Leadership Tips | Walk into the Wind

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Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything feels hard… and you’re just trying to make it through as a manager?

The kind of week where your energy is low, your team needs more from you, and your workload keeps growing?

This is one of the biggest challenges in leadership development.
 Most managers wait until things get hard to figure out how to handle it.

But by then, it already feels overwhelming.

Because mental strength isn’t built in the hard moments.
 It’s revealed in them.

In this episode of the podcast for managers, I’m sharing a simple concept that can completely shift how you approach stress, pressure, and team management.

It’s the idea of “walking into the wind.”

And it’s about choosing to do hard things before you have to… so when challenges hit—whether it’s conflict, overwhelm, or difficult employees—you’re ready for it. 

This is especially important when it comes to how to handle conflict at work.
 Because the managers who navigate tough conversations well aren’t the ones avoiding hard things…

They’re the ones who have built the capacity for them.

We’re talking about how to build resilience as a leader, how to strengthen your mindset, and how this shows up in your day-to-day leadership and team management—even when nothing feels urgent.

By the time you finish listening, you’ll learn:

•  How leadership development actually happens in the small, everyday moments 
•  How to build mental strength so you can handle stress and conflict at work 
•  What “walking into the wind” looks like in real life and team management 

This podcast for managers is here to help you:

• Grow your leadership development
 • Navigate team management with confidence
 • Learn how to handle conflict at work
 • Apply real, practical leadership tips

If this episode helped you:

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Taking Intentional Action: How to Choose the Life You Lead

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Transcript

Desiree (00:01.292)
Hey friend, this is your weekly leadership tip from Desiree. One small idea to carry with you into your life and leadership this week. And the tip this week is to walk into the wind. How often do you stop and take a gauge on your week and just say, how am I feeling? Where is my energy? Have things gone really well this week? Have my circumstances helped me to move forward or have I had to kind of sludge through and just make it to the end of the week in survival mode?

I think there's a spectrum of both of these things. We're on it every week, but I don't think we often stop and ask ourselves where we are or how we got there or what it's gonna take to get back to where we want to be. And this week for me was a full on survival mode. I will probably talk about it in more depth later, but an MRI resulting in the fact that I'll probably have to have hip surgery, some family drama, sicknesses with kids.

overwhelm at work, a never-ending to-do list, all the things that I'm sure you can relate to on some level or another. And so as I'm preparing to give a keynote today, I knew that there was a part in my book that I was wanting to reference. It's this concept of walking into the wind, which just means that on any given day, when things feel easy and the weather is nice, you can be walking down your gravel road or on the hiking trail, whatever it looks like, and

The wind can still be at your front. The wind can still be making it hard for you to push your way through. And you might think to yourself, well, I don't need to work this hard.

Desiree (01:45.632)
On any given day, we have two options. If we are walking down a gravel road and the wind is coming at us and it's really hard to keep going, we have two options. We can either push through, we can work really hard to get through what feels like a lot of resistance, and we can intentionally build up our strength, both mental and physical, to get to the other end.

knowing that when we turn around, the wind will be at our back and will be kind of pushing us forward. Or we can say, you know what? I don't want to do this right now. I'm not willing to put in the work. I'm going to turn back around and go home.

Desiree (02:26.39)
When nothing is on the line, we can have that conversation with ourselves and we can choose to turn around and go home and it won't matter. Honestly, one day isn't gonna make a big difference. But there are weeks where we are going to wish that we had put in the work to build up our tolerance of hard things, to build up our mental and physical strength to push through what feels hard because there's gonna be weeks where you can't make the decision to turn around.

and go home, there's gonna be weeks where you have to push through and you're gonna hope and wish that you had that mental agility built up. So I'm gonna read a passage to you from my book that really resonated with me as I was walking down the gravel road yesterday, preparing to do my keynote today. And I think that at least I hope that the message will resonate with you too.

I will never forget a bus ride we took to a track meet when I was in high school. I was a discus and shot put thrower on the track and field team. So what the running coach said didn't directly apply to me, but his words are forever burned into my brain. He said, it's raining and it's windy and overall miserable out there, but this is what we've been training for. The reason we don't let you skip a day of practice when the weather is less than ideal is because you get to practice resistance.

You have to run into the wind. You have to run into the rain. You have to endure the cold. But when we're here at the track meet, where it all comes down to moments, you will have a leg up. You will know what it's like to push through. You will be stronger from having fought through the wind and the rain, both physically and mentally. So today, when you feel like you can't go any further or faster, put your head down, watch your feet hit the pavement, and remember that you have prepared for this very moment.

Now I obviously paraphrased his words because my memory is not that good, but the concept of his speech came back to me one day as I was walking down a gravel road that I had walked hundreds of times. I was walking against the wind on a straight shot from one stop sign to the next. The weather was decent. There was no hills, one set of train tracks and rarely any vehicles. Despite what seemed like a lack of obstacles, the walk felt really hard. I was expending a lot of energy from fighting against the wind. I had to put my head down and swing my arms.

Desiree (04:44.598)
I had to brace my core to avoid getting pushed over. I had to deliberately put one foot in front of the other, but I was determined to get to my destination. I had walked against the wind many times, but this day felt extra challenging. It felt mentally taxing and it would have been easy to give up, to turn around and to be propelled by the wind all the way back home. That's when the coach's words came back to me and I knew that this is how I will get the leg up. This is how I will test my physical and mental strength.

Even when there is nothing on the line, I will begin to train and build trust in myself to know that I will not give up, growing my belief that I can do hard things.

Desiree (05:26.616)
So after this part of the book, I go into talking about how my son ended up in the NICU for a month and my mom passed away just two months later and how I'm so, so thankful for having gone through those really hard moments and having to physically and mentally push past barriers, even though I had the choice to stop. This is something that we get to build every day, to build our foundation of self, to walk into the wind, even when nothing is on the line.

And as I was having a really hard week this week, I got to be thankful and grateful for all the work that I've put in to help me push past this, to help me push past what feels really hard because I know there's something better on the other side. I know that the work is going to be worth it on the other side. So as you enter into this week, just remember to walk into the wind. Make the choice to build the strength now, even if you don't feel like you need it. Walk into the wind. You're going to be so thankful you did. So until next week.

Desiree (06:26.712)
Thank you for sticking around to the end and I look forward to seeing you back here next week for another tip on life and leadership.

Desiree (06:39.606)
If you would like to grab a copy of Taking Intentional Action, the book I wrote back after my mom passed away, I will link it in the show notes for you. It is all about how to build habits, overcome your excuses, and really live a life that you can be proud of. But until next week, thank you so much for joining me to the end, and I will see you back here next week on another tip on...

Desiree (07:04.632)
Thank you for sticking around with me till the end here. I look forward to seeing you back here next week for another tip on life and leadership.