We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Krystal White. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Krystal below.
Hi Krystal, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
Most of us have experienced a situation where we feel we are out of our depth, inadequate and faking our confidence. I don’t see why there’s anything wrong with these situations or our feelings about ourselves.
Often, if we experience “imposture syndrome” perhaps we are in situations that stretch our capacities, our perspectives, our wisdom and our range of responsiveness.
Instead of fearing these feelings, I want to be someone who actively welcomes them. If I’m in a situation, relationship, or position where I am 100% confident and 100% capable all the time, it’s a sign for me that it’s time for me to try something new.
That perspective being said, the interest in this phenomenon mostly says something about our culture and the deeply embedded trance of unworthiness many of us are under.
Many industries, services, and movements benefit from the notion that something is wrong with us, each other or the world.
We are perpetually in a “war against” one thing or another multiple times a day.
Many of us have learned to be at war with ourselves, and to fake it till we make it in the roles we play within our communities.
I guess I care less about the sense that many of us lack confidence, and more about the sense that our society has made it easier to second-guess and under-value ourselves, compared to truly understanding ourselves.
The times of my life that I’ve felt like I was an “imposture” are the most are always the moments where I was being the MOST myself.
Moments, I tell you. Not seasons. Not situations. Not days.
I recount only moments.
The more, mere moments I string together, the more conscious, and more competent, I become at being truly me.
Maybe there is a sliver of what most people identify as being “confident” in those moments, too. If so, that confidence is like the hint of fruit on a Mango Bubbly water. It’s hardly detectable…but if someone labels it that way, then the flavor must be present, right?
LOL.
What if the occasional “imposture syndrome” experience was a sign of our willingness to evolve, and not a sign of paltry, must-ingest-some-feel-good-mantras-NOW!, self-esteem.
What if it was what we used to indicate—”this is my edge. AND–this is how I go past it.”
What and who, will support you when you’ve met your edge? Who will meet me when I am past mine?
That question, those who really answer, and my own (hand me some tissues) responses, are what I find most compelling today.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Right now, I am over the moon about Free Leadership, Inc: a 5013c social enterprise whose mission it is to curate and equip more people to be informed friends, mindful mentors and natural coaches in their personal relationships.
We at Free Leadership intend to rebrand how we identify our leaders, and what it means to be a leader.
We definitely believe it’s outdated primatology to confuse a higher-ranking person as the leader in the group. We also think that just because somebody is going somewhere competently and confidently, doesn’t mean we it’s in our best interest to follow them.
We believe that 1) who we choose to, and how, we follow and 2) who chooses to, and how he/she/they lead both require serious renovation and a revolution in our society.
Our core premise and standard is that the most influential people in our lives are the ones who support us. They often play this role invisibly and often without a lot of credit or value. Think of how our bones support our entire physical system stabilizing and holding us up. They make sturdy possible. Yet their power remains hidden to the eye. Few people go around complimenting or acknowledging the value of each other’s bones!
Who are like bones in your life?
We want to find these people. educate and empower these people first to foremost to play this role more openly in our communities.
Then, we want to position them to be more engaged in community at either a civic or neighborhood life level.
Right now, we’re organizing our effort in three directions:
- We’re supporting mindful men in our communities to be more capable and willing to lead more consciously, cultivating trust and meaningful collaboration in their relationships.
2. We’re researching and creating a Mentoring Training manual to resource and inspire those who want to serve in this role with core, evidence-based competencies.
3. We’re certifying those in helping industries, wellness providers, tattoo artists and certain hospitality staff who are living below a living wage to give Mental Health First Aid.
We’re still pretty green—we’re a social enterprise start up that is less than 18 months old. So, we’re still open and curious regarding the specific shape and strategic solutions we’ll take in the future. We aim to be an necessary value-add for our communities. We’re tending to our early developmental needs and learning basic skills as a start up. It’s all very fresh and uncertain. We’re here to tend to this fragile and formidable process.
And of course, we need mentors (in the form of board members and key volunteers) to be our bones.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
- Self-advocacy Championing
This 100% is about championing my “self” and committing to seeing life as training to become better me.. Championing involves enthusiasm and responsible ownership for a mission and vision. This isn’t about winning for the sense of achievement or accolades. Most of the time, self-advocacy doesn’t feel like the typical accomplishments our society highlights. Often, it simply means I am recalibrating and then outwardly expressing and going after what I need.
It frequently ruffles feathers, my own, and some others.
Every day, week or season of my life when I mastered and honed this skill were times where I felt the most confidence and “on the right path.” That feeling is priceless, and its impact can’t be measured.
