Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future

Ep #195: Maria Brinck: Power Without Balance: The Cost of Unchecked Masculinity

• Beate Chelette • Episode 195

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Why do we keep trusting the loudest person in the room instead of the most capable one? We seem drawn to the tall, bold, confident, and the loud, but not always to the wise. I invited Maria Brinck, founder of Zynergy International, and author of The Leadership We Need, to help me unpack this uncomfortable truth. 


Maria argues we have accepted being led by bullies and that our subconscious bias toward dominance keeps toxic, outdated leadership patterns alive. We explore what happens when masculine energy takes over the world, why empathy is often mistaken for weakness, and what it really takes to build the kind of leadership the future demands


🎙️ This is a powerful, eye-opening conversation for anyone who feels frustrated with the way leaders are chosen today — and who wants to be part of creating change.


 đź‘‰ Learn more about Maria and her book The Leadership We Need: A New Mindset for a Brighter Future
🎧 Listen now and discover what it takes to build the leadership the future demands.
 đź‘‰ Subscribe for more conversations with visionary thinkers shaping tomorrow’s world.
 đź’¬ Share this episode with someone who’s ready to lead differently.


Other Resources Mentioned:
Website | LinkedIn | The Leadership We Need: A New Mindset for a Brighter Future


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Maria Brinck:

We are not being led by the greatest asset of humanity today, not even close. Our survival truly depends on that we get this right. We are subconsciously drawn to these leaders, loud, confident, instead of the truly capable to lead, it's easier to go to something familiar, even though we know it's not good for us, we can do so much better than we're seeing today in the world. We need to balance the feminine and the masculine equally. You need to be bold and humble, decisive and inclusive.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Hello, Maria, welcome. What makes your blood boil when it comes to today's

Maria Brinck:

leadership, wow. Beate, thank you for having me. What makes my blood boil is the fact that we are not being led by the greatest asset of humanity today, not even close. And that is sad, because humanity have so much more to offer. We are falling short of our human potential, and it hurts, and it I'm sure it hurts a lot of people right now.

BEATE CHELETTE:

It certainly is hurting a lot of people. So I'm gonna have to, like, jump right in, sort of the sensitive issue here, because we know that there's a massive onslaught and dismantling of what you know has been called up until now the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Dei, is this another dei conversation that we're having?

Maria Brinck:

No, no, this is so much, honestly, it's actually much bigger than that, if you think about it, this is not just about doing the right thing, which I think dei was trying to do, yeah, at this point in human history, our survival truly depends on that we get this right. And what I mean by that specifically is we need our diversity of thought more now than ever, and we are not meeting this moment in human history, and the consequences could not be larger. There's so much at stake.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Yes, thank you and sorry for interrupting you here. So you talk about in your book about the wisdom of leadership. So how could have the wisdom? The combined wisdom, is what I'm hearing you say, of women, indigenous people, old people, young people, people of all colors, shapes and sizes. How could this combined wisdom have been able to been classified as a diversity equity, inclusion, as if it was a bad thing? What happened? So, what was your trigger event?

Maria Brinck:

Yeah, so my trigger event, and really the reason why I wrote "The Leadership We Need," the book, is that I unfortunately had to experience this myself, in my own family. I'd seen it playing out for years, even decades, in corporate America, being a part of that leadership environment myself. It was a job, or it was kind of expected. There was no surprises, and working very much in sales, this was a part of what I signed up for. That's how I felt. But when I saw it play out with the dynamic of my own family and just seeing this kind of need for status and coming out from greed, I just couldn't take it anymore, to be honest. It hit too close to home. And then also it was a second reason as well, and that was because at the time, I'd actually experienced a very different type of leadership, having had that great opportunity to live and work and observe the indigenous population in a remote part in the Congo Basin rainforest in Cameroon, and just seeing how things could actually be so different. And why are we not bringing in some of this wisdom in, in into our leadership across the globe?

BEATE CHELETTE:

What is it that there is a discounting on these principles that you know have been around for 1000s of years. What is it about that

Maria Brinck:

exactly you would think it would be common sense right to have a full representation of all of us would be what would make the most sense? Because then you know that the wisdom that we have, all of us are smarter than any one of us, if we have different experiences, grew up at different places, we went to different schools, or different thoughts of all kinds of things, that we'll be stronger together and having that diversity, because we're living in such a complex world. But what we're seeing is, in my opinion, and I write. About this in the book, is that I believe we are subconsciously drawn to these leaders when we feel that is that there is some kind of crisis. We tend just like we tend to crave sweetened sugar, we start craving these alpha male over masculine type of characters in our leaders.

BEATE CHELETTE:

So you're saying that this is really a response to a very old, outdated behavior pattern. I don't want to quite say caveman, but certainly feels old and stagnant. What's the psychology behind this strong, masculine, I know everything better than you do. I'm going to take charge. And this is not America specific. I want to be clear. You know, this is not about talking about what's going on in America. This is in Russia. This is in China. This is in this is all over the world. We are seeing a lot of the leaders that are being popular arising are more on the side of this heavy, heavy masculinity, where, where? How do we manage this is like, why do they continue to rise? Is it our own insecurity, or is it a game? Is it a playbook?

Maria Brinck:

Well, I'm not a psychologist, so I can't speak to the full psychology of why it's happening, but what I do believe, as a leadership consultant, what's happening is that we truly have a subconscious bias towards Leadership, and we're not subconsciously voting for or elevating leaders that are truly capable and skilled to lead. I'll give you an example. You and I and a bunch of others are on a plane, and the captain of the plane faints, a vote is cast, and we vote for the person who stands up says that he can fly a plane, he's loud, confident and says, Trust me, instead of the person who has a pilot license, that's pretty much where we're at. And we just need to look ourselves in the mirror and say, and stop and say, Am I really voting in and elevating the person who's the most capable to drive this business, this organization, forward, this nation, forward progress? I think we just need to look at ourselves, these leaders, these type of people, are always going to be out there, but we need to make sure that we do not have culture and an environment that let them get to the top. I mean, we really need to look ourselves in the mirror, because we very much have accepted to be led by bullies. There are reasons why these leaders got to where they're at, and as much as it's easy to blame them, we should blame ourselves.

BEATE CHELETTE:

So you are alluding to some patterns in society, and in your book, you talk about this as a learning planet type of thing. So why are we repeating these patterns if we know they don't work?

Maria Brinck:

Yeah, that's a really good question, and I would refer it back to and I'm sure you know, as a woman, I'm going to take it very personal here, in private and intimate. We all know there are many women out there. They're being abused by their significant other. We know by stats, is about one out of three, one out of four women. We also know that these women tend to go from one abusive relationship to the next. Why is that? And ironically, these type of relationships has exactly the same tendencies as we seeing playing out in these world leaders today. Number one, you isolate the woman. You isolate your nation. This nation first, right? Nationalism. We're better than everybody else. We have nothing to learn from anybody else. That kind of mentality. You isolate the woman from her family, from her friends, same type. Number two, you start questioning her thinking. You start channeling the media, her influencers, what's truly real, what's a lie. We don't know. Things become kind of shady, just like in a national level, you start attacking the highly educated. This is classic. This is classic leadership, authoritarian type, style. And then, of course, the last thing you do is we versus them. So it's a dangerous place out there, honey, you didn't need to protect you. This is classic, I'm the only one who cares for you. I'm the only one who's going to protect you, just like you see in the nations. I'm the only one who's going to protect this nation, building walls, bidding, getting more money into defense. Now. Have a Department of War. I mean, and again, not just United States, but this is classic in the book of authoritarian leaders. Just that is classic in as in domestic violence. We're seeing it over and over again. And why do we go for one abusive relation to the next? Because, and again, I'm not a psychologist, but what I know from leadership is that it's easier to go to something familiar, and we have that constant need, even though we know it's not good for us, it makes us feel comfortable, and it's more comfortable than to go to something we don't even know, which would be another type of husband, significant other leader.

BEATE CHELETTE:

So let's talk about sort of the strategy. Then here, it sounds to me like I need to have some sort of level of awareness to look at this and recognize that there's a pattern that's unfolding or manipulation that is taking place. How can people even recognize that? Can everybody, anybody recognize that I always talk about trigger events. Does it have to have a trigger event? I mean, I'm certainly seeing a lot of people that go like, Well, I I was on board with this, until they took my stuff away. And now I'm realizing I thought, I thought other people would be punished. I didn't think that I was going to be at the receiving end of it. What makes people wake up? Did you examine that in your work? It's like, what is it that makes somebody

Maria Brinck:

conscious? Yeah, it's difficult, but we do need to look into our own again. This is on us. We should not blame any particular leader, per se. We should really look deep inside ourselves, and we need to look for our patterns that we just talked about, our triggers, and we need to have a deep self awareness of where my personal strengths, where do they come from, my values, my purpose, so I can stay true to myself and not let myself be swayed by these type of personalities. And I also think the something I write about in the book is that we need to have a very high sensitivity to suffering. You and I know what's wrong and right. We know what suffering looks like. We don't need anybody to tell us this is suffering and this is not so I think we have to be very careful with you know, certain leaders, certain religious religions, that tells us what it should be and what it shouldn't be, what's right, what's wrong, we know deep down, what's right and wrong, and we need to tap into that more now than ever, so it will take a lot of inner development. So now

BEATE CHELETTE:

I want to shift this a little bit over to business. Why does this even matter for business? So isn't that the political world? Isn't that the external world? What does it have to do with me and my business?

Maria Brinck:

Yeah, it is interesting, because we kind of took it to the individual relationship and what's playing out on the national relationships. And again, to your point, BEATE, we see it in America. We see it in South America. We see it in many countries. In Europe. We see it playing out in Israel, Middle East. We see it in India and China and North Korea. And I mean, this is all around the world. So I think it's also important to realize that this is not an attack specifically on any particular leader, is just the leadership culture that we currently have and is being led by now that, ironically, is also what's playing out in organizations. And you being in corporate America, and it's the same type of leaders over and over again, we know also that narcissism is about four times higher in leadership positions in corporate America and businesses, I'm sure, all around the world, not just corporate America, but that's what I've seen the research from. So we do even in business, tend to let these people lead. And I think what we need to be very careful for going forward is that we have overvalued the masculine for so long that we mistakenly take it as a leadership skill, including a lot of influence, like very charismatic people and very funny People and assertive people and confident people. But being charismatic or even being tall, that's another we know for a fact that the average person in leadership, and particularly we look at the presidents of the United States of America, are much taller than the average person. Well, there is nothing about tall or charismatic or assertive or confident that make you more capable and skilled leader than any one of us, and what we need to do is really take a step back and think who actually is the most qualified and capable leader going forward. And that means we need leaders that have a lot of strategic thinking that might be a little bit more on the more quiet side, maybe even. Introverts. We need people that are really strong in relationship and cares about humanity, cares about the environment. We need those type of leaders, and that might be charismatic. They might not be that's but we should not go for for those very superficial type of leadership styles, which, again, probably were really good 10,000 years ago, when we had about 500 times the more more violence in our society and we needed an aggressive leader, possibly like that.

BEATE CHELETTE:

But today, do we really look look at the consequences? Well, I think it comes down to the question that you ask, and the question is, what leadership trades will give us a competitive advantage? We know when we look at history, or when we look at the repetitive pattern of how we go about things, we know what works and what doesn't work, and we do it anyway. We do we continue to do things that don't work, but I think we are now at a pivotal moment in history where we are getting to the edge of something that could go could go really bad, really fast. So what are these leadership traits that are now giving us this competitive edge? And you already mentioned some of them. So have, do we have the complete picture? Or do you want to add anything to that?

