Embodied leadership for nonprofits with LeeAnn Mallorie
6/3/2025
“We can become graceful when we have more options. Available. So when our range is bigger. So I’m graceful if I can fight when I need to fight, I’m graceful. If I can let go when I need to let go, if I can. Get big, get small, do all of the various things. When we get clunky in our movement, to use this as a metaphor is when certain things are off the table, I can only be big but never smoke. I can only in breath, but never out breath. Then it’s like it becomes stilted actually. so one of the key things, I think that’s also a leadership skill right now, if we come back to that. Idea of grace and metaphor is being able to have a wide range of what kinds of moves, ways of being types of choices, mindset wise, embodiment wise, are available to us as leaders.”
In episode 124 of Nonprofit Mission: Impact, Carol Hamilton and LeeAnn Mallorie discuss navigating leadership from a place of embodiment, resilience, and grace. They explore:
how tuning into the body can help leaders make better choices, weather organizational turbulence, and come through crisis with renewed purpose.
How our effectiveness and influence are deeply tied to how we relate to ourselves—and that honoring our inner wisdom is not a luxury, but a necessity in today’s climate of uncertainty and change.
Episode highlights:
What Is Embodiment and Why It Matters
[08:15] LeeAnn explains the role of embodiment in leadership—how being present in our bodies can enhance focus, impact, resilience, and communication. She contrasts this with the over-efforting, burnout-prone tendencies of traditional work cultures.
Resilience in a Time of Chaos
[11:15] LeeAnn emphasizes the importance of embodied surrender—not as defeat, but as a skill to meet loss and transition with grace. She introduces the concept of “wintering” as a natural and necessary leadership cycle.
The Power of Letting Go
[13:59] Carol shares an example of how a client used crisis as an opportunity to clarify priorities and streamline programs. LeeAnn highlights the renewal that follows “composting” what’s no longer working.
Balancing Drive with Surrender
[17:15] The integration of drive and determination with the softness and receptivity needed for long-term sustainability and innovation.
Grace as Leadership Range
[19:26] Grace isn’t just about elegance—it’s about having a wide range of leadership responses. Leaders with greater behavioral range can respond with more agility and presence.
Leaders Getting in Their Own Way
[22:15] how rigidity and resignation are two sides of the same coin. Leadership growth comes from cultivating the healthy middle ground—commitment without attachment, flexibility without collapse.
Co-Creating with What Is
[23:26] An essential leadership skill is “co-creating the dance”—listening both inwardly and outwardly to navigate change with responsiveness rather than reactivity.
Feeling First, Then Acting
[26:58] Before rushing to solutions, leaders and those in transition need to move through their grief and emotions first. That somatic release creates the foundation for authentic clarity and next steps.
Leading Through Uncertainty
[24:01] LeeAnn walks through how leaders can interrupt reactive patterns when facing potential downsizing or organizational change—recognizing embodied signals (like jaw clenching) and softening in real-time.
Advice for Those in Transition
[29:16] For those who’ve lost jobs or are in between roles, LeeAnn recommends somatic practices to move emotions and reconnect to deeper purpose—trusting that renewal often follows release.
A Strategic Shift: Collective Leadership
[35:15] LeeAnn shares a shift she’s currently navigating—moving from a founder-led model to collective leadership at Guts & Grace, in order to hold the growing vision more sustainably and collaboratively.
Guest BIO:
LeeAnn Mallorie, CEO of Guts & Grace Leadership, began her career as an executive coach in 2006, working with leaders and teams from around the globe. Yet she soon found something was missing—the body. This led her on a personal journey of physical, mental, and spiritual healing, to eventually embrace the feminine side of leadership. Committed to walking her talk, she brings these lessons back to her clients in the corporate, non-profit and government sectors, with surprisingly positive results. Today LeeAnn specializes in bringing feminine wisdom and diverse cultural values into business, as keystone to solving some of our world’s stickiest problems. Using practical embodiment tools, she helps attendees bridge the gap between the hard-driving logical mind and the deeper wisdom of the soul.
Important Links and Resources:
Related Episodes:
Episode 117: Grounded presence for nonprofit leaders
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Carol Hamilton: My guest today on Nonprofit Mission Impact is LeeAnn Mallorie. LeeAnn and I talk about navigating leadership from a place of embodiment, resilience, and grace. We talk about: how tuning into the body can help nonprofit leaders make better choices, weather organizational turbulence, and come through crises with renewed purpose. How our effectiveness and influence are deeply tied to how we relate to ourselves—and that honoring our inner wisdom is not a luxury, but a necessity in today’s climate of uncertainty and change. I appreciated LeeAnn’s point about how having grace and flexibility gives us more range and options on how to respond to any particular circumstance.
