Transforming Life's Seasons and Career Paths + Resiliency with Yolanda Greer (part 1)

What inspires someone to shift from a classroom filled with diverse languages to the unpredictable world of real estate? Join us as Yolanda Greer, an ICF Associate Certified Coach and an expert in Impact and Fulfillment Coaching, unravels her remarkable journey. Yolanda's story begins with her dedication to education, where she overcame the challenges of resource-limited classrooms by tapping into her resilience. She shares how her passion for teaching became a foundation for personal and professional growth, turning obstacles into opportunities to make a lasting impact. Her journey serves as a testament to the strength required to transform one's circumstances and create meaningful change in the lives of others.

Explore the evolving purpose behind career choices as Yolanda shares her transition from education to real estate, driven by the need for greater family flexibility. Life's seasons can often require us to step into roles that may not align with our passions but fulfill immediate needs. Through Yolanda's experiences, including her resilience through personal challenges like her husband's sudden illness, we discuss the importance of embracing change and adjusting our goals. Her insights offer a powerful reminder that it's okay to redefine our paths and priorities as life evolves, encouraging us to harness resilience and adapt with grace.

The Quiet Gift: A Journey of Self Worth and Resilience is now available for download as an audible.  Check it out!

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. Resilience where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

Speaker 2 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host, natalie Davis, and I am so excited to be back with you all, and joining me is Pam. How are you, pam Cass?

Speaker 3 0:53

I am fabulous. We haven't done a Friday recording in a while, so kind of excited to end our week on a high note. So I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 2 1:01

Exactly Same same. This is yet again another episode from the road. I think we've talked about this taking the show on the road and doing live appearances. Yeah, absolutely Except it's just me that's on the road, not the two of us. No, that would be interesting.

Speaker 3 1:14

We've not done that yet, so maybe not.

Speaker 2 1:17

Oh, my goodness. Well, I am really excited to dive in to today's episode because we have a special guest. I would love for you to take a few moments and introduce our guest to our listeners, and then we can dive right in.

Speaker 3 1:30

Absolutely so. I'm really excited about this guest, so I met her at an event. She was one of the first people I was introduced to and we just started talking and through our conversation I was like, oh, you need to be on our podcast. One thing led to another so so excited for her to be here. She's just an incredible human and so I'm so excited to learn a little bit more about her and the amazing things that she's doing.

Speaker 3 1:54

So today joining us is Yolanda Greer. She is an ICF Associate Certified Coach as an Impact and Fulfillment Coach for Life in Leadership Enhancement coach. As an impact and fulfillment coach for life and leadership enhancement, she provides thoughtful, compassionate and accountable strategic coaching expertise for her clients so that they can increase self and organizational awareness towards high performance. Yolanda especially enjoys supporting imposter syndrome ridden leaders in overcoming the noise to becoming confident, compelling and compassionate leaders. She's been married for over 25 years and has three young adult, dynamic children. She was called to be an educator and has served as a teacher, assistant principal, highly effective school turnaround leader, promoted to director of leadership development and most recently, served as the chief talent officer. Welcome, so excited for you to be with us today, and so I'm just going to hand it off to you and have you share with our listeners. A little bit about yourself.

Speaker 4 2:58

Thank you so much, natalie and Pam, for having me on Reignite Resilience. I'm honored, and what a dynamic connection that I had with you, pam. So thank you just for listening and for us to have the opportunity to share each other's stories. There's so much power that we can learn and be empowered from each other when we just take the time to pause and to listen, right? So thank you, ladies both for having me here, yeah, and thank you for reading that mouthful of a bio there. It's amazing, it's impressive. Yes, yes, it's been a journey, right, I like to say, in my fifth decade of life, and I say that unashamedly right. And so that's why the bio just gets longer and longer, and the role of let some of the stuff go and only keep what's within 10 years, and I'm like, oh no, these gray hairs came Well earned.

Speaker 4 3:50

They're earned, yes, well earned, and I want to share how they got there Right. So thank you for that. Yeah, when I think about resilience, so many things come up for me, and really my focus is education, because that is my calling from an early, early age, right as a fourth grade student taking a math test, I heard that call on my life, and so I've taken that journey all the way through, as you mentioned, with some of the various positions that I had the pleasure of holding and serving in, and there's even a little stint of real estate in there when I got my first teacher paycheck and I was even a little stint of real estate in there when I got my first teacher paycheck and I was like, yeah, this salary is not going to work, and so I was doing real estate and being an educator simultaneously there for a while. But when I think about resilience, even if I think about that first year as a teacher, I think about there's so much that we can take on as a teacher.

