Kelli King-Jackson, ACC

Coaching for Black women leading in white spaces.

Personal Development

Kelli and Martha’s End of the Year Survival List: Special Edition

Hey y’all!

It’s the list-making time of year, and Martha and I wanted to share our top ten survival strategies.

In addition to what we said last time we made our list:

1. Add a ‘nourishing’ appointment to your online calendar to catch up with friends and colleagues at local (outdoor) spots.  

2. Cut your last year’s holiday shopping in half and consider regifting or charitable donations honoring someone instead. Given the great disparities in giving, please support organizations led by people of color, LGBTQ fox, and people with disabilities.

3. Put some love into the world:

  • For the non-chefs, send an e-gift card for a food delivery service, or, if you can, cook for a friend or loved one in need.
  • Send a thank you note, email, or text even if it’s too late. Seriously, don’t overthink it. Sending it will benefit you and the other person.
  • Send the condolence message you forgot to send. Please let’s normalize grief beyond the first two weeks.
  • Give a stranger a compliment. If you suffer from stranger danger, join the #MakeKindnesstheNorm movement

4. When you don’t get The Thing or Things you want, LET IT GO! Someone else got it instead is happy about it because they got it, and a lot of someones didn’t get it and feel the same way you do. 

5. Be an email abolitionist. (Oh Kelli! I will aspire to this!) Go back to phone calls and don’t leave voicemails.

6. Try fried pickles if you haven’t yet. Eat them like people do in the south, by dipping them in some ranch dressing!

7. Hug your loved ones. Or, if you’re not a hugger, make sure to find other ways to show affection—words of affirmation, celebrating their accomplishments, etc.  

8. Friends are really important!  Our friend group fills our cup daily.

9. Learning to nap is a love letter to your inner child.

10. Celebrate the rejections!! Taking a wrong turn opens the possibility for new discoveries about yourself and others.   

Love,

Kelli and Martha

Black at Work: Reset YourSelf

September is doing all the things.  Mercury is in Retrograde.   COVID is still real.  Life is life-ing.  Across my coaching sessions you have said y’all are exhausted, overworked, underappreciated, and refusing to slack off because Black women don’t move like that. 

Y’all have heard me ask: At what cost?

How much longer will you be able to maintain this pace?

What would ‘better’ look like, feel like, smell like, sound like, taste like?

My job as a coach is not to tell you what to do.  It’s to ask questions.  Offer things for your consideration.  Challenge you to consider another viewpoint. 

My coach is doing the same with me.  I, too, managed to allow my schedule to get out of control in August.  I looked up and it was September and I couldn’t even remember my late-July vacation. 

IYKYK

One thing about me is that I’m going to find a way to bounce back.  Here are a few things I’m going to try as I seek to enter this next quarter from an empowered place. I hope they help give you the energy you are to reallocate time in the 4th quarter.

  1. Back to a 30-45 min weekly planning time.  I used to do this session with the Joy Collective and even hosted monthly sessions for my network in 2021.  I miss having this time to prepare for the workweek. You can do the same by hopping on Zoom with friends or doing it as a family activity.
  2. Time Blocking.  I’ve written about time-blocking before.  This tool is essential because meetings aren’t work and virtual land has created the conditions to expect back-to-back-to-back meetings ALL. DAY. LONG. Time blocking allows me to schedule dedicated working times where I can process all the meetings and build relationships.  If you adopt this strategy treat this time as a sacred, non-negotiable meeting with your brain. 
  3. Our labor laws in the U.S. are trash but most jobs allow for a 30-minute lunch break.  Take it!  Step away from your desk and get back into your body.
  4. Before saying yes to another request ask a LOT of questions.  Nitpick the hell out of the request to ensure that your yes is deeply aligned to your job, values, and goals. Am I the best person for this request?  If I wasn’t available who would you ask to serve in this capacity? How much time is expected for me to participate? When will this project/committee/etc. end?

I mean, it’s wild that the rest of us feel like we are letting folks down by prioritizing ourselves in our own lives.  Hopefully, we are learning that the way these Gen Zers are set up – the way they walk into interviews asking about PTO, mental health coverage, and PD budgets – is the new minimum standard.  Holistic growth is non-negotiable for Gen Zers; it’s not something they have to earn by paying unstated, outdated dues.

Yep, just writing that sentence triggered me. 

Here’s the thing.  So many of us have stopped believing in what’s possible because of what we’ve seen firsthand.  Our doubt needs to catch up with these company policies and statements. Until then, let’s leverage the hell out of them before they disappear. Let’s use these resources to reset ourselves!

Resources:

Black at Work: Quarterly Review

So I recently did my quarterly review for the second quarter.  I always dread the thought of doing quarterly reviews but feel really great at the end.  My experience wasn’t great because my quarter was perfect.  In fact, I had a really challenging quarter personally.  #life was life-ing in all the ways.  My experience with my review was great because it allowed me to step outside of myself and my self-critique and look at data.  I found the data in my calendar, