The Unburdened Leader

It feels like we are in a collective hangover right now as we unlearn toxic ways of viewing difficult emotions, life experiences, and just being human.

And the commitment to understand those unpleasant feelings or aspects of ourselves isn’t any less daunting. It’s hard work to discover why we can’t set and maintain boundaries or deepen the courage to speak up when the stakes are high.

But our capacity for discomfort creates our capacity to lead with courage.

Our ability to work with our emotions helps us achieve the changes we desire inside us and around us. 

Working with our emotions–doing inner work– involves an intention to better understand why we do and feel and respond the way we do. 

When we do inner work, we take responsibility for our own needs, our pain, our difficult life experiences. We listen to our discomfort and get curious about what we need instead of exiling the parts of us that need our support.  

Sure, this kind of awareness without action fosters more individualism. But when we deepen our awareness of what happens internally, it can also deepen our impact in the world around us. 

And when we lead with more courage, compassion, and confidence, that has a much needed ripple effect outside of us.

My guest today lives this practice in a deeply human and accessible way that encourages and inspires.

Nicole “Ziza” Bauer is a content editor at Magnolia. Previously, she worked as the Online Managing Editor for DARLING, as well as a freelance writer in food and travel.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Ziza let go of external opinions and the perception of what it means to be an adult to listen to her intuition and pursue her passion
• How she uses social media as a tool for connecting and the guardrails and boundaries she has put in place around social
• Why business leaders and content creators need inner work to develop the capacity to respond to social and cultural moments with courage and integrity
• How an unexpected and disappointing job loss allowed Ziza to step into new professional growth

Learn more about Nicole Ziza Bauer:

• NicoleZizaBauer.com
• Instagram: @zizavita

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Joan Didion
• Richard Rohr
• Mary Oliver
• Max Richter Recomposed: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
• My Brilliant Friend
• When Harry Met Sally... 

When being right is more important to you than being in relationship, difference and questioning become something to fear.

And fear shuts down connection and curiosity.

Unattended grief and rage are fertile ground for fear to have a party with our capacity to stay curious and welcome the discomfort of doubt and questions. 

And trust cannot exist without the ability to share and question the norms and beliefs of a community. 

When we lead or are led this way, questions become a threat to belonging and status quo. 

And when you are in the public eye, there seems to be even less room for doubt and more momentum for digging heels into being right, at the sacrifice of relationships and dignity.

Today’s Unburdened Leader guest and her husband lost friends, community, and much of their livelihood when they started to question some of the foundational tenets of their beliefs, which were deeply intertwined into their community.

Instead of their doubt and curiosity being welcomed and honored, their questioning came at a great cost that reflected that many in their community were more invested in being right over their relationships.

Lisa Gungor has been scribbling down songs since she was seven years old. A maker at heart, Lisa studied art in college, and in 2005 she began recording and traveling with the band that eventually turned into the two-time Grammy-nominated musical collective known as Gungor. She has new solo music under the name Isa Ma, and is co-founder of Sacred Feminine.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Lisa’s beliefs and identity got publicly subsumed, first with her band then with her husband’s questioning
• What Lisa learned from the solidarity of the friends and community members who stuck by them
• How Lisa found her songwriting voice while struggling with her faith and infertility
• What embodied leadership means to Lisa

Learn more about Lisa Gungor:

• Isa Ma
• Sacred Feminine
• Instagram: @LisaGungor, @Isa_Ma_Music
• The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder, Lisa Gungor

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita, Ram Dass
• The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys, James Fadiman
• Awakening the Body, Will Johnson
• Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Princess Bride

If you don't take time to grieve, your body will make the time for you. 

Grief is an emotion that does not respond to intellectual strategies or hacks. It has a job to do and it will take you out if you do not listen to it. 

And there are not many spaces that encourage you to take the time to tend to the fullness of your grief. 

Work deadlines are still looming. Bills still need to be paid. Family care needs are still all too present.

