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
Your Next Steps: When “Outwit, Outlast, Outplay” Isn't Working | S4 EP4
In our 50th episode 🎉, Shelby and Belinda discuss why courage is essential in today's professional landscape, and what it looks like when leaders are radically honest with themselves when "outwit, outlast, outplay" isn’t working.
We share personal moments of reckoning, from defining what we don't want, to realizing when to leave work environments that no longer serve us.
If you’re stuck in analysis paralysis and fear of the unknown, this conversation can help you find the courage to move forward, even if you don’t have a perfect plan.
Also in this episode
- Should you play the game, try to change the rules, or create your own game?
- Being good at something doesn't mean it needs to be your next thing
- Finding clarity and clearing the clutter as you plan your next steps
- The courage to move forward without a perfectly formulated plan
Resources Mentioned
- Leadership Lounge:
https://www.stirringsuccess.com/leadershiplounge
Join our exclusive membership area for resources and deeper, unconstrained conversations - Belinda's LinkedIn post where she asks “Will I be the only one brave enough to step up?”: https://bit.ly/4nQlk9m
We publish new episodes every other Wednesday.
Follow us on Instagram @Leadership_Tea for more inspiration and insights.
Get your FREE copy of our Strategic Change Workbook
Learn more about us at stirringsuccess.com
Welcome to the Leadership Tea Podcast, where Shelby and I regularly bring you our insights that we wish we had known early in our career as senior leaders. And we want to help you learn these insights so that you don't have to take all the time that we did to do it. Please like and subscribe. And we would love for you to leave a comment that really helps us understand how we're impacting you. We also encourage you to come over to YouTube and see the fun and laugh and learn with us. Today we wanted to delve into an issue that I think is important for leadership, and that is how to be courageous during times that are very dynamic and changing. One way that we thought about that is kind of looking at life like a game, right? Almost like a reality show. We thought about the phrase outwit, outlast, outplay. When times call for it, what are some of the things that we have done? Or what have we learned by either outwitting, outlasting, or outplaying? And what have we learned when we haven't done that, but maybe should have. So does that sound like a good start, Shelby?
SPEAKER_00:Sounds like a great start. We thought it was timely to talk about courage and to talk about outwit, outlast, outplay in the context of celebrating our 50th episode. This is our 50th episode of the Leadership Tea Podcast. And rather than reflect on lessons learned, we thought it would be better to look forward in the context of courage, in the context of things that are happening right now, and talk to you all about what does outwit, outlast, outplay mean to each of us? And what have we learned in the process of exercising those tools?
SPEAKER_01:100%. Yeah, I just cannot believe like 50 episodes. It's wild. It is wild. Who knew?
SPEAKER_00:Who knew we would be here? But here we are. Here we are. I'm really looking forward to hearing your comments and your anecdotes on what does courage mean to you in this moment?
SPEAKER_01:So I think for me right now, there's a link between courage and being honest with yourself. Right? I think that that's been for a long time, but maybe not as directly as it is right now. I've had some experiences over the last couple of years where I was really real with myself for the first time in my career, where I've been like, this is not working. And it ain't gonna get better. And so I either need to go all in and play the game or I need to tap out. And in a couple of cases, I have tapped out. That is what I've chosen because I've been real about what it is. I've been real about what the realities were that it was gonna take to like move forward. And I've been able then therefore to make a clear decision about what was in line with my value set, my reality, what I had the energy for, and deal with the consequences, therefore. Recently, I find myself frustrated with folks who are not willing to look at the realities and make decisions accordingly. That hurts not only themselves, but it hurts everyone around them. But kicking the emotional can down the road sometimes is just not an option. We've got to find ways to be real with ourselves. It hurts. We're gonna cry some tears, we're gonna be scared, it's gonna feel like I thought I would never have to make decisions like this, like all those things. Uh-huh. Yes, people throughout history have had to do uncomfortable things, and now it's my turn to do uncomfortable things. But I'm not the first person to ever walk the face of the earth to be uncomfortable. And so, how can I learn from the ones who came before me? But lying to myself isn't going to prepare me to get done the things that I need to get done.
SPEAKER_00:You know, in the past few episodes, we've been talking about taking care of yourself, taking care of your mental health. That's been the overarching theme for this season. And as I think about outwit, outlast, outplay, and what it means to show courage. I think about what's happened to me over the course of this year when it comes to dealing with the fact that I was laid off, as I mentioned in the last episode, but also reconciling that with the fact that I was already beginning to grow tired of some of the maneuvers that I knew would be required to outwit, out last outplay in government bureaucracy. It got to a point where it's like, you know, I don't know if this is for me. I don't know if I want to continue maneuvering and figuring out how to one-up someone or how to have longevity in this particular environment. Am I up for it? And for me, the courageous moment was realizing that even though a lot of other people wanted me to be up for it, understanding and embracing the fact that I wasn't was in and of itself an act of courage. Sometimes when you're leading, those of us who are trying to get leadership right, you're so focused on the team, you're so focused on what the people around you are going to think, how they're going to react, what will they do without you? That sometimes you can stay in a place too long and you lose sight of what is it that people need from you and have you twisted that into what it is that you need for yourself to maintain that title or to maintain that role. And we can talk about this in the leadership lounge. I can go into a little bit more detail on what that revelation was like for me over the last few months. But there comes a point, I think for every leader, where you have to ask yourself, what is the courageous thing to do? Is it to continue playing the game, change the rules of the game, or leave and create your own game?
