Mick Unplugged
Dr Adriane Johnson-Williams: Why Every Leader Needs a Brushstroke Strategy
28 Jun 2025
Chapter 1: What inspired Dr. Adriane Johnson-Williams to pursue her mission?
I'm not gonna work with you if I don't believe that you are ready to do the work. And so we have to have a lot of conversations about the sacrifices it's gonna make, the sacrifices you're gonna have to make, the challenges you're gonna confront.
Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self improvement, leadership and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just hard hitting truths, unstoppable strategies and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mic Unplugged. And today we have brilliance in the building.
She's a scholar. She's a strategist. She's an advocate transforming the conversation around racial equality, education and leadership. We're talking about going from classrooms to communities, from research to real world impact. She's brilliant. She's fearless. She's a catalyst. None other than the doctor. Adrian Johnson-Williams. Dr. Adrian, how are you doing today, dear?
I'm doing well. You did a great job with that intro. I'm going to have to hire you to like, you know, lead everything I do whenever I show up.
Five dollars goes a long way. So Dr. Williams, there's so much that I want to get into. You know, like I said in the intro, you're brilliant, huge fan of the work that you're doing in the communities, in the boardrooms, in the classrooms, like everywhere. So I want to start with this question of what's your because? What's your that thing that's deeper than your why?
Like your core purpose is fueling all the work that you're doing. What's your because?
I knew you were going to ask this question. I did my research too. I did my homework. I'm a scholar. And I've been thinking about it really deeply. And I struggle to answer it. I think at the core of it, I really fundamentally believe that every single human being has something beautiful and wonderful to offer.
And that the systems that we create as people, sometimes because we are tribal in some ways, because we are threatened by all the different things, all the different isms that we have, we actually diminish our collective power. We diminish what we can become as an entire human society because we don't value human beings. And so I think that's my why.
I think that there should be nothing standing between any individual human being and their absolute best potential, selfishly, because I think that we would all benefit from it.
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Chapter 2: How does Dr. Johnson-Williams define her 'because' in leadership?
We have to figure out what our contribution is to solving the big problems.
Yep, totally agree. You know, I know that you are a big proponent of self-reflection. What role does self-reflection play in becoming like an effective leader, an effective purpose for others?
Yeah. reflective practice is important for everybody, every profession, if you want to get better, because if you're spending all of your time just doing, doing, doing, doing, then you could just be spinning your wheels. You may not actually be doing anything of any real value. It's important to step back and think about what worked, what didn't work, why.
And it's a critical part of emotional intelligence too, to be able to Really do some thinking and digging into your own motivations and your own interactions with other people to determine how could this have gone better? Because if we don't start with ourselves, if we're not reflective of ourselves, then we're really just out there judging what other people do. That doesn't help us either.
No, I totally agree. And I'm glad that you brought up emotional intelligence. Like to me, that's been, I'd say over the last three years, one of the biggest shifts that I've had corporate leaders going through, right? Like if you can't self-reflect, like gone are the days where you need to have the immediate answer. Mm-hmm.
I think now is a time where you really need to make sure that your response is a lasting response and an impactful response, not just the buck stops with me approach. I talk about the shifts between the 90s to the early 2000s to today. And emotional intelligence for me is the biggest proponent of everything that leadership should center around.
I wonder if it was ever a good thing to have people just saying, I've got all the answers. Because they never did. They never had all the answers. And I wonder, again, on this issue of all of humanity and everything we're capable of, what we lost with that leadership model. Who were the people who were in that room who had better answers?
And the person who didn't have enough ego, enough emotional self-awareness to say, I don't know. What do you think?
Yeah. I don't know. And then also I don't agree. Yeah. Like think about I always talk to my mom now about growing up. The difference between her raising me and like me raising my kids was I had the Internet where things had to be real. Right. Like I couldn't just say something and not be researched and just told.
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