In this first interview for Lumina’s Female Leadership Series I want to introduce you to Amanda Zamparo. We met her a couple of months ago via Instagram and contacted each other right away.
We shared our experiences as mentors, consultants and as women. We talked about our vision for a new kind of empowerment, one that is real, practical, balanced and that could resonate with the different realities and contexts of females around the world.
Based in Sao Paulo, Amanda is a human development consultant and facilitator of online and live workshop on feminine leadership.
I invited her to share with us her story for this series so we can learn more how can women become leaders.
Amanda: I graduated in Biomedical Sciences, and I have worked as a consultant since the beginning of my career.
I started in 2016, working with «social and environmental responsibility», helping waste pickers cooperatives in Brazil – most of them were organized by women.
I was working with wonderful people, but we had so many problems with communication, specially with the way my boss communicated with us (specially us, women).
I started to notice that I was so afraid of my boss, and I could not express myself properly. I knew how to help our clients, but I couldn’t express my ideas. I know that a lot of women have the same problem: insecurity when it comes to expressing their intelligence and creativity, and I know that it is in our hands to resolve this, inside ourselves. (…)
Long story short: after a long period going after my dreams and visions, and learning a lot about what solutions are missing in the world… I decided to work with feminine leadership.)
It is important to say that I am not a «coach», in the sense that I didn’t get any professional training as a coach, and I do not train anyone to become anything.
I just help people to understand what they want, and get emotional clarity about important decisions they need to make.
My work is actually more about healing our collective concept of leadership, than it is about leadership itself.
I decided to work with feminine leadership because I believe that the important changes to come in our society will come (and are coming) from women that will have the courage to walk new paths.
To me, feminine leadership is not a rigid concept, but rather something that has to be discovered by every and each person that wants to create a beautiful life for themselves and everyone around them, and in the meanwhile, respect nature (our human nature and Nature itself).
A: It is important to say that I am only doing this for 1 year, now. So, in the very beginning, I was a bit confuse about the work that I would need to do. I thought that I would help women to establish a service of their own, and gain financial autonomy. I was wrong. The process is much more delicate, and it is actually a process of emotional autonomy.
As I said before, it is about healing our concept of «leadership» as something violent and masculine.
Financial and material autonomy can be an illusion, but it can also be something real.
For it to be real, it has to come from a place of emotional autonomy and integrity. So I help women to find integrity, and to find integrity can be a really long process that I still don’t have solid results to show.
Yes, I can say that all my clients gain more confidence, courage, clarity and autonomy. But «integrity» is something that needs more time, and I am still finding my own integrity. I don’t have enough experience to answer about trends and other countries, since I only have «coached» 4 women that live in other countries (Italy, Portugal, Finland, Germany – and 3 of them are Brazilians).
N: Part of your work is based in the Flow Game, can you tell us about this tool and how it has helped your practice?
A: The flow game is a tool that explores our deepest and most powerful questions. You came to the game with your burning question, and the experience helps you to find clarity about it. Every player brings its own question, so the process creates a field of collective reflection, where everyone practices dialogue and vulnerability. In this way, the game allows healing to take place.
I love working with the flow game, because it is not my responsibility to make something happen. I actually need to be very relaxed for it to work properly. I don’t do anything. The game will talk to you. Things will emerge. Everyone is involved.
It is a process for people that want to be serious about self responsibility, and for me, personally – since 2017, when I was trained to became a flow game host – it has been a process of discovering and re-discovering my self responsibility on and on.
N: What top leadership lessons you have learned in this journey?
A: My lessons:
- To respect other people’s times, processes and pains
- To understand that the more important thing is to help people to heal, because if they can clean what is hurting, everything else flows
- To be a better person, to heal myself, improve myself, and act according my ideals
- Not everyone wants to be a leader, and this is good
- Leadership comes from knowing what we want, and that is the most difficult task of all
- Sometimes, to know what we want is a dynamic process, not a static decision
- Practical discipline and spiritual surrender can be our best friends in life
N: What advice would you give to women investing in leadership development?
N: You provide coaching services online and offline, how can we support you in 2020?
N: Finally, how can women reach you to learn more about your work?
A: They can schedule a conversation with me, here: https://calendly.com/amandazamparo
Lumina Magazine 