Shameless Leadership

How do you feel when someone exerts authority over you? And how does that influence the way you exercise your own authority as a leader?

For many women, authority comes with baggage. If you’ve experienced someone abusing their power, dismissing you in some way, or making decisions that impact you without including you, stepping into your own authority can feel complicated. You might hesitate to set expectations because you don’t want to be controlling. Or you might get self-protective and defensive, perhaps doubling down on your autonomy when your authority is challenged, like me!

These patterns deserve our attention because they shape how we make decisions, communicate boundaries, and support the people we lead.

In this episode, we explore the three components of your perspective on authority: Relationship, Responsibility, and Resourcing. We’ll examine how your experiences with power influence your leadership, where you have a responsibility to take up more space, and how holding boundaries protects you and your team’s capacity to do meaningful work.

We’ll also explore five authority aspirations that can help you create the necessary space to develop a more commanding presence, communicate with conviction, and create opportunities for others to grow their own leadership.

Listen in to hear:

A commanding presence helps people understand where you stand, what matters, and what you expect. It also makes room for their voices, judgment, and contributions.

As you listen in, I invite you to consider: Where would owning your authority more fully change how you lead — and what would your team see or hear you doing differently?

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I have followed Paul Ladipo’s work on LinkedIn for the last few years. Every time he posts, I can’t “like” his post fast enough. His expertise and ability to distill down tough topics related to race and inclusion are superb. Paul just released his book, It Was Never About That: Going Beyond Hate to Dismantle Everyday Racism in America, which is a must-read. 

Paul has a combined fifteen years of experience in academia, non-profits, and faith communities, becoming well-versed in the DEI challenges and needs of each sector. In higher ed, he has facilitated bystander intervention and sexual misconduct trainings with athletic teams, discussed systemic racism with faculty, and led full-day workshops on building inclusive cultures with student leaders. For non-profits, Paul has developed curriculum to center the needs of persons with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence, and survivors of sexual assault. Within faith communities, he has given presentations and led discussions on breaking racial barriers to create multi-ethnic ministries.

Listen in to hear Paul share:

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Very few women are looking for their opportunity to shatter glass ceilings from the time they are little girls. Wanda J. Herndon was one of the few. Raised in Flint, Michigan, in a working-class family shaped by the Great Migration, she became one of the first in her family to attend college, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Michigan State University. She built a groundbreaking career at Dow Chemical, DuPont, and Starbucks. 

Wanda is an award-winning corporate communications trailblazer, author, speaker, mentor, entrepreneur, Broadway producer, and the first Senior Vice President of Global Communications for Starbucks, from 1995 to 2006. Howard Schultz, Starbucks founder and CEO, asked her to return to the role in 2008 for a one-year engagement to help execute the company’s turnaround strategy. 

Wanda’s new memoir, Working Class to Breaking Glass, chronicles her journey from Flint to corporate leadership, exploring race, gender, class, family legacy, belonging, and the courage to lead without compromising one’s true self while opening doors for others. 

Listen in to hear Wanda share:

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Integrity in leadership is easy to talk about when the stakes are low. The real test comes when living your values costs you something: approval, belonging, comfort, status, or social capital.

In this episode of Shameless Leadership, we’re talking about what leadership character actually looks like in practice. It’s one thing to say you support women, value inclusion, or believe in ethical leadership. It’s another to examine whether your actions consistently reflect those values, especially in rooms where speaking up might be uncomfortable, inconvenient, or risky.

We’ll explore the gaps that can emerge between our stated values and our behavior, from speaking poorly about another woman while claiming to support women, to staying silent when harmful behavior happens in front of us. This is about what it looks like to build character consistently over time, through leadership, self-awareness, personal accountability, and a willingness to notice when our integrity becomes conditional.

If you want to strengthen your leadership character, live your values more consistently, and contribute to a workplace culture where people are willing to stand up for what they say they believe in, this episode will give you practical questions and tools to start.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Leadership isn’t simply about what we believe or the values you say you hold near and dear. It’s about the choices we make when those beliefs and values are tested. 

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Communication breaks down between senior and mid-level leaders even when everyone is really hustling to do the very best they can in their respective roles.

In the work I’ve done with leaders and teams, I’ve had the opportunity to take a close look at what people are thinking and feeling behind the scenes - and how their thinking and feelings impact their behavior. In this episode, I share some of the patterns I consistently see and what leaders on both sides can do to communicate more effectively.

We’ll look at what happens when senior leaders pass down decisions without enough context, leaving mid-level leaders to explain the what without understanding the why. We’ll also talk about why well-intended mid-level leaders sometimes hold back difficult and pertinent information until a problem becomes urgent. We will also dig into how this can erode the trust they were hoping to protect by holding back.

We will address the very real pressure of leading in the middle. This typically includes trying to meet senior leaders’ expectations while taking care of your team, often with limited resources and conflicting priorities. I share how a propensity toward people-pleasing can make that squeeze harder. This leads us into the critical importance of being solution-oriented rather than problem-focused. It’s easy to find 27 problems on any given day. It’s the leaders who are finding and creating solutions, staying in momentum, and able to make strategic recommendations who are typically building more credibility, authority, and trust in their roles. 

Finally, we’ll consider pace. When senior leaders move from one decision to the next too quickly, the people responsible for implementation may struggle to keep up. Before setting another priority or timeline, it helps to ask: Who is most likely to be negatively impacted by this decision?

If you recognize these dynamics on your team, I’d love to talk about how I can help you strengthen communication and strategic thinking across levels of leadership. 

