Over the last few posts, and in the most recent resilience toolkit I've shared a practice to identify your core values. And then take the next step: work out how you actually operationalize them. Talking a good value game is easy and B.S. The more meaningful, and much harder, part is working through how you are actually going to walk your talk. That takes some good ol'fashioned look-at-oneself-in-the-mirror work. But the results, as I share below - are so worth it. I am definitely feeling much more grounded in, and committed to, my values now that I have gone through this exercise. 
 
So, what about you? Have you tried the exercises to identify your core values and how you operationalize them yet? What came up for you? What did you notice about what you struggled with vs. what came more easily?

So, what does my story evoke in you? And what might that say about how you view the world and your place in it. How you view yourself?

Am I weak? Am I a failure? Am I “less than” any of you who are reading this?

Only you can answer that.

Friends admire me for me strength, my resilience, my grit, my determination. But the fact that I have those is no accident. They are, largely, a product of my privilege. They are not some innate personality characteristic. I have the mental, emotional, and intellectual resources - due to my education, upbringing, race, culture and work experiences - to find a way to argue and fight for myself. To plan a new future. To retrain as a coach and become self-employed. If I were a poorly educated single mother-of-color in a developing country, would this be the case?

My experience has taught me, more than anything else, that leadership is never about the exercise of authority or power over someone. Leadership is about compassionately, and with a motivating principle of loving kindness, seeking to lift up everyone we can to be their best selves. To hold them accountable for their actions from that basis, not from a basis of blaming and shaming them for what they’re not. Leadership is about focusing on possibility, not scarcity - and yet that is so much what we tend to do. We measure people against metrics, not being aware that the very metrics themselves are usually rooted in privilege, in the perpetuation of the status quo, and a system of winners and losers.

These questions go to the heart of living, loving and leading. Wrestling with them is the work of our lives, so that we can become the best selves we can be. It is a brave, vulnerable and authentic act to look at these questions. It is profoundly uncomfortable. It is also an act of true leadership.

Leadership and authority are vastly different things. It is vital that leaders question authority, and resist its attempts to normalize and perpetuate the status quo. Leadership is about seeing all human beings as inherently whole, inherently worthy and doing the best they can given the tools and resources that they have.

And if we think they could be doing better, then leadership is about helping them to gain new tools and resources. That may mean letting them go so that they can pursue opportunities that are more aligned with where there are at. But is never about putting them down, or blaming or shaming or judging them for what they’re not.

The more authority and power are used, the more it is to be questioned and resisted. It is an act of profound bravery and courage - and therefore of leadership - to be willing to ask the hard questions of those in authority, of those with power over us. The personal price for doing so may be very high - as I well know. Whether or not that price is worth paying is a question only you can answer.

For myself, it was not a price I sought to pay. And yes, at the time, the price felt way too high. Way, way, way, way too high.

But now I don’t.

Because I would have paid an even higher price if I had capitulated to their definition of me, and in so doing I had continued to avoid wrestling with the question of who I really was. It would have been the price of my soul.

Feeling worthy, just as we are, is not in the least the same thing as feeling you deserve what you have, or that your are entitled to it. A sense of worthiness is routed in humility, gratitude and an awareness of how much of what you have is not due to anything you have done to earn it.

Perhaps the worst abuse of privilege is when privilege aligns with a position of power and authority over others and a feeling of entitlement to that position. The narrative then becomes that they deserve this position of power and authority and have earned it by their own hard work. That can come together in a really toxic brew, because now the privilege/power combination is completely self-justified and self-righteous. People with this outlook (and, let’s face it, they are mostly, but by no means exclusively, white males) are completely blind to - or simply don’t care about (they are effectively the same thing) - the effect of the use of their power and privilege on others. Because in this position they truly think they are better than the other person.

For this is what privilege and power seek to steal from us: our dignity, our worth, our agency, our humanity.

And as a leader I refuse to let that happen to me. And I also refuse to stand by and let it happen to others. So that is why I am now a workplace bullying coach, helping professionals of all ages and genders stop feeling disempowered and move forward in their lives  and careers with unshakeable confidence.

There are many ways to fight this fight. But ultimately it boils down to how we each, as individuals, choose to show and be seen everyday. And how we choose to see others: as whole and worthy, or as flawed and needing to prove themselves. I choose the former. I choose empathy. I choose compassion.

Leadership is about owning our own privilege and prejudices. Defensiveness is a natural response to us being called on our privilege. But it never helpful. And it blinds us to the work we need to do on ourselves, for ourselves. There is only one sure way that I know to breakthrough the disconnection of privilege - and that’s empathy.

The stories we tell ourselves about our identity, about who we are, where we are from, and what we deserve and are entitled to are so powerful. And yet we are, most of us, blind to them. I certainly was. These stories are like the glasses that you are born with - and which you don’t even know are there - because they’ve been part of your ever since you can remember.

I’ll end with a quote by Brené Brown:

The first time you become aware of the cliff edge you want nothing to do with it. No way are you getting close to that abyss that is the whole “vulnerable, authentic self thing”. That’s just marshy woo-woo swampland, a place you get lost and bogged down in. And really, you tell yourself, you’re doing ok. Sure, you could work on a few things, but who couldn’t? 

But it’s like a siren call. Once you know its there, you find yourself drawn back to it. And life, and circumstances and events seem to conspire against you. Slowly, over weeks or months or years you find yourself being nudged closer. Until comes that first day when you are close enough – but not too close! – to peer over the edge. Your partner, your children, your coach, your mentor, your god, your inner widsom, your higher self  - who or whatever it is that has brought you here, dammit, again – points out the scenery. You can see its beautiful over there, in that other country that is your real, authentic self. You’re free down there. Free to be yourself, to dare greatly, to be who you want to be, to be seen and heard for who you really are.

You want to get down there. But it’s a long way down, the jump looks terrifying and the journey impossible and scary. And you have no idea how to do it. In the meantime, you have all these things that keep you in your life now. Work, family, the need to earn an income, parenting, expectations – from others of you, of you of yourself. They are loving ties that bind you. And some are less loving, yes, that too.

And so you approach and retreat. As many times as it takes. As long as it takes. A little closer every time.

And then one day, you find yourself closer to the edge than you’ve ever been before. You realize that you’ve come a long way. That the country this side, this self that you keep on trying to be, is starting to feel more and more like a dead country. A “country of your skull” in the words of Antjie Krog. But down there is a living country. Lush, beautiful, alive.

And your companion voice, inside of you or next to you, shows you that you are ready, that you are not alone, and that you will have the tools and support you need to make a safe landing and bravely explore this new wilderness that is you. You will be able to walk chin up, shoulders broad, head high in that country. In that land you will not fear who or what you might meet, as on the journey there you will collect all the tools you need to flourish and thrive in this rich, verdant place.

And you find yourself right on the cliff edge, toes hanging over. Taking one breath after another. Just waiting until you are ready to take that one last step.


​When you do you will be soaring, gliding. A little wobbly at first, but getting the hang of it fast. The freedom will be exhilarating and terrifying. You will feel boundless. You will be supported by the air. The wind is beneath your wings.

You take another breath in.

You jump when you’re ready. ​