We are being tested as a community for those of us in the US. the destructive targeting of people of many identities, people being arrested for exercising their first amendment right to free speech, plus so much more. There are threats to the nonprofit sector itself. Whether its funding cuts and freezes, threats to rescind an organization’s nonprofit status or direct retaliation that Harvard University and other organizations have experienced.
I was intrigued by LeeAnn’s assertion that surrender is sometimes what is called for. Not surrender as in rolling over and giving up – but rather softening to fully be able to be present to the reality of what is happening. If we only have one way of responding to threats – then we are limited. Having the suppleness to flex in different directions, postures and approaches will serve us better.
For me It brings to mind the image of Neo in the matrix dodging the bullets as they come at him. His dexterity and elasticity saves him. Another movie image that it brings to mind is one from Star Wars – the rebels are fighting the Empire. The Empire’s weapons are huge and terrifying. Yet the rebels are able to take them down by grabbing their ankles – their literal Achilles heels – destabilizing them and bringing them crashing down. What are the moves of David – of David and Goliath –that we can employ in these times?
How can we flex and then recenter to stay on our mission? How can you fully accept what is and move to counter it at the same time? What are all the energies you need to bring to this moment? And how will you care for yourself and your spirit so that you have the full capacity to have the range that LeeAnn describes?
Well, welcome Leanne. Welcome to Nonprofit Mission Impact.
LeeAnn Mallorie: Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.
Carol: So I'd like to start out each episode with just asking each guest what motivates you to do the work that you do. What would you describe as your why?
LeeAnn: Wow. I probably have at least two answers, if not more, but one of them, as you know inside of Guts and Grace, I do focus a lot on working with women leaders and I started my career in. pretty neat, actually a boutique leadership training firm that was working in all sectors. So we really were focusing on leaders in any type of organization, any industry, any sector. But we were really interested in what kind of makes leaders tick underneath the surface and specifically how teams are not teaming well together. And at that time, which was about 20 years ago, I was often working with the only woman on the team or the only person of color on the team. Unfortunately, they were often the least senior person on the team as well, which still holds true to some extent today.
Not everywhere, thank goodness. But definitely back then and at that time, I really got to see. Kind of under the hood of my client's inner world in terms of what was challenging about being the only, or what was challenging about thinking a little differently, seeing things a little differently, maybe having been socialized a little bit differently than their peers, and then trying to bring their vision or their ideas forward on the team.
So this just inspired and motivated me to want to better understand what support could be offered to make that journey. not only easier, but more fun, more graceful, less painful, less challenging. So that is really one of my answers. And I think the second answer given do embody to work also for teams and really any, anybody of any gender is, is, you know, can benefit from this work is just that we think in our traditional workplace cultures, we've disconnected from feeling ourselves so much that we are often at risk of or on the verge of burnout, that we are often. Overgiving or over, efforting and in fact our workplace cultures often ask that of us or even require that of us in some cases to be able to get by. So I'm just a real stand that we can work in a more human way and feel ourselves along the way in the process. And I believe that when we do that, we're able to make better choices, including for our own wellbeing, but also for the decisions we make as a business.
Carol: Yeah, when I'm working with nonprofits, you know, many of them are led by women or, you know, the field in general. The sector is majority women though. The bigger the organization, the more likely it is that it's gonna be run by a man. But one of the things you mentioned was your work around embodiment, and we've talked about that on the podcast before.
But I, you know, I'm always interested in that aspect because as you said, I think it really is. Not part of our default culture, the kind of traditional workplace assumptions that you kind of leave all that at the door, even though of course you literally can't, because you gotta walk in the room with your own body or remotely with your, you know, face on the screen, whatever it is.
But I'm curious from your point of view, how, how would you kind of describe what that is and, and why would you say, you know, why is it important? Why is it important?
