78: Julie Fogh and Casey Erin Clark on Stepping Into and Out of a Role
Vital Voice Training is a communication consultancy out to revolutionize the conversation about good public speaking and leadership presence — from stressing out about your “ums and uhs” to working creatively at the intersection of you and your context. Since 2014, they’ve been bringing game-changing public speaking and communication training to individuals and organizations, specializing in building public speaking confidence, navigating difficult conversations, balancing authenticity and situational adaptivity, and bringing out their clients’ own unique charisma. Co-founders Julie Fogh and Casey Erin Clark are experienced professional actors — their approach is grounded in theater and performance, neuroscience, somatics, socio-linguistics, and organizational psychology. Their clients are leaders in the finance, venture capital, law, and tech industries, world-changing entrepreneurs, and best-selling authors, as well as in-demand keynote speakers who regularly bring their ground-breaking ideas and perspectives to stages all over the world.
Casey Erin Clark is a voice, public speaking, and communication coach, performer, author, entrepreneur, podcast host, and leader in both the entertainment and business worlds. She is a fierce advocate for gender justice and spends her days speaking, teaching, and writing about the power of women’s voices, while seizing fulfilling opportunities to perform on screen and stage. In 2014, Casey and Julie Fogh co-founded Vital Voice Training, a voice and speech coaching company on a mission to change the conversation about what leaders are “supposed” to sound like and empower everyone to own the power of their full vocal instrument and presence. Casey hails from the cornfields of southern Illinois (where she grew up singing with her family Von Trapp-style) and has a BFA in musical theater from Illinois Wesleyan University. She also coaches musical theater pros of all ages, is a member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA, performed at the 2013 Oscars with the Les Miserables movie cast, and sings with the Grammy-nominated and Tony-honored Broadway Inspirational Voices choir. Recommending romance novels and breakfast restaurants is her love language. Will perform the Lafayette speed rap from Hamilton on demand.
Julie Fogh is a voice coach, podcast host, and interpersonal communications specialist who works with speakers and leaders helping them navigate their individual tensions and blocks, revealing the personal power and unique and captivating humanity that exists in all of us. Through Vital Voice Training, Julie and her co-founder Casey Erin Clark blend the toolbox of the professional actor with their powerful frameworks for embracing one's authentic speaking voice to businesses, schools, and organizations all over the country including Thrive Capital, Facebook, Google, NASA and The Hartford. Julie was raised in Seattle and earned her BA in Theatre and Women Studies from University of Washington. She earned an MFA in acting from Northern Illinois University, a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum that engaged with the physical body, the emotional life, imagination, use of language, character construction, non-verbal communication and the truth of the moment. She has studied with the Moscow Art Theatre and University of Copenhagen and has studied Meisner Technique with Kathryn Gately, Michael Chekhov Technique with Deborah Robertson, and Movement and Period Style with Lloyd Williamson. She loves YA novels, introverts, and her very vocal rescue cat, Ashland.
Quotes:
When we walk into a room, every time we go into a meeting, we are there for a purpose. We always communicate with a purpose in mind. So we need to give ourselves the agency to ask why am I here and what am I trying to accomplish?
Our mission from the beginning of this company has been to expand our ideas of what leadership looks and sounds like. We do that in part by showing up with more of who we are, even in spaces where that is risky and where that may not always pay off. But we do it strategically, we do it bravely, and we do it consistently so that other people can also do it.
Leaving Well is the ability to really figure out for yourself and for the people that you care about how to button this chapter, how to transition, how to move forward.
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Transcript:
My goodness. The conversation that you're about to hear with Julie and Casey is a really important one. I think when we think about the way that we show up to work, how we bring our best selves, and how we cover, how we method, act, how we. Find the parts of ourselves that we want to share with those that we work with, and how we can implement it all into integrating into a, a better version of ourselves and the truest version of ourselves.
I hope that you enjoy this conversation. Vital Voice Training is a communication consultancy out to revolutionize the conversation about good public speaking and leadership presence. From stressing out about your ums and your uhs to working creatively at the intersection of you and your context. Since 2014, they've been bringing game changing public speaking and communication training to individuals and organizations specializing in building public speaking, navigating difficult conversations, balancing authenticity and situational adaptivity, and bringing out their client's own unique charisma.
Co-founders Julie Fa and Casey Erin Clark are experienced professional actors. Their approach is grounded in theater and performance, neuroscience, somatics, sociolinguistics, and organizational psychology. Their clients are leaders in the finance venture capital law and tech industries, as well as world changing entrepreneurs, bestselling authors, and in-demand keynote speakers.
