggressive, mansplain, sit there with his legs wide open, taking up all the space, and then women think, oh, okay, well, that's what it is to hold power. If you have been in any meeting when you see a man doing the gorilla pose, where he sits back and usually puts his legs right out and puts his hands behind his head, and there are all these subtle signs of dominance that men are using. Men take up more space because that is how you feel more powerful. And yet women are there in their seat, elbows to their sides, being a little T-Rex with their arms, not really wanting to make too many gestures or take up too much space, because they feel that the only version of power that they've ever known or seen is to go and do a gorilla pose, which doesn't feel authentic to a woman, or to take up that space, or to be domineering, or to mansplain or to put people down around you.
Jo:Now, I'm leaning into stereotypes here. I'm not suggesting that every man is doing gesturing body poses in meetings. I'm not suggesting that every male is dominant and aggressive, but this is historically the characteristics that we have seen modeled around power. Instead, what I would love you to walk away from this episode is an understanding that If you want to be successful, if you want to climb the ladder, you have to embrace power as a word. You have to embrace your own power and stop being scared of it. You have to embrace your ability to impact and influence others in a good way, and sometimes you have to make bad decisions and sometimes you have to let people go. There are things in life that we have to do, but, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and I'm on a mission to see more power in the hands of women who are going to do good things with that level of responsibility.
Jo:If we avoid stepping into our power or we avoid playing the power game, what we see is this repeated pattern of women being overworked, underpaid, overlooked, others around them who are less qualified, less intelligent, taking their promotions, getting the plum projects, getting the staff members, because you are stuck in this old paradigm. So women have been trying to play by men's rules of leadership for a long time and it's not working. The system is fundamentally broken because those women that are stepping into a male-defined version of power usually typically end up being so out of alignment with the truth of who they are. They've become what I often call a pink man, where they lead like a man just dressed up in pink or lipstick on a pig, like no, no, no, no. We don't lead that way. There are other ways. You don't have to be dominant, you don't have to be a bully, you don't have to be mean. And these women also in a bid to become more dominant and to prove that they can lead like a man, they become even more aggressive and more mean and more domineering and have more power over than any male ever has.
Jo:As evidence of this, many of the let's just say poor examples of leadership that I've had in my career have been women. They have been soul crushingly mean, they have been manipulative. They have thrown me under buses. They've not been able to give me a leg up. I even had one woman say to me when I passed a comment about the importance of us reaching behind and helping those around us, and she turned to me and she said I walked over crushed glass to get here and every woman is going to do the same. That's right. Direct quote from something someone said to me who had ascended to the levels of leadership and was determined that she had to earn her stripes. Every other woman was going to do the same. So she was going to treat every other woman the way she was treated by men on her way up the ladder. This is no way to live.
Jo:Ladies, we have to change this paradigm, because too many of us are playing by the old rules being burnt out, over-delivering, constantly being undervalued, being overlooked, feeling invisible. It is not working for us. So the question is what do we need to do about this? Right, you know I'm the practical queen who loves giving you ways to solve this. So the first thing that you are going to have to do is teach your nervous system to hold power, because there is a direct correlation between how much power you can hold and how safe you feel.
Jo:I know that seems counterintuitive, but our nervous system is wired for safety, and if you don't know how to cultivate safety within, if you were still looking to others for validation, if you were still looking to find safety and your worth in being a perfectionist or being a people pleaser or helping others. They are not internally cultivated or not. They're not internally cultivated methods of safety. They're always reliant on another, and so it will be wobbly as all hell when you try to step into your power, because you'll be asking for permission, you'll be worried about making mistakes, you'll go into functional freeze, you'll become paralyzed because you realize that you can't hold the power without the safety that goes with it.
Jo:So that is the first step, is you have to stop over explaining, you have to stop softening your voice, you have to stop backing down, which are all characteristics and behaviors that you will see when a woman is trying to step into her power, but then she's terrified of getting into trouble. So she wants to have impact, but she asks for permission, or she puts herself in this little, teeny, tiny box, because that's the box that she knows is safe and everyone's given her permission to sit in this box and so, heaven forbid, I'm not going to step out of it. Meanwhile she's got the key around the neck, her hand on the lock going, and then he's livid and frustrated and full of rage, because she knows she can be more. I know I've got more in me, I've got my capabilities, yes, but you are sitting in a box that you have created, which is your box of safety. So, first step, in order to step into your power, in order to play the political game that comes with, I guess, many jobs when there are other humans, you have to play politics. It's not a dirty word, but you can learn to do it really well. So, first thing, nervous system, nervous system regulation, nervous system safety, and this has been such a huge piece of work that I've done with those in my alliance program, which is a follow on program from balance and beyond, because we are seeing as women step up, as they're moving into CEOs, they're moving into the C-suite, becoming executives. They can't hold that level of power without doing the nervous system work, and we do both in tandem and, my goodness, both in tandem and my goodness, everybody starts to soar.
