A few days ago, I was standing in a dry riverbed in Namibia.
Watching a herd of elephants move across the sand.
No noise.
No competition.
No visible struggle for power.
Just… flow.
Twenty animals moving as one.
And at the front?
Not the biggest elephant.
Not the strongest.
Not the most aggressive.
The oldest female.
And in that moment, something clicked.
What if everything we’ve been taught about leadership is backwards?
The leader who doesn’t perform
Here’s what fascinated me.
The matriarch wasn’t acting like a leader.
She wasn’t posturing.
She wasn’t signaling dominance.
She wasn’t trying to look powerful.
She wasn’t even trying.
She was simply keeping everyone alive.
Namibian desert elephants are among the most extraordinary animals on Earth.
They survive in one of the harshest environments imaginable.
They can go up to four days without water. They walk hundreds of kilometers across barren land. They dig wells in dry riverbeds to access water hidden beneath the sand
And here’s the wild part:
The herd survives because one female remembers where to go.
Water sources humans don’t even know exist.
Migration routes passed down through memory.
Patterns encoded over decades.
When a matriarch dies too early…
The herd doesn’t just grieve.
It gets lost.
The knowledge dies with her.
Nature’s hidden leadership model
It turns out… elephants aren’t unique.
Across the animal kingdom, something fascinating appears.
The most intelligent, social mammals, the ones that rely on cooperation, memory, and emotional bonds, evolve toward female-led systems.
And in humans?
It goes even further.
The rarest trait in Nature
Out of more than 5,000 mammal species on Earth, only a handful have evolved menopause.
Humans.
Killer whales.
Pilot whales.
Belugas.
Narwhals.
That’s it.
Now think about this.
Evolution is ruthless.
It eliminates anything that doesn’t serve survival.
So why would it turn off reproduction in a female who still has decades of life ahead?
We assume menopause is a ‘decline’. A biological shutdown.
But it turns out, it’s an upgrade.
Scientists call this the Grandmother Hypothesis.
In certain species, older females become so valuable to survival not by giving birth, but by giving guidance, that evolution rewired their biology on purpose to free them from reproduction.
So they could lead.
Let that sink in.
Evolution didn’t make a mistake.
It made a decision.
Stop reproducing. Your value now is wisdom.
The pattern we can’t ignore
Look at the species where this shows up:
Elephants. Whales. Humans.
The three most socially complex mammals on Earth.
They all:
- Live in multi-generational families
- Communicate across distance
- Form lifelong bonds
- Mourn their dead
- Depend on shared knowledge to survive
And when left to evolve naturally…
They all arrive at the same answer:
Put the wisest female in front.
Not a decline. A promotion.
Now let’s bring this home.
When a woman goes through menopause…
We treat it as a decline.
Loss.
A closing chapter.
But biologically?
Something profound is happening.
Her role isn’t shrinking.
It’s expanding.
She is being freed from reproduction to focus on something far more important:
Protecting.
Guiding.
Stabilizing the group.
And here’s the truth most people miss:
Evolution does not keep anything alive that isn’t useful.
So the fact that women live 30–40 years beyond reproduction tells us something extraordinary:
Those decades are not leftover time. They are mission-critical years.
In whale pods, when a post-menopausal female dies, her sons are significantly more likely to die within a year.
In early human tribes, older women were the living libraries of survival.
They carried memories.
And memory meant life.
So no, Menopause isn’t the end.
It’s the promotion into leadership.
So what happened to us?
Because if this is what we evolved for…
Why does our world look so different?
Why do we consistently choose leaders based on:
Dominance, Charisma, Visibility, and Performance.
Instead of:
Wisdom, Memory, Emotional intelligence, and Long-term thinking.
Of 194 countries, only about 10% are led by women.
We didn’t evolve this way.
We constructed this.
The lie about emotion
And here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
One of the most common arguments against female leadership is this:
“Women are too emotional.”
So let’s look at the data.
Globally:
75% of suicides are male. Men die by suicide at 4x the rate of women.
Men commit ~90% of homicides.
Over 95% of road rage incidents are male
That’s not emotion.
That’s unprocessed emotion
Research shows:
| Men suppress | Women process |
| Men avoid | Women regulate |
So let me ask you a question:
Which gender is actually struggling more with emotional control?
We’ve created a world where:
The group more likely to explode under emotional pressure is called “rational.”
The group better at processing emotion is called “too emotional.”
That’s not logic. That’s conditioning.
Two operating systems
This isn’t about men vs women.
It’s about how you lead.
There are two leadership operating systems:
| 1. Performance Leadership – Speed – Dominance – Competition – Control It asks: Who wins? | 2. Matriarch Leadership – Wisdom – Memory – Empathy – Long-term thinking It asks: What sustains? |
Both exist in all of us.
But look at the world today, and ask yourself honestly:
Which one are we rewarding?
Why this matters now
Because we are entering a different kind of world.
AI is reshaping industries.
Climate instability is accelerating.
Global systems are shifting fast.
This is no longer a game of conquest.
It’s a game of survival.
And survival doesn’t favor the loudest voice.
