leader you were born for this but somewhere between the toxic leaders broken systems and workplace trauma you forgot why you said yes to leadership this show is your invitation to descend to anchor to find the stillness beneath the noise so you can ascend back to your team with clarity conviction and renewed purpose I'm Dr. Denise Simpson, and I will guide you through five principles that restore your wholeness and call you back to your original assignment. Join me now so we can go deeper. It's time to find your way back. Ooh, the great return. We are returning to ourselves. We are returning to why we were called into these roles, why we said yes to leadership to begin with. We are returning. Welcome to another episode. So happy that you are here. We're still in season four, my friend. I'm happy that you join us every week for a pause, a break, a moment to contemplate. This is why we gather every single week and I'm happy that you are here. For those of you who are new, my name is Denise Simpson. I've spent a great deal of time in this field of study because I love it. I eat it. I digest it. I metabolize it. I do all of it because leadership has been something I've struggled with. And I think that stems from when I was a little girl. And if you stick around long enough, you're going to hear all of those stories. All the stories from being taped, my mouth taped shut in second grade because I dare, I help a classmate figure out what page we were on, right? And all the other interesting circumstances that happened to me as a little girl because I... was told that my power was too much, that my voice was too loud, and that my opinions just didn't have a room. It didn't have room here on the table. Those opinions needed to stay outside of that house. Okay, cool. Then I went out into the real world and said, wait, what? I have power. I have wisdom. I have life experience to share. I have brilliance. Wait, what? Who, me? Little old me. And I found that through the pipeline of leadership. And it has given me great responsibility. Oh, my goodness. The stewardship that was put on me at a very young age, running a bath and body work store at nineteen years old, loved every minute of it. went into leadership through that retail route because I love to sell. I love the products. It was so easy for me to talk about those products. And I don't know if you remember back in the nineties, we demonstrated products on people. I would ask people, come to the sink. Let me show you what this sugar scrub is like. And then we would talk all day about their children, about their spouses, and then they're walking out with a two hundred dollar transaction because I loved selling and I loved this buyer and I wanted to make her feel so incredibly special because she was worthy of it. That turned into this incredible trajectory into leadership and went off to get a PhD in it because wow, so much to study in this field and so much that's happening externally that is impacting how we're showing up in our leadership roles. And I am obsessed with patterns. I'm obsessed with trends. I'm obsessed with forecasting because we're visionaries, y'all. We are leaders who have expansive vision. And so of course, leadership was the natural journey for me and for you probably. If you're listening, watching this, and if you are a seasoned viewer or listener, then you are right here with me, my friend. We are on parallel journeys, but we're walking towards that vision for ourselves, for our communities, for our collectives. This is what we do as contemplative leaders. And I'm so happy that you are here. Let's get into this conversation. We're going to dive into the second anchor. by the way if this is like your first episode there are four seasons we are in the fourth season not sure what episode number this is but we are in the fourth season and so you want to go back to season one of course there's so many more before season one but listen the last four seasons is where you want to you know jump into because this is the pivot, this is the shift, this is where we are going. Now listen, I study patterns, I study trends, I study historical records, historical studies. This is what makes me a fun researcher because I have a great time. I'm so curious about patterns and trends and where we're going. So in my intuition, ooh, ooh, I just said that out loud, y'all. My intuition, along with my life experiences, along with my wisdom, has me looking in a very interesting, specific direction. And the direction is contemplative leadership. This isn't a leadership style, okay? This isn't like transformational leadership or emotional intelligence or whatever else is out there that you spew because I hear y'all. I hear you guys go, oh, I'm this. I'm a servant leader. I practice authentic leadership. I'm this. Okay, cool. Contemplative leadership is not a style of leadership. That's not what we're doing here. Those styles of leadership focus on behavior. Ooh, I'm the precursor to that behavior. Let me explain. I spent a great deal of time as a leadership trainer, executive coach, consultant. I got in the door with corporate buyers and corporate leadership buyers because I was a consultant first and foremost, and then went into training and then went into executive coaching. Okay. So I spent, uh, ninety nine point nine percent of my coaching, my curriculum, writing my training on competencies. That's what corporate America wanted. They wanted for me to develop this leader with all the skills that they needed to perform at their maximum capacity. Cool. I taught them all the skills, taught them strategy, taught them all the things that they needed to be excellent, exemplary leaders. But what I failed to do as a trainer was focus on the mindset. Ooh, the values, the