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
How Leaders Can Create Joyful Boundaries with Boniswa Siwundla Madikizela | S4 EP3
Shelby and Belinda welcome special guest Boniswa Siwundla Madikizela, a transformational leader from South Africa, for a conversation on how to stay grounded and aligned in a world that feels chaotic.
Boniswa shares her personal practices for protecting herself from energy vampires, defining (and refining) her core purpose or "golden thread," and the joy of setting boundaries.
ALSO IN THIS EPISODE
- Staying grounded in an off-kilter world
- Pausing before you commit to a decision
- Leaving a place that doesn’t align with your values
- Recognizing and overcoming the hesitation to shine
ABOUT BONISWA
Boniswa Siwundla Madikizela is a South African financial expert, educator, and advocate known for her work in financial literacy and accounting education, holding a CA(SA), MCom, and is a PhD candidate. She is a senior lecturer in accounting at the University of Johannesburg and is the founder of the Financial Literacy and Inclusion Center of Southern Africa (FLIC_SA).
Find Boniswa at https://linktr.ee/Boniswa_M
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Hey everyone, welcome to the Leadership Tea Podcast, where we talk about not only what it takes to reach the executive level, but how to thrive once you get there. My name is Shelby Smith-Wilson and I am joined by my dynamic co-host, belinda Jackson-Farrier, and today we are so thrilled to welcome a very special guest, my friend Boniswa Siwundla Madikizela. She is a native of South Africa and I met her in 2020 when we were both participating in the International Women's Forum Leadership Fellows Program. Boniswa is just magic personified. She is joy personified. She is an educator, a PhD candidate and founder of FLIC underscore SA, which stands for the Financial Literacy and Inclusion Center of Southern Africa. She calls herself a financial literacy horticulturalist.
Speaker 1:I love it Tending to financial mindsets, the way that a gardener tends to soil and seeds, she nurtures growth, she prunes harmful patterns and she cultivates inclusion. She is a dynamic individual. I can't wait to let her speak directly to all of you on some of her insights and advice on maintaining alignment when things are in misalignment, what it means to maintain your joy even when you're in unjoyful spaces, and a lot more. So let's hear from my dear friend, boniswa, who we affectionately call Bonnie. Thanks again, bonnie, for joining us. We're really excited to have you with us. I would like to start our conversation by asking you, because the world feels off kilter right now how do you remain in alignment in a period of misalignment?
Speaker 2:Shelby, thank you so much for that question, but I must say upfront it's a very layered question, and I say that because in reality we show up differently depending what a day has in store for us. You know, if we're being honest, everything has a frequency. It's got an energetic frequency and I'm the kind of person who's quite intuitive. It's a God-given gift and that intuition sometimes, in the world of a lot of headspace and logic, can actually send you off kilter. So being intuitive has meant that I pick up on energetic frequencies, whether I'm at home, whether I'm in the office, whether I'm in the boardroom, and if I'm not careful I can sometimes misinterpret that to be that is me, whereas it might not have anything to do with me. For me to remain as true as possible and grounded to me, my own practices, to remain centered in literally grounding myself I know that this might sound funny, but a simple tool that I use when I come back home from work. I take my shoes off and I walk in the grass before I get into the house, because you have interacted with so many other people that are carrying their own crucifix, if I may use that word, and because we are social beings and we exchange, you know, energy. So you might see a colleague who looks down and you'll be like, hey, what's up, are you okay? And that colleague sees that as an invitation to actually share with you whatever they're going through. And when they share with you they're offloading and then they feel better. But where does that offload go to? That offload comes to you into your own vessel. So if you're not careful, you're actually walking around with other people's feelings and so forth.
Speaker 2:So you need to have your own practices to say how do I make sure that I shed off? Do you know what I mean? You don't absorb everything. So in a world that is so much of guilt I mean it's not only us as individuals, but our economies in our countries. Worldwide there's wars, there's different types of wars economically, family-wise, religion and so forth there is no way that you can remain sane.
Speaker 2:So in my own way, I have found certain things that speak to me, protecting my energetic frequency such that what is mine is mine and what is not mine is not mine, and I'm able to hold space for others. I'm able to hold space for me but also for my own family. So, like I said, part and parcel of those practices is to give to myself what is most important the first part of the morning. What do I do for myself to make sure that my energy is okay when I step back into my sacred space? I need to do certain things that say okay. Whatever energy that I might have come with, that is not mine. It must remain where it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this idea of being conscious of what you're taking in all day and how you're showing up in other spaces outside of the workplace. How am I taking all of this energy and applying it where it should be, not getting home all wound up? I think it's really helpful and I think it's something a lot of us don't get the time to do or don't think about doing, and we just leave one tense space and bring that tension into another. Well, with that said, that really sounds like a core piece of your philosophy and the threads that make you a leader. What is the overall golden thread in your life and how has it helped you to develop as a leader?
Speaker 2:First and foremost, belinda, that golden thread is not something you just wake up to. It's been a trial and error over years. Trial and error over years and for me, to even get to what my golden thread is or has become, there was a lot of curiosity. That was a foundation. When I mean by curiosity, it's around who am I, why am I doing what I'm doing? From what source or from what place is that reach that I'm doing coming from? And that curiosity and the willingness to be open to get those answers it's madness. It was very brave of me to actually ask such a question, because the feedback that you will get through life events will be in an attempt to answer those questions. So, where I'm at now, the golden thread for me would be am I honoring the God in me? And what I mean by that?
Speaker 2:Most times we show up in spaces whether it be work, church, family we enter there in the roles that we carry. So you are asked to do certain things because a role has a particular job spec or job description. At times we might be caught up with saying yes when you meant no and you say no when you meant yes. So when I say honoring the God in you. Is that remaining true to what really, really inside of you, you are wanting to honor? So the golden thread which I call being aligned has meant that at each and every space that I show up, the question becomes in the way that I'm choosing to show up, am I honoring the God in me? And how honoring shows up is. Am I saying yes when I mean yes, or am I saying no when I mean no? Because at times where I've said no when I mean yes, then there's a misalignment that was a word.
Speaker 1:In our ongoing evolution as women, as professionals, as mothers, entrepreneurs all the roles, as you mentioned, that we play and the different settings in which we are called to play those roles, it can be difficult to hear God's voice and recognize what are my gifts and am I staying true to them? Am I honoring them? And I know we've spoken before about what your name means, what your calling is, and we chatted about how you are joy personified. Personified, yeah, but that comes at a cost. It does. That comes at a cost. That comes at a cost. And so I'm wondering when you are, you and you are a person who is accustomed to holding the light, to asking people how they're doing and then taking on that energy, but you're surrounded by energy vampires. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:How do you hold steady? You know, shelby, like she said, being joy personified comes at a cost. It took me a long time to actually be vocal about being joy personified, because saying that to people it leads them to having certain expectations of you, because joy should look a certain way, whereas according to me, a luster of an infant is joy. A cool breeze on a hot summer night, that is joy. So I've had to be very intentional about what joy means for me, and it will show up the way it chooses to show up.
Speaker 2:The beauty of being grounded in who you are or what your purpose is is that there's the nature of the pause that comes in.
Speaker 2:And when I say the nature of the pause, before you act you first pause, and one of the things that I have mastered over time is that, even if people seem to need me, one of the key things that I've learned over time is that before I respond, I take a pause, because naturally, being somebody who's a nurturer, you just want to help people and sometimes I just jump in there without looking, and number of times I've jumped into situations where people just sucked and sucked and never knew where to stop and then in the end I feel so drained.
Speaker 2:But I had to go through those moments for me to learn to say something is wrong. Yeah, so what are the tools? Must I put in place? And part and parcel of those tools was a question that I would ask myself during that pause, and the question would be am I the vessel? By saying those words, it's like I'm calling upon support from the universe, from God, from my intuition and so forth, to say if I am the vessel through which to assist this person, how far should my help go? And then that is what allows me to have boundaries, so that I don't project myself and my ambition and so forth, because sometimes you find yourself wanting this person to be empowered more than they want to be empowered themselves.
Speaker 1:Yes, I say that all the time, even to my kids. I can't want something for you more than you want it for yourself. I just can't. That's not how life works.
Speaker 3:No, and I've definitely been experiencing something similar. I can't be super volunteer if people we're serving aren't really interested.
Speaker 2:Right At the end of the day. It takes a lot of discipline being joy. Yes, it comes at a cost day. It takes a lot of discipline being joy. Yes, it comes at a cost. And that cost includes at times, saying, bonnie, this is enough, this is not for you. Or saying, okay, yes, this is all for you. But only step one and step two. It has been a trial and error exercise. However, those little steps, those little decisions over a period of 15 years, they show up the way they show up now, and then when people look at you and they're like, wow, you're so wonderful, it's like, yes, but there was courage, there was discipline, of course. Course, there was commitment and consistency to action. You know, when you hold on to something, to an idea, uh, one version of an idea, also not holding on to say joy should look like this has allowed me to actually to surrender and allow life to show up the way it shows up, and then it becomes a dance and then that's it. That's how it appears.
Speaker 3:So that was very much in the context of dealing with individuals who are those energy vampires. Do you feel like that same philosophy is what you use in the context of dealing with individuals who are those energy vampires? But do you think you're like that same philosophy is what you use when you're in an environment that doesn't respect joy or doesn't respect or value the gifts that you bring to the space? How do you balance that? How do you still find joy when the environment is so negative?