Maria Brinck:

No, I would like to add a few things to that because, and I think you're absolutely right. Beah, I mean, as you know, Einstein famously said, we cannot solve the problems with the same thinking that created them. So why are we over and over again, we're just circling around, circling around, circling around, right what we need today in leadership, and this goes back also what we talked about, the inner work that we all need to do is balance the greatest potential within us, which is balance the feminine and The masculine equally. What I mean by that is in leadership today, you need to be bold and humble. You need to be decisive and inclusive. You need to be confident and caring. It cannot just be bold and decisive and confident and charismatic, and you need to be having a much wider set of qualities and skills to lead, because the world is more complex, and the greatest thing that you can bring to leadership is the courage and the boldness, if you will, to reach out to the other side and meet people where there are, and connect and build bridges. And that's going to need more than just the masculine. It's going to need that feminine of the connection, the inclusiveness, the caring, on being humble, and that's what we need more so today than any time in human history. And to your point, we are at a tipping point, if you will. We need to get this right, and we're running out of time, and the consequences are playing out in the poly crisis, which I would say is the direct consequence of this type of leadership we had over the 10,000 years, the only leadership we truly know. I would also like to point out that we have this, you know, we're thinking, of course, of their people out there and say, Maria, you're so naive. This is never gonna work. They're always gonna be wars. You know, there's just human nature. Wait a second, how do we even know it's human nature? If we never had human nature lead, we had a small, small subset of men only, and very, very aggressive men. They're not even the average male leading. And that's what we looked at at humanity and saying we're always going to have wars. Are always going to be this way? I say absolutely not. We can do so much better than we're seeing today in the world, in relationships, in nation, in nations and in businesses, than we are today. People can be feeling a sense of well being and that are very survival is secured. We do not need to live in an environment where people and children star. We do not need to live in an environment where we're being basically killing ourselves because of all the pollutants in the world, in the air, in the land, in the water. We don't need this. We can do so much better, but we need to get these things right. And the first thing, the first step is to get that diversity of thought into leadership.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I love that. So if we're not talking to Founders of the Future, which we are, what should they do? I

Maria Brinck:

think we all need to step into being founders and leaders. You know, we need to take charge of our current situation. We can no longer afford to be followers that. One of the things. So I love founders, because, I mean, these are the people that put themselves out there and again, that also goes to say we absolutely need the masculine leadership traits. We need to be bold, we need to go out there, take risks, well calculated risks. We need to explore. We need to be adventurous. So I want to make it clear that this is not about women per se, and it's not about the feminine taken over in any shape or form. It's more about women and minorities and indigenous leading alongside the men and the feminine being led by alongside the masculine. Just want to make that clear, because I think it's it's out there to be misinterpreted. So as a founder, I would start with doing some of this inner work to make sure that I have a very stable foundation for what we're currently going through and for what's ahead, because it's not going to be easy. And for that, I would recommend starting with really honing down on what are your true strengths? What are the strengths that are unique to you, and are you utilizing and maximizing those strengths? Currently, I would also do and Strengths Finder is a great assessment to explore yours. Secondly, I probably bring out like an assessment, maybe. And these are all very affordable, by the way, and you don't necessarily need to work with a coach or anything. The second thing would probably be to explore your values. What are your true core values that you need to stay true to, to feel like you're have meaning in your life, and you you're living to that meaning. And then I would probably look into the purpose that you're creating in your own life. Is it the purpose that you were meant to have? Do you feel like you're aligning your work with that purpose? I do have something I call a synergy Q12 that I write about in the book. So that's probably where I would start. Because, as you know, starting a business, you gotta be swayed this way and this way and back and forth, and it's very important that you stay true to yourself. First and foremost, excellent.