LeeAnn: You know, it's interesting again, 10, 20 years ago, I think the conversation about embodiment was less present in the zeitgeist. People knew less what that meant. Now I'm much more often coming into a warmer audience where people are like, yeah, you know, I have a sense of, I. Embodiment being part of a leadership conversation. But for anyone who's listening who may not, or just as a reminder, really the, the truth is our minds are only a portion of what we do at work, right? That, like you said, kind of what happens below the neck, everything that is. In relation to our physical body, including things like our health, our wellbeing, our ability to be able to stay present in our bodies, to focus not just mentally, but kind of full bodied focus or full bodied presence, are a huge part of it.
And this includes our health and wellness. It also includes. Our ability to be present in such a way that's compelling to others who wanna join us. Certainly if we speak our body language is more than 70% of what gets communicated, not just our words. So it's kind of in a way of embodiment or somatics in leadership.
It's like the catchall for everything else. That's not just your decision making and not just the power of your mind. Which is a huge kind of chunk of the iceberg that's underneath the surface of what we tend to tend to when we're talking about leadership training. People often will come to me through two different doorways. One is what we might call resilience and one is what we might call either presence or kind of like purpose and contribution. That presence plays a role in. So you might find, for example, in your leadership that you're burning yourself out super common. There's a whole
Carol: Very common in the nonprofit sector.
LeeAnn: Exactly. There's a whole bunch of things related to one's embodiment that will play a role in burnout. It's not. Everything, but it's a lot of the conversation. So this is a whole topic we could get into. On the flip side, again, if I need to speak for my role, if I'm trying to make an impact or influence in some way, the kind of presence that I carry and even. The way that I can tap into a sense of purpose also has a lot to do with the way that I'm carrying my body. What may be stored or not stored in my body in terms of information, in terms of past experiences, can get in the way of enhancing our access to those things. So impact, inspiration, influence, huge part of the embodiment conversation as well as resilience, wellbeing, these types of things that are a little more obvious.
Carol: Yeah. And I think that resilience piece right now is so important. Obviously we're in a time of very high uncertainty. Our nonprofit sector in particular is being impacted. I know you know, being here in Washington, DC I have many people who've lost jobs to organizations that have had to downsize.
What are some of the leadership practices that you think are particularly important as we navigate this current kind of situation of chaos really is what it is.
LeeAnn: Yeah, I mean it's funny as you're asking into chaos, the, the answers that I'm gonna give to this question are probably not the first things that I'd put forward under different circumstances, but actually the first thing that comes up inside of Guts and Grace and the embodiment work that I do, we really look at what it means to surrender.
And I don't mean to give up, surrender. I mean in the body, can you accept what's coming versus brace against it for the sake of being able to live another day and actually come back forward? Right. Or for the sake of being able to transmute an energy of loss, of attack, of, something not going the way that you want it to, of an unexpected surprise. There's so much that's trained in us in terms of, I would say our current workplace culture that is, that you have to muscle through. So grit is like. Exalted right in our culture that you have to muscle through, that you have to to fight in a certain kind of way, that you have to make sure nothing ever ends or dies or falls apart, that we sustain our progress, our success, even if we're working for a non-profit, right?
It's like there's still this. Way that we've learned that things need to continue. The truth is organically, right? Everything in nature dies. Things in nature go through cycles. Our bodies are actually built the same. And if we can build a capacity through our own embodiment, through our presence to down cycle, to let something go, to receive bad news, to transmute, to actually like to take in a loss, a fall apart, a death of some kind, whatever that may be. And then to be able to kind of go through more of a down cycle, more like a winter period in our own embodiment, we actually gain the energy back and the resources to be able to come back stronger. And in your sector at this moment in time, I really see that as, what's happening, what's being asked and what's important.
And I don't, you know, I would never say like, oh, it's good that that's happening, but I think. If we've all been holding on by the skin of our teeth and like bracing against each other for such a long time and we just take one more hit and actually we kind of fall apart. What I know from doing embodied work for 20 years is that there's often a renewal that will happen that will bring us as individuals and us as a collective back more strongly.
There's always a spring after a winter. always a new birth that comes out of a death or a falling apart. If a fruit gets spent, there's always a seed that comes out of that. You see that in nature, and it's very much true in our embodiment as well. So I think this capacity, being able to work with this through the body, through our practices, through our presence, is actually really important right now. The alternative, if we don't, is that we're. We're probably gonna burn ourselves out, right? Because we're probably trying to hang on when everything energetically is going in a different direction. Now that is not to say that one should quit. Give up the fight, let go of your value. Like it's totally not that at all.
