Stop Missing the Opportunities to Be Even More of a Leader | Step More Into Leadership

Welcome to the Healing is Possible hot seat. I am your host, Rebecca Silence, creator of Healing is Possible and emotional healing Coach. The mission of the hot seat is to take you on a journey of hope and healing and to prepare you for life beyond survival mode. And what I do in the hot seat is I am either interviewing an influencer with a healing message that can change your life if you'll let it, or. Or I do breakthrough coaching with a brave volunteer that is ready to emotionally heal through whatever stuck pattern, belief, emotion or wall is in front of them to get to their next level. I am so excited about today's episode with Maggie Martin Riley. We are going to talk about leadership, but in a way you've never heard it before. I believe we're all leaders. We'll hear Maggie's take here in a moment. But there are so many opportunities where we could turn the volume up on our leadership but the habit or the tendency or the norm is to want to turn it down. So today's topic is specifically about not missing the opportunities that are hidden in plain sight where we could be even more in leadership. I am fully prepared for the episode today. Maggie, with you, I've got my Brendon Burchard Honor the Struggle sweatshirt on. We are going to just go here. The struggle is real, but we can lead. Maggie, welcome to the hot summer.

Thank you so much, Rebecca. I'm so thrilled to be here.

Always so much fun getting to work with you. I have so much respect for you. If we could just start with you telling us a little bit about who you are and what healing means to you.

Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. Yeah, well, I'll start. I was thinking about all the layers of our identity and who we are. Right. So not only coach and an educator, but I'm also a mom to a 2 year old and have a great husband and family that lives close by. And so all those pieces of life going on but in the last couple of years have gone from the focus on my career and development in education or continued that focus and seen in our schools the need for healing and your message too. And through my work of my own personal growth and transformation, have just gotten really committed to developing this additional skillset of coaching so that I can meet people that I'm in service to, kids, adults, teachers, leaders, where they're at with not only skill or strategy that might support them but also with this more abundant and expansive message of the fact that they can really show up and lead and create the experience in the life that they're after.

I love it. And so how is leadership needing more healing? What's your definition of leadership and how is healing a factor? Because I don't think people think about leadership and think about healing in the same conversation. And I really love that we're taking that on together today.

Yeah. Well, since my home for the last 13 years has been in the public education system and serving students from all walks of life and areas of income and opportunity, I step I took myself from teacher to then instructional coach to assistant principal. And what I realized as my position changed was the different attachments we have to the roles in an institution. And I'm sure this transcends schools, whether it's the hierarchy of a corporation or maybe just who's the most influential, like sibling in a family system and who gets their way. And I noticed that the attachment to role and meaning that a role was indicating who was a leader led to a limited perspective of leadership. And I am just here to stand for leadership is available to all of us in every moment. And it's much more interesting when we live and lead from that place than it is contingent upon the role we're assigned, given, or eventually earned.

Chills, right? Like, we don't need to be told, oh, leadership is your right now because you got the job title or because you have this role in your life. And so how is that an opportunity for people to heal? And again, like, can you just tie healing? I think it is really healing in general to understand that leadership is your right and it's up to you, regardless of the title or a role. But what else would you say about healing factoring into leadership?

I think one of the traumas or pain points that we experience and that I have experienced and been in the observation of others walking through is when we feel disempowered, when that role that we need to earn or someone has the title that someone has that we don't means that we have less power or agency in our world, Whether that's in a classroom, in a system, in a corporation, or in our family. We can then become complicit in that messaging. Who am I? How can I really impact or affect change if I'm not in this position? That to me, just can double down on the trauma or the pain that we experienced in childhood or any messages that we've previously received about not being worthy, not having a voice, not being enough. To me, healing is blowing that paradigm up and welcoming in leadership into each of these moments. For me, part of my journey has been standing in Front of. I've been in elementary school, love elementary school. And teaching in front of sometimes 34 students and being in that classroom community. And it's occurred to me that had leadership not be an integral part of that role in my life and in the students I was impacting lives, then the opportunities of connection, compassion, growth would have been completely missed. And it was.

