Only Go Where You’ve Been

In this episode, Don reflects on what happens when leaders offer direction to places they have not yet been willing to go themselves, and how the inner work we avoid often becomes the limit of our ability to stay present with others.

He is joined by Mish Sommers, a facilitator, organizational development leader, and founder of Happier Outside, whose work has helped people and organizations move through uncertainty, transition, and change with greater presence and clarity. Together, they explore emergence, “leaving the shore,” the courage to go through rather than around hard things, and what it means to accompany others without rushing, fixing, or forcing the path before it is ready to appear.

To learn more about Don's work, upcoming offerings, and leadership resources, visit carpentercompanyconsulting.com

 If something in today’s episode spoke to you, I hope you’ll subscribe and continue the journey with me — because leadership begins within. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to Meditations on Leadership. I'm Don Carpenter. Let me ask you: what happens when leaders offer directions to places they have not yet been willing to go themselves? That question brings us into this week's meditation and into a reflection on presence, humility, and the inner work required to walk with others through pain, uncertainty, and change. Because leadership is not only about knowing the way forward. Sometimes it is about being honest enough to admit where we have not yet gone, and courageous enough to begin our own walk first. Exploring these hidden dimensions of leadership is at the core of this podcast. Each week begins with a meditation, followed by a personal reflection, and then a conversation with a guest whose lived experience brings the theme to life. It is all in the service of the deep inner formation that true leadership asks of us. And today, I get to have that conversation with someone who has spent her life practicing the kind of presence this meditation points us towards the grounded, generous, deeply human presence that helps others find their way without being rushed, fixed, or forced. My guest today is Michelle Summers, better known by all of her friends and colleagues as Mish. Mish has spent much of her life helping people across thresholds, from leading a watch on a tall ship off the coast of Western Australia when she was just 15, to guiding wilderness expeditions on land and water to working with leaders and organizations in the midst of change. Today, through Bay Consulting and as senior manager of training and organizational development at the Finance Authority of Maine, Mish works besides leaders who are navigating transformation, both personal and organizational. She brings presence, curiosity, and strategy to that work, giving people room to think out loud, reauthor their own story, and see more clearly where they stand. Her path is moved through outdoor leadership, documentary film, organizational development, graduate study, and change practice work. She's also founded a small venture called Happier Outside, which invited people to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the natural world as a way of creating more reflection, grounding, and possibility. I first met Mish around 2014 when we were both doing corporate consulting and facilitation with Riddish Line Consulting Group. Together, we helped facilitate new higher training for Athena Health, which included both high and low initiatives. And what I remember most about Mish from those early days was her sunny disposition, her quick-witted intelligence, and her incredible way with people. She was, quite simply, an amazing facilitator, grounded, observant, deeply present, and able to bring both lightness and depth into a group at the same time. It was clear to me then that her years with Outward Bound had shaped her facilitation skills in all the best ways. At the heart of Mish's work is a practice she calls leaving the shore, the deliberate step away from the noise and urgency of daily life, so real reflection, real change can happen. And that is one of the reasons I'm so grateful to have her in the conversation with me today, because this week's meditation is about the kind of leadership that does not offer easy answers from a distance, but instead asks us to do our own work so we can walk with others through difficult, uncertain, and transformational places of their lives. Mish, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Hi, Dawn. God, that's amazing. It's so funny to hear our experiences reflected back to us in the frame of someone else's, you know, understanding. You know, what a lovely summary. Thank you so much. I'm so delighted to be here with you.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah, well, all of it's true. And um, I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and uh I meant every word. So thank you for joining me. And um, before we begin, let me uh share meditation 21 titled Only Go Where You've Been, a theme that Mish picked for our conversation today. And meditation 21 is really inspired by uh one of my favorite authors, Glenn Doyle. And she said something simply that said this don't share with others directions to places you've never gone to. Don't share with others directions to places you've never gone to. One quiet danger of leadership is offering directions to places we've never had the courage to go ourselves. When I first heard Glenn and Doyle say this, something in me paused because it named something I'd been carrying since I was 16, when I lost my best friend in a really tragic accident. It shook me to my core and it rewired something in me I would not understand until much later. I grew up in a religious family, surrounded by people who meant well and loved me, loved me deeply. But in the aftermath of that loss, what I mostly received were spiritual strategies to bypass pain. Pray about it, trust God's plan. Everything happens for a reason. Lean on your faith. None of those statements were inherently wrong, but what I did not hear and what I so badly needed was this. It's okay to feel this. You don't have to make sense of it. You can grieve. No one gave me permission to sit in sorrow, to sit