It's like hang on to all of that, but go through the transition that is this wintering cycle. So there's a practice that I teach, it's kind of fundamental under everything else in Guts and Grace, which is called. Surrender. I sometimes will say like allowing what is, and there's a way we can be with the softening of our bodies, the suppleness of our bodies, rather than resisting our triggers or contraction, actually allowing them to happen.
And going through this also connects to feeling emotions. This feeling our feelings rather than containing our stucking, know, grief, for example, letting it run. When we can build this capacity, we actually become stronger through the process.
Carol: Yeah, it was just just closing out, working with a client that we were, we were doing strategic planning and in the midst of, you know, everything that's going on as well as here at, at the, or the state they're in, was also going through a budget crisis. So they got news that their funding had been cut and.
So they really were in crisis as they're still trying to think about what do we, what's really important for us? What do we need to hold onto? And yet also what I saw was through kind of working through the, the process of planning and in being in crisis that, the leader was actually able to rethink differently about all that they offered where she said, you know, I came in, I was like, we do all these things, we do it all great, we gotta keep doing it all.
And by the end she was like, no, I am ready to let go of some stuff. We need to really focus on what we do best and where we really make the most unique contribution. And it was just so interesting, and I think, you know, the fact that there was this crisis going on kind of in. Not in the background for them, but it, you know, as we were moving through this process of feedback and assessing where we are and assessing what they want in the future, that, that, that was, that was the outcome that, that she was able to, to let go, you know, and, and see things differently.
And I think, you know, ultimately it will mean the organization will be more effective moving forward.
LeeAnn: I mean, it's true for orgs, it's true for individuals. I would say the innovation that can happen, the consolidation that can happen on the other side of that, it's pretty common actually in my coaching practice that I work with people who are on the other side of this kind of a downturn. Maybe they've lost a job or maybe they've left something that wasn't really working for them. Or maybe they're just into something new, having gone through this kind of a cycle. And it does, this isn't about embodiment per se, but kind of like it does invite us to be more clear about our priorities. It does give us a chance to maybe compost something and then come, come forward with fresh ideas, with a different kind of energy, especially if we have to step out of the game for a little while. and I think that is the. Opportunity that's available. It is. Part of why my work is called Guts and Grace, because there's guts, which is an analog right to grit, to powering through. We could say kind of to kinda like the masculine energy of drive and then there's this other thing and The name came very intuitively a bunch of years ago. We actually didn't use it right away and then ended up publishing the book and re renaming all of our programs when it was clear that it was the right name. But this word grace is really a little bit of an enigma, especially in the business world.
It's like, what does grace mean? Like I know that to be about God or like something, right? And, but actually it's like. This capacity to then let go and receive, let go and receive. And if there's grace, it's like I couldn't have made it happen myself. could have tried to muscle through and maintain all those programs.
I have an innovation team I'm actually working with right now where they're in a process as a team of learning what to do and an innovation doesn't work and they have to, you know, end that business and then start something new and repurpose the people and repurpose the ideas and the resources into the next iteration of something. so it's like grace is like what comes online when I can't make it happen anymore, and then I have to actually open to something else. And it's, it's a little edgy, but it's also an incredibly healthy thing that we just haven't trained ourselves in so much in the business world. I would say for me it connects to feminine wisdom. but it's just energy.
Carol: Well, we be, we have that in common 'cause the name of my company is Grace Social Sector Consulting. And, and yeah, I mean, I, I think about it and in a couple different ways of just that, you know, we need to give each other and I. Ourselves, grace, when things don't go the way we're planning. And then there's also the, like, things being graceful, right?
When, when things are really working well, smoothly and aligned, there can be a real grace in that as well. So I appreciate it.
LeeAnn: I'd love to
Carol: what, what,
LeeAnn: actually.
Carol: go, go, go ahead.
LeeAnn: I believe through my practice and research that 'cause people often say movement wise, I'm graceful and I've just spent, you know, probably 30, almost 40 years in movement practice. So there's, it adds up. But one of the key ingredients, I think anyone can access this and then we can translate it to leadership.
