Courage to Leap & Lead with Joia Nuri, part 2 - Episode 151

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar.

Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

I love it. So tell me, in these journeys with so much action activity, so much good, You spoke about our race trying to demean, trying to make us less of what we've accomplished. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you spoke honestly about your reaction, which I love. And I love that your parents didn't say, okay, you can have your little world to yourself. No, they said, get your ass out there and go. Yes. Yes. Did you ever fail at anything?

I thought about that as we were— as I was preparing to come to do this wonderful conversation with you. I would say that I don't have a list of failures. I have a list of I gave up. And it crosses my mind.

That's a very interesting—

I quit before I could fail at it. Whoa. Yeah.

A lot of introspection.

Yes, a lot. I have done a lot of studying, and as you know, I take the notion of the powerful inner critic into my coaching, and all of my clients are Black women. And the one thing I do wanna add, I think that crabs in a barrel thing has ended. I think Black women have come to a place where there's a universal sisterhood. Now, I promote that. I quote that. I—

Oh, am I gonna disagree with you? Um, I disagree with you.

Well, see, I don't live in corporate America. I've never really worked in corporate America. You can't— even though newsrooms are corporate America, I have never been in there. So you have stories But where I come from and how I deal with— or maybe that's why my women find me— is that they're— they come to me for the sisterhood of it. And they come to me for the— I will say this.

I will say this. In the arts, there's a whole different world. In the arts, it's not just a sisterhood or a brotherhood. It's a wehood.

Mm-hmm.

Everybody together, everybody against the world. We live in our own bubble.

That's true. That's true. And even when I left newsrooms, I went to human rights work.

And, and you could be part of the LGBTQ+ community. You could be a person of color. You could be a white person. We all slept together. We all ate together. We all— That is true. We all cried together.

Yeah.

The journalist world is very close to the arts.

Mm-hmm. Well, there's a trained objectivity.

But when you step out of that space, girl, you better have your suit of armor on.

Okay.

Even today.

Okay. That's sad to hear. That's sad to hear. So at least in the world I live in, women come to me because they want a Black woman to escort them through this journey of executive leadership. I have 2 clients who are from India who came because I said I connect to Black people, because they know their journey is not that much different.

No.

Okay. And then I have a Puerto Rican Client who knows that her journey is not that much different, and she just needs somebody who can understand the language of what their journey has been. But we're talking about, so I just wanted to say that we were talking about my failures, and I started with talking about the inner critic. From the time those girls teased me about being too tall and too skinny and talking like a white girl. I became very self-conscious, body image, not fitting in, and it has followed me ever since the age of 10. And so there were things I should have attempted or could have attempted. I'll give you an example. After I left NBC, I went to CBS. I became the first Black woman ever to be the technical director of the CBS Evening News and Face the Nation. And the women all around me, the white women all around me, because there were no Black women, you know, there might have been one, but she was my junior, as when I became technical director, urged that I should produce for the way that I would complain about their coverage. It's like, why would you say that about him? And how come his quote is longer than that one? And why are we zooming in on him and not zooming in on him? I was just complaining. They said you should produce. And they wanted me to stay. I agreed. They wanted me to stay at CBS and just move from my technician job at CBS and move into the newsroom. I didn't think high enough of myself to do that. So I went back to the— they helped me get a job at the CBS affiliate, the local station. I learned a lot, made great friendships. But I went from probably $80,000— we're talking about 1983. I went from like $80,000 a year to $12,500 because I couldn't see my— I made it. I made it. I don't know how I made it. Didn't miss a meal. Stayed on people's sofas. Didn't have a check. There were no children, husband, or anything. Stayed on people's sofas and made it. Okay. And, but I learned a lot. However, I could have made that jump. Right in CBS and stayed in CBS. But myself, my, my inner critic couldn't do that. It was so— it got in the way. Before, between NBC and CBS, or at NBC, I took a year sabbatical because everybody told me it was my height and my cheekbones, I should model. So I took a year and moved to New York where my big sister lived. My sister from my father's first marriage. And lived in her house, beautiful house, beautiful townhouse, and lived in her house and was supposed to go to auditions and everything. And when I'd go to the modeling auditions, they would complain about the smallest little thing. Like one person at a big modeling agency, and I'm looking right at her, but I cannot think of the name of her agency right now, said that my eyelashes were stuck together with the mascara. This was a reason to complain. And I just thought, my intellect is too great for this. I can't be worried about my mascara. I can't be judged by how I put on mascara. I would go— it was wintertime. I would go to these auditions in my boots and coat. I would dress like an audition underneath. I have to take my boots and coats off and leave everything in the hallway. So I could walk in that door and look like a model, praying to God that my boots and coat, anything would be out there when I got back. You know, these are office buildings. Anything could happen. But every time they were there. I auditioned for a theater group that was very famous, Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof, HB Studios. He looked at me and he said, You don't have to audition. You look talented.

