Rebecca Sutherns
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
the extent and the speed and the pathways you take to get there that feel like you. And so helping people visualize both the changes that we are moving toward or that are being put upon us. But also what continues, because I think the other thing we can do to reassure our brain and our nervous system is to be clear that not everything changes at the same time.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
It did feel during some of those darker years that everything was changing. But even in the midst of pandemic insanity, we still had to buy groceries. We still had to cook dinner. We still had to look after our families or whatever it was. And so helping our brains calm down by saying some things are not changing, even as other things are. can really reassure us.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And so reading with an individual person or an organization to say, are they someone who craves challenge and adventure? Can we tap into that? Are they someone who craves connection and belonging and relationship? Can we tap into that? Do they need more contribution? They've become a bit sort of self-focused.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
Do they need some outward orientation and more service in their life that's going to put them in a whole different mindset toward paying attention to what's going on with others around them rather than themselves.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
There's just all kinds of tools we can use to help people push a little so that they feel energized and that they're making a meaningful, purposeful contribution, but they don't feel so threatened that they shut down.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
Yeah, I love that. Thanks for asking that. There's things that you want to talk to your parents about and there's things that you don't, right? And so I'm grateful that I'm close with all of my kids and we talk about lots of things. And also I'm sure that there's things that they don't share with me or that I wouldn't be the person that they would choose to come to.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
I want to honor everybody's space to choose who they want to speak to about certain things, but... We do have a bit of a joke in my family that I should have been one of those high school guidance counselor kind of people. I love, I've really enjoyed helping my kids figure out what university to attend, for example, and what pathways to follow.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And as I mentioned, we love travel and there's a lot of sort of trip.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
planning and trip imagining and dreaming that goes on we took a sabbatical I told you about in 2017 but we certainly have we've done home exchanges and lots of other creative ways to to travel the world and so I feel like if any of them were sitting here they would say what do I ask mom to do I ask her to edit my essays I ask her to plan my trips and
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
I ask her to help my friends and I decide what schools to attend. Those kinds of things come up. And you mentioned that I host a book club. I do. I host a monthly leadership book club. And the idea is that we cover four to six titles a month, but you don't have to read the books. I read the books. It's one of the occupational hazards of having a PhD is that I know how to read really quickly.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
are rearview mirror, backwards-looking tools rather than future-oriented tools. And we're not even aware of that. And so I think sometimes if we look at our data, for example, evidence, whatever that might be, that almost by definition is what has happened in the past, right? We look for patterns that have happened in the past. Or we look at our resume, our CV.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So I read the books. And I talk about them for an hour. So I'm like the human Blinkist. When people come on for an hour and they hear about four to six recent titles in the leadership and self-development space and decide if they want to read them or if that gives them enough of a sense, if it comes up in conversation, they can at least chat about it intelligently.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And a couple of my kids come to that book club. And so it's interesting to me the different little parts of my work that are starting to intersect with their lives. They're all into their own things, but I think it's really important that obviously the skills that we bring to our paid clients are also ones that I don't know, it makes me think of the word integrity.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And I mean that from the actual meaning of the word, that there's a fullness that says, this is the kind of person I am and this is how I show up in the world. And whether I'm talking about those things with my own children or with my paid clients or with my friends, it's how I show up.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And I think when you have, I guess, a personal brand as opposed to a corporate brand, there's an authenticity there that I think has to come through. And I won't be for everyone. That's okay with me. But I think if I can show that level of,
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
consistent integrity across what I do I'm hoping that my own family and my paid clients would know that what is what you get and and the way that people describe the work that I do is this warm energy combined with insight and if that can be helpful to my own family so much the better yes absolutely and you're so right the balance between guiding and letting go is such a delicate part of parenting
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
I was going to say, I feel like you've just described the parenting journey, but I think one of the things that we've really valued in our family is learning, is teachability. Our kids have had the benefit of having some really great coaches in the sports that they've done and their music and that kind of thing. They've had some really great teachers. They've had some really not great ones.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And we've really encouraged them to seek out teachers. good role models and good mentors and be people who value feedback. Three of our kids were dancers and they learned through one particular dance studio that they studied with for years that corrections are gold. They would say that.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
If I said to any of my girls, corrections are, they would all say gold because they learn that being given feedback to get better is a gift and they know to thank people for that. And so I hope that has really permeated and it makes me realize that the people that I most enjoy working with are people, like whether they are my kids or paid clients, are people who are teachable people who
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
We look at the experience and expertise we're bringing in our biography, our autobiography. All of that is good stuff, and it's really important in getting us to know the specifics of what we love. I love tapping into people's very sort of quirky personal energy around what they love and what their own sort of superpowers are.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
really want to learn from people who inspire them and who want to get better and who want to level up. And I want to be modeling that in my own practice and work. And I want to encourage that in other people, whether they choose to tap into any wisdom that I might bring or to what other people are saying.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
I really, I'm valuing that combination of curiosity and teachability that I think great leaders have.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
If folks are curious about giving some language to maybe what they are experiencing right now that feels like transition, we'll make sure in the show notes that there's a link to a podcast page on my site that takes them to a little, we've got a little quiz that you can try that will give you
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
some idea of where you're at right now across five different areas that most people in transition are craving. And also you can order there an e-copy of the book Elastic that I mentioned. And so would love people to get that in their hands. It's got that metaphor. It's got an acronym of Elastic across seven different leadership qualities that I think are under-
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
written about, underplayed in terms of leadership work. And it's got some interesting case studies that are not the typical large kind of American Silicon Valley case studies, but that are more local organizations that are really putting this adaptable, nimble leadership into practice. So I'd love to draw people to that space to get some of those resources.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And Vince, I really appreciate the opportunity for the conversation today. Thank you for it.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
But I think the tendency for that is to be backwards looking rather than forwards looking of saying, who could I become? What could I do in the future?
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And how could that history be a springboard into a new future as opposed to being an anchor that keeps me defined in a particular way or keeps me working in a particular methodology or whatever that might be that I think we underestimate the potential. I don't know if it's inertia or just the weight of our past.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And as we get older, especially, that past is longer and heavier and ties us into something. And so I think we often think of things like imagination and curiosity being childlike or childhood things. And part of my interest is helping people grow into that rather than out of it. As we do get older, there's more of a history to anchor us.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
But at the same time, our curiosity actually stems from our memories. And so to the extent that adults have a larger memory bank, we have more experience to draw on to help us, in theory, be more curious, be more imaginative. So there are... There's good, solid reasons why adults can actually be more curious, more imaginative than kids.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
If we are willing to be a bit more experimental, hold things loosely, stay not quite as tied to our autobiography as we have been. And that also is true organizationally as it is personally, to say we've shown up in the world in a particular way. We've taken on a particular position, a particular identity. And are we willing to...
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
either change that radically or tweak it in some ways that it'll take us along a path that is more energizing for us. And I think you're right. Helping people, first of all, to have a vision for that and then to fill that in greater detail with someone alongside to be that sort of coach and cheerleader. I realize that people hire me primarily for energy. It's to build momentum.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
It's to borrow my belief when they don't have some. It's to have some tools along the way that are going to help them move through that liminal space, which our brains hate. We really don't like the uncertainty of that in-between season. And so even that adaptability tool I mentioned, it gives people some language and some practical steps to keep moving.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
Because one of the things that's most motivating when you're going through transition is momentum. And so if I can help people both initiate and maintain momentum, the likelihood of them being able to then make some of the changes or some of the brave choices that they want to make is that much higher.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
I think one of the similarities is the importance of articulating clearly what a win looks like, what success looks like. And I think in certain business contexts, that might be more obvious than others.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So, for example, if I'm in a private sector firm that values shareholder value, profitability, revenues, market share, those kinds of things, you still need to have a bit of a conversation about those things. benchmarks of success, those performance indicators, but it's generally pretty well understood.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
In the kinds of work that I do organizationally, because I'm working in largely big community-facing initiatives, so that might be a university, it might be an organization working, say, in food security or affordable housing or a multi-service social service large agency or something. We often have to start with conversations collectively about what are we going after? What does a win look like?
