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Stand Tall & Own It
Something shifted. You can feel it. You just can't name it yet.
Stand Tall & Own It is for women in the second half of life who are high-functioning on the outside and quietly disoriented on the inside. You built your life inside systems you trusted completely — until you realized you couldn't tell what was actually yours from what you'd just learned to navigate well.
Host Andrea Johnson doesn't offer formulas. She offers honest thinking, sharp observation, and the kind of conversation that makes you pull over and sit in your driveway.
This is where the real work starts.
Stand Tall & Own It
Episode 80 - The Heart of Listening with Sophie Wadsworth
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Sophie provides executive coaching and nonprofit consulting with a passion for helping leaders craft compelling, mission-centered stories, and build strategic messaging throughout their organizations. She provides training and webinars on storytelling, how to craft winning pitches and presentations, and public speaking skills for leaders. Sophie is the author of an award-winning collection of poetry and a selected storyteller for WGBH’s Stories from the Stage on World Channel. She lives with her family and one very animated cat near Boston, Massachusetts.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Discover your origin story, and where you want to go.
- Find your voice.
Habits:
- Get outside and tune in to that “story”
- Eat well: see food as both medicine and joy
- Read. Expand your mind and horizons.
Green Flags:
- Know your goals.
- Know your non-negotiables.
- Understand what flexibility you need.
Advice:
- Do you need some career coaching? Someone to help you ask all the questions?
- Look carefully at the timing and how it lines up with your goals.
Where to find Sophie:
Website: Sophie Wadsworth
Learn more at http://www.sophiewadsworth.com.
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You're listening to Intentional Optimists, the podcast for unconventional leaders, where you'll find inspiration, learn to discover and develop your own strengths, and hear from inspiring women just like you who are making a difference in their community. Who knows? You just might find yourself stepping up as the next unconventional leader right where you are. I'm your host, Andrea Johnson, the original intentional optimist. Hi there, welcome to episode 80. Today's guest, Sophie Wadsworth, helps women uncover their stories in order to build bridges and connect with their audience or their team. She's brought storytelling and a passion for supporting at-risk youth and people with disabilities to the forefront of her career. And now she coaches leaders, including women in male-dominated fields, to discover their voice, helping them grow into the thought leaders they aspire to be. She loves working with women who have a strong message, helping them learn to use their own story to lead with authenticity. And as a woman in this kind of space, our conversation resonated with me in a deep and profound way. I learned so much, and I hope that this conversation will meet you where you are on your own road to leadership, especially where your story intersects with your audience, whether it's from a stage or in the office or boardroom. I can't wait for you to meet Sophie Wadsworth. Let's go. Hello, Sophie. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Nice to be here.
SPEAKER_02We were chatting just a second ago about the fact that we don't really know each other. So we are gonna make friends here on the podcast. And I can see your smile and face, so I know that this is gonna be easy. And I love your story. So I've already given, now that I've gone back and done my intro and outro, I've already given them a little bit of information. But why don't you tell my audience a little bit about yourself? And the more you share, I'll just pop in with questions so that we can kind of know your background and what you do now that's interesting and different and unconventional.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So right now I am helping people with speech and story development. My early years were spent as a teacher in the high school classroom. That was really my public speaking boot camp. And then I went on to get a master's degree in English and teach college. Um, and my second career was as an executive director in the nonprofit world. So that's where I really got to be a leader and work with a team of people in service to a mission.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And now I'm really excited to be sort of on the other side, you know, taking all the wisdom I got from mentors along the way and my own experience and helping other people tell their mission-centered stories and create keynotes and work with words.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is why I was like, I knew we were gonna connect, I knew this is gonna be good. I mean, everything I do is mission-oriented. The women I work with are mission-driven. And I think that it's really when people start pulling up your own buzzwords, you know it's good, right? I want to go back though, because you shared with me that you were a high school teacher and you empowered high schoolers to challenge authority and express themselves authentically. Now, I have a middle schooler in my house. They don't usually have trouble challenging authority. So I am really curious to hear, because you know, you said you got to work with leaders, but in my mind, you're making leaders right there in high school.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I remember a time my first teaching job was out in Tacoma, Washington, in the Seattle area. And they brought in a group of kids who actually had really been in sort of under-resourced school system and were from a neighborhood that was not seen very well in that city. And I kept hearing them talking about it and then hearing other kids talk about it, and it wasn't positive, and I thought, well, I'm just gonna go check this out. So I actually, on my day off, went and walked through this so-called bad neighborhood. And when I came back, I told them, you know, this is what it looked like had a walk. People who were from the neighborhood were horrified, which wasn't what I expected. They said, Why you went there by yourself? You know, what are you doing? And um, and the people who had out all these stereotypes said, Oh. So you went and walked through the neighborhood so you could see for yourself. And what I was showing them, and I think it worked in this case, was that we really shouldn't take things at face value. We should go find things out for ourselves. Now, I wasn't telling them to go walk through any neighborhood, but showing them I wanted to do a little research and I was new to this city and was gonna go be an eyewitness and then come back and say, well, this is what it's really like, everybody. So let's revise our thinking. Um and that was that was really, I think, a form of empowering everyone. Um, everyone in the room.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And you know, when we look at the classical understanding of middle schoolers and high schoolers, that's part of their job is to challenge authority because they have to learn and they're establishing their own identity and finding a way to meet them where they are, I think is super uh important. And when other people feel seen, they're more open, they're more accepting of you. So, and I loved that whole idea of don't take things at face value. Just don't. I mean, because now what you do is you work with people talking about stories. So we always talk about don't judge a book by its cover, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02So you went and got, so you left teaching. How long did you do teaching?
SPEAKER_00Um, I was actually a high school teacher for three years.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And then you went and got a master's in English. What has that done for you in your work?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think it was the chance to have more space and time. I only worked part-time through grad school to work on my own writing and really develop my voice on the page. Um it's hard to do that um working very full-time. Um, I even worked on weekends as a high school teacher, as I'm sure many people who are teachers know you can't get it all done during the week. So to drop in and explore what I really wanted to say and what excited me about language is still with me today. Um, I worked on a collection of poems and eventually got those published that I I think I I couldn't have done as quickly if I were on my own. So that was that was the gift.