Speaker 4 4:44

My first classroom, fifth grade teacher, 30 students, zero supplies, no textbooks. I walk into an empty classroom where there literally is only the flag on the wall, a broken piece of chalk and zero books, paper like nothing else, desk and chairs, that was all. I go into the office and I'm like, hi, where do I find the books and the supplies and different things? And the principal, who I adore, you know. But the principal, he says to me the best teacher can teach from a Sears robot catalog. And that was it okay. And I thought, okay, is there a punch line? Or are you testing me? What is this about?

Speaker 4 5:24

And so for me, I would say that in my professional journey, resilience started at that moment, just figuring out what is it that I want to do, what's the impact that I want to have, and how am I going to make that happen with what's in my hand, with what's in my head, what's in my heart. Because that was what I had at that moment, that was all I was given. And so when my students showed up and half of them spoke a second language and not even all one other language there were multiple languages represented in my first student class. Half of them had ADHD, some of them were taking medications at that time that were given out for that, and there were a lot of other dynamics happening. And here I am just bright eyed, ready to go and I'm like, oh, they didn't prepare me for all of these.

Speaker 3 6:20

Tell me about this.

Speaker 2 6:21

Exactly. I just wrapped my mind around the fact that I don't have the books and the supplies.

Speaker 3 6:26

And now and now we get this okay, let's go, right, let's go.

Speaker 4 6:32

And so I had to determine that. You know what? This was the greatest opportunity that I had to be in front of 30 students to ensure that they were going to leave me better than I found them, and it was up to me to figure out how I was going to make that happen. And so, when I learned and realized what it was that they had to have academically, if you will, and then, of course, the social dynamics and the safety dynamics, right, like all of those different components of being an educator I just got very resourceful, but I also expanded my village, if you will, right? So I had an amazing mentor teacher right across the hall and other teachers, and the beautiful blessing about this scenario was that I was teaching in the very school that I attended. Wow, so the secretary was the same secretary that I had as a student. Oh, I love that. The cafeteria staff were the same ladies that I had, and so one thing I knew that I knew is that my village, they knew me, they supported me and they wanted me to win, and if they would help me to win, my kids were going to win.

Speaker 4 7:43

The resilience started for me again at that point to recognize that I cannot do it in and of myself.

Speaker 4 7:49

I get to rely on others, as much as that can be really hard sometimes. Right to ask for help, you don't want to be a burden, all of those things, but you get to do this because other lives were counting on me and I like to say, as an educator and even though I'm not in the school system anymore, it is who I am and it's the essence of my being. And so, as an educator, it's really about the ripple effect that I want to create. But I also can't do that by myself. I can't do that without picking up the rock and asking someone who's done it several times before okay, now, how do you do it so that it skips, just right, and that ripple goes on and on. I get to lean on other people, I get to use the resource and I get to cast it and put it out there. And if I don't get it right the first time, then we do it again, try it again, try it again until we get it right. So that's really the start of the resilience story for me.

Speaker 3 8:47

Listening, get it right. So that's really the start of the resilience story for me, listening to you talk and hearing about all of the obstacles that you had from the get-go. You came in bright-eyed teacher, so excited, so hopeful, no supplies. Then the students come in. All through that there was never anything victim, it was always. I get to, I get to do this, I get to do this and that is such a powerful mindset to have because you were there for a bigger impact. It wasn't about the supplies, it wasn't about anything, it was about what you could do for these children and that's what you focused on and you created something incredible, absolutely.

Speaker 2 9:21

I think that that lesson, yolanda, applies regardless of industry right. We see this for healthcare providers or legal practitioners or entrepreneurs. If you have any type of product or service that you're sharing, we usually enter in with this excitement of it's new I am going to have tremendous impact on other people's lives, or this is how it's going to benefit the world. Also, you don't have the support that you need, or you don't have the collateral that you need or the resources that you need. Fill in the blank with whatever resource is missing or lacking In that moment. You have a choice and, as Pam mentioned, you have a choice to either take that opportunity and choose to make a difference, still find a way to make a difference or fall into that victim space.