Who regularly bring their groundbreaking ideas and perspectives to stages all over the world. Casey is a voice, public speaking and communications coach, performer, author, entrepreneur, podcast host, and leader in both entertainment and business worlds. She's a fierce advocate for gender justice and spends her days speaking, teaching and writing about the power of women's voices while seizing, fulfilling opportunities to perform on screen and stage.
Julie is a voice coach, podcast hosts, host and interpersonal communication specialist who works with speakers and leaders, helping them navigate their individual tensions and blocks revealing the personal power and unique and captivating humanity that exists in all of us. All right, Julie and Casey, my first question for you is taking something from your recent email newsletter, which I absolutely adore if you aren't already on their email.
Newsletter, get on it, but you said if you don't like a required costume, you can make it part of your beginning and ending ritual. And then another part of that same email newsletter was talking about being able to step into the moment and you can also step out. So I'd love to just hear more about those ideas and those.
This is a concept that we learned about in, in our theater background. I mean, when you are an actor and you're playing a role, um, especially a role that's not necessarily like super close to who you are or that contains kind of some stressful elements to it, you really do have to be able to step into the character and step out of the character.
So costume is one of the quickest and easiest ways to do that. We have fairly complicated feelings sometimes about clothing, about how we judge people on appearances about the necessity of dressing up to blend in. Um, Julie and I have lovingly referred to some of our presentation outfits as finance drag thanks to a friend of ours named Amber Baldett.
And that said like, we know the power of costume in how we enter a room, how we are perceived. But that, that the ritual element of like, when that costume comes into play and when we let it go, is so, so, so important. And I wanna let Julie kind of expand on that exactly everything Casey said, but this idea of stepping in and out came.
My background from my movement teacher, whose name is Deborah Robertson, um, at Northern Illinois University, and this would be, we'd all come into the room and we'd do an artist shower, which involves putting your palms together, rubbing them, and then. Touching yourself all over your body to just make sure you still exist and you're still there.
And then this ritual of stepping into the creative space and that ritual is so important, not just for entering something completely on your own terms in your own agency, but that stepping back. Out. I think during the pandemic with everyone's identity collapse, we, we realized how important that is to have those transitions.
So for, for both of us, we really put that into our routine. I'm on, I'm off. Well, and I think what, what struck me about both of those concepts, and especially now that you're giving a little bit more context to them, is the power that I, what I hear a lot from my clients around, I think I need to leave this job.
Or I, um, maybe I'm, I'm new to the job and I'm not sure what I'm doing. It was like, oh, well try that. Try the idea of costume, try the idea of this version of your leadership being something that you maybe can't step in and out of as much, but what is the, what is the work need from you? And that's something you can step in and step out of, which is also helps, you know, with burnout and all those things.
Yeah. The core concept around the way we teach communication is that all communication is context specific and different contexts demand different things from us. So I, I think that as we approach. More complicated contexts or contexts that are demanding things from us that we either don't yet know how to give.
Coming to it from this place of experimentation and play and creativity, knowing that we have tools inside of us that maybe we've never called on before, but we are called upon to, to bring to this situation. That's where we can finally get. To a sense of agency as opposed to a sense of lack, and that is always where we're coming from as we teach communication.
Because like the foundation of our company has always been based on like no one's voice is broken, no one's communication is broken. Sometimes we just don't have the right skills for the scenario that we're in yet, or we don't know how to apply something yet. All of it is learnable, which. We're recording this right now, just a couple of days after the inauguration of the new presidency and administration, and that feels really potent and poignant because while we have been here before, we've not been here today in this version.
And so I think a lot of what we all have coming down, regardless of who you voted for or your belief system is stuff that we don't know yet. So that's a good reminder. I'd love to ask a little bit more about rituals, because you both talked about rituals in your answer to the last question when thinking about showing up, and maybe part of it is also around communication.
What lessons have you both learned about rituals and how important they are to the how we show up? For me, I straddle between competent. Leadership presenter, person and bedroom troll. So that's, that's a pretty wide spectrum for me. So without the ritual, I don't, Casey laughs 'cause she knows it's true. I don't have the scaffolding to get to my external.
I don't even wanna say persona. I'm an introvert. But I'm an introvert that has spent a great deal of time in the hospitality industry and I've devoted my life to. The art of theater for 25 plus years now. So I know that that introversion is not the an obstacle, but it is part of my given circumstances that I do need to do a bit more prep.
