In my last episode, I had a great conversation with Kayla Sachet about growing through change. She was stepping from solopreneur to agency owner and discovered she was becoming a new mom at the same time. That forced her to rethink everything she thought she knew about leadership. Today, I am drawing from that conversation to talk about what it really means to lead with grace, set boundaries that sustain you, and let go of perfectionism so you can lead more humanely and effectively. Hi, I'm Becky. Welcome to Short Story Long. In this podcast, we discuss ways you can integrate who you are into how you lead. Today I am offering strategies for building your skills as a leader. Let's break down what's important as you make your own meaningful shifts from me to we. Kayla's story is about redefining what success looks like when life and leadership collide. She built her business with determination and drive, but everything shifted when she became both a founder and a mother. The old definitions of control, time, and success just didn't fit anymore. What had once been about getting it all done turned into learning how to let some things go. Through that change, she discovered that leadership isn't about doing more, it's about leading differently. She learned how to value boundaries, show empathy, and give herself and her team the same grace she used to reserve for her clients. It wasn't about perfection anymore. It was about presence. What stood out to me in Kayla's journey is her courage to rewrite the story. And it makes me really think about how we need to rewrite our stories in ways like Kayla did, with, you know, trading productivity for a different kind of fulfillment and letting go of that pressure to be everything for the freedom to just be enough. Sometimes we need to be thinking about how leadership is actually personal. And it happens when we stop proving our worth and start living it. And that can show up in your work, your family, and just within yourself. At the core of Kayla's story, there's this piece where she was taking one leap when she realized she was also going to take another one. And you know, it takes courage to take a single risk. And it sometimes takes some grit and determination to pivot again in the midst of it. So when you're thinking about those times in your career where you've decided to make a change, and then all of a sudden something else shifted, and now your whole plan has to be revamped. Her original leap was in creating her own firm. She jumped from that nine to five into that solopreneur practice that she had built for herself. She took that bet on herself and then recognized that as her business grew, she wanted to shift into an agency model. We're not all Kayla moving from that individual solopreneur kind of environment into an agency. We do still have the opportunity to recognize our own leadership starts when we're willing to bet on our own potential before we actually have any proof. She was building foundations of proof. Kayla went from the nine to five to the individual before she made the leap into the full-on agency. Confidence doesn't actually precede courage. Sometimes what we need to do is build up some sort of momentum in order to keep us moving forward, but really it's that action that we take that gives us the confidence to try another action. So what we're really starting to do is function around this concept of informed instinct or informed intuition. The plan might still be forming because here's the thing: whatever your plan might have been, when some of the other things start shifting, you have to revise and evolve that plan anyway. When Kayla realized she was going to be a parent, she had to make one of those dramatic shifts. For you, it may be different. The markets might change. Team might change with someone going on leave or someone exiting the organization, or in a more positive sense, maybe someone is joining the organization. And how is it that you're going to incorporate that into your leadership style? Because that person will need to find their own path into that team dynamic. You, as the leader, don't control everything. So you cannot trust in that stability. You have to trust in you. And what I'd love to talk about today is how you choose that challenge and how you lean into that challenge within your leadership style. It won't surprise anyone when I say when you're making changes, it's worthwhile to do a little bit of analysis. It really becomes a question of are you redesigning your career? Is it your structure or strategies for your team? What is it that you're looking to shift and change? Is the world changing around you and you're just looking to adapt to that changing world? For Kayla, she dropped it down to a core change, the pronoun shift. She said it's really just a pronoun shift, I versus we. Instead of I will build this, it's we will get this done. Language teaches culture. When leaders change how they speak, they change how others see them. It also helps in terms of how others see themselves. We can use language to create safety for ourselves so that even in those big leaps, we're recognizing where some of that stability actually does exist that we can count on. What can be objectively predicted versus some of those things that are constantly shifting? So if you're changing a dynamic within your team and you're talking about those elements, it's important to be really thinking about what is it that's staying the same so that you can talk about these are the incremental or transformative changes that we're making on the other side. It's also important to be able to connect that to what we might call inclusive leadership. And that's when we start using those words like we and us. When you're using words like we, the others begin to own the outcome. When you communicate a change, and that's to yourself, to your team, or whomever it might be, words matter. We means that everyone is in it together. It's all of us collectively making an effort to make a shift and to make a change. The use of I sets you apart from the rest. That language matters. Are you part of the collective making the shift? Or are you distancing yourself and stepping outside of the team in order to make that shift? Even though Kayla went out on maternity leave, she still didn't create that full distance out. She created mechanisms to keep things moving smoothly, and she was really supporting her team members in identifying where they could plug themselves in to keep the wheels on the bus turning. And that's