This week’s excerpt from Insubordinate features the Temptress, one of “twelve timeless female archetypes reimagined and refreshed with stories of literary and everyday women who fought, cajoled, commanded, schemed, or blasted their way free of the chains that bound them.” (Want to know your archetype? There’s a quiz!)
Chapter 1 presents Bizet’s Carmen and my former colleague Caroline as examples of the Temptress. She fits beautifully with our Valentine’s Day themes of love, risk, and the sexual soul. –Jocelyn
… She is not a dominatrix in thigh-high boots or a sugar-baby in a pushup bra. Indeed, the Temptress wears whatever she likes—though she won’t hesitate to flaunt her physical assets, if doing so will help her attract the type of attention she wants from whom she wants. Her main characteristic, as I’ve said, is her daring: not only in matters of erotic love but in the whole sphere of personal relationships. We might call her a daredevil of human connection.
Such a daredevil was Caroline, a marketing executive at the consulting firm where I worked beginning in 1989. Caroline had lustrous dark hair, a wide smile, and an infectious laugh. She had nice legs, which from time to time she would encase in fishnet hose. (While nylons or tights were standard professional wear for women back then, fishnets certainly were not.) A Harvard Business School alumna, she was acknowledged by all to be a brilliant mind and was never shy about taking credit for successes. One of my first memories of her occurred a few weeks after I’d started at the company, at an all-staff gathering in the lobby of our Boston headquarters. Our CEO was running through the results for the quarter, and when he announced the goal-beating rollout of a new product, Caroline yelled out: “That one’s mine!” Nothing about my team or ours—just mine. Pretty self-centered, right? But her tone was so happy, so unselfconsciously exuberant, that the braggadocio didn’t seem to matter.
Caroline’s daredevil nature showed up in numerous ways. She relished pushing boundaries and having them pushed by others. I remember the time I attended an internal training session that she was leading; this was back in the days of flipcharts as visual aids—no PowerPoint—and she was up at the easel making her presentation when suddenly (or so it seemed) she recalled a funny story. A few years back, she told us, she had been leading a similar session in that very same conference room. She had been giving her usual spiel, turning the flipchart sheets without looking at them, when all at once every mouth in the audience fell open. “What?” she asked. People pointed at the easel. She turned to look, and—oh my!—pasted on the sheet was a large, seminude magazine photo. A couple of her colleagues had stuck it there as a prank. I recall how, as she told this story, she mimed her own shock, leaning back and throwing up her hands with fingers splayed. “What a riot!” she said, chortling. “They really got me!” We all laughed along.
Just as often, she was the prankster. She was always one of the stars of the company’s annual show, the Follies, not only leading and writing lyrics for a spoofy acapella quintet called The Five Whys, but also appearing in skits that sometimes pushed the limits, shall we say, of corporate decorum.
It was a different era, of course; today, most shenanigans like that are out of bounds, and rightly so. But even back then, it was interesting: although there were plenty of eye-rolls and the occasional catty comment about Caroline’s over-the-top behavior, she was universally respected, even loved, by her team, her clients, and really everyone in her orbit. “The way she acted was unorthodox sometimes,” said a colleague of mine, “but I never felt manipulated or put down. She made you feel like she really cared about you. Some people are all about results, but I felt she led with relationships. She used relationship energy to get results.”
Relationship energy. It’s a perfect term for the Temptress’s main tool, which she wields intentionally (or perhaps instinctually), directing it as a spotlight on this person and that. A star, they say, is someone who makes you feel as if he or she is performing for you alone—just you, among hundreds in the theater—and Caroline had that star quality. When she shone her spotlight on you it felt good, if a little unsettling. She was, my colleague said, the original close-talker: she would invade your personal space, putting a hand on your back or shoulder. She would hold eye contact a few seconds longer than appropriate. She would nod and smile as if you were the most fascinating person she’d ever met. All of this gave you the sense you were special; that, like Corporal Don José, you had been chosen by somebody exciting, somebody big.
Though Caroline’s attitude could have a sexual buzz, it didn’t always. In 2010, some twelve years after she had left to start her own firm, I ran into her again. I had recently coauthored my first leadership book, and I’d been invited along with a couple of other authors to give a talk to the Harvard Business School Alumni Association. Caroline was chairing the panel discussion that followed. We hadn’t seen each other in all that time, and I didn’t expect her to take notice of me beyond what would be expected for professional courtesy; she was now a successful CEO, on the verge of selling the firm she’d founded, and in any case our paths hadn’t crossed much back in the day. But when the event was over and we speakers were mingling with the guests, I got cornered by a very persistent woman who wanted to tell me all about her job search. I’d been standing there for ten minutes as the woman talked on about her qualifications, and I guess I was looking a bit desperate, for suddenly I felt someone at my side. It was Caroline.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, beaming at the job hunter, “I just have to introduce Jocelyn to mumble-mumble.” She tucked her arm through mine and led me away. After a few steps she leaned in even closer and whispered in conspiratorial fashion, “I’m saving you.”
And boy, I felt saved. Not only that, but I felt I had a new best friend. Like Carmen with Don José, Caroline had tossed the flower at my feet, singling me out for attention. If she was merely amusing herself, I didn’t care. I’d received plenty of applause for my speech, but applause couldn’t compare to her arm linked with mine as she took me off, whispering gleefully in my ear.
Our stint as besties didn’t last long. We walked around the room together for a bit, chatting of this and that. She introduced me to a few people, talking me up as “brilliant, such an expert, have you read her book?” Then she had to go, and she pressed her card on me as she told me to call her “any time! We’ll have drinks!” I knew I’d never call, no more than she would. The Temptress is a creature of the moment; her spotlight shines and moves on. But while you’re in its light, you feel special. Are you her best friend, her crush, a member of her secret club? It doesn’t matter. You’re in. And you know it’s going to be mad fun.
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Insubordinate (Amplify Publishing, 2023) is available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book. The beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations of the archetypes are by Inbar Fried. Here’s her rendition of the Temptress:
