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I watched a beautiful movie on Netflix recently: Blue Jay from 2016.

I wept and laughed, completely taken in to the point where I didn’t check my phone once, which is highly unusual for me.

On the other side of the couch, sat my youngest daughter, who was watching intermittently (checking her phone often 🫠, but also gently checking in with me whenever I cried, allowing me to be my full emotional self). 🥹

After the movie was over, I let out a deep exhale and said: “whoo! That took a lot out of me!”

And then, this feeling immediately came over me and I restated “actually: that put a lot into me.”

My daughter responded: “I like that better, Mama.”

So do I.

I’m sure you’ve heard—or said— “that took a lot out of me!” before. It’s one of many seemingly harmless statements that categorizes our heavy emotions as too much, as feelings we want to get rid of and push away.

In our society, most of us are conditioned to think that deep or heavy feelings are taking something out of us, or from us. It makes sense, because a lot of us have received the message that big emotions are not something other people can handle.

So, expressing our emotions can make us feel ashamed, embarrassed, and exhausted. I’ve seen this especially at work, where we’re supposed to be perfectly emotionally regulated, push through hard things on our own, and perform as if we have it all figured out.

At most work places, we privilege logic over instinct, more data over relevant data, and avoid conflict to keep the peace.

If someone cries, we send them to HR.

Maybe there have been times when you felt a lump in your throat, began to turn bright red, or tensed up in an effort to withhold your emotions. Or maybe you started to tear up, and found yourself apologizing, or leaving the room, and coming back armored and focused, having “got it together.”

I’m not entirely sure how we got to a place where we’ve been told that expressing ourselves fully is bad, but here’s my guess: we are teaching people to perform, instead of teaching them to trust that what they feel is not only allowed, but valued. We’re not actually managing performance; we’re managing performing.

I spent years at some of my work places compartmentalizing my feelings in service of “delivering.” I pushed away my instincts, which I felt as emotions, in service of looking smart.

But, what if we shifted the way we work towards believing that deep feelings carry wisdom and insight? That they connect us to ourselves and to others? That our BIG emotions are signs that we are taking the world in, experiencing it to its fullest, and therefore able to solve its greatest challenges? That embracing our full humanity, and showing our full humanity, is actually the only way to change the world?

What this looks like at work (a cursory list, mind you):

• Using P.A.N. (pay attention now) as a norm to read the room during discussions, and encourage those who are extra quiet, checking in with those who are extra loud, following up later with those who were looking checked out. This is not only the facilitator’s job, by the way.

• Asking “what’s your instinct on this?” when making decisions.

• Letting people cry and not feeling like you have to do something to fix it.

• Ending meetings early without saying “I’m giving you your time back” (which signals that none of us really have any agency over ourselves)

• Incorporating a reflection of “how do I want people to feel?” when planning a meeting, and then asking them during it!

• Shifting ‘performance management’ processes to being as much about HOW we work together as they are about WHAT we accomplish.

If we do this:

❤️ I assert that we would see more patience and compassion for each other.

❤️ I believe we would shift from urgently fixing symptoms to actively shifting systems.

❤️ I attest that we would more fully use our thinking brain to better understand our feeling heart. Emotional Intelligence, anyone?

❤️ I know we would feel less alone, and we would have more collective energy to build towards the world we want to live in.

We would move from scarcity to abundance, hungry to full, and agitated to calm. We would feel our emotions filling us up with the capacity to envision something grand together.

I believe we would shift from how hard it all is to how lucky we are to get to do the work we do. We would feel free at work.

And then we would make this world the place it keeps wanting to be. 🌍

In Radical Hope,

Lynnae

If you’re looking for ways to feel more free at work, reach out. I offer free 1 hour coaching sessions to help you tap into your limiting beliefs to find freedom at work, and identify opportunities to shift HOW your team or organization works together.

If this landed for you, forward it to someone who needs to hear it today.

Some days feel especially rough, don’t they? I’ve felt big emotions lately for so many reasons, but the destruction of Big Bend to supposedly strengthen the border is one for the books. And it’s a farce: there were 3,096 apprehensions at the border in 2025, just 1.3% of all southern-border crossings. That statistic has decreased 74% from 2023.

Nicole Cardoza of Reimagined provided some great options to take a stand:

• If you live in Texas, you can share a public comment until August 31. Email your thoughts about the work to BigBendComments@cbp.dhs.gov with “Big Bend Vehicle Border Barrier System Construction” in the subject line, or call (833) 412-2056.

• Follow and support Big Bend No Wall, a community coalition rallying and mobilizing against the destruction of the national park.

• Sign the petition urging Congress to protect the biodiversity of Big Bend.

• Tell your local leaders to take action directly.

I’ve mentioned Big Thief here before. They are my favorite band of the past few years. The songwriting is riveting, the music folky-indy-rockin’, and I can’t find one song in their entire discography that I don’t like. A couple of weeks ago, I got to see them live with some of my favorite people and it was absolute heaven, even in the rain. They played 4 new songs, 2 of which they wrote the night before. A new triple album with a country vibe is coming, and I just can’t wait. I know it will put a lot into me.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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I’ve spent most of my life chasing the feeling of confidence.

It didn’t help that I was compelled to work in really high-performing social impact organizations that attracted some of the smartest, most driven people you can find. I was constantly trying to reach their standard, trying to prove to them (and myself) that I had something to offer.

Here’s the kicker that took me YEARS to figure out.

Most of them lacked confidence, too.

Let me say it again.

Yes, most of the people you think are smarter than you have their own internal monologue that has them second guessing themselves; they’ve just learned how to navigate the system. It’s called survival.

I see this same confidence gap with many of my brilliant clients. They find themselves shrinking in spaces where the voices are louder or more demanding.

They find themselves trying to morph into what they think other people want from them, sacrificing parts of themselves to please others, afraid of not being able to meet expectations, or worse, fearful of losing their job (which in these economic times is super-warranted!)

I hear them say things like “I don’t know why I’m acting this way,” or “I was really successful at my other job,” or “I can’t figure out how to work with <insert name of person in power>.”

And they are baffled by it.

Here’s what I see them doing: They over-function to prove they belong. They edit themselves mid-sentence in meetings, softening a strong opinion into a question. They say yes when they mean no. They over-analyze. They perform competence instead of practicing it. And they’re exhausted.

I did the same thing for years. I would hyper-perform, avoid hard conversations, or pretend that everything was ok. Head down. Work harder.

I usually thought the problem was me.

Here’s the thing: it usually was! But not because I wasn’t smart, strategic, empathetic, or good at my job.

It was because I let the system I was in define my value.

Read that again. Your lack of confidence is not because you lack talent. It’s because you handed your talents over to be graded by someone else in a system that was never intended to focus on making you feel good about yourself.

So, let me offer you some wisdom I wish I could have kept in the forefront of my mind, especially over the last 15 years when I was often killing! it! at my job:

First, get support. We are not meant to go it alone in anything. Humans, by nature, are communal. You will do your best work, and be seen as an incredible team player, when you ask for help, seek input from others, and act with genuine curiosity. Promise.

Second, say what you think with radical candor and an appropriate dose of humility. A mentor of mine used to say “what’s the worst that can happen?” And when I imagined the worst, it was usually things like: “I won’t be understood,” or “there will be conflict.” Neither of these things will break you; in fact, they are opportunities to lean into. So speak your mind in a way that is direct; don’t mince your words (but don’t be a jerk, either).

Third, be reminded of what is in your locus of control and sphere of influence. Let me shout this one from the rooftops! There are things you simply cannot control. So, get very clear on the things you can, and let the rest of that ‘ish’ go. This one is for those of you who have been told that you are part of a family at work 🙄, or “it’s all hands on deck,” or “we need to go above and beyond.” Your nervous system will thank you for recognizing what’s yours to carry and what is not.

Finally, along with practicing everything above, here’s a real reflection activity that can help you reframe and help you to be reminded of all of your talents:

When my clients are struggling with confidence, we do a little “confidence step-back.” I ask them to reflect on their proudest accomplishments and I coach them with a few probing questions.

As we dig in, I see the lights come on, the recognition of all the amazing things they’ve done. This is not a “what are the big outcomes you achieved” kind of discussion, but a nuanced reflection on who they are and how they show up at work. From there, we surface the strengths that enabled them to accomplish all of those things that they can draw on moving forward.

When you stop outsourcing your worth to a system built on hierarchy and individualism, something shifts. You speak up more, because you’re no longer auditioning. You feel calmer, because your nervous system finally gets the memo that it’s not under constant review. And you make an impact, real impact, because the energy you used to spend managing perception is now available for the work that actually matters, the work you came to do.

This isn’t about fixing yourself; you were never broken. It’s about refusing to let a system that wasn’t built for your thriving decide what you’re worth.

We are not meant to just survive this life; we’re not meant to shrink, give away our power, or try to solve the world’s problems on our own.

We’re meant to thrive, even in, and I would argue, especially in our workplaces, where we spend most of our waking hours, and most of our talents.

When we give into feelings of low confidence, we keep the very system we are trying to change intact.

So be reminded: you got to where you are because you have talents, insights, and skills. You deserve to shine, and the world will only be better if you do.

In Radical Hope, Lynnae

If you’re bewildered as to why you feel less confident, feel like it’s a high you’re always chasing, or you’re sitting in survival mode at work, I would love to connect. Reach me at lynnae@lynnaehilltalentadvising.com.

And if you know someone who could use this reframe, forward it their way.

While vacationing in Michigan, I got to take stock of the support that Abdul El-Sayed was getting. I didn’t see one yard sign for his Democratic Senate nominee rival, Haley Stevens, but saw plenty of signs for Abdul El-Sayed, even in the parts of Michigan that MAGA is dominant. And then against the PAC odds, he won the nomination! This is data-driven proof that we don’t have to compromise our values when we vote with them.

Whether you’re in Michigan or not, this is an important next step in the movement against corporate and other interest groups commandeering who represents the people. So, if you got it to give, please donate to his campaign. It will continue to be a battle in this tricky state. LFG!