really about managing capacity and not about managing control. It was her willingness, and maybe the willingness you need to demonstrate to say, I need help. Because when you're scaling leadership, that means that you have to release control in order to expand the impact. You wouldn't have all of the people on your team if you were able to do it yourself. So ownership also is not all on you when you're driving with a team. Kayla owns the business that she has, so the full responsibility absolutely falls on her shoulders. But the weight of that responsibility can be shared. Other people can take ownership of their own areas, their own submissions into a final product. Accepting help doesn't mean that you're releasing that responsibility. It's truly about many hands making lighter work. My encouragement to leaders is always to design a system that frees your energy for strategy and not tasks. I often talk about stratification of responsibilities. I'm here to break it to you. You're not like everyone else. You're just not. You're more likely to create havoc and confusion by stepping into a system and a process that you're normally not part of. You are the conductor of the orchestra, and no one else can do that. You need to embrace your role and allow them to do theirs. Now, sometimes people will ask for help. I'm a big fan of absolutely roll up your sleeves and offer help. But you're going to flip the script then. You begin to ask what tasks. You begin to ask what tasks would be useful for you to do. Let them lead you when you're deep in the weeds in that way, so that you don't break anything that they've constructed already and have it as a a working system. Because if you parachute in, you're likely to cause mayhem. Mayhem, by very definition, is not going to be perfect. My encouragement to you is to find a way to balance minimization of the mayhem with not striving constantly for perfect. We often talk in all of these leadership circles. I am not the only one you've heard say that manage to do good work and don't worry so much about great. I know, I get it. It's hard. We want everything to be perfect, and we want everything to be just exceptional. Except the return on that is not high enough. Because perfectionism masquerades is excellence, but actually drains innovation. Kayla's comment was that we don't need to put all this pressure on ourselves to be 110% for everybody. Just showing up can be more than enough. I run half marathons periodically, 5K's, 10 K's, whatever it might be. I'm one of the few people who actually shows up at that starting line. The pace at which I get to the finish line is uniquely me. It's not about do I have to be first? Do I have to have a perfect run? It's really about did I get to the starting line? Did I make the effort? And did I get to the conclusion of that race, of that project, of that program and system build. Those are the things that matter. Did you start and did you continue to find your way forward? Because you can't predict the end at the beginning. You can set that stage, but you can't guarantee where you'll land at the end. One of the things that Kayla talked about when it comes to perfectionism that I thought was absolutely amazing was this idea of checking in. Do I just think I'm at 50%? Or is it really at 95%? And sometimes it's really hard when we're doing the task to recognize that we're actually done. It's enough. It meets the requirements that we've agreed to with our client. A client in this context could be an internal client within your organization. One of the things that's really important about how she was doing that is she was creating that scope, creating that plan. And anyone listening out there knows that you can work through and you can create that plan. And then it creeps and it crawls and it grows and it turns from a toddler into a teenager within five minutes, right? And so what happens is you can have that plan. You can have confidence in your plan. But like Kayla finding out that she was pregnant, all of a sudden you're mid-leap and the world is shifting in an entirely different direction, and you're trying to figure out how do I change while I'm in the air. Sometimes you need to put your foot down for your balance and then propel yourself in a slightly different direction, ideally in a forward direction where you wanted to head originally. Or if it is a really big like side hit of a change, then you may need to just stop and regroup. Kayla had to revamp her plan pretty significantly when she realized that she was going to have a baby. It didn't change her outcomes, but it, I am certain, changed the path that she took and the approach that she decided she needed to have. And that's true no matter where you're leading. When you're looking at a problem and you've come up with a solution, it's not likely to be exactly the design of the solution that you implement in the end. And maintaining that agility is critically important. One of the things that it makes me think about is you have this plan. And then it's an opportunity for you to set what I might call your container. How is it that you manage you? And that container might also expand out to include a larger container, if you will, that includes your team as well. One of the things that Kayla talked about was boundary setting. She talked about doing desk hours and really setting some of those boundaries on her time. And I would just reinforce boundaries aren't barriers. They're temporary limits. Sometimes they're firm limits, but they aren't barriers. They're the structure that can actually sustain the excellence of what you're producing. When you're over-available, then that ability to be that strategic person, to be able to be that conductor for the orchestra gets limited because you can't hear how all of the different horns and woodwinds and brass are coming together in that particular moment. And it could sound pretty clangy if you're not listening to it as a whole. So when you're thinking about, but I have to be in over here and I have to be in over here, no, no, you don't. No, you don't. Your opportunity is to step back, listen to the music that's being played, and understand where you can tweak things and go in and talk to the people in that space to say, you know what, I think your bass might be a little bit flat right there. Are they going to be happy to hear that? Yeah, maybe not. But is it important that they know? And here's the thing: we're not expecting them to be perfect. The other thing that we're wanting to have in that