Ritual is the way I have found and days where we have presentations that start at nine, I am up at 5:00 AM because I need to be not just awake, but as my acting teacher, Katherine Galey taught me. Awake, like you have been awake forever, awake by 9:00 AM and I have a pretty complex spiritual, physical, mental, emotional preparation system that I do within that time, um, that has truly expanded and benefited my work on stage.
I have a couple of thoughts as we, as we think about rituals. So first of all, my stage rituals were so much framed around what I had to do to warm up specifically my voice as a singer. So, so that was always something I was like hyper aware of. What are the demands on my body and my voice that this show is putting on me?
And what are the routines that I have to put in place in order to support my ability to. Sing a Q Sharp in the stratosphere 48 times this week, like it's it that self-care is so part of it. The other thing that it makes me think about, especially now as I have aged, as I am confronting my own perfectionism, as I am confronting my own people pleasing like.
All the time. I'm noticing that I have a different relationship to like the box checking and the gold star getting that. I used to really, really need slash crave slash desire as a younger person, and I'm getting a little bit more rebellious. So I think for me, reframing like good habits as. Rituals kind of makes them feel better to me.
They, it, it has a little more juiciness, a little more magic, a little more freedom, a little more, again, agency choice as opposed to you should do those things. You know that I'm, I'm not, I'm not finding myself responding to that very well anymore. I love what you both just said, and I just thinking about the nonprofit leader who's listening to this, or board member or staffer, just thinking about what is it you can do either if it's to be awake, you know, by nine o'clock when you show up at work, or whether it's the actual physical thing that you need to do to warm yourself up.
So good, like so many great takeaways, uh, from what you both just said. I also have a question that's very specific around performance and the relationships that are built around performing. In my thought, you might, you might have a reality based different way to define this, but to me, I think about cast members and stage hands and crews.
What can you share about what you've noticed when it comes time to thoughtfully depart from a show's cast or the people that you've built around you to get to a performance outcome? When you have to say goodbye, is there anything that you could touch on there? Julie and I were just talking about this this morning.
One of the really fascinating things about being a professional actor in the theater world in particular, but I know this, this applies to film and TV as well, is that we, we are constantly entering these sort of. Hyper intimate, hyper collaborative environments. I think that there's, especially in nonprofits, there's a, there's, there are some similarities there, right?
But in theater, you know, in a regional theater gig, you're not only working with these people, you're also living with them like, and you're collaborating on something that has to be created very quickly and often, like with really intimate parameters in it. So we create these kind of fast and furious relationships, and then the show's over and you move on.
And I think that. Theater people do learn, I think I wanna put it as a lack of attachment to long-term relationships and jobs, because so few of our jobs are long-term. I don't know that that necessarily always translates to like a healthy leaving practice though. I, I think that it, it often manifests more in.
Like, well, we're gonna take what we can get out of this experience and ex sort of extract and move forward. I think that the, the experiences that I've had as an actor, that I have the most treasured, I do still retain those people, even if I don't, you know, talk to them that regularly, like. I'm sure that I could sit down with one of my sisters from Little Women, the musical in 2008 like tomorrow, having not seen them for years and fall back into the beautiful intimacy that we had in that moment.
But I think that I, I think, I know I'm still learning about how to leave something appropriately, um, and with, with the right energy. Julie, do you wanna expand on that? Based, we, we had a juicy conversation about this in preparation for this interview. Naomi, I'll have, you know. Yes. Where I was thinking about it is the, the different phases of leaving.
There's the pay attention to the red flag phase. There's the appropriately timed. You can do the productive things. And then there are these, I've stayed too long and now I have to burn it down. And I was being very open about the fact that my, my biggest transitions have been, I've stayed too long and now I have to burn it down.
I have not loved the outcomes of that because I'm a person that when I form relationships, I hold on to them. I it take a while to, well, if I know instantly, I know instantly, but otherwise it takes a while to warm up to folks and I don't wanna let them go. So. Whether that's, you know, a restaurant job or a theater production, or my life in New York City paying, yeah.
Paying attention to the people that I want to keep in touch with, ideally, and not waiting until it's just past expiration time to make the move, I think. And it's so, so important to hear you talk about also that. It doesn't have to mean that you have a lack of attachment going into it, because I know a lot of people will go in and say like, I'm not gonna make any friends, or I'm not gonna be in relationship with these folks.