in rage, to ache, to fall apart. Not because people didn't care, but they cared deeply. I think many of them were giving me directions from places they had never fully gone. They knew how to believe, they knew how to pray, they knew how to explain, but I'm not sure they knew how to sit in the unbearable mystery of pain without making it mean something too quickly. Years later, a therapist offered me insight that reframed it all. She said something like this Don, people can only guide you as far as they've allowed themselves to be guided. They can only walk with you where you've been, where they've been willing to walk themselves. And to be honest, that created a little break for me, a break of compassion, not just for others, but myself. I began to understand that most people were not trying to demiss my pain. They were trying to help me with the tools they had. The problem was that many of those tools were designed to explain pain, not enter it. And that is where leadership becomes deeply personal because we cannot guide people through places we have spent our lives avoiding. This does not mean we need to live, have lived the exact same story as people we lead. It means we need enough inner work not to manage their pain simply because it makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes the people we lead do not need our advice, our interpretation, or our meaning making. They just need our honesty, our humility, our willingness to stay. Sometimes the most powerful thing a leader can say is not here's the way out. Sometimes it is, I don't know, but I'm here. So the next time someone looks to you for advice, pause before offering directions. Ask yourself, have I been willing to walk this road in myself? And if I have not, can I be honest enough not to pretend? Because leadership is not about giving people maps to places we've never been, it's about doing the inner work required to stay present when the path gets hard and only offering directions from the places our own souls have been brave enough to go. So I'm going to offer a quick real-time reflection here. And one of the themes I've seen surface again and again, whether I'm mentoring young people, youth development professionals, or executive leaders, is the challenge of managing what is happening inside us while still showing up effectively in the world around us. Because life does not pause just because we have responsibilities. You know, students still have to walk into school carrying whatever happened at home the night before. Youth workers still lead programming while managing their own stress, grief, insecurity, burnout, exhaustion. Executive leaders still have to make decisions and hold teams together and steady the organizations while navigating the pressure, uncertainty, and private struggle. And to me, we have to be honest with that. Or as Eckhart Tolle says, what we resist persists. For me, one of the clearest ways this shows up for me is through control. When I'm not dealing honestly with what is happening inside me, my uncertainty, fear, sadness, or feelings of overwhelm, I know my go-to strategy, which is control. I organize, I plan, I tighten, I anticipate every possible outcome. Sometimes that is responsible leadership. But other times, if I'm honest, it is my attempt to make the outer world feel controlled because my inner world feels anything but. And if I have not faced what is persisting in me, I can start trying to manage what feels unresolved in others. I can rush them towards clarity because I'm uncomfortable with confusion. I can push them towards action because I'm uneasy with stillness. I can offer answers when what they really need is someone willing to sit with them in question. So part of my own inner work is learning to notice what I'm carrying before I try to help someone else carry what is theirs. Because my ability to face what persists in me often becomes the difference between truly accompanying someone through uncertainty and subtly trying to move them out of it before they're ready. Mish, you listened to the meditation, you heard the reflection, what resonated with you, what stirred in you, what's staying with you.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Which is kind of it's an emergence of its own. You are allowing emergence to be the thing, you know, that is important and that it has value. And that's what I'm hearing so clearly uh in your your initial meditation and then your own reflections. And it it mirrors a process I feel like I'm going through also, in that maybe I'm just getting older and I'm letting go of trying to be the expert. I think when I was younger, I sort of felt this responsibility to fix things and be the smart one in the room. And the older I get, the less I care about that. I don't need to be the smartest. In fact, I know I'm not pretty much all the time. But what you're talking about here is this allowing of emergence. And I have a sticky note on my screen here, which is like my mantra, which is slow bleep, bleep down. Because I know my own mind moves really fast, and I know that I often will see and can clearly see things in my own head that seem really clear to me. But when I slow down, I allow a lot more information to come in, and that there's so much that I don't see too, you know. And instead of hearing, processing, organizing, and providing an answer, where the beauty lies is when we can hold that space and allow that to emerge and co-create. And I think, you know, I've been so interested in that journey. You know, so much of what I've done has been a journey. And so I think everything's a journey, everything's an ongoing, never-ending adventure, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Well, that is a uh I love that you named emergence. I want to uh come back to that theme because I I think you've named something that uh I was trying to name in that. So, but before we do, I want to stay on this idea of the journey. So your story begins in some ways on a tall ship at 15, being asked to lead a watch and hold responsibilities for others in an unfamiliar environment. When you look back now, what did that experience teach you about presence, fear, and helping people discover or yourself discover what you were capable of?

