WISE WOMEN’S COUNCIL
LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY

A letter from Sarah K Peck, the creator of The Wise Women’s Council.

Dear Wise Women,

For too long, the world has cultured women to stay silent, to show up as men, to compete in zero-sum games. There’s more to leadership than masculine hustle and power-over. If doing it all, pushing harder, and hustling more were the answer, we would have arrived by now. That’s why we’re building something different with The Wise Women’s Council.

I’ve worked with the 20th-century leadership models, and yes, there are important insights to be gleaned. But the cannon of leadership and business literature is woefully incomplete, and doesn’t meet the leadership needs for the world today. Through learning, practice, and observation, I’ve built a core leadership framework that complements what you might see highlighted on the bestseller’s table in a bookstore.

Here are a few highlights of The Wise Women’s Leadership Philosophy: 

We don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done.

In here, our core belief is that we don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done. We believe if we keep doing things the way they’ve always been done, we’ll get the same results. We want different results. And by doing things differently—by tapping into empathy, by slowing down when we need to, by resting more, by owning our unique paths—we can build lives with more connection, joy, and success.

Listen to your inner voice.

Your inner voice is wise, important, and needed. In here, we’ll encourage you to reconnect with your own wise inner self, and to peel back the layers of cultural conditioning that are often too loud, crowding out the space for your intuition, strength, and voice.

The world needs women’s leadership. 

The world needs women’s leadership — the power of together, the art of coordination and cooperation. There’s an art, a beauty, and a richness to women’s leadership, and it’s been proven to be just as powerful (if not moreso) than traditional models of men’s leadership. This is what happens in this space over the year ahead. 

There is wisdom in the in-between.

In a competitive, individualized world, we get hyper-focused on what each person contributes, forgetting that there’s a beautiful, interconnected richness that exists in between us. There is wisdom found in the spaces in between. When we engage in conversation, creativity, and meandering storytelling, we get to discover parts of ourselves that we might not have seen alone. The reflective power of humanity is incredible. There is wisdom to be found between us, out among the trees, and in rich community fabric.

Emotional intelligence is wisdom

The current narratives around emotions and feelings is stuck at the teenage level, at best. Higher orders of wisdom and thinking happen alongside emotional maturity, emotional intelligence, and understanding emotional complexity. What does this mean? We’ll teach you, of course. But in it’s simplest form, it means that we can hold sadness and joy together, and feel them both deeply. We don’t hide our joys and we allow our sorrows to have space, and we can do it alongside each other. There is no point in comparative suffering or comparative joy. The world needs leaders with emotional intelligence and emotional wisdom.

Endings, beginnings, and transitions matter.

We don’t shy away from the dark. For each module, there’s a shadow side, and this dance across the light and the dark is what creates depth. Women in our program are often navigating life’s big moments. Whether you are starting something new, or ending something familiar, or you’re grieving a change — we’re here to see you, fully, in the life you’re leading.

Show up as who you are.

We invite everyone to show up as they are, over and over again. Whether it’s a tough day, or you’re feeling spicy and angry, or you’re fueled by ambition or motivated by growth, we’re here for all of it. The Wise Women’s Council is where you can show up fully in front of mentors and peers across all areas of your life—with all of your ambitions, desires, and professional dreams. With the mess at home, or the stress at work, or the inner doubts. With the callings that still ache inside of you.  We’re here to honor you and hold you in your unique path, and to see you for who you are—and who you are becoming.