And I love thinking about the intimacy that is needed for a performance, for a show, for a cast to be able to deliver on stage what the audience is coming for. You do have to lean into relationship and so it just, it just makes me think about the reality first that people leave is a reality. And then the other reality is we're always just on a journey to figure it out and to learn.
And maybe there isn't ever a place that we reach where we're good at leaving. One thing that I think that I have gotten better at as I've gotten older and left more, left more and more things as you do when you get older, it is like. Being able to sit down and process afterwards, both what? The leaving required of me or what made me notice when it was time to leave beyond just, and now the show closes, but also like what lessons I'm taking away from this experience.
I think that if Julie and I are anything, it is deeply curious and introspective and naval gaze. And so, um, I think those, uh, all of that naval gazing does at least lead to things like, oh, okay, here's what I learned from this. Even if it was complicated or, or even like. Disturbing or crappy or whatever.
Like there's always a lesson. Yeah. There's always a lesson to take away from an experience if we're bringing the parts of ourselves that are the, the best equipped to accomplish the task at hand. I think we can also do that with relationships, that we can connect from those really specific places and not have to feel like, you know, we need to be bosom buddies with every single person that we come across, but we don't have to freeze them out either.
Right. Yeah, and it also made me think about actually ritualizing the leaving. So if you know, um, if you're paying attention and if you're noticing and you're aware, then you can start to notice the patterns and the themes, and so being able to bring ritual to leaving also, you know, I think about, I. The, the leaving Well concept came from the expat world and from living abroad.
And so every time you left a posting, there was always some, some certain things that everyone did. We joke about it that the first thing that happens is people ask about your stuff. Are you taking that red, that really beautiful red armoire that I love because I'll take it if you're not, if you're, if you're, if you're gonna leave it.
But what can happen is some intentional, um. Ranking your friends. That's kind of to your point, Julie, of like, who are the most important people that you need to prioritize as you're leaving. Um, maybe it's that you wanna make sure that you say goodbye if you, especially if you're in a show that is location based and you're gonna go back home.
Where do you need to say goodbye to? What, who are the servers at your favorite restaurants? Um, and so Ritualizing, the leaving is also. Probably a good idea you all. I wanna pivot a little bit. You both wrote an incredible piece for M LaFleur and then also delivered a workshop for their, I think their staff.
I'll link it. It's a great article, but I'd love to know what each of your favorite points were that you made in the article. This was kind of a round work meetings and productivity. Um, so I'd love to just have you share your favorites from that article. The biggest thing, uh, that has. Struck a nerve in, in the sense of, oh, is this idea of your role and your goal, knowing what your given circumstances are before we enter a meeting?
And not in a way that adds more homework, but in a way that can help give you the rules of engagement. So having a target, because I, I love to say you can be the best archer in the world, but without a target, you're gonna miss every time. I wanna expand on, on role and goal for people who may not immediately understand what we mean by that.
So this idea that every time we walk into a room, every time we go into a meeting or a presentation or whatever, we are there for a purpose. We always communicate with a purpose in mind. Now whether that purpose is like clearly articulated to ourselves. Or not. Uh, it's there. We are always communicating for a reason.
So when we give ourselves, I keep coming back to this word, the agency to go, okay, why am I here and what am I trying to accomplish? With some additional questions in mind that are also in the article, which is, what is this meeting about and what is this meeting really about? Because those are some juicy questions, right?
Um, and frankly, so much of the time. The person running the meeting doesn't actually know the answer to that. Unfortunately, that is the state of so much modern meeting culture. But if you can figure it out for yourself, then you can get clearer on like, what am I here to do and who am I called to be to do it?
And then my personal favorite part about it is like, nobody has to know your answers to that question. Like those can be your secret, which means you can have fun with them. So like our recommended roles that if you choose to read this article, you'll see are like things that are fun. Like are you the host of this meet?
Are you imagining yourself to be the host of this party? Are you the tour guide through the complex information? Are you my personal favorite? Are you the glamorous lady detective who's here to like figure stuff out and make it happen? Right? That's where we can bring that. That sparkle in the eye back to things like that, little twinkle in the eye does so much for your charisma and your ability to like really show up.
I just, I have this thought of like, or this dream as you're both were talking about, I. What it could look like to go into a work meeting with both a goal and a role, and then to bring sparkle to it. I mean, that can change so much about the actual practice of, of working. You know, I think a lot of people talk about like a meeting needs to have an agenda.
