https://www.tuttitaygerly.com/
https://www.tuttitaygerly.com/
friends today. We're talking to 2d Tegrity she is the author of MakeSpace to lead and coach. Former tech executive. I love this conversation and the timing of this feels just right for right now in this conversation, we dig into what it means to make space and take faith, not just to celebrate what we've achieved, but to be reflective on what we want. Next. I love this conversation. I know you will too. Let's get into it. Welcome to the show. Excited to be here. I'd love for us to start off with you sharing a little bit about who you are and the work you do on the. Oh, thank you for that opportunity. Ooh. Sometimes our question comes off easier than others, even if you've said it a million times. So right now I am a coach, a speaker, a writer, and I help people typically from the tech industry, I help people who are executives in the big tech firms, as well as CEO and startup co-founders. I help them figure out who their most authentic leadership style is. And typically I work a lot with women, people of color and immigrants. They are trying to figure out what's their voice, how to beam the most. Effective how to build company cultures and processes and how to lead in a way that feels unique to them. And then often in this, there's the balance of how to be this external leader versus how to take time to rest and balance and spend the time for themselves. And this is my, I don't know, second of many career. My first career was I worked in tech as a design leader for 22 years. I worked in. Design studios figuring out like the future of interactive TV, autonomous vehicles, smart homes. I worked on that worked at startups and I've worked at large corporations. My last corporate job being at Facebook. So it's a little bit of what I do in the world. Now. I love that because it taps into kind of the need that you saw in the world where. There's this desire, this call to be an authentic leader. But we're supposed to figure out what that means. Just on our own. I saw a lot of that in my corporate work. Which is when I, the first time I was promoted to being a manager and this was probably 15 years ago, I had no idea what to do. I was like, I'm good at the design work. I'm good at the individual contributor skills. And now I'm supposed to be just a good manager and I was terrible. I really was. And so what I've spent, especially like the last I've probably managed for, I don't know, 15, 18 years, I think I finally come in to understanding the craft of managing people. And most of it is helping them develop the autonomy, confidence to step into their strength, then know how to influence others as. And that's what I found in my corporate world. Even I was helping people be their best selves, even while we were launching digital products. And it's been lovely to transition almost entirely into doing that as a full-time profession. What had you making that leap from managing a team, doing that for other people, working for a big organization to saying, ah, this feels more. Aligned to be doing it for myself. So I've been doing it quote on the side for a while in similar to Google's infamous 20% time. I'd had my own coach for about maybe eight to 10 years before I left the corporate world. And then when I worked at Facebook, there was a program for rising female stars. Essentially it was called it was called leap and it had external coaches and consultants come in and work with a cohort of us about nine women and coaches. Talk about imposter syndrome. Talk about, Hey, was this something where you were Gaslight? Just really developing, authentic leadership and then Facebook eventually wanted to scale the program and had the first women in the pilot program helped. So it's something that I did on the side. It wasn't my day job. And I knew I loved it and I knew increasingly well, I am in my core, always a designer. I knew that. I love building culture and processes and people just as much. So I had this. It's like a, wow, I like doing this thing on the side, but why would I do that? This is my main job. And we often transition when challenges and adversity and crisis hits us. And I had, I would say you can call it a midlife crisis year. You could call it a crisis year where. It's three PLE really big, bad things. And I'm not sugarcoating it cause it wasn't a great year. My father-in-law passed away and I had known him since I was 18. And then right on the heels of that I got divorced from my kids' dad. Had been my only loves since I was 18. And then finally in the course of that same year, my father passed and it was boom. And I'm used to being a high achiever and having the armor and succeed as a women in tech. And I just kept going and marching and running and working harder. But honestly, after my father passed and I took some time to. Honestly, it's slow down, breeds, been in his eye funeral rights and just didn't want to keep going anymore. Working these long hours. I needed some space. I needed some rest then. So I left my job at. And in that process, got my coaching certification and decided that I was going to really switch paths, spend a lot more time with my children when they needed the support, being able to do that from home. This was pre COVID. So being able to work from home there and then really embrace some parts of my work that I had loved. I loved so much and was finding this, the side gig becoming the core of what I was doing. It's often in these hard moments where we have blow after blow delivered, that it really says, oh, is this really how you want to live this one precious life that you get? Yeah. Universal things happen. And often we forget them. And these blows happen and it's not the universe conspiring against us. It's Hey, life happens and will we get excused? What it triggers us is, Hey what do we want to do about this now? What next? And it sounds so beautiful right now, right? In retrospect, that was a hellish powered on the floor in the corner crying. Like what is it? There were hellish moments, but I'm so grateful. I think it's important. I've had my own, bathroom floor moments. I think Liz Gilbert coined that phrase, right? Not your bathroom floor moments and I've had them too. We all have. It's important to remember that it's a moment. It feels so consumptive in the moment. So I just want to hold this