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
Because sometimes the wins are very hard to define or other various people around the table have different definitions of what a win looks like. So one thing that's different in an organizational and individual context is organizationally, we need to have conversations as a group or multiple groups
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
To say, is the picture in your head of success matching the picture in my head or his head or their head or your head? And really develop that shared joint picture of success. Whereas when I'm working one-on-one, I only have to have that conversation with one person. But the conversation is similar in that... You can't easily go after something if you don't know what it is you're going after.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So I intentionally build into the strategizing processes that I do. And that's personal strategy and organizational too.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
lots of time to talk about what the win looks like I talk about how we're not we're not like I sometimes wish I was like a rower or some other kind of athlete that had a finish line and a time clock and you just know if you've improved you know when you're done because you know when the race is over you know if you've improved your time by three one hundredths of a second or something and you just have this really clear metric of success
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
Most of us don't have that in our individual lives or even in our corporate lives where we go, yes, that was a win. So I think part of what I can bring to a conversation is clarity around the jointly defined picture of success so that you can then go after that. Because there's tons of ways to define success. There's all kinds of ways to be finding that win.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So I mentioned earlier, part of for me earlier in my career was, flexibility to be available to my family was part of my definition of success. I still want that, but I don't need it as desperately now that my children don't live at home. I'm looking for other kinds of abilities to combine paid work and travel, for example. That's one of my newer metrics of success. And I really value learning.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And so I've really built in some experimentation and some learning opportunities very explicitly into my work. And so I Helping my clients do that as well, individually and collectively, is a really important piece. And I think when you're doing it as a group, it also does depend on where in an organizational hierarchy or food chain you are actually intervening.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So I do tend to work with the boards and the C-suite executives of an organization who have a certain amount of ascribed power, at least, to be able to make the kinds of changes we're talking about. But even in that environment, around the C-suite table or around the board table, you need to have dialogue to say, do we have a shared understanding of what's going on or what we're going after?
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And so that's where my facilitation skills do come in really handy because part of what facilitators are good at is structuring a conversation and making elements of that conversation visible to the whole room So that people can go, oh, that's where we are now. Now let's have this conversation. Okay, that's where we are now. Let's have it again.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And so it's providing some structured activities and almost like conversational containers to move a decision collectively forward. That's not that different than what I do in coaching. I provide content. containers, language, steps that say, first let's talk about this, then let's talk about this. And I think overall what happens, I mentioned that I deal in energy, I do, but also in
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
sort of feeling like people have some clarity, some insight where you go, oh, just even taking the time to pause and have those conversations has a learning element for the people involved because so often we're just, we're going, right? We're on autopilot, we're doing our things. I think pausing strategically and wisely to say, what do I actually think? What do I actually want?