If it, there's no agenda, I'm not going. Those are all things that I also can subscribe to and I, I'm with that, but how much joy and fun it is to bring what you both just said into work meetings. That's amazing. I think you can also expand, I'm just thinking out loud. You can expand that idea to like what's the goal and the role of your work period.
Uh, make it even bigger than just a meeting. This is, is what we would call in the acting world, you're super objective. Like what is your whole objective for the play? Yes. Well, we work with a lot of folks who have been given the specific feedback of, you need to speak up more in meetings. Which is a very difficult thing to do without a role and goal, to just sit and play random defense so that words can come out that are disconnected.
Isn't serving anybody least of all the meeting yet? We do. We do wanna get our ideas out there, so something more focused. Why am I saying this? You don't have to know, but I know and it doesn't leave me in that place of like that we land in sometimes in meetings. That's so powerful when I dig down with my clients about, say they're leaving or they're navigating some of those decisions.
It all. It often comes down to disconnect or dissatisfaction with their work and some of the things you're talking about, it might not solve for everything. You might still need to leave your role, but it sure helps. In the meantime, you be more grounded and connected to the day-to-day of work. Yeah, I really love that.
I wanna leave space right here for anything else on those topics before I pivot again to another, um, question. Is there anything else that comes up for, for either of you around goals and roles? The way that we show up for our work? I will say so much of what we've noticed lately in, in the spaces that we've been in, both virtually and in person, is.
It really does come down to the collective. What is our role and what is our goal in this meeting, which is a, a lack of facilitation. Right now facilitation is one of the most. Crucial skills for difficult conversations, for meeting a room where people are, are really nervous or, or upset or feeling fear or feeling anxiety about the state of the world or about, about the state of the organization itself.
Like how do we create the container? How do we run the conversation? How do we make sure that voices are heard? How do we, you know, prevent over talkers like. All of these like core competency facilitation skills. I think that especially in organizations where you often have like individual, like really strong individual contributors who suddenly have to be managers or suddenly have to run really complex things, like they're not being equipped with these skills and like We wanna help, like this is, again, this is given circumstances design and it goes beyond just does this meeting have an agenda?
The agenda is like. Baseline. I also wanna add something I've been thinking about, especially for folks that are in toxic work environments. The, the, the actual nervous system response that we often have is shrinking in it's contraction. And I think it is critical. This is a little bit separate. I. We need to find opportunities, whether it's in our private spaces or in front of people, to be as big as we can be and be as loud as we can be.
We, we want to keep connected to those skills. I think that can do a lot for making us feel less taken down by toxic environments. Yeah, I love that. And that's part of what I love about Vital Voices is you are really just huge. Insistence that we, especially women, anyone who comes from a, you know, a, um, marginalized background or set of lived experiences that we do sit and take up as much space as we possibly can.
And I also wanna go back to given circumstances design, because when you said that, Casey, I was like, mm-hmm. Okay. I know what given circumstances means, but I'd just love to learn more about what that is. Yeah. So for anyone who doesn't know what given circumstances means, uh, this is the theater term for the who, what, when, where, and why of our scene.
It's literally, it's we're, we're, we're naming things, we're, we're figuring out our context, we're investigating our context. I think a lot of the times when we, um, talk about this concept with clients, they have a little bit of a, like, danger will Robinson thing happen because they, they think it sounds like homework.
Like, oh, I have to, like, think about all of this stuff. And that's just more input and more, you know, things for me to be anxious about. No, no, no, no, no. We identify our given circumstances, at least partially to let go of the uncontrollable because if there is anything that we recognize in every high achiever that we ever meet and we meet a lot of 'em, it is that instinct to control like we wanna control.
And there's so little, at the end of the day, when it comes to communication that we have full control over, that doesn't mean that we don't have any. Or it doesn't mean that we don't have any, I'm gonna use the word again, agency, right? So given circumstances, design can be as. Personal and simple as back to costume.
Like what am I gonna wear to feel confident in this meeting? Do I need a bold lip? Do I need some like kick-ass earrings like Naomi is wearing right now? All the way to, okay, I'm the facilitator of this meeting. What time of day is gonna be best for this experience? Do I need to have food in the room?
What kind of environment am I creating for these people? And that's where you can play. Actors know that you cannot be the actor and the director at the same time, but you can beforehand play director a little bit. And in that way back to creativity, you can design more of how this experience is going to happen and, and take a little bit of that creativity back.