space. If you are somebody that's listening to this today, and you're thinking of duty and Casper talking about this and they have it all together and like they have the benefit of hindsight, right? Number one, false bathroom moment could happen just as easily for me tomorrow is it did you know, 7, 9, 12 years ago. And. Like we get a new day. There's always another day. Yeah. Yeah. When you think about the work that you're doing in the world right now, a lot of women, especially in tech have been up against it. 18 months of COVID now companies are saying, we'd like you to start coming back into the office and we're seeing another wave of resignation. And just opting out of the way, how were the women that you're working with approaching the season, both as leaders and then for themselves. I think there's always another season, always another thing. But I think in our lifetimes at any rate, this global pandemic has been one of the first where it's like a stop, a pause, a reset. What is it now? 18 months, something like that. Oh, sheltering in place and realizing what that really feels like to live and work with your housemates, your family, your children, your pets. Your laundry, all of that together. And what I love, what I absolutely love about this. And we were talking about life is that we fall into all of these patterns. We fall into all of these like unknown, unconscious patterns. And what a beautiful opportunity that we get when we realize that we are in a pattern and we have the opportunity to make a different choice, whether to continue with the pattern. Cause sometimes it serves us or whether to break this. And that's what I've seen happen with the pandemic, for it, for the clients that I've worked with. One of the women that I worked with and I talk about her in my book. Her I write about her because her story is so beautiful and. All throughout her life. She had been an overachiever. She had to make those grades, get into the right job, get promoted and look around as comparisons to the people around her, oh, they got that promotion. I want that. They got that job title. I want that. Oh my gosh. How's car, like all of this stuff. And I'm saying this. Because many people don't want to say this out loud to other people, but she said it to me as her coach. Cause it sounds greedy. It sounds like I shouldn't be comparing, but I think the reality is we all do it. Whether or not we admit it and it's also human to do yeah. And for her, the pen demic was a big collective sigh of relief because everyone was on pause and it was the first time where she noticed, oh, I don't want path to run anymore to keep up is everyone's on pause. We have a space yeah. I can spend time with my children, my multiple children, my partner, I can do this. And that was her permission to rest, to take a break and we spend a lot of time figuring out, okay, if not that, what next? What is it that steep? What did it, what is it that gives you energy? What is it that enlivens you? What are your values and where do you want to go next? And she ended up in the course of that, leaving her job, finding another job, finding someone, some place from. From a company as well as a manager, as well as a cultural perspective, that fit what matters the most to her at that particular point in time. And so that's one story of someone who laughed and I have other clients who do a revisit and think about their work and then come back and be like, all right, when I've taken a little bit of a pause, I do want to stay here. And this is what I want to do with my career. Some of them are saying, all right, maybe I want to work a little less and spend the energy to be side projects. Others are saying, no, this is good. I want to keep going on this path. And I guess why I'm saying this is all tons of different stories, but the thing is it's about recognizing, naming our past. And realizing if these are great patterns, like the pattern of, the route to the store, the route to work, the route to your kid's school, you don't even have to think about it. Sometimes these are good. And then sometimes they're hurting us. So it's recognizing when it's that, when it's one of the other, having that moment of saying, oh, I'm willing to look at this objectively to say, is this is doing it for me. Right now and taking all of these invitations of change and, to create the space for the questioning. Absolutely need it. It's the inquiry of it. Yeah. I've done brand work and design work. And I use a lot of the design process when I coach right now, which is it's a process of divergence opening up and asking questions and brainstorming and ideation and figuring out all the potential possibilities. But what is the vision of the life you want to create? And then converging focusing a bit and being like, all right, I'm going to try this as an experiment or that as an experiment. And what do I learn from it? All I learned something else let's go big. Let's narrow. And just really it's the process of. I think it's worth noting on this, looking at the lens and the aperture that we're looking at our situations with, right? Saying, you know what, not every season can be ideation and big brainstorming, like thumbs, the seasons are about making it simpler, bringing things back to basics. And I've been struggling just personally, as a moment of vulnerability and that when a lot of your dreams have come true, it can be a little startling because you're like I don't want a yacht. So what is, what does dreaming bigger? What does being ambitious? What does the brainstorming look like when much of what you strived for you have now achieved? Such a beautiful question. And I love it because I think there's two aspects of unpacking it. What is, and I do this, I don't know if you do this as well cast, but the day after you've achieved this really big milestone, whether it's purchasing the yacht or getting that raise or getting that promotion, or for me, I'll be completely honest here a couple of weeks ago. The day after I released my book. Yeah. And what's really interesting with this day after is how do you look at it? Is it like, yay. I'm awesome. I have a yacht and we're going to sail around the Mediterranean or is it more. Numbness emptiness. Cause you hit that and you're like, wait, I'm supposed to be feeling great. Is that it? What's the next goal. What's