But when we neglect to approach our grief and the grief of others with the reverence it deserves, we may unintentionally become complicit in toxic narratives around grief while doing harm to ourselves and to others.

And when grief is not tended to, our bodies end up being the truth tellers in ways of: anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks, brain fog, and so much more to get us to pay attention to our grief. 

My guest today addresses powerfully what it looks like to normalize grief and what happens when we try to bypass it. 

Marisa Renee Lee is a writer, speaker, entrepreneur and grief advocate. She's the author of Grief is Love; the founder of the social impact consultancy Beacon Advisors; the co-founder of the digital platform Supportal, which offers resources to those going through hardship and loss; and the founder of The Pink Agenda, a national organization dedicated to raising money for breast cancer care, research, and awareness. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Marisa went through anticipatory grief leading up to her mother’s death, and how it couldn’t prepare her for the actual loss
• Why there is no getting over some fundamental losses and why that’s okay
• The mental and physical toll unattended grief took on Marisa in the wake of her mother’s death
• How the emotional vulnerability required to fully grieve is a privilege not everyone has
• Why it’s imperative for leaders to normalize grief and offer tangible support to those experiencing it

Learn more about Marisa Renee Lee:

• MarisaReneeLee.com
• Instagram: @MarisaReneeLee
• Grief Is Love: Living with Loss

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• In a New York Minute, Kate Spencer
• "Fix You", Ben Harper
• Ozark
• The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On

Our bodies are often the wisest parts of who we are, but we regularly over-ride the messages they send us when they tell us when we’re at capacity. 

We push through, over-work, see physical and emotional pain as something to overcome instead of important data to take into account about our needs and how we are living. 

And even if we do take in these messages clearly and see the need for needed shifts and care, it feels like change is not an option or acceptable. 

So we push ourselves until we crash. And this is often normalized - sometimes even celebrated - as a part of how we do work and life. 

And when the body dials up the pain or the anxiety to finally get our attention, the default for many is to become at war with the messenger - seeing our bodies as the enemy instead of the culture of work and health care as the culprit. 

This is only reinforced by the expectations from work and how everyone else “seems to being doing it all with ease.”

My guest today shares her story of working through healing from an unsustainable work schedule where burnout showed up, took her out, and changed her career trajectory. 

Racheal Cook is an award-winning business strategist who believes entrepreneurship doesn't have to be so complicated. Through her business, The CEO Collective, she helps women entrepreneurs to scale sustainable businesses without the hustle or burnout. When she's not working with women entrepreneurs, you'll find her playing board games with her 3 kids and husband in Richmond VA.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The formative experiences from Racheal’s childhood that inform how she runs her business today
• How Racheal carves out time and capacity to cultivate strong relationships
• The support systems and processes Racheal has in place so she can navigate caring for her aging parents and her family without burning out
• How acknowledging and honoring the constraints on her time and her capacity helped Racheal build a sustainable business

Learn more about Racheal Cook:

• The CEO Collective
• Instagram: @racheal.cook

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) - Violence Prevention
• RYSE Center ACEs Disorder vs. Distress Pyramid
• Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World, Eve Rodsky
• Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live), Eve Rodsky
• Florence and the Machine
• Atlas of the Heart
• Dirty Dancing

When you are not clear on what truly matters most to you, how you decide to use your precious time can leave you feeling overwhelmed and lost. 

And even your sense of time and what you can get done gets skewed by the tyranny of the urgent. Or comparison to how others are doing life and work. 

Striving and grinding is still the norm in so many spaces. The message is still suck it up, chin up, get it done. And falling or failing is on you and you alone.

This mindset is deeply problematic as many are pushing back on these approaches to how we use our time and the expectations around how we do work recognizing how culture and many of the systems we work in contribute to burdening our sense of time. 

Boundaries around your time mean disappointing people. So if you are focused on over-delivering and making everyone happy, things can get messy, fast.  

If what matters most means meeting metrics that are set by others, burnout and disillusionment are inevitable.