When we think about voice, we talk about everything that makes you, you, makes your voice, your voice, and your communication is that voice plus the context and the context is the given circumstances in, in its simplest terms, but. How do you figure out what that context is? So one of the places I have turned to is my training and style work.
Actors get trained in different eras to for play, you know, restoration plays or 1930s plays. And you really have to understand, I. The rhythm of the interactions, the stories that are motivating them, the status, the angles that are popular in the day, all of these things. And I realized we can use this kind of breakdown to actually suss out what are the unwritten rules in office culture, in office context.
So these aren't questions that are just meant to answer. These are things that are. Genuinely going to impact the fundamental thing of why I say what I say and the way that I say it. And the more we can spot and work with those, I think again, the more agency we have. I've got chills and that was like, it landed so solidly with me.
And I'm also thinking about the power of then also naming that for other people. The, the beautiful power of saying, I'm noticing for myself that I am the best at two o'clock and I'm also the best when I've got, you know, my tea. So you'll notice that every single time we have a meeting, I'm gonna, it's gonna be a two.
And here's why. That starts to shift culture in workplaces. My gosh. More of this, please. Well, 'cause it's. It's the naming right. It so much of culture ends up being under the surface, not named, expected to be intuited, and especially as we move. Unfortunately toward a world where, where even talking about this stuff explicitly as being labeled as negative, which is insanity, right?
We're gonna have to be more explicit about the benefits of naming culture, the benefits of, of understanding the architecture of culture. And we're gonna have to like dare to do it even if people tell us that it's not. Useful because we know it's useful. That ability to, to ask those questions and stay curious and if, if you're a leader of an organization to make explicit what is implicit is so powerful.
I recently took an interim gig with an organization and their question for me during the interview process was, how will you know? About what we do. You know, do you have specific expertise in the thing that we do in the community that we serve? And it kind of popped outta my mouth and it resonated with them.
So I'm starting to use it, but I, and I would love to hear a little bit more, this is a question I didn't have you plan for. I said to them, I do it like a method actor. Like I. Do research, I put myself as though I am the executive director. So by the time I start, no one knows the difference. No one knows that I had no idea three months ago what this body of work is because it's on me and it's my job to do that research.
And Juliet made me think of when you were talking about like the 1930s, you have to go. I don't know, immerse yourself in that for a little bit. So I'd just love to hear a little bit more from both of you if you have thoughts to give around. 'cause it goes back to the costuming and it goes back to the step in, step out, um, around what could we do if we are finding ourselves?
Here's the question. If you are in a maybe toxic situation or a situation that's not toxic, but you just know it's time to leave, or maybe you're stepping into a role that doesn't really light you up as much as you hoped, or for whatever reason, it's just not a good fit. How would you both bring what you know about acting, whether it's method or another way to that that scenario?
That's a really wonky question to ask you, but curious what you would say. That's a great question, and I love that you were thinking about empathetically stepping into someone's shoes. What I have found extraordinarily helpful, and I really want to. Say this before I get into that because I, this, this is not a goal of spiritual bypassing or ignoring things that feel bad, what I'm about to say.
I wanna make that very clear, but. We do have some agency about the energy we walk into a room with, and that is very much connected to, for me, my dramatic imagination or maladaptive, daydreaming, depending on which world you wanna get that from. So, so for me. Again, part of this ritual, getting myself in the head space, the emotional space, because that reads when I walk into a room, if I spend time ahead of time thinking about everything that sucks or something that annoyed me, I'm gonna walk into the room with a weird energy going on.
So I think that can only take us so far. Sometimes it's so toxic that the thing that you can do is just make sure you're breathing, and sometimes that's enough. But this is another potential tool. Naomi, what this makes me think of is some of the more extreme roles that I've played, and again, the things that I've learned from them.
I tell this story a lot in workshops. Several years ago I did a new musical called Play like a Winner where I played. Um, if you've seen the movie Mean Girls, think Regina George all grown up as a soccer mom in Connecticut. So like. She was the queen bee. She was the bitch. She was unquestionably at all times, the most powerful person on stage.
She also did and said things that I would never in a hundred million years do that in the real world. However, I. Exploring what it felt like to be unquestionably the most powerful person on stage exploring, uh, what it felt like to say the meanest thing that someone else wrote to another person, and like that.
Taught me things about myself that I now carry into rooms where my ethics would still never let me act like Melissa, but I know I have it in me if I needed to call on it. And I think so much of. The exploration that we really love doing with clients who are willing to go there is to explore the edges because sometimes the world requires our edges like staying kind of safe, calm, neutral.