the next milestone for myself for so many years and still now, still. And for most of my clients, like whenever you hit that milestone, you're looking for the next one and the next one and you move the goalpost. And to maybe put a little bit more, but inspiring positive spin to this. I think the way out of that is yes. Sometimes it is create another goal and I can talk about what that is, but sometimes it's simply giving the space to. Arrest have the season of like, all right, I'm going to pause. I'm going to Greek and celebrate be like, this is beautiful and it's big and all I'm getting, I'm gonna slam some champagne over the prowl. I don't think that boat bit around this and have a party with my friends and be like, how do you make yourself go into this celebration moment? Yeah. Rather than I've got a trash truck outside backing up rather than, have yourself spiral into this depression of a trash truck backing up and saying, oh my God, what's next. What's next? What's next? And of course there's nothing wrong with what's next. We all do it, but it's okay to maybe hold the space for days, weeks, months, even years, and be like, all right, this was here. Let's see where else I'm going to go. Yeah. So yeah, I think the both end of that it is celebrate and think about what's next and hold space for them to happen in a perfect timing. Absolutely. Both of those together, for sure. Yeah. One of the questions that I've been asking women lately is, what tactical thing are you doing? That's bringing you a sense of joy. Yeah. So for me, that question is really easy and I feel so lucky to have found it. I learned to surf in my late twenties and that has been the one activity in my life. Where I've probably spent Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours surfing in the water, and guess what? CAS, I completely suck at it. I would pretty bad surfer, but I love that. It's one where I don't know how I can let go and completely be in the process and the water and the nature, and, the waves bobbing and just like completely fall in love with it. So the extension of it that I would say to help others with joy, if you don't particularly want to take up surfing, it's the context, which I think it's the context switch from being behind a computer specially now digital or in your. Same old office demold home office, same old workspace. And the simplest tactic for joy, I'd say is get outside. It could be five minutes or not after it's already gotten dark. Cause God forbid it's dark now at five, o'clock just be five minutes. Step outside field. The night air, look up into the sky, look up into the moon. It's switch your context. And one of the easiest I find is get outside. It'd be a park. Could simply be outside your front door. Be the beach, be the ocean for me. I think that is a beautiful. Which flipper you might not be an outdoorsy person. You might not want to take the height, but it's okay to step outside your house and stand on the street. Yeah, there's something grounding about just being in an, on the planet, as opposed to being within a structure, being in your house, being in your car, being in motion, an episode that was recently published with Channon Kelly, Ray, we were talking about the overview effect and this idea of, you go to the moon and you get to see how connected and one, we truly are on this planet. And I think that we get our own glimpse of that. And some tiny bite-sized really digestible way when we step outside and I live in a city living. I think there's still something cool about stepping outside and seeing all the houses and the lights. And it's knowing that you're a part of something, not quite like the blanket of stars, but I think you can have some really similar effect of knowing all the hearts and souls around you. Oh, I love that today. We've covered a lot of ground today. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we haven't gotten into? I think the one thing that I really wanted to share, which is all the path that I've been I've been on my own personal path, as well as the lessons from my clients. I'm pretty proud to have pulled it all together in, into a book. And my book is called make space to leave. Because for so many of us, high achievers and goal setters, it's about go drive, drive, do. And of course there's a place for that. That's gotten us to our success. And I think what we forget about so much. Concept that you brought up the seasons, but space and what, and I use the design process and experiments and frameworks and tons of tools within the book to help them find their own space. Enjoy. But the one thing I wanted to leave people with cause one of my favorite quotes it's it's by this guy named Mike Vance, who is the Dean of creative thinking at Disney for many years. And his quote is this lowering down is sometimes the best way to speed up. And I believe it's true because I've seen it in my work, in creating products that you can just go and hit the deadlines all the time. Sometimes you need to let the idea breathe. You don't need to let it just stay. You need to slow down and go take a shower. And then your brilliant idea and insight will hit. And we need to do that for us, for our careers, for our lives. And that rest time that making space time will help us achieve even more sustainable and fulfilling success in the long run. I think that's the core tenant around which I think everything else recalls. I wanted to share that. I love that. Thank you for sharing. It feels really Optus. This episode is airing. We are nearing the end of 2021 gathering some steam for 2022 and taking that much needed space in the break that we hopefully get in that holiday season to say, ah, how do we want this to go with some intention in the. Yeah, 2d. I've got a lightning round of questions for you. What is the go-to song you listen to when you want to up your energy. Alicia keys girl on fire. What time do you wake up recently? But usually pretty early between six and seven coffee or tea. Any person or night? Morning person, a book you've given a recommended the most, never split the difference negotiation guide by this guy named Chris Voss. He's an ex FBI negotiator, and it's the secret of it. It's all about the relationships 2d. Thank you so much for your time today. I've really loved this chat. I'm sure our listeners will too. Thank you so much.