SPEAKER_01:I think the leadership lounge is a good place to go into detail about that. For those of you that aren't familiar with the leadership lounge, it is our members-only area where we're gonna go a little more in-depth into some topics and talk about things in a more unconstrained way that is a little more difficult to do on the broader podcast. We'll include a link to joining and we'll invite you there for deeper conversations, an opportunity to engage directly with us, some additional resources, and even occasional live Q ⁇ A's and things like that. So there's a lot over there. We look forward to seeing you there. When you decide that I no longer wish to engage in this, did you have a sense of what you wanted to build instead? And I asked that because sometimes people are frozen. They're like, I know I don't want to do this, but I don't have a better idea, so I should just stay here. Were you able to say, I don't quite know what I'm gonna do? I'm willing to start doing the work to figure it out because I realized that this is not working for me.
SPEAKER_00:Perhaps that was a leading question, but it totally was a leading question, but that's that's okay. You know too much. You have the benefit of knowing too much. So and that's that's all good. I think I'm still figuring out what it is that I want to do and what are the rules that I'm coming up with. But I will say going through this process, this phase of my life of figuring out the next thing, it's been helpful to write down on paper what it is that I don't want to do. And I'm crystal clear on that. And I think sometimes the breakthroughs happen after you figure out what it is that you don't want to do, what doesn't fit with your passions, your interests, your values, what feels out of alignment. If you're clear on that, then in many ways that helps you find clarity or at least puts you on the right path to figuring out, okay, well, what is the thing that I'm being called to do? What is the thing that makes sense right now? Once you clear the clutter, and we've talked about that before in other episodes. Sometimes it's necessary to get to get rid of the mess, to get rid of the junk, to empty your glove compartment, you know, to do a little bit of house cleaning, some soul searching, to get rid of the excess and the baggage before you can really be like, oh, okay, there's that thing that was hidden beneath the pile of junk. That has been a useful process for me. And I can talk about in the leadership lounge the things that I have uncovered in terms of helping me figure out the next, some of the revelations that I've had. But I do think the process of just writing down on paper, and this is something that I did. I don't want this. I don't want that. I'm no longer interested in this thing. And I think the other thing, Melinda, that I want to leave our listeners with is just because you're good at something, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the thing that you should do. Sometimes it's necessary to just dig deep and find the courage to say, yeah, I may be really good at that particular thing, but is that the thing that I'm meant to do with my life right now?
SPEAKER_01:You said exactly what I was hoping you would say. Which is that what's that? That you don't know 100%. Yeah. One thing I wish I had known more clearly in the past is that you don't have to have a perfectly formulated idea to move forward. So much of my life, I've been clear about what I wanted and clear about the roadmap to get there, right? It's been impressed upon me that you have to be strategic and you have to plan. And that's maybe part of the purse of being an A student. But part of my learning path has been surrounding myself with people who are willing to take the first steps even when they don't have a clear idea, are willing to just expose themselves to a different way of thinking. Maybe it's going to a conference, maybe it's going to a meeting, maybe it's reading a certain book, maybe just whatever for so much of my career when I knew I needed to, you know, zig or zag, but I wasn't quite sure what was at the end of that zig or zag. I didn't do it because I didn't have a perfectly formulated plan. Everything you've just said really speaks to that. And if I could impart that on any listener who's saying, like, I'm trying to outlast, right? But it ain't working. But I don't know what to do. So I'm gonna stay here until I crumble or it all crumbles around me. You don't have to do that. You can do multiple things at once. You can learn, you can, as we often talk about, you can build community. You can have more than one community, but you have to be willing to move even if it's imperfect. Like you cannot let perfect be the enemy of good when it's clear that some changes need to be made.
SPEAKER_00:How has that manifested for you recently?
SPEAKER_01:I'm in a season of partnership, and people have come to me with ideas of partnership that are not fully thought out that sounds super scary to me, but I'm also in a season of yes, that's where the courage piece comes in. It's like it's not gonna hurt me to try, right? It's not gonna hurt me to build this new community of partnership. I've been in a place of kind of like, God, I don't know why you opened up this door. I was not expecting this door. I'm gonna walk through it. I don't think what everybody's talking about is really why I'm walking through it, but we'll see. And in some cases it has not been, but it has opened up other doors, right? Or other ideas or shown me another side of myself that I really should be exploring.
SPEAKER_00:I think you walking through unexpected doors is a good plug for people to discover and participate in the leadership lounge so that they can hear a little bit more about what do you mean when you say that? We don't want to give it all away right here.
SPEAKER_01:No, a hundred percent. So I would just say for our listeners to think about how are you, how are you being courageous in this moment? I had on LinkedIn put a similar question out to people. Are y'all, is anybody courageous? Is it just me? Right. Like, what are we doing? Right. And people were really responsive. That post actually went viral, had tens of thousands of views and lots of engagement in the leadership lounge. I'll explain the story behind that post. So, anybody who's seen that post, if you want to know, like, what was Bolindo snapping about, I will explain it. So look in the show notes, join us in the leadership lounge. There is a really amazing introductory price that you'll want to take advantage of soon because it's gonna change. And I can't wait to share all these insights and a little more with you guys in the lounge.
SPEAKER_00:If you're so inclined, leave a comment on this episode and let us know what are you doing, not only to show courage, but how does outwit, outlast, outplay, land with you? Please do share it. We want to hear from you.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you liked and subscribed, and we look forward to sipping wisdom and stirring success with you on future episodes.
