Leadership Tea
On Leadership Tea, we talk about what it takes to reach the executive level, and how to thrive when you get there. Powerful leaders share their journeys, insights, and triumphs in conversations with hosts Shelby Smith-Wilson and Belinda Jackson Farrier.
Join us every other Wednesday to be inspired by the unvarnished stories of amazing executives who know what it's like to be "the only" at the table and who have succeeded regardless. They have proven leadership experience in their respective fields, from international affairs to the private sector to academia, and want to help others create their own success stories.
Leadership Tea
Accepting Change & Reimagining Your Future | S2 EP7
Imagine facing an unexpected shift in your career trajectory just as you reached the peak of your success. Our conversation aims to equip you with strategies to embrace resilience and clarity, even amid uncertainty. We discuss the non-linear path of grief and the critical need for community and therapeutic support during such times.
We encourage you to reimagine your future beyond the confines of previous roles and to let go of any hubris that might hold you back. Hiring the right coach can be pivotal, whether you're refining your resume, adjusting to new realities, or scaling your business. It's crucial to learn from failures and keep your future goals at the forefront, even when faced with setbacks.
We publish new episodes every other Wednesday.
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Learn more about us at stirringsuccess.com
Hey everybody, thanks for joining us today. We're here with a special episode to talk about something that we've been reflecting on a lot the last couple of weeks, which is how do you manage change for yourself when your organization's needs have shifted and yet you are at the height of your career. You are really at the pinnacle of your career. You're so close to the very top and, for some reason, business needs have changed, policies have changed, politics have changed have changed, policies have changed, politics have changed, and your opportunities and, in some respects, the career path that you're on have just been cut short, snuffed out through no negligence on your part. It's just over.
Speaker 1:And how do you deal with that? And how do you move forward when you weren't even, you weren't planning for this, and little did you realize that your identity is so wrapped up in this? And so I think today we want to. We don't have all the answers. Today we want to. We don't have all the answers, but we want to talk through some of the steps and some of our thoughts on how to move forward and get clarity and take action when you are so I mean I'm going to say angry and saddened and disappointed and broken about what the system has done, even despite all of the sacrifices that you've made.
Speaker 2:Yes, we've been talking about kind of the stages of grief when things go wrong. Or, as you said, belinda, the ground rules have changed. You know, things have have happened unexpectedly that are basically forcing you to pivot, and we've been thinking a lot about some of our friends and colleagues, some of whom are at the age where it's time to retire, but they weren't necessarily ready or thinking I should be planning my exit gradually For a lot of people that we know. Some of them are facing pink slips, some of them are facing retirement due to, again, politics shifting. Some of them are choosing to retire because the dynamics have changed in such a way where they feel that they need to move on and contribute their talents elsewhere. But, regardless of the circumstances, belinda and I have been thinking about what are some of the things, what are some pieces of advice that we may have for people who are facing these types of circumstances, and the first thing that we wanted to talk about was you need to give yourself space and grace to grieve.
Speaker 2:It's perfectly normal to be upset or, as you said, belinda, to even experience some rage, some anger or feelings of being despondent, but it's important, as you're making, you know, a life change.
Speaker 2:Particularly at this moment in time, it's important to grieve, especially if you've been doing something for decades.
Speaker 2:We underestimate a lot of us in our careers the fact that you are in relationship with your job. We don't like to think of it that way, but if you've been doing something for decades, you're essentially in a relationship with the institution where you work or the company or the firm where you work, and so it's natural to feel a sense of loss if suddenly you're no longer in relationship, if suddenly you're thinking about walking away. That takes a mental toll and you need to give yourself space to grieve the loss. Especially if you were in a career that you loved, if you were doing something that you were passionate about, or if you were doing something where your whole identity was tied to the thing that you were doing, to your career. It's normal to feel not just that you've lost something, but to feel a sense of loss, to feel like the rug has been pulled from underneath you and you don't quite know how to find your way or how to figure out what your next moves are going to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would just build on that, shelby, by saying those stages of grief are not linear, like you can bounce around them. Today you're okay, today you're numb, tomorrow you're angry, like you missed out on important family and friend events. You stayed long hours. They said jump and you said how high and it was right there, like you were supposed to have this thing, and now it's just gone.
Speaker 1:So you need to give yourself time and space and permission to feel what you need to feel about that. But you also can't do that in isolation. This is where you need to, like, lean on your community, your therapist, your whoever. But, like it is important to feel the feelings, it is important to move on to next steps. But we can't get there fully until you have allowed yourself, with the support of the right people around you, to begin to work through those feelings. And some of the other stuff we're going to talk about will happen in parallel to this. But the heat of it, the most of it, the worst of it, you've got to go ahead and let yourself go through 100%, 100%.
