Five Leadership Lessons in 5 Years

Happy New Year, Leader.

While many of us have been completing annual reflection and planning exercises, I have been going through a 5-year reflection. Over the holiday, I had a chance to examine my progress and challenges, and frame how I want to enter the next 5 years. I have 5 learnings from each of the last 5 years, that I’d like to share with you.

In early 2018, my life was completely different. I was on an executive track as an engineering and enterprise learning and development manager at a Fortune 50 company. On the outside, my life was rosy, but I was at the lowest point of my life. Chronic pain, the challenges of working motherhood, communication challenges, and doubts about my career and purpose in the world all led me to resign from my job, and start my own company, rooted in what I was passionate about - helping leaders and companies be more effective and impactful through play. Since then, I have transformed my physical and mental health, built a successful business, boosted my creativity, and deepened the quality of my friendships and relationships. Check out these 5 lessons to understand more of what I've learned along the way.

The 5 Lessons

1. Health needs to be our top priority (2018)

At multiple levels including individual, organizational, and in relationships, dysfunction exists due to people thinking about health in short-term, reactionary ways, rather than intelligent long-term ways. Healthy bodies and relationships scale to healthy systems so collective health starts with each of us. There is a consistent gap between what we say we value and our behaviors.

Faced with the idea of losing something, we can imagine our life without it. When I imagined my life as a successful executive in poor health, I realized that none of it mattered if I didn’t feel good. This is when I put my health at the top of my list (above my family and career). I began meditating regularly, seeing a therapist and hired a personal trainer. Today, these well-being practices are non-negotiable, and the foundation of my success.

2. It's better to fail at something you love than succeed at something you don’t (2019)

Voting with your feet to direct your energy is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. Whom you work for, what you stand for, and what you direct your energy towards influences your life, your emotions, and your legacy. Leave that job, start that company, make that move you’ve been dreaming of - or face regrets when you look back.

Becoming an entrepreneur is one of the most humbling experiences I’ve had. Starting over from scratch, building something from nothing, and inviting others to join me, hire me, and trust me, has fueled my confidence and creativity in ways I never thought possible (I had to hit what felt like rock bottom first). I know my capabilities and have confidence in my ability to solve problems and face people and situations that seem insurmountable. At the root of it is my renewed trust in myself, my worthiness, and my ingenuity.

3. Channel your pain into creativity so you can release it (2020)

Stress and burnout are nervous system responses that trigger adrenaline and cortisol. From a neuroscience as well as an energetic perspective, this energy needs to be directed into action, or else it manifests in the body in other problematic ways including digestive issues, immunity, muscle tension and pain, heart disease, pressure, stroke, sleep problems, weight gain, and memory and concentration impairment (a large body of research supports this).

When the pandemic hit and our socio-political climate intensified, our collective stress levels increased. Latent stress combined with the uncertainty of what was happening put our nervous systems into fight or flight. Through hosting community leadership circles & family DJ live-streams, drafting a manuscript, and co-creating The Empathy Tour, I was able to process what I was perceiving and feeling so that stress didn’t stay in my body. This embodied practice of stress release (facilitated by my personal training) not only helped me but helped my community as well as we learned and grew together.

4. Hone your purpose to provide clarity and make better progress (2021)

Just as an organization needs a strategy to prioritize action, so do we individually. Purpose-driven companies perform better because efforts are aligned in a common direction. Because of this, further progress can be made towards what matters.

As my facilitation and coaching business expanded, I realized that the broad and diverse abilities that my multicultural background, corporate leadership experience, and systems change expertise delivered made it hard to concisely communicate what I did to others.?I hired a company to help me develop my personal brand, and after 75 pages of writing and multiple sessions, honed my life’s history, strengths, and dreams into a series of purpose statements that form my integrity compass. When I feel confused, need some grounding before a big talk, or help a client, I read these statements to remind me who I am, what I do, and how I help. They inform not only my work, but how I am showing up in my various roles.

5. Connect to your ancestors and descendants to understand yourself and embody your vision (2022)

You know the sayings about being doomed to repeat history unless you learn from it? From communication and cultural patterns to organizational and societal, taking the longest view (a view called 7 generations thinking in indigenous cultures) of our traditions, work and family values helps us see life beyond our brief existence. Good or bad, we inherit what we believe and achieve from those who came before us, and leave it all to those who come after.

Despite all the progress I’ve made with my health and business over the previous 4 years, I was still encountering unhelpful behaviors. The place where it's hardest to implement change is in your closest relationships because they are where patterns are the most deeply entrenched. This year, I was more honest with my partner of 22 years than I have ever been, and the two of us entered a new phase of our relationship. Part of my journey was embarking on a weeklong ayahuasca retreat with an Indigenous Shipibo maestro just before my 40th birthday, where I surfaced and shifted cultural dynamics that have existed in my family for generations. I had visions and experiences that reminded me of my struggles, pains, hopes, and dreams through the lens of my mother and grandmother, and my two daughters. These visions created neural pathways that proved to me the power of plant medicine and personal growth through neuroplasticity. I will share more about this later this year via my talks and articles.

2023: Its time to integrate what we have learned

Leading teams and organizations in 2023 is indeed more complex than its ever been. Faced with increasing climate threats, political divisiveness, mental health crises, and a collective demand for ethical leadership, the time to be a systems thinker, and integrate our struggles into solutions is now.

I advocate for these three pillars of systems change.

1. Emotional Intelligence - our life history determines our nervous system programming. Achieving peak performance demands you know your triggers and are ready to disrupt them with habits to cultivate empathy for yourself and others.
2. Cultural Competence - gender, race, sexuality, and class are among many factors that inform your cultural worldview. Knowing how to shift perspectives requires a familiar understanding of your cultural dimensions and their associations with systems of power.
3. Systems Thinking - this is a framework that helps you understand yourself, your organization, and the world around you in an interconnected way. Developing your capacity to think in systems will help you leverage better strategies, be more efficient with your energy, and build more impactful organizations.

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