We can become graceful when we have more options. Available. So when our range is bigger. So I'm graceful if I can fight when I need to fight, I'm graceful. If I can let go when I need to let go, if I can. Get big, get small, do all of the various things. When we get clunky in our movement, to use this as a metaphor is when certain things are off the table, I can only be big but never smoke. I can only breath, but never out breath. Then it's like it becomes stilted actually. so one of the key things, I think that's also a leadership skill right now, if we come back to that. Idea of grace and metaphor is being able to have a wide range of what kinds of moves, ways of being types of choices, mindset wise, embodiment wise, are available to us as leaders. Then we can actually move with the current of what's happening. I can show up making the right move at the right time and the right situation because nothing's off the table. And so this again, kind of is a way to work with a metaphor of what happens in the body with what happens in an organization.
If I can only grow, but I can never scale back, there's gonna be a little less grace when it's time to scale back and I'm still holding on our bustling through. So I just, I love that word for a lot of different reasons, and I think there's lots we can learn from it.
Carol: Yeah, that makes me think of myself, I set intentions for, for every year, and one of them for this year was to be like water. 'cause like, you know, who knows what's gonna happen and we're gonna be in the rapids probably for a fair amount, but then sometimes you get stuck in the Eddie, you don't know where you're gonna be, but just flow with it.
And, you know, flow with the waves. 'cause I, I knew they were coming and so just that
yeah, it's a different way of just instead of like, okay, we're going to do A, B, C, but it's like, no, we're gonna, we're gonna flow with what comes.
LeeAnn: Not easier said than done, as we like to
Carol: Easier said than done, but at least, at least that image helps me when I feel like I'm getting, you know, over overwhelmed by the, by the wave.
LeeAnn: That's right.
Carol: What I mean, you talked about kind of, I, I feel like it's kind of a, the, a di and then maybe the two poles are like the kind of a rigidity or holding onto, you know, a, a narrow way of being and more fluidity of being able to be in different spaces, different kind of ways of being. What, what other ways do you see leaders kind of getting in their own way, especially when they're dealing with the kind of circumstances that we're dealing with right now.
LeeAnn: Well, let me answer the question. What other in a moment, but even just what you teed up is juicy because you know there's. That's like the way you said it, right? Like a rigidity, a holding on. But there's also, we could say like the exalted version of that, which is like commitment, clarity, decision, directness, which we need, right?
And we need at this moment in time, in the right moments, in the right ways, the flip side, you can have you can have like opening to whatever happens in a way that's kind of shadowy. Like, okay, fine, I'll just do whatever. Like I don't really care. Like there's all the downside of that as
Carol: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
LeeAnn: So it's
Carol: The, the, you know, acquiesce in advance kind of version.
LeeAnn: decline, I'll decline myself. Before you decline me. Thank you very much. I'm already gone. so there can be a shadow of either of those sides and I think part of the work is to cultivate. Capacity to be in the healthiest version of each of those.
And then to work with, well, which one do I use when If you only major in that for the rest of your life, you'll have a lot of work to do and probably be a great leader. Other things at this moment in time that I think matter are, there's a principle inside of Guts and Grace that I call co-creating the dance.
I use a lot of movement metaphors. I'm a somatic assistant. That's why. But really what I mean is being able to be in collaboration with whatever is, that does require us to listen both to what's happening outside and also what's happening inside of our bodies. So it brings me back a little bit. I would call it kind of an inner listening or like an inner wisdom and intuition. There's a lot happening right now, and on the surface level, very quickly we can get triggered by what we see. I. Rightfully so, right? There's a lot happening that's very specifically and directly impacting some of our bodies, some of our livelihoods, some of our jobs, some of our loved ones. And the more we're in reaction to that, the less effective we're going to be. So they're able to receive that and recenter as part of a practice that's really important for leaders right now. And then there's also, I think, something like. Is there a, a listening underneath, the listening could be sourced from that might inform the next move, not from a place of trigger or reaction, but more from a place of either response, responsiveness, or even creativity or innovation. I'm just gonna feel if I have a good example for you. yeah. Okay. So I have a client, for example, who. A little before this recent wave actually was laid off in a pretty crap way. And nonetheless there was a sense in her that there was something for her through this process and her own willingness to be creative processing through and centering in the triggers like the surface of what was happening. She was really able to kind of make lemons out of lemonade, right? To be able to. Find herself in a new opportunity that actually is positioning her very well to be able to serve at this time. So I think there's also taking what you need to take at base value, but as quickly as possible, then recentering from what that produces in you.
And then sourcing from a sense of trust and curiosity about what else might be here. I wanna say as quickly as possible, but I also don't mean that people should rush through their grief or through what's hard, but like to the extent that I can being able to get back in the game from this place of more curious, more creative, more like what else is here for me now?