SPEAKER_02I like that because if you're gonna work with people on figuring out how to tell their stories, you need to know yours. You need to find your own voice. And I've got a note, we're gonna talk about that in just a minute, um, about what that means to find your voice. But I think that um I loved what you said about it, gave you the opportunity to figure out what how you could do things with the English language. And there is, I'm seeing my own self a little less emphasis on what we do with the English language, especially when we speak. And some of that is just the fast-paced world, some of it is, you know, texting. And, you know, my son will say, LOL. I'm like, seriously, that you I mean, at least use the laugh out loud part. I mean, it's just granted I'm old, right? But I think that having people who are still interested in making the English language do beautiful things rather than coming up, I mean, and great, it's great to come up with new words. It's I don't, there's nothing wrong with that, but or at least that's my opinion. I think we need to come up with new words because there are reasons why we have words that don't seem to make any sense to us. But I love that that's the gift you feel like it gave you. And I'll bet you use that every day. So you also um says that you actually did some other writing about like adventurous narratives for women, and um, like you mentioned your environmental, the environmental leader, Marion Stoddard. You'd mentioned your great-grandmother. So are these books published?
SPEAKER_00So the collection of poems is published, it's called Letters from Siberia. Um, poetry is a quirky business. It won a chapbook award. Um, so people should reach out to me personally at this point if they're interested in a copy. Um and the um yeah, the poem about Marion Stoddart, she was an ex it was and is an extraordinary environmentalist. Um, and so that was a long poem I wrote to support a film about her work to clean up one of the most polluted rivers um in the country at the time in the 60s. Um, and then yeah, I've gone on now to I think do more public speaking. The stories are coming forward more on the stage than the page right now. So it's been a fun journey from poetry that is a little like bullion cube with story to stories that are more sort of live and in person and a little freer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, to a big stone soup, right? From bullion to stone soup, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_02So tell us what you do now. Um, you say that you've brought storytelling and a passion for supporting at-you at-risk youth and people with disabilities. I assume that was in your nonprofit work. Yes. That you've brought all that now to the forefront of your career because that's what we do as entrepreneurs and coaches, right? We take whatever we've experienced over our career and we say, you know what, I can do this for this group of people on my own. And I love that we both tend to work with women. Do you exclusively work with women?
SPEAKER_00Um, I do not. And I would say that that is the majority of my practice, is women who are writers who are looking to develop their keynote, um, who are business owners, and really in a place where they have a strong business and want to go to the next level with their story and their communications, whether it's on the page or on the stage.
SPEAKER_02So tell me a little bit about how you do that. How do you work with women and do that?
SPEAKER_00So, you know, for a leader, each of them has an idea of what their story is, how their business came to be, how their ideas came to be, their sort of their origin story. And usually when I start working with a leader, I'm interested to know how she wants to evolve. Does she want to reach out to new audiences? Does she want to create kind of a better magnet to attract more of the kind of clients that she really wants to work with? Um, does she want to develop her thought leadership? Maybe she's working on her second book. So I talk with the leader about where she wants to go with her writing and with her speaking. Um, so we can think a little bit about audience. The most powerful thing for the leaders I work with is for them to understand their story and how it intersects with the audience's story. That old sort of advertising wisdom that, you know, we want to enter the conversation that's in our customers' minds. So I ask a leader like, what's the conversation in the minds of your audience? What are their problems and struggles? And how do you as a leader match your story to that?
SPEAKER_02I like that. Do you have any really good examples of how that really worked for a specific client?
SPEAKER_00Sure. I was working with one client who was running um her own investment business. So she had um a very seasoned portfolio of clients and yet had never stepped back to figure out well, how would she bring her story into the mix? So we started first with talking about her life story and some of her childhood adventures and circumstances that led her to have a deep empathy for people who struggled with their finances.
SPEAKER_02Um, that sounds rich.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, growing up with um a single dad and seeing um what it took to put food on the table for the family. And also what she had learned along the way as she had done retail sales and worked for insurance sales and mutual funds, and figuring out what was it that she could bring to the conversation, what was it in her story that she wanted to tell? So some of it is like a kind of mini mini biography work. What's the arc of your story? What are the big points of crisis? And what are the ones that you're comfortable with sharing? Where people are gonna relate. People are gonna relate to that moment of struggle when you know a person had four kids and their marriage was falling apart, and then they decided to level up and go work for a big company. People will relate to those points of crisis. So that was the beginning point is looking at the story and saying, okay, what are the parts you're comfortable sharing and what are the parts that you really want to bring into your leadership story and your organization's story?
SPEAKER_02And I I've done a little bit of what you're describing. Um, I've actually had a had a coach mentor once he said, So have you written your own narrative? And I'm like, my what? Just your own narrative. Have you written your narrative story? And I have to tell you, Sophie, it's currently three years into it, it's probably 18 or 20 pages, and it's just bullet points because I'm a little bit of a detail person. But then I love your comments. Like you get to take what you want to share and not share, right? But when you write it all out, it's I think it's fascinating to see what our stories really are. Um, it just I of course think that my story is just my life, right? It's just I've just lived through it, right? That's just what I've done. And when I start telling people about things like uh adoption or weight loss surgery or growing up overseas or losing my mother to cancer, people just start going, oh, that I understand that story, or I'm an adoptive mother, or so this is exactly the kind of thing you're talking about. And when my friend said to me, you need to just do your story because when you hang your shingle out there for any kind of business, for me, it's women, and she said, When you hang your shingle, people you have no idea what kind of woman is gonna walk through your door. You need to be ready with a story from your background that is going to relate. Does that ring true for you?