I heard the news of Glen Hansard’s passing in a tragic motorcycle accident during my long drive up to Glen Arbor, where we frequently vacation. I immediately played the soundtrack to Once, and sobbed my way up route 31, nature’s beauty providing some comfort along the way.

Glen was a special musician. I saw him perform live three times, and each time I marveled not just at his talent, but at how much joy he exuded; he was simply generous with it.

He was the kind of artist I wish I had known personally, and the kind of human this planet needs more of. From what I can tell, a lot of us felt that way.

He was one year younger than I am when he died. His death and life remind me that we have just this one precious life. It’s a reminder I’m trying to hold onto.

Thank you, Glen, for all the gifts you gave so many.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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When I was younger and in more junior roles, I loathed, and frankly didn’t understand, the term ‘manage up.’

So, as I imagine most of us did, I defined it for myself:

“I need to tell my manager what I’m working on.”
“I need to ask them what they need from me.”
“I need to let them know when something isn’t going as planned.”

Yes, all of these are aspects of managing up. But, they fall very short of what managing up should actually look like. They’re not wrong, but they’re not enough.

When you behave as if you are waiting for others to tell you what to do, or act as if you need permission, or defer to someone more senior, you will perpetuate the archetype of acting as a doer, but you won’t be seen as a strategic leader.

Contrary to what we’ve been told, you are not below anyone else in the organization, and you should not be deferring to anyone else just because of where you sit in the org structure. You are an equal human— even to the CEO— and you need to start behaving that way.

You need to start acting like an owner.

What does this mean?

While everyone else is tactically reporting their to-do list to their manager, an employee who acts like an owner anticipates and solves problems the organization doesn’t even know they have yet. Someone who acts like an owner gets ahead of what a leader might need that they don’t even know they need.

An employee who acts as an owner surveys the conditions and uses their sphere of influence to improve the conditions.

I came to this concept from a client who is navigating this very thing.

My client was preparing their CEO for a presentation to a group of potential funders. In advance, they asked the CEO if he needed talking points, to which he said “no.”

When he arrived at the event he said to my client “where are the talking points?”

So, on cue, my client quickly scrambled together some talking points, sent them his way, and watched helplessly as he didn’t use most of them.

The next day he called my client and said: “I need you to manage up.”

After my client conveyed the warranted frustration of this situation in our coaching session, I asked “what do you think [name] actually meant by that?”

And without missing a beat, my client said: “I think [name] wants me to act like an owner of the organization.”

EXACTLY.

Listen, I understand that it was frustrating that their CEO blatantly said “no, I don’t need talking points” one day and asked for them the next. I’m not suggesting that was excellent leadership.

What I am offering is that my client shouldn’t have even asked the question to begin with.

Is this an easy behavior to change? Absolutely not. It means putting yourself out there, taking risks, and positioning yourself in a new light. Over and over. On repeat.

Because with practice, it will become easier, and you will ultimately shift your own thinking about your role in the organization.

When you speak up, you won’t have to justify your recommendations. You’ll be the one others will listen to and come to for advice. You’ll be seen as a trusted partner.

And then, you’ll be the first in line for a promotion because you’ll be respected as someone who has already made the organization stronger not just as a tactician, but as a strategic advisor who thinks about— and acts on— what’s best for the organization.

When you act like an owner, you stop asking for permission to lead. You start being the leader you already are.

Remember, you have more power than you think.

So act like an owner!

If you’re navigating this shift in your own role, or trying to help someone on your team make it, I’d love to talk it through with you. Reach me at lynnae@lynnaehilltalentadvising.com.

And if you know someone who could use this reframe, forward it their way.

In Radical Hope,
Lynnae

Spain donated $176 million to Palestine and Gaza to support refugees, and Lamine Yamal specifically, has advocated for a Free Palestine.

I’m not saying this is why they won the World Cup. I am, however, saying that standing up for human rights and against genocide is no longer something to fear.

So if you haven’t already, maybe it’s time to act like an owner of our world, and take a stand for a Free Palestine.

So this recommendation may come as an out of left field based on what I usually share. But, my friend Sue has been exposing me to other genres for a while now, and I’ve been opening my ears to music I typically don’t. I saw a post about 5 funk bands that are underrated and started listening to Nubiyan Twist, a London based group of musicians who have been around for decades. It’s jazz, hip-hop, afro-beat, reggae magic. I can only imagine what it would be like to see them live. Check out anything in their discography; it’s all stellar.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

Subscribe now

When I started my independent consulting practice three years ago, I logically knew that my experiences leading people and culture work were going to be relevant and transferable to other social impact organizations. I also knew my passion would resonate with other people who craved less drama and more connection in their workplaces.

What I didn’t realize was that the way I did things in my prior roles was usually overly complicated. Ambitious to a fault. And my need for personal validation would sometimes get in the way of what I was actually trying to make happen.

In my first year of my practice, a few months into a client engagement, I spent hours building a lengthy deck full of fancy lingo. The CEO looked at it and said, “We don’t talk like this. We don’t need all this.”

Yikes.

I was not anticipating that.

Initially, if I’m being honest, I tried to convince them they did. You see, I spent decades (literally) learning (and believing) that if I had the right language, a really long deck, and lots and lots of priorities, I was doing it right.

And, I was usually validated for doing it that way, so the pattern continued…

Because of how I (and I bet you, Dear Reader) have been taught that complex means smarter, better, bigger, we’ve overly leaned into it, and our egos have been stimulated into sustaining that way of thinking.

This past year, a client came to me bereft over how they could get other team members on board with their approach to performance management. They had lots of ideas on how to approach the work, having done tons of research, and with years of experience on what would work best. They knew where to start, what all the next set of priorities and actions would be, and what could be true three years from now. And they wanted to share all of it with everyone as soon as possible.

It felt very familiar. And triggering! So I found myself responding with questions like: “What are the top three things everyone needs to know? What is the one thing you want to make sure they walk away with? What is the big sentiment you think will inspire them and make them feel heard?”

In doing so, I realized this was an exercise we both needed. Because it’s actually harder to make things simple. It requires editing, deep listening, and a willingness to let go of perfection.

It’s something we need to unlearn. And, like most bad habits, we can’t unlearn them alone.

Seeing the same patterns with many of my clients has gifted me the ability to see my own habits of making the simple overly complex. (And shout-out to my former client who initially held up the mirror!)

Contrary to what we’ve been taught: you don’t need to know all the things, build a thirty page deck, outline twenty goals and be able to reference all the experts in your subject area to provide value.

What most of us crave in our day-to-day workplaces is less, not more.

What you really need, instead, are three simple things:

1. To be able to listen intentionally to what your stakeholders need

2. To distinguish the major lever of opportunity from the many, many supporting levers

3. And, to be able to communicate how to move forward with words that resonate to your stakeholders while honoring who you are

I imagine this sounds more simple than you think it actually is, but give it a try the next time you’re asked to lead a new project, communicate a path forward, or meet with a teammate. Notice how you feel, and notice how they react.

And remember, you are just as worthy, just as talented, and just as relevant whether you’re producing complex material or making it simple.

And so am I. ;)

In Radical Hope,

Lynnae

Another reminder: you don't have to figure this out alone. If you're ready to unlearn the habit of overdialing, I coach leaders through exactly this. Reach out, I'd love to hear what you're working through.

Did you see this?!?! Love it with my whole heart.

I had the best time at the most beautifully curated music festival, Solid Sound in North Adams, Massachusetts. One of the many highlights was seeing this guy play with Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band. He was completely himself and completely a part of the band all at the same time. Enjoy!

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

Subscribe now

My client came to me exasperated.

Confidently and decisively, their CEO had just announced it in a leadership meeting: “We need manager training.” And just like that, it landed on their desk. Design it. Coordinate it. Get it done.

They knew this was not the full answer to their culture problems, but felt stuck by the command.

Just like you can’t build a room without a blueprint for a house, you can’t build a strong and thriving culture with one off initiatives that are disconnected from your overall talent philosophy or belief system.

My client wasn’t only being asked to build a series of trainings; they were being asked to build a room in a house where there was not only not a blueprint, but the foundation was cracked.

This type of thing is not a one-off; it’s an old-school approach to “people problems,” and I see it often.

And it’s not only a huge waste of resources, energy, and time; it perpetuates the status quo— or worse, it just kicks the can down the road to bigger problems.

Here’s what the cycle looks like.

Someone decides it’s important to do staff pulse surveys. So you send out the survey, the data comes back, and staff never hear the results, there’s no plan of action by team or department, and by the time the next survey is scheduled to come out, no one has context on what was done with the previous results or why we’re having another survey.

Or the leadership team saw the survey results and decided “we need manager training.” Someone responsible for talent work builds something or finds an online training. But attendance isn’t required, there’s no shared definition of what great management looks like, there’s no accountability to use the lessons moving forward, and managers aren’t evaluated on how they are coaching and managing.

Or a thoughtful leader hears consistent feedback that staff needs better technology. They invest their budget in a new human capital management system. But it isn’t user-friendly, isn’t being used to its potential, and becomes another platform for staff to feel frustrated about.

I could go on and on… people initiatives that feel random to employees, lack accountability structures, and become piecemeal efforts to appease instead of working towards meaningful culture change.

Let me say it loud and clear. You need a people strategy in the same way you need a programmatic or funding strategy. Your people initiatives should be part of an overall values-aligned talent system.

Your talent plan should include robust, rigorous, data-informed talent goals, and a roadmap of initiatives you will take to reach those goals. This looks like starting with a Talent Philosophy: a grounded articulation of what your organization wants to be true and how you support each other, identifying the competencies (behaviors, skills, and mindsets) expected at your organization, and then determining which components of your talent systems need to be built first, then next, then last.

It includes goals (not just reporting!) around hiring, retention/attrition, engagement, career development based on your current state, what you value, and who you want to be as an organization.