Speaker 4 10:04

It's always a choice, always a choice, and a lesson that my father taught me, and both my mom and dad really reared us in this way, I like to say.

Speaker 4 10:13

We grew up kind of like the Cosby family, and that's a story maybe for another day, but what I'll say is that my parents raised us with the mindset of you are no better than anyone else and no one is better than you. So be able to walk alongside a pauper and dine with the king, love it. You get to choose how you show up. You get to choose where you show up. You get to choose if you want to show up. But to your point, natalie, it is a choice every single day. And so, pam you named about getting to right, like it's a phrase that I use all the time when I was a leadership developer, when I was a principal with my staff and now with my clients. Is that, what is it that you get to do? As soon as I hear that H word, I will pause and interrupt a conversation immediately and we will just focus on that.

Speaker 2 11:05

Yeah, it is a bad four-letter word.

Speaker 3 11:09

It's a very bad four-letter word.

Speaker 4 11:14

And so for me, like my life's journey is all about when I leave, when I am six feet under, I want people to say Yolanda was poured out. She left completely poured out. There was nothing else to give. Her life was not in vain.

Speaker 2 11:30

Beautiful.

Speaker 4 11:31

And I get to do whatever it is that is put in front of me at the time so that I can be poured out and not poured out. To the point of now I can't serve others. Well, I'm not taking care of myself, right? I get to also take care of myself and make sure that my mental health, my emotional stay, my physical right, like all of those things, are well and intact so that I can serve you from the very best of me. I get to do that, but I don't have to do anything.

Speaker 2 12:03

Yeah, I've never heard that phrase walking alongside a pauper and dining with a king. That puts it all in perspective. And it's not the other way around, right, because that's not as humbling. It's that reality of you'd get to choose and knowing that you're the same as and no better than. That's beautiful. Well, yolanda, I find it interesting that you fast forward to later in your professional career, where you're working with individuals that often suffer from imposter syndrome. It does not sound like that was the case at this season, this early season of your life, when you were brand new, wet behind the ears teacher and my best friend is a teacher and has been a teacher for over 20 years. So I get it, but the imposter syndrome didn't seem to pop up at that moment in life.

Resilience Through Life's Seasons

Speaker 4 12:48

Early on, it did not? I was so well equipped from my parents, from I have two older brothers and they're always cheering me on and supporting me, and just my village at large, right so my parents owned clothing stores. The customers, right, they were a part of my village. That where their stores were and where we live. My neighbors, right, they were a part of my village, that where their stores were and where we live. My neighbors, right, like they were a part of my village. And I just felt like everyone was rooting me on and, of course, my friends and extended family, and so things were fine for a very long time as an educator, and even when I was dipping my toe into real estate for a while, even my colleagues in that space and that industry. I will never forget I walked into the real estate office when I went full-time, because there was a while I took a sabbatical from education. I'm like I'll do this full-time for flexibility's sake, because we were starting our family.

Speaker 4 13:39

We're going to say air quotes on that Flexibility flexibility, yes, and I went to the owning broker and I said I don't want to be a top producer, this is why I'm stepping into this full time now. And she kind of laughed at me and I was like I don't know what that was about, but I just wanted her to know. I want to put her on notice. I'm not here to be your top producer, but I'll do whatever to help sustain my family. And even those folks and many of them I'm still in relationship with today even some of the title agents and the insurance brokers and the mortgage, right, they're just amazing people that were like cheering me on because I've had a toddler and one baby in the backpack and we'd go show properties or go to closings, right, and they became a part of my family. So even to have all of that encouragement and something that I really didn't love, I actually abhorred it because it wasn't a part of my purpose, it wasn't a part of my identity, so it didn't become natural for me, but there was a sense of resilience in there because for me, it created an opportunity to have more time with my children before they went to kindergarten, and so in that, it's like what is the goal? Let me push towards that. Why am I doing that?

Speaker 4 14:59

Getting very, very clear on the why in the season because that's the other part is not only that we get to choose, but if we can chunk life out into seasons and not stay so focused on a question that I don't care for is where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I have no idea. I do not have a crystal ball, but I can tell you what's happening today and in this current season and where I'm hoping to get as far as the eye can see and beyond that. I'm not even going to put energy in that. For me, that's not healthy, and so the resilience in that season was merely that I want it to be a financial help me to my husband. I want it to continue to work outside of the home. I tried working at home for a while. It's great, I love my kids, but it's not me Very honest about that. I understand.