Speaker 2:So, as you're processing, you know the various stages of grief, as you're processing the various stages of grief and as you take a moment to acknowledge what's going wrong and course correct, but you can't stay stuck, and so the point that I would make is, once you've given yourself a moment to grieve, you have a choice to make. Are you going to wallow in the grief, the disappointment, the what ifs you know, shoulda, coulda, woulda are you going to stay in a negative mindset or are you going to choose positivity? Are you going to continue to feel like woe is me, this really sucks. What do I do now? Woe is me, this really sucks. What do I do now? All of the negative emotions that are inevitable, frankly, but are you going to choose a negative mindset or are you going to choose winning?
Speaker 2:I think that is the key to anyone getting ready to make a pivot, getting ready to transition. You really have to train your mindset and train your emotions in a way that put you on the path of a positive trajectory, as opposed to operating from a sense of complete despair.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. I mean, I would build on that by saying, as you come out of grieving or the height of grieving, it's time to calm down, it's time to, like, take that you know deep breath and calm yourself enough to be able to make rational decisions. When we are making decisions from a place of panic, then it just puts us in this cycle of we're going to start making bad decisions, we're going to start making decisions out of desperation, out of anger, out of vengeance, and that doesn't put us in the space of winning. Turning it around will not happen immediately. Those are just facts. Around will not happen immediately. Those are just facts.
Speaker 1:It took you a long time to get here. It's going to take a minute to turn it around. And so, since we are now in this space of we have to make a change that we weren't expecting, but facts we have to make a change. Let's make it the right change. Let's not make it a change that's going to require us to be back in this place in a few months or a few years. So that's going to require us to take a moment and, like you said, what does winning look like? And calm ourselves.
Speaker 2:I completely agree, completely agree. I like what you said about not making decisions, you know, from a moment, from a place of panic. It reminds me of something that one of my coaches said to me recently no decision before it's time, mm-hmm. And as you're making decisions, make sure you're making them from a mental space of not running away from something, but towards something bigger.
Speaker 1:That's really important. Shelby Like not feeling like I'll show them right. They did this to me, but I'm gonna go get a bigger title somewhere or I'm gonna. I'm gonna go to some rival organization that will make them all jealous. Is that really what you needed?
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, in a way, you've been given a gift of a reset. If we were honest with ourselves, yes, you were about to get a prize. You were about to achieve the thing. You were about to get that promotion that you know, additional salary or compensation you were about to get something and now it's gone. But was that place actually? If we were honest, was it serving you? It probably wasn't, but we were probably telling ourselves everybody's proud of me. This is the thing, this is a great. Who turns this down? Who walks away from this? Right, of course I love this, da.
Speaker 1:There are other ways to do the parts that you love, and I guess I would add on that kind of going back to grieving be sure you're grieving what you're supposed to grieve, right, and not grieving like, oh, I was so close to great opportunities and they took it away from me and I've put in so much time, or maybe that's what you're grieving versus. I'm so upset about that title. Yeah, I'm so upset about that role. I'm so upset about that amount of compensation, that role, oh, I'm so upset about that amount of compensation. Maybe those are parts of it, but what's the real thing that you're upset about? Make sure we get clear on that.
Speaker 2:But I agree with you Focusing in on what does winning look like and making sure that, as we get focused on next steps, we're not in vengeful space are probably really important it comes to are you grieving the loss of a title, or are you grieving the time, the effort, the energy, the sacrifices, because that'll lead you down a different path towards the next thing, as opposed to focusing on other people's expectations or other people's definition of success for you, which is something that we've talked about in many other episodes. But I think it's a good segue to the third point that I had in mind. As people are thinking about pivots, you know you have to let go of the hubris. I think we all bring hubris to whatever it is that we're doing, especially if we've been doing something for a long time. Presumably, you know you've become good at your craft. You've become good at being a salesman, being a manager, being an executive, being a journalist, whatever it is that you do in life. If you've been doing it for a while, you're probably pretty good at what you do, and yet when it's time to pivot and make a transition, you really do need to be willing to let go of your hubris, to ask for help, and I'm thinking a lot about again, folks that I know who are retiring or are considering a change in career.
Speaker 2:No one can do anything by themselves, and no matter how long you know you've been an expert at the thing that you get paid to do. On a day-to-day basis, everyone needs help, whether you're starting out, whether you're in the middle of your career path, or whether you're facing the end, and especially if you're, you know, getting ready to move on to something completely different, you need help. Now's the time to be reaching out to ask people you know who perhaps have already pivoted from the thing that you're doing. How did you do it? How did you manage? What does it look like, you know, to be doing something different than the thing that you've dedicated your whole life to.