With that strategic talent plan in hand, you consistently communicate and engage with your staff so they know where you’re collectively going, what’s expected of them and you, and how the organization is progressing, what you’re learning, and what might need to shift.

With that type of foundation in place, the manager training your CEO asked for might absolutely belong in the plan. But now it makes sense and it has a home.

This takes you out of the cycle of unpredictability for yourself and for your teammates, and creates clarity on what you’re collectively driving toward. And one of the number one things people need at work is clarity.

I named this Substack “The Real Work” with the tagline: ‘the people work is the real work’ because HOW we get our work done is the foundation for everything else. So, let’s treat it that way.

If you find yourself constantly on the defensive, or reacting to someone else’s idea for what to do next to solve your people problems, reach out. I love this stuff and can’t wait to help you build a stand-up talent system and roadmap that makes it clear what you value and how you’ll collectively get there.

In Radical Hope,

Lynnae

Sometimes taking a stand can be something that makes your heart swell with its mix of boldness and pettiness (in the best way). In my home city of Chicago, there is a petition to rename a portion of Wabash Ave. “Barack Hussein Obama Ave.” That portion happens to be where Trump Tower is. It makes me downright giddy that this petition exists and that it could actually happen. Love the innovative approaches to getting under the President’s skin; it keeps me going some days.

This weekend I’m headed to Massachusetts for Wilco’s Solid Sound Music Festival. In preparation, I’ve been listening to many of the artists— most of whom I’m not familiar with, and I came across Elizabeth Moen. This is the soulful country that should be making the top 40. Sweet, soothing, yearning, and rocking. Check her out!

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

Subscribe now

I heard this recently from a client who is brilliant, systems-obsessed, and deeply committed to their work. And I recognized it immediately, because I have felt it and said it too.

Maybe you’ve felt this way while staring at a document you have rewritten so many times it no longer sounds like you. Maybe you have felt it after another round of feedback that sent you back to the beginning. Maybe you have even spoken it quietly, to yourself, wondering if you are simply not reading the room correctly.

That sentence felt internally or spoken out loud can feel like an expression of incompetence. I swear, it’s not. It’s a sign of exasperation and confusion because you are feeling boxed in.

When you don’t know what someone wants from you and you’re a little afraid of being seen as incompetent, the instinct is to accommodate. You adjust your language. You cut the context someone said was too much. You reshape your thinking to fit someone else’s frame. You rewrite the document again. And again. And somewhere in all of that revising, the thing you were trying to say and actually know gets buried or even lost completely.

You shift the problem to the product— in this case, the document. You think if you can just get it right, if you can just figure out what they are looking for, everything will click. So you keep editing. Keep shrinking. Keep waiting for a signal that you finally got it right.

And you begin to second guess yourself entirely. (Just writing that I’m feeling triggered myself!)

But getting it right for them is the wrong goal.

And I bet instinctively, you know that.

The moment I interrupted my client when they said “I don’t know what they want from me,” and said “I don’t think that’s actually true,” something shifted. And I think it’s because I interrupted the exasperation and excuse-making. We stopped talking about the document entirely and I asked two interconnected questions:

What do you need them to do? So, then, what does that mean they need to know in order to do it?

Those questions did what the edits couldn’t. They returned my client to their own expertise. To their knowledge of the organization, the people in that room, the problem this work was built to solve. And you get back to your beliefs, and your wisdom. Then the people in the room can start seeing the expert and the possibility.

Your expertise did not disappear because someone asked you to edit. Your insight did not vanish because it did not fit neatly into someone else’s framework for communicating. Your voice is still there, underneath all the accommodating, waiting to be trusted again.

The shift from getting it right to knowing what matters and communicating in a way that inspires investment takes practice. It takes someone willing to hold up a mirror when the noise gets loud to remind you that you have more influence than you think.

You already have the answer. You have had it the whole time. Stop finessing documents and start trusting yourself.

If this landed for you, I would love to hear what it stirred. And if you are in a season of rewriting yourself into someone else’s version of right, come find me. That is exactly what I am here for.

In Radical Hope,

Lynnae

Did you all see the Tony Awards? What a moving reminder of the power of art and artists and storytelling to not only ground us of our shared humanity, but delight us in it.

💃Ragtime holding up a mirror that this country is built on immigrants— and also slavery and white supremacy. Jellicle Cats celebrating the talent and beauty and power of the trans community and the vitality of a chosen family.

But what moved me the most was Lost Boys’ Ali Louis Bourzghui’s acceptance speech.

What if we all felt supported and safe enough among our “work” community to speak so courageously?

His speech reminded me it’s absolutely possible. Check it out.

This last weekend we had a Celebration of Life for my kids’ grandmother, Geraldine Mead. It was such a beautiful testament to what a loving human she was and how she was able to demonstrate that to whoever was in her presence. My youngest, Luka, and Andy, Gerri’s son, performed “Go Lassie Go” as part of the ceremony. Thought you might enjoy (I certainly did).

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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I see it all the time. A leader who is sharp, experienced, deeply committed to their work, and completely derailed by their CEO.

Something in this dynamic has gotten under their skin, and now they’re spending more energy managing their own reaction than actually leading. And it’s fatiguing.

They’re bending over backwards to prove themselves. They’re letting things go that shouldn’t be let go. They’re working around instead of working with. And somewhere in the process, they’ve found themselves wondering: how did I get here?

These are not leaders who don’t know their own power. They’re leaders caught off guard by a dynamic they can’t quite solve, which is disorienting precisely because they’re self-aware enough to know better.

I’ve been there.

One of the hardest professional moments of my life was with a manager I desperately wanted to impress. I kept telling myself I had it together. I smiled through meetings. I delivered. I acted like everything was ok because anything else felt like failure.

What I didn’t realize was that my manager had no idea what was happening inside me. As far as he was concerned, things were going reasonably well. There was no signal I was struggling, because I was working so hard to hide it.

Until I wasn’t.

I went from zero to completely overwhelmed in a single conversation, as far as he could see. Tears I hadn’t planned on, in a moment I hadn’t prepared for. I had done this once before with a manager, and told myself I wouldn’t let it happen again—and yet, somehow I was here again.

What I wish I had known then is what I try to offer my clients now: the work isn’t about pleasing your CEO. It’s about what gets activated in you when power and hierarchy enter the room. And there are things you can do about it, before you reach your limit.

A few places to start:

Get curious about your triggers (we all have them). Naming what specifically sets you off gives you something to work with instead of just a feeling to survive.

Try not feeding into the urgency that is so prevalent in social impact organizations. Many CEOs operate at a pace designed to keep people reactive, whether they know it or not. You don’t have to match it. A pause, a “let me think about that,” or a “can we schedule time to go deeper on this” can interrupt the pattern without escalating it.

Root into your shared organizational values before hard conversations. When you can anchor a difficult conversation in what you’ve both agreed to stand for together, you’re no longer defending yourself. You’re reminding both of you what the work is actually about. That shifts the dynamic from personal to principled.

Use stronger inquiry. Instead of defending your position or going quiet, ask questions that slow the conversation down. “Help me understand what’s driving the urgency on this.” “What would success look like to you?” Questions shift the power dynamic without requiring a confrontation.

Build the relationship as an ongoing practice, not just damage control. The leaders who ultimately influence their CEOs aren’t the ones who fight best in the meeting. They’re the ones who have done the relationship work in between. If you can find ways to embed that into the rhythms of your organization, a regular check-in, a shared project, a standing agenda item that creates space for honest conversation, the hard moments become less hard because the relationship is already strong enough to hold them.

Here’s what I want you to hear: hierarchy and power differentials are real. They can derail brilliant people. But being derailed is not your destiny. It is a signal. And confidence, the sustainable kind, is built through small acts of bravery taken before you reach your limit.

You don’t have to wait until you’re in tears to try something different.

If you’re ready to stop working around your CEO and start building the kind of relationship that can hold the hard moments, I’d love to think through what that looks like with you. Find me at lynnae@lynnaehilltalentadvising.com.

In radical hope,

Lynnae

On Memorial Day I learned for the very first time how this holiday came to be. It started as an act of remembrance organized by formerly enslaved Black people in honor of Union soldiers who were buried in mass graves during the Civil War. Black folks from Charleston, South Carolina came together, recovered their bodies and gave these souls a proper burial. It is another example of erasure of the truth of this country. Stay curious, question what you’ve been told, and share the truth when you find it.

You know how a record can sometimes just draw you in immediately? That’s how I feel about Kevin Morby’s newest album, Little Wide Open. It feels like an ode to the Midwest (where I’m from) by way of Texas. His imagery takes me back to the wide open skies of my childhood, and makes me feel love towards this section of the planet in a way that I didn’t know I needed. And the album cover of sunflowers reminds me of my dear friend and mentor, Greg, who always made me feel seen.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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Last week I told you that the anti-DEI movement is backfiring— and I got a number of “I love this” notes in response. I also noticed that some of my favorite thought leaders in this space shared very similarly aligned thoughts the same week. Check out Shawn Ginwright and Lily Zheng.

It was validating, and deeply, deeply inspiring.

AND ALSO.

I know there are some of you who are experiencing the opposite feeling. We see examples of companies like Deloitte cutting benefits that supported marginalized employees, fearful board members requesting that DEI statements be removed from websites (or hidden five clicks away), and we continue to see people in power upending years, sometimes decades, of work out of fear their organization will be targeted.

And you, as a leader, may be wrestling with a deep fear that you will lose funders, get sued by a potential or current employee for your stance, or on the opposite side, get stuck in a never ending loop of trying to justify to your teammates why you’re not using the phrase DEI anymore.

So you’re retreating from the conversation, revising your strategic plans, editing your website, and feeling really shitty about all of it. But your hands are tied.

I want to offer you a reframe that has helped me as I think about what is needed right now.

And here’s the harder truth: we were already off the path before they came for the term.