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I met Dr. Sherri Lynch on my first day on campus for graduate school. I was told by another professor that I should introduce myself to her. I was admittedly nervous and fumbly. Luckily, Sherri is overwhelmingly kind and open to connections of all sorts. We quickly hit it off and have had the chance to get to know each other and partner for multiple events. My obsession with her work and her commitment to women began a few months later, the day after Election Day in 2024. You’ll have to listen in to hear that story!

Sherri Lynch, PhD, is the Assistant Dean at Gonzaga University's School of Leadership Studies, where she teaches in the Organizational Leadership & Comprehensive Leadership programs. She is a certified emotional intelligence practitioner and a highly skilled relationship builder. She co-founded the Women Lead program, which includes conferences, workshops, and a certificate program, to educate and empower women at all stages of their careers. She has presented to many professional organizations on leadership topics such as emotional intelligence, microaffirmations, mentorship and sponsorship, and the power of storytelling. Sherri has a heart for service and continues to serve on various community boards, including the YWCA and Canopy Credit Union.

Listen in to hear Sherri share:

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I don’t know anyone who has breezed through life since 2020. Constant change, enduring uncertainty, and frequent downright chaos have become fixtures of life. It’s taken a toll on us all. 

Constant change, uncertainty, and chaos not only rock your nervous system, it can also do a number on your confidence. When you’re navigating professional shifts, economic uncertainty, and ongoing instability, it’s easy to move from change overwhelm into uncertainty fatigue, and eventually into full-on burnout. And when that happens, the impact extends well beyond work. In my work wth executive coaching clients, I see this result in increased self-doubt, decreased self-trust, and questioning one’s capabilities. 

Many clients come to me having made a hobby of collecting evidence that reinforces the idea that they have less power than they actually do. I don’t blame them. There have been many large-scale efforts to make most of us (anyone carrying a marginalized identity - women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants) feel completely powerless.

In this episode, I’m talking about how to maintain your confidence when so much around you feels unpredictable. We’ll explore why waiting for certainty before trusting yourself can keep you stuck, how chronic catastrophizing and hopeless assumptions quietly erode your self-trust, and why it’s crucial to identify the capabilities and strengths you can carry with you anywhere in life. I’ll also share how to hold legitimate risks alongside emerging possibilities so you don’t accidentally let fear become the only evidence you’re willing to consider.

While you may not be able to control what happens next, you can strengthen your leadership confidence, protect your sense of agency, and continue making grounded decisions without requiring certainty first.

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Strong leadership communication isn’t just about knowing what to say. It’s also largely about knowing how to say what you need to say. It's about building the habits that help you communicate well when you’re frustrated, under pressure, or navigating tension. In this episode, I’m breaking down four communication skills every leader needs to practice:

We’ll talk about what happens when you assume you know why someone is underperforming, why an email sounded snarky, or why someone missed the mark, and how quickly your reaction to those assumptions can undermine your leadership. We will explore what happens when you don’t share enough information with those you lead. We will address how to assess different people’s communication needs and how to best serve different kinds of people, even in tough and tense moments.

Whether you’re working on team communication, giving feedback to employees in a way they can actually hear and integrate, navigating difficult conversations as you manage up or manage down, or simply trying to become a more thoughtful and emotionally intelligent leader, these are skills that will strengthen your leadership while also making your work significantly more rewarding.

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Dana Robinson Slote and I originally connected on LinkedIn, where I stumbled upon her work and was immediately excited about some of our similar passions. In getting to know her a bit and learning more about her strengths, I knew she would be a great fit for the show. She loves to talk about things many leaders dread, such as public speaking and managing up. I love a leader who brings simplicity to things that can be overwhelming, if not downright scary. Dana does just that.

Dana brings more than two decades of experience in the political arena and the public sector to her work as a communications strategist. In her current role, she's responsible for advocacy communications in the External Affairs division for the country’s largest regional children’s hospital, serving four states and one million square miles. In prior positions, Dana served as the Director of Media Relations at the University of Washington and as the Director of Communications for the Seattle City Council and the Washington State Senate concurrently. Dana earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from Western Washington University and a master’s degree in communication and organizational leadership from Gonzaga University.  She’s also an affiliate faculty member at UW’s Communication Leadership program, a world traveler, and a two-time Ironman triathlete with deep roots in the Pacific Northwest.

Listen in to hear Dana share:

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As I’ve talked about in past episodes about perimenopause and menopause (Episodes 924, 954, and 968), the transition from perimenopause to menopause took me down - HARD. Since navigating this journey myself, I’ve become hyperaware as clients start to share common difficulties at work that might also be connected to menopause (poor focus, forgetfulness, irritability, lack of patience, chronic fatigue, feeling “off,” feeling irrational (and maybe irate) for no particular reason, and more. 

Perimenopause and menopause can affect far more than how you feel physically. Changes in sleep, focus, memory, anxiety, and energy can influence how you communicate, make decisions, handle pressure, and show up in high-visibility leadership moments. For women who have always been known as highly capable, these changes can be unsettling. I’ve noticed that it’s pretty common that we clock this as evidence that we are losing our competence, confidence, or leadership edge - which could not be farther from the truth. 

It’s time to clear this up!

In this episode, I’m exploring five specific ways perimenopause and menopause can affect how women lead. I’ll talk about changes in access to executive functioning skills, shaken confidence in high-stakes situations, a reduced tolerance for dysfunctional workplace norms, the invisible workload of privately managing a major physical transition, and the need to redefine sustainable leadership. 

If you’re navigating this transition and questioning your confidence, capacity, or next chapter, individual executive coaching can help you distinguish between what may be changing physically and what remains true about your experience, expertise, and leadership. Together, we can strengthen your boundaries, communication, decision-making, and leadership practices so you can continue growing without sacrificing your well-being. Coaching can complement appropriate medical care, but it does not replace evaluation or treatment from a qualified Healthcare professional. If I can support you during this season, please reach out! 

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