convictions. Ooh, dare I say the leader's soul. So here I was just, Here on the surface, I was swimming on the surface with my leaders. And what I soon realized was what I was doing through my leadership training, executive coaching, consulting work was perpetuating some toxic leadership models out here. You want to talk about organizational behavior and psychology? Go look that up because you're going to see all of the toxic systems in place that were designed to break apart the leader's soul. What? And I was part of that perpetuating process. I mean, guilty, guilty as charged. Okay. So now we're on redemption. We are returning the leader and myself to to what it really means to lead from this place of wholeness. Because when you are whole, oh my goodness, when you are one complete person again, you can sustain a fulfilling, incredible vocation. Instead of burning out every two to three weeks because you don't have the coping strategies between these projects, between these deadlines, between these timeframes. See, that's the thing is burnout is a real thing. Doesn't mean it's failure. It's a big signal that you are not leading from the soul, from your purpose, from why you were put on this earth. I mean, let's talk about that for a moment. here we were thrusted into leadership. So many of us were, some of us were conscious of it. Some of us were unconscious of it. Cool. I was more, I was kind of straddling in between probably, but you know, at times I was pushed, life pushed me into this leadership path. And then other times I said, Ooh, I'm here now. How about I take that other route? But I I'm here though. I'm here. And you're here with me too. And so here we are doing the best that we can in these leadership roles. And while your organization could care less about your burnout, they want to know because I've been told by CEOs, I'm not here to cure their burnout. I'm not going to hire you to help my executives clear burnout. No, that's on them. That's personal and good luck to them. I'm a CEO and I'm trying to make some profit here and I just want for them to come their best and do their best while I have them under this roof because their attention span is diminishing. They have quiet quit on me most of the time and now I'm struggling and now I don't care about their burnout. Good luck, y'all. Try to do something about it on your own. Your organization more than likely does not care about your mental well-being, your spiritual well-being far less. My goodness, your physical well-being. That is not their priority. And that's okay. Is it right? No. Is it truth? Yes. I mean, and maybe it's not for you because you've got a great employer and they're setting aside professional development for you to get all that burnout coaching so that you can be better. Okay, cool. Great. There are not many of those out there because I am out there showing these organizations what my programs can do for them. And many of them don't want what I'm offering. Cool, whatever. So now I'm focused on you, the individual leader. I'm not giving up on the corporate buyer. If you're a corporate buyer listening to this, you're going to want to call me. Let's chat. But I'm focused on you, the one out here struggling, the one who said, yes, put me in. I can do this better. I'll take on these responsibilities. But then something happened along the way. Some things have happened along the way. And here you are now in burnout. And what I want to solve for especially in this season, season number four, is this question. I want us to answer this question together. By the way, this question is like my research question for the season. I'm a researcher. I'm always coming up with ideas. There's a question. And then it's a question that I must answer and find different ways to answer this one question. And that question for us this season is, can you be an effective leader without sacrificing your soul? or destroying your life. And we're finding ourselves in drastic burnout. We are burnt to a crisp, honey. You left that bacon on that pan far too long. There are some carcinogens in that meat and now it's burnt. You can't, there's no way you can eat that. There's no way you can keep going as burnt out as you are right now. I know this is extreme language, but it's necessary during these extreme times. And so stick around. This is what you're going to get from our time together is honesty. I'm not going to shoot the shit with you here because we're going to take things ten layers deeper. Always. Always. But if you want to stay on the surface and if you want to continue feeling this burnout and not solve the burnout... because I'm about root causes. I'm not about the symptoms. I'm not going to treat the symptoms, which is what I thought I was doing for many, many years by teaching you more skills and more competencies. And then there you are burning out, crashing and burning, destroying your lives, destroying your souls, fragmented into a million pieces. It's like, well, where's that whole resourceful, fully alive, purposeful person? Where did you go? Oh, well, I'm on the floor in a million pieces and my life is falling apart. And I absolutely hate my life right now and this job. And sometimes these people I work with, I'm kind of disliking my own family. My goodness, I don't even have time to parent my own children. Forget the bills, forget anything else because I'm just, I can't have no more capacity because I'm burnt out. Again, extreme language for extreme times. And this is why it's important that we talk about these anchors. By the way, last episode, we talked about the first of five anchors. So let me give you a quick, quick little summary. We talk about descending here a lot, and we use the metaphor of the anchor so that we can visualize what's