These dangerous messages have us chasing something we think will give us relief when in fact, we only feel worse when we put this kind of pressure on ourselves 

My guest today has an approach and a philosophy to time and getting things done that has transformed my relationship with work, time, and my calendar.

Charlie Gilkey helps people start finishing the stuff that matters. He's the founder of Productive Flourishing, author of the book Start Finishing (2019) and The Small Business Lifecycle (2012), and host of the Productive Flourishing podcast. Before starting Productive Flourishing, Charlie worked as a Joint Force Military Logistics Coordinator while simultaneously pursuing a PhD in Philosophy. He lives with his wife, Angela, in Portland, Oregon.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why our problems are with expectations, not time management
• How we need to shift our relationship to productivity to prioritize values, self-awareness, and compassion
• How we end up with so much of what Charlie calls project debt, and how to dig ourselves out of it
• Why we need to stop reinforcing the narrative of the busy party
• Why leaders need to stop playing the hero or the martyr to their teams

Learn more about Charlie Gilkey:

• Productive Flourishing
• Twitter: @CharlieGilkey
• Instagram: @productiveflourishing
• Facebook: @ProductiveFlourishing
• Connect with Charlie on LinkedIn
• Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done
• The Small Business Life Cycle

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• White Supremacy Culture, Tema Okun
• Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption, Geoffrey A. Moore
• The Ten Equations That Rule the World: And How You Can Use Them Too, David Sumpter
• Nahko And Medicine For The People - “Skin In The Game”
• Star Trek: Discovery
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

The desire to be seen, loved, and belong drives so many of our decisions. 

Especially when it comes to connecting in community.

Community plays a powerful role in our wellbeing and culture.

But what happens when the communities we are in make us sicker? 

Part of the antidote to toxic communities is finding spaces that support bumping up against our fear of being misunderstood, our fear of not being able to handle a difference of opinion, our fear of rejection. But this is a messy process and many spaces struggle with creating this kind of culture. 

And when our places of work and learning and worship struggle with messy realities, community feels less like community and more like a place for us to perform and check boxes.

Our connections and relationships become transactional instead of a place where we grow and strengthen. And when we are in transactional spaces, we are not truly seen, and the deep change we desire doesn't happen. 

But Community can serve as a catalyst and container for healing and growth. 

My guest today is cultivating spaces that are much needed medicine to us individually and collectively. 

Founder, leader, and community builder, Shannon Siriano Greenwood knows the benefits of building her network with meaningful relationships over bountiful connections. Her work supports women professionals in creating meaningful connections that will support them both professionally and personally.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• What Shannon’s first event taught her about burnout, work-life balance, and how we measure success
• How growing up striving for external validation translated into perfectionism and burnout in Shannon’s life as an adult
• How her background in the competitive world of ballet has shaped her adult relationships with women and the community she’s built with Rebelle
• Why Shannon and her team are committed to creating safe spaces for their community to explore and challenge their internalized biases
• How to bring curiosity and gratitude to building your network 

Learn more about Shannon Siriano Greenwood:

• Rebelle
• Instagram: @readytorebelle
• Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Other People's Clothes, Calla Henkel
• BENEE - “Beach Boy"
• Point Break

You carry life's burdens with you every day. Some days, they might feel heavy enough to break you.

But they also have the power to inspire you.

Your burdens are those difficult life experiences you’ve had. Our past pains can be the source of many of our recurring struggles. And they can also motivate us to do good in the world.

Coming to terms with our burdens–how they inspire us and how they continue to cause us pain–is a key step for allowing ourselves to be known and loved as we are.

Without recognizing our burdens, we can’t make ourselves open to intimate connections. 

This is the work of a lifetime.

Self-discovery takes time, and it doesn’t necessarily get any easier with age. But one way we can enhance the process is to listen to others tell their stories and share their burdens. 

And that’s been the goal of this podcast from Day 1. Today, I’m proud to be sharing our 50th episode with you.

My guest, Alison Cook, is a longterm friend and colleague and she’s interviewing me about the origin story of this podcast along with connecting the dots of my story that informs my work today.