Say that one more time.

Yeah, I just think it's my job when I'm in service to show up as a leader. Because one of the most freeing things we can do, and I know you model this for me all the time, is go first when we go first. Freedom begets freedom, opportunity begets opportunity. Leaders owning our leadership, like, hey, I'm a mom. Like, I better be a freaking leader. My 2 year old's looking at me all the time and right now he's parroting all the things I say, you know, and that's. And whether it's true in parenting or in the classroom or in whatever role or positionality, you know, your listeners are experiencing, we have to be in the embrace that there's opportunities everywhere to lead.

Oh, Maggie, this is awesome. And I hope everyone is listening to every word she's saying, because no one's, like, born not a leader.

Exactly.

So what would be your actual definition of leadership be? Just for people to really kind of take that in.

To me, leadership is the embrace of our very best and most empowered self.

Say that one more time. That's so good. Yeah.

It's a full embrace of being our best and most empowered self. Because just as I said with other things, when we go first in being the leader of our lives, we're then better able to show up in service and community and expansion and possibility for all those we're impacting every single day.

Right. And you have a really cool message for people about being their best. What is it?

But I'm like, oh, my gosh, what is it? No, when your best. Being your best. If you could be your best, why wouldn't you be? Yes. Such a simple question, Maggie.

If you could be your best, why wouldn't you be?

Yeah.

Holy shit, that's good, Maggie. Right? And then I think we're not because we don't believe it's possible yet.

Right.

I'm now a regular guest on the Kathy J. Show on Denver News. And our next episode in January 3rd is going to be about confidence. And one of the things that I say about confidence is that confidence is just a commitment to doing what it takes to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. We don't get confidence once we have the evidence. We have to be confident in our ability to learn, grow, go first, fall down, get up before we're going to create the evidence we're looking for. And I think so many people don't have evidence that they could make a difference yet they don't have evidence that their voice matters, that their best is worth it and going to make a difference. But how do you know unless you go, go for it. And if you're freaking watching, you have a best version of yourself that's making a difference all the time, whether you recognize it or not. And I think what's really important is also whether you're validated or not. So I'd love for you to talk, Maggie now about, like, what I call kind of becoming the source of your own encouragement. Or said another way, just how do you validate yourself as you lead in a vision that maybe nobody else sees yet?

Sure. Well, how do I set myself? What did you call that? The voice of your own encouragement.

I talk about a lot lately just becoming the source of your own encouragement, being critical. I really believe, like, the only problem people have, Maggie, is they're not knowing how to be the source of their own encouragement.

Sure. Well, an essential tool in my life is the state, the post it note.

Okay?

And so the source of my own encouragement, off to my left hand side, right here, is my planner for the day in my journal. And just right there on a post it note, because it's the source of my encouragement in my current leadership journey is this message that says this. A new version of anything is disruptive. So a new version of leadership is disruptive. Why would I expect it to be anything else? I find that when I go, oh my gosh, this is upsetting. This is confronting to someone or a team I'm in leadership with. This message is not being immediately embraced in a school, particularly in a school system where there's a lot of pain and struggle. Right now I have to bring myself back to this mantra of. And this comes with it as we embrace our own leadership. That doesn't mean that there will not be, you know, evidence or like, we won't get confronted along the way. And in those moments of confrontation, just reminding ourselves, like, who do we want to be in this moment? And I think about all these, like, great people from history that we would all recall to our minds as change agents. You know, people who live during civil rights movements or other freedom movements, great artists and expressions, musicians who were putting their message into their world. And what was generating their life changing, world changing message wasn't because they were born into a moment of total ease. And I have to remember, Martin Luther King Jr. Isn't a man great in our history because he just was born on easy street. He wasn't born in a time where there was no racial strife. And it was in fact the challenge and the confrontation and the lack of values that worked for him and his children that caused him to rise and use his voice and be great. And so I'm in no way equivocating myself to any of these leaders, but they remind me to normalize the struggles that we see in leadership, to normalize the hard or the hurt. Because those are the moments that invite forward our very best.