Speaker 4 15:58

Yeah, the babies were probably happy when I was like, yep, you know, let's go do something else, but just that resolve of this is what we're doing now.

Speaker 3 16:05

This is the target, we're going to reach the target and then we'll decide the next thing I love the idea of the why for the season, because I think sometimes we think that we have to have this why figured out. That's going to take us through our entire life and it really changes and evolves based on where we are in the time of our life. And so I think that's such a great thing that you shared with us, because I don't think people think about that. I think they think, nope, this is my why and it's going to be that way until the day I die. But no, it should change based on where we're at. And I know I've done it. I've done positions where I did not love them, but it was what I needed to do in the moment because of the age of my kids and where we were financially, and that was in that season, and now I'm in a different season Beautiful.

Speaker 2 16:52

I always speak with my clients and entrepreneurs in general. When we look at seasons, it's like that bigger season and you can chunk it down. There are seasons within the years in between as well. Right, when we're looking at those bigger seasons and specifically, yolanda, you mentioned working from home. If you are a parent or a caregiver that's working from home and the kids are on break, that work schedule looks significantly different than working from home and the kids are fully engaged in a full week of school. And so, recognizing that those seasons are both short and long-term seasons in life, but adjusting and I think not necessarily just adjusting, giving ourselves permission to adjust and not taking ourselves into that guilt cycle of being pulled in one direction or another, feeling like we need to be somewhere when we're somewhere else.

Speaker 4 17:39

Wow, yes, and I'm saying wow because you brought to mind something that I hadn't even thought about for this conversation. But when you talk about the seasons and they change, it made me think about here. I am doing real estate, not enjoying it, and suddenly my husband gets gravely ill, and I'll fast forward through the story. It's movie worthy actually. But fast forward through the story. My husband went into renal failure, both kidneys. This man had not even had a cold or a flu for the time that I had been with him, which we were pretty far in at this point and to learn that this was happening.

Speaker 4 18:18

And we have three young children I think my youngest was probably in about third grade, the oldest in seventh grade and being faced with being a single mom, we were, we had the doctor's appointments and then they would pull me out of the room and have separate conversations with me to say, yolanda, you need to start preparing to be a single mother. And then finally it got to. He will not make it to the new year, and so the resolve in that moment was I could have shuddered in despair, but I chose to step up for my kids and I did not want them to miss a beat with the lifestyle that we had begun creating for them, the roof that was over their head. I wanted for them to have stability. That was most important to me. So now it was like, okay, what do I do to be able to take up the income that my husband provides? And he had been doing a great job of setting us up. So we would have been fine for a while, but right the long term.

Speaker 4 19:24

And so I decided I'm going to go back to school and I will become a school administrator. Now, mind you, I'm still in real estate full time, mm-hmm. But it was that pivot back to the very thing that I'm called to do the passion. So I enrolled in school to get my master's degree was able to do that. The beautiful blessing is my husband came through that. That's why I said it's movie worthy, because we were that family who got literally a phone call at 1230 in the morning to say there's a perfect, zero mismatch donor in the best possible conditions for this. So you and six other families will be blessed. And so we're there, and next month will be 13 years from transplant. But again, as I'm talking to you and I've actually never seen this for myself, but the resilience is directly connected to the resolve oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 20:20

Well, thank you for sharing that story. I could feel the emotion as you were sharing it and putting myself in that place, I can only imagine the amount of second guessing that I would have. I'm going to make this an I statement, because here you are, in this pivotal time of life, and you choose to go back to school with young kids. I'm sure people were thinking, or at least the thought is, people are going to think what are you thinking? Are you okay? Are you okay?

Speaker 3 20:48

But you had a very definite why, and it was to keep the children as stable as possible while they are going through this. And this was your way of doing it, and so it outweighs everything else yeah, and it outweighs everything else. Yes, it's that definite and purpose that you had in that moment it's so powerful.

Speaker 4 21:07

And then to move into. I won't go into too many details about kind of that part of the story because it's a little hard to explain, but what I will tell you is I end up in a assistant principal position without the pay.

Speaker 4 21:21

I get this position but I'm working on the master's degree okay and so the title's there, but not the salary, but it's the open to get there in the meanwhile and so doing that it's great to be there in the meanwhile and so doing that, it's great to be back in education, around kids and the noise and the bell ringing and all those things. It's really, really wonderful. And you know, I would say, man, I think this is kind of the biggest part of why I do what I've done the last several years and why I'm really focused on doing what I do now. It really began like this is another monumental point in life. So one day maybe I'll write a book, a Tale of Two Leaders.

Speaker 4 22:02

And so when I think about, as we mentioned earlier, like what's the example of your show up, my first example of a leader in the show up, a leader in this context was not good. And so here I am. I had been out of education for a little bit, five years to be exact. I'm coming back into this as an assistant principal, really a teacher on special assignment, but I'm doing the responsibilities of an assistant principal.

Speaker 4 22:30

There was a lot of degrading, demeaning, being treated like the help, and I got the position not necessarily because of the immediate leader, but because of senior leaders who knew me, knew the impact that I could have had, experienced my performance before. All of those things knew me on a personal level, and so that was a little disheartening but the best thing, because we don't want to focus on that part, but it was well. Here's what I'll say about that. The resilience came from. I am here in support of these students and the staff and the community that I serve. There is a reason why I'm at this school, in this building, in this community, serving these families.

Speaker 2 23:15

At this moment right.

Speaker 4 23:23

At this moment, at that very moment and that is a story for another day, for sure, All the conditions and dynamics in that scenario but what I would like to share with your audience is that, again, the purpose was determined, it was set. There was a reason for my being there at that time, for such a time as this, but it was again the senior leaders who gave me the best gift ever. They gave me two gifts. Actually, they probably get tired of me thanking them because periodically, even to this very day, I still reach out and I say thank you for that day. Because of your gifts, I'm doing what I'm doing today, and so one thing that they gifted me with was an opportunity to do a 360.

Speaker 4 24:04

And when I think about that in hindsight, even right now, didn't expect this. They had me to do a leadership 360. And I didn't understand it at the time because, you know, I was newer and I don't know. It just didn't make sense. But I'm like, okay, they want to see how I'm doing. I thought they knew how I was doing.

Speaker 4 24:24

We had site visits from the district office all the time, so they were fully aware of what was happening, but what it did for me was give me feedback from parents, direct reports, just different observers that validated what I was doing but also showed me what I could do better. Feedback is such an enormous gift and for me it allowed me to not like bounce back but just stand up straighter Because I was kind of like, oh, this doesn't feel good. I didn't want to go to work every day just because of the treatment that I was enduring, but it did help me to stand up a little bit stronger to say I can do this, I do know what I'm doing and I'm going to get better at those things that they graciously pointed out to me that they did not have to do, and I trusted that the people that were giving me that feedback were giving it to me to help me, not to hurt me, not to harm me, not to hinder me. They wanted to help me and I took that tool and I clung to it with my life. I still have that very first 360 and I've taken it again four more times since then. But that tool was life-giving.

Speaker 4 25:43

The people who gifted that to me, it was a gift. And then they coupled it with an executive coach Remember, I don't even have the school administration degree yet. But they were like you know what we want to set you up for success, despite what's happening in the immediate arena. They were seeing things that I couldn't see. They were looking into that 10 years. I wasn't doing that, and so it's very much a part of why I do what I do now.

Speaker 3 26:21

And how courageous. You know most people going through a 360 and to see the feedback the not positive feedback could shut down and not see that as an opportunity. There was nothing negative that you felt about that. It was like what a gift this was to help me become better at what I'm doing. Like what a gift this was to help me become better at what I'm doing. That is such an incredible attitude to come from, or mindset to come from looking at something like that, because I could very easily take someone down a spiral saying I'm getting out of this, this isn't for me, nevermind. I think it's such a powerful thing and you're using it now in what you do, which I'm so excited for you to share with our listeners about that.

Speaker 2 26:55

We hope that you've enjoyed part one of our two-part interview with Yolanda Greer. What a fabulous story that she shared with us. That started really with her childhood upbringing, where her parents instilled in her to learn how to walk alongside a pauper and dine with a king. What a fabulous foundation to really set the stage to her leadership journey. Make sure that you come back and join us for part two, where we will continue to dive in and learn more from Yolanda, as she shares some fabulous skills on how we can continue to improve and grow in our leadership journey. We hope you come back to join us. We'll see you soon.

Speaker 1 27:36

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas. To fuel the flames of passion, please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes and, of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.