container for yourself, for your team, and beyond is actually the grace that is part of being human and recognizing that people don't always have a hundred percent capacity in each day. Compassion actually can strengthen accountability. Because when you are talking with a team member, colleague, whomever, and start saying, Boy, it seems like you're having a hard day today, and really touching base with them as a human, they might actually feel lifted up and appreciated and actually are able to go back in to doing the work that they were doing with a little bit more enthusiasm, a little bit brighter or clearer mind. And maybe not. Maybe it's just a really rough day. But they can sit back and be appreciated that they were seen, that they were valued despite the fact that they were operating maybe at 70, 80% today. Their commitment, their willingness when they're at 100% to push that extra mile is much more significant. If you don't treat them like a human, they won't treat you like a human either. We train people how to treat us. One of the key things that we have to think about too when we're shifting from a me mindset into a we mindset, we can't just leave ourselves out. For some, there's a temptation to say, I'm just going to focus all on you and I'm going to take care of all of you. The conductor has to take care of themselves as well. Kayla had talked about having to vouch for herself at the hospital because she was reporting that her mental health was fractured and that she was seeking help with that. It was repeatedly unnoticed until suddenly it was. And she was taken seriously, and she was able to get the help that she needed. You might be saying that you need help, and no one is responding to that. Sometimes we're saying something, we're asking for the help, but the person that we're asking for that help is in a place where they're not able to hear it. They're not seeing the need. Yes, you're saying it. Yes, it might even be clear. And no, they're not hearing it in the way that they need to hear it in order to get you the help that you want. And sometimes what it takes is repetition. And that's what Kayla found herself doing. She was in that wheel of repetition, filling out a form that, yes, if you're going to give me the form, you should look at the results on the form, right? But we see that in the workplace as well. We share information, we put it into reports, we send it off up the light leadership chain, and it doesn't get looked at. It doesn't get looked at with precision. The board might be looking at one piece of it, but not the whole of it in detail. And so sometimes when we're asking for help, we need to be able to package it in a way that says, right, so this is me asking you right now for help. And sometimes it has to be exactly that clear. One of the things that I would also encourage you to be thinking about is if you have team members coming to you, how are you maintaining that vigilance? How are you tuning into even some of the subtle cues so that you can ask? I'm kind of hearing that you're looking for some help here. What would be helpful to you in order to get from where you are to where you need to go? Because I'm feeling like there's something that you don't have that you want to have there. And you'll notice that I'm not leaning into it as, why is it that you can't get this done? Right? It's not a criticism, it's not a judgment of that person. It is really what is it that they need in order to get from here to there? There may not be a fault or a blame or a cause, it might just be. So we need to be able to pay attention to what our needs are and advocate for our needs while also tuning in to the advocacy that someone may not do that great, a job of doing. It's true. Because it's really hard to advocate for ourselves and it's really hard to ask for help. So listening for those needs can be a really critical thing. There's a lot of pieces that I've talked about here too, and one of the really key things that I really want to drive home is that your vision and your plan will go through a transition. With Kayla, one of the things that she had talked about was that she had a lot of direction. She had a lot of vision for what she actually really wanted to do, and still the unknown kept knocking on the door. And she stepped into one world and ended up in another. Vision isn't certainty. Planning isn't certainty. It's clarity about what matters most when certainty actually disappears. It gives you a direction to go, not a discrete outcome to achieve. You can hold that vision loosely that is anchored in purpose instead of in prediction. You can't predict the future. You can anticipate, but you can't name for certain what it's going to look like. So being able to plan enough to manage some of the movement and some some of the ambiguity that comes into that without feeling like you have to control it and force it into what the plan looked like. Instead, that ambiguity shows up and you start to say, is there an opportunity then for us to shift slightly and still achieve the spirit of the goal that we are pursuing? So with this, we have uncertainty, we have directions that we might want to go, and we can give ourselves and the people around us a little bit of grace. And when I think about a skill builder challenge, this is the skill builder challenge if you choose to accept it. And I would call it like a me to we sort of shift. Pay attention to how you talk about your work for one week. Think about it in terms of emails, meetings, talking to people in phone calls, you know, if you still do those archaic kinds of things. And then replace one I or me with we and us where it fits. Then notice how people respond. Do they step in more? Do they offer ideas? Do they feel and demonstrate that they feel like they're part of something bigger? You see, that's how ownership grows. Kayla's story is a reminder that leadership doesn't always follow the plan. It's what we choose to do when the plan falls apart, when growth collides with life, and the only option is to lead differently. She showed us what it looks like to trade grind for grace, to trade control for connection, and to shift from perfection to presence. Remember that leadership isn't a race to do more, it's the daily practice of staying curious, staying kind, and staying grounded in what truly matters. Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone who could benefit from it. Until next time, I'm Becky Fraser, reminding you to integrate who you are with how you lead. Okay, bye.