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And I can share a personal example about that. For me, at least, when I raised four kids, I hadn't actually asked what I wanted clearly for quite a long time. What I wanted was kids. And so once you answer that question, what mom wants may not get asked again very much for the next 20 years.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And it's actually a much harder question than you think, especially if that muscle of asking and answering it has been atrophying. And so part of what I'm helping my clients to do is in both of the spheres of organizations and individuals, is to say, what do you really want? And that's part of what goes into building that vivid picture of that imagined future.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And that can take some time because it's actually a very, for most of us, it's a hard question and it surprises us.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
that it's hard you feel like you're supposed to know the answer to that and some people really can just come up with the answer very quickly but for others it takes some time to reconnect with what makes you sing what lights you up and organizations can drift away from that too so I see a lot of similarities kind of a big picture dot connector kind of brain so I seeing the similarities across those two modalities is clearer to me than seeing the differences.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
I think for me on a mindset level, really going deep in thinking about whether I believe that the best is yet to come or whether the best days are behind me as someone who is at midlife has been a really important exercise. And also thinking about the math of it, because for those of us that live with a certain level of privilege, we can probably expect to live, say, round numbers to 100.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And so if I'm 55 this year and I'm thinking I'm just on the later side of halfway done, if that's true, I think so much of our CV and life experience gets filed in our 20s and 30s. And we still have this ingrained ageism and this ingrained sort of time frame that says something like work goes till we're 65. And then what happens? You've got like potentially another 35 years after that.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And so I think... rethinking the math and helping other people to realize that all being well, we have a long story and a lot of life ahead of us, not just behind us, can help. The other thing I think about is I wrote a book last year called Elastic, and you talked about comfort zones.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And it's a bit about that, where we need, if we think about the metaphor of a rubber band is not useful just sitting on our desk. And in fact, if it does just sit on our desk, It gets brittle and you go to use it and it snaps and crumbles in your hand, right? An elastic is only useful if it is stretched. But if you stretch it too fast, too much, for too long, it is also not useful.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And by definition, an elastic snaps back into its original shape. But sometimes snapping back into old shapes isn't what we most need either. So I think about post-pandemic life when people were asked to snap back into old jobs or old ways of doing old jobs. They were going, no, I used to do that, but that's not who I am now.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
And so I feel like that helping people through the use of metaphor can also be helpful to say in our midlife or later years, are we still willing to stretch or have we just sat on the desk and we're getting brittle? Are we still stretching but not stretching so much that we will snap or lose our stretchiness like our stretchy pants?
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So I think giving people some images like that to say, what does an optimal level of stretch look and feel like for you? And that's where some of that adaptability work comes in for me because, again, it's not about stretching. Will you be adaptable or not? Will you adapt or not? It's about what's your personal preferred pathway to adaptability.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So some people lean into certain aspects more than others. So if you're a really persistent, perseverant kind of person, you're going to leverage something like grit or resilience to be adaptable. Somebody else says, no, that's not me. I'm not the climb Mount Everest kind of person, but I am a really good big picture thinker.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
Okay, big picture thinkers are more adaptable than really highly detailed people. That's useful. Or I'm going to leverage my team support inside the corporation where I work because our environments and our individual relationships can encourage us to take risks and push our edges of our comfort zone forward. in some ways, whereas other team environments will keep us risk averse and small.
Chief Change Officer
#268 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part Two
So there's lots of different tools in the toolbox to push us into learning spaces without feeling like we're gonna snap or without feeling like we're having to take somebody else's path to get there. So that's the reassurance that I enjoy exploring with people is you don't get to choose whether you adapt or not, but you do get to choose
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
If you don't know what you're trying to create in your practice, in your life, if you don't even know something is a possibility, the likelihood of you pursuing it is very low. But if you have a really detailed,
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
I picture it being like instead of sketching something out in pencil, if you've actually filled in the colors and the shading and the details of it, the likelihood of you being able to achieve that or move toward it is much, much higher. So that's one piece is helping people sketch.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
the possibilities and actually encouraging them to build in the details of it because people can speak in generalities about what they want their future to be like, but they may not be able to describe it in detail, partly because they haven't taken the time to do that or had the prompts or encouragement.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
But sometimes, like I mentioned with my thought leader's business school journey, I had never heard of scaling up as a solopreneur. I didn't know that was a thing. Or one concept they talk about a lot in that program is dollars up, days down, which basically means getting more money in for working less.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And I hadn't realized how ingrained in me that direct correlation between hours worked and money in the door was. And they turned that on its head for me and said, no, it's quite possible to work less and make more, not to have to put time and money on a linear kind of relationship together all the time. Things like that where your mind just goes, oh, didn't even know that was a possibility.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Now that I do, I can let my imagination meander through that path and go, huh, what would that be like? So I think one piece with my work is giving people opportunities exposure to the possibility of a different future and helping them get the details of that in really in more detail than they otherwise might. And then I think another piece is almost like a reassurance piece.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And I say that carefully because I think when we are in transition, or even considering some sort of transition, there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of unsettledness. We feel untethered because you have to say goodbye to something before you can say yes to the new thing.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And it's a little bit, you might have heard the image of kind of a trapeze artist that has let go of one bar and hasn't yet grasped the other. And there's this moment, or maybe a long moment, of unsettledness. And I think having someone alongside you in that moment to say, This is normal. You are not going crazy. This is you will feel solid ground again.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
This is what that liminal threshold space feels like. I think having some people that have that can come alongside you in that journey and reassure you that what you're experiencing is in fact what it's like. There's some work on transitions that a guy named Bruce Feiler has done, and he talks about lifequakes. And lifequakes are massive transitions that shake us.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And what I appreciate about his work, small sample-ish in the U.S., but I don't know if it applies other places. I would assume it would. But... What I appreciate is that he talks about those lifequakes happening more often than we think and lasting longer than we think.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And so I think if we can normalize for people, we've got this interesting combination right now of transitions of change speeding up, like you said, when I said a three or four year reinvention cycle. There's some research coming out right now that suggests that many businesses, about 20% of them, are reinventing themselves faster than their own business cycles, than their own budget cycles.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
We've got this pace of change speeding up on the one hand, but we've also got this personal lived experience of transitions taking longer than we think. Those lifequakes really shake us sometimes for three to five years. And so you have this... three to five year cycle and you have this accelerating pace of change also. And that can serve to be destabilizing for people.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And so part of what I do is normalize that, but also help them have some maybe put some vocabulary to it. So sometimes when we're feeling like I need to make a change, but I'm not sure what the next chapter is going to be. Helping people kind of name what they're craving is, I think, a really helpful offering. And I do that through coaching.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Yes, I've got a little diagnostic tool I can tell your listeners about. But I think that there's, in my work, I'm noticing at least five kind of categories of coaching.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
What people, particularly around midlife, although it doesn't have to be, are craving that they sometimes have trouble even putting words to because sometimes people have gone through a long period of time in a particular role, maybe as a parent, maybe in a particular job or job identity, where you go, this is who I am. This is what I do.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And sometimes transitions can rock our identity and we need some time to go, oh, okay, where am I now? Who am I now? Who is the next...
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
version of me and I've got stickers they just arrived at my desk today that say that version of me is no longer in print and it's okay what's the new version like and so I think part of what I can do is help people normalize that experience and give some language to it so that they can begin to make some choices that energize them and move toward that vivid picture of the future that we began to imagine together and that can happen organizationally corporately systems-wide
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And it can happen personally. And so I'm always working at those multiple kind of altitudes to say this can be a collective experience, organizationally and sectorally, in communities. But it also can be an individual experience between myself and a client one-on-one.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Thanks very much, Vince. It's good to be here. I'm in year 27 of my own solopreneurial journey. So I have an entrepreneurial background and I work as a facilitator and a coach. And the difference for that for me is that the facilitation work is primarily group-based work, helping people with strategy. And so I think about strategy for organizations and even for whole sectors or communities.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Absolutely. And I think a lot of the tools that we traditionally use are rear view mirror, backwards looking tools rather than future oriented tools. And we're not even aware of that. And so I think sometimes if we look at our data, for example, evidence, whatever that might be, that almost by definition is what has happened in the past. Right.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
We look for patterns that have happened in the past or we look at our resume, our CV. We look at the experience and expertise we're bringing in our biography, our autobiography. Right. All of that is good stuff, and it's really important in getting us to know the specifics of what we love.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
I love tapping into people's very sort of quirky personal energy around what they love and what their own sort of superpowers are. But I think the tendency for that is to be backwards looking rather than forwards looking of saying, who could I become? What could I do in the future?