You're in.

My inner critic wouldn't let me go to one class. Wouldn't let me go to one class. There's this false upper limit that my inner critic created, and then it wouldn't let me try certain things outside of Well, you're already at NBC News. You know, what else do you want?

It wasn't until I—

Be grateful. You're making a fortune. But I did leave, go to CBS. I did leave CBS and go to Channel 9. But that coming down in that, in that pay felt normal. It felt what I deserved. It wasn't until I started working with a coach. Who identified my inner critic, who started to beat me, beat her down. Okay. And made me identify—

Time out. Time out. Yeah. I love what you just said. You started working with a coach. I did. How did you get to that courageous move?

In some really odd way.

Yeah. I knew it would be. Let's hear it.

Okay. So my spiritual growth was always very non-traditional. I found that Christianity wasn't answering my questions. I was put out of— I was put out of Sunday school when I was 6 because she told us the story of Adam and Eve. Well, first of all, I was far more interested in playing in my hair than listening to anything. Okay? And my hair was pretty long. It was thick, and my mother always wanted me to look like Shirley Temple. I hated Shirley Temple at the time, and I would just put spit on my hand and take out all the curls. I'd take out all the curls. So by the time my mother saw me after Sunday school and then after church, when we, you know, they took all the kids back to their parents, my hair would be like this. So my mother told me, if you don't stop playing in your hair, I'm gonna spank your behind. I only had one spanking my entire life, but that scared the daylights out of me. So I figured now I have to go and listen to whatever that woman up front is talking about, okay? And not playing in my hair.

I love how old-fashioned your mom was.

My mother was—

She was kick-ass. You—

yes. And you could shame her by your behavior. There was just Just how you're dressed, your shoes, your socks. You know, those patent leather shoes where your socks would go down into the back of the shoe? Pull your socks up! Don't you feel that your socks went into your shoes? Pull your socks up! Oh my gosh, she's like, you know what? You know, you're a Jefferson and you have to do this. Look, I got all that.

A Jefferson.

Oh, you're a Jefferson. I have no idea what that actually means, because we're not Thomas Jefferson. It was just how— it was a pride thing. It's a pride thing. It was some made-up way to make you proud of something. Okay, because, you know, Jeffersons, we're teachers and firefighters and maids, and, you know, we're not— we're not Thomas. Even though I hate Thomas Jefferson, which is a whole nother thing.

Yeah.

The way you talk about in another show. But so when I was in school, I— Sunday school, I paid attention to her. I don't know why, because I didn't want to get— because I didn't want to get spanked. And so she started talking about Adam and Eve. I'm fascinated. And the apple and the serpent. And then Cain killed Abel, and Cain went off to live with Those people? Teacher, where'd those people come from? I thought you said there was only Adam and Eve and their 2 sons. And she said, well— I said, well then, what's that like? Basically, I was saying, well, what was their origin story if they live over there? And how do they know Cain where he can go live with them? Did y'all text? I mean, I obviously— I wasn't saying that when I was 6, but I just And all of these questions. I'm like, why? 'Cause you just told us the first man and the first woman, and you never mentioned them. And did they eat the apple? And she kept talking and asking me to be quiet, and I kept yammering at her. So Sunday school's over. We come back the next week, and I picked it up right where she was.

Oh no. Oh my God.