Oh, Maggie, that's so good. Right? Honor the struggle. Right. And I love what you're saying about, you know, growth is disruptive. Leadership is disruptive. And I look at leadership as creating. My definition of leadership would just be basically looking forward into more possibility. Leadership is about more possibility. It's not about good or bad or right or wrong. It's just about there's possibility beyond this wall, whatever it is. There's possibility beyond disconnect. And I think growth does require conflict. Right. Saying what you're saying just a little bit differently. And we don't want the conflict. We don't see the conflict as an opportunity to lead. We see conflict as scary or maybe ourselves as not equipped to lead through it. But I'm just going to suggest, and I'd love to know your thoughts, every conflict in front of you requires more out of you if you're going to get beyond it and not just stay stuck in it. And we all have the capacity to be that leader through the conflict in front of us. We just often haven't seen it done before. And it's time for us to blaze our own new trails.

Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think those questions of like, who am I and what are my core values and who am I? What am I stand for in the world? So good I have to remind myself, like the answer and the interrogation that comes with finding the what the answers are for ourselves in those questions isn't again, for the moments of ease or for the lack of conflict. Who I want to be as a mom isn't for the moments when my son is in his really cute jammies wanting to snuggle me there for the moments after zoolights when we are in full tantrum overwhelm mode. And it's like, am I willing to be still stand for calm, for comfort, for normalizing strong emotion? Or was that only kind of a cool little cute idea of motherhood when it wasn't hard? And so to me, it's just taking that idea and on any level. And so I've been a school leader in the time of COVID and I remember that, as I'm sure we all do, that March 13th date, that was when our school went to remote. We took three weeks off from live instruction, but as a school leader, we took no time off. And we went right into all the operations. And I was so mad. I was in so much resistance. I was like, I need a week to just get my head around this global pandemic thing. And that resistance was hurtful to me. It was probably not awesome for my colleagues or the creative solutions at the time required, but as soon as I was then able to be like, what if I was born exactly on the right day and time and year so that I could be in this position of school leadership for a global pandemic? What if I was meant to be here in this moment? And I don't think that means there's anything particularly special about me. But we all have that opportunity to ask, how am I the perfect leader for this moment, for this child that was born into my family, for this role I have in my community, whatever it might be that seems hard, or there's resistance or there's something coming up. How are we the perfect leader for that situation?

Well, and I would argue, Maggie, that there is a lot really special about you because your giving, the possibility of all moments being an opportunity for our best and more leadership of voice. I think that's really special. It's really brave. And, you know, I think that we underestimate the significance of our special, sacred version of leadership that only we can do. And that's what I'm hearing when you're saying what you're saying, like, how am I meant to be here? You know, is also, you've got what it takes. There's something special about that. There's something special in you that only you can provide. The moment in front of you. If you'll be brave, if you'll step into your best. Right? And I just. I just want people to hear that, because there aren't, I think, to your point, Maggie, like, you know, if we can do it, the audience can do it too, right? Like, it's not like there's one person that's special and they're the only one that can do it. But we all have what it takes in our own special way. And I think it's time to turn the volume up on our leadership. And also, one of the key ingredients that you really teach about when it comes to leadership is intention. So we can also be turning the volume up on our intentionality as leaders. Will you speak to that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that moment of COVID and the reflections and learning that have come for me since in school, leadership in particular, have been a real invitation to consider if I mean, what I've been learning for many years and in some instances, preaching myself. Am I willing to be intentional about who I want to be today? Am I willing to be intentional about who I want to be when there's, you know, another quarantine or something like that, and where I learned the power of this? And it's kind of. Maybe it sounds simple, but in my coach, who I've worked with for many years, I was getting married. This was more than four years ago now. She said, my only real advice for you on your wedding day is set an intention and give your time before all the things starts to really get clear and to feel it. And that transformed my whole experience of an event. And, yes, weddings are, like, super fun and beautiful and amazing. I'm also a little bit of an introvert and not always ready to be, like, fully on stage or in front of people or lots of people around. And weddings also invite lots of people around you. And so I spent that morning because my intention was joy and getting really clear on it and being with it. And that, to this day, is the most abundant experience of joy I've ever tapped into. And so I kind of keep that in my pocket as one of those things, too, that reminds me to encourage myself to be my best. That when you make the choices to set aside that time and be deliberate, it's amazing what we can unlock. And so I think about that whether it's leading in the time of pandemic, parenting in the time of pandemic going into the holiday season, and certainly we're also in the new year season. So I don't know what 2022 will bring. None of us do. Exactly. And it's not needing to know that to be clear on who we want to be, how we want to show up.