SPEAKER_00It does. I want to ask you now like what kind of client is like your dream client when they walk through the door, when the email comes into your inbox, you're like, oh, we are gonna go on a journey together. I would love to hear that for your listeners to hear that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm getting a coaching session right now and right here. So for me, it's the mission drive driven woman. It is the woman who she's probably professional. It's a lot like me, right? She's probably professional. She's really good at what she does. She always gets high marks wherever she goes, but her heart is over here. Her heart is is all of her emotional energy is spent on something else. And she wants to do that for the world. And as women, so many times we get stuck in the corporate rat race, right? I started, I didn't mean to go into medical uh administration, right? I had no intention of starting to work at, I worked at two amazing universities. I worked at Johns Hopkins and the University of Virginia, right? That was never my goal. And yet I still gained skills and that kind of thing, but I still got stuck in what I call the administrative assistant to like certain administrative routes that women all over the world, but especially in the United States, I think just get stuck in. And that's not fulfilling to someone who wants to make a difference in other people's lives. And I, you know, part of my story is I went through all these cycles of I'm gonna figure out how to be engaged in the scientific research and helping with lab management to have that sense of purpose and have that sense of fulfillment. And the reality is I found it more in actually working individually when I went into management and realized, oh, this is where it is for me. It's in the personal transformation of individuals. And it took me a while to get past that and to get out of it or to get out of that corporate environment because it's pervasive in our country, right? It's it's just actually it's all over the world. But for me to be able to look at another woman and say, your experience matters. It it just because you're a first year, like I didn't quit my job until August of 2022, 21. Yeah. Or in 22. What year is it? I'm like, oh my gosh, it's February. Um, so uh anyway, I didn't quit my job until August. And so when people would say, Well, how long have you been doing this? I've started learning, I've really gotten myself over the idea that, oh, I've only been doing this full time since August, but no, no, no, no. I have been helping people figure out how to plan their um work and do their work for over 25 years. And so that's what I do with female entrepreneurs. I help them build themselves so that they can build their business. And you know, when I say that's what I do, the right people go, oh, because I do that with accountability inside community and with encouragement and with tools. And so that's that's my little ideal in a in a nutshell. I'm surprised too. I I initially thought it would all be women my age, and it's not. A lot of times my audience is younger women, and that's ideal for me because I would love to help other women get to the place where they can do their thing much sooner than I got to mine.
SPEAKER_00I love that.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'm not surprised they're drawn in to you. And it reminds me, you know, my experience as an executive director was that some of my best moments as a leader were as a coach inside the organization. Right. Because I loved, like you, to sit down with an individual and explore well, what was their vision and their goals for the year to come and and how did they think it was best for them to get there and make it a conversation, you know, those performance reviews. They they got used to this. It was always self-evaluation and a conversation of where do you want to go? And I'm here to help you get there. And so, in a way, I've been coaching for likewise a couple of decades because there I was just within an organization. Now I'm bringing that um sort of wisdom from the outside, very objective. Um, and I love both. Um, it's wonderful to be part of the transformation for people who, you know, dream big and are doing great work.
SPEAKER_02It is, it's very, and to actually watch the light bulb go on over somebody's head to say, oh, I could do this, right? And you know, you might it might be that you work a side hustle, it might be that you like start your business on the side and you might work that for 10 years, but that's where your heart is, that's where you get your energy, right? It doesn't sap you, and it gives you the momentum and the motivation to do whatever else you need to do to get yourself to a place where you can do that full time. And I loved your personnel evaluations. It's like this is this. I was the only one that felt like I know I'm not, you know, university degree places, but I felt like I was the only one who said, Where do you want to be next year? They're like, these are my job descriptions and these are my goals for my job description. I'm like, okay, job description is assumed. You're going to do your job description. Let's talk about you. What do you see in the department that you can make better? What do you see? You know, and that's the further along I got with that, I'm like, I don't need to be doing this in corporate. I need to be doing this out there. So that's what we do inside my collaborative community. We we do goal setting every month. We do so many people have never even heard of a smart goal. And it's just wow, these are for you. So we hold each other lightly accountable. So um, thanks for letting me um share my story there for just a second.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my pleasure. It's it's great to hear you talk about it.
SPEAKER_02But let's go to the voice part because that's a part that I'm discovering on my own. As early as the end of last year, I misunderstood what it means to find your voice. I thought it meant I had to be ready to take on the world, right? I had to be ready to like raise my fist over whatever it was that I was feeling passionate about. But I have since learned that that is not really what it is that being able to share, well, I'm not gonna give the definition. You tell me, as a coach for women finding their voice. How do you describe that to them and how do you help pull that out of them?
SPEAKER_00So that's a great question. And I describe voice and the process of really excavating and unearthing our voice as a process of deep listening. In the same way as leaders, as people in the world, we build relationships through listening. We need to build that relationship with ourselves. So as much as we can slow down and find the emotion and the feeling in what we've experienced, the times of anger or challenge, the times of celebration and accomplishment, and reflect back on what made those things happen. We come closer to discovering our voice. So it's this deep listening of saying, well, where was I bringing my biggest strength to that project or to that strategy or to that situation in my organization or in my life? And then the second part is really investigating the feeling around it, that it's a felt experience we have. It's not up here in the intellect, it's it's in here, in our heart of like, well, what did it feel like?
SPEAKER_02So give me a little bit more of an example of that. I love that you said it's a felt experience, right? So um, how do you help? Like for me, there are things in my story that um are definitely going to bring up tears. There are things in my story that are going to bring up eye rolls and total, like my son says, cringy moments. And um, so how how do you help work through those? Because it's so much easier for most of us to stay in our heads, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, well, some of it is actually through time travel that we need to go back into the experience. So, an example is working with a writer who wanted to write about her father and her memories of her father cooking. And she wanted to share this in some way with girls.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I asked her to take me back, and this is what we can each do for ourselves, into that kitchen and describe for me what he cooked. So he was from Thailand, so she described the flavors and the smells of the food that he would cook, the lemongrass, and sitting at the table in expectation, right? And the feeling that she had in that expectation, right?
SPEAKER_02My mouth is watering.
SPEAKER_00So it's partly going back in time and recalling something of the details and the feelings you had, and then bringing those forward for us in this concise way of, you know, I had this expectation, I knew that he was cooking out of love for us. And this is how he showed his love is in cooking for us.
SPEAKER_02I love that. Um, is that like an exercise that you walk all of your clients through?
SPEAKER_00I do. So first it's a matter of identifying what are those key stories, what are those key moments of crisis or accomplishment or breakthrough, and then going into them and saying, it's like sometimes I say, um, there's a writer um that I'm working with, and I say it's like taking dictation from your former self. It's like, can you go back into your mind at that moment when you were in that boardroom? What was actually going through your head? And usually a leader like this person could slow down enough and remember, oh yeah, I was thinking, yeah, that I was bored out of my mind.
SPEAKER_02And how long is this?
SPEAKER_00Not the answer I was expecting. How long is this meeting gonna go on like this? Sure. And when will I get to speak? And when will I have a chance to share the ideas that are mine? And this is a powerful story. This is a powerful story of really like there's two conversations going on. There's the one in the room, and then there's the one in our heads. So you can go back and recall that voice, that it's like that track and what it was saying, and you can share pieces of that dialogue with us, and it will bring to life the feeling and at times the disconnect between what you know, what you as the leader are thinking in the room and what's actually going on externally. And part of the excitement of the journey and the narrative is how do those threads come closer together? How does what's playing in our head of how we want things to be come closer to the way things were able to make um them be in reality?