I picked it up. This went on for maybe 3 weeks, 3 Sundays. She finally took me to my parents, and whispered to them, she can't come back to Sunday school. But I was also not allowed to be in the sanctuary. No children in the sanctuary. So my father saw that as his opportunity not to go to church. And so he and I watched football and baseball and made pancakes. My mother and grandmother and the rest of the family went to church. He and I get up on Sunday and had a ball. You know, we go driving places. So from that day on, I've been curious.

Yeah.

Beyond the teachings of my grandmother and my mother and my father.

Right.

My father never wanted to go to church. Trust me. Like, like I say, he never—

I get it. Yeah.

He believed, but that Sunday getting dressed up thing wasn't in his thing. Okay. And so I kept seeking and I went through this to explore this, explore this within Christianity, outside of Christianity. And I had a very good friend. Who had found Native American traditions, and she had a cabin, and I'd we go there, and she would teach me all of these things: incense burning, chanting, meditation, all of these things that were new to me. You know, and I'm I'm not that young. I'm like forty, thirty-nine, something like that. Okay, thirty-five, something like that. I'm not young. And she had a friend who would help people have a better understanding—

excuse me—

of themselves. I don't think it was called coaching. And so she said, what he taught me about me, I've known so much. And there's nothing magical. He wasn't giving you mushrooms or anything. This is really sort of talking. And his perspectives is what he and his wife Ken and Renee Kaiser. Their perspectives is what she was, you know, and there would be breathing exercises part of it. So I thought, fascinating. Okay, so I went, and they lived maybe 2 hours from where I lived. They live in Richmond, Virginia. I drove to them, and that's exactly what happened. The conversation was Well, what happened to you between the ages of eight and fifteen that altered you? Why do you have so much self-doubt? Where did that come from? Let's build a toolkit to quiet that. Same different. I use that language now: toolkit, blah blah blah. But what I learned was that there was another person, that wounded child that was still in my head. that was scared to step out. Even though my parents made me step out, she was still scared to step out. So anything that got too big and too public and too seen, I would stop doing it because it was so uncomfortable because I hadn't had the conversation with her that she'd be safe, you know, that we can do this. And I worked with his wife for a while, Renee, for a while, but Ken was— a little bit more robust about it. Because, you know, I could soft pedal. Renee would soft pedal me. But, you know, I needed somebody who was like this.

Okay.

Like, get over yourself. You know, even though he never said that, but that would be his attitude. Okay? And I just learned to be brave and go past The inner critic, to be horrified, in a sweat, but still moving forward. And I've stopped—

But what—

what—

I'm sorry, you made me laugh so much, Mike. I'm tearing. Stories of your mom and everything. What said to you, it's time? So, you know, I know working with—

Well, you know what, it wasn't anything that said time. What it said was he makes sense.

Here's what I mean by time. As a coach, I work with a lot of people. I work with coaches who are coaching other people.

Yeah.

What was that aha moment for you that said You're good. You got this.

When I was able to reflect— wow, man, I need to think of that for a second. The aha moment. Well, there are a couple things. I would say that there was a moment of, I'm going to do this no matter what, even though I'm afraid, even though this makes no sense.

What made you say that? What got you?

Because I hated to go to work. My last job was at C-SPAN where I had to go to work at 4:30 in the morning. I'm on my way to divorce. I don't want my daughter to be a latchkey kid. And I have to work for myself. I have all this media experience, but I don't want to do it for corporate America. I want to do it for human rights groups. And so I wanted to work in human rights and human dignity and civil rights. And so I started working for an organization called the Institute for Policy Studies. I was consultant for them and communications, and I met Harry Belafonte. And I worked for him for 10 years on different projects here and there. I grew with Danny Glover, TransAfrica Leadership Council for Civil and Human Rights, projects here and there. But from in between, I didn't have enough money.