I am unflappable in the situation like a boring as hell, B, probably not serving you in the way that you think it's serving you. So like what does it actually feel like to in a safe. Place, explore big anger, big sound, big feelings, big judgment. Big bitchiness. Big fabulousness. Like what does that feel like?
And then how can we bring that with strategy in where it belongs? So, so juicy. Like I'm sitting here nodding my mm-hmm. Seriously, while both of you were talking because it just, I literally am envisioning such a world in the workplace that if we embodied some of this stuff and practiced it, and I guess that's the key, right?
You have to practice. Um, just how much more Yes. Enjoyable and joyful it all would be. Well, and how much more space we would have for different. Ways of communicating, like that's it. This is the, you have to see it. To be it aspect of our work. We, we started, you know, with this understanding that most people were being taught to communicate correctly and correctly.
Met a very narrow box of what leadership looks and sounds like. And our mission from the beginning of this company has been expand our ideas of what leadership looks and sound like. And we do that in part by showing up with more of who we are, even in spaces where that is risky and where that may not always pay off for us.
Um, but we do it strategically. We do it bravely and we do it consistently so that other people can also do it. I love that. This is a good pivot. Exactly what you were talking about, Casey, because I wanted to ask you about, or I wanted to talk a little bit with you about my work with you, and it's funny because I came to you to help me craft a signature talk on leaving well, so that I could take it to the stage.
And what I found is that. I mean like, spoiler alert, it hasn't been spoken those words on a stage, but what it did was helped me remember my leadership. It helped me with my confidence. It helped me even ground into the realities of the work that I do and how to communicate it out, which has. It been so helpful as I talk to clients, as I talk to humans, as I, you know, just I in spaces with people.
So I'd love to know a little bit from you about maybe just general client takeaways. What are you learning about the process that you've developed for working with clients? What are you learning about Some of the things you just mentioned, Casey, about, like what have you seen from clients when you've worked with them that has just changed the way that they enter spaces or that they show up?
I'm thinking about. Our work together, which is diving into that. Big mission or super objective, as Casey was saying, is one of my favorite things, and it's one of my favorite things because you already knew the answers. And I think that's such an important part of this work, is we are not teaching you anything your body's not capable of knowing.
Your mind's not capable of knowing, and in fact, often we're mirroring back to you what you have just said. I've had clients say to me, wow, I can't believe that's, that's really amazing. Like, yes, you just said that. To me, literally, those are your words. So I I, I think allowing people to know that a, they're, they're, they don't need to be fixed, creates a, a confidence and having them own their part in the process of this improvement that they're seeking or whatever the goal that they're looking at is, to me, you just, you just see a difference.
That, and permission to take space. Going back to taking space. Well, and you haven't said it yet today, but let your butt be big. Yes. Hell yeah.
Yeah. I think that over the 10 plus years of Vital Voice training, one of the things that we have realized is who our ideal clients really are, who the people who light us up are. And I think it really comes down to. Uh, kind of the control versus the creativity when people are willing to. A kind of confront the fear of a lack of control.
I cannot control this outcome. I cannot be a perfect communicator. There's no way to do that. But then move out of what we've started calling the right answer mindset into this creative mindset where communication is essentially a, an act of creativity all the time. Always you're doing it and you're doing it well when you're comfortable.
So how can we understand? How to regulate our nervous systems, how to take up space, how to understand our, our context a little bit better, not so we can get rid of discomfort because that's impossible, but so we can learn to dance with it. Learn to deal with it, learn to habituate to it to a certain extent.
Learn to honor it as a part of what our brain is designed to do for us, and then learn to play with it. Play while it happens. That play, especially right now, is I think one of the most powerful tools that we have against a world that wants to burn us out. A world that wants to shut us up, A world that wants us to capitulate to whatever is in power at the moment.
Like if we, if we're like, no, we're gonna create instead, I love that. That's such a good, uh, connection to what I use as my tagline with leaving Well, which is you, you're leaving, which is a, a reality. It's gonna happen, but can you add joy? Can you add delight to it? Mm-hmm. Um, I love that so much. I would love as we start to kind of wrap up this conversation for each of you to share a little bit about your own relationship to change and or transition.