SPEAKER_02Or what needed to happen in order to just move on, right? Just it's like sitting through this anymore. And and if we think we're not having the conversation in our head, think again. Yeah, everybody listening to this podcast is having a conversation in their head while they listen, right? It's we just do, we interact with what's happening, even if it's not something that you're consciously aware of, we have that conversation, don't we?
SPEAKER_00Yes, we do. You know, and I'm reminded of when I was on the cross-country team in high school. And I was not at the front of the pack. I was not one of the fastest runners. In fact, I wasn't really in the middle of the pack. I was like back of the middle. I wasn't the last one, but I wasn't even squarely in the middle. And yet I was chosen as the captain of the team because I led in other ways. I led through what I said to people before the race and how I helped get us all psyched up and get us focused. I led in the way I talked to people after the race, um, especially the ones who were behind me. There were a couple. And um just help them feel good about the race they had run and let them be focused on the time that they had on the clock compared to their usual time. And so I think to be a leader doesn't mean you have to be the fastest or the smartest in the room. You have to have that awareness of each other and the voices that are in our minds, right, that pull us down.
SPEAKER_02It's really, really good. And I that was like, it's like, oh, we're gonna pull that out as a quote. We have to have the awareness, right? Um and I love that you keep talking about leaders because this is an unconventional leadership podcast. And you may have already shared your story, but what I love to do is ask women what their earliest memory is of being a leader. Does it go back to that high school cross-country team, or is it before then? Because you developed that skill that you used in your high school cross-country team somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Well, it might have happened actually on the tackle football field when I was about nine.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sweet. Give us that one.
SPEAKER_00So, well, my sister and I played on a private all-boys team in New York City. Um, I had a chance to share this um thanks to WGBH on a program called Stories from the Stage. Okay. So we can we can share that out um with your audience. That we played um really to the disgust of the boys on the team. And I believe my leadership began there, um, on the van as the boys were insulting us and telling us we looked like boys and um, you know, we're good for nothing in their way. And I learned how to stand up and talk back, and and also when it wasn't worth talking and when we really just needed to get on the field and play football.
SPEAKER_02Okay, what position did you play?
SPEAKER_00I was a linebacker.
SPEAKER_02Seriously?
SPEAKER_00I yeah. So I really learned how to tackle, you know, how to really wrap my arms around the boys' knees and take them down. It was an advantage that I was taller than almost all of them.
SPEAKER_02Well, and my mind, because I'm thinking you're a tall, you're a tall girl. I'm thinking she's probably a wide receiver.
SPEAKER_00Um that was my sister. My sister had the speed, yeah. So I love to watch her race down the field and make touchdowns. That was a plus. Love. I have absolutely. You've got to have a wingman, right? You've got to have a wingman. I was associated with her just by by blood, you know, and by gender. And she older or younger? Younger. Yeah. So she was the one behind me as the boys were slinging insults at us. She was behind me and I was doing all the talking. No surprise. But on the field.
SPEAKER_02We do as the older sister. I that's right. That's exactly. We have the mouth, they have everything else, right? So um, tell me a little bit more about how that experience. What did you say? You were nine years old, ten years old?
SPEAKER_00Nine, ten, eleven.
SPEAKER_02It's like four throughs. That's like the late elementary, early middle school, right? Um, so tell me how that experience has taught you, because I hear all kinds of stuff in there. Number one, you you understood you're learning boundaries, you're you're learning your own boundaries, but you're also learning to expand your boundaries to do things that girls quote unquote don't know how to do. Um, you are developing a wingman. I mean, I'm just hearing all of these things in there that are amazing. So tell me how that experience kind of feeds you today, because clearly it's affected your mindset.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I'll tell you one of the things that was most powerful for me was I had an amazing mentor, our mother. She was the one who got us all into this mess. Um, she was in the height of her feminist phase in the 1970s, talked us onto the team. And she would coach us in the evening after the practice. Um, this was every Saturday morning for years. We played with this all-boys team. And because she was helping us think about these boys in a different way, I had her voice in my mind, along with my own, this voice of wisdom that said, they feel small inside. That's why they're saying those things. They don't know what to do. It's weird having girls on the team. And you know how you feel when you're in unfamiliar territory, right? Um, or you really don't like someone. So that's all. So she kind of like, it was like the shrinky dinks we had in elementary school that you put in the oven and they just got small. It was like she just put put it into this other perspective. I was like, yeah, I mean, I almost felt this um really beneficial pity that I didn't express to the boys, but like, that's gotta be really tough for them. They're so uncomfortable that they are cruel. And I have seen over and over as a leader that the quality and the connection we have with our mentors is literally a game changer. That we bring with us their voices in our mind and put our challenges in their rightful proportion and can step forward and say what we have planned to say and understand the dynamics, you know, just like bring that wisdom, like you're watching a play unfold. I don't mean they have to be a pun, but we were watching the plays unfold on the field. But it is like a drama, you know, uh, this being human. And I could see it unfold. Oh, here's the one. Yeah, he always, you know, says this kind of an insult, or he does this, you know, after I've made a good tackle. Oh, yeah, there that is again. So it becomes this script, like, oh wow, they're just on script. And meanwhile, I can change my part of the dialogue, or sometimes say nothing at all. Right. Get back on the football.
SPEAKER_02Sophie, this is so much of what you learned playing football at 9, 10, and 11. I learned at 40 sitting in a counselor's office. And now my dad was a football player and he had two girls, and I joke that I was his favorite son because I did learn how to play shortstop and first base. And uh my dad was a linebacker. I learned how to play running back, I learned how to play tennis, we were snowskiers, and I learned how to uh I almost called it vacuum the yard, mow the lawn, and um change the tires and the oil and all of that stuff. But at the same time, it was still very girl vers, you know, girl-oriented, even in all of that. But what I had to learn about the scripting, I love that point, is we we're all life really is Shakespeare wasn't wrong. All of life really is a stage, and people really do have parts that they play, and we're all motivated by our own fears and insecurities. And what a blessing to have a mom that could help you see that, and to have that beauty of that voice in your head that was not a voice of you're too small or you need to be smaller, not the voice of, you know, it's it's this voice of expansion and this voice of you got this. It doesn't matter what they do, that's their problem. And then to take, I did shrinky dinks myself. Are we just dating ourselves or what? But I mentioned them to my son the other day, and he goes, excuse me, what? To be able to look at something and to to say, oh, when I understand it, it goes down four times, five times in size. And then it becomes something that's very manageable, something that's very easy to handle. Um, that's just some fantastic lessons that you learned there. How about your mom? Is she still, is your do you still have your mom?