And—

but I said, I'm going to stay doing this because this makes sense to me. This work makes sense to me. And I don't want a job job. Somewhere in the course of that, it got tough. So I took a consultancy with somebody I had no respect for, some organization I had no respect for, because they were a mess. But I took the money. The money was huge, and it was a year-long consultancy. I think I stayed 8 months, and like, I can't stand it anymore, but it allowed me to pay myself out of debt. and get more secure in what I was doing. And then there was an aha moment of, this is what I'm meant to do. And that's when my friend— I'm going to call her name— Sharon Robinson, who ran a PR company, said, I have a client and they need public speaking coaching. You were an anchor. I was an anchor at BET News, and I was a weekend anchor at several stations when I was in the media. You were an anchor, you were a reporter, your father was a tenor— oh, it was a baritone. I think you can teach this. So I went online and I looked up— this is 10 years ago— I went online and I looked up what public speaking coaching does. I didn't know what it was. And I said, oh, I can do that. And I put together a curriculum and I worked with an agency, a DC government agency, which is Always going to be predominantly Black. And so these are all Black women, and I think there was one Black man, but primarily all Black women, and they just loved it. They kept calling me back and calling me back, and I realized wheelhouse. Love it. Taking people from Their fear to putting them behind a podium and watching that change and adding my spiritual things to it to get them out of their fears. It felt like everything equaled right there. And then a few years later, after I was doing that, the first woman I trained in that job and that consultancy called me and said, I've now moved to another state. And I'm looking for a leadership coach. I'm sure you do this. And I said, okay, I guess. And I said, sure, that's what I do. And so she said, all right. I said, what do you, what do you want to accomplish? She told me. I went Google. I called people I know who are coaches, and I put together a curriculum. And so, and then I had, then I realized I don't really know what I'm doing here. 'Cause I was subcontracting time management people. I was subcontracting a lot of the things that I thought, I don't need to dance in there unless I know what I'm doing. And then I went back to school and for a degree in leadership, and then I became an ICF certified coach.

Great.

So when did I have the aha moment? When I recognized that I was in a very complicated situation with one of my clients, and I didn't know what to say. She's talking, but I didn't know what I was going to say. And I heard something my coach taught me. You don't know what you're going— you go, where would you have me go? What would you have me do? And what would you have me say, and to whom? And while she's talking, I'm keeping up with her, but I'm saying, what would you have me say? The answer came out of my mouth. She started to cry because it made perfect sense. It was not even something I thought about 5 minutes earlier, or even knew I was going to say. It was the aha moment of you're in the right place, you're doing the right work. So long answer to that question, but—

A fabulous answer. And I don't know if you've read the book. It's an old book called Synchronicity.

No, I haven't.

By Jaworski. I highly, highly recommend it.

Okay. I'll write that down.

It's all about When you're in the right place, everything falls into place.

Yes.

And so that's a great story. I, you know, it still does not quite answer the question of— here we go. Getting from point A to point B. You had an opportunity to be with human whisperers. Yes. It brought to you a certain degree of peace. You still had to get out of the imposter syndrome.

Yeah. My key human whisperer was Harry Belafonte. He didn't see limitations in me. I'd be assigned to go do things, and he would assume I knew everything. And one time he asked me to call a woman named Lindawi Mumbusi. Mbusa, and tell her we were in England. Tell her he's coming to London on whatever date that was. He'd like to see her. I looked at him. I'm like, okay, and I'm just writing down stuff. I don't know how to spell her name, anything. My inner critic wouldn't let me say Who is that, and where do I find her number? But I'm thinking Google will help me if I get her name right.

You need to know how to spell it.

I didn't know how to spell it, but I was gonna figure it out, and I figured out her London. So I stood there, and I'm writing, and I'm writing, and I'm writing, and he's— he quite— we're on a train coming from Liverpool to London, and he says quietly, you don't know who she is, do you? And I looked up, and I said, no. And he said, you are so brilliant. There's no reason for you to ask what you don't know. She was the— she was the ambassador from South Africa. To England. Like, I was never gonna find her. So I was like, oh, well, that's important. But he, he died not knowing what that meant to me.

I'm writing this down. You are so brilliant.

There's no reason why you shouldn't ask about what you don't know. Like, it doesn't diminish you that you didn't know her name. It doesn't diminish you because you're so brilliant. And he just trusted that I was brilliant through our entire workings. He just trusted every project he would pull me into. He just trusted I can— I want— I want—

I want you to repeat it one more time.

You're so brilliant. There is no reason for you to ask about the things you don't know.

For you. Not to ask about the things you don't know.