I think you even gave an example that kind of touched on this. Like that I can find hope again and I can in an authentic, a way be available to the next thread that might be for me and I, I just, I look around and I go, there's a lot of really talented great skillful wise people that are either out of jobs or are under fire in some way, or there's like a lot going on for, I'm like, what are these people gonna do next?
I'm so curious about that and type of resilience, what type of things we're talking about, conserve them to find those threads for themself and come back creative and come back on fire.
Carol: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, a lot of people are gonna be going through various types of transitions when, as, as, as programs get impacted cuts, et cetera. You know, losing jobs and I. You know, I do think there is I think, I don't think there's been much recognition of the grief that people kind of have to work through first before they can, you know, it's all like, oh, well, have you got your resume ready?
And are you on LinkedIn or are you doing all the things and are you, have you started networking? But if you haven't kind of worked through that yet, I think you're not necessarily putting yourself at the best position to find your next opportunity and, and be creative about it. Be in that kind of more curious and, and creative space to think about, you know, it as an opportunity versus, oh God, I can't believe this happened to me.
LeeAnn: That's true. I probably skipped a step. My first answer could have been Feel your feelings, which is also an embodied
Carol: It always comes back to that, right?
LeeAnn: Just cry, just grieve a little bit. Just let yourself have, you know, have a, have a pity
Carol: I have a few rants.
LeeAnn: yeah. Or like get really mad and go ahead a punching bag for a couple of days or weeks or months as needed. So yeah, for sure. That's you know, it's also a huge part of the work that I do and, it's like, it's the, it's the module that nobody likes, but everybody gets a lot out of when we do that
Carol: Right,
LeeAnn: definitely, definitely.
Carol: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It made me think of the, you know, during the pandemic when we were going through the, you know, the great resignation, and this may not be, you know, that was a little more folks making their own decisions and this'll probably be a little less of that. But. Either for leaders who are still trying to, you know, work with teams and keep their missions moving forward, or those folks who are in that transition space maybe we take one 'cause they're really very different.
What's one thing that you would have the leaders focus on right now?
LeeAnn: Which one do you want me to take first?
Carol: Let's do the leaders first and then we can do the folks who are in the in-between space.
LeeAnn: One thing for them to focus on right now. What do you think is the main challenge that they're facing?
Carol: I think it is probably having to face the possibility of downsizing and whether it's gonna be reactively or, you know, strategically managing anxiety on the part of their team as things are so uncertain. And I think also, you know. Right now just looking at your to-do list can feel kind of prosaic when you feel like the world's falling apart.
LeeAnn: Yeah, totally.
Carol: So just a few challenges.
LeeAnn: Yeah. The last one, I'm, I'm gonna talk to the first couple and let me see if we can come back to the last one. what, I know I'm gonna speak for myself as an example. What I know about myself is that when there's a risk of things falling apart, I have all of the embodied coping mechanisms that I have that start to come online to protect. from the pain of that to protect my ego from whatever people might judge of me, if I'm part of why it falls apart or somehow I couldn't hold it together. And I found with myself and those that I work with that those habits can either make it feel worse or actually make it worse. Meaning whatever that is can contribute to things going less well and or it can just create more stress, more anxiety, where like, maybe it's gonna go the way it's gonna go, but I'm having a much worse experience of it.
I'm suffering more through it because all of that is online. So there's, I think, an opportunity to, Either leverage what you know or learn more about how your nervous system works, how your coping mechanisms turn, tend to turn on, what that feels like in your body, what your mind does when you're in that mode, or activate curriculum actually is a really focused kind of nervous system, reset, deep dive on this type of work.
But you can learn this anywhere that you are in a practice of pattern interrupting Train wreck inside of you. Right? Meaning, okay, so let's give an example. I tend to shrink when, you know, it looks like things are gonna fall apart financially. For example, inside of a business that I might be responsible for. And in that shrinking, I am more likely to both get small in my body, feel tight and be stressed out and tired because I'm tightening. And then also, not make some of the moves that might otherwise help to generate more income or make, you know, things go in a positive way? Certainly only so much one can do, right?