happening. So there you are on that boat. You're getting tossed around in the sea. It's violent out there. It's physical violence, emotional violence, all the violence. You're on the boat, and that storm is knocking you around, and you are You, dear leader, don't know what to do. You're ready to jump out that boat and drown, but I want for you to descend intentionally with me on purpose. Because all of those external circumstances that that storm brings in, and by the way, that's just one of hundreds of storms that are going to come through your journey as a leader, right? Sometimes it's one right in front of you and one right behind you. It's like, they're all coming at me. But see, those external circumstances, even the internal ones, that's chaos. That's psychological chaos. There's mental chaos, spiritual warfare that's happening. And so I'm asking you to consider descending, descending from that chaos. We're not running away from it. We're not spiritually bypassing this. No, it's to take a moment to descend, detach, disconnect from that chaos. And so we descend down below the surface. And as we are descending down below, we start noticing there's peace in our body. There's calm in our nervous system. The brain fog starts to clear. The heart starts to regulate again. My goodness, it is a shift from that leader that was in that boat, that was trying to navigate through those external uncontrollable circumstances. And here you are now deciding for yourself. I don't want to lead in that reactive, hyper, intense, emotional state because those emotional waves are angry, honey. They are violent at times. You should hear the things I tell myself. If you were to put up a megaphone to my thoughts, you'd be like, what? This coach, this expert, this person speaks to herself this way. Yeah, it could get violent in here. So I know what it feels like to live in this head, to have the perpetuating cycles of emotions and thoughts running through my brain and my body. It's exhausting. Cortisol is high. Nervous system is hijacked. My goodness. I Because that amygdala is like, we need to survive and there's nothing else we can think about but surviving. And then there goes my clarity. There goes my years of wisdom and expertise out the window because I have put myself or have kept myself in a situation where I need to detach, descend, disconnect so I can think for myself clearly, so that I can remember who the hell I am and why I was brought into this role of leadership, why I chose myself to be put into this journey. So we descend on purpose. And that's what I'm asking you to do is to descend from the chaos because it's time to anchor into truth. So as we reach down to the bottom of the ocean floor, because you're the anchor and because you chose to descend, you then get to anchor yourself into the truth. And there are five very important principles that I teach once we drop down below and we anchor ourselves. So we talked about anchor number one last week. And that is the purpose anchor. Why you lead. It's reminding you why you lead. It's reminding yourself, this is my divine calling. This is my divine assignment. My goodness, let me drop down below and figure this out. Let me remember why I was put on this earth and why I'm doing this at this time with this team, with these circumstances that are beyond my control. So the second anchor that we're going to talk about today is your responsibility anchor, the sacred responsibility, sacred stewardship that you have right here, right now. This is who you serve. And it's number one, first anchor. Why am I here? What am I doing this for? Let me remind myself. Number two, who am I serving? Oh, that's right. I may not like this team. I may not have hired this team or my peers are trying to get me out of here or I'm having issues with the board of directors right now or even with my clients if you're a business owner like me. You anchor yourself into this principle because this is where we remind ourselves who the hell we're serving. Why are you the one, the chosen one to serve this very specific group of people? Ooh, jot that down. Take some notes. Brainstorm some ideas. Prime that pump. Get into that anchor. Stir some things around in your soul. That's what the second anchor is supposed to do for us. Your sacred responsibility is to lead this family. is to lead this community, is to lead this nonprofit right now. That's the sacred responsibility. It's stewardship, my friends. It's stewardship. It's like remembering, oh yeah, I'm honored to do this work. And what a privilege it is that I'm the chosen one, that I'm the one to do this work. How fantastic is that? And also how hella hard is it? Whew. My goodness. But if I was put in this role, because I remembered why I was called into this leadership practice or this specific leadership role, then I can look at who my constituents are, who are the children I'm raising, who are the community members that I'm helping. You now start connecting your divine assignment, your divine calling, your purpose with sacred responsibilities. See how every anchor builds on each other. So that first one, we talked about that on our last episode. Go back to that one if you need to. But here's where we build on these anchors. And the second one, again, is the responsibility anchor, sacred responsibility, sacred stewardship. Oh, I love that phrase so much, sacred stewardship. Like that's how I treat my leadership students and my leadership clients. It's like I was put on this earth, anchor number one, right? to use my wisdom, use my experience, use my expertise, use all of what God gave me. And then now I get to stay right here anchored in that knowing, but also building on that by deeply connecting to the people that I was called to lead in this time space