The Erotic as Leadership Power

What Audre Lorde Teaches Us About Leading From Within

In her essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde wrote:

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.”

For many leaders - especially Black women in positions of responsibility - leadership has long been defined through endurance. The expectation is to push through, hold it together, be competent, be strategic, and be strong. But Lorde invites us into something far more powerful. She invites us into the erotic.

Not the erotic as it is commonly misunderstood, flattened into sexuality or spectacle, but the erotic as life force. As deep feeling, and the body’s knowledge of truth. The erotic, as Lorde describes it, is the moment when something inside us says: Yes. This is aligned. This is alive. And once we experience that depth of knowing, she writes, we can require no less of ourselves. For leaders, this is revolutionary.

Leadership Has Been Trained to Distrust the Body

Many leadership cultures, especially institutional and nonprofit spaces reward disconnection.

We are praised for:

• being rational over relational

• efficiency over presence

• composure over authenticity

• productivity over vitality

The body becomes something to override, and the nervous system becomes something to silence. Our deepest feelings become something to manage privately so we can continue performing competence publicly. But when we sever leadership from the body, something essential is lost. We lose access to discernment, truth, and to the very energy that allows genuine change to occur. This is the power Lorde is pointing toward.

The Erotic is an Internal Compass

Lorde writes:

“When we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves…we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense.”

To live from within outward is to lead differently. It means decisions are not made solely from strategy or obligation, but from felt alignment. Leaders who are in relationship with their erotic intelligence notice things earlier. They feel when a partnership is misaligned, sense when a project no longer carries life, and recognize when an organization is replicating the same patterns it claims to challenge.

The erotic sharpens perception and makes mediocrity difficult to tolerate. Once you have experienced work, collaboration, or leadership that feels alive, it becomes almost impossible to return to the numbness of performing leadership without soul.

The Erotic and the Courage to Disrupt Old Scripts

Lorde reminds us:

“Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.”

This line speaks directly to leadership in our current moment. Many institutions talk about transformation, but what often occurs is simply a change of characters. New leaders, same dynamics. New language, same exhaustion. New strategy, same unspoken hierarchies. The erotic disrupts this.

Because when we lead from the erotic - from embodied truth - we can feel when something is hollow. We can feel when we are being asked to perform progress rather than create it. And that feeling becomes a source of energy. Not just to survive systems. But to change them.

Erotic Leadership Requires Self-Respect

The erotic, Lorde tells us, teaches us to require more from ourselves. This is not indulgence, this is self-respect.

Self-respect means:

• refusing to numb ourselves in work that drains life

• refusing to call burnout “commitment”

• refusing to participate in leadership cultures that reward disembodiment

• refusing to shrink the depth of our feeling in order to remain palatable

It also means telling the truth. Even when that truth is inconvenient and disrupts expectations. Even when it changes the shape of relationships, because the erotic teaches us something profound - vitality is a form of integrity.

Leadership That Is Alive

When leaders reconnect to the erotic dimension of their lives, leadership changes. Decision making becomes clearer, boundaries become more precise, and collaboration becomes more honest. Creativity and joy thrive. And perhaps most importantly, energy returns. Because the erotic is not simply about feeling deeply. It is about living fully enough that our work carries life within it. Individuals, teams, and communities will feel that. Organizations led from that place begin to move differently - they stop performing transformation and start to embody it.

A Quiet Question

Audre Lorde’s writing leaves us with a quiet but powerful question: Where in your leadership are you settling for numbness?

And where might the erotic, your deepest aliveness and your truest knowing be asking you to require more?_____________________________

Between the Breath:

Place one hand on your body and take a slow breath. Ask yourself: Where in my work do I feel most alive?

Then ask: What would leadership look like if I allowed that aliveness to guide me more often?

Stay with whatever arises. That place is not indulgent, nor is it impractical. It is information. It is power. It is the beginning of leadership that moves from within outward. Selah.

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Between the Breath: Essays on Rest, Leadership & Listening

Between the Breath is a space for reflection on rest, leadership, and the practice of listening in a culture shaped by urgency. The essays here draw from somatic therapy, embodied practice, and systems-level inquiry. It is not a place for quick answers or tidy conclusions. It is a place to slow down enough to notice what is already present - in the body, in our work, in the systems we inhabit. For more information about our work, please visit: www.selahsomatictherapyandyoga.com