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Yeah, I think like many people in their teens who had an outward bound experience or some kind of foundational nature-based or theater-based or uh art-based, whatever that modality is that you, you know, if you have an opportunity to do that, I know trekkers. This is a massive part of that what appealed to me, I think, about the trekkers model is holding that space for those students over a long period of time. That's what I love about the outward bound model. And I, you know, at 15 I had an experience of my own, which was really foundational for me, you know. And I think about this a lot because I'm so invested in those kinds of experiences in in the volunteer work that I do. So I just worked with the Olympia Snow Leadership Program, similar idea, these young women who are finding themselves through the program as a mentor, you know. And I think a lot of what I'm driven to give back is because of that foundational experience as a kid myself. And you know, I was 15, uh only child of a single mom who I was probably being a bit of a rat bag, I imagine, you know, like knowing myself now, watching my own daughter grow. I can imagine she was pulling her hair out, going, What am I gonna do with this kid? She's got too much energy and I need to find an outlet, you know. So she sent me off on a 10-day sailing expedition. It was about the fifth or sixth of its type of its type. It had just gotten started. So it was a very unproven model. And I was asked to participate as a trainee, and then literally offshore for 10 days. We didn't come back. We went far north, Western Australia, sailing all kinds of conditions, storms, uh in a group of 10 people led by a watch leader, you know, and I just truly found myself thriving in that environment. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have a family. Like I'm an immigrant child and also an immigrant to the States. So I never really had that sense of community in my in my own family environment. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. You know, I loved being at sea, I loved being in community, I loved having these incredible captains and first mates and you know, professional seafarers to look up to. Like it was just an incredible uh mind opening. And I just went in boots and all. I can I do this more? And they were like, we need watch leaders. I was like, I'll do it, you know. So it was a right time, right place for me. It was just a perfectly timed opportunity. And I ended up doing some pretty awesome things. I sailed all the way across the south coast of Australia, I sailed up to Indonesia, across the Atlantic. I mean, that really opened up so many opportunities for me that I otherwise would never have had. And I just kept following my nose, doing that, you know, and it's because of this um model of create challenging experiences and help people navigate their way through that by creating space for growth. You know, that was just such an incredible opportunity for me. And it really did set my course, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Well, I want to stick with that. I think really, really well said, I'm all fired up, actually. So you had this experience at 15. Obviously, anyone who's listening can feel from you how impactful that experience had on you, but also in and thinking about what you just shared in light of the in light of the introduction that I gave I gave to you or had read about you, your life then took on this opportunity, like you became introducing people into these creating challenging experiences on water in the wilderness, on ropes courses, in moments of even organizational change. What have those threshold spaces taught you about how people grow? Like you, you, you went on that and your life was fundamentally changed. You remember it at a cellular level. But what do you know about that, those experiences and the things that you've helped facilitate for people to allow them to grow?

SPEAKER_02 20:06

I'm thinking about your theme here and how we can't guide people to places that we haven't been. Actually, most of my life I've been going places I haven't been before. It's kind of that's one of the reasons I chose this subject, actually, because I think it really is a tension, T-E-N-S-I-O-N tension, right? We hold this tension because actually we can't control our environment. We can't control what's coming down the pipe. We think we can as humans, we want to, we want to create conditions where we can predict what's going to happen because it helps us to imagine how we might respond. But the truth of the matter is we're always on the threshold of something. And sometimes we don't know what that is. And that's why I think about emergence and I think about holding space. Because when we set off from the shore on my first voyage, it was dark. We got into little boats, we did across to this massive big ship, like everything was new about it in a very fundamental, obvious physical way. But there was a bunch of other stuff happening there too. Like we didn't know anything about ourselves. A lot of us were very young. So I think this idea that we can control this threshold or that we control our environment, or we control what that future is going to hold for us is just a false dichotomy. It's a false dichotomy, it's just simply not true. And so, what it has helped me to understand is that I want to be really clear that I'm actually constantly thinking I'm not good at this. I'm constantly questioning whether I'm actually able to hold this space well enough, you know, and it's not imposter syndrome, more as like what's missing, you know. I need to I need to keep my eyes wide open, right? So, but it's a it's that tension between having the tools. To allow whatever needs to emerge to emerge. And also having enough of a plan or a vision of how it might go so that you can provide some sense of comfort for people and for my and for yourself. Because as if if you think that you're leading without growing, you're missing the point. Like you're growing alongside these people. So at any time that you're holding this space for people. So for others. So I think coming back to the question of like not going where you haven't been gone, where you haven't gone before, I think really my answer or my my reflection or my practice in that is probably in the zone of you know it's actually okay to not guide where you haven't gone before, but be part of the process of going places that people haven't been before. And reminding us that that's okay and that it's actually very normal. And that if you have your values, you know, and you have your some some some foundational things with you and your toolbox or in your back pocket, that that's what you need, not to know exactly what the end point is. And so I think that's my work is to try to keep us always coming back to what are my foundational values? What is it, what are we trying to achieve here? What's our purpose? These kinds of questions are the sorts of things I like to grapple with. And rather than saying, you know, here's your project plan from A to Z, and this is that these are all the milestones, you know, that feels comfortable, but is a little bit of a false reality. Yeah. There's a lot there to unpack, but those are the reflections. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Well, so I in the reflection, I I mentioned that I um what happens to me when I am not uh fully present on what's happening inside me, I end up kind of going to my uh control, need to control. And that's hard to admit, but it's true. And like there are times where uh my wife will come home and I'll just be cleaning like a mad person inside the house. And she's like, Okay, what what's going on? What what what are you thinking? What are you feeling? Because she knows that I'm like there's something unsettled within me. I'm wondering about as you've kind of gone through your own work in terms of the danger of offering directions to places we haven't gone ourselves, like in your life, where have you had to do some inner work before you could responsibly guide others? Like, where what's your go-to mechanism that like maybe it's slowing down? You mentioned like you just want to kind of take things on or move fast or try to fix them or whatever. But can you name um like what is the your your thing that you've had to work the most on from an inner perspective from uh both personal and leadership perspective?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

