There are many phases in the journey leading people and leading organizations. Depending on your approach, or ambitions, or conditioning or even your wounding, sometimes the phase is dark, and feels really hard, and really heavy. Perhaps it gets dark and hard regardless and inevitably.
I am ten years into this sacred endeavor of founding and leading an organization – Axis Talent Partners – that is built with liberatory principles. I began, and have been joined by numerous beloved co-creators along the way, before any of us were regularly using this kind of language in our work… anti-racism, equity and belonging, liberatory culture. We are now a proud, mission-driven, fiercely dedicated team of nearly a dozen women, primarily women of color, all working toward this cause of seeking something different in work.
Liberatory culture for us is characterized by an organizational mindset that centers the human beings who work within it above all else. Where we are uncompromising about centering our values in all that we do. It means a culture that bends hard toward transparency of information and decision-making; toward significant flexibility and autonomy in the scheduling of, expression of, and time away from work; and toward constant examination of and deprogramming from dominant culture conditioning. It means while striving to provide outstanding, equity-centered client services (in this case executive search), we are reimagining a work paradigm of true thriving as individuals (in this case, all woman, mostly women of color, a lot of parents, aunties, partners and care-takers) and as a collective. Where we bring all of ourselves into work instead of compartmentalizing the totality of who we are. We find deep community in the nurturing and support of each other, truly believing each person is and brings enough. Collectively and individually we have all been discouraged, overlooked, not trusted, made to feel inadequate, other, incompetent, not enough or outright harmed in work. In some ways, we are looking for professional healing. It is a lot. There are fits and starts. There is failure. Hence… really hard, and really heavy.
We have made all the classic (and certainly some context-specific) growing-organization mistakes, even when we should have known better, watching our brilliant clients for nearly a decade. We thought we were exceptional in our intentional-ness and ability to push through growth pain to the “other side.” We grew too fast. We needed way more infrastructure than we had. Flush from the post 2020 DEI-services rush and COVID federal grant funding bump, we lost perspective about potential challenges or changes in this new and ever-evolving recruitment landscape. Our expenses zoomed past our income. Essential and extraordinary team members have and will transition. In all of this building, we will have to rebuild as well.
I should also say that I have made so many mistakes. The hard lessons are at every turn. I have not managed colleagues effectively or equitably. I have not understood our finances nearly enough. In all my delivery of mitigating bias discussions, I am often drowning in my own affinity bias. I miss obvious things. I struggle with boundaries, depletion and resentment. I have even made others feel hurt or not seen, the very thing I began this endeavor to oppose. The self examination and mirror that must be held up in this work can be brutal. Hence… the journey can be dark.
But there is much that can be celebrated in our accomplishments. We’ve onboarded and supported nine incredible women who continue to evolve and expand their leadership and expertise in our work and our culture. In a tough economy we doubled our revenue. We’ve grown into social change issue areas, like advocacy and reproductive justice and philanthropy, which used to elude us. We designed the most extraordinary and values centered employee guide I’ve ever laid eyes on.
They are harder for me to see but there are even things to celebrate in my own learning and accomplishments. I understand much more about my strengths and challenges and how they show up in my leadership. I have practices for both self regulation and supporting others. I’m honing in on the use, expression, and tempering of my passionate conviction. With all of this, we are realizing a professional home that is unlike any other. And for some, is where they always want to be.
With each dark, heavy phase in leadership (in life too certainly), when glimmers of light come through, they are especially brilliant, and instructive. While it is certain, as we know, that darkness is necessary for growth (for the individual, the leader, the organization), there is another equally important truth. Dark seasons pass and lighter ones lie ahead.
The irony in building a liberatory work paradigm, which may sound idyllic on its face, is that the lift of it does not end. You are never ‘free’ from the incredible effort of it. With all of the inquiry and unwinding and reimagining and inevitable self and collective reflection, (that alone can fill up weeks and months!) strain and burnout come. Pausing, tabling, falling, getting up again are frequent. The learning is enormous.
Here is what I can share on the learning. Even when you think you are going slow and measured with growth, go slower. Get your footing for a good year or two or three after hiring more than a couple new folks if you can. Even when you think you saved for growth, you won’t be able to conceive how your expenses will balloon. And they will. Save more, spend less, analyze and forecast again before you grow.
And the work you must do as the person leading the growth and change? The work you must do on you as the person leading the growth and change? That will likely not end either. You will react poorly, defensively, emotionally to a variety of situations. You will have to keep learning and keep repairing. If you are a founder, you will too late begin to understand that you are impossibly, irrationally attached to this thing you founded as if you were nurturing and protecting your offspring. You will have to learn to steady, center, and ground yourself, so that you show up for your team and your family the way you need and want to. You will lose your confidence and your voice. You will find it again. You will learn the deep wisdom of staying quiet and curious. You’ll get better at discernment through pausing and listening and empowering. You’ll develop practices that help you reconnect to your own wisdom within. You will need to lean heavily on a tribe of advisors, mentors and coaches. You’ll realize you have to keep learning anew what energizes you. The expertise and strengths you need around you might shift or change dramatically, as will your own.
Here is what I know now. Even through darker moments of leadership, when other committed and wise souls are building with you, amplifying values of liberation through one small act after another – extending grace for one who doesn’t for themselves, seeing growth and contribution when another can’t – the impossible is possible. There is a digging deep-ness to the hard parts of this journey where you reconnect to your own purpose and conviction, and know that if you are in true relationship with the community you have brought together or are responsible for leading – whether you are two or ten or a hundred – together you become a beautiful thing much greater than its parts.
I am reminded by a dear mentor and guide, there is beauty and terror in this journey of building for liberation. Isn’t this true about all acts of disruption, all acts of love even? We will get down, tired, mess up, lose strength and steam, and feel alone in this role. But we can also surrender to the passing season, knowing we will come out on the other side, with the replenishment of learning and sharing authentically in community. As I’m doing here.
As one of our colleagues recently shared with us so powerfully (paraphrasing her), we are being audacious enough to exist as we do here at Axis… we are comrades in what some days feels like an uphill battle… there are few spaces and places that exist that allow this kind of self actualization in the midst of the demands of capitalism. That we are this space for each other…that we exist here as we do at all… all the light one could need.