We're responsible and the rest of the world of the environment are responsible, but also certainly to some extent what we do, how we play, what shows up in our bodies and our mindsets and our moods in our. Ways of interacting, contribute to our co-creating. This comes back to co-creation, our co-creating the experience. So as a leader, if I can build the skill to almost like, not take the bait of what I'm seeing happen around me or what I'm afraid is happening around me and have a couple of. Embodied markers of that. So it could be as simple as when that starts to happen, when I start to get the information from my team that things are starting to fall apart, or this incoming is coming and I lock my jaw, can I start to just practice unlocking my jaw, for example?
Right? It can be a simple embodied practice once you boil it down, but the actual essence of it is unhooking a little bit from the the word train wreck earlier, like the, the pull of the spiral that takes us down into these places that actually co-create with and contribute to more of what we don't want, or it just being more stressful to experience what we don't wanna experience. And so I think this is in a way, one of the biggest skills for leaders, especially those who are in at this moment in time. And it's,
Carol: And then those,
LeeAnn: and
Carol: yes. Yes. So, so what, you know, what is that? Things for you where you know, oh, I'm in that I'm, I can feel the tightness or whatever it is. And then being able to kind of take a breath or relax, you know, whatever helps you relax. And how about for those kinds of in, be in the in-between space?
LeeAnn: I think it's a lot of what we already said, right? That there's one feeling your feelings letting them. Grief. Letting the anger, letting the frustration have its time. Be able to run through your body process through needs as makes sense. Giving yourself places to talk about it. Ways to process the energy, which could literally be physical movement often. When we're working with, I call these into the well practices, like going into the well of my emotional experience. We'll often give folks an assignment to either run it out or punch it out or dance it out or. Cry it out or wait it out or whatever the thing needs to do to actually move the energy through the body.
Some amount of times, you know, 10 times in the next two weeks for example, or once a day or whatever you dare. Right? Whatever you're willing to do. Some of us are really comfortable in these types of practices. Some of us, it's like, I would never do that, but maybe if I close the door and like, you know, put a pillow up in the door so that no one can hear me.
Maybe, maybe. But it really matters to give your body that time and that like release. then everything we were saying already about then dropping in, like going through the down cycle, but then dropping into where the intuition may lie about an next thread about who should I talk to next about, here's an opportunity that like I wouldn't usually say yes to, but actually maybe this is a door opener or like I just have this. Knowing in me that there's a need for X and like I've never had the time to pursue it, but maybe I research it now or maybe I, make an offer around it now. So like going down and then coming back in with something that connects you to a sense of contribution, hope, purpose.
Carol: Yeah. And as we close out looking back to your own experience, what's one strategic shift that you've made in the past that had a significant impact on your work?
LeeAnn: So many probably, I feel actually compelled to talk to something that we're in now versus something past,
Carol: I.
LeeAnn: is at Guts and Grace. I founded the business. Depends on how you count, but we could say like, I've been teaching the work since 2010, founded the business in its original form in. 2014 and really in the last year, the intuition I've been receiving is that it can't just be like a single founder- led business anymore. That there has to be something circular, more collaborative and, you know, and to do that in a way that is a little unconventional. But that is relevant to this moment in time.
And some of them. about that really comes from my study of somatics that for, for change to happen, for energy to move, you need enough bodies that can actually hold the, the energy of that. so we're scaling at the moment. We're doing some big projects. We're launching some new events for change makers and things like that.
And. Not only do we need a team, like people to do the work, but we actually need a different energetic leadership to be able to hold the vision for that work. So over the past, really 10 months we've been leaning into reconfiguring, actually reincorporated the business. We're looking at a different format of the business. And it was a, it was a bit of a, like, before things fall apart, here's the thing you need to do to be able to hold the energy of what the change is going to be. So a little bit preemptive and like. Leaning into doing some, let GOs make some changes that I didn't necessarily want to make but could see would be needed.
And so let's, we might as well do it on the front end of what's gonna happen. So what I've been in lately and I think it's changed me in the sense of. I am learning how to work with collective leadership in a next level way. It's always something I've cared about. It's like another layer of embodiment of the practices and what that actually requires of me as a founder.
Carol: And that's a transition that, that many, many nonprofits go, go through for, because most will have started with a founder, but then need to shift into more of a collective. And often, you know, if they don't, it does, it does, it does die. So yeah. Wonderful. Well, good luck with that. That sounds like a, you know an amazing evolution and it you know, good, I'm sure it will work through and, and everybody will be better off for it, so.
Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been great to have the conversation.
LeeAnn: Thanks, Carol. It's been great to be here. I look forward to keeping in touch with you and your audience.
Carol: All right, well, thank you.
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