Speaker 2:Letting go of the hubris, I think, also means recognizing when it's time to move on. You know, some of the people that we know are kind of being forced, you know, to move from you know their current positions. And then others. They've grown so accustomed to doing the thing that they've been doing for so long that they have mental blinders when it comes to imagining doing something different. And that's a part of hubris too, just knowing like okay.
Speaker 1:And that's a part of hubris too just knowing like, okay, what does the next chapter look like and how can I reimagine myself going forward in a setting ambitious goals for yourself that you've played within the lines you stayed in the box that served you within this organization that now isn't a part of you anymore organization that now isn't a part of you anymore and to make it outside of an organization to land and really leverage this force to reset, you have to dream big Dream.
Speaker 1:What seemed impossible, what seemed impossible 60 days, 90 days ago. It feels very strange to say anything is possible now, right of what was not serving me before and what do I want to have in my life that is serving me in the future. If you don't kind of think through those steps and you don't ask yourself what is it not? What do I feel like I have to do because I'm in a panic? Oh, I got to pay these bills. I just got to like I got to take whatever I can get. Okay, we're just going to be right back here. I'm going to be right back here in like 12 months.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, oh, I just got to. I'm so mad I'm going to go figure out how I can come back in through a back door or go after them and go to a competitor.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that just keeps you in this cycle of like negativity and anger. And again we're just going to go right back here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you allowed yourself to dream the impossible, what does that look like? Actually, anything is possible. Anything is possible. You now have no barriers holding you back, and so how do we build towards that? How do we build towards it quickly? But if you're not clear on what you need and where you want to go, you're not going to find a new home or a new path that is stable, right or healthy. So it's not easy. When you have molded yourself to an organization for 10, 15, 20, 30 years, to an organization for 10, 15, 20, 30 years, it is very difficult to unlearn.
Speaker 1:Being small and being in a box, you think you were great, but really you were great within that context, right? So what are the great things that you bring to the table outside of that context? What are just your inherent great abilities? You know, when I left government, right I used to joke and tell people I'm really great at writing memos. That's not a capability statement, that's not. You can't just show up places. I also see people who are running around like well, you know, I just want to make a lot of money, I'm just going to go buy when I can and I deserve a big salary and a lot of money. Money comes at a cost it sure does. I learned Right. You can make a lot of money. That better be your full 100 priority, because you ain't doing nothing else. Yeah, um, you're not spending it it's working.
Speaker 1:So like dreaming about what you're going to do with this next chapter. And if you think about a good book, the next chapter isn't just a better rewrite of the previous chapter. The next chapter builds on what we learned in the last chapter and pushes the narrative forward. So if life is like a big, a really great novel, I don't want to read a remix of the last chapter. I'm going to put the book down. I need something new. So what are we writing?
Speaker 2:What are we writing? What are we writing? I love that. I love that Like what is the next chapter? It shouldn't be a rewrite. It shouldn't be a rewrite. It reminds me of something that we were talking about before we started recording. You know, when you think about the changing context in terms of you know, when you think about the changing context in terms of you know what's pushing people to have to shift and if the context has changed, the ground rules have changed, the politics, the organization, you can't keep forcing a square peg into a round hole and, as you're, you know, trying to figure out your way and writing the next chapter without rewriting. You know previous chapters.
Speaker 2:Who do you need on your team? That leads us to the next point. You know, if you haven't had a coach before, is now the time. You know. Maybe you need a thought partner. Maybe you need someone to help bring in renewed energy or just a new way of thinking about the possibilities, dreaming the impossible, as you said. How can you make that leap on your own? Perhaps you can't. Perhaps you need a coach on your own. Perhaps you can't. Perhaps you need a coach, a thought partner, a therapist, whatever I mean. You and I talk about our kind of life support teams, if you?
Speaker 2:will which consists of you know multiple coaches, you know an acupuncturist, you know a therapist, a dietician, you know whatever it is that your lifestyle and bank accounts can afford. It's good to have a team of support around you to help you as you're making these life-changing decisions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brunch is not therapy, yeah, it's not. A girl's trip is not therapy. It's helpful, it's good to have community, but it's not. It's not coaching, it's not therapy, it's not. You can't replace those things, but it's an important piece of the overall puzzle, right? And I think what you just said really ties nicely with my next know, my next thought, which was it's time to be. Once you've dreamed, gotten clear, you've got a plan, or you've got. Now it's time to be pragmatic, and so building that team that you've talked about is important to that.