“DEI” is just a term for what social justice work over the course of generations was already doing. As I’ve said before, we don’t need to use a term that was, frankly, co-opted by both the private and social impact sectors. And a lot of us, myself included, got lost along the way.

Some of us got so caught up in getting it exactly right that we forgot to build, reacting to every new interpretation, trying to satisfy everyone’s version of what DEI should mean, until the analysis became its own kind of stalling.

Others threw equity into a values statement and called it done. Either way, we drifted from something that is, at its core, more straightforward than we made it: every person deserves to be treated fairly, to feel safe and supported, to bring their full self to work.

The values underneath DEI didn’t start with the term. They came way before it. And they will outlast it.

What we’ve been doing over the last 6-10 years to elevate DEI has been, in many cases, piecemeal at best and hyper-performative at worst. And in most cases, it’s been built with a lens for what we’re against, instead of what we want to be true.

This has put those of us who believe in equity and fairness in a defensive, rather than proactive, position. We’ve been fixing broken systems and patching holes instead of creating the world we want.

I see this moment as an invitation. Not to retreat, but to reorient toward a vision of what we actually want to create, not just what we’re fighting against.

Here’s what I mean:

I’ve seen leaders agonize over whether they want to claim they are anti-racist, and in some cases actually say they are, having no idea what that means in implementation. And I’m here to tell you I’ve never seen or heard of an organization that is fully anti-racist. If you have, please correct me.

Should we be on a path to being anti-racist? Of course. But what if we dreamed big and had discussions focused on what we are for rather than what we’re against? And what if we built it policy by policy, system by system, relationship by relationship?

For example, what if an organization said: we are for every single employee feeling safe and supported. That means we won’t just learn about microaggressions. We’ll build a community grounded in lovingly accountable relationships. We’ll reckon honestly with the fact that intention and impact look different depending on where you’re standing. And we’ll create conditions where people can work things through with each other first, not just know that HR is there if things go sideways.

Or, instead of battling over whether a policy is equal or equitable, we can ask ourselves what a fair approach actually looks like. That means acknowledging that in a hierarchy, which is the way most organizations are structured, we can consider ways to shift power differentials. This could mean gathering feedback from employees at every level on a policy shift, distributing health benefit matching percentages so those who earn the most pay more than those who make the least, or using employee engagement data to determine how we are resourcing support for teams that may be struggling, instead of doing the same thing for everyone.

My point is, instead of battling over words and definitions that keep us mired in hyper-reactivity, we can envision and build organizations that reflect our mission and vision, and the impact we say we want to have.

They can take the term. They cannot take the foundation.

Now is not the time to hide. Now is the time to dream more boldly about what we want, and then put the resources into making it happen.

If your organization is ready to stop patching holes and start building something worth believing in, I’d love to think through what that looks like together. Find me at lynnae@lynnaehilltalentadvising.com.

Now that’s radical hope,

Lynnae

Now is also the time to take a real stand for voter rights state by state. The Legal Defense Fund has a great website that leads you to information on the efforts happening in each state to codify anti-discrimination voting rights. You can sign up by state to learn more about what’s happening in your state, and identify ways to support. Yep, the time is now.

Ann Annie was the opener for the performance I talked about last time. And, they kinda blew my mind. They are self-taught, and draw from classical and jazz to create an ethereal, eclectic sound unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s mostly instrumental, so I’ve been playing it on repeat while I write and work, and as my playlist while my yoga students set up for class. Highly recommended.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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In December, 2024, I wrote a piece titled “Call it What You Want, DEI Isn’t Going Anywhere.”

I probably don’t need to remind you, but this was right after the current POTUS was elected. I needed to write that piece for a number of reasons: 1) there was relevant data to counter the narrative that the concept of DEI would end, 2) I was fearful of what was to come (and clearly, those fears were not unfounded,) and 3) I wanted to share some kernels of hope that could keep us steady on our collective path to justice.

To be honest, I was feeling a little desperate at the time, and writing that piece helped calm me.

But now, I feel significantly different.

Not only is the concept of DEI not going anywhere, the path to DEI is finally headed in the right direction.

The current administration can admonish DEI, police companies that host ERGs, scrutinize diverse hiring practices, or pressure employees around pronoun use. What they don’t get, and frankly neither do a lot of organizations, is that these are activities, not the aspiration. In the best case these initiatives diversify teams and raise awareness; but, as I’ve seen, in the worst case they’re virtue signaling.

By targeting orgs who use the phrase DEI, the anti-DEI movement is inadvertently forcing something more powerful: organizations are being pushed to embed the values of DEI within their systems rather than display them on the surface.

The true aspiration of DEI is for all people to be treated fairly and humanely, to be able to see themselves in each other, and to know that the aim isn’t sameness, but it is freedom to become fully ourselves, in alignment with the planet Earth. It is this radical and wild idea of loving thy neighbor, and caring for all living creatures.

Because that aspiration was never about the label, many organizations have been forced to go underground and reckon with how to make the values of DEI persist without using the term “DEI,” which wasn’t the point anyway. The savvy, deeply committed ones are actually taking DEI the direction that the performative organizations never understood to begin with, or never really knew what they were getting into when they wrote their fancy DEI statements.

I’m not here to thank this administration; I would never choose to have all the harm and suffering they are causing. And yet, this moment has forced a reckoning; it has inspired an uprising of community support all over this country, and as we’re now seeing, the world.

What’s even more inspiring is what is happening locally. Last week, I listened to a short piece on NPR that described how Minneapolis, Minnesota, where ICE caused catastrophic mayhem, has actually grown in its social capital (which is defined as building trust and community that can not only unite people, but cause economic growth, as well). The people of Minneapolis came together and rose up against tyranny, and they are benefiting from doing so.

And this can happen, too, in our workplaces.

A few months ago, I worked with a client to significantly revise their competency model. They wanted equity to be an expectation with real accountability. Our first pass included a competency called “centers equity.” After some focus groups to pressure test it, it became clear that isolating that competency would be more disruptive than supportive. So instead, I recommended that we disperse the principles of equity throughout the model so that it is not a special outlier, but embedded in their every way of working, as it should be.

It was a systems change that will require deeper dialogue and accountability, and I believe it will set this institution apart as a leader who makes systemic impact.

If you need another kind of argument or some additional data, check out “The 250-year Theory: John Glubb’s Fate of Empires.” Given that the U.S. was founded in 1776, a lot of people have been doing that math lately.

And if you’re moved by astrology, as I often am, take note that Uranus moved into Gemini on April 25th, and as Chani Nichols notes: “Uranus tends to spark historic flashpoints in our ever-evolving world. If something’s gotta give, Uranus is happy to offer the necessary push…When Uranus abruptly departs from tradition and disrupts the status quo, it’s ultimately bringing us closer to personal autonomy and collective liberation.”

If you have been retreating from DEI, or feeling fearful of a backlash, this is the time to do the opposite. Don’t even call it DEI. Center yourself and your teammates on what you’re really after, and work with me, or someone you trust, to get there.

The roots of trees speak to each other and protect each other beneath the earth. That’s where the magic happens. I think we humans are finally getting to our roots.

In radical hope,

Lynnae

If you’re a consultant and want a great pro bono opportunity to work on saving democracy, please check out The Pour Project. It’s a new endeavor that is providing pro bono executive coaching, staff trainings, and high-impact project volunteer capacity to democratic campaign staffers and progressive organizers. I signed up and can’t wait to help!

My friend, Sue, and I went to see a really incredible pair of singer songwriters, Hayley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover at Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago last week. Their album, “What of Our Nature” is a Woody Guthrie tribute with a modern day folk-protest edge. Fittingly, they remind me of a modern day Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. The opening track, “Song for Alicia,” tells the story of the unjust treatment of Alicia Rodríguez, a Puerto Rican activist in Chicago and a member of the FALN, who was imprisoned for 15 years beginning it 1981. Somehow this album has managed to create hopefulness amidst our ongoing struggle for liberation.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, Mark, Brianne, and Liz for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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I promised you a framework.

Before I get there, I want to name something— because the framework only works if you understand why we skip this step in the first place.

Consider this me practicing what I preach.

Most organizations are working against themselves in three specific ways:

They’re deliverable-centered, not outcomes-centered. Employees want to meet expectations. Managers want to demonstrate progress to their own managers. So everyone just keeps delivering, executing, building widgets, providing updates. Rinse. Repeat. We’ve built entire cultures that value what is produced over what actually changes.

They’re fear-based, not relationship-based. When people complain, most leaders want to make it stop. Fast. This leads to urgent, reactive fixes that quiet the noise without addressing the real problem. Been there. Done that. SMH. The conflict feels too costly, so we sidestep it. And the real problem stays.

They’re mired in the status quo. “I don’t know how to do this, I’m afraid to admit it, so I’ll just keep going.” That mindset doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s usually enabled by a manager in the same boat, in an organization that has never held anyone accountable for actually developing their people. My take: this is what misguided, deliverable-focused performance management produces. People who execute but can’t problem-solve.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the framework that has worked for me and many of my clients. It works for simple problems and complex ones.

1. Gather Data. External and internal. Qualitative and quantitative. Resist privileging one over the other. And please, resist the data rabbit hole.

2. Clarify Trends. Bring diverse perspectives to what the data shows. Name the top trends, the ones that matter most to your mission. Just the top.

3. Create Alignment. Define the problem together. Ground it in your org’s values and context. Present it to your leaders and key stakeholders. Then repeat it, restate it, and remind everyone of it constantly as you move toward solutions.

That’s it. Not sexy. Not fast. But it works because you actually know what you’re solving for.

Try it the next time you’re out of alignment with your teammates. And reach out if you could use a thought partner.

In radical hope,

Lynnae

Sometimes we don’t know what to do. So we do something small.

My yoga teacher friend Brianne knitted me a scarf and made me a giant jar of ginger shots. Another yoga friend, Kirsten, gave me a summer scarf for my trip to Indonesia. My client and friend Arij sent me two books on the Muslim faith after I told her how compelled I was by the teachings she’d shared with me. And this week, my neighbor David showed up at my door with a warm loaf of homemade sourdough bread.

None of these things solved anything. And all of them meant everything.

This is what community actually looks like. It doesn’t have to be grand gestures. Just showing up with something warm and thoughtful that says: I see you.

This is the stuff that gives us the energy to be courageous. So if you’re exasperated with what to do right now, in a world that feels heavy and hard, do something small for someone. It will matter more than you know.

Someone suggested I listen to Cut Worms (stage name for singer-songwriter Max Clarke) and once I did, I knew why before I knew why. It felt familiar, and then I learned that his most recent album, Transmitter, was produced by Jeff Tweedy, and features Jeff and Glenn Kotche, both of my favorite band of all time, Wilco.

There’s definitely a resonance of old school Wilco, but I also hear some Elliot Smith influence, but with a lot more hope. Check out “Walk in an Absent Mind,” and I bet you’ll hear it, too. The whole thing is perfect warm weather, welcome spring kind of pop record. Enjoy!

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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I spent most of my career busting my ass trying to make people happy.

We’ll get to the problem with THAT in some future posts, but a headline teaser is that the lure of getting recognition for my hard work, feeling validated for what I was producing, along with the fear of looking like I wasn’t doing “enough,” often kept me in a manic-type of hyper-production.

And in some of my roles, with some of my managers, “production” was all that mattered. What I produced maybe even landed me some promotions.

But when I became the leader of an HR function in a scaling, high stakes, equity-centered organization, production became something altogether different, ambitious, and really tough to achieve. The goals became about building a strong culture where everyone— of all backgrounds— could thrive.

I often spun my wheels, and did everything from coming up with solutions on my own, to throwing spaghetti at the wall with too many solutions, or letting other people dictate what should be done.

I have a core memory of sitting in a leadership team meeting, agenda in hand, mapping out to everyone how we were going to evolve our performance management system— and watching a profound look of confusion (frustration, even) wash across the room. As people began to ask questions, one person said “we need a new competency model.” Another said “this is already too complex, why are you changing it?” And a kind soul leaned in across the table, just smiling, cheering me on despite it all.

But people were irritated. And I walked out of that meeting feeling like I’d failed— and I couldn’t quite name why.

Everyone had a different opinion on the problem, and therefore a different say in what they thought would work. No one seemed satisfied, including me. I felt out of my element, and honestly, incompetent.

Here’s what that costs you: unnecessary conflict, distracted teams, and ultimately, an urgent pace that makes impact feel impossible.

Misalignment on the problem will always create misalignment on the solution. Every time.

My manager at the time introduced me to a quote Albert Einstein is reported to have said: “If I had an hour, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes on getting to the solution.”

It changed everything about how I lead, consult, and coach. If we’ve worked together in the past ten years, you’ve probably heard me repeat it.

So I offer this to you if you’re feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or daunted. Or if your teammates are bitter and fatigued. Or if your engagement scores are not great. Can you tell it was hard?!

Before you map the solution, make sure you and your key stakeholders can agree on what you’re actually trying to solve, not the objective (that’s different)— the problem. That’s the step I skipped.

Don’t skip it.

I spent years generating solutions nobody asked for. Turns out the work was never the problem. The problem was the problem.

And this advice is a hill I will die on.

In radical hope,

Lynnae

P.S. In my next post, I’ll offer you a framework that’s worked for me when solving big, high-stakes problems. More to come!

Do you have landscapers or other workers at your home who could be racially profiled and targeted by ICE?

A neighbor shared an idea I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: let them know they’re welcome to come inside your home if ICE shows up. If you work from home, you can keep a door unlocked while they’re there. If you’re not home, leave word about where to find a key.

This is one layer of protection— alongside making sure they have accurate information about their rights.

This is what using your home— and your privilege— looks like. This moment calls for courage. Use it.

I judge most music by how my body reacts. Do I get goosebumps? Do I want to sing along? Do I sense yearning? A true hallmark is if it makes me want to sign along and/or makes my shoulders shimmy (if you’ve seen this classic move of mine, you know).

Some people in my life are not fans of the new Harry Styles’ album, Kiss All the Time, Disco Occassionally (I will reveal no names but one of them is one of my two daughters, and it’s not the youngest one… ;)) My favorite song is “Dance No More”… if it doesn’t make your shoulders shimmy, I’d be shocked! Also, it includes the best lines that don’t seem to relate to the song at all, but I don’t care.

“Respect! Respect you mother!”

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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Social impact leaders who perpetually use the phrase “people first” when referring to their employees are gaslighting you.

Do I believe this is intentional? No.

Do I believe they wish they were actually “people first?” In many cases, yes.

Here’s the reality. Every single social impact organization is beholden to at least two other groups that often actually come first: their funders and the people at the center of their mission.

Here’s why:

1. The expenses to cover people costs hover around 80-90%+ of any organization’s budget. Who covers those costs? Funders who usually have interests and expectations that need to be met. Even unrestricted funds usually come with some expectations (shout out to Mackenzie Scott who seems to be an outlier!). How funding is used matters.

2. Funders are expecting impact—the fulfillment of the organization’s promise to work relentlessly to reach its vision and mission.

3. Therefore, if anyone should come first, it is the people an organization is serving.

I know, I know. But, if we put our employees first, then won’t we be able to achieve a greater impact?

Ideally, yes.

But, words matter and they signal your real intentions.

The very notion of putting anyone first is in and of itself a false narrative that perpetuates the idea there should be a “first.” This sentiment, while I believe is meant to signal care and investment in employees, instead sets up a dynamic of resource choice. For example, if we are “people first,” why isn’t everyone paid at the top of the market? If we are “people first,” why would we ever downsize? If we are “people first,” why do we rate people on their performance?

I could go on—and frankly, so could the employees in these organizations.

So, let’s be real with employees. I think we should—and can—instead say and become “people forward.”

This means:

1. First, deeply consider the experience of current and potential employees when making resource decisions. Use objective engagement data and leverage external workforce data and current best practices. Consider what’s happening in the world and be upfront about how that might impact your employees and your resources.

2. Then, transparently name priorities and tradeoffs. This may mean pulling the curtain back to clarify your funding requirements. This may mean stating clearly that you will compensate in the middle of the market because that’s what’s going to keep everyone with a job for the long term. This may mean saying explicitly that when given resource constraints, some people investments may need to be limited or delayed.

3. For a bigger move, reground in your core values and consider what they may be intentionally or unintentionally conveying. Don’t lean on self-interpretation. What do your core values mean in practical reality? Even better, bring a group of employees together to share how they are interpreted, and use that as an opportunity to clarify and align.

Equity does not come from a wishful turn of phrase. It comes from being real about what you truly believe, naming the challenges you’re up against, and clarifying the thought processes that land your decisions.

The next time you’re tempted to say “people first,” ask yourself: first before what, exactly? Say what you actually mean. “People forward” isn’t a consolation prize—it’s a more ambitious commitment, because honesty is harder than a slogan. Your people deserve that.

With love,

Lynnae

The day after the Illinois primaries, and I’m sitting with a mix of emotions.

Relieved that Raja did not get elected even though AIPAC spent millions. Disappointed that LaShawn Ford—who largely rode the coattails of his predecessor—won in the 7th district while there was such a rich pool of contenders. Inspired by the early voting turnout, though disheartened that numbers dropped off on Election Day itself.

It’s all a reminder that big change is a marathon, not a sprint. We have to show up daily, always keeping sight of what’s possible.

If you’re feeling the same weight today, know that you’re not alone—we’re in this together. Stay strong, vigilant, and strategic. Keep moving. Our kids deserve it.

I'm obsessed with Buck Meek's new record, The Mirror. Backing vocals feature Adrienne Lenker, his bandmate from Big Thief, one of my favorite bands from the past ten years. The lyrics have a deep simplicity to them—an emotional familiarity that feels universal, and that's exactly what makes the album so affecting. But the instrumentation is lush and rich, and each song builds on the last to trace something like a life story. I just love it. I'm sure it'll be in my top 5 of the year.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

Subscribe now

Before my first trip to Indonesia, my daughter Ruby— who’s been living there this year— did a great job preparing me for what to expect.

Strangers might come up and ask for a photo. ✅

Learning Bahasa was unnecessary, as English is widely spoken—though I’d still argue everyone should learn “thank you” in the local language (terima kasih, or makasih for short). ✅

Indonesians are incredibly caring toward others—as I sat outside writing this, a sudden downpour hit and someone ran out to help me get inside. ✅✅✅

But what I observed in how people collectively navigate traffic was downright mesmerizing—and full of lessons about how to keep moving forward regardless of the infrastructure around you.

In the two cities I visited (Makassar and Bali), people on mopeds drive next to, behind, and in front of cars in clusters. Entire families ride on a single bike. Large items are balanced horizontally across a driver’s lap. Traffic lights and stop signs are rare. Three-point turns are a standard way of changing direction. Strangers in the street help drivers they’ve never met make U-turns.

And get this: honking is a light tap—just a friendly heads-up that someone might not be in your line of sight.

I never heard anyone lean on their horn. No road rage. Instead, remarkable acts of mutual accommodation, again and again.

Everyone has somewhere to go, and everyone works together to get there unscathed. No one is waiting for a better system; they’re making it work, regardless.

It’s exactly what we need more of in our workplaces—especially in start-ups or resource-strapped nonprofits, where the infrastructure to solve every problem simply doesn’t exist, or where everything feels like a priority.

If we want workplaces where everyone feels like they’re getting where they need to go, we have to build it together—through coalitions and partnerships within and across teams.

This is different from the advice I used to give. For years, I counseled people to find the one influencer, the highest-status person in the room, and work through them to drive system-level change. I’m not saying people in positional power are off the hook to drive change—they’re not.

But when we passively wait for people in power to act, we unintentionally perpetuate power differentials. That’s not a strategy for social change; it’s a reinforcing loop working against us.

The kind of change that actually sticks—the systems-level change that many social impact organizations intend to build—spreads differently when it comes from within the people most proximate to the problem, who are grounded in shared values, and who decide to move together. Like the drivers I watched in Indonesia: patient enough to let others pass, steady enough to ride alongside, and assertive enough to lead when the moment calls for it.

As you partner together, the desired change becomes a reinforcing loop. It spreads to adjacent teams, and over time becomes a cultural norm—or even a system-level practice.

Essentially, when the desired change takes root in one team, it spreads to adjacent teams, and over time, becomes the culture.

So the next time you see something in your organization that needs addressing, don’t sit back and wait for the traffic light to be built. Grab your helmet, join the other drivers, and move.

Together, you’ll get where you need to go.

With love,

Lynnae

I live in Illinois’ 7th Congressional District, where Danny K. Davis is retiring after 29 years — and 12 people are currently running for his seat, with the primary on March 17th.

Of those 12, only 4 are worth considering: candidates who refuse AIPAC dark money and have gone on record condemning the ongoing genocide the U.S. and Israel are committing against the people of Palestine. With what’s now being done to Iran’s people, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

I’m currently deciding between Kina Collins (a lifelong 7th District resident from Austin), Anthony Driver (a union organizer with real impact), and Anabel Mendoza (an immigrants’ rights advocate).

If you’re in the 7th, I’d love to hear your take. And wherever you are — please dig into who’s funding your congressional candidates.

Speaking of mesmerizing, check out this album: Packaging. I’m not actually sure if it’s also the name of the band? It’s a debut album by two artists I wasn’t familiar with (Daniel Lyon and Daniel Birch) and a bunch of other artists I wasn’t familiar with (except for Father John Misty and Nathaniel Rateliff). It sounds like The Human League (shout-out to 80’s synthesizers!) and The Shins (shoutout to heartbreak lyrics of the 2000’s) had a baby.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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Last year I wrote a series of posts about the 4 conditions that turn good intentions into equitable culture. It culminated with the fourth condition: Communication.

I’m bringing this back up because with every client I work with, whether I’m advising on recruitment strategies, designing a competency model, partnering on an organizational restructure, or coaching an executive leader who is overwhelmed, I’m ALWAYS also advising on how to communicate with teammates.

Because none of my clients work in isolation, their ability to achieve any impact is dependent on how effectively they communicate.

As I said in last year’s post (and it’s worth saying it again):

Organizations who care about equity need to systematize the way they communicate as its own priority work-stream. Strategic communication practices build trust, which is the foundation of a healthy culture.

Reactive communication, on the other hand, sends the message that your teammates are an after thought, that you prioritize product and outcomes over people. It perpetuates a sense of urgency, power hoarding, and individualism—characteristics of white supremacy culture.

In a nutshell, reactive communication maintains the status quo that most social justice and social impact organizations are trying to disrupt.

To build upon my post from last year, I’ve developed a framework called PACT—a commitment to make with your teammates to foster shared accountability and trust.

Your communication PACT is:

1. Predictable. Your teammates know when communication is coming. They know which meeting, which method, how frequent, and even which part of the week or month they will get the information they need to continue—or pivot—their work. You are consistent.

2. Accessible. Your teammates know where to get the information they need, and there are multiple ways to access it to support diverse learning needs. They know where the communication lives within your internal systems, who to go to if they have more questions, and what to do if they don’t have the information they need.

3. Clear. Your teammates understand what’s being communicated. They get exactly the information they need; not more, not less. You are sincere; you say what you mean and you mean what you say. You are direct, not overly wordy or hyper-explanatory. This can look like saying “I don’t know the answer yet, but I’ll get back to you;” or “It’s not appropriate for me to share more information on that right now;” and “This is what this means for you.”

4. Trustworthy. Your teammates know that what you communicate is aligned to the values and purpose of your organization. You make connections to those values when you communicate with examples; you name what is sometimes challenging, and you follow through with the PAC part of the PACT.

Why is PACT communication practice so important?

We have an insightful workforce who tend to have an inherent distrust of power, particularly in today’s climate. I mean, can you blame them?

We are in an age of access to information at our fingertips. When information sharing is delayed, avoided, hard to find, or muddled, it leads to storytelling, filling in the gaps, and gossip.

This not only disrupts workflow, but also causes unnecessary anxiety and creates distrust, which takes so much time to heal.

PACT practices help bridge the power differential of who knows what and when.

And, I would argue, PACT practices build a culture of community where collective impact becomes the focus and the way.

Take a moment to reflect on where you’re already practicing PACT and where there’s opportunity to strengthen your communication practices. And as always, I’m here to help.

With love,

Lynnae

I’m horrified and disgusted that there isn’t more uproar about the contents of the Epstein files, especially from Democratic politicians, but honestly anyone with a beating heart and moral compass. I just learned about the work of Democracy Defenders Fund, who are doing everything they can to demand accountability from everyone, but most importantly, the POTUS who is mentioned more times in those files than Jesus is mentioned in the bible. Please take a look at their work, elevate what they are doing, and donate if you can.

I don’t know if we were meant to carry so much grief in one body.

Yet, we are not alone.

We are not alone.

Alexandra Blakely: One Body.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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As ICE wreaks havoc all over the country—but acutely and horrifically in Minnesota right now—I’ve been grappling with a real tension: for people of color in this country, this is more of the same, while for many others, this feels radically different.

Frankly, it’s felt really hard to know what to say here that won’t potentially cause harm.

I always try to write in a way that makes you feel less alone, challenges your thinking, and also gives you some really practical guidance on what to do, especially within your organization.

So I’m going to say what I think, and trust that if you’re reading what I write, you know I’m doing so with a great deal of reflection and care.

What is happening right now in this country, in my opinion, is VERY different from what I’ve seen in my lifetime.

And part of the reason we are here is because we have not made systems-level change in our country. If you really think about it, what’s happening right now was completely predictable—and it was absolutely preventable.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham has put into words what my gut has felt when she recently reflected on how, after Michael Brown was murdered by a police officer in St. Louis in 2014, at least the Obama administration was “warm:” open to dialogue and action to make change, even if we didn’t get everything we hoped for.

This, instead, as Brittany emphatically states, is “a warfare of America’s government against her people.”

What’s happening right now is the overt rise of authoritarianism.

I can imagine what is happening in many social impact organizations right now because I was often a part of this type of thing. The leadership team is coming together to figure out what to say to their staff members so they know they’re thinking about what’s going on out there, because it’s the right thing to do, and because many genuinely care. It’s thoughtful, but also reactive and tactical. Will we send an email? Will we hold 5 minutes at the next staff meeting? How can we make sure we don’t cause harm to people of color? Should we do a follow-up? Do other leaders need talking points? Who responds if someone gets upset?

In some orgs, leaders will go the extra mile to offer time off or provide space to have a deeper dialogue.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to hold space. In fact, you should offer an opportunity to be in community with your colleagues. But these are reactive moves.

Holding space is good, great even. But it is not enough.

Remember, social justice organizations wouldn’t need to exist without the inequities that this administration is perpetuating.

So, this is a call for organizations, especially those with an equity focus, to take a close look at how you’re doing your work—for you to take a strategic approach to making your organization a place that never again has to hold a meeting to prep its communication to your staff when a crisis occurs.

This looks like building a protocol so that whenever there is a crisis, people automatically know where to go and what to expect: the weekly staff meeting will get repurposed; people know how to access crisis support; your wellness program allows people to take time off without needing to provide a reason.

And it’s also about making the connection between why you exist and what you do: Onboarding includes this history, instead of assuming everyone knows. Strategic plans connect to current inequities. HR processes evolve to push against antiquated policies.

Because social justice work is hard, there’s training on navigating stress and conflict—and those tools are embedded into your everyday practices. People in positions of power are expected to learn and practice and model the skills of navigating conflict.

This is the time where you make sure you don’t have to question what your funders value because you’ve built a rubric that has you assess values alignment before you take any funding.

This is the time for determining who we want to be in the face of authoritarianism, for the courage to make strategic shifts, and for abundant transparency that together we will create an organization that can be the change we want to see in the world.

Remember, there are more of us than them.

This is the time.

With love,

Lynnae

Gospel, choral, spiritual music has showed up in my life just when I needed it most. This week I found How to Hold On: Songs of Comfort and Solace by Melanie DeMore with the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers. Melanie’s voice dips into sturdy baritone notes, a perfect tone for how I’ve been feeling right now: in the depths of our collective struggle. And it is also beyond comforting. The song ‘Standing Stone’ refrains: “I will be a standing stone, I will stand by you.” Sitting in my chilly home during this relentless Chicago winter, it makes me feel so less alone.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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For the past few years, around this time, I choose a word to guide me as I continue this thing called life. I don’t try to overthink it; I just let the word come to me, and usually when it does, I begin to see it everywhere. But this time, I’m feeling it everywhere, too.

My word this year is “softness.”

When Ruby said to me “I’m not trying to be combative; I’m just debating, Mom—that’s what I do” in the most gentle redirection, I felt my shoulders come down from my ears and I responded: “I hear you.”

It happened again when my friend interrupted me for the hundredth time and instead of retreating and letting them, I just kept talking at the same tone to finish my sentence— and they actually stopped talking. And maybe listened? It didn’t matter; I didn’t feel the frustration I usually do.

The day after New Year’s, I shared a quote about softening with my yoga students while they were in child’s pose, and I not only visibly observed their bodies come closer to the earth, but one student let out an audible “hmmmm.” After class, another student, who thought she was going to take a sculpt class (that had been cancelled) and reluctantly took my class instead, came up to me afterwards and said “softness is my word, too! This was meant to be!”

I told my therapist my word. She took a deep sigh and repeated it back to me: ‘softness.’

Last week one of my clients sent an email pushing back on a recommendation I made and instead of replying immediately, I thought “softness,” and not only did I not respond right away, I stopped thinking about the pushback until the other client on the chain followed up, aligned with me, and together we found a compromise that resulted in the outcome we all wanted— accomplished with softness.

But softness isn’t just for the small moments—it’s what we need to survive the unbearable ones too.

My softness took care of me last week after Renee Good was murdered by ICE. Luka started crying and so did I, and that’s what we needed to do. My hardness had me doom scrolling and doom posting and I needed softness to let me be in that moment with my kid, and feel connected to our humanity.

Over the holidays, I watched the video below of now Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, during a listening session as he was running for office. In it a woman originally from Pakistan says “thank you for creating softness in peoples’ hearts.” And before he teared-up, I wept. Because softness has been and is being taken away from us.

As I write this essay, I can feel tingling in my fingers, tears welling, heaviness in my hips. During this most frightening time where I find myself following expat influencers and wondering how much worse it’s going to get, I think ‘softness’ and somehow counter-intuitively I find faith that we will make it through this time.

My heart rate goes down, my breathing slows, my nervous system re-regulates. Something shifts in my body—I am physiologically less afraid.

And it’s not passivity that shows up; it’s energy. Softness isn’t surrender—it’s the strength to keep showing up without breaking.

So I’ll ask you to consider what you need these days. Maybe you have the softness that fuels you. But if you don’t, as we move through this time of hardness, I offer you so much softness.

With love,

Lynnae

In a deeply disappointing move, with pressure from MAGA, the Hilton Hotel company overturned a decision by their Minneapolis management to not allow ICE to stay at their hotel. We need to give the same amount of pressure in the other direction. It took me only one minute to write a strongly worded email to HiltonHonors@Hilton.com where I have points, to let them know that I will no longer use their chain of hotels. Boycotts work (Spotify stopped running ICE ads!), and there are lots of other places to stay if you need a hotel.

I came upon Appalachia Borealis in someone’s best of the year list, and I’m so grateful I took a listen. It’s been playing on repeat as I write and work. Phil Cook, who has collaborated with many artists, including Bon Iver, wrote this piano centered arrangement of songs that express a vulnerability I haven’t heard instrumentally in a long time. It sounds like a journey through the burdens of life, sometimes up and sometimes down, but always present. It’s beautiful. Read more about it here.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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Have you ever heard the term “phantom traffic jam?”

If you live in an urban area, I know you’ve experienced it.

It’s when a single driver’s action of sudden braking causes a ripple effect that disrupts the flow of traffic. You know what it feels like—everyone has to slam on their brakes even though there’s no accident in sight, no construction, no reason you can see for it. You’re crawling bumper to bumper. Then, just as mysteriously, the lanes open up and everyone accelerates back to the speed limit (until it happens again…)

I experience this nearly every time I’m on the expressway in Chicago. And if I’m being honest, I could absolutely be one of the people causing it... ask my kids about my road rage. 😰

We talk a lot about “sense of urgency” in organizations and how it creates unnecessary stress—the equivalent of constantly accelerating and making everyone else speed up to keep pace.

But we don’t talk enough about how a sense of urgency in one person actually has the opposite intended effect; everyone else has to slow down to react to the sudden change.

If you’re driving a project, remember there will ALWAYS be roadblocks, pivots, sudden swerves.

The way to alleviate the sense of urgency that so often creeps in, that speeding up we’ve all seen, is in the way you mindfully plan, knowing you’ll always need to adjust speed.

I know things come up that feel so important they have to be solved right away. But, I’m telling you, pausing—even for an hour to thoughtfully plan to anticipate the inherent roadblocks—will alleviate so much unnecessary stress not only for you, but for your team.

When planning for a project, always take into account the following:

1. Roles. Who is leading which component? Get very clear on who is in charge of what.

2. Decision-making. If one person is making the decision it’s going to take less time than if you’re making a decision by consensus or with input from many stakeholders. Get clear on decision making.

3. Priority. Where does this work or project fall in terms of priority across the organization? If it’s not one of the top priorities, it’s going to slow down.

4. External factors. I’m writing this the week before the holiday break, and a project I planned to wrap up this week is going to continue into the new year. Why? Because we’re all ready for a break, and it’s competing with all the other priorities my client needs to wrap up, too.

5. The Big One: new information and insights that always—and should- rise up. I learned a lot during this project, which meant that while I had one destination in mind, I needed to pivot for the cultural and operational moment my client is in, and the evolving aims as they, too, learn what they really need.

Remember: everything takes longer than you think it will. Build that reality into the plan itself. Create enough flexibility so you can adjust collectively, mindfully, at a pace that keeps everyone moving forward together without getting whiplash—or road rage when it goes a different direction.

You want to go fast? Plan for it so you can go steady, instead. The destination will be there whether we drive fast or slow. So why not put on some good music and make the journey one people actually want to be on?

With love,

Lynnae

Grab your whistles, Chicago. ICE is back. The Department of Justice data showed that 97% of the people ICE arrested and detained had no criminal record. We are in the belly of racist, fascist times, but we can intervene. Love will always win. Do what you can to speak up.

This album, What of Our Nature, by Haley Heynderickx with Max Garcia Conover, is a stunner. It reminds me of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in its folk tones, justice-oriented lyrics, and representation of this moment in time. Just read these lyrics below from “In Bulosan’s Words.” Just beautiful. Take a listen.

We don’t talk about the distance, we don’t talk about the hunger

Perhaps since we don’t talk, they cannot tell we’re going under

Perhaps we’ve been too fearful of not doing what we’re told

Oh, it’s easy being quiet, but it ain’t easy being alone

In a land where I’m a stranger is a land where I am numb

I cross the streets and shadows, to hope the whole world won’t find out

That my rights are still translucent, like a sharp wind in the cold

Oh, it’s easy being quiet, but it ain’t easy being alone

I learned that poverty is normal, I learned the language hurts my tongue

I learned the jobs are scarce like cutlery and sharp as hunger to my stomach

And my bravery still nameless, in expressionless expression

Oh, it’s easy being quiet, but it don’t leave much room for questions

When can we live to love forgiveness? When can my brothers know their names?

Will we ever find the balance of sharing land in the same place?

I feel the new world slowly blooming as the old one starts to mold

Oh, it’s easy being quiet, but it ain’t easy being alone

So grab your friends and brothers, tell them you are done

And the war’s gone long without us using the ammo of our tongues

I see justice in each pea pod and every hand that’s gone to feed it

‘Cause I’m tired of being quiet

Yes, I am tired of being silent

Yes, I am tired of being quiet

But my soul is not defeated

P.S. I’m literally taking a beat and taking a break from writing on Substack until mid January, 2026. Sending light your way as we enter a new year; this one has been relentless.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, Tiffany, and Mark for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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Like thousands of people in Chicagoland—and most likely beyond—I’ve been mesmerized by the pair of snowy owls who surprisingly arrived at Montrose Beach on Lake Michigan sometime in November.

If you’ve been reading my Substack, you know I’m a bird lover. Contrary to what some might think, it’s not just an aging thing. My very first tattoo (when I was 21) is of a sea eagle. The notion of flight, the ability to pick up and go wherever you need or want to with ease, has long compelled me.

So last week I drove out to catch a glimpse of the beauties who’d been flooding my social media feed.

I didn’t really know where I was going, but trusted I would find my way. As soon as I arrived at the parking area, I saw a man with a giant tripod, aiming his camera towards the water.

I asked him if he knew where the owls were and without hesitation he said, “Yes, you can walk with me.”

Montrose Beach is wide open and there were enough people around that I didn’t hesitate at this stranger’s offer. As we walked, Larry and I introduced ourselves and swapped bird watching stories. He pointed to a tree where he’d seen another type of owl a while back. We continued through the bird sanctuary and finally arrived at the entrance of the horseshoe-shaped pier where, about a quarter mile ahead, I could see a crowd of about twenty-five people bundled up, all staring in the same direction.

As we headed towards them, others walked back towards us. I was struck by how every single person passing smiled so brightly, their eyes conveying something I couldn’t quite name—not just excitement for what they’d witnessed, but almost like they were excited for us, for what we were about to see.

We arrived and Larry found his spot, seated on the pier, and began taking photos. I stood as close as possible—the camera I’d borrowed from my daughter allowed me to get a better view, but it wasn’t what I expected.

And you know what? It didn’t matter.

It turns out that seeing the owls close up wasn’t what filled me with joy; it was the experience of being with people—from all types of backgrounds—collectively moved and thrilled by bearing witness to something so unexpected and beautiful.

It was the mom and dad grinning at each other as they took turns taking photos, trying to teach their distracted toddler why they were there.

The man using old school binoculars up against his phone’s camera, laughing as he tried to get a better view.

Strangers pointing out to each other which owl was female and which was male, and how you could tell.

The kids on skateboards who might have been given a side-eye by the elders anywhere else, but here were welcomed into the community.

The grandpa with his grandson who told me he wanted to bring him because he knew it was special, then proceeded to ask me for facts about the snowy owls. And all I did was repeat what I’d heard from others five minutes earlier: “They came here most likely because of a lack of food supply in Canada, but it also may mean we’ll get more snowy owls. And some say it means we’ll have a snowy winter.”

I stayed there for about an hour, barely able to see more than the figures of the owls. But I stayed because I was immersed in humanity. It was about as hopeful as you can get.

And right now, we need this. We need to seek out these moments where beauty still persists amid all the chaos and division—to be present to them, to let them fill us up. The owls arrived unexpectedly, but we had to show up. We had to make the drive, walk the beach, stand in the cold. Hope doesn’t just happen to us; we have to go looking for it.

As I walked back, I caught the eyes of newly arriving owl seekers. This time, I was the one smiling brightly, trying to tell them with my gaze what I couldn’t quite put into words: that they were about to experience something profound—not just the owls themselves, but the gift of shared wonder, the rare opportunity to stand beside strangers and feel, for a moment, like we all belonged to each other.