Well, for me, I feel like I've been in a perpetual state of transition since 2017, um, which is when I made a very big life choice and buttoned my New York life and moved out to San Francisco. I don't like change. I desperately need it. I need, but I also need structure, so I. Respond to change, sometimes kicking and screaming, but I think that this work, or finding what's deeper beneath the change has been really, really helpful.
What's, what's my deepest anchor I can connect with? Helps me when it feels like the world is exploding all around me. I, I just got back from Mexico City with a few girlfriends to celebrate one of their 40th birthdays, which was so joyful and wonderful. Um, and we went to the absolutely fabulous and extraordinary, uh, national anthropology museum in Mexico City, which is this beautiful depiction of Mexican culture and all the different sort of microcultures within this country and everything.
And, and it brought me back to this, this. Thing that I feel like I notice every time I go to a museum, particularly in another country, particularly in a country older than America, which is the cycles and pendulums and perpetual motion of human culture and human history, and it is just a reminder that like the history of the world and the history of humanity is perpetual change.
I, I think my biggest shift that I've made over say, uh, I don't know about the last 10 years is. Realizing this like insane level of privilege and certainty that I grew up with, that like the world was created for me and that everything was gonna be fine and that, you know, life was gonna be sort of like, yes, of course hard things are gonna happen in your life.
Of course they are, but like in general, things are good, right? Things are, you know, I was an, I am, I am a classic elder millennial in that way. Then being confronted with a world that's so much less certain, so much more precarious than I was prepared to understand even as a young adult, I. And then being able to look at the larger cycles of history to look at places like Tiri, uh, in, in Greece where like Tiri was as ancient to Pompeii as Pompeii was ancient to us.
Tiri, like walking around that archeological site, like they have three story houses in indoor plumbing, like the cycle of history is growth and, and, and then decay. And then more growth. And then more decay. And I'm like. Like, I'm a blip. I'm a, I'm a blip on this, on this massive scale. And, and there is, there is a little bit of fear and awe in that.
And then there's also like, okay, so, so I'm gonna make the little ripples that I can make and I'm gonna ride this wave and I'm gonna see what happens next. There's so much beauty and I think, uh, an ability to ground yourself. When you realize that you are only in charge of so many things, then you get to choose Yes.
How you are going to act about those things that you're in charge of. Yeah. Yes. 'cause us eldest daughters really wanna be in charge of everything. Everything, everything. What, what does leaving well mean? To you both. And I'll also give you space if there's anything else that comes up that I haven't asked you, um, as we close up our time together.
It's, it's funny 'cause it sort of connects to, I was thinking back to Octavia Butler, uh, parable of the Sower. God has change and I think that there is a spiritual aspect to leaving well. I think that honoring those transitions is so important. Like you said, it doesn't change whether it's, it's going to happen.
This, the acceptance of what is, isn't necessarily approval of what is, but it's the ability to really figure out for yourself and for the people that you care about how, how to button this chapter, how to transition, how to move forward. And I think that there is, I, to me. Those shifts when we allow them to have that deeper significance.
Um, I'm really trying not to use religious terms, but I do believe in, in that bigger, greater connection between us. All of the above, everything Julie just said. I think learning, learning and acknowledging the, the button, the, like, how do we create the button on this experience? Because I think that the, the tendency that I, that I still have, that I'm still working on is looking back and going, what if I'd done this better?
Or like, how could I have done this better? And. I think I'm becoming more and more comfortable and making it more and more of a practice to go, alright, well if I can't change anything that I did in the past, like how can I learn from that moving forward? Like, what can I take from this experience of leaving that then gets to inform the rest of my trajectory as a human without beating myself up without, without going like, ah, I failed.
Like, yeah. This has been so good. I feel like always when I'm in your presence, I feel like we could talk for another hour, two hours. Yes. I'll ask soon. Thank you both so much for this conversation. Thank you for your work with Vital Voice Training. Um, thank you for your friendship and for all that you're doing to one client at a time.
One article, one workshop, um, at a time changing the way that we show up in this world that we're find ourselves in. I appreciate you both. Oh, thank you so much, Naomi. This was a delight as always. Same. Thank you. Thank you. If you are an organizational leader, board member, or a curious staff member, take the Leaving Well assessment to discover your organization's transition readiness archetype.
It's quick and easy, and you can find it at naomi hattaway.com/assessment. That's Naomi, N-A-O-M-I. Hattaway, H-A-T-T-A-W-A y.com/assessment to learn more about leaving well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace. You can also see that information on my website.
It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hadaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Wealth, a Navigation Guide for Workplace Transitions.