BEATE CHELETTE:

So Maria Brink with us here today, from synergy, talking about conscious leadership. And if you want our audience to walk away with one thing, with one core message, what would it

Maria Brinck:

be? I think knowing yourself, self awareness, and maybe a second message in there would be, because I made this mistake myself, never underestimate the people around you. Don't think that you're smarter than anybody else, or you can work harder than anybody else, because in the end of the day, I had that mindset that I thought I always had to be the smartest and I was the smartest to realize, not at all, I need to be surrounded by smart people, and that's really what's going to bring out the smart in me. When you challenge each other and you come in with that diversity of thought, it's amazing how much you will grow and get out, get out of your own ego chamber, if you will, or echo chamber. That would be my recommendation to your audience,

BEATE CHELETTE:

yeah, I always say, don't believe everything you think, because we exactly, because we, we have these thoughts and then nobody challenges them. And what do you need to talk to other people for? If they confirm what you already know that's pointless conversation. I actively and purposely look for differing viewpoints and thoughts and stuff that I don't know, because how could I ever have an opinion about something if everybody just says, yeah, exactly you're so right on everything, that's exactly it. I think the conversation today is really powerful in the sense that it's a touchy subject to talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, dei, because now people go like, well, it excluded white men specifically, and it was in itself, the word that I'm including women excluded men, and in the sense that I'm including black and brown people, I'm excluding white people. So I want to reiterate that on this show and on anything I do, and I'm sure you do, this isn't about that. This is about somebody said, The woman that were one, a woman that works for Airbnb, said, This is not about having an unfair advantage. This is about making sure you don't have an unfair disadvantage. Talk to us about the book, Maria,

Maria Brinck:

well, the book"The Leadership We Need" a new mindset for a brighter future. Really has to do with the new mindset, because, you know, leader, leadership is mindsets. It's you're not. You can't go and necessarily get a degree in or title now you're going to be a leader. It really has to evolve in your mind and in your mindset. And I think the mindset that we currently haven't having across the globe is just not enough. We need to expand that mindset. And that's where the future potential for. Humanity is within that expanded mindset of what leadership could be and should be. That's what I hope that this book will bring the reader. And of course, it's also very practical. I have a 10 step micro road map on how to get there with very small steps. And then of course, of course, the connection with yourself and the inner feminine and masculine leadership qualities, and how can you expand on both and make sure that they are balanced and harmonious and lead from there? Because that's where you will be the most effective, because, in a way, that is your greatest potential, where you can just show up the way you are and not have to try to be more masculine just to fit in. And I'm sure any woman listening to this podcast knows exactly what I'm talking about.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Okay, wonderful, beautiful, well, and that concludes our conversation today. Maria Brinck here again from synergy, and we talked today about leadership, evolution, conscious capitalism and why. Really, all wisdom needs a seat at the table. The older I get, the more I see the pattern repeats itself over and over and over again. We are fighting for the same thing that I fought 40 years ago for, and something tells me this might, unless we change, the pattern continue and then in 40 years, the women that come after us will have the exact same experiences, by way, fighting for this again, humanity does better if we move in the same direction if we move forward, and sometimes we need to have uncomfortable conversations and confront our own ideas, opinions and biases, and ask ourselves, is this true? So Maria, thank you very much for being on the show today. It's been an insightful conversation. Thank you for being here.

Maria Brinck:

Thank you so much for having me. BEATE. I so appreciate this,

BEATE CHELETTE:

and that is it for us. For today, I hope you took away some valuable insights. Make sure you check out Maria and get the book learn about, you know, conscious leadership, what type of leadership is required to lead the future of tomorrow. And if you find something valuable On this episode, please share it with one other person. Subscribe, like, leave a comment and we see you again next time and GOODBYE. That's it for this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, Founders of the Future. If you're done playing small and ready to build the future on your terms, subscribe, share and help us reach more Trailblazers like you. And if you're serious about creating, growing and scaling a business that's aligned with who you are. Schedule your uncovery session at uncoverysession.com. Lead with vision. Move with purpose. Create your future.

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Beate Chelette

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Maria Brinck

Guest

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