June 17, 2025, will go down in history. Not only because the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected for the first time in 131 years a woman as president. Nor just because this woman, Kirsty Coventry, is also the first African person to hold that position. It will go down in history because this woman chose how to begin her mandate with this statement:
"A spider's web is only strong when all its threads are intertwined."
And sometimes, a metaphor is more revolutionary than an entire speech.
The shift in axis: from vertical power to a horizontal network
Coventry did not arrive with empty promises or handbook formulas. He arrived with a powerful idea: that true power is built in network, not alone.
That image — a spider web that only holds together if all its threads are connected — challenges the classical way of thinking about leadership. Because it questions the myth of the "individual leader," omniscient, infallible, and isolated.
Coventry says it without saying it:
Leading is not about holding a position; it's about creating a structure that allows others to grow as well.
And that look is not accidental. It is the result of a career marked by collaboration: as an athlete, as a minister, as a mother, and now as a global figure in sports and diplomacy.
What does this change mean for those of us who work for purpose-driven leadership?
In the business, institutional, and social ecosystem, the Coventry metaphor should raise several alarms (and opportunities):
- How do we lead our teams?
Are we still evaluating results from an individual perspective, or do we understand that real value arises from networking, cross-impact, and what one contributes to another? - What structures are we building?
Pyramidal and exclusive, or open and multiplier? - ¿Quiénes siguen fuera de las decisiones clave?
Because if we don't weave with all the threads —genders, cultures, generations— our network will always be partial... and therefore weak.
Women are not just arriving. We are changing the map.
What Kirsty Coventry has done is more than symbolic. He broken more than just a ceiling. He pointed out the new ground on which he wants to build.
And it has done so not through confrontation, but through collaboration.
With the certainty that to lead is also to invite, intertwine, sustain, and multiply.
At Women On Board, we know that the power of a network is not measured by its size, but by its ability to sustain.
And the real changes — the ones that last — are not born from isolation, but from honest and structured connection between people who believe in something bigger than themselves.
"Let's build a network together where we all have a voice."
And that, exactly that, is the kind of leadership we want for the future.