The Language the Women Inherited

What happens when the leadership vocabulary you inherited from the women before you includes everything except the hardest sentences? In this episode, Lisa reflects on watching a senior woman in a meeting redirect a difficult conversation toward an operational follow-up — a move she recognized instantly, because she'd learned it too. Not from a textbook, but from years of watching accomplished women navigate rooms that would have punished them for saying what was actually true. "I disagree." "I don't know." "I'm scared." "I need help." These weren't sentences the women before us withheld — they were sentences they never had. And yet we inherited the silence alongside the strength. This episode is about the slow, careful work of building a vocabulary no one in your line was allowed to develop — and why saying the sentence they couldn't say isn't a betrayal. It's a translation. If this one brings up a face, a room, a sentence you've been carrying — write it down. Then come find me at soultosoulleadership.substack.com or lisa@soultosoulleaderhip.com.

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Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Transcript

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You're listening to Soul to Soul with Lisa Carter Bawa, where science meets soul. I want to tell you about something I noticed in a meeting recently. There was a woman at the table, senior to me, accomplished, the kind of woman whose presence rearranges a room when she walks into it. The conversation got hard. Not dramatic, just hard in the way real conversations get when there's a real disagreement and no one wants to be the one who names it. And I watched her do something I have seen women like her do my entire career. She got very still. She let the silence sit for a beat longer than was comfortable. And then she redirected the conversation towards something concrete, a next step, a follow-up, a small operational thing that gave everyone in the room something to do with their hands. She did not name what was actually happening in the room. And the meeting moved on, and the hard thing, the real disagreement, the thing that mattered, got tucked under the operational follow-up like a sheet over furniture in a closed room. And as I watched her do it, I had the strangest feeling. I knew exactly how to do it too. I want to be careful here. I am not telling you a story about a woman who did not lead well. She did. She is one of the most capable people I've ever seen and sat with in a room. I'm telling you a story about vocabulary. A vocabulary that I inherited from women I admired, from women who taught me by example what a senior woman looks like when the conversation gets hard, from the rooms they had to stand in, and the rooms before that, and the rooms before that, and all the way back. And the vocabulary did not include some sentences. It did not include, I disagree with what is happening here. It did not include, I am scared this decision is wrong. It did not include, I do not know the answer to this and I need help. And it did not include what we're doing right now is not what I came here to do. They gave me everything they had. The thing they did not give me was the thing they did not have to give. And I want to say that twice because I think we get confused about it. The thing they did not give me was the thing they did not have to give. They had not been given the language, by the women before them who had not been given it either, by the rooms they were the first ones to stand in, where a woman who said the word scared was a woman who would not be promoted, by the time they lived in, where the cost of the sentence was higher than the cost of the silence. They did not withhold the words. They did not have them. But here's the thing about an inheritance. You receive it whether you wanted it or not. And what I inherited from the women who shaped me, alongside the work ethic, alongside the resilience, alongside the rigor that has carried me throughout everything. What I also inherited was the silence, the reflex to redirect the hard conversation toward an operational follow-up, the instinct to manage by moving forward instead of by naming what is happening, the trained avoidance of the sentence that would slow the room down and make everyone uncomfortable, including me. And I will tell you, for most of my early career, I did not know what I was doing it. It felt like good leadership. It felt like grace under pressure. It felt like the kind of poise I was supposed to be modeling for the women who were watching me, the way I had watched the women before me. But underneath the grace was a sentence I could not say. I am scared. I am tired. I do not know. I am furious about what we just decided. I do not have a solution, but I know this is wrong. I need help. I cannot do this alone. Those sentences were not in my inherited vocabulary. They were not what the women before me had been allowed to say. And so when the moment came in my own meetings, in my own rooms, when those sentences were the true ones, I would redirect to the operational follow-up. I would tuck the hard thing under the sheet. I would move the room forward in a way that protected the people in it, including me, from having to actually deal with what had just happened. Now I want to tell you about the work, because the part of the story that does not get told often enough is the work. The actual labor of