SPEAKER_00Is she still alive and well? Yep, she's retired now. And still I seek out mentors, new mentors, writers and thinkers who can help sort of shine a light on, you know, where I'm I'm headed now and where I'm headed next. So I'm always learning. I guess just a just a perpetual. I'm addicted to learning.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02This is a good thing. This is in my world, this is this is how we live. This is a good thing. Because when you stop learning, you stop living, right? And so let's talk about that. You you decided you're you're you said you're an perpetual learner if you're addicted to it, but at some point you discovered, all right, I've done the teaching, I've done the language, I've done the writing, I've done the executive work, and I've I've watched all these, the way I work with people. At what point did you discover what I'm just gonna call your mission, right? Your mission of being able to say, I want to help people do this on a full-time basis. When did you discover that?
SPEAKER_00Well, it was only a year ago in 2021. And I recognized that my greatest strength is doing work with leaders one-on-one. It was through conversations with colleagues where I discovered that I listen in a way that helps people uncover what they are really struggling with and express where they really want to go. So I I think of this as a really like a generous curiosity, not just curiosity for information, but curiosity with an ear to help a person tell the story that's inside the story. So they have a first story, and as I find questions that ask them to go deeper, ask them to go back into the boardroom or go back into the kitchen to that story and remember what they were really thinking and feeling, they uncover a next layer in what they're truly experiencing and what the heart of the challenge truly is, because we don't necessarily say it the first time around, um, the presenting problem. You know, I'm working with a woman now who's a mid-level manager, and sometimes she comes in to our conversations and she says what's really on her mind. I'm gonna go into this next meeting with my team, and um I'm just gonna really lay it out to them. It's gonna be like this come to Jesus moment. And yet, what's underneath that is a deeper layer of some of the challenges that they're facing as a team. And this this it wasn't, in fact, a moment to have this come to Jesus and call them all sort of on the carpet on things. It was a moment actually to do one-on-one um work and coaching with with individuals and not as a whole team because they're having sort of a mix of challenges. So I think that's the heart of it is listening. I used to joke when I was an executive director that I was really the um not the CEO, but the CLO, the chief listening officer. Because I saw it as my job to ask increasingly better questions.
SPEAKER_02That's great. Uh, I read a book this last year called The Question is the answer. And um, if you haven't, I'll send it to you if you haven't read it, but it sounds like it's right along your trajectory there because it just helped me understand that it's it's not always answering a question with a question. That's not the point. It's what's the right question, right? You have to ask those questions to get to the right question. And when you get to the right question, it's like, whoo, you go way down that hole, right? And it's it's asking enough and and being willing to find the right questions to make sure that you're building in that right thing. And that sounds like exactly what you did there, um, especially with that example with your client. Um, so for all of the women that I talk to, because you have gotten where you are, right? You are your own boss now, and you coach clients, and and it doesn't sound like you just teach people how to tell stories. It sounds to me like you actually use story. This is just me kind of reflecting back, but it sounds a little bit like you use story to help people figure out what they need to do with it rather than just how to because you are a speaking coach and you you do help with the and a writing coach, but you use story in a way that most if you're online and you hear, I'm a tell her this is how you're gonna tell your story, right? You use it in a different way, and part of that is you're listening. But what I hear is that you help people take whatever story that is and figure out what to do with it. Is that accurate?
SPEAKER_00I do. I do, if that's what they need, is understanding once they've sort of gathered the these stories, they have this kind of archive, where are they gonna go with it? If they're um in a business setting, is it gonna go onto their blog? Is it gonna go into um a vlog? You know, some people are um are really interested in leveling up the videos that they share. If they're in a nonprofit, well, how might that shape the way they talk to their big donors, people who are making this mission possible? Um, it's the same with an entrepreneur, you know, seeking to influence their investors. So there's lots of places the stories can go. Um, and I think it helps to it's hard to do this work alone. It helps to have another person to sort through, well, when do I tell which story? Right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So for you on a daily basis, um, you've now that you work with people individually, almost everybody I talk to has some kind of principle that they live by. And you I think if I've been listening, if I've been listening well, I I don't think I'm gonna be surprised with your answer, but we all have some kind of principle, guiding principle that we live by. And I'm curious to know is there a specific leadership principle that's helped you step into this bigger place? And if so, why is it important to you and how do you apply it?
SPEAKER_00Let's talk a little bit more about curiosity.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00One of my principles is to show up for people with a generous curiosity, to listen as deeply as I can and ask them the kinds of questions that are going to help them move a few layers deeper in their understanding of their own story and the messaging that they want to put out into the world. So showing up you know, with a generous curiosity also means setting aside that part of my voice, um, or I which sets. To a leader, try to set aside that part of you that's a problem solver that wants to come in the conversation and already be formulating how you're going to help them solve their challenges, right? The you know, sort of previewing in your mind the advice that you're gonna give, and see if you can go a layer deeper into what the problem is and how they're experiencing the problem as a leader. It's like assuming that, um, like being a friendly detective, that we don't have all the clues yet, and that the first obvious villain isn't necessarily the true villain, and going further in the questioning until what you're hearing back as a leader has um that energy of well, what it really is, what I really mean, or what's the most challenging here in this situation is as follows.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00So that's the curiosity, but the generosity part is not just looking for information or to position yourself as a leader to solve it, tie it up with a bow, send them off with all of your wisdom, but to help, in fact, change the conversation in the other person's mind, the conversation that they're having with themselves about what the real challenge is. Because that positions them to collaborate with you in developing the solution if they can better diagnose the problem.
SPEAKER_02Sure. I love that collaboration piece. That's I think I think that as coaches, I think we all just love collaboration, right? It's being able to say and reflect back and listen and reflect back. Now, is there something that is there any kind of a personal principle or um maybe even a habit that has helped you make those changes, right? Especially make this latest change a year ago from being the CEO of a nonprofit into, I think I'm just gonna assume that's where you were, into being a coach and a consultant. Um, is there a daily habit or principle that you employ each day that kind of helps you stay on track with that?
