Wendy Smith

knowing that it's uncomfortable and not just assuming that will go away, but owning the discomfort, recognizing it, and then being able to move forward amid knowing that it's uncomfortable.

We're not saying this is for the faint of heart.

We're not saying this is easy.

We are saying it's important though.

Absolutely.

Yeah, couldn't agree more.

I was just having this conversation this weekend and it went like this.

I was talking with a friend of mine who is a significant leader in an organization and recently went and hired a coach.

And part of the coaching process was trying to explain to her all of the things that she needed to do in order to move up and advance in the world.

And she realized that, but it felt to her like all of those practices were really denying who she was as a person and not honoring what she was bringing to the table.

And it invited us to think about not just the tension between trying to be vulnerable in order to be brave, trying to be vulnerable in order to be strong.

There's another sort of paradoxical tension that we think people need to live into.

Certainly leaders need to live into, female leaders need to live into.

And it's this tension of learning to grow, change, live on that growing edge by starting with accepting ourselves first.

So the more that we accept and honor exactly who we are at this moment, exactly as we are, love, value, everything that we are, the more that we can grow and change.

The more authentically we can shift, grow, and change.

And this is, you know, again, something else that we talk about in this sort of paradoxical relationship, which is, again, change is enabled by our stability and our acceptance of what is.

And actually, the more that we change, the more that we can love and grow and accept who we are, because we're constantly moving and changing and shifting to meet the moment, meet the opportunities of the moment.

And so, as you said earlier, I lead this women's leadership initiative at the University of Delaware.

We teach executives.