Practice Your Leadership

In this second episode of a two-part reflection series, Saralyn invites you to take what you’ve learned from looking back on your year in order to consciously choose what practices – in your leadership and your life as a whole – you wish to take with you into 2022, and what you wish to leave behind. Subscribe to our newsletter and receive a free worksheet filled with prompts used in this episode: ...

We’re taught to equate productivity with output. To bulldoze through even when we’re running on empty. To constantly do more. But what if we told you that notion is harming us, our teams, and our work? That reflection, relationship building, and even rest can be productive? In this episode, Saralyn is joined by Annika Voltan , Executive Director of the Community Sector Council of Nova Scotia , to...

Team alignment matters. Why? The only way to create the meaningful change you were built for is to journey together with collective beliefs, actions, and behaviours towards your team’s purpose. But what does an aligned team actually look like? In Saralyn’s experience, an aligned team: actively defines and consciously works in a brave space that prioritizes psychological safety in order to hold dif...

Create the intention, attention, and space required to cultivate psychological safety on your team. Why? So you can be intentional in your behaviours and align your heads, hearts, and efforts towards the impact you were formed for. How? Define it – Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or...

Is your team avoiding hard conversations for the sake of false harmony? It’s time to disrupt the “peace.” Avoiding conflict is only harming your team and its work. When teams begin to explore areas of discomfort, conflict becomes productive data that can help transform the way you work together for the better. What’s required? Creating brave spaces to host honest conversations, cultivating psychol...

Teams must journey together. Both in the work itself, and by centring the team as the work. But how do you do that? How do you journey together to reflect on “us” as a team and build back stronger?  In this week’s podcast, Saralyn explores how teams can benefit from the ferocity of reflection using the following practices: Reflection Studios – Take the time to integrate your collective learning an...

How do we work together? It may seem like a simple question, but it’s powerful. When teams talk about how they work together, they oil the machinery for doing the work together. In this episode, Saralyn explores asking this question through different lenses – accountability, power, discomfort, trust, and language – in order to hold a continual conversation around the required inner work of teams....

As the podcast continues to hold conversations around optimizing team relationships and dynamics, Saralyn begins to explore the importance of focusing on the inner work of teams. In this episode, she explores the necessity of aligning and reflecting on your team’s behaviour, putting relationships at the centre of your team’s work, and doing your own work as a team so you can align towards your imp...

Saralyn sits down with thought leader, social justice activist, and out-of-the-box thinker Tyler Colbourne to talk about how his new role has the power to pull one of the biggest levers in team dynamics of all time – focusing on the team so the team can focus on the work. This dedicated role sees the team as its work and cultivates the conditions to:  Make space for conflict and difficult conversa...

We need to rethink burnout. It's no question that burnout is real and demands to be addressed. AND, there’s a rethink here.  Are the costs too heavily felt on the individual, and not enough on the organization? In this episode, Saralyn takes the stance of shifting the conversation around burnout from being something the individual is responsible for to an issue that teams and organizations ne...

Gratitude means more than just giving thanks. It connects us to our joy, our vulnerability, and our self-belonging. In this episode, Saralyn discusses how incorporating simple gratitude rituals into your leadership practice can broaden your perspective on life so you have the resilience to ride the waves of chaos and uncertainty.  For exclusive prompts, tools, and resources to help you along your...

Being in community with others can be incredibly powerful. These spaces allow us to share our stories, learn from others who are on similar – or wildly different – leadership journeys, and take accountability to practice our inner work. In this episode, Saralyn discusses how harnessing the power of community allows us to turn up the volume on self-authoring your path, and turn down the volume on s...

Doing your own inner work is required. Rise in that responsibility. In this episode, host and leadership coach Saralyn Hodgkin explores why making the commitment to practice your own inner work – to ask yourself hard questions about your blind spots, triggers, strengths, and so much more – is essential to help you rise to your full leadership potential. For exclusive prompts, tools, and resources...

What is your why? Understanding the reasons why you bring your agency out in the world in different ways – in your leadership, your relationships, your identity – is fundamental to your leadership practice. In our thirteenth episode, Saralyn discusses how clearly defining your why can act as a touchstone for you to orient your learning around on your leadership journey. For exclusive prompts, tool...

Let’s dive deeper into what it means to forge your own leadership journey. In our fourteenth episode, leadership coach Saralyn Hodgkin reflects on her own unique path, and explores the integral role that intuition plays in guiding you along your career path, rather than just following along with the narratives you’ve created for yourself, so that you can confidently create a path that aligns with...

In the past year alone, over four million North Americans have quit their jobs in search of different opportunities that better align with their life, values, and leadership. At a time when the future seems unclear for many as they navigate their leadership journey, leadership coach Saralyn Hodgkin asks you to examine your timeline as one source of power to self-author your own path. For exclusive...

What does it mean to practice self-care? In the words of self-described Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet Audre Lorde, caring for one’s self is not an act of self-indulgence, but of self-preservation and political warfare. In this episode, leadership coach Saralyn Hodgkin explores how rest, relaxation, and refueling are required in your leadership practice so you can re-enter the world ready t...

Communicating your needs is important. It’s important simply because they’re yours. Own that. In this episode, Saralyn discusses why setting boundaries isn’t just helpful in your leadership practice, but why it’s required. Living and leading in alignment with your true, authentic self requires setting boundaries in relationships with others to protect your personal and professional needs. Listen t...

This week, the Practice Your Leadership podcast tackled some overwhelming feelings you might encounter on your leadership journey, like stress and compassion fatigue. In today’s reflective episode, Saralyn helps you build your own resiliency toolkit – an essential pool of resources and practices to help you stand tall, grateful, and resilient in times of adversity. For exclusive prompts, tools, an...

Feeling powerless? Distressed? Like you’re caring for others more than yourself? In our tenth episode, Saralyn discusses compassion fatigue – a condition that many are dealing with during this pandemic that’s often described as the negative cost of caring. Saralyn walks you through the phases and symptoms of compassion fatigue and asks you to reflect on how compassion fatigue may be showing up in...

Overwhelmed? Let movement act as your medicine. In our ninth episode, Saralyn explores the Nagoski Sisters’ concept of the stress cycle, the importance of dealing with stress itself – not just the stressor – and how this sometimes requires physically moving your body through a cycle of movement so you can come out on the other side ready to live, love, and lead. For exclusive prompts, tools, and r...

What does inner work mean for you? In the first installment of our five-part Growing Still series centering around practicing inner work to allow you to grow still and foster a deeper relationship with yourself, others, and your leadership agency, Saralyn dives deeper into the process of practicing your inner work. We’ll talk about how inner work requires you to unfold your self-awareness to explo...

In the second installment in our five-part Growing Still series, Saralyn invites you to explore the stories and narratives you’ve constructed in your head, heart, and mind that have helped shape you for better or for worse. As part of practicing your inner work on your leadership journey, you’ll need to ask yourself what effect these stories have on your identity. Do these narratives serve you? Do...

Practicing your inner work isn’t always easy, but it’s necessary in order to walk in alignment with the person and the leader you strive to be. In the third installment of our five-part Growing Still series, Saralyn discusses the importance of dwelling in the uncomfortable stories, narratives, and experiences you hold within yourself in order to find perspective and foster growth, and how explorin...

After identifying the stories we tell ourselves and dwelling in discomfort, it’s time to heal your wounds so you can rise to your full leadership potential. In the fourth installment of our five-part Growing Still Series, Saralyn walks you through the work of healing by encouraging grieving, self-love, self-acceptance, and the importance of letting things go in order to shift patterns of behaviour...