It favors the clearest one.
The one who remembers.
The one who sees patterns.
The one who knows when to move and when to wait.
That’s the matriarch.
The moment this becomes personal
Because this isn’t just about governments.
It’s about you.
At some point in your life, the game changes.
You stop needing to prove.
You stop needing to win.
And you start needing to: guide, protect, and elevate others
That’s the shift.
From:
Performer → Steward
Competitor → Guardian
Leader → Matriarch energy
(Yes, even if you’re a man.)
The question that actually matters
Standing there in that riverbed…
Watching that herd move as one…
I wasn’t watching animals.
I was watching a system that works.
A system tested over millions of years.
And it kept pointing to the same truth:
Experience over ego
Memory over speed
Collective care over dominance
So the real question isn’t: “Should women lead?”
The real question is: What kind of leadership do we need now?
Because nature already answered that.
And she’s been right every single time.
If this made you pause, question, or see leadership differently… share your reflection and leave a comment. Those conversations are where real shifts begin.
With Love,
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261 Responses
Hi, Wonderful article thank you but fifty percent of the equation was left out! it turns out that male gangs of elephants need the influence of an older male elephant to help find food and water and to prevent these younger males from being very destructive, aggressive and sometimes sexually violent harassing other wildlife, when left without an elder. This was discovered when due to human hunting practices the older males were removed leaving gangs of young males alone. Here below is one of numerous documentaries about the topic, (6 minutes, 3 on double speed). Perhaps that’s what young human males need too, an interested elder plus valiant knight’s errands picked from any of all the issues out there that need solving, everyone would benefit including the boys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN4RWSHUs50
OMG, you make me revolution my mind in several ways. I think it’s true and the first thing that becomes to my mind is about war… probably our civilization would be much more empowered and advanced if leaders who cares at first their own sons&doughters lidership the countries…. probably all the wars would be less and shorter…
Insightful article, thank you
Thank you for noticing. In my view, at this point in time, men are where women were in the 1960’s. We’d love for you to figure it out faster, but the online world of toxic masculinity is slowing you down, considerably.
Since you are an influential man, articles like this are vital. Men cannot hear it from women, and it is not our place to tell you. Patriarchal behavior runs much deeper than you think. There is a reason many women are exploring women only communities. Male behavior is exhausting.
Thank you again for noticing. Consider what the world could be without the posturing, blustering, saving face, and generally misogyny. I bet men are as exhausted as we are.
Wow!! My mom died recently as I started the beginning of Menopause. She was a mighty warrior filled with love and compassion and tolerance and hope. She used to speak of feeling old and ugly and dismissed by society, after being a beautiful, brilliant psychotherapist in her youth. She certainly believed women should lead and that the older they get the more respect they should be shown. It is my birthday in 2 days, and this post from you was truly a gift. Thanks for validating my mom and honoring her legacy. I am bottomlessly grateful for the help I get from Mindvalley. Thanks for sharing this story. It warmed my heart so much.
This stopped me mid-scroll. I’ve spent years helping women step into their power — and what you described with the matriarch is exactly what I see happen when a woman finally stops trying to perform leadership and starts being it. The shift from “who wins?” to “what sustains?” — that’s the entire game. Thank you for putting language to something so many of us feel but struggle to articulate.
Vishen, you were standing in my first home.
I was born and raised in Namibia. I lived there for the first 30 years of my life. That dry riverbed, that silence, those elephants – I know that world in my bones.
Reading this felt like a homecoming.
I’m now in New Zealand, where I’ve spent the last 20 years building an accounting practice from scratch, raising three sons, helping charter a Lions Club, and quietly holding space for a lot of people who needed steadiness more than spectacle. I didn’t have a name for what I was doing. I just knew that leading loudly never felt like me.
This piece gave me the language.
What strikes me most is this: the matriarch doesn’t lead because she’s been given permission. She leads because the herd needs what only she carries – the memory, the patterns, the long view. That’s not a role you perform. It’s a role you grow into.
I’m in my fifties now. And for the first time, I understand that what I sometimes saw as ‘slowing down’ was actually something else entirely. A reorientation. A shift from proving to guiding.
Thank you for writing this. For those of us who grew up in Africa – who felt the weight of that landscape and learned something wordless from it – this landed somewhere very deep.
From a Namibian girl who carried the desert with her, all the way to the other side of the world.
This was already spoken out by Joan Borysenko in the 70’s in the book about the stages in a women’s life. Think of it as the female version of the hero’s journey. Most of the women I know (I am 50 and menopausal) are relieved form the responsibilities of paying attention to NOT procreating at this age and find themselves filled with extra energy since the body stops regularly loose a lot of blood. I also found myself in my community becoming “the” advisor, the one who can take perspectives and has empathy. It is great to see that someone so influential as Vishen actually writes about it.
Wow I have just finished a short trip into the Peruvian jungle and your very articulate comments resonate strongly with what I learned. Nature shows us how to live in harmony embrace diversity and minimise unnecessary destruction. Animals do not destroy each other in masses nor for individual gratification. The jungle and its inhabitants which we have been conditioned to fear is a much safer place than our cities. And it is no accident that the guiding principles belong to the feminine, the universal Mother, Mother Earth. And it is no accident as we are conditioned simultaneously to disconnect from Nature and the Feminine that the world is in the mess it is in. So yes time to reclaim the Feminine particularly the Crone. The saving of us will be the reactivation of her in every one of us,
I loved the article because I wasn’t aware of what menopause really means! And also because it gave me a push to take into reality a project that I’ve been putting off (because of my insecurity) called ESLABONES “links” and it is about making a community where the elders can have spaces to share their wisdom with young generations. This article empowerd my desire to make it a reality. Thank you Vishen!
Love your project. The world needs exactly that kind of intergenerational interaction and wisdom transfer! Good for you for going after your goals
Thank you Vishen. I loved this article. It reframed the way women are often looked down upon as being ´too emotional´as a negative thing but actually is their ability to process emotion in the moment and let it flow through them so they don´t hold onto the anger, the fear, the sadness and strike out at others or themselves to the extent that men do.
We need more feminine energy in leadership and today you really inspired me. Thank you.
Love this article! It made me pause. I’ve been single for a couple years and my growth has been exponential, now I’m only open for a meaningful partnership who is ready to be able to emotionally support my paths that I choose to create.
Strong piece. It touches something we see every day in organizations, we just call it something else.
What you describe as “matriarch leadership,” I recognize in practice as the moment someone stops trying to prove themselves and starts making the whole system work. That’s often the real shift in leadership: from me to we.
At the same time, I’d add one nuance to make it even stronger.
In nature – like with the African elephant – this kind of leadership emerges organically. In organizations, we’ve built systems that reward very different behavior: targets, speed, visibility, short-term results. So it’s not surprising that we keep reproducing “performance leadership.”
So maybe the question isn’t only: who should lead?
But also: what are we actually rewarding in our systems?
What I find powerful in your piece is that it invites us to redefine leadership. Not softer, but wiser. Not less powerful, but more sustainable.
And maybe this is the practical translation for teams and leaders I work with:
Less broadcasting, more observing
Less fixing, more understanding what’s really going on
Less speed, more timing
Less ego, more responsibility for the whole
And yes, this asks something different from all of us. From women too, by the way, because we’ve grown up in the same system.
Leaders who can carry what’s needed, instead of showing what they can do.
That shift, to me, is where the real movement is.
As a nurse and energy healer, I see this every day. The patients who stabilize families and communities are rarely the loudest—they’re the ones who remember, who regulate, who hold the emotional center when everything else feels chaotic.
Maybe leadership isn’t about power at all. Maybe it’s about nervous systems that can stay calm enough to guide others home.
Spot on. I’m a retired nurse and though autistic, was ultra calm and clear thinking in critical situations, at work and in many accidents I came across lover the years, especially when I lived in London.
Love this article… So true, I had never seen it from that perspective, but it makes a lot of sense.
This article really hit home for me. Especially as I am a woman who just turned 50, and going through perimenopause. It’s so easy for people in my age group and gender to forget our worth. And this was a beautiful reminder. A reminder that not only are we still useful and worthy, but in many ways we are more needed at this stage than ever before. In many ways this is an even more beautiful stage in life. Thank you for sharing. This article is a keeper.
Hello Vishan,
I’m a 63 year old woman and I have gradually been coming into my own person. What you have spoken of here is something that I have felt and somehow knew for a long time now. It is only recently that I have put pen to paper and designed a completely new political party for Australia. It’s not one that relies on left or right politics it is one that creates communities with continuity. I am also currently working to on the problem of homelessness. In Australia older women are in the highest category risk of homelessness today, not the young, not the addicts, older women. I have a full set of foundational plans ready to roll out across the country. Even though I am yet to get the first test group established. It is early days yet and I still have a great deal of negotiating to address. It’s a huge learning curve for me having to negotiate with profit over people mindsets. But I will not be deterred. The very future of our planet and our existence is at stake here. Please wish me luck and thank you so much for your timely post. Cheers Jen.
Love this.
I work in a male dominated field and organization with very few women in senior positions. Truly believe we make better leaders.
Love this Vishen.
Thank you Vishen for this article. It validated my views about how nature chooses female lead over male. How I would wonder why in animal kingdom, males are supposed to attract females and females get to choose which male to be with (mate & start the family); and that why male animals are more beautiful than females (for example look at lions, peacocks, wolves, even cats & dogs). Whereas in humans, it is the exact opposite.
And about leadership I also now realize, why I was constantly denied leadership roles not because I wasn’t fast, dominant or controlling, but because I was resilient, empathic, always thought of sustainable growth…which is obviously not most humans want from leadership.
Every insight in this article reasonated with me deeply.
Especially the table where Emotions topic is being discussed. Men suppress women process, men avoid n women regulates.
We are conditioned with certain stereotypes.We need to witness what actually matters.
Yes vision is more important thanoud noise.Leadership shud exist to nurture people towards their highest best not to prove a leader as great.
All in all an amazing article.
Thanks Vishen ji 🙏🙏