Speaker 2:To be honest, sometimes I do go into my cave because at times you are part of a system and that system is an institution that says I've got these strategic goals and you are a resource that I have employed to help me deliver on those strategic goals. And there are times where I don't identify with some of those strategic goals. And then on the inside it's almost like you know you're feeling this adverse push when you enter the space. A number of times I've retreated to myself because it's a bit too much, because you feel it, but you can't really put your finger to it. So that's the one part. But I found that by retreating to my cave, it's not that I'm running away. What I've picked up is that part and parcel of introspecting and internalizing and all of that has meant that later on I do get into spaces where I'm with the executive of the particular institution to use those opportunities to bring that conversation up, because now we are dealing with a level that can do something about it, because part and parcel, for example, of me sitting on boards or being part of management or being part of council, it means that is a platform that I can bring the lived experience of the ordinary person at that level. So me being able to feel the tension. It highlights that there's a misalignment between what the institution is saying, these are our values, and then I am an individual who's meant to represent those resources from down there. But because I'm very vocal, I'm then able to say, obviously, when the timing is right to say, mr CEO, were you aware of this and this and this and this?
Speaker 2:And then that's how, as much as I'm not showing up as Joy in the literal sense, but by virtue of being vocal, to say, hmm, did you ever consider that A, b, c, d in terms of strategic goals, how does it translate to the men on the ground?
Speaker 2:We need to recognize that we pivot. You know I can still be Bonnie, but Bonnie can show up in a particular environment so that you are entering at the level at which they are at. So, for example, if I have to address kids, obviously the Joy who's the child in me will show up. Has to address kids, obviously the joy who's the child in me will show up. If I'm in the boardroom, the joy who's the director, who knows which language to use in that setup, will show up. So it's being fluid and not being rigid. So that's how I tend to handle the faces or the institutions who might not be maybe privy to experiencing joy, as I am, you know. So you show up still as that person, but using the language or using an armor that will be palatable for the spaces that you enter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, using armor, I feel like every day. It's like all right, how am I going to suit up for this particular challenge? Because you never know what you're going to confront. Like you said, you know, in the different spaces that we occupy, you have to make those shifts and pivots, to meet people where they are and to make sure that you're still able to honor your gifts, but doing so in a way that's appropriate for the recipients around you.
Speaker 1:But there's something else that you said that I think is very true across the globe right now, where we're seeing this tension between people wanting to show up as themselves. But, as you said, institutions have their goals, their strategies, their priorities, and sometimes there's a gap between where you are and where your institution is, or there's tension where it's like I don't know, I don't know if we're in alignment, I don't know where I am is where the institution is, and, as you're trying to guard yourself, your values, the things that you stand for because I know that you are a woman of conviction and you are so centered in who you are and what you stand for how do you define self-respect? No-transcript.
Speaker 2:The scariest thing about evolution is being honest with yourself. You know, when you make a decision and you say this is what I want, we tend to be stubborn and hold on to that decision, and that decision did not take into account room for your growth room for your growth. And when time comes that you are meant to expand, you find yourselves having a tug of war and the first thing you do is to project. And then you say that institution has done me wrong, they're not doing this, they're not doing that, and it's mainly because you are wanting to fix what's inside using what's outside. So you keep on hitting a wall and you're like I don't like this institution. They're doing this and this and this to me. But guess what? What if you've actually reached your limit? You know it's time for growth, but you are so stubborn that you're trying to hold on. And therefore, that discomfort or that tug of war probably the first place you go to is that there's something wrong with the space. You can easily and I'm using the word easily in inverted commas. You can easily recognize to say I've actually outgrown the space, the space is no longer serving me and there's nothing wrong with that. Your very being feels like it's dead. One more day to be in the space. It feels like dead, and I guess the question becomes is it my job to fix that? Is this my mandate to actually fix that? We like things a certain way. There's a safety about it, so we sometimes tend to overstay our welcome.
Speaker 2:Let me give you a typical example. Having been a lecturer for the past 13 years, I'm telling you now, back in I think, the fifth of being in this space, I started itching. I don't know if you've ever had the first year itch, and I'm like I'm not meant to be here. I need to move on. I need a challenge. I need the next thing. I'm not meant to be here. I need to move on. I need to attend. I need the next thing.
Speaker 2:I do not know how, but God, the universe, the angels were saying you are going to stay where you are because there is something in you we are trying to nurture and grow, and this is the space that it has to happen, whether you like it or not, but it was the most painful thing, and I'm in year 13. And it has been painful all these years. And that pain, though, led me to seeking opportunities, you know, wanting to apply for the IWS, for example. You know it sent me on an exploration journey, but that exploration meant that I needed to have a home base Somehow. This home base was necessary because this is where I have my most social capital. I don't have to prove myself. I have earned my stripes. What happens when you're in a space that seems to not align with your values? There's a lot of introspection and a back and forth and all of that to clarify that for yourself, so that you can make a decision from a place of love rather than from a place of fear.