And I think that that was when I stopped. That's when I accepted I was brilliant. I was really good at what I do. The best and the brightest had trust in me, not just because they got famous, but throughout my life. People trusted that I knew what I was doing, trusted that I would deliver, trusted that I could do it throughout my entire life. My father trusted I could run a household. I was 13. And I did. My mother was there. Don't get me wrong, my mother was there. She would still smack you across the back of the head if something went wrong. Okay, I wasn't—

she did not—

she didn't acquiesce her power, but I just had skills that my father recognized. And I'm 13. My parents gave me the New York Times. They understood I could read it, comprehend it, and this was not a waste of money. You know, and to this day, the New York Times is my source.

I am so glad I dug. Yeah. Because that pearl of wisdom is going to help so many people, including myself. So thank you to Harry Belafonte. I know he can hear us.

Oh yes. You know, I tell you a story about— another story about him. You know, all of our travels, all the times that directly from him or through TransAfrica or directly from Danny Glover, I got a chance to work in Brazil and go to Venezuela and London and South Africa and Paris doing the work. And All of it, report back to me. What's going on? Or when we would travel, he knew that I would do the reconnaissance, so he would know what to expect when we landed. And the— he's been elderly, died at 96 about a month or so ago, I guess, when this— from this— when the show— early in the spring. And I haven't seen him in a few years, and I've spoken to his wife though. My daughter had a baby, you know, we made sure he knew, you know, and all of that. But there was one night, and I also— here on the wall, if I can show pictures, I'll show you this picture.

Yes, of course you can.

Mr. B, as we all called him, and to his face I used to call him Hansel.

He was.

Yes.

Oh my God.

And so he moved into a new office at a union, 14th floor in New York. And all of his stuff was brought to this office he'd had. It was a suite of offices he had. And there was— everything he owned was leaning up against the walls. Nothing had been hung. And when I got there, he said, I'm in this meeting. I'll be out in a minute. I'll be out in about an hour. Look around. Grammy Awards, letters from Dorothy Dandridge in boxes. Um, all kinds of things.

All—

I mean, in that hour I went through things, I opened things and read things. I just like— I was like, okay. You had a blast. Yes. So when he came out of the meeting, he said, so you look around? I said, oh yeah, yeah, I know all your business now. And he says— he said, that's good. He said, do you see anything you like? And I said, wow! I said, well, over there in that corner is a picture of you and my other hero, Robert Kennedy. He said, go get it. I brought it out, and he gave it to me.

Oh my!

And you can see here where he wrote me a note, but he wrote it in black ink, so you can't— You may not be able to read it.

It says, Joya.

This is Joya. See, now I can't read unless I'm facing it this way. It said, Joya, from a, from a time filled with possibilities. Peace, Harry Belafonte. So this belonged to him. So he had his secretary open it up so he could sign it, and I walked— I left that day with it. And it's here on the wall in my office. Wow!

Yeah. So the real deal. Ah ha ha!

So there was a night. It was a Monday night that I felt so compelled to talk to him. I felt so compelled to talk to him. That I was in tears. I'm gonna read something to you. That I was in tears, like I had to talk to him now. And it's a Monday evening. I was sitting on my sofa watching Netflix. And so I text his wife, and this is what it says: Hello, Pamela from Joya. It has been a while. I pray all is well with you. I saw that there's a new documentary coming out. Mr. B, I am thrilled. I said, I have a favor to ask. I would do anything to see him today, or see him now. I would come to New York and stay for 10 minutes because he's getting more and more exhausted as he got older. I would come to New York and stay for 10 minutes. Can you make this happen for me? I just passed my 70th birthday on March 10th, which you know. I just feel like I want to see Mr. B and you. Can you make that happen for me this week? He died 11 hours later. She never even got a chance to respond to that. I think it was him coming to say goodbye.

Audience, there's nothing else to say. There's nothing else to say other than, Joya, thank you.

You're very welcome. And thank you for that journey. I appreciated that look And you know, you're so busy living your life now, you don't spend a lot of time looking at the sequence. I thank you for that. I really do.

Thank you for allowing us to be part of your heart.

Thank you. You're very welcome.

Audience, see you next week. It's CB.

Enjoy it.

Bye now.