Are you a brave, confident, and assertive female leader? Do you sometimes feel reluctant to reach out to potential clients or post a video or selfie on social media? Do you struggle with giving hard feedback to team members or colleagues? And how about boundaries?

These are all areas where I’ve noticed some women have a gap in the masculine energy in their businesses. Isn’t this ironic? In our last episode, I talked about how we can have so much harsh, hard-driving masculine energy and be so hard on ourselves, striving, berating ourselves, acting too much like a mean boss. I advocated that we need to balance it by bringing in more of the feminine.

But there’s a place in our businesses both for healthy masculine and feminine energy—not men and women, but masculine and feminine qualities. Today, I’m going to be talking about the beneficial masculine quality of father energy, also known as the Father Archetype. Now, not your father, but archetypal father.

In this episode, I’m going to cover what exactly the Father Archetype is, why it’s effective to bring it into your business, five specific areas in which you might bring it in, and how to access it. So you can be more productive, decisive, and effective - and of course more profitable, and joyful.

You’ll hear from the expert who works with my clients and me on archetypes, and from a couple of my clients with their takes on the Father Archetype and their relationship to this energetic signature.

INTRO: I’m Samantha Hartley and this is The Feminine Advantage: A Six Part Series of Profitable Joyful Consulting that tackles key challenges for women consultants. This is episode two. If you’ve never heard this podcast before, this series is a great place to start. Be sure to favorite or follow on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a thing. And if you’re a regular listener, welcome back. This series was created especially for you.

Now, archetypes can seem really theoretical, so I wanted to ground this with some references: We have many examples in pop culture of FA whether it’s classics like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, or more modern examples like Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation or Ted Lasso.

My favorite version is from a film I adore, called *Master and Commander*. It’s an extremely masculine film, basically war at sea, and Russell Crowe is the commander in question. He’s so wonderful in this movie—he’s paternal, strong, decisive, and fair. He exudes a calm in the chaos, balancing toughness with a deep sense of responsibility and care for his crew. All of the men on board his ship—there are men and boys (there are children working on the ship)—they feel loyal to him and safe in his presence. And that, to me, is our opportunity with Father Archetype to create safety for our feminine aspects.

I remember one of the first times I experienced this energy showing up in my business. I very often talk on this show and with my clients about grown-up conversations—the kind have when you sit down with a client during a contract negotiation, or with a team member who isn’t performing, or in any situation where you need to be direct, and serious, and mature.

This was years ago—within the first five or six years of my consulting business. I was working on a project with a client—the specifics aren’t important—but the way I arranged payments with this particular client was in three installments: one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end of the work. Now, if you’ve listened to this show, you know I highly discourage project-based work and never, ever structure your payments this way. But this was before I knew all that. Everything was on schedule in the work with the client, so I had an appointment to go pick up that second payment.

Context: these were very lean times for me and my business. I always say I understand what it’s like for my clients who experience a revenue roller coaster because I’ve been there myself. So this was peak revenue roller coaster time, and when I went to get this payment, I really needed the money—like, really, really needed the money. This was pretty much the only money that I had coming in, and I had bills that were literally due. I needed to leave there with this money. Not doing so was not an option.

So as you may suspect by now,, after our meeting, when I asked him for the check, which took a lot of courage, he looked very surprised and said, “Why would I give you a second payment? You haven’t done anything.” This was a person who worked in buildings and properties and was used to seeing visible evidence of work like foundations and walls. And I, as a person who works with strategies and plans, had been doing tons of work in brand discovery, customer interviews, and with his team on all kinds of things.

I said, “Here are the specific things that I have done.” And he said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Here’s what we’ve done.” Inside my head, I started to realize, I need to get paid. He does not want to pay me, and I have to get very intentional about how I’m handling this conversation.

Archetypes are universal patterns or symbols that represent human qualities, or themes that appear across different cultures, and situations. They help us understand and relate to different aspects of ourselves and others. Examples include the Hero, Father/Mother, the Warrior/Lover, Goddess, King/Queen, Advocate, Alchemist Victim, Fool.

In past episodes, we’ve talked about Saboteur Archetype and also Hermit and Child. I’ll link to those in the show notes. And I may have mentioned in the last episode that one of my archetypes is Warrior. So sitting with my client that day, I had a flash of anger and thought, do I want to bring in my Warrior Archetype and argue and get fierce?