learning to say the sentences the women before you could not. The work of building a vocabulary that no one in your line had been allowed to develop in your presence. It is harder than it sounds because you are not just learning a new word. You are unlearning a survival strategy. You're dismantling a mechanism that kept the women before you safe in rooms that would have punished them for the truth. You're saying a sentence that in the language of your inheritance is dangerous. And every time you say it, some old part of your nervous system braces for a consequence that does not come. Saying the sentence they could not say is not a betrayal. It is a translation. A translation of the strength they gave you in silence into a language they did not have access to. The same strength, a different vocabulary. And here's what I've noticed. The more I let myself say the sentence the women before me could not, the more I see them in it. Not less. More. Because the sentence is carrying everything they put into the silence, everything they protected, everything they held by not saying. I'm not replacing their language. I'm completing it. And here is where this becomes about leadership. Although you have probably been hearing it that way for a while now. The voice you lead with, the way you talk to your team, the way you respond to a hard moment in a meeting, the way you handle the conversation no one wants to have, that voice was shaped by the women you watched lead before you. And some of that shaping is precious. The poise, the discipline, the ability to keep your voice steady when the room is shaking, the capacity to absorb without leaking. Those are real gifts. Honor them, keep them. But some of that shaping is the silence. The silence about being scared, the silence about not knowing, the silence about being human in a room that was trained to mistake your humanity for weakness. That silence is the cost of an inheritance you did not choose, and you are allowed to put it down. The next generation of women does not need you to be the woman who could not say it. They need you to be the woman who finally could. Because they are watching the way I watched the women before me, the way the chain has worked for as long as there's been a chain. And every sentence you find your way to saying out loud, the I disagree, the I do not know, the I am scared, this is the wrong call, the I need help, the what are we doing right now is not what I came here to do. Every one of those sentences becomes part of the vocabulary the next woman gets to inherit. She will not have to learn it from scratch. She will have heard it from you. And the room she walks into will be a room where that sentence has already been spoken and survived. So I want to leave you with a question. Not a lesson, a question. What is the sentence the women in your line could not say that you are quietly learning how to? Maybe it's a sentence about your own value. Maybe it is a sentence about exhaustion. Maybe it is a sentence about wanting more or wanting different or wanting less. Maybe it is the simple sentence, the one that sounds easy until you try to say it out loud. I am proud of myself. Whatever it is, that sentence is the work. Not because the women before you failed. They did not fail. They survived rooms that would have eaten them alive if they had said that sentence out loud. Their silence kept you safe enough to be the one who could finally say it. You're not breaking the chain. You're adding a link. The women who shaped me, and there were many in different rooms at different times in ways they probably did not know they were doing. Those women are not going to hear this episode. And that is part of why I can say it. But if they could, if some version of them in some other room could hear me right now, I would want them to know that the silence they handed me was not a wound. It was a bridge. They built it across a river they could not cross themselves so that I could. And every time I say a sentence they could not say, I am not standing on the other side of the river without them. I'm standing on the bridge they built. And here's the soul-to-soul part. The voice you lead with is not just yours. It carries the women who could not use theirs. Speak gently. You're speaking for more than one person. And before you go, I want to say something a little different than I usually do. This episode is going to land in some of you the way it landed in me when I started writing it. It's going to bring up a face, a meeting room, a woman you watched once do exactly what I was describing. A sentence you've been carrying for years that you have not said out loud yet. If that happens, write it down, just for you first. And then if you want, come find me on Substack at Soul to Soul Leadership Substack.com. Tell me about her. Tell me what she did instead of saying. Tell me the sentence you're slowly learning to say in her name. I read everyone. And the women who come to read what you have written will recognize themselves in it, and they will not feel as alone as they did before they read it. That's the work. That is what we are doing here. That is what I am sitting with this week. The woman in the meeting who redirected the operational follow-up, the way I knew exactly how to do it to. And the slow, careful work of finding the sentence she did not have and saying it out loud in a room where it can finally be true. Thank you for being here. I'm Dr. Lisa Carter Bawawa for Soul to Soul.