As you're asking me that question, the joker in me is like, are you kidding? Like all the things. I want to give you a specific example, but I can't choose. Um my husband and I joke about this, and we think we have a similar dynamic uh to the one you're describing, which is that I'm probably a bit more comfortable with uncertainty than my partner is, than my husband is. And he is really so good at risk management, at thinking about the risks that are coming down the pipe. And I'm more like, well, if that happens, we'll be fine, you know. I sort of go into slow mode, like in whether I've been on a wilderness trip or you know, some disaster has occurred, you know, in our house or something, everything slows down for me, and I kind of get into this space of like, let's look at the things and prioritize, you know. I kind of like my whole consciousness just slows down when I get into this very calm state. And so I've experienced that that's something that happens for me, and I think I built that actually on the on on the water, you know, as a young person. I saw other people doing this, and I was like, that's incredible. Like I can do that too, you know. So risk management is both planning and responding appropriately, not reacting in a moment. Yeah, and so that's linked to control. It's like what when you think you need to control everything, then it throws you for a loop when things don't go the way you expect. And I think we can see this in ourselves too, you know, and so I'm linking this back to inner work because I think I've had really big disruptions in my life on the personal front and on the professional front, sometimes driven by me, sometimes driven by circumstance. And so I think those are the lessons that I try to bring home to help myself grow, which is how am I going to not react but respond? How am I going to create that pause to give myself time to recover, to ground, to center. And that's what allows the emergence. So, you know, I know I'm being very like high, high print high principled high thinking here. So, an example. When I was in my 20s, I had spent time traveling. I'd left college. I was like, you know what? I'm here. This is not the direction I want to take. I need, I need, I need space. I need to go travel and figure myself out for a bit. So I left college after a year and a half and traveled for a couple of years. And I was taking an intentional pause, right? I'd realized that I was on a track that was not going to work for me. And I sort of went off and traveled and got my jiggles out and you know, sailed and did a bunch of really fun stuff and you know, drank too much vodka and did all the things one does in one's 20s, you know. And I returned and I came back and I'm I landed with a really incredible group of people who are still dear friends now. And I was very lucky just to kind of land in this. It took a while to find them, but you know, to land in this place. And what I really valued about those folks were that they were very reflective and very willing to allow mistakes and to allow learning and reflection and processing of those mistakes. And I had sort of grown up in a very German household, a very like, things must be the way they should be, and you know, like so that was new to me, you know. And so that's the work I continue to come back to is like it's okay to make what is perceived to be a mistake, to leave college, to go travel, to, you know, to go do crazy things, you know, and return and still have heart, still have a direction and still it all when you look back, the trail is very obvious, right? When you're on it though, it feels like it's meandering and zigzagging. And so just to trust a little bit that that path that you look back on will lead directly to where you are. Um, and I think that's true in all change management. I think that's true in all self-development, you know, it's like we're all constantly just trying to make it work. And so reflecting and pausing and allowing space for those things um in all the different ways, I think is really important. And I really struggled in the in my early 20s. I was really lost. I was like, how am I gonna live my life? Like, who am I? You know? And by meeting a really good group of people who are able to hold that space really showed me that it's possible, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah. What a I really appreciate you sharing parts of that journey with us. So much of what you're saying kind of goes to, I I understand it better now in terms of this phrase you use in your work about leaving the shore, which of course I love. Let me just ask you, what does that mean to you? Like, why do you think stepping away uh is necessary for that type of real reflection and change?

