Episode 21: Self-Expressed Leadership with Brooke Hofsess
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
I see leadership as a bringing forth of more of ourselves. Really opting out of a narrative around leadership that is about conforming to principles and positions and titles and instead choosing to make the way we lead ourselves, our businesses, our relationships, a deeper reflection of who we are.
Welcome to episode twenty one of the podcast where I chat with Brooke Hofsess about self-expressed leadership. This conversation we share is soul-stirring and inspiring and I cannot wait for you to hear it.
Brooke Hofsess is a coach, scholar, and artist with a passion for women’s leadership and wellbeing. Her expertise is rooted in the pursuit of leadership as self-expression, with women whose way of being in the world is leading (whether or not the overculture recognizes them as leaders). Brooke’s clients don’t work with her to fill gaps in their skillset, they work with her because they want their leadership to reflect more of themselves. She is a certified coach and ‘Playing Big’ facilitator, and the author of Unfolding Afterglow: Letters and Conversations on Teacher Renewal and co-author of Reconceptualizing Early Career Teacher Mentoring. Brooke now works within academia, as a coach for women, and as a consultant to organizations invested in elevating women’s leadership and wellbeing.
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Read the Transcript:
Ashley: Brooke, I am so excited and honored to have you on the podcast and get to sit with you for a little bit on a conversation around leadership. So thank you.
Brooke: Thank you, Ashley. I am a devoted listener to the podcast. I've received so much from your generosity and your gentleness and that of your guests.
Ashley: I already have a sense that it'll be a rich conversation. I know that there will be many listening that will want to know more about who you are before we even dive into this subject matter and so, could you give us a little bit of a window into who you are? Who you are, what you do, anything that might feel important to share with us?
Brooke: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. So I'm an author, artist and coach. I'm also an academic and my really, my guiding mission is to help women, support women to make art. Out of their lives so that they can stay in their style, you know, stay in their own energy, express their version of leadership and bring their body of work, whatever that might be to life.
My clients don't work with me to fill in gaps in their leadership or improve their skills. My work is really grounded in sort of the origin of the word lead, which means originally meant to guide or to bring forth. And so our coaching partnerships are rooted in the sense of leadership as a bringing forth of more of themselves.
More of their creative direction to their lives and really opting out of a narrative around leadership that is about conforming to principles and positions and titles and instead choosing to make the way we lead ourselves, our businesses, our relationships, a deeper reflection of who we are. And I call that kind of leadership, uh, self expressed leadership.
Ashley: I am curious if you have any, uh, experience on like, or any thoughts, I suppose, that I find those who are more drawn to gentleness, more drawn to you, identifying maybe as sensitive that the word leadership is not always the initial word that will resonate with them. And they might even avoid using that word to describe themselves. Have you noticed that or what are your thoughts on that?
Brooke: I have absolutely noticed that actually, and I have lived that. I, it wasn't until my mid forties that I Was even comfortable saying the word leadership in regards to myself at all and I think Part of that reticence to embracing the word leadership was a mix of not identifying with the definitions and examples of leadership that we see in patriarchal capitalist white supremacist society But more than that, it was a growing edge for me to step into a sense of fullness within myself and to not only fully own the shyer, more reserved, kinder, gentler pieces of myself, but also come into right relationship with a healthy arrogance. And intellect and poise.
So part of my capacity, expanded capacity for leadership, really included taking more responsibility and more ownership of the pieces of myself that I really need to build my body of work, my coaching practice. Um, but then I had been fearful you know, a lot of holding back. And those, those parts of me were more about, you know, really claiming a healthy sense of arrogance.
Stepping into my version of brilliance and being able to even say and express those things out loud. First, that came first before I was able to really bring the concept of leadership, I think more fully into my work. And I think your question really underpins what I'm up to If we believe in, if we believe that we are a community, then everyone leads and everyone follows. And if we want to create a community that has a capacity for gentleness and softness, we need leaders who embody those qualities.
Ashley: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that thought that you just shared there around everyone leads and everyone follows and the communal like that sort of communal aspect of also the pressure, you know, not being on a select few to lead. Like, there's a shared responsibility to both lead and a shared responsibility to follow.
Brooke: I love the words you're wrapping around that idea, particularly your words around shared responsibility. And You know, I, I carry a belief in this world that leadership is extremely creative. So I see that dynamic as, you know, as a real dance that we do. It's a real choreography. Um, and knowing when to, um, move forward, knowing when to move back can, I've just seen it really support every aspect of my life.
And I think it's an under represented conversation when it comes to leadership. Dynamics that can fall more to hierarchy power over, you know, rising through the ranks, so to speak, and I'm really interested in getting a different conversation around leadership started and inviting more women to bring who they are to that conversation instead of asking them to go get a training or a new skill set to enter the arena where leadership is happening.
Ashley: What I really see, too, echoed in what you're sharing, what you've even just shared in these very short minutes, is this. Idea of a more cyclical form of leadership than a linear style or approach to leadership, which is probably much more rampant in our culture. It's hard for us to, um, move rhythmically. And so, you know, even how you have women who get often stuck in like a giving role and struggle to. Be in postures of receiving that there is not like the holding that rhythm or holding that dance between Giving and receiving but that there can be like people can get really stuck right in that um in that giving in the state with You know leading leading and following how it's like you're a follower or you're a leader
Brooke: Right.
Ashley: That you can't between both of those
Brooke: Absolutely. And getting kind of boxed in to one of those roles and how we are, you know, our concept can kind of get a little bit sedimented around that particular. Kind of leadership rather than being in the rhythmic cyclical, um, image that you just described, right? Just like everything else around us, the seasons, the weather, um, we have periods of leading periods of following, times of venturing out times of hunkering down and tending to our wounds.
And I think that A big part of self expressed leadership is getting to know those unfamiliar places and our being.
Ashley: So I, I would love to hear you tell us a little bit about your approach or definition of leadership and what that entails.
Brooke: I'm thinking about a time when I was missing the felt sense of my leadership in relationship to my newborn daughter and missing that felt sense in relationship to my role as a mother.
I was a first time book author and trying to navigate the publishing industry and peer review and having unfamiliar eyes on my body of work. I was even missing the felt sense of leadership in my creative process because so much weight up to that point had been given to other people's opinions about what I was creating.
And what I realized from moving through that challenging time and hearing my say myself say out loud to people really close to me. You know, I'm not making it, I’m not making it and they would just look at me with such surprise and say what are you talking about? You have this beautiful new baby and you have a book coming out and yet I think one of the reasons I felt so overwhelmed was just the lack of connection I had to a sense of creative direction over my own existence and I think that story You know, when I think back to that time, I think that was the beginning of this work or this work coming into a crisper vision for me around this idea of, you know, in order to make art of our lives and to live a life that departs from what's seen, maybe expected of us, we need leadership.
And I think about a poem by Quinn Bailey that talks about, you know, there's no there's no right or wrong direction in life. There's only two true directions moving toward yourself or away from yourself and think what I have learned through these hard earned lessons is that Every choice we make to move toward ourself is an act of leadership.
Ashley: That's powerful. It's a powerful thought in practice. What do you think it looks like to move towards ourselves as a form of leadership?
Brooke: That's such a beautiful question. And I think, you know, it kind of circles back to where we were just looking around, getting to know, You know, new and unfamiliar places in our being and stretching ourselves to bring a little bit more contrast.
I'm a visual artist and I think one of the first art classes I took was in a photography dark room and we had these different filters we could put over the enlarger to make, you know, brighter whites and, and inkier, richer blacks.
And to bring out a whole range of grayscale. And I think about that when I think about making life art and moving closer toward ourself of, you know, finding the kind of hidden, putting on new lenses and finding those hidden, Pockets of beauty and expression and conduits between our rich inner worlds, which I think so many of us that have a gentle way of being, we have very rich inner lives and building conduits for, for that richness and that vitality to be expressed on the outside level.
Ashley: I think there's something really beautiful in the in the way you're describing this and the permission something that's striking me is Specifically, maybe in the entrepreneurial, uh, context is that there can feel a pressure when we're creating to not go inwards, but look outwards, you know, and I, I see people all the time get really frozen and stuck in things like thinking about their niche or thinking about the, the person they're wanting to reach.
And I think that. There's a permission here almost in like what would happen if you actually paid closer attention to or took a step towards yourself paid closer to what is stirring within you and within your work within your leadership versus fixating on having the perfect language or the perfect language. Niche or the perfect in through line.
Brooke: It's such a gorgeous observation and it really, it really inspires me because I think that for so many of us somewhere along the way, we learned that it was safer to tamp down our creativity and our self expression and look outside of ourselves for exemplars and mentors. And I think this idea of inviting ourselves To give greater permission to stay a little while with what is alive and feeling really vital and energizing, you know, that kind of emergent energy bubbling up in us, um, is, is a bit counterintuitive to the way that I think, um, running a business can sometimes be portrayed.
Ashley: Yeah, I totally agree. Which is also why I really resonate with. The language or idea around creating a body of work and all that, that can hold in an entrepreneurial setting. I think when I hear the phrase body of work, it speaks to me of like, you can take your time with this. Like it, cause you got your life.
Brooke: Yes. And you get to explore and experiment and it doesn't have to all. Make sense in a linear way. So if we think about, you know, like the work of an artist over a lifetime, they, you know, maybe a catalog of their, their work, you wouldn't see a linear progression more than likely you would see little flurries of inspiration over here and then bringing in this experimental material over there.
And I think that's part of what speaks to me about building a body of work is. You know, if you run a business, it might, that body of work might include your offerings, but it also speaks to how your offerings will grow and change. With you as you evolve.
Ashley: Yes. Yeah. It feels more holistic in a lot of ways. I know that, um, you have this framework or, or whichever that you've created around self expressed leadership. Would you give us a little bit of a, uh, a tour, if you will, of that.
Brooke: I’d love to. So, this framework involves five qualities that may, may, you know, I got a lot of feedback that these qualities are fairly counter cultural to the way we typically talk about leadership qualities. So, I'll start there. Um, But I'll talk about each of the qualities and then I'd love to kind of give your listeners a sense of what might create safety and working with that quality in their business.
Uh, the first quality is the quality of presence. And in my body of work, presence is about showing up in ways that embody your fullest expression while also holding space for the fullest expression of others. And I would include our businesses as one of those others to fully express a quality of presence.
What I've seen in myself and my clients is that we need safety. The safety that comes from The felt sense of mutuality or reciprocity. So for business owners, that could look like, you know, really spending a couple moments every day in an intentional practice of trusting yourself, you know, what, you know, to be true about your business, what you need, what your business needs, trusting the other people involved.
And trusting the process, I think that's something that we don't talk enough about in building businesses is trusting the, you know, as you use the word cyclical, the cycles and the rhythms of the process, because it's not a straight path for many, many of us. In fact, I haven't met anyone that it was a linear path for.
Another tool that might be useful for your listeners is to bring in a metaphor. Um, so I was working with a client recently who's got a business that has three distinct strands. And she's really working with this metaphor of her business as a greenhouse. And what are the different growing conditions that each of those strands needs to thrive? And, you know, just something that really paints the image, the vision of her business in a way that has that sense of mutuality. It's a living thing that she is growing. It's not just words on a laptop. Mm hmm. Another way to bring presence or mutuality to create that, that safety is, you know, taking your, your business or a particular project out on an artist date, you know, where would it like to go where, you know, where might it be fun to, to sit and think about that project or that aspect of your world and your work for a little while.
And how would having that energy flow back into what you're creating. So it's not just you pushing in a single direction.
Ashley: Yeah. I love, I love that, that prompt.
Brooke: The second quality is one of reverence. And this is really the heart of this is really partnering with forces that feel bigger and larger than yourself. So forces like creativity or justice or care or gentleness in ways that alleviate the burden of being visionary and safety and reverence. Typically, I've seen this really come from the felt sense of being in service. Or a felt sense of being held by something outside yourself, you know, being held. And that could maybe take on a spiritual realm or being held by a mentor or a coach. Um, it kind of looks different for everyone and something that can be really practical that we can do to tap into that safety is, you know, maybe just a little bit of grounding in why does my business matter?
You know, so, so what? What, what, how am I showing up to serve? How am I in service of my values? Um, that could look like free writing or meditation or taking a walk with a friend and talking about it, but really letting yourself be in the energetics of why your work matters and how you're serving can also look like designing, you know, um, practices or rituals for your business.