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And how could that history be a springboard into a new future as opposed to being an anchor that keeps me defined in a particular way or keeps me working in a particular methodology or whatever that might be that I think we underestimate the potential. I don't know if it's inertia or just the weight of our past.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And as we get older, especially, that past is longer and heavier and ties us into something. And so I think we often think of things like imagination and curiosity being childlike or childhood things. And part of my interest is helping people grow into that rather than out of it.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
So getting groups of people together who are working on a problem or a challenge that is bigger than any one organization can work on alone. And how that has morphed for me, though, is that as I worked with executive directors, CEOs, board chairs, increasingly got into more of a coaching space with those leaders and began working both one-on-one and in smaller groups with them as well.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And over that time, the most recent kind of version of all of that has landed me in a place of focusing on helping organizations and individuals reimagine their next chapter. I'm starting to lean pretty heavily into the ideas of imagination and curiosity and experimentation in my work. So most people would know me as a strategy coach and strategy facilitator.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
The other pieces of my work that have been really important to me are that I'm also a parent of four people in their 20s currently and a grandmother to two. I say that partly, it's more than a sidebar for me. Those relationships have been part of what have shaped my business journey as well.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And in that kind of transitions coaching have really given me some experiential credibility maybe in the transitions work that I do. And so that's what I enjoy is helping leaders and the organizations they work for navigate the uncertainty of transition and through that build their adaptability. So I do also work as an adaptability quotient professional coach, which is an interesting tool.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
We can talk more about it if you want, but it helps people understand build, not just build their adaptability skills, but actually identify their preferred way of adapting because all of us need to adapt. We don't get to choose that, but we can choose the pathway we take to get there. So those are some of the areas that I'm most interested in right now.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And that's partly actually why I mentioned the family responsibilities I had, because it's funny how when you tell a story backwards, in retrospect, it can all sound so organized and deliberate and tidy. Certainly living it forwards isn't always like that.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And so for me, my priority, I started my career in international development, worked in that space and doing a lot of traveling for the first five or six years. And then had to make a career change at that point because we wanted to have a family. And I was in a job where there was nothing medically available to be able to take against malaria. And I was traveling to Africa a lot.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And that was also safe during pregnancy. And so it put me at this kind of major inflection point of saying it's a very hard conversation to say to your boss, oh, by the way, I can't travel anymore for work, even though that's 30 or 40 percent of my time. so that I could clean out my system so that six months from now we can start thinking about trying to have babies.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Like it just was a really tricky time. And in a job that I loved, that I thought was my dream job, but was proving not to be sustainable with the other hopes that we had for our lives at that time. And so eventually through a couple of other transitions and some time passed, but thankfully we were able to have our kids. And that was really the focus of my work at that time. And so my paid work,
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
was a little bit on the side at that time. And that, so the business that I'm now in started during a time when I had a whole bunch of little kids at home and was finding work that fit inside that. So literally I remember it being, if it sounded interesting, if the people that called me sounded like folks that I would enjoy spending time with, if I could find some childcare and
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
then it was like, okay, if that sounds interesting to me, I'll say yes. And so it ended up just being this collection of, yes, interesting, but random projects that when I looked back on my CV a few years into that, it was just a mess. It was interesting stuff, but there was no real kind of plot line that you could easily follow. And so what I would say is that the journey has been one of
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Growing intentionality in terms of saying, what do I want the thread that connects my work to become? And also, what do the other responsibilities that I've chosen in my life give me space to try? For example, really wanted and needed in those early days to have a lot of flexibility. And that led to a decision to stay as a solopreneur as opposed to growing intentionally.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
a larger firm where I might have hired a bunch of people to do what I do.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Certainly had opportunities to do that, had enough demand for the work to do that, but didn't want the responsibility of feeling like I was on the hook for helping pay other people's rent or mortgages or having to really lock down some lack of flexibility that I felt like I needed at that time if one of our kids had a doctor's appointment or a soccer tournament or something like that.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
But I think over time, some things have stayed very consistent, including working as a solopreneur.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