Speaker 1:I could not have made the shifts that I have made in my professional life without a team of people behind me, helping me to see my blind spots, helping me to see my skills, helping me to articulate what I bring to the table, helping me to see my value, helping to push me to really think about what's possible. I think about this like a group coaching class that I took early last year, and on the first day of the class you had to set a goal for your business, and you know, mine was very small, it was just very and it was very qualitative. And the teacher was like hi, we're here for a business, like I need numbers, like, what are you going to do? And I was like, oh, that's so scary, that's impossible. Like, yes, I'm starting a business, but how will I ever reach like XYZ goals? Oh, they're scary, I don't want to set them. I was pushed to set them. I was pushed to do things that were outside of my comfort zone, that I thought were impossible.
Speaker 1:And as I look back over the last 12 months, the things that I thought 12 months ago were not possible are not only have I done them, not only were they fully possible. I now fully understand, with the help of this team, how small they were. And my next 12 months I've set like here's where I want to be. And actually I want to push that even 5x Right. Like that I. It has taken me time to learn, but with the help of the coaches, therapists, the acupuncturists, the stretching people, all of it that stretching really helps I have learned how to dream and then think critically about the steps I need to implement. Yeah To you know, dreaming sounds like something where you're just like oh, that gonna happen, let's go off in the clouds. No, no, like if you think about the greatest things that we work with every day, I mean even something like your smartphone. Can you imagine what the initial like meeting was, where somebody pitched that?
Speaker 1:so I I was like hey, I got this idea Like what if you had a computer in your hand? You know, like what, what have you had that? And what if it also made calls and what? I wonder what if it would have what? And people were probably like that's nuts.
Speaker 2:That's never going to happen, but here we are.
Speaker 1:Every day. Yeah, here we are Every day. Yeah, we couldn't do life without them. So I'm not saying that the next thing has to be technical for you. What is that thing that if you were standing around a conference room table and you told the people in your life, I want to do X, y, z, 24, 36, 48 months from now, and they would all be like that's crazy. Can you just like, go get a job at, like you know, a big box store and pay these bills? You know, maybe you're doing that while you're implementing the dream, but the dream is actually quite possible If you have the right team around you, if you have positive people around you who aren't dragging you down.
Speaker 1:If you don't stay weighted in what could have, should have, would have been what I deserved. They told me it was going to be this. The brochure said my career was going to do that. I earned it. They took you, got to. We've got to grieve and leave. Leave that back there. Leave that behind, yep, because we can't go forward without dragging you. It. They took you, gotta you. We've got to grieve and leave. Leave that back there behind, yep, because we can't go forward without dragging you exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:I love your points about dreaming and being pragmatic. The pragmatism is is so key, um, and I think it also ties into the final point that I wanted to make, which is to remember who you were before you became who you are. I think you know, especially as I'm thinking about people who are nearing the end of their careers and getting ready to move on to something different, and you know, empathizing with, with folks who just feel lost and disoriented, and I want to tell them you know, you were someone before you became attached to your career. Who was that person? What were the special qualities about that individual? You know, 15, 20, 30 years ago, and how can you get in touch with that person to help you on the journey to what comes next?
Speaker 2:As you said, Belinda, as you get ready to write the next chapter, how can you get in touch with? You know, Belinda or Shelby, the individual apart from the career that has shaped your identity? How do you do that? The career that has shaped your identity, how do you do that? You know, and maybe you need to start journaling. You know, get a coach. As we said, take some time off, have some quiet time. I've been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of meditating, a lot of setting aside time to just be, still setting aside time to just be, still to get in touch with you. Know myself, and it's something that I recommend to anyone, as you're really trying to get at the core of who you are and getting back in touch with the person. You know that you are again apart from your career or apart from the thing that other people associate the most with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you, Shelby, on that, and I can't say enough about how being still, which goes back to that idea of calming down, being still brings so much clarity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I also want to kind of go back to your point about hubris, like you have to be still and in that stillness you have to let go of that hubris to hear what your core purpose really is, what you should really be doing by really. My final point, which is, once you've calmed down and you've dreamed, you've been pragmatic about what needs to happen, okay, now it's time to do it. Yeah, like the only thing standing between you and greatness you and this pivot, you and this change is now just doing what needs to be done Making that first phone call, sending that email right, you know. Hiring the right coach at the right time.
Speaker 1:As I think about my own journey right, and it has been through many different kinds of coaches who met me where I was, at the right moments. Right, I initially had someone help me with my resume. That was a very clarifying process about what. When it's all said and done, what are my actual skills beyond writing memos? Right, and what does it mean to look for new opportunities? Right, I found someone who helped me. What does it mean to think, to accept where I am and think about my future? I've had coaches that have helped me get clear about that.
