If you are a woman reading this: ever wondered if your periods empower you? 

And to the men reading this: how does the hormonal cycle relate to you? Glad I’ve caught your attention. 

As someone who has experienced all the female hormonal cycles, I had never stopped to consider them as a source of strength, let alone something that can improve and enrich leadership. However, I’ve been rethinking this. 

Data supports the argument that female leaders are good for business: The Ready-Now Leaders report from The Conference Board shows that organisations with at least 30% women in leadership roles are 12 times more likely to be in the top 20% for financial performance. And a report by McKinsey revealed that companies with more than 30% women executives are more likely to outperform those with less, or none at all.

Some of this could be attributed to certain characteristics that women over-index in - empathy, collaboration, resilience - being more effective than those over-indexed in men (confidence, ruthlessness, decisiveness). The idea (brilliantly explored through Jo Fuller’s The Merry Menopause) that our cycles through menstruation, childbirth, perimenopause and menopause could contribute to the attributes that, as women, we lean in to in for leadership is perhaps not surprising: after all, each cycle breeds resilience (working through days of pain), perspective (nothing matters more than your children), empathy and wisdom (as Claudine Collins once said, there’s a reason why women over 50 get paid so much). 

My role as a leader is to enable my team to do their best work. To do this, I need to galvanise all of these behaviours to support the next generation of leaders. So let’s break it down.

Do as I do: Teams will hesitate to ask for support if they don’t see their leaders modelling the same behaviour. So when I need flexibility - maybe for that pilates class that stops hormone-less me from seizing up like Oz’s Tin Man - I am transparent about it, and I apply the same flexibility with our teams so that they can juggle their priorities to better deliver in their work. In 2025, leaders ought to be focusing on outcomes rather than presenteeism (while acknowledging deadlines and working as a team, of course). Your best bet to achieve this is to be flexible, whether the ask is picking up the children from school or a mental health day. 

Change the game: Behaviours do not change without the infrastructure to support them. At Propeller, we set the agenda with a range of policies that create this structure: generous maternity leave is matched with equally generous paternity leave,  allowing women and men much more flexibility in how they manage that crucial first year of parenthood; we are signed up to WACL’s Menopause Policy which supports everything from time off to cameras off during the perimenopausal and menopausal years; we offer mental health days, the chance to work abroad for a month each year and a four week paid sabbatical in addition to annual leave allowance for every four years of service - all supported by a DE&I committee which sets the agenda for what we do next. 

Men experience cycles too: Not like women do of course, however new fathers can experience postnatal depression (many people think only new mothers do) and they also undergo permanent hormonal changes once they have a child. Crucially, men’s empathy, support and advocacy are key in making all of this stick. Research shows that when men are active allies, gender equality can progress up to three times faster. Fathers need to be more vocal about time spent away with their children - and leaders need parenting policies that support this. 

No “I” in Team: Flexibility and support isn’t simply within our gift as leaders - it takes a village. And in this instance, the village is your team. A lot of the time that team is global, with a need to focus on meeting time zones, handovers and boundaries. Once a team understands the tempo and priorities of its members, all guided and role-modelled by its leader, it can coalesce to provide seamless service - and bring energy - to its clients and customers. 

All of this has helped to enhance productivity, retention and advocacy among our staff. It is not unusual for members of our team to recommend us to their networks as an employer, which means we have a steady pipeline of top talent to draw from. We have also built a bench of associate directors - with a strong female contingent - who apply the same empathy, perspective and awareness to their teams. Positive cycles breed positive cycles. 

In a couple of months, I will be helping to judge this year’s shortlist for the WACL Talent Awards. These reward around 25 of the next generation of female leaders with grants of up to £1,500 each to accelerate their leadership journey (so another quality in which women over-index: commitment). As an organisation focused on achieving 50:50 CEO gender equality in the UK by 2045 , we see these same attributes in which women over-index in the brightest and best of those applicants. Attributes which, as Jo Fuller’s research indicates, could be hard-wired into our cycles. 

So maybe as female leaders we should be celebrating our cycles, rather than simply putting up with them, or worse, feeling we have to leave the workplace because of them.

Period.