Alison Cook, PhD is a counselor, speaker, and the author of two books, including her new book, The Best of You (coming September 2022) and Boundaries for Your Soul. For 20 years, Alison has helped women, ministry leaders, couples, and families learn how to heal painful emotions, develop confidence from the inside out, forge healthy relationships, and fully live out their God-given potential.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why starting a podcast felt like breaking the rules personally and professionally
• How The Unburdened Leader is informed by IFS principles as well as a lifelong interest in the influence of people’s pain in their life’s work
• How ambition got tangled with power and a need for control while working on the Hill
• Why parenting led to a process of self-healing and a shifting definition of success

Learn more about Alison Cook, PhD:

• AlisonCookPhD.com
• Instagram: @AlisonCookPhD
• Facebook: @AlisonCookPhD
• Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings Into Your Greatest Allies

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life, Cleo Wade
• Leon Bridges - "River"
• Billions
• The Breakfast Club
• Pretty in Pink

We can get so caught up in how we are seen that we miss opportunities to course correct and expand our views on the world around us. 

And admitting you made a mistake or that you changed your mind can feel like jumping into shark infested waters. 

The process of expanding our views and self-correction involves connecting meaningfully with other’s experiences and needs so we can see the world outside of our own experience.

Sometimes we take in important new data that activates protective behaviors like defensiveness and control while navigating feeling disoriented and uncertain. 

How we move through these moments rarely looks or feels graceful. Especially because parts of us still resist the discomfort that leaves us feeling out of sorts. 

But when you commit to growing as a leader and as a human your work is more than an intellectual and tidy process.

And it requires deepening relationships with others so you can truly understand from your heart the needs and perspectives of others. 

Today’s guests were willing to share hard and vulnerable stories from their lives and perspectives and what started as a conversation in DMs expanded into this roundtable discussion.

Cha Barefield is a powerful speaker, and the host and creator of "The Cha Show". Cha sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and causes us to see the same. She believes that when you speak about things that matter to you, you will invariably speak about things that matter to everyone. The world needs what Cha seeks to amplify, now more than ever. 

Joon Park shares his incredible typewriter skills and inspiring ‘Typewriter Therapy’ on Instagram and he is also a Hospital Chaplain, Chaplain for the Homeless, 6th degree black belt, ex-atheist, skeptic, son to immigrants, and Korean-American who loves Jesus. He is also the author of The Voices We Carry: Finding Your One True Voice in a World of Clamor and Noise.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How the narrative of “reluctant leadership” has been tied to race and gender for both Cha and Joon
• Why we need to broaden our narratives, whose stories we value, and whose stories we center
• The difficult and exhausting trade-offs of navigating visible leadership as people of color
• How expanding the narrative and acknowledging their history helps Joon and Cha stand in their power
• The fundamental difference between comfort and safety

Learn more about Cha Barefield:

• The Cha Show
• Instagram: @ChaBare

Learn more about Joon Park:

• Instagram: @JSPark3000
• Twitter: @JSParkBlog
• The Voices We Carry: Finding Your One True Voice in a World of Clamor and Noise

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee
• The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change, Michelle Mijung Kim
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
• The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu
• Exhalation,Ted Chiang
• Stories of Your Life and Others,Ted Chiang
• The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
• Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle, Danté Stewart
• God Is a Black Woman, Christena Cleveland
• Encanto Soundtrack
• Sarah Kang
• Wyn Starks
• “Tambourine,” Eve
• Yellowstone
• Squid Game
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED Talk

When you choose to step into conversations about racism you risk giving up your comfort and the illusion of control on how you are seen.

In essence, when you choose to speak up against injustice you are inviting discomfort.

And inviting discomfort is an affront to all the ways you protect yourself from harm. 

Yet when you befriend your discomfort instead of letting it shut you down, you can navigate the vulnerability of potentially being misunderstood. 

The polarities that come up around wanting to say the right thing, but not be performative or not wanting to center yourself, but be authentic and true are real and can also shut you down.