SPEAKER_00Well, there are a number of habits that help shore me up. One of them is being outside. Um, you know, I live in Massachusetts, so right now it's on snowshoes. We've had a lot of snow lately. Um and there is something about being under the big sky and noticing the weather and whatever critters are out there, it just might be that ordinary squirrel who's ransacking the bird's feeder. Um, that helps me tap into feeling most alive. And um, you know, some of my favorite moments when I when I used to commute, um, when I was, you know, an executive director or CEO, as it's sometimes called, was when this band of turkeys would appear in the middle of the road on my TV. And I had no choice but to stop and watch them. And they're really these unbelievable creatures. Um so even those moments, I I seek out those moments where I can um be part of the this bigger world that we're in. It puts things in perspective and um and sometimes brings some real humor along the way.
SPEAKER_02I love that. I I too find a lot, I'm in Virginia, so we've gotten a lot more snow than we normally do. Um I'm right next to the Blue Ridge, so we get the snow. But um so I I understand that and completely um agree with being able to get outside and get that bigger picture. That's part of the intentional optimism tenet of present, understanding the wonder and the beauty that there is. It also kind of helps when you talk about perspective, it kind of puts you in perspective with all of creation in the world, right? Um, so is that your main habit? You just get outside every day.
SPEAKER_00It's one of them.
SPEAKER_02Okay. We'll take them. What else you got?
SPEAKER_00All right. Other habits. Well, um, I love food. So another habit is um just making sure I'm eating really well. It sounds so simple, but it um, you know, the food is really medicine and it's joy. So taking time to cook something that uh my family will enjoy in the evening when I can, or doing it once on the weekend um is a great habit. And just paying attention that I'm I'm keeping my energy up and I'm uh yeah, I'm just having having fun now and then. It's hard. I've got you know an 11-year-old and um it's you know, it's hard to cook the way I'd like to, but when I do, it always feels good and it's always part of yeah, just the fun of being human is tasting new food. In fact, I've started sharing with my neighbor now. Um, when I make something I like, you know, I don't I don't share the disasters. Um, and it's been really sweet to just bring food back and forth across this across the snow drifts when we make something we're proud of. She brought over these samosas the other day that were so good. I was like, you're gonna be competition for my favorite Indian restaurant.
SPEAKER_02Uh that is awesome.
SPEAKER_00She's Indian, so she's got an advantage. But um, but yeah, I'd say eating well and um and cooking when I can is is another habit.
SPEAKER_02I love that. Um, so we're you and I are on similar places there. It's like I'm trying to do well. Mine's now 13. So um, you know, it's like there's like, oh, I don't like that anymore. I'm like, but you liked it for 12 years, and oh, this is yucky, or uh the cheese is different, or you know, so I fully understand. And when you find something that works and it's healthy, that is like the sun rises even on a rainy day, and the the sky opens up and you hear the oh, the angel sing. I love those are really good habits. Um, can you give me maybe something that you do for yourself? You said you're addicted to learning. What kind of because for you as a leader, in order to serve your clients and your family, evidently, what do you do to keep your learning going all the time?
SPEAKER_00Well, I love books. So I yeah, I'm I'm a regular um at the library and um am always you know buying books that I know that I'm gonna want to read or reread um yeah, by leaders who are inspiring, um, and and other kinds of writers. Um so I read all kinds of things. I even read poetry because that gets my mind in a different place. Um so all right.
SPEAKER_02What's what's the book that has most influenced you last year? Like of 2021, what is the book that if you had to pick only one to share, what book got you?
SPEAKER_00Um Dory Clark's Reinventing You.
SPEAKER_02Hmm, tell me tell me quick synopsis. I'm gonna have to look it up.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Uh well, Dory Clark is um a marketing and business strategist who is herself a coach and consultant, and she's written four books. This one really inspired me to think in bigger ways about how we can reinvent ourselves and take small risks along that journey and draw from other people we admire, um, sort of like reverse engineer how have other people done it. Um, and just you know, be an experimenter in our own life. Figure out, well, how do I do small experiments to test out if this is really the direction I want to go in, if this is a place where I can add value to the world and you know, connect with the people I want to connect with. So reinventing you, I recommend, I recommend all of her books, but that's the one that really got me this year.
SPEAKER_02Well, I will check it out because I'm also a reader, and um I kind of share that with my my community, with my Facebook community, with my um Launch from the Beach community. But part of it is just leaders are readers, right? We this is one of the easiest ways to take in information. And I have a friend who she does all audiobooks, but I do like Kindle and Paper, I do them all. And so I'm always interested to hear what people, what other people are reading.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I would add that her most recent book is The Long Game. Um, and I think that's a great book for leaders.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that sounds familiar.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking for it on my shelf.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Or as it says on the spine, the long game.
SPEAKER_02That's great. I love it. It's a visual as well. Oh, that's cool. So we will um probably put links to these down in the the show notes or something. Um now, Sophie, before we kind of wrap things up, you did mention that you have transitioned from working full-time to being this is you you call it, you and I both call it fairly a new venture. What I'm also interested in understanding, especially for women as we do this, what kind of support did you need or have in place when you actually made this transition? Who was it? What kind was it? Did you need any, or were you just kind of good on your own? I hear you taught community, so I'm thinking maybe that's not true.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I definitely had a community. Um and one thing I think is wonderful is people that played one role in our lives as we shift and reinvent ourselves may play a different role. So a woman who was my coach while I was an executive leader, um, her name is Kim Meninger, invited me to join her team of coaches after I launched on my own. And so she and I um have become friends and colleagues, and we share ideas, you know, as we do um, you know, keynotes, as we do webinars, you know, lessons learned. Um she started coaching for um chief um coaching executive leaders, so we talk about sort of other opportunities that are coming up. There's I think a lot of opportunities in that realm. Um, so that's been terrific to be part of her team and and and uh her colleague now. There are others who um are friends who've seen me through the arc of my career. They know me as a writer and can have excitement and be um sort of partners in crime with that part of myself and and like have this sort of insider thrill that I'm now bringing my writing forward in this other space and helping writers, you know, write their next book. Um so some of that is the sort of cheerleader and insider role. Um, there's just so many people in my community I'm blessed with. And and some are newer colleagues, you know. Um, there's a wonderful um colleague in a consultants group I'm part of named Larry Raff, and he um has deep knowledge of philanthropy. And um he's great to call on when I'm thinking about helping nonprofit leaders, you know, connect with their donors. Um, and we share ideas back and forth. So it's great to have a mix of people who are cheerleaders, thought leaders, um, and then others who are good skeptics, right? Well, tell me more about how you really think you're gonna roll that out. Um, you know, let's let's go a little deeper, you know, beyond the initial excitement here, Sophie, that you I can count on, right? To sort of bat things around with. Um, so I love having um all of those voices in the room. Something I'm doing now that I want to mention is I'm starting a 21-day writing series. Okay. Um it is about generous curiosity and what it means to deep deeply listen to other people. So this is a chance for me to really explore the question of how we can show up with a kindness and um and other-centered interest as we listen and work with other people. Um, and this writing I'm doing will be an email on a daily basis. So people can go to my website and sign up and be part of this series. And hopefully, my hope is they will gain from it some perspective on how they show up as curious leaders and people in this world. And what does their most generous self look like in relationship?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I like that. Um, we'll definitely be adding that into the show notes. Um, and is that something that will be kind of uh on now? We're just gonna go techie talk. Is it gonna be like an evergreen thing where it will automatically, or is it like in live time, in real time, or can they sign up later? Because this actual podcast will not air until like April. So I want to make sure that people know where to find this.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it will be on my website. Um yes, so they can go to my website and see the 21-day writing series on generous curiosity.