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Well, it's a lived experience for sure, like a physical lived experience. So it's resonant for me. I actually borrowed it, just I got a full disclosure. Borrowed Leaving the Shore from an incredible two guys who used to run a company called Two Roads Maine, and it was uh two brothers, and one is a sort of a monk, I guess I could call him, meditation and Buddhist um practicer, practitioner, I guess. And the other, David, was sort of the business side, but also understood that side. And they would lead these four-day retreats back in the I'm trying to remember if it was the late 90s, early 2000s, and I helped to, I was a it was this through the Chwonky Foundation and True Road's head of relationship, and I was one of the guides. I didn't lead any of it, but I got to participate and be part of the process, and it just like hit me as soon as I discovered the model. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is just so incredible. What they would do is they would take four days, and before you departed on your retreat, you would have a ceremony to say, I'm leaving behind all of these things to give myself space, and I'm leaving the shore. And in this space that I've moved to is going to be an incredible opportunity to look at myself, to give myself some room to, you know, lean into meditation or nature or just being, you know. And then there was another ceremony that we're returning to the shore afterwards, you know, and it really helped me sort of frame something I've been carrying for a long time about this understanding. Uh, so it really resonated with me. And I sort of have been coming back to that more and more. And I think to answer your question directly, what I think it is, is you have in in a way, there's a couple of other things that are coming to mind that I want to share. One, it feels like there's a bit of a movement in this direction. Um, a woman called Victoria Foster who runs Future Women X, she's recently posting on LinkedIn about being a death dueler, which has kind of seemed a little like, what?

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

You're a leadership person and you're a death dueler. Like, what's that about? But she's really bringing it together because for her, she's talking about, and I love this, before you move into a new space, you must let go of some things. It's just how it is, you know? It's like when you go to your closet and you can't fit anything more in your closet and you have to decide to take some things out before you can put new things in.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

You know, so what are you gonna leave behind so that you can bring in? What are you gonna release? So Danielle Laporte is talking recently, she's got a new book called Bless and Release. And I love that too, like this idea of I'm gonna bless this stuff that I no longer need, and I'll let that go so that I create space for that which needs to emerge. And when we think about organizational change or we think about individual change, if you just keep trying to cram more stuff in, doing more, doing more, doing more, being more, being more, it it, you know, the same stuff will keep on rising and emerging. So you have to find a way to like put it to bed before you open yourself up. So that leaving the shore is part of that, right? What am I leaving behind so that I can let something else come up and emerge?

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Well, and all of your this is so great, and it obviously it aligns so much with uh my own personal and professional journey in terms of what trying to put out into the world of offering opportunities for young people to be introduced to new places, new people, new cultures, new ideas, but also new perspectives about themselves. And I uh have done a ton of rites of passage work with um seniors in high school, and sounds like it's a lot as you described, your leaving the shore idea or the the ceremony. It there's so much in the rites of passage ceremonies that we did as well. I'm curious what was one of, and I'll I'll share an answer to this as well, but I I'd be interested in your perspective. Like, what was a theme that came up when people came back that allowed them to actually move away from one thing, their old self, into a new emergent idea, a new story, a new chapter, and embracing that on the other side. Can you think of themes that allowed people to do that?

SPEAKER_02 35:09

So I think right now my answer, and again, I I feel like if you ask me this a week from now, I might come up with a different answer. But there's a few things that are are bubbling up for me, and I and I think they're hooked into various experiences. So in the context of the wilderness experience where you leave the shore, and it could be an outward bound trip or a two-roads trip or whatever it is, you you enter a new community, a new space in which you can, and we would often, in all the various experiences that I've had, I would often say to people, you get to be whoever you want to be in this space. You can make up a completely different personality. You you you are not with your family and friends right now. If there's something that's been emerging in you that you've wanted to play with, a new name, a new identity of some kind, like this is a great space to try that out. So there's a permission element. And I think that that transfers really nicely into personal development work, you know, this idea like you're allowed to reboot. Somebody who I love the work of is um Jeff Warren. Do you know him? He's a meditation, it was introduced to his work through the 10% happier podcast. And I've been to a retreat with him and I follow him. He's just very wise and very like, you know, allows for emergence. And he talks a bit about that, which is very cool. But that permission to just do nothing, or that permission to be, that permission to be something different, to play. And it's really no one's giving you permission but yourself, you know. And the other another theme that I think is important, and I heard you talking a lot about this with Susan Bates, is the strengths approach coming from the perspective of let's not look at our deficits here. Let's not try to fix things, let's lean into what is true and resonant, and even if we haven't really done it much before, that feels really good, that feels true to us, you know. And I think that both of those permission and you know strength-based work um are great tools to allow whatever needs to happen to happen. And and and also play space. Uh one so Olympia Snow's um program for young girls, they're three tenants of their program. Are you familiar with that program?