But other things have shifted over that time where I can be much more deliberate, intentional, clear about the kind of work I want to take on, about the areas of work I want to specialize in, even about the lack of flexibility now that I shouldn't say lack of it, but the lower need for it that I have now that I don't have the same caregiving responsibilities that I had at that time.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And so certainly over the journey, on one level, the CV looks like it's 27 uninterrupted years of entrepreneurship, which it is. But I would say about every three to four years, there have been some very significant either mindset shifts or strategic shifts that I've made in the business to suit where my head was at, where my life was at that time.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And that's one of the beautiful things about being self-employed is that we have the latitude to change. to reinvent what we're doing. And so on the one hand, there's this sort of long story. And on the other hand, there are all these shorter chapters that have each involved some transition for sure.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
I think one of the big decisions early on was to focus with mission-driven leaders. I'm very interested in working with clients whose mission aligns with values that I share. So I would not be someone who would be good at helping, I don't know, some random private sector factory company Build more widgets.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
If I don't care about the work they're doing and can't connect it with some values that are important to me, that was a way of being more selective about who to work with. And also choosing to really focus on facilitation and coaching, that came along. But when I think about, if I drew the timeline of the 27 years and one of the major inflection points... It came about seven years ago.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
My family was going on sabbatical. We were taking a three-month break. And just before that, through a seemingly random LinkedIn rabbit trail, found a book produced by a group called Thought Leaders Business School out of Australia. And I was at a stage at that moment, it was one of those chapter changes for me of saying, am I ready to hire people?
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Am I ready perhaps to be hired by a large organization? What's the next iteration of my business? And I read this book very quickly because I didn't want to carry it with us on sabbatical and I only had it in hard copy. So I was whipping through it, trying to get it done before we got on the plane.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And it really grabbed my attention to the point of saying, I think this is going to give me a pathway to what I want the next chapter. chapter of my business to look like. And interestingly, coming out of Australia, that's where we were going on sabbatical. I had never been to Australia before.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And the one day that I ended up working on that three month break was to meet with one of the people that worked with this thought leaders business school at that time. And over the course of that year in 2017, I became more and more interested in the work they were doing, partly because they had a structured pathway for self-employed people to scale up.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And I don't know that I even knew that was possible. I think I had other growth pathways in my head. They weren't seeming to fit very well, but I wasn't sure it was even possible. I think, too, that one person could scale up their impact and still stay a fairly lean, small organization.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
fast forward a little bit, but I ended up going back to Australia later that same year and getting involved as a student in this Thought Leaders Business School. And over the next three to three and a half years was involved in growing my business through that program. And it seemed crazy to me. As I said, I had never been to Australia before and I ended up going twice that year.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And to extricate myself from my busy practice and my family life and fly to Australia almost on a whim to invest in some business training, felt pretty crazy, and I wondered if I would show up almost like a little demanding. Do you know what it took for me to get here and figure this out? But it was the opposite. I was just like a big sponge. I was so excited to have that kind of adventure.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
I love to travel, so that's a big part of it for me. But it was just like being surrounded by people who were doing interesting things in their business and who were inspiring in their level of ambition and in painting a picture of a future that I didn't even know could be possible. And that led into that transition three plus year student journey, which took us into COVID.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And then out of that, again, about three and a half years ago, reached what they call black belt level at that program and became a faculty member with them. And that community of people, that methodology, but also just the change in mindset and how I show up in the world has been really dramatic. And for example, it probably close to quintupled my income.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
It gave me a whole different set of people that are role models and mentors and colleagues. It added another dimension to my work as a mentor and faculty member within that program. But I think it also created a cadence in me of growth. more consistent experimentation over time.
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
And I'm very accustomed now to a rhythm of trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't and just really leveling up my game. I'm someone who loves to learn. I'm really, I am very curious and interested in a lot of things. And so this gave me a structure in which to do that. So as I look back on the story of the business over the 27 years, that what now is a seven-year chapter in
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#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
certainly will figure very prominently in that storyline because it changed the game for me.
Chief Change Officer
#267 Rebecca Sutherns: Building a Life That Flexes—Not Breaks — Part One
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that word reimagine has become so important to me because I'm more and more convinced that until we can picture something, literally imagine a vivid, detailed picture of it in our heads, it's really hard to move toward it.