Sometimes it seems best to just stay quiet. 

Taking the time to pause and not just react is important, especially in our hyper-responsive world. But indefinite silence is never ok when harm is being done. 

Self-leadership helps you lead yourself with more confidence and clarity through the vulnerable and awkward moments. And collective efforts are always better than individual ones. You can best advocate when you have community, clarity, and a plan. 

Today’s guest literally wrote a book on how to talk about race to your boss at work that is practical, actionable, and really, really helpful. 

Y-Vonne Hutchinson is the author of How to Talk to Your Boss About Race and CEO of ReadySet, a diversity and inclusion training firm that helps tech giants, political leaders, media outlets, and Fortune 500 companies speak more productively about racism and turn talk into action.To date, ReadySet has worked with hundreds of companies around the world to build, manage, and grow diverse teams. In a former life, prior to founding ReadySet, she worked as an international labor and human rights lawyer for nearly a decade.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The impact of performance attribution bias on people of color in the workforce
• Why Y-Vonne says work, identity, and race are so intertwined in our culture
• Why emphasizing unconscious bias and individual actions alone can’t create sustainable systemic change 
• How movement language gets co-opted and why leaders need to prepare for backlash
• How identity, social location and position can impact your strategy for speaking up at work

Learn more about Y-Vonne Hutchinson:

• ReadySet
• How to Talk to Your Boss About Race: Speaking Up Without Getting Shut Down
• Twitter: @ReadySetInc
• Connect with Y-Vonne and ReadySet on LinkedIn

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Resmaa Menakem
• Kimberlé Crenshaw
• Capital and Ideology,Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer
• How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way,by Tim Seldin
• 90-Day Fiancé
• "We Don't Talk About Bruno"
• Coming to America

If you do not know who you are, the world will tell you who you are. 

And If you lead from a place of who you think you should be instead of who you truly are, it will take a toll on you and those around you. 

There is immense effort put into editing instead of owning your multiplicities, leaving you exhausted and confused. 

You also give up your power and give up what is most sacred in you when you do not make room for embracing the beautiful multiplicities in you and in all of us when you filter yourself. 

But when you begin to unpack the burdens you carry that impact how you show up in the world, you can embrace all of your multiplicities instead of trying to fit into a mold of what you think the world wants you to be.

It can take a lot of effort sorting through the noise and the baggage you carry to figure out who you are and to embrace all of your identities.

My guest today hit a wall in her own life and found the power of embracing all of her multiplicities instead of trying to fit into a mold that never really fit her. 

Reverend Sarah Heath is an ordained United Methodist clergywoman. Originally from Canada, Sarah attended Duke Divinity School where she earned her Master of Divinity degree in 2005.Sarah currently serves as church consultant and one on one life coach helping people through transitions in faith and in life.

She is the host and creator of the podcasts Making Spaces and Sonderlust, and co-host of Your Favorite Aunts and REVcovery She is also the author of two books What's Your Story? Seeing your Life Through God's Eyes and The Authenticity Challenge.

Sarah’s work challenges people to tell their story, invite everyone to the table, find restoration instead of demolition, and connect the spiritual within the ordinary.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The red flags that Sarah overlooked that spinned eventually into total burnout
• How Sarah reevaluated her relationship to embracing and nurturing her own desires and needs
• Why the experience of being lead pastor left Sarah feeling othered and how she is building community now
• How Sarah is redefining what it means for her to be a pastor while owning her multiplicity

Learn more about Rev. Sarah Heath:

• RevSarahHeath.com
• Instagram: @RevSarahHeath
• Making Spaces Podcast
• Sonderlust Podcast
• REVCovery Podcast
• Your Favorite Aunts Podcast
• What's Your Story? Seeing your Life Through God's Eyes
• The Authenticity Challenge

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Enneagram Types
• Jen Hatmaker
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel Van Der Kolk
• "This Must Be the Place," Sure Sure
• Ted Lasso
• The Expanse
• Christmas Vacation
• Brené Brown
• Glennon Doyle