I Had a tough year…
(But it has made me a better leader)
Often times you run into someone or catch up with a friend and when they recap what is going on in their life—everything is glowingly positive. Of course, people share with you how busy they are but, overall, the family is great, work is busy but good, and life is going well. It’s not often times that our friends are truly vulnerable. Maybe it’s because they don’t have the time to be introspective. Maybe it is because if they truly admit that they don’t have everything under control—things will really fall apart. Often as leaders, whether at home or in the workplace, we have to appear to be good and have everything under control. I’ve been a practitioner of this framework for years. I will tell you that you cannot truly be a great leader who people want to follow until you are open and honest with yourself and have a degree of transparency and vulnerability with those around you. This doesn’t mean divulging all your business, but just hear me out.
I’ll start. I had a really tough year!!! 2023 was a mammoth amount of change and admitting that it was sometime difficult to navigate was the hardest part. Now my tough year was not due to the first thing that people would jump to being work, but it was the amalgamation of all the things. Of course, there have been tough work situations as 2023 bought my third management transition in two years, but I’m used to navigating that as I am good with that type of change. My tough year has a lot to do with the parts of me that were not always visible in the workspace and not often shared with friends or family. It had a lot to do with health and transitions that were happening within my home and personal life.
Health wise, many of you know that about a year ago, February 11, 2023, I made the tough choice to have a partial hysterectomy. After many years of going back-and-forth with health concerns that landed me in and out of hospital visits and doctors appointments, having multiple blood transfusions, IV iron infusions, and many other treatments to get to the root cause of what was happening with me, I made a very hard decision. It was hard because it caused me to be introspective and admit to myself that I was giving up something so germaine to being a woman—the physical ability to have another kid. I told people all the time that I didn’t really want another kid, but this decision was forcing me to come face to face with acknowledging that I was physically commiting to giving that up. Moreover, I am still relatively young, and I’ve never been married. So, this also meant that if I did meet someone who didn’t have kids or wanted more kids in the future, I, physiologically, would not be able to provide that. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have been blessed with having the best daughter a mom could ever ask for, but removing the possibility of another kid was quite a big decision. Post hysterectomy there were so many feelings and hormonal emotional adjustments and let’s not talk about the 30-pound weigh gain that was only discovered because my pants didn’t pant anymore!
On the surface, home life was going great. I purchased an amazing house when we moved to Houston, and I’d spent a lot of time really making it a beautiful home for Amiel and I. I’d finished the top floor, furnished everything the way I wanted it, finally framed and made new art purchases— the whole nine yards. Amiel was in an amazing school, playing two sports, getting great grades, and finding her balance. Her academics were going so well that her grandparents were trying to renegotiate the rate at which they financially rewarded her for A’s because their report card bill was getting a bit heavy. But this was all a veneer and I was about to see the decay under the surface.
By the start of the new school year in 2023 things took a pivot for home life. My daughter was facing emotional challenges with fitting in vs. truly being herself. She was learning to manage school friendships and how or if they could integrate with out of school friendships. She was navigating her Blackness in a city that was extremely more diverse than what we’d moved from, but being more conscious of racial divides is an eye-opening part of maturing. 2023 taught me that I didn’t have control of my home life and that for the sake of my daughter and her physical and mental health—I had to pivot and focus. Over the last year I’ve had to coach my daughter through situations that I thought I had prepared her for. She had to learn to navigate the changing dynamics of friendships and understanding the difference between having acquaintances and truly being friends. She has experienced people who she thought were her friends that ended up being the chief gas lighters and authors of racist attacks. These things were different and difficult for me because they required me to relearn her and how she needed to be parented. I had to reassess what I needed to do to prepare her for this journey and the many twists and turns on the road ahead. So yeah—it was a tough year!
In the midst of these home and family hurdles that required skillful navigation, there were the personal ones. I’ve never really prioritized finding hobbies or making romantic connections. I haven’t actually admitted that before! I had been running on fumes for a long time managing amazing career successes, parenting, being a friend, daughter, sister, and aunt. That was a lot to manage. Quite frankly to add a romantic relationship meant I had to split the tiny fraction that was left for me with someone else. Sufficed to say, my love life had always been nonexistent. By moving to Houston there was new opportunity for that to change. I was introduced to someone by a long-time friend that I met during my Minneapolis days as someone who would be cool to connect with in Houston. No romantic intent, he was just good people. Our friendship took a bit of a romantic turn and we became amazing friends. He was my “person” in Houston and for the first time in a very long time I thought this friendship could blossom into a life partnership. Long story short, the onset of 2023 created scenarios that dissolved the depth of that connection, and I somewhat lost my person in the process and had to learn to navigate life without such close emotional proximity to this person. I felt quite alone coming into 2023 on the personal front.
Lastly, there were many career changes that added additional strain to 2023. While I remained excited about the work I was doing and the potential of what could be achieved, there were many changes to navigate. The organizational structure changed, the mission of the teams changed, leadership evolved, and the fundamental products we were building had to be reevaluated. All of these compounded with the life, health, personal, and family things, I had to be very introspective and make some important choices on what was right for me on the next leg in my journey. I came to the realization that I needed something that would provide more personal and professional fulfillment and I didn’t have that in what I was currently doing. Today, I’m still figuring out what the future holds in this area.
Whew, that was a lot. So let me wrap this all up. My rough year taught me a lot and it made me a better person. I did not survive the year without scars, but they came with valuable lessons and amazing growth. I leaned heavily on my faith and prayed continuously for clarity, direction, peace, grace, and mercy. Those prayers gave me a deeper connection with God as well as comfort and reassurance that I would be fine. I submitted to God’s leadership as He helped me grow in ways I never could have imagined. I grew tremendously as a leader because I grew as a human. I learned how much I could withstand, and how to pivot to focus on what is truly needed and important in seasons of change and growth.
The lesson I want to share here is that true leadership requires vulnerability, introspection, authenticity, and sometimes admitting to yourself that you are not fine. Showing only the shiny facades of the cool products, trips, houses, cars, beautiful family etc. without recognizing and sharing the rough parts can make us a bit dilutional and does not give a true depiction of the personal journey that leads to leadership growth. It can also give us false hope in the veneers we’ve created, so much so, that we don’t recognize or see the decay we unknowingly cover up. Facing all of these things on our journey allows us to be better leaders not just because we are self-aware and transparent—but because it allows us to see others for their complexity, multiplicity, and it opens us up to be more empathetic. It builds additional skills, enhances our qualifications, and enables us to lead others through their professional and personal journeys because we have new perspectives and lenses to see things through. It also allows us to authentically connect, empathize with, and potentially understand the weights that are on the people around us. It creates a richer experience set for us to leverage to evolve/modulate our leadership styles, to coach our teams through obstacles, and most importantly to show our own humanity and vulnerability to authentically connect with others.
I encourage you to assess your years, months, and days. Be introspective with yourself and pull back the curtains of your personal and professional environments. Take inventory of the good, bad, and ugly that you find. Look deeply into the eyes of your partner, kids, parents, siblings , friends and take the time to have the tough conversations. Assess what you may think is your firm foundation before it’s too late. See the cracks—before the veneer shows the decay— and do the work to fix them. In the journey you too may realize you had a rough year or rough few years, but in the end the awakening and experience will enable you to evolve, adapt, and become a better, more empathic human and leader.
