Leading Through Challenge & Creating Change

In my previous blog, I shared the first part of the Dynamic Women® Leadership Secrets book launch party where we had Panel 1. Now, let me share with you Panel 2 where the panelists discuss how to lead though challenge and create change.

We have our panel moderator Candy Motzek and then three panelists: Jacquie Rougeau, Katherine Johnson, and Laura Richards. These four women are authors and part of the 36 authors that came together to create Leadership Secrets.

Meet the Panelists

Candy Motzek (Moderator): Thank you so much for being here. My name is Candy Motzek, and I am so pleased to be moderating this panel. A huge thank you to Diane for hosting this launch party and to all the amazing authors. I’m so pleased to learn from all of you.

I'm going to ask you, ladies, to start with your introductions. Laura, can you tell us a little bit about you and your piece in the book?

Laura Richards: I'm Laura Richards. I'm a narcissistic abuse recovery expert, and I'm the host of the 'That's Where I'm At' podcast. I wanted to be part of this book because narcissists are everywhere, and I wanted to help leaders learn how to deal with them. My piece gives you three steps for dealing with narcissistic people when you're a leader and how to keep your integrity as you deal with them.

Candy: That’s great. Jacquie, I have seen you. You clap for everybody. You are the cheerleader, and I love it. Could you introduce yourself as well?

Jacquie Rougeau: I'm Jacquie Rougeau. I'm at my lakefront property here in Lac LaHatch, BC, Canada. I'm a nomad, an adventurer, traveler. I'm also a coach, speaker, and cheerleader for women ready to lead boldly in their second chapter of life. I jumped into the book because I know the power of rising strong and wanting other women to know that they can do the same. My piece is real. It's a raw look at bouncing back after loss, leading with love and always some sass, and finding your fire again, no matter what age.

Katherine Johnston: Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Diane, for bringing us all together. I'm really grateful for these new connections. I'm Katherine Johnston. I'm the founder and executive director of Global Mindz, and I provide leadership development and coaching worldwide. I must admit, I became a part of this book mostly out of curiosity, wanting to get back into writing. As I enter the last decade of my career, I want to give back, so I love supporting leaders and entrepreneurs to be their best. I hate seeing them struggle and looking for direction and finding a path because there's no recipe. I created this 'Boss and Buddy' concept as a framework to balance between the two roles. It's a playbook, in a sense, based on a leadership book I wrote some years ago with Lisa.

Candy: That’s so great. I love this, entering the last decade of your career and wanting to really give back and support people who are coming forward. That’s wonderful.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Candy Motzek, and I am a leadership coach as well as a business coach for high achievers. I'm also the host of the top podcast called 'She Coaches Coaches.' I'm excited to be part of this book because that word 'secrets'—it's really easy for people in leadership to pretend like they have it all together, but I really like that idea of sharing the behind-the-scenes. We all have self-doubt. We all experience imposter syndrome. We all have good days and bad days.

The piece that I wrote is about the wake-up call. It is so important for us to have collaboration and engagement and support of mentors and leaders who bring us forward, but I wanted to remind us to lead from within as well—to look inside at what's going on with me and making sure that my leadership was aligned with who I am.

Leading Through Challenge: What Did It Teach You?

Candy: I'd love to hear about a moment when you'd to lead through a challenge, and what did that teach you about yourself and your leadership capacity? Katherine, can we go to you first? ​

Katherine: Anytime I get this question, it gives me a sense of déjà vu of one of the toughest, personally and professionally difficult moments in my life. What they say—what doesn't kill you makes you stronger—it was life-changing for me.

I was a business change leader for the Coca-Cola company, leading a year-long SAP implementation project of 23 team members in eight Nordic and Baltic countries with the same go-live date. No one would ever do that today, but they did. I realized the critical importance of communicating never enough hours in the day, but I did it, and how important it is to motivate others because I could not possibly do the work myself.

As a leader, you have to let go. You have to trust your team, enable them, motivate them, and communicate with them because you cannot possibly do it yourself. This was before my two sons were born because I couldn't have managed it otherwise. That understanding of communication and motivation was life-changing for me. I realized I was more interested in people development rather than working with spreadsheets, which was finance and IT, which is my previous background. I switched to consulting and leadership, and here I am, 20 years later, doing what I love. But that was a breaking point. It could have gone either way. I became more people-oriented than task-oriented.

Candy: I love that leaning into the thing that draws you the most, and that's probably your strength as well. That's great. Jacquie, what about you?

Jacquie: When the company I had poured 17 years of my life into suddenly closed, it honestly felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I could still feel the emotions of it right now. I was grieving, disappointed, and heartbroken, but I still had people looking up to me for guidance. I wanted to honestly just crawl away and stay with my grief, but I knew I couldn't. That moment taught me that leadership isn't always about having all the answers. It's about showing up anyway with honesty, grace, and grit. I realized I was stronger than I thought I was, and leading through a storm doesn't require a cape, just courage and heart.