Speaker 1:How do I set up a business? How do I implement a business? How do I implement a business, how do I scale a business? Like different people for different moments, and there's no shame in having help, there's no shame in taking those first steps and those first steps failing. You try to make. You know, you try to get a job, you get to the final round and you didn't get it. Okay, you made it to the final round. Exactly, that sounds right. You know you tried to start a thing but it failed. Okay, a lot of people fail at the things that they try and they take those lessons and they start a thing.
Speaker 2:But it failed.
Speaker 1:Okay, a lot of people fail at the things, that they try and they take those lessons and they start a new thing. Yeah, like, even failure is forward progression. But what we can't do is stay stuck in the mud, mired in like self-pity and resentment. When I look at people that I don't really resonate with, that is something that they often a trait they often have. They're kind of living in a space of resentment. How is that serving them? I don't want to be like them. I'm going to keep moving forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agreed, and not letting you know your failures be final. They're not. They're just part of an ongoing process of evolution and growth, and learning Mm-hmm, a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:So I think, shelby, we've left folks with a few points to think about and even though I know that we're kind of reaching the end of the year, it feels like, well, everybody else is slowing down, well, everybody else is kind of hibernating. Right, yeah, it feels right in this moment to be different, yeah, and to say, yes, everyone else is falling back, everyone else is letting all of the noise around them bring them down and keep them in denial. Won't, won't I be so much happier in the spring if I continue to push forward, continue to ask myself the difficult questions and do the work now. Why am I putting the work off? Do the work now Get ahead of everyone, yeah, yeah. And really, most importantly it's you know whether I'm talking to people who are caught up in rumors about what might happen. You know the company's business needs are changing we're all going to be gone tomorrow. Or policies are changing we're all going to be gone tomorrow. We can changing. We're all going to be gone tomorrow. We can only control what we can control.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's. There's a fine line between between that pragmatism we talked about and denialism, and it's okay to like tune out that noise and just say like, yep, definitely, there are winds of change all around me. The winds of change have touched me. Even so, what am I going to do with it? What am I going to do with this wind? Am I going to build a windmill? Right, I'm going to get a wind farm. I'm going to build a sailboat.
Speaker 2:Am I going to be flying around in the wind or am I going to be like a tree and be rooted and planted?
Speaker 1:Be rooted? Or am I just going to be like let my hair blow in the wind and be sad that my hairstyle got messed up? Like what am I doing?
Speaker 2:what am I doing?
Speaker 1:and what you can't do is just like wrap like your hoodie around you tighter and just say there's no wind nothing to see here no, no, nothing to see here. There's no wind. It's just cold out, but there's no wind. It's just cold out, but there's no wind. I refuse to deal with the wind. Yeah, or tell yourself that, like you know, there's wind, but it's over there, so I'm just not going to act on it or deal with it, like the winds of change are about. So what are you going to do with?
Speaker 2:it. What are you going to do with it?
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be negative, just it's facts, it's so what are we gonna?
Speaker 2:do right, right, what's your mindset gonna be? What is your?
Speaker 1:mindset gonna be I like your. Are you gonna win? Are you gonna lose? What are you choosing? What are you choosing because, at this, other choices have been made for you. So what's the choice you're making?
Speaker 2:That's a good way to wrap up.
Speaker 2:I agree, hibernating strategically. We think that this is a moment for us to lean in more to the content that we're delivering. You know, just picking up on the signals that we're getting from our listeners and folks who enjoy the podcast and what we have to offer. So stay tuned for more episodes. Throughout the month of December, we have another guest episode coming up in conjunction with our strategic leadership, with a startup mindset theme for the season.
Speaker 2:A dear friend of mine that we're going to air that episode about knowing your client and your operating environment, what your ideal client looks like, what the ideal operating environment looks like, which I think is a timely subject, given where we are in the world right now. And then Melinda and I are just going to lean in and have more candid conversations about our own thoughts about where we are individually and some of the things that we're doing to plan now for 2025. So stay tuned for more episodes and more posts on that and, as always, you can find us on Instagram at leadership, underscore T. We encourage you to go to our website, wwwstirringsuccesscom, and we're here for you. Let us hear from you if you have ideas for future episodes or other topics and issues that you'd like for us to cover. We read the fan mail, you know, and even the conversation for this episode was put together based on feedback from some of you. So we appreciate you and we're here for this community.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree 100%. So thank you everyone and have a safe and festive holiday season. We'll be back soon. Thanks, bye.