Jo:The second lesson let's say no-transcript. You need to be able to see what you are capable of. So owning your power means things like holding tension without discomfort, sitting in silence how about disagreeing without being defensive or going on the attack? Giving feedback or receiving feedback without taking it personal, making decisions without asking or seeking permission from others, saying no and being okay with disappointing someone. Yeah right, it's a pretty good chance to go. Oh, that's making me feel so uncomfortable. We say welcome to the limits of what your nervous system is capable of handling.
Jo:When you own your power, when you stand fully in your possibility, in your impact, you own your time, you set boundaries. You work on what's important to you. You set boundaries. You work on what's important to you. You don't hesitate to find your voice and speak up. You become more unfiltered. I don't mean in a profanity sense, but there's not all these things that you're swallowing. So many women have all these things unsaid and then they swallow them and then somebody else says them in the next meeting and gets the credit for it and gets the promotion for this amazing idea that they had. But they swallowed because they couldn't tap into their power.
Jo:True power is about not just all of that owning your time. It's meeting your needs and learning to influence without overproving, Not feeling like you've got to justify your existence or to over the whole. Good old. You know, over over promise, under deliver. Hang a second Over promise and under deliver is what we want to avoid. So everybody does the whole. All right, you know I'm going to under promise and then let me make sure that I can over deliver and I'm going to deliver 150%. But so much of that comes from proving energy. Let me show you I can do it. Let me show you I'm smart. Let me show you I'm on top of it.
Jo:So this is how true power actually starts to move, and you can imagine when you can start to unlock this, when you can hold all those boundaries when you can protect your time, where you can meet your own needs, where your nervous system feels safe in discomfort or conflict or saying the thing even when you want to swallow it. This is what true power is, and women have an immense array of tools and capabilities that are inherent within us that prime us for this game. Abilities that are inherent within us that prime us for this game this beautiful thing called intuition that we have access to, these amazing things called feelings and emotions that we are incredibly sensitive to and can be our superpower when we can unlock. These are just two of the huge array of tools and, I guess, feathers in our cap that we have disavowed because we're playing by the rules of someone else's game.
Jo:When you can understand how power works, when you understand what has to happen for a woman to step into her power, which is different from what a man has to do to step into her power, you now have a roadmap to follow. You can play the political game because you're not worried about disappointing someone. You can say the thing, you can say the no. You can say no, I'm not going to deliver that thing. That all becomes available now and no surprise. Can you imagine? When you've stepped into your power in this way, where you own your expertise? Now your impact and your influence improve exponentially and, of course, then a lagging indicator will be your income will start to follow.
Jo:But that's not to say that you're still not going to get nervous. I'm not pretending that you're going to become a power robot here, or you're going to become power hungry, or that you're going to stomp on everybody around you, which is something that so many women worry about. There is a new model of female leadership, and those who are ready are going to find that this new era of possibility is going to be endless. There are going to be so many opportunities for women to step into creating a new model, to be the ones to own their power, to speak up to say the thing. This is exactly what we are covering in my brand new leadership program, which is called Elevate the Art of Leadership.
Jo:I'm going to be teaching you about how to hold power, about how to have presence. Executive presence is a buzzword everyone's talking about, but you can't have presence if you can't hold your own power. Teach you how to regulate your nervous system, how to have charisma, how to open doors and not just claim your seat at the table and then do all this overthinking and overworking. But stop the overworking, the overproving, the permission. This is going to unlock so many areas of life if we can get you to step into this new model of female leadership that no one else is talking about.
Jo:I want you to come and join me at balanceinstitutecom forward, slash, elevate. It's a brand-new program. I've never done this before because I have so much to say on leadership. I'm seeing so many executive women, powerful women, almost be absent from their power, to have been completely disconnected from themselves, and then, when they do this work, the opportunities and possibilities of what can unlock are priceless. I want that for every single woman, which is why I'm making this program available to take. It's a six-week live program, lots of contact with me, lots of time for Q&As.
Jo:This is going to blow your mind about how we can really open up this new paradigm and find a way that's going to help us lead with all of our feminine edge, with all of our amazing gifts, and break the paradigm, stop the burnout and step into our true selves. So make sure you come and join me balanceinstitutecom forward, slash, elevate. Until then, here's to your next day of power presence and politics. Thanks for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And, if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world to us. If you're keen to dive deeper into our world, visit balanceinstitutecom to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond podcast.
.png)