With love,

Lynnae

The snow arrived in Chicago, as the owls foretold, and it forces so many of us inside, into the safety and warmth of our homes—if we’re lucky enough to have them. But while we retreat from the cold, the forces breaking down our shared humanity remain in high gear, relentless.

This is when we need each other most. Check in on your neighbors. Reach out to that friend you’ve been thinking about. Stay in the work of reclaiming our shared humanity—not just when it’s convenient, but especially when it’s hard, when the cold makes us want to turn inward.

We’ve got this if we stick together. That’s not just a platitude—it’s the only way forward.

Over the weekend I watched the most stunning, beautiful movie I’ve seen in ages. Stop what you’re doing and watch Train Dreams. Every. Single. Shot. is mesmerizing—the kind of cinematography that makes you forget you’re watching a film at all. The acting feels so effortlessly authentic that I wasn’t just watching the story, I was living inside it. I’m already planning to see it again, ideally in a theater this time, where I know it will pull me in and move me all over again.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, and Tiffany for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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Many moons ago I wrote a post called “Giving Notice,” which was a reframe meant to inspire us to show gratitude and appreciation of our teammates on the regular, to take notice of something meaningful, and literally “give notice” to the people we work with in our day to day. It included the following reflection:

​​How much time do we spend noticing our teammates—really seeing them and acknowledging who they are? For example, praising a comment made during a meeting, speaking up when we see someone struggling and offering help, or expressing gratitude for a decision that might have been different than ours.

How often do we acknowledge someone at work for being brave?

Or when do we simply say, “I really love the way you phrased that. Thank you”?

We are living in a time where many of us are confronting brutal truths about the reality of the world we’re in—a massive moment of reckoning and redefining.

I’m bringing this notion back up because the “moment of reckoning and redefining” at this point in time feels more like a movement than a moment (to quote Hamilton, one of the best musicals of all time). And, yes, because we’re entering the manufactured “season of gratitude.”

And while the season is complex, the notion of gratitude is simple.

Which is exactly why I’m bringing the idea of “giving notice” right now, in the middle of your work week, where I imagine many of you, like me, are racing to get a bunch of things done, in advance of the holiday break.

Can you, today, give notice to someone you work with? Can you do that tomorrow, too? And the next day?

Can you take notice of someone’s efforts, and offer encouragement on December 1, when many of us go back to work? And what about in January, when the “season of giving” has passed?

What if today you began thinking of your job as a community builder and of your career path as developing expertise in creating shared humanity through appreciation and connection?

What would shift in you, and can you imagine what that shift could mean for others?

What would it look like if the deliverable is love and the outcome is connection?

With love,

Lynnae

I’ll keep it simple. Do you see someone in your life doing something to take a stand right now? Do you appreciate it? Tell them. This movement building can feel really lonely. We need to build each other up.

My 17 year old recently introduced me to the band, Wednesday, with the sweetest song, Elderberry Wine. I realized that I had it on one of my playlists for teaching yoga, so we played the rest of the album. Let me tell you, ‘Bleeds’ was nothing I expected, but everything I wanted. This is a rock n’ roll record that reminds me of one of my favorite records of all time, Hole’s ‘Live Through This’. Wednesday’s female lead singer is backed by an all male band, and she is definitely in charge, with sweet vocals that shred. I would have loved to see them live this past Monday in Chicago, but I don’t think there’s a band on earth that would get me out on a Monday night. 🙂

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, and Tiffany for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.

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Over the past few months in my coaching and consulting work, I’ve become deeply attuned to how urgency manifests itself in work places.

‘Sense of urgency’ is a learned practice that looms large and deep within the non-profit, social justice sector, where most of my clients spend their precious moments.

I used to think that ‘sense of urgency’ was primarily a tool of oppression that was kept alive by people in power who wanted to control or even micro-manage the work of those who didn’t hold the same privilege or power.

While that can be true, it’s only part of the story.

‘Sense of urgency’ has become a workplace means for survival—nurtured even— by each of us in a misguided attempt to reclaim, over and over, our sense of identity and purpose. We act with urgency as if our life depends on it. And it’s breaking us.

Here’s how it can insidiously manifest:

Case Study 1: A brilliant leader who is navigating a ton of organizational change and a toxic culture gets a text message from a team member who is having a challenge with a colleague in a different department. The well-meaning leader says “I’ll talk to them.” Sounds like a lovely way to offer support, huh?

This is wrought with missed opportunities:

1. First, this highly compensated—and highly stretched thin—leader just took on another task, which just kicks the can further on solving larger issues.

2. Second, they disempowered the team member from practicing the vital skills of navigating healthy conflict.

3. Third, and perhaps most importantly, they didn’t address the root cause. Why is there a challenge? What’s underneath what’s happening? And how can we solve it so this doesn’t happen again?

In the moment, that quick effort at support made the leader feel a sense of purpose and added value. That type of reactionary leadership can become addictive, but it never solves the long-term problem; it just keeps them playing whack-a-mole.

Case Study 2: A different bad-ass leader gets a call from a partner that their boss (the CEO) is not responding to their outreach. This leader is currently in a state of feeling fatigued and under-valued. During our coaching call I advise that they end their day when we hang up, and take the next day off; a restorative pause, if you will.

Their response? “I have to call my boss and tell them what the partner said first.” I ask, “why does that have to happen today? Why can’t it wait until early next week? What’s the worst that can happen?” This leader’s eyes glaze over and they stammer for an answer.

The habit of moving swiftly and quickly is a hard one to break, especially when you’re emotionally dis-regulated and dealing with hierarchy. But communicating a tough message when you’re in a compromised state is never going to go well. Just don’t do it.

Case Study 3: In a retreat with a client, we are working on clarifying the year’s priorities for the rest of the team. Other team members have been asked (for the first time) to fill out a spreadsheet with their priorities. They had little guidance and one of them did not adequately complete the task.

During the retreat, the leader of the team thinks it will be helpful to text their team member to fill out the sheet—so we could keep moving. I stop them to say “if you’re that person, who knows you’re in a retreat reviewing priorities, how do you think it will feel to receive that text?”

My client reluctantly pauses.

I know they were trying to “keep things moving,” but in doing so, they are perpetuating urgency for other team members, which signals to them that “getting it done” is more important than quality of the work, it’s more important than our relationship, and it’s more important than their team member getting to learn a new skill.

Case Study 4: Another client receives the news that a workstream owned by someone else is being shifted to them. They aren’t given context as to why and they initially don’t agree. So they immediately sent an email to their more junior team members, naming their frustration and asking for their team members’ thoughts.

What didn’t work here? First, they put their emotional reaction onto people they have power over. Second, when they stepped back and thought about it, they actually had the opposite reaction— that this workstream would be a great opportunity to problem solve some other areas.

They could have avoided the email altogether, saving their time, avoiding the angst that came up for people (including themself), and actually getting some credit for leading on something that needed a better home, after all.

All of these examples demonstrate missed opportunities to assess—and address— the systemic issues within the organization, and on the team.

The endorphin rush of solving problems over and over again can be momentarily rewarding, especially when it feels like the sky is falling. But doing so puts us in a perpetual, reinforcing cycle of hyper-reactivity, limiting our ability to pull back and address the larger, systemic issues that plague so many well-intentioned non-profit organizations.

We react immediately because it feels good to solve problems. We’re actually wired to feel a sense of connection to our fellow humans by being helpful. The study of this is called “interdependent neuroscience,” which is the idea that our brain systems and neural processes are interconnected and influence each other.

The irony is, urgency distances us from each other and it causes major stress; our hyper-reactivity breeds even more urgency, and keeps us from creating the type of connection we crave, and creating the world I believe in my heart most of us want.

If we really want to affect social change, we need to rewire our brains to create and model the idea of taking a pause.

This literally looks like: taking a deep breath, waiting 24 hours before making a decision or sending a note, norming on how we use our communication systems, i.e. how and when do we use text vs. slack vs. email. It’s asking “what is the purpose?” of anything we are doing. It’s spending time on getting to the root cause, naming our urgency habits, and leaning on each other to slow down.

To pause is to rewire our brains to be able to be in right-relationship with one another. The pause is where the magic happens. The pause is where we will save ourselves and save each other so we can save this world.

And when you do pause, when you take a beat and build space between the problem and your role in solving it, the intensity usually dissipates. You will find yourself with more energy, more clarity on what matters most, more connection to others, and ultimately, more freedom.

So, take a pause. Because the quality of your life depends on it.

With love,

Lynnae

I’m not going to mince words here. The world is on fire. As I write this, just yesterday one town over from where I live, ICE beat a father of two, who has lived in this country since the 1980’s, to the point where he is currently in the ICU. The atrocities in Sudan are beyond the imagination. Palestinians are still being murdered by Israel. And I don’t yet know if Zohran Mamdani won the NYC mayoral election.

At times, all of it feels completely overwhelming and unsolvable. But moments come that recenter and redirect me. When my neighbor said “as long as I have hands that work, I will keep fighting,” while we were making whistle packets to alert others when we see ICE. Or on Halloween when the pure joy and excitement of children who see I have their favorite candy say “thank you, Lady!” Or this poem that showed up on my feed.

Keep looking for the moments, and pause and take them in. Will you?

NPR featured the song, “Jesus and John Wayne” by googly eyes, Joy Oladokun, and August Ponthier, over the weekend, incredulous that it wasn’t a hit. I’m in complete agreement. It’s a song for the moment, crescendoes with its own incredulity about the state of this world, and this country’s betrayals. Give it a listen.

P.S. I’m in the process of moving my music from Spotify, who pays musicians squat, advertises for ICE, and whose founder is now chairman of an AI military start up. So, take a beat and then take a stand.

Special shout-out to Carol, Vivian, Katie, Megan, Shane, Bobbi, Jenn, Terri, Mindy, Beth, Michelle, Nicole, Adam, Heather, Alli, Andrea, Jill K, Audra, Sandy, Kate, Sarah, Holly, and Tiffany for becoming paid subscribers; I am so deeply grateful.

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to be here. I welcome and crave your input and reflections.