Coming face-to-face with true leadership
I opened up about the hardest part of me and I didn’t break.
I saw compassion and empathy and innovation and leadership. Not in pieces or spread out over time, but all at once and on a middle school playfield.
It was June. I had been working in a new job for about six months, encouraged to apply by the person I was sitting across from. She listened as I shared my frustration and fear and overwhelm. I had been trying to have a baby for a while now, and it had consumed my life slowly, over time, without me realizing the depth of its impact. I was at a crossroads.
The job I had taken with enthusiasm and excitement – to immerse myself in a new field, to have impact at a large scale, to be innovative and scale a major initiative – was now a source of pain. It wasn’t because of one person, but it brought out the insecure, scared, helpless, fragile, lost parts of me, which – because of the baby-trying and chronic pain – were pretty close to the surface as it was. I fought back by making more lists, trying to do more things, twisting myself into new shapes to be what I thought I should. But my body was saying, “No, no more of this.” And I came to tell her this: “My body won’t let me keep working here, like this, and my head is being forced to listen, so… I have to leave.”
But, the thing is, she listened. She did more than nod and make the motions you do to convey that one is listening. I felt her listening. I felt it deep in my bones. It’s imprinted in me, which is probably why, nearly three years after that day, I can write about it right now.
Listening like that – it’s not something that happens as often as it should. With all the noise and apps and things and stuff that goes on around us, all the time. In those moments, it was empathy and compassion and listening all at once. And then it was leadership. She said, “Stay. We’ll build it together.” And we did.
There’s more to that story, but the message is listening is leadership. Leadership is listening.
Something incredible happens when you lead with compassion, empathy and integrity. And through Reframe, we’ll explore how people – just like her – do it.
What behaviors do they practice, what life experience help shape it, and how does it get supported and nurtured
How do we get more people to lead in a way that supports our humanity
How do we define it – across fields, people, industries, levels of experience – in order to raise it up in the world and make it the type of leadership that we live by
I want my daughters to know that by being empathetic, compassionate and ethical – by being their authentic, whole selves – they are already leaders.
We can all be leaders, and we probably already are.
Join Reframe in exploring - and being part of - the future of leadership.