Well, since this client is a former professional athlete, among other things, that did not seem like a good idea. And honestly, in a situation where there’s disagreement but not necessarily conflict, it didn’t seem like the right element to bring in.

I also have Teacher Archetype, which you hear me use on the show all the time. I'm teaching you how to do things. We're covering curriculum, I'm giving assignments, but this didn't seem like a moment when I should begin to teach this client about the way contracts work–that we have an agreement at the beginning that you’re going to do this thing, and then we get here and see this is the part where you do that thing. That didn’t seem wise.

I also have Queen Archetype, and that one is very much about the good of the realm and being a confident, graceful, poised authority, having the vision for what all of us can be, and empowering the people I work with to achieve that vision. And being in both service and leadership, it might seem like that’s a perfectly reasonable archetype to bring to this meeting, but it didn’t feel like grace and poise were going to get me where I needed to be in this situation.

So who did I need here? I needed to embody someone who was, above all, dispassionate, unemotional, rational. I needed a calm, masculine energy. I also needed to be direct—to basically tell the client what I expect. I needed responsible masculine energy because by holding the responsible masculine energy, I could invoke and evoke a similar energy from my client. And I needed to be pragmatic. Father Archetype brings the structure in a specific, fact-based aspect of myself.

In that moment, I kind of flipped into all of those qualities, and I had a very calm, pragmatic conversation with my client. Inside, I was freaking out. I had that voice saying, “Oh, my God! What happens if this doesn’t work, and I leave here without money?” But I was able to quiet that voice and communicate very clearly with the client: either we agree that the work has been done and he pays for the work, or we don’t agree—and we will part ways. And so in that moment, very calmly—not a threatening ultimatum, just a very clear path of: you do option A or option B. And that day, I left with a check for that second payment, and the rest of the work with that client went according to plan. It turned out just fine. I got paid. Everyone was very happy. It was the kind of lesson you don’t want to learn more than once.

This is why I talk with my clients about Father Archetype because it’s a specific set of masculine qualities that so many women benefit from in business. A lot of my clients immediately identify with it if I ask them, “Do you have Father Archetype?” They have a visceral yes to it. So let’s understand it better.

To me the defining qualities of father arch are that it is calm, direct, dispassionate, and decisive - it’s like an ISTJ or ESTJ if you know Myers Briggs. It is generative (producing offspring, whether that’s literal children, business ideas, or making money), it protects, guides and supports the feminine.

I want to introduce you to Christopher Carrick, a spiritual director who works with my clients and me on our archetypes and on business as a spiritual path. He’s also my husband. When I spoke with Christopher about this topic, he started here:

Christopher:

I think for your audience, the value of talking about mother and father archetype is that we come from oneness to this realm, which is about duality. Everything has an opposite and everything is defined by its opposite. So the question is, will you polarize or will you cooperate with that other? There is me and there is other, and I also contain both. So it's gonna define my relationship to other, both externally and internally. For entrepreneurs, the relevance is this is a creative endeavor that they're engaged in. And these are the two, two halves of the creative force, the mother and the father. They are more specific versions of masculine feminine.

I thought it was fascinating to consider both mother and father for a minute in the ways those energies could show up in business.

One way to think about it is that the mother archetype is about the inner realm, and the father archetype is about the outer realm. So when you put them together, you get wholeness, right? The mother is about the internal creative process, the gestating, and, the birthing. But also if you think of the home, she's about keeping the internal environment safe, nurturing and loving. the father archetype is about enabling that to take place, making sure that it's safe, making sure that it has resources, making sure that, it has everything it needs, and helping the creation, the project to grow and, give it guidance as it proceeds into the outer world.”

There's the issue of the outside world versus the inside world. So the masculine is gonna be about negotiating the outside world. The feminine’s gonna be guidance, but it's gonna be guidance about getting in touch. It's about self care. It's about what conversation you're having. The one that's about relationships, that's about emotions, that's about passionate creativity. That's gonna be more of the feminine conversation. The masculine's gonna be more like structural and maintenance and procedures and concepts.

So the masculine energy here is providing a safe container and resources - including earning the money! - for the feminine to exist inside of, to create and grow. If you’re queasy about the money part of your business, finance and numbers - that’s an opportunity to bring in more masculine and possibly father.

Father versus Mother Archetype is mother is going to be more heart centered. Father is going to be more mind centered. Now, it doesn't mean there's no emotion in father, but one of its strengths is to step back, to have objectivity, to have a healthy distance or detachment so that it can make sound judgments that aren't, overly emotionally fraught. That kind of overseeing big picture-holding role is really appropriate.

I love several things here: that healthy distance and detachment which gives us objectivity. Overseeing the big picture and providing a structure and container for it is vital. And then there is action!

If like the feminine creates the dream, then the masculine does the execution, The feminine's job is to say, here's what it could be, and the masculine says, then this is what we would have to do. That's the action part. Also courage to take action, going out and facing the outside world, doing the difficult thing.

Mm hmm doing difficult things …

Related to that, I mentioned five ways to use Father Archetype in your business, and this is the first one: A difficult thing – OUTREACH

My client Kristen had been gestating outreach messages to her network. She’d carefully selected who she’d contact, when and with what message to get their attention and interest. She’d considered the contacts’ POV “What’s in it for them?” But then… paralysis. Why? The potential for rejection felt too vulnerable. She started questioning herself, her strategy, her value. Have you ever felt this way?

This is the feminine, empathetic aspect who did the creative part of the work but is now stuck. Here’s Christopher again:

To me, that's one of the big advantages of archetypes is, as I said to many of your clients, many of the problems we experience are when we don't have the right aspect of us in the right job. We send a part of us that isn't good at doing this to go do the negotiating or to do the boundary setting, or to set the vision. When you have the wrong aspect, the one that isn't designed to do that, then things are gonna get all thrown off.

All thrown off - Because outreach is a job for a different archetype. It’s the perfect job for Father Archetype. I have walked countless clients through this: “just hit send, just hit post.” I feel shy, I don’t want to be a burden, will they be annoyed, will I seem needy?

If you access that Father energy and suddenly the same people are like, OK done! Then they’re elated - and here’s Kristen texted to me a few minutes after that: OMG, I heard back from 3 of the 5 and all said yes to talk with me. I was like of course they did.

So in a bit we’ll go into how to access that masculine aspect. But I wanted to talk about the second appropriate place for that Father energy: contracts/negotiations and boundaries. ← You feel how everything here has a kind of legal vibe to it. My clients and I spend a lot of time here. I model this for them when they sign on with me. I walk them through the agreement word by word, face to face. I’m in full Father mode when I do this: because I want us to be clear and open and direct about everything before we start. If you set clear boundaries at the beginning, you avoid 99% of problems. In my imagination my Father Archetype is a lawyer.

Your takeaway here is that action step: always read your proposals and agreements aloud to the client in the meeting when you’re reviewing and signing them. When you talk about outcomes, deliverables, scope, timing - all the boundaries get named and everyone hears them. Can’t pretend later that you didn’t hear them. But if you email a proposal or an agreement and you can expect something to go off the rails during that engagement.

The THIRD area is one I struggled with. I’m such an empath, and a P on Myers Briggs that it was really difficult for me to make decisions. I could see all the sides and sometimes when I was in my feminine energy, they all felt valid and persuasive. Christopher explains how he saw this evolve in me:

Christopher:

When father came online for you, when it came to consciousness, I certainly noticed that it gave you a way to unemotionally consider questions, to have that distance. I think rational is one of the keywords, right? So when female goes out of balance, it gets too irrational. It's great for making those kind of intuitive, heart-centered choices. That's one of the big questions when you're saying, who do I wanna bring online for this decision? Is this an intuitive choice or is this a look I'm just looking at the numbers. This is really the answer. I know you don't like it, but this is the answer.

And so, you know, for you, once you see the answer, once it presents itself, you have a lot of clarity. And then I think a lot of the, struggle goes away because you know the truth. And then you can work with it. And so father gives you that. It, it's a great choice to make and I saw you using it when things felt scrambled and you could sit back, give yourself time, observe, and let the information organize itself, or there's a complicated decision.