SPEAKER_02That sounds great. So as people work with you, or as people think, okay, I might be, because like I said, my ideal client is somebody who's ready to leave corporate as well. You and I have both kind of done it. I think we've done it a little differently, and we, you know, we do talk about support, but one of the things we do talk about here are green flags rather than red flags, because we're optimists, right? So we're looking for things, and even just, you know, I have an ADHD son. So instead of telling him to stop doing things, I've learned to tell him what I want him to do, right? This is just normal, the good way of communicating. So for people who or women who are interested in either becoming a coach or uh using their stories to uh influence whatever they do, what are some green flags that you would say people should women should look for in themselves in order to say, hmm, yes, this is a good jump for me or this is a good road for me to travel?
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Well, I think if a woman is in tune with what um the mosaic of her life is asking for, that's a really good start for identifying a green flag. And by that I mean you need to understand what your sort of work life proportion might be. And for some women, they need actually some more flexibility. They need to be able to work remotely and and have that availability for for a young family, for instance. You know, for others, they are more free to go in and work in an office, travel, maybe their goal is to level up and find ways to just have the microphone more at work, so to speak, to be um in a position of greater leadership and influence. Um so understanding what the goals are and saying, is this opportunity going to meet that sort of highest, most important goal while also sort of answering to my non-negotiables? You know, if they need a certain amount of flexibility, that has to be there, right? Um and that's a that's a personal decision, right? Um I've certainly worked with leaders where a lateral move was the best move. They wanted to work with a different kind of team, um, learn a new area of a business, and it wasn't the time to go for a big promotion. Um, but that was the right next move. And I think um for women I've worked with that self-understanding is so important. Um, and I'd encourage, you know, the women who are listening to think about, you know, is it the right time for you to do a little bit of career coaching so that you can uncover what those priorities are? Because some women I work with are so flat out in the work they're doing, they don't have time to step back. And we all benefit from having someone ask the deeper questions and bear witness and have that generous curiosity as we figure out well, what are the non-negotiables and what is the highest priority right now? And when we know that, we will recognize the green flags and say, what's green, you know, deep lime green flashing, and what's sort of pale green? And I can wait on that.
SPEAKER_02Or what's yellow? It's like, yeah, but I really love that advice that you handed out there. It's like, is this the right time to step back and let someone else inform a little bit of what I'm seeing, right? Because we all think we look in the mirror, but the reality is we don't. We actually just, and fortunately, many of the women that I talk to are they're very driven, they're very purposeful, and they're you know, type A's. So they're like, as my mother used to say, Mach 10 with your hair on fire. And, you know, just always going, going, going. And I loved that the phrase that you use, they're flat out in their jobs and they just can't see sometimes what that highest priority is. If you don't know what your horizon point needs to be, you don't know how to direct your car or your boat or whatever it is that you're you're in. So I really, really like that. Um, now the best place to have people find you is going to be what your website is.
SPEAKER_00Yes, which is my name, SophieWadsworth.com.
SPEAKER_02Super simple. I wish I could have done that. Andrea Johnson is taken 50 million times in every iteration of Andrea Johnson's. Having an easy name means that it's an easy name. So we've also um we've also already talked about the fact that you have a new 21-day writing series coming up. And you said there's also some kind of free best tips for video presentations.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So if you um visit my website and sign up on the email list, you will get my best tips for doing video presentations, how to set yourself up on the screen and how to deliver in ways that'll really engage your audience on this pixelated excellent pixelated platform we're all on so much of the time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, and even just listening to this, you've everybody's gotten a really good baseline understanding of number one, how you got where you are, but also what it means to tap into your story and what is important. And when you do that, then a lot of times, even if you just have a green screen behind you, so much of what engages people is you. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00And I'm often saying to people, why don't you take a few slides out and let's have a little bit more of you on camera sharing.
SPEAKER_02It's we're afraid to do that, right? And so I think that the work that you do is extremely valuable, helping people. What's odd is that sometimes we know people want to be seen, but what's really odd is that we think that hiding behind a slide or we think that hiding behind a blog is we're worried about being seen ourselves, even though that actually makes it easier for other people to be seen.
SPEAKER_00So true. Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so before we before we wrap up, Sophie, we always ask what is the one thing that you can be optimistic about, even when others might think you're totally crazy. And we're wide open on this one. It could be silly, it could be serious. What about you?
SPEAKER_00What's the one thing I can be optimistic about? Humor is available to us in all situations. Not always in the moment, but later, this will be a funny story. And I can help you make it funny. I love it.