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Yeah, I am.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

So they they start with values, you know, voice and vision are the three, you know, themes. And as an advisor, you know, like I'm in my 50s, I'm like, I've been there, done that. But no, you can do this at any age, right? Yeah, and so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna re-envision my values, I'm gonna think about my voice. How am I using my voice? How am I not using my voice? How am I listening? How am I not listening? You know, what is my vision for myself? I'm I'm only halfway through my life, after all, right? So I think at any time, giving yourself permission to re-examine and go back to basics, and uh, and that is so uh freeing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah, yeah, uh, it's so good. I love it, the permission piece. I I think it uh really is a cousin to what I at least for teenagers, this could be different for older groups because I've I've only done rites of passage, which is this idea of like, you know, who am I, and also who do I want to be, and what do I need? What are the obstacles keeping me from becoming the person I really want to become versus who I am or who I've been, and so much of that is permission, from giving ourselves permission to envision a different uh way of being in the world, and the cousin that I have seen as kids have come back over and over again from their 36-hour wilderness solos or whatever that it is, is a theme of forgiveness, the ability to forgive themselves for past mistakes in high school that have been kind of weighing on them, or forgiving people who have deeply hurt them, as a way, in your words, to let go of something for something else to emerge. And you know, that's language that's not used a lot, you know, in teenage culture or even in adult culture outside of religious institutions. So I think for myself, I loved when you said, I don't know if I'm gonna find my notes here, but the idea of crossing a threshold for me many times in life has always started with what I'm willing to let go of through forgiving. And sometimes it's mostly forgiving myself for not doing it right or doing it the way I thought I could do it. Um, that internal beating myself up. And I think the truth of the matter is that I think that's what's made me a good leader because if I am not able to find the grace and find the forgiveness for myself and the things I've done uh wrong or perceived unserving to my soul, my ability to forgive others who aren't meeting a particular standard that I might think or have or the organization has, or giving them the benefit of the doubt, or creating a process of assuming best intentions. Like that's really, really hard if we're super self-critical of ourselves. So I'm just gonna hit the pause button just to see like what comes up for you as you hear that theme of forgiveness and uh along with your theme of permission.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

Oh, it's so interesting. As you were talking about that, and you're speaking about it at the level of a teenager and how they need to forgive themselves and others. Um, and you were reflecting early in this about Glenn and Doyle and her work, and now I think about Renee Brown and her work around shame and vulnerability. And isn't it just a lifelong question? You know, I think a lot of people who I who are drawn to me to do Clifton Strengths coaching often we go beyond Clifton Strengths because we start talking about these thresholds that they're trying to navigate beyond, you know, like whether that's an artist who's trying to get out of artist block or um coaching of an incredible person who was trying to get back to study, like wanted in order to give herself permission to go back to school, you know, and like forgiving herself for leaving that in the past, or you know, people who are trying to navigate new work or new, you know, maybe coming back into the workforce after being a parent or being ill or net or looking after others, you know. And so these questions of like, what are you holding on to, forgiveness or permission, as you go through these milestones of your life? You know, have this one person I spoke to, and you know, she's in her late 60s, and she's like, I have so much more time. What am I gonna do with this time? You know, and it's like, okay, where what's hidden? What's the judgment that's hidden in there about this? You know, like what what are we what are we what stories are we telling ourselves? Of course, that's that whole thread, also, right? Stories that we tell ourselves. So what I'm reflecting on is how these young people we work with in these programs or as a mentor or what have you, those same questions. One of one thing I've said to the Olympia Snow leader girls that I'm like, these questions you're grappling with, I hate to tell you, you're going to grapple with your whole life. Sorry, not sorry.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