Yeah. And that's very different than focusing on what do I need to do. Right. The actions without intentions keep us spinning. And I think we all know how to lead in the lives we have now with the results we have now. But there's more. There's more of us to, to give and bring and be. And I really appreciate your message about that, Maggie. And when we're being with intention, we're leading intentionally, which is the opposite of autopilot. Right. And it's easier to go into autopilot, but there's a cost. So I really appreciate that you're supporting all of us in kind of flexing that muscle today around our leadership and checking in. And I think another important thing to say about intention is when you're intentional, you're in control. You know, you're saying you don't know what 2022 is going to bring. We don't know what tonight's going to bring. Right. Like, and we have enough time until we don't. We have, you know, life going our way and then it doesn't go our way. And how are we leading in between? How are we leading when it's going well? How can we turn the volume up on our leadership when it's perceivingly not going well? Right. But it's all an opportunity. And I think with intention, we do have control over what we have control over. And I think it's really important to me anyway to just invite everyone to consider it possible to be your best to the point where you have no regrets. And if you can be clean and if you can know you did your best and then know sometimes it's going to work, sometimes it's not. Learn from all of it. Right? Brendan Burchard talks about. Brendan also loves post it notes, by the way. You know, he just talks about like a, you get to reinvent yourself anytime you want.

Right.

Companies can completely rebrand in a tweet. We are so worried about what people think about us, how they know us, what they expect of us. But it's time for you to start leading your life, in my opinion, in a way that really works for you, in a way that really feels the way you want it to feel. And you know, you can reinvent yourself and then you're never, not as you lead and disrupt in Maggie's point, you're never not going to have people judging, criticizing, trying to tell you what you're doing that isn't right or what you should be doing instead. But when you have that clear intention and the volume turned all the way up on your leadership, you can stay focused and on track and you can take all that noise as opportunity to stay on track, or you can take all that noise as evidence that you.

Don'T have what it takes yeah. One of the phrases I pay a lot of attention to, I'm tempted to say that I really dislike, but it's useful, is like, anytime that's just the way it is comes up. That's just the way it is in our organization. That's just the way it is in terms of the impact we have. That's just the way it is in parenting. That's just the way it is. Whatever. To me, that is an absolute invitation to wake up and get a little bit more real about it. Because if I'm going to take Covid and use it as one of the greatest teachers of my life so far, if that's just the way it is, if school year 2019 was just the way it is and was going to Predict school year 2020, that would have been maybe great. That was not just the way it is. There was nothing similar about those two school years.

Yeah.

And so. So I like to just remind myself and remind my clients and the leaders that I work with and support that we actually are can become complicit in thinking that there's some. The autopilot is somehow of service to us or that there' predestined about an outcome, that the more we're willing to challenge that and then find evidence all over the place that we get to decide much more than we might normally be considering. 1. The good news is, I say the good news is you're responsible, and the bad news is you're responsible and you're going to just bring whatever energy you bring to it. Right. But I'm responsible for how I show up in my classroom tomorrow. I'm responsible for how I sit down to dinner with my husband tonight. And in that, I get to decide who do I want to be and am I serious when I said that my value was love? My serious that I said when my. My value is service, and that's when the action gets to bring alive that person. We said we've been building, creating, and we're in commitment to.

Yeah. I love this, Maggie. This is so, so good. What assignment, what homework assignment would you give the audience to really take on a new intention of leadership as an opportunity, not just some of the time, but all of the time.

Yeah. One thing I would just invite everyone to do if they haven't done this work with a coach or on their own or with other. Other leaders, is to identify core values. One thing I've seen being in a system where there's lots of core value conversation is, you know, maybe I've. Maybe there's an experience where with teachers and they're like, oh, we've had the core values talk, like, okay, cool. What are they? Well, I don't know. And so if you haven't had that opportunity to really get clear on what the things are for you that are the North Star, the compass, the things that guide your life, find a great leader, find a great coach, find a teacher to support you in doing that work. Because to me, that is that foundation to the intention is knowing what I am up to. Mine are love, joy, gratitude, service and leadership. And I find that in myself, in my home life, in my professional life, my coaching practice. And from there I get to design. How do I want to do that today? What experience do I want to create? How do I want to be feeling for myself? So that would be the first thing. And if you are feeling a little stuck on core values, one way I learned this summer from my coach to do that is to just ask, what do I love? And think about those things you love, because it can be really revealing about what matters to you. And then I think, just following this question, oh, I had my homework written up here. You know, I think the holidays or the new year, like a specific date, just like I was talking about my wedding. If maybe there's a family meal that hasn't historically, like, felt great to you or you haven't found meaning in a New Year's resolution setting, Pick an opportunity in the near future that's finite and just consider how do I want to feel, how do I want to show up and how do I want to lead in this one experience? And the way I do that is just consider what hasn't worked for me in the past. What do I want to be in the experience of and what do I need to get committed to, then you're.

Saying so much, it's good.

So just going through that simple practice for that one event is a great way to start this practice of intentionality.

Yeah. And values. Values are so awesome because they are an intention. When you know your values, you can be intentional about whether or not you're living them. And that's what your response is. I don't think responsibility is about like, oh, I caused whatever happened to happen, but I am responsible. My new tagline, Maggie, is the mission is healing. The cure is self responsibility. Right? Because who I'm going to be in the face of these circumstances, that's what I have, control. And when you over and when you know your values, when you're intentional about them, when you're intentional and committed to being that best of who you are regardless of circumstances. Man is that freedom. And man, are you making a difference.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you for today. So good. How do people get a hold of you?

Thank you so much Rebecca. This is great. You can find me on Instagram at Riley underscore results. I also have a website that details all my coaching services, rileyresults.com and then for school facilitation and leadership is expansive.

Education.Com awesome work Maggie. Thank you for being here.

Thank you Rebecca.

Healing is possible Hot Seat is brought to you by my gorgeous team and rebeccasilence.com where we offer you everything from free free to premium services that support you in your healing. And healing is possible when you'll commit and you have what it takes in you and an opportunity to lead in using every moment in your life as an opportunity to heal and be more and more and more of the you that you can be so you can have the life that you've longed for and always imagined for yourself. The Hot Seat is not meant to replace any therapy or growth work you're doing, but we hope that you got some gold today and whatever your favorite takeaway were from this episode, please comment on whatever platform you're watching. Please message me and reach out to Maggie and let us know what worked and let us know how we can support you moving forward. I have a free resource for everyone@rebeccasilens.com that you can go read right now on self responsibility. We have a free ebook. It's the one step process to healing self responsibility on rebeccasilens.com so you can take what you got today, go read that book and download it. And again, happy leading. Thank you for being who you are. The world needs you healed so you can make your difference. Thanks for watching everyone. Thanks Maggie for being here. Bye everybody. Thank you.