This week wasn’t that kind of week for me. In the last 7 days, I was re-mothering, re-authoring, re-minding, and re-guiding others towards their own awesomeness far, far more than I was championing myself.
In a land far, far away, in a time soon from now, I’ll share that I did both in equal measure.
I’ll champion myself as much as I leaned into the beauty, realness, and trust others show me today.
- Allowing, and provoking, loss to do its thing
Listen—This quality was literally introduced at my birth, and 45 years later, I still consider myself an amateur at it. One of my most proudest work titles was “Chief of Workforce Engagement;” I consider pledges, agreements, and being “in it” part of my life-blood. Now, I want to center loss more as a valuable, honorable leadership skill.
The truth is: I tend to stay in the game too long.
I prefer to work things out long past their expiration date. I adore playing hard, working hard, and any feedback associated with engaged investment. I default to attaching to “the thick and thin of it,” far more than any alluring hello. Left to my own devices, I have an ego-driven, semi-secret desire to bring back the dead, or infuse what was on its last legs with effervescent energy.
I’m not secure about these aspects of my inherited preference for toiling and enslavement. I’m wanting to shift into a more accepting, open stance to dissolution.
Still, I don’t feel or see our culture teaching the masses that loss, goodbyes, letting go or death as a natural, possibly neutral, part of life.
It is.
And it can be.
Disengagement, letting go, saying goodbye and even proactively planning for succession and endings has been the singular, continuous (ha!) most impactful lesson of my leadership journey.
Today, I refuse to equate quality with longevity.
For sure—sometimes when something lasts long, it signals health, vitality, life. For sure—sometimes when things last long, it signals complacency, denial, tolerance for mediocrity and the belief that with enough effort, we can “make everything work well.”
One of the most poignant skills I’ve learned is to leave people/situations/agreements AND also to love people when they do the same, especially with me.
The only quality that supersedes this skill is how to offer, cultivate and resource grace and discipline when I leave, let go, or absolutely break up with a part of myself/identity that I used to love or worked well for me.
Who are the wisdom keepers about this? I’m too foolish when I offer any guidance. I am waiting on your readers, or a mentor that reaches out to me,to point me in the right direction.
- Equalizing my power with my word.
My weapons, my wounds, my medicine, my sanctuaries, my friendships and my allies deeply rely on “the word.”
Words are both holy and banal to me. Power is both sacred and ordinary to me.
Words are ligaments, neurotransmitters, costumes, bridges…at the mercy of our shared interpretations, momentarily e-valutation and personal intentions.
Still,
I choose to be a hopeful believer, and Words are the only faith I flounder for.
In my world, when words marry action (no matter how long that marriage lasts!) their union paves diverse paths towards our collective peace, to our shared joy, and therefore to widespread love.
I can, we can, you can, choose to be ruthlessly real when words, personally and socially, are used for pain, isolation or momentary/fleeting one-up-ing.
I can, we can, you can, choose to ruthlessly committed to our words as prosocial power-tools and the medicine that we crave.
What skill do you equalize with your own personal power?
Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?
I’ve been some teachers’ worst nightmare, some teachers’ favorite pet, a handful of teachers’ ideal learner and many teacher’s unmemorable student.
No matter how I showed up or reacted (please forgive me!) I acknowledge that “teachers” have been the biggest influencers of my life.
I’ve spoken/written about this elsewhere numerous times, and I’ll never pass up the opportunity to express “Thank You” again. They have held a vast range of forms: from strangers to children, from educators to authority figures, from momentary connections to lifelong ties, and from turned-my-world-inside out to tiny course corrections.
Over the years, I honed my own internal recognition system that flashes brightly when I meet one of these “guides. I am humbled and empowered each week for their support of my development.
The truth is: I am, this here is, simply another consequence of connectivity.
I know that my work isn’t creating anything innovative, and I’m not initiating any new social crusade. I simply upcycle or re-package the energy, wisdom, skill and hope these beings extend(ed) me, and then I embody their light as much as I can muster.
I am, we at Free Leadership are, always asking for mentors to step up and into our visioning, mind mapping and heartsets. Please reach out if you’d like to help guide and steer us to be a beacon of wise strategy. The world needs more from us. I believe, I need more support.
My 6th grade teacher was the first person who ever saw me as capable, as clever, or with anything special to say. We’re still pen pals, almost 35 years later. She instilled the belief in me that choice is always available and change is always possible. I aspire to connect that way, move that way, and lead that way. But if I could get only one thing right in my life, I’d like to love that way.
The second best thing I’d get right would be to host epic parties.
Contact Info:
- Website: theexecutiveshaman.com, freeleadership.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freeleadershipinc/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystal-white-phd-801179109