reality right here, right now. all the students that I've served throughout my thirty years in leadership, all the people that I've served throughout my thirty years as a leader in the trenches molding the clay, all the customers I've served, all the clients I have served, all the board of directors that I've spoken to, all of the CEOs that I have helped, all that, all that is a connection to who, number one, I am, why I was called into this leadership. vocation. But these are the people that I was responsible for in leading, in stewarding, in guiding, in formulating, in forming, in teaching, in all the things, in developing. And I take that seriously. And it's such an honor for me. And I don't take that for granted. Because as a young leader, I'll be honest with you, I didn't care. I needed a check, right? There's some positions where, you know, we enter and we immediately know, okay, well, wow, this may not be in alignment with my values, this particular organization. And gosh, this leader here is actually testing my convictions and my values, but here I am getting this check. So I know where some of you may be at this moment because of the quiet quitting, the conscious unbossing that we're doing right now, right? We have all these incredible terms for leaders who are disengaged and no longer committed to their organization. So this is one way, if you are in that circumstance, this is one way for you to reconnect with that first anchor, why you lead. This is the purpose anchor. But then secondly, today, who you serve. These are the people that were called into your life at this very specific moment. And yes, we get to look back and go, wow, look at all these incredible humans that I've served. My goodness, all the souls that I've touched, the spirit that has connected every single one of them to me. Wow, what an honor, what a privilege that is. Now, of course, I would not have known that, especially if as I was trying to survive in some of these circumstances. I mean, every day I felt threatened. Every day I was defending myself. Every day I was trying to prove unnecessarily to the powers that be that I belong there. So of course, I was so consumed with that instead of those who I was called to serve. Ooh. Oh, that's where we get to look outward. We get to look at those that are right in front of us, that are waiting for our guidance, that are waiting for our wisdom, that are waiting for direction from us. Oh, that takes you out of your mind and into your heart and specifically into others. That's what we do as leaders. But we have to, number one, know why we lead. And then number two, who are we serving? And then connecting that back to the sacred responsibility, the sacred stewardship that we were each called to do in this time-space reality right here in this moment. And you can look at this grand. You can look at this, in my case, over thirty years. Of course, it's a vocation. I mean, I have perspective because I can look back and then I have vision, expansive vision, so I can look forward. But if you're new in this pipeline of leadership, I know it can feel challenging right now. I know that it can, and this is why this work is important and it is intentional. And this is why you have to choose to descend, descend from the chaos, from those uncontrollable variables, those circumstances that are trying to take you out, my friend. But instead, you decide to descend intentionally with me, descend from that chaos so that we can anchor into truth. You know when it's true for you. You'll feel it in your body. You'll know that it's truth for you. That's undeniable. Now, those are just two of the five, two of the five anchors that we're going to cover this season. And so that's the question I'm going to leave you with is, The responsibility, this anchor that I want to anchor myself into today, I want to remind myself the sacred responsibility that I have to steward this team, this collective, this family, this community, these constituents. And I want for you to find and contemplate ways to connect your soul, your heart back into this very specific team that you're leading. And if you're a business owner like me, it's the clients that I'm leading. And it's also my part-time research assistant right now and my part-time helpers right now. I'm connected to them deeply because I know why, anchor number one, why my purpose in this role, in this lifetime, in this specific role that I'm in right now, why I was called to do this work. So my anchor number two, the responsibility anchor, I am deeply connected to stewarding these souls, to stewarding these humans, because they're watching my every move. I am the model of excellence, you see. They've been taught about bad leaders, right? I mean, we all have about a hundred stories of bad leaders in various, you know, past experiences. And so I want to be the one that they look at and say, wow, She truly saw my greatness. She truly cared about my wellbeing. She knows about burnout. She wants for me to be whole and resourceful. And she wants for me to focus on my spiritual wellbeing and my physical and mental and emotional wellbeing. I've never had a leader like that. My goodness, she cares deeply. Now I'm not going to go have a drink with Denise, but wow, I can trust her. I can trust her. I feel safe. under her leadership, under her direction. Of course, I will do everything I can, give her everything I've got because I trust her. She has created an environment where I'm truly wanted and my opinion truly matters. And she's hired me because I'm an expert. And she's hiring me because there's a gap that she has, that she sees that I can fill. This is the sacred responsibility leader. Everything I'm just sharing with you, that's what I want for you to dive deeper into. Dive deep into this. Don't be afraid of the emotional work. Don't be afraid to go deep with your emotions. This is what sets us apart from AI. This is what sets us apart from all of your peers that are on the surface that could care less about their employees. You're not them. You are different because you want to lead differently. You're tired of fragmenting. You're tired of the burnout. You want to do this differently because you're not going anywhere because you've got a long way to go in this career, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but I got to work for a living. I mean- We got to work. So why don't we find the strategies and in this anchor framework that I'm sharing with you throughout this season, why don't we open ourselves up to the possibility of this working for us? See how this can be true for you right now in this moment on this leadership journey. So after we anchor into truth, again, and these five anchors allow us to do that, they give us that space, that sacred space and opportunity, oh my gosh, to dive deeper into our souls. Wow, what a treat. Ooh, what a treat that is. Ooh, wow. Your organization wants to mask your burnout with more skills, more competencies, more training, and they don't want to look at the interior life of that leader. They just want to mask whatever symptoms you are experiencing with more skills, more performance measurements, more competencies, and nobody's daring to look at you internally, your interior life, the mindset, the soul, oh my God, the spirit that connects us. Yeah, this is deep work. This is deep work. This isn't emotional intelligence. This isn't servant leadership. This is not transformational leadership. This is not a leadership style. We're not talking about... Sorry, there's a fly in this room. Oh my God, get it out of here. We're not talking about how a leader should behave. No, I want to look at before you go out and lead. I want to return you back to who you are in your whole full resourceful self. Because then we ascend back into leadership after we have anchored into the truth. We descend from the chaos. We anchor into truth and we ascend back into leadership. whole, resourceful, fully alive, purposeful, excited, ready to serve ourselves, our communities, and others. Oh my goodness. That's the solution to burnout. This that I'm sharing with you right now is the solution to burnout. Now listen, if you're like, well, that's just way out there. Well, yeah. Well, so was emotional intelligence, so was servant leadership before Robert Greenleaf put this into practice in the sixties. Okay. Like before that, nobody knew about that. Like what? transformational leadership, right? Like, wait, what? Yeah. We didn't know about this more than years ago easily, any of this. So if this is new language and your brain is like battling this, Relax. Nothing's gone wrong. Decide to see that this could be a solution for your burnout, for your resentment, for your regret, for your bitterness, for your anger. Start looking at those emotions that you are feeling on a daily basis or more frequently than you want. And then ask yourself, those are symptoms. What's the root cause of this? What's the root of this concern, of this problem, of what I'm experiencing right now in this organization? And just maybe, maybe the solution is to choose to descend, to anchor, and then ascend back into leadership. And I've got that for you. It's called the anchored leader. We're integrated. We're whole. We're contemplatives. We do what is necessary so that we can return back to ourselves. All right, leader. I'm going to go and escort that fly out of my office. Oh my gosh. That fly has been landing on my laptop, landing on my camera. And then I got hairspray on today. So that fly is like, give me some of that. Dear leader, what a wonderful afternoon to spend with you. I'm here in Austin and it is dark and I don't know if, and I've got the windows open Don't know if there's a storm coming in this weekend. Haven't checked the weather. But I wouldn't be surprised because it's been a lot of rain here. So thank you for your time. Thank you for considering this for yourself. This is to help you. This is to help you return to wholeness, to reconnect with your soul, and to remember your divine assignment. Yep. We're using spiritual language too. I know corporate buyers in America are freaking out right now. Fine. Because twenty years from now, you'll be using this language freely. No one will have an issue with with anchored frameworks and anchored leadership and integrated leadership and contemplative leaders. That's going to be just common for everybody. So Follow me here if this language is resonating with you right now. And I know it is. I know somewhere, somehow it is connecting with you. So be open to it. Be open to it. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm wishing you all, you especially, you who's watching this, listening to this, my dear leader, I'm here for you every step of the way. And I'm looking forward to serving you again very soon. Take good care. Bye. You came here for a reason, and that reason is bigger than you know. If today's episode stirred something in you, that stirring is your assignment calling you back. Don't ignore it. Here's what you can do next. Subscribe, leave a review or share this with a leader who forgot why they said yes. And when you're ready to go deeper, my friend, join me in my program. It's called Anchored. This is where we descend into the five principles that restore your wholeness and return you to your original assignment. The world needs the leader that you were born to be. So head over to my website at drdeniessimpson.com to learn how you can join me inside my program called Anchored. Until next time, take very good care.