And and you have to bring lightness to that because it doesn't have to be a struggle, right? I often will bring humor, and as you can tell, I'm giggling to myself. But like it's it's just how we are, you know, we're constantly coming up against new problems and then trying to reassess and figure out, you know, how am I going to do this? You know, how much of the of the past do I Bring with me and how much is just emergent and possible, you know. And the only other thing I'll mention, just because so much of what you have done is the community, like we're talking a lot about individual journey here, but it's impossible without community, right? It's impossible without those around us. And we reflect our environment, you know, the people we choose to surround ourselves or those who we are responsible for. And so I think that idea that we have to forgive others or that we have to give ourselves permission to kind of move outside of what others know of us is a big part of that because our community provides support, but it also provides constraint. So really recognizing that you're allowed to tell people, you know, I see the world differently now, and I want you to come with me. I want you to come with me across this threshold or into this new way of being. And sometimes you have to leave people behind, you know, because they aren't able to do that with you, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Boy, there's so many things going through my mind on that. I I mean, I think about the journey of I I have um three siblings, and um the roles we play as um siblings, and I'm the third um youngest, I guess. And um, you know, you you play a role up until you leave for college or yeah, you know, leave home or whatever, and then you come back at Christmas, or you come back at whatever growth you had there goes right out the window because you can put back in that role. And you know, uh it takes a long time to kind of to feel grounded and and then have to set boundaries around who you really are or what or are now versus where you were when you were 16 or 12 or whatever. But that happens in you know relationships, but it also happens in organizations as well. You know, you you you um I know that I've worked with a number of people who've been promoted, and their fears they won't be taken seriously because they were in these in a role that wasn't a supervisory or a managerial role, and and their ability to, I think that's in some ways where that imposterism comes from sometimes, is that there isn't permission to see that you're on this journey of self-discovery, both as a human and as a professional. And you uh I'm assuming, based on the fact that you're doing a lot of this work with individuals, what's your go-to when somebody is in that imposter syndrome uh feeling of like, I know I'm in the role, but I don't feel worthy or don't have enough skill set yet, or whatever. How do you help them move through that threshold and and own that space? And I know everything's not this, you know, every situation's different, but I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Yeah, look, I'm I'm I'm looking in my little um thinking about the different organizations I've worked with and the different kinds of roles I've played in doing that. And I think the general approach, going back to you can't guide people where you haven't been. I have not been in most people's situations when I talk to them. Right? Like someone who is stepping into an executive leadership role in that particular organization, in that particular culture, with that person's particular background and fears and you know, imposter syndrome. That is not my, I'm not in that situation. So really I have to go back to what we're saying before, we have these foundational blocks that we want to come back to, you know, like what are your values? You know, what how are you trying to grow? How are you, what are your strengths? It could be Clifton strengths, it could be, you know, technical skills, what you know, whatever it is that you bring to the table. Why do you think you were given this opportunity? You know, what called you in this direction? What's your purpose, right? So really asking those questions, because I do not have any answers for anyone. You know, I don't know. I don't know what Don wants to do with his next 10 years, you know. All I know is what I can reflect and the questions that I can ask to make sure that you're grounded and feeling very true in the path that you make for yourself, you know. And that's how you cross the threshold is like solid. I've got my, you know, got my toolbox, um, and off I go on my journey, you know. And so for me, your toolbox is your values, and it's you know, where you're headed, the things not where you're headed directionally, as in I'm gonna get that job, but why are you why are you here, you know, thinking about that. And it's questions I'm always asking myself. So I feel like I've been like a good partner for those kinds of conversations because um, you know, when when you have a co co-conspirator or a collaborator, sometimes it's easier to say the vulnerable things than if you're trying to impress somebody who's a few steps ahead.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

So yeah, I I I think what comes to mind, like it just in the example that you gave, where someone's feeling like an imposter or feeling fear of stepping into this new position, a position that maybe you and I haven't been. My contention is that the fear itself, if we haven't known what to do with our own fear, if we hadn't overcome our fear to step onto that boat at 15 or our ability to leave uh college when something stirred inside you, the the culture said stay, and you said no, I've got to go. I I don't know that you could help them through that.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

You hadn't had those experiences, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

So I I I'm saying, like at the deeper level, I would agree with you. There's a lot of folks like who are leading much larger organizations that I've never been to, but at the at the personal level, their insecurity, maybe. I know about insecurity. You know, I know what I got that, I know what that feels like, and I've been working on it, as you said to the the young women at the uh Olympia snow leadership thing. Yeah, it's a lifelong process, and uh you're never gonna get over that. Yeah, but had I not really looked honestly at my own insecurity and and what where it came from and where those original wounds were, and my ability to kind of make sense of it, I can at least stand on a thing, not saying that it doesn't reappear, but that I at least understand it enough when I recognize it in other leaders to say, is it could it be this? And it opens up something.

SPEAKER_02 51:14

And um so anyway, it's not um I'm gonna jump in there and and offer like a tangible analogy, maybe great, never quite define analogy versus metaphor, but anyway. So when you when we decide to go hiking in a new place, for example, and we look at the map, we've never been to that place before. But we do know when we see the contours really closely stacked together, for example, we know that's probably gonna be hard. You know, or when we see that there's a long way around or a short track, like we can make a judgment. How am I feeling? Am I gonna take the long way? Am I gonna take the short way? You know, we can decide is it important for us to get to the summit, or do we just want to have a picnic on the side of the of the of the trail, right? So I think we're bringing all this past knowledge from previous experiences of how to navigate the terrain and we can read the map, but we can't necessarily tell somebody if they should go for the summit or take the long right route, but we can talk about our experiences in the past, like, you know, I saw this really, really cool coyote on this long trail one time. It was really awesome. And I thought, you know, you can show how there are benefits and and you know, pros and cons to different kinds of approaches to the terrain that somebody is, you know, deciding how they're gonna navigate, right? So I think we can draw so many elements of wisdom or past lived experiences to illustrate what might be ahead for somebody, which is not the same as guiding somebody, you know, we're just saying, well, these are my experiences, and if it's of it's of its use, if it's of use, then um and that's a good thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Yeah, yeah, that's well said. Time has flown. I I got one last question for you. In terms of things that are merging at different stages of I want to I want to keep this in the in the leadership space. There's a leader that you're doing executive coaching with, or what advice do you have for them as they really want to move towards uh a new or an unlearning or a new chapter in their own career? What advice are you are you wanting to give them?