And again, the father could look at it and say, uh, look, this just doesn't work. That's the answer. You can have feelings about it and thoughts about it, but this is the answer. It just is. And that's it became extremely expedient. But again, I think it has everything to do with both of those aspects being online so that you're not using it just because that's the one you have access to. You're using it because it's the appropriate choice for this situation. When you felt emotionally confused, that becomes a really great indicator for you, Hey, bring father in line.

My feminine is amazing at intuitive decisions but when things got emotional or complicated, I got stuck. So there’s a trigger for you that you need to bring in more masculine: I’m stuck, I’m ruminating, I can’t decide. That is often a sign of the feminine out of balance.

If someone's listening to this and they're thinking, I get this archetypal idea, but I don't understand like how I would dial that up on demand. What would they need to do?

I'll give you two answers. One is, imagine the archetype that you think would, be required, would serve you in this situation. And imagine it, start to picture it and then sort of play, act with it. You know, you did a thing with Father, which was like creating a pose. imitate your idea of it and then see if that starts to generate some of the energy of it.

it's acting as if and seeing if it follows. Think of somebody who you think epitomizes this, and then just pretend you're them by yourself. what would so-and-so say or do and see if you can start to stir that energy. The other end of it, I would say is look at what's already going on.

See who's there. So look at what's setting you off, what's bothering you, what you keep ranting about, what you can't stop thinking about, what works, what you love. And then say, well, who is that? What qualities is this thing, embodying? Is it showing me? , that can start you on the path to recognizing who's already there, So the archetypes that are in shadow or that are in the wrong job or, need to be healed, those will be your points of pain. They will show up, they will aggravate you, and they will get in your way because they're trying to get you to stop and see them. And then the ones that are thriving too, they're ready made.

So just take a minute and look at them and say, who is that? What does that remind me of, of the huge realm of all the archetypes it could possibly be. Which, do I think this is, who did I get this from? Who is that? Like who does that remind me from? Is this me being my mother?

Is this being my mother when she was in her queen, et cetera, et cetera.

I began accessing my Father Archetype a few years through the pose Christopher mentioned. I picture a classic Father figure in a tweed blazer by the fireplace, looking out the window. In my modern take, I stand with a mug of tea, instead of a pipe, my arm on an imaginary mantle, overlooking my garden. But the other thing he mentions about looking at who’s there. Years before this -when I had that meeting with the non-paying client, I had to find that energy (in seconds, by the way) and channel some serious uncompromising aspect of myself instead of the scared girl I felt like. So both ways, a pose or finding it within myself, have worked for me. Try them out yourself!

The fourth area, where I most often help clients tap into their healthy masculine energy, is people management—whether it’s clients, teams, subcontractors, or even family. Dealing with people can be messy and often overlaps with other areas like decisions, outreach, and boundaries.

For example, my client Emma, who’s highly empathetic and deeply connected to her emotions, felt nervous about a big meeting— it was a pitch for a huge client and just minutes before the meting, she found out all the top brass were coming. I guided her to get into this energy, to practice the conversation with me, and use the mantra: "Calm and confident." (She nailed her presentation and got the deal!)

My client Kara Levy is a Leadership Consultant specializing in communications for C-suite executives and Founders. I asked her how she works on this with her clients:

Kara:

One of the things that you've shared on your podcast before and also with me, is how Father Archetype looks for you and you have sort of a vision or an imagining of what that might be and how that person might act. That's really the same thing we do with my clients, except that rather than thinking about a persona, for example, a wise father standing at the mantle with a cup of tea, we might ask them if you were embodying confidence or boundary setting, what are some of the things that you would actionably do? Maybe you would put your point first and only offer one reason, rather than going into a defensive positioning of offering more. Maybe you would decide ahead of time what's non-negotiable for you to be able to offer the highest value to your customer and so on.

This last area is the most strategic and where I’ve benefited so much: Getting It Done! Father Archetype is about action without overthinking or self-doubt. It’s the ultimate JFDI and make it happen. Why is it so effective? I’ll let Bofta Yimam, Visibility Expert and Founder of StoryLede share her experience.

Bofta:

In running a business, Father Archetype steps in to get things done effectively and efficiently. I think of it when I'm creating processes and systems, it's all father to me. There's not the nurturing in there, there's no mother in there. it's like how am I gonna get this done so this person understands that I don't have to answer 40 questions 'cause it's all in the process documents. That's definitely father archetype showing up for that, and I actually think I'm good at that and I never would've thought that I would be that person, creating a business and creating processes and being good at that. I never would've thought that in my life. Like, what? Wait, what? Why would you? But then I realized it's because of what I want and what I want is to grow. What I want is to be able to bring on more team members, bring on more clients, and that means I need processes. As a father archetype gets it done every time.

And I think the father knows, maybe, and I might be misstepping here 'cause I don't, I don't know the archetypes as formally as you do, but I feel like Father Archetype knows what he wants. So, okay, great. I want that house with that thing and that thing, and I'm gonna find a way to get that thing. And I think that's very much father.

YES: he’s that part of us that is Goal-driven, structured and action taking: that’s the masculine in action.

So we’ve covered a lot here but before we end I want to zoom out for some cultural context. Last time, in the first episode of the series, I talked about how we see the feminine rising. We’re seeing it on the world stage with more women billionaires. We have a woman running for President. We’re seeing so many more CEOs and world leaders are women, and that’s transforming our collective relationship to the feminine.

We are also simultaneously reevaluating the masculine. What are masculine qualities? What does it mean to be masculine? What does it mean to be a man? I think we have a big opportunity to heal collectively—to heal the masculine—so that it doesn’t need to be toxic. It doesn’t need to be violent or even aggressive. It doesn’t need to be dominating in order to lead. It doesn’t need to be fearless and emotionless to be worthy of respect and love.

The expression I’ve heard a lot lately is about big dad energy. That makes me smile—the idea of it—it’s wonderful.

I want to talk about Big Dad Energy that we were talking about in the media right now. What do you take Big Dad Energy to mean?

Sure. It's an opportunity for healing. It's a contrast from the wounded masculine that we're experiencing. Because even if you're not the worst version of father or masculine in our culture, you're affected by it. I was raised in the context of this, don't be weak, don't show emotions.

It's not okay to do this. And so I had that wound. So seeing it, actually experiencing it is… It's almost like it shows you what it could be. It gives you permission to be that. It also gives you… It allows you to receive it. You can be fathered by watching a television show where here's that wonderful father energy that you wish you had.

You can absorb that and you can imitate it. So it puts that vibration into the world in a way that we can access, because otherwise we only have the negative examples and we only experience what we wish it was in its absence or as its absence.

And can you describe what, if we think about Big Dad Energy, what are the positive qualities of that Big Dad Energy?

I think it's approachable. It feels big and strong, but safe, like accessible, somebody you can go to that is stable, welcoming, warm.

And I think in a way, can make it better. I think going to the mother energy is saying, you have a big feeling and it's okay to feel that. And going to the dad energy is saying, you're feeling a certain way and you can be with me and it'll be okay and maybe we'll even have to do something about it. But it creates a kind of like everything is right in the world because I have the confidence and safety that comes from being with him.

“It puts that vibration into the world in a way that we can access.” The way we as women can help heal the masculine in the world is by balancing our feminine energy with it - modeling healthy masculine behaviors and qualities in ourselves for the women AND men in our lives.

Here is a Coaching Question for you:

What specific situation in your business would benefit from a more structured, fatherly approach?

And a Journal Prompt:

Think about positive role models of the Father Archetype, both real and fictional - a supportive professor you had maybe or Ted Lasso. Which of their qualities can you pull into and use in your business?

And an Affirmation: I have a strong, confident aspect within myself. Now here you can substitute whatever words, whatever these qualities are that you wanna bring forward. I have a direct responsible aspect within myself. I have a decisive, fair aspect within myself, et cetera, whichever you choose to bring forward.

I hope this episode has been thought provoking and will inspire you to pursue the balance of feminine with the masculine aspects of Father Archetype in your business.

Before you go, be sure to visit SH.com for free reseouces to help you grow your business. And based on what you heard today, that Million Dollar client proposal template, that might be a good one to download.

And with that, I’m wishing you a profitable and joyful consulting business

Thanks for listening. As a thank you for being a part of my community, I’m sharing free, exclusive resources to help expand your consulting business. Head to samanthahartley.com/super to access bonus content and tools from the show. For a complete transcript of this episode and all Profitable Joyful Consulting episodes, visit samanthahartley.com.