So one for me is that. Before visibility opportunities. I tried to move my body. It helps me kind of shake out nerves and get into, you know, more of a contemplative space. That's. It's primed for connection for some of my clients. That looks like writing in a specific notebook for different projects or even, you know, just working on their floor with a huge easel pad, just like mapping out ideas, but really letting that larger force be a thought partner for you and your business.
Ashley: It's beautiful.
Brooke: And then we come to the quality of congruence. And for me, this looks like recognizing the cost of not bringing our whole selves into our leadership and the ways that we close the gap between what we know internally and our outward expression. Safety in the quality of congruence I think often comes from the felt sense of being whole, being undivided, I think that integrity is just another word for wholeness. So it's like, how is integrity flowing through your body of work, your business, your relationships, and not being as willing to easily pay a toll for masking up and hiding, like really getting clear about the cost to your nervous system and your, um, Your self concept when you're toggling back between, you know, what your lived experience is and what you're expressing to the outer world.
In this example, I think about one of my clients when she launched, um, a major book project and it was based on a body of work she had done in graduate school. And she was really clear that at the start that she did not want to bring that felt sense of like being a student, being a good student. Um, or being a novice to the project and so one of the, I work a lot with imagery and so one of the images that became a guidepost for her was this image of kind of walking along a beach, she lives in a coastal region, walking along a beach, sort of picking up rocks and creating these like, Impromptu, uh, rock sculptures and sitting down next to them with a notebook and, and just letting the words flow.
And I was just so struck by how, like, none of that good student, good girl energy was in that imagery for her. And, but, Yeah, like really allowing herself to steep in that image, um, created a writing routine and a relationship with her body of work that felt just felt entirely different, right?
The next quality is the quality of divergence. And for me, this is about evoking the changes that we want to see. Whether that's in our industries, in our relationship with ourself or our business, but with more faith that we can navigate through the hard parts and the fear that inevitably comes up when we're building any body of work.
There's no creativity without fear.
I think building safety into this quality can look like. That felt sense of permission that you were talking about, Ashley, specifically a permission to experiment and to not get it, you know, perfect right out of the gate, but to bring in, you know, a spirit of like tinkering, um, to be very mindful not to get stuck in romanticizing our Potentiality, not letting, yeah, not letting the dream be so pure that it can never be brought down and put into action. And, you know, we work with this a lot in, in my practice around, um, so, you know, my background is as a scholar. So this idea of a pilot study, you know, you would never engage on a, a long grant project or, you know, 5, 10 year research project without running a pilot. So just. That sense of playfulness with your question, like what question would be really supportive and really grounding to answer.
And for me, looking at ways to bake in a lot of gentleness and enjoyment into that process. And then the final five, the final of the five qualities is the quality of interdependence and For me, interdependence is about how we honor our callings without burning out on self reliance. Or sacrificing intimacy and community as we build our body of work. And so safety in this quality often comes from a felt sense of belonging, partnership and community, you know, and practical ways that I think we can, particularly for like solopreneurs, ways that we can create that sense of belonging is to, you know, surround ourselves with like spirited colleagues.
Um, It doesn't always have to be humans. You know, it can be colleagues from the more than human world, you know, a tree that you like to go sit under and, and dream up offers or blog posts or what have you. Um, and, you know, just really recognizing that when this quality is out of balance, it can show up as, you know, if it's something that you have to do alone.
It just doesn't get done, no matter how many times you put it on your list, it's just not going to move. Um, or the other kind of end of the spectrum that you're holding so tight to control, you're not allowing anyone in and practicing delegation can be really impactful if that's showing up.
When I first started my coaching newsletter, I hired an editor and my closest friends were kind of horrified about that because they're like, you're, you're a published author. Why do you need to hire an editor? But for me, it was about like, supporting myself to have that person on the other end of my writing who would receive it and give it a little DLC.
And then, you know, it, it, it helped me show up for myself in that way. And it also helped me show up in a different kind of writing that I wasn't used to. it was enormously helpful and it, I didn't need that person forever, but I was humble enough to recognize that. No matter how strong of a writer I was, this was something that I needed some partnership around in order to really show up for it with what I knew I, what I knew I had to say.
Ashley: There's something really beautiful in there too, around, even like around the co-regulation aspect of. Of simply having someone in it with you.