SPEAKER_02I love that. You know, it is humor's the number one diffuser. Humor is the number one fire extinguisher. Humor, as long as it's done well, and humor really does give us perspective, doesn't it? I love that. He said it may not feel funny now, but it won't, it will feel funny later. I love that. Fantastic. Sophie, this has been such a delightful conversation. I look forward to getting to know you better and learning more and more about how you work with clients and for my audience to get to know you better as well. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00It's really a joy talking with you.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I absolutely loved the way that Sophie wove her own stories into this conversation as perfect examples of the principles that she was sharing. Now, before I share my main takeaways, let me point out how Sophie exemplifies the tenets of intentional optimism. I do this for every guest because, you know, we all live unique and different lives. And while what we do is different, intentional optimism is how we do what we do. It's the attitudes and the mindsets that we employ and embody to live out our own goals and dreams with excellence. So let's start with optimistic. Sophie helps women see the possibilities, all the possibilities, of what their stories can do for them. For others. Her concept of generous curiosity is a beautiful example of presence. Just listening for the story inside the story enables others to truly understand and feel kind of what you are experiencing. For energetic, she taps into joy on the regular by leveraging humor in any situation. How fun is it that humor is her one thing that she can always be optimistic about? I just love that. Now for courageous, she helps others look for small, consistent ways to move forward, always keeping an eye on their big why. This has to do with resilience and being undaunted. She learned the wisdom of understanding from her mom in changing the way she looked at the comments the boys on her tackle football team were making, and she's used that mindset and principle ever since. And she's intentional about knowing her own big why and keeping that at the forefront of what she helps her clients to discover. Sophie is unconventional in her leadership because her passion to help women uncover and tell their stories is a true reflection of her core values of leadership, generosity, and curiosity. All this makes her a great role model of how you empower women to use storytelling as a leadership tool. And she even confessed that she's addicted to learning and is an avid reader. This means that she's going to keep growing consistently, so she's dedicated to personal growth. Unconventional leaders lead at every level in any area using their unique gifts, and Sophie is a great example. Now, the way that she works with women leaders is unique and encouraging. So here are my main takeaways. When she sits down with a client, a woman who wants to use her own story to level up her business, there are two general steps. First, it's to discover her origin story. This involves more than just the historical narrative, it also includes what's her main goal? How does she want to evolve? What change is she looking for? Where does she want to go with her writing or speaking? Helping each person understand their story and where it intersects with the audience's story, that's the main point. You look at things like what's the arc of your story? What are the moments of crisis? This sounds like really good literature, doesn't it? What are you comfortable sharing out of that narrative and bringing into your leadership or business? I like that she gave examples of sharing stories on stages and in the daily management of a team. Now, once she helps her client map out that origin story, then they work on finding her voice and has two main components. First is identifying the key events of her story. She described this process, the excavating and unearthing of a voice as deep listening. She pointed out that when we build relationships with others, it requires us to be good listeners. But we tend to forget to do that with and for ourselves. I'm guilty, I'm for sure, of that. She suggested looking back over the big events and circumstances and just kind of see what those big events were and what you maybe you learned from them. And then the second piece is investigating the feelings associated with the events. When something is a big event in our lives, yes, I used scarequotes there, we usually have a remembered or current feeling about what happened. But she says we need to go deeper. She called it time traveling. You need to go back into the experience and describe all the senses, the sights, the sounds, the smells. Most of the time, there's also more than one conversation happening. There's one in the room that other people hear or experience, and then there's one inside your head. And learning to share pieces of the dialogue in your head in order to identify those feelings then enables you to look at what it maybe took in that moment or what it might take now to get those two conversations woven in to be the same story. That makes it cohesive and relatable. Of course, I find all of this absolutely fascinating, but how do you use this information in your life? Well, first, you can use generous curiosity as you work with your team, in your parenting, your community, or even with yourself. When someone comes to you for leadership or help, these are some really great tips she gave. Set aside the part of you that's the problem solver. Are you a problem solver? I am. I'm really good at coming up with the answer. But she said if you come in with generous curiosity and see if you can maybe go a layer deeper than what they're presenting to see how they're experiencing the problem, it helps you to not solve that, right? You don't need to solve it, and she put it this way, and I've used this terminology before, and tie it up with a bow, sending them off with your own wisdom. You can help them change the conversation in their mind as to what the real challenge is. That makes them a collaborator in the solution. Then they're owning it and they're involved and they're really going to make the changes. The other thing I noticed is that her habits are very practical. And you can use them to help you be more present and cognizant of the story that you're living and consequently be able to share it better. And her first one is just get outside, get in nature and connect with that story to help you tap into feeling most alive. She talked about taking walks. I love being at the ocean. I love hearing the waves. And you probably have a place like that where you can connect best. Her second is super simple: eating well and cooking when you can. I thought it was so interesting that she said that food is both medicine and joy. She talks about feeding our bodies well and then enjoying the experience with others. It's just part of being human. She and her neighbor have this beautiful practice of sharing the beauty of their own food and bringing joy to each other in this really simple way. And then, of course, we mentioned it just a little bit ago. Reading is one of the best ways to take in information. And she shared several books that we've put in the show notes, but you can take advantage of the library, or maybe you're an audiobook listener. Either way, this habit will keep you expanding your mind. Now, Sophie's green flags are also very practical. If you find yourself at a crossroads, or maybe you're looking at a way to level up into greater leadership, it's important to know what are your goals? What is the highest, most important goal? Where do you want to ultimately be? What is your point on the horizon? Those are questions you have to ask yourself. Then you need to look at what your non-negotiables are. She used the words life proportions instead of life balance. I absolutely love that. It helps you kind of see where the pie needs to be divided up because it's going to be different now than it will be 10 years from now. And all of that helps you see what kind of flexibility you might need or how the next opportunity might line up with that. Now, when you're faced with decisions or presented with opportunities, self-understanding is most important. So the advice she shared was to look at number one, do you need a bit of career coaching first? You might need somebody else to help ask you the increasingly better questions with generous curiosity. And then when you have those answers, maybe you look at the timing. What is the timing like for you and your career based on those life proportions and your big goals? To learn more about Sophie and tap into the offerings that she mentioned, check out her website, SophieWadsworth.com. You'll find everything you need in the show notes, and don't forget to tell her that you heard about her here on the Intentional Optimus podcast. I found it really interesting that she even pulled my story out just a bit, and I was reminded that I've helped people figure out, plan, and do their work for over 25 years. Now I do it full-time as a leadership and empowerment coach. I help women build themselves so that they can build their business or their lives. I do this inside a community where you can dream, grow, experiment, and explore with group coaching, teaching, encouragement, and gentle accountability. If you need help discovering and building you so that you can build your life or your business, hop on my calendar for a 30-minute consultation and let's get you a strategy in place. Until next time. If you're curious what it would be like to work more closely with me, or to step up as an unconventional leader yourself, schedule a free discovery session and we'll chat. But maybe you're an entrepreneur looking for a support team. I'd like to personally invite you into my collaborative community, Launch from the Beach. It could be just what you're looking for. All of my contact information and all the links are included in the show notes. And don't forget, you can always connect with other intentional optimists in our Facebook community. You can follow my Facebook or Instagram page, or even connect with me on LinkedIn. Additionally, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter, Optimistic Living. It's good stuff delivered straight to your inbox on a not so strict schedule, but always from the heart. Remember, unconventional leaders lead at every level, in any area, using their unique gifts. And you, my friend, are a leader. You are the future of leadership and the role models for future generations. Until next time.
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