EPISODE 36: HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR VOICE, SHARE YOUR GIFTS, AND BUILD A VILLAGE
Live Date: December 7, 2020
Show Description: Heather is joined today by leadership coach, author, speaker, and podcast host Jo Saxton. Jo brilliantly takes us on a journey with practical steps to understand the beauty in discovering your voice, embracing and sharing your gifts, and effectively building a village as a leader.
Biggest Takeaways:
We are currently living in a time where we’re constantly being surrounded by noise: a global pandemic, racial injustice, and a major election divide. Jo speaks about the importance of still raising your voice because while there are many voices, not all solutions or perspectives have been heard.
Jo speaks about the importance of women using their influence to make an impact in the world. She believes there is always a positive impact when there is a variety in ethnicity and gender within the C-suite. Ultimately, a variety in skill sets make these spaces better.
Jo unpacks a section of her book, Ready to Rise, which speaks to gifting and the hiding of our gifts. Throughout her career she found herself trying to adapt to her environment because she either felt like she was too much or not enough. But what Jo discovered was that when we use our voice, it makes a sound that reverberates around our community. Businesses, creative initiatives, books, and needed conversations end up coming to fruition.
There are several factors that lead to losing your voice including loss of job, being told you’re not enough, sexual harassment. On the other hand, when trying to recover your voice, you must figure out what inspires you and why. According to Jo, these are great questions to ask to get the conversation going:
What and who inspires you and why?
What change would you like to see in the world?
Who were you before anyone told you who you were supposed to be?
We often think that grit is either something you have or you don’t, but Jo encourages us that grit can be grown and developed through a commitment to rest and finding ways to still have fun.
As a leader, we need a community of people around us to help navigate the landscape. Jo goes on to explain that you need two groups of people: the kind that gives you roots, and the kind that gives you wings. The kind that gives you roots are the people around you who know you best and keep you grounded, and the people who give you wings are there to help motivate and inspire your growth.
As we move forward into a new year, Jo shares the necessary questions to ask or steps to take to rise:
Ask yourself what skills you have
Connect with someone else to share your ideas with
Write down what you want your voice to be used for and consider the next steps to make this happen
Quotables:
“Whether we’re black, indigenous people of color or not, it’s permeating our atmosphere. And so it’s important that we engage. It’s important that we engage and we respond and we grow in all of these moments. And I think women spend a lot of time with a lot of ideas that are locked in their heads and in their hearts that actually would be better served and could actually do something if we were curious enough with those ideas to share them in various spaces.” Jo Saxton – 7:13
“There’s different lived experiences that can speak into how a business is run. There’s different lived experiences that can speak into the media we consume to how a community is built. Because I’m not going to expect everybody to know everything, but together we can get a fuller picture. It’s exciting to see those God given gifts because they are God given gifts. Those God given gifts, being given some air and some room to grow and flourish and help other people flourish.” Jo Saxton – 8:31
“Our gifts are things that God doesn’t just tolerate, he celebrates them. He is delighted to give you them. He’s excited for you to use them because they’re for human flourishing and they do good in the world, and I think we pay a price as a society when we leave those gifts under the tree.” Jo Saxton – 14:31
“What businesses aren’t being started? What books aren’t being written? What creative initiatives aren’t happening? What courageous conversations within the space of your marriage aren’t happening all because we’ve been afraid to use our voices? When we use those voices, businesses are launched and maybe no one has done it like that before, but you won’t be the last, if you get to be the first, because other people will be encouraged by it and will see something they’ve not seen before.” Jo Saxton – 17:19
“We’ve gone into environments where we felt we’ve had to be twice as good. We’ve had to really show up to be taken seriously. And that is an exhausting life. And somehow we’ve had to be twice as good to prove that we were enough or we’ve had to fit into a mold to prove that we were worthy.” Jo Saxton – 27:50
“I think you find your voice at the intersection of the things that you love and the things that you hate to see happening in the world.” Jo Saxton – 34:36
“I think we’ve been told to be polite. Politeness over passion, politeness over purpose politeness over calling, and it’s been reductive. It’s been reductive for our lives.” Jo Saxton – 36:27
As a leader, I realized how much we need that community of people around us who will help us navigate the landscape, particularly in moments when the landscape keeps on going crazy and when everything is changing. So I divide it into two groups. I think you need the kind of people that give you roots and the kind of people that give you wings. Jo Saxton – 43:34
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