Brooke: Yeah. I think it can make all the difference. You know, I, I experienced the world through my neurodivergence and one of the most healing and gentle practices that I can offer myself is. You know, having a coworking date or a body doubling date or showing up to a writing group or being part of a community that, you know, where I feel like I can play an experiment with other people, it's just incredibly supportive for me.
Ashley: Yeah. I feel that deeply. This is just a curiosity out of all of the five aspects that you just shared. Is there one that you find yourself within the most?
Brooke: I’ve thought about this a lot and it's so interesting because I feel like when I tug or lean into one, it, it spills over into the others. So I think for me, divergence is a big piece of who I am in the world. And it's, you know, going back to our, um, the beginning of our conversation, it's one of the reasons why I needed To embody my own version of leadership because I am really wholeheartedly wholeheartedly convinced that I'm here on this planet to make change for the greater good.
And I also know that I tend to be a very, um, inward, thoughtful, careful person. And. Leadership, you know, bringing leadership into my life has just, um, allowed me to partner with myself in a completely different way towards the work that I care the most about.
Ashley: In listening to those and, you know, both for me and then I think anyone listening. I think that there's a lot of there's a mixture of like a lot of grounding and a lot of practice that people can sort of listen to those and find themselves within I think for those listening to notice. As Brooke shared, like what are the things that really came forward is resonant for you and starting there and seeing if there might be a practice or a thought or a ritual of some kind that you can begin to play with to sort of with this idea of leadership and what that could look like and what that can mean for you. So I want to offer that.
Brooke: Really beautifully said. And, and also just to kind of underscore that none of these things you to go outside of yourself. There may be, you know, ways to bring in more safety and more capacity, but they're, they're already, they've always already been with you.
Ashley: Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's a relief in that.
Brooke: I’m so glad.
Ashley: With, uh, the one kind of final question I wanted to, to ask you about is when it comes to the work of self leadership and leading ourselves, both with the qualities of like gentleness and also the qualities of, um, boldness, do you have any thoughts on what that, what it can look like to, to lead yourself? In a way that kind of allows you to feel held and taken care of but also helps you do the things that matter to you.
Brooke: And the thing that immediately sparked for me was, um, when I was in a leadership role at my academic institution, leading a team of about 70 Folks, my assistant director would say to me, like, I've never met someone who was so soft yet so strong.
And it always made me chuckle because I think that in our culture, those ways of being have been positioned in opposition to one another. And I don't necessarily think that that is true. I think that, you know, when we think about, you know, maybe like the softness of water falling over time, you know, carving away rock, or if we, you know, just think about other examples of where soft and bold can live together, um, then that is great encouragement for me, I think for those of us, for those of us who, who don't want to compromise either one, either part of ourself, but to use one to really strengthen the other. I think that's something that I think about a lot for myself.
Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. They're in, they're in a much deeper partnership, softness and strength than we've been told that they can be.
And I think it's about exploring that within ourselves. Like how does that operate within us? How does softness and strength exist in partnership within us? Your work really encourages that noticing.
Brooke: Thank you. Thank you for reflecting that. And, and I think also, you know, what's coming up for me in this, um, thread of our conversation is that neither one is better. More useful, but it's more about creating this synergy, you know, creating the strength that gives rise to the softness and creating the softness that gives rise to the strength and so on and so forth.
That is maybe where the The real mystery in the power lives.
Ashley: Throughout this conversation, I think that, um, there's a lot that people can pull from. Is there any type of prompt or anything that you'd like to leave people with?
Brooke: So I'll just offer that my approach to leadership is grounded in a really deep recognition that women are out of breath, not courage. And so the prompt I would love to offer your listeners. Is around what makes it easier to breathe in your business and in your life and what starves the oxygen, what makes it harder to breathe or diminishes your capacity.
And I think that's just a really maybe, um, helpful reframe that even when we're tired or it's feeling like a heavy lift for us to keep going in our practices and in our businesses, that there are ways to pause and just, you know, Center and ground ourselves back into what supports us and gives, you know, that oxygen and that vitality and aliveness to the work that we're here to do and the bodies of work that we're building.
Ashley: So it's a beautiful place and prompt to leave all of us with, including ourselves. Uh, I am so grateful that you shared your wisdom with us, Brooke. Thank you so much for being here.
Brooke: Oh, thank you, Ashley. It was really a really heart opening conversation, and I'm really grateful to have the chance to connect with you in this way.