Speaker 3:You know, we really have to be clear and brave and willing to take some risks, but also to be pragmatic. We can't just run off just because we feel that itch. We really have to be diligent and mindful about how we're thinking about it and what this moment is and what our place is, Going back to that idea of who are you and what's your purpose. That helps to guide you as to what you're doing with that itch. As we wrap up, what is one thing that you have learned last week?
Speaker 2:The one thing that I learned last week. There are certain secrets that you keep to yourself, those secrets that you would never ever vocalize, Because if you did, you might feel that you are vulnerable or are you an imposter. What I learned last week about myself is that most of my decisions in life were based on a failure to shine. My biggest fear was being rejected if I would shine, so I would turn down a number of opportunities because I had a fear to shine. That's what I learned Shelby.
Speaker 1:Oh, you put me on the spot. Wow, as I'm transitioning from government to whatever, my next is going to be Just a realization that I'm enough, like I have everything and more, that I need to take me to that next thing? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I have anything deep, I okay, but you always have something deep. I know you do. I'll say I'll be a little different'll say I'll be a little different today. I'll be a little different. Today I learned a leadership tea fun fact Ooh Is the most popular search term to find this podcast on YouTube. Is Papa, pope.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. Oh, my gosh, Bonnie. I don't know if you saw that particular episode, but we were quoting from Scandal.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm telling you. I said that and when I had watched that episode, I actually went back and downloaded those specific moments. I love it. I made my own reel. Yes, that's awesome. Oh, that's so funny. I'm telling you, and can I tell you this? So, if you didn't know, I got divorced in 2020. There's kids involved. So there has been, you know, trying to manage the temperature. So I call that I'm the weather maker, the weather maker. So I use the Papa Pope video to say to the father of the kids I'm the weather maker. Every temperature will be forecasted. So, come hell or high water, you will get on that plane. I know that's right. Just in case you didn't know, I am the hell and the high water I love it.
Speaker 3:Do you see? Habakkuk comes in handy all the time.
Speaker 1:In many different respects.
Speaker 2:I was having you. I sound so powerful because I had to say to him I'm the weather maker, so in this house the temperature it could be to be 24. Powerful Because I had to say to him I'm the weathermaker, hello, so in this house the temperature it could be 24 degrees or whatever. I'll control it. So you must be so constant, you can't just come in, I'm the hen and the homeowner.
Speaker 3:I like the weathermaker too.
Speaker 1:I do too. I'm like I got to come up with a different name for myself, right.
Speaker 3:Weathermaker, I'm going to like roll into space as like I make the weather here.
Speaker 1:Okay, right, excellent.
Speaker 3:Well, what a great way to end. I think so much. It's been a lot of fun. I feel like we've learned. Thank you, it's been great. Well, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. I feel like we've learned. Thank you, this has been great.
Speaker 2:Well thank you so much Before you go away. The word I wanted to use. I said Thaler to shine, and it was meant to be hesitation to shine.
Speaker 1:I instinctively knew, that's what you meant. You're actually articulating what I learned. That was my lesson seriously, because I don't think I actually verbalized it in that way, but like what has been holding me back. Belinda asked me a very powerful question a couple of episodes ago, like who is Shelby when she's unconstrained, and that has just been reverberating in my head for months now. I completely identify with you, Bonnie, like the hesitation to shine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the hesitation to shine. That is what I learned about myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That a number of my decisions over my life were mainly anchored in hesitation to shine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, same here. I feel like not just decisions, but times when I did not thrive. It was because I was hesitating to shine. Yeah, yeah. And it is the most amazing thing yeah, yeah and it.
Speaker 2:We are so powerful yeah, yeah, and we still don't believe in it, even when people tell you how powerful you are exactly, that's it, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:well, bonnie, I can't thank you enough for joining us today. I think the power of this episode is that you are in South Africa and we are in the United States, and yet our shared live experience it's the same, it's true, and in that way, it highlights how connected we are as a people, like, really, really, we're part of nature.
Speaker 2:You know there's an underground network yes, that exists, so you are not not part of it, so don't fool yourself.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us for today's episode of the Leadership Tea podcast. I think you will agree that Bonnie is just an incredibly special individual. It's amazing to me how we can connect with people who are from other countries and yet our shared experience is so similar more. We really appreciate the feedback that we get from all of you. If you're listening to this podcast, you are missing out on YouTube. Please join us and share this episode and other episodes with your friends. We're so grateful to have you as part of this community and we look forward to sipping wisdom and stirring success with you again real soon.