SPEAKER_02 53:56

Well, the frame of that question is a little bit something I I resist, which is advice giving.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

Okay, yeah, I understand.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

So that's my first reflection is like, well, I don't give advice really typically, but I'm gonna reframe it a little bit and say, what process would I suggest somebody use to help themselves and support themselves to be ready for whatever that next leaving of the shore might be. So if that's my if that's if I'm rephrasing the question that way, what has worked for me and what I've seen work for others is to create space in your life for reflection that through whatever form it could be something that you don't expect, it could be you know, riding your bicycle or journaling or doing art or a musical instrument or something that's very much outside of what you are doing day to day in your work, creating room in your life to have those outlets so that what needs to emerge can emerge through these other spaces. Because the thing I think is true about us as humans is when you create that space, it will rise, the truth will come. But we're so we're such seekers, you know, on our journey. You know, if you think about many of the stories that we are told, it's all about the fool who learns the thing and gets to the summit and then comes, has the dark night of the soul, and then they discover a truth, and then ta-da, they're at the end. And I just think that's not how it works. It's all a cycle, and so you have to create space for the truth to bubble up and for yourself to go through these cycles and for you to just be constantly allowing, you know, what giving yourself permission, like I was talking about before, to allow what is true to emerge. And I do, I know that sounds very woo-woo, but it's just been so true, uh, personally for me and in so many people that I've worked with, that when they actually create that space, it becomes very clear what they need to do. They don't need to ask me or their boss or their partner, it just becomes very clear.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

So yeah, that's really, really beautifully said, Mish, and it it totally aligns with the things that I've learned most about myself over the years is because I've created space, neutral spaces of therapists that will be a mirror to me, creating space uh for writing, creating space for uh walking in nature, creating space, and and out of those things out of those spaces, something always does rise to the top. And um so thanks for sharing that wisdom. Thanks for joining me today.

SPEAKER_02 57:15

It's been a real I want I want to add, uh you can say that again if you need to, but the words of my year, which I think are informing this reflection, are space, grace, and connection. And I've been really using those as a lens for myself to think about like what do I introduce to my life, what do I not introduce to my life, what am I driving towards? What can I allow to emerge, you know? And so trying to find ways to create that space, allow grace, and focus on how the connection uh supports me and and gets me there. It's been a real sort of lens for me this year. So you know, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

Yeah, no, thank you. That's so beautiful. And um I uh I really appreciate being with you today.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

Thank you, Dom, for this opportunity. Honestly, uh I was nervous to start with, and you just held the space perfectly and uh really wonderful conversations. So I appreciate the opportunity very much.

SPEAKER_00 58:21

Yeah, well, thank you, Mish. Uh, if you'd stay on for a couple minutes so I could say goodbye, that'd be awesome. So before we go, just want to share what stayed with me during this conversation. You know, one of the things that Mish kept returning to in our conversation was this idea of emergence that you know, we don't always know exactly what is forming in us or in someone else, but and here's the but we can learn to trust that something is being formed, and that connected so deeply, in my opinion, with this week's meditation. Because the idea that you can only go where you've been does not mean we have to have live the same exact story as the people we are trying to support, it means we need to understand something about the process of going through hard things rather than around them. Meaning, if if we have never allowed ourselves to sit in our own certainty, uncertainty or grief or or tension or struggle, we may not be able to recognize those moments in someone else as truly sacred ground. We may rush them, as I mentioned in the meditation, toward clarity before clarity is even ready, or before they are. We may offer answers when what is actually needed is just accompaniment, just to sit there. But when we've done enough of our own inner work, we begin to understand that emergence cannot be forced, it can be supported, it can be witnessed, it can be protected, but it cannot be rushed. You know, I I think that's where Mish really connected a lot of dots. Because the when people people often emerge stronger and clearer and more connected to what they need on the other side, not because someone gave them the perfect directions, but because someone had the presence to really walk with them when things were still becoming clear. So that's one major, major piece that I'm walking away from today's conversation with. So once again, I just really want to thank her. But before we finally close, let me just ask, uh, provide two prompt questions for you to consider. And the first one is what road are you asking others to walk that you yourself may have not been willing to walk? What road are you asking others to walk that you have not yet been willing to walk yourself? And two, what kind of uncertainty do you struggle to sit with in others? And what might that reveal about the inner work still waiting for you? What kind of uncertainty do you struggle to sit with in others? And what might that reveal about some inner work waiting for you? So as we close, Mish, thank you, thank you, thank you. Omar, big thanks to you for producing the episode. If you found something meaningful here today, would you consider sharing it just with one person? I mean, how could you not want to share this episode with Mish with somebody? Please do. It really expands the audience, and it would mean the world to me. And if you have a reflection or thought you'd like to share, I would love to hear from you. You can reach me anytime at Don, Don at Carpenter Company Consulting.com. Thanks for listening. We only have about nine to ten episodes left, so I really appreciate you listening in. And please remember, the journey of leadership begins within the other.