Laura: I'm thinking back to a community group that I used to lead, and how it really goes along with what I talk about now with narcissists and toxic people in general. I would have people who really looked up to me and I was able to lead, and then I had someone who, as soon as everybody left the room, would come and fight with me in certain ways where it wouldn't even seem believable when I would tell other people.

Looking back, what it taught me was I did not have the skills that I needed for such a person. I was very meek. Even though I was having to lead, I thought it was my fault that they were treating me that way. That's why I talk about this now—the way you can keep your integrity as you're dealing with difficult people because it isn't usually about you. It's usually about their toxicity.

Candy: Let's go on to the next question. What one change would you like to see made to help more women be leaders? Who wants to go first? Jacquie, I can see your smile.

One Change to Help More Women Be Leaders

Jacquie: I'd love to see aging women celebrated, not sidelined. There's a belief out there that leadership and women as a whole have an expiry date, and no. Women who are 40, 50, 60+ are packed with wisdom, creativity and fire, but they're often overlooked. Let's start shifting to spotlight them. You're not too late. In fact, you're right on time. We need to focus on reinvention, not retirement. Your life is not over. I'm really here to lift people up and remind them of who they are.

Laura: I second that motion. I'm 58, started this new career at 56. I would love to see women in leadership be just commonplace. When older women are celebrated and it's more commonplace that women are in leadership, I think it sends that message to young girls and teens who are looking and going, 'Oh, I can do that too,' because women hold that place in leadership. I just would love to see it be more commonplace and not something that's unusual.

Katherine: This is fascinating because when I initially had the question, “I don't have a lot to say about this”, and now I do. I have three comments. I think it's a tough question.

One of the things I've learned recently, I think it requires seeing more women be leaders. I'm thinking from a young like 25 to 45, I think we need systemic changes.

There are structural problems when it comes to allowing women to be at their best and be visible and be promoted. When do you have your meetings? Well, after drop-off at school and before pick-up at school. Are you flexible? Can you do your two hours of work at eight in the evening or five in the morning? I think there are some systemic changes especially in certain industries like tech, finance, like a startup.

I think there’s some work to be done there. I love that there's a Pay Transparency Act now in BC. There are intersectionality implications, a Caucasian female versus a Black female or a female with disabilities, the pay disparity or promotion disparity increases exponentially. That is a systemic problem, and it's also access to opportunity. I’m very passionate about that. Based on what Jacquie and Laura said, I’m all in on that.

One of the things now when I mentor or coach younger women is to say what is most important for you now in the phase of life you are and using myself as example, I had children very late in life. That crazy project I did for Coke with the countries was before kids. Then I had children. I was so grateful. I really focused on them.

My son just got his driver's license. He's going to university. My other son is at university in the US. My five years of caring for my aging mother, which took 20 hours a week, are over. I feel like I am in the brilliance of my third career. I don't know if you Jacquie and Laura feel the same. I'm like, “Oh, I have so many hours I can build my business now.” So that's where I would say the risk of a company overlooking people, and whether they're like, they had kids young or they had kids older, but the risk of overlooking people between 45 and 65 that's a bad move because we have the capacity to really put it all in if we want.

Candy: Katherine, I loved how you summed that up, too. I won't even say my opinion. It's all of the above and a little bit more.

Rapid Fire: Secret Weapon for Staying Calm Under Pressure

We're going to wrap it up with this rapid-fire question, and it's going to be like a bottom line, one quick sentence. What is your secret weapon for staying calm under pressure? Katherine, do you want to go first?

Katherine: Deep breathing, exhale out two counts longer than inhale. Five years ago, I would have said look calm even when you don't feel it inside because everyone's looking to you, but that creates internal stress.

Jacquie: It's always Mel Robbins' five-second rule for me, hands down. It's like 5-4-3-2-1, I take action before that fear takes over. It's my brain's cue to stop spiraling, stop thinking, and start leading, even when I'm sweating through it.

Laura: Just do it afraid. I think there are times in that 5-4-3-2-1—just do it afraid. Because there's never a time when none of us are doing it, like we're perfectly fine all the time. Just do it afraid. It's okay. That doesn't mean it was the wrong choice. Just do it.

Candy: I do this kind of lean back and take a breath and try to keep perspective. Most of those pressure situations are not that big of a deal in the real world.

Conclusion

I encourage you to make sure you've a few notes that you can apply to your life, and also pick up a copy of Dynamic Women Leadership Secrets. You can learn a great deal from this diverse group of women from various countries. We have Canada, the United States, Netherlands, UK, Australia, South Africa, the Philippines, and many more.

I encourage you to grab the book, buy it for a friend, or do it with your book club. Let us know what you think of it.

This blog post is adapted from the Dynamic Women podcast episode featuring the Dynamic Women® Leadership Secrets book launch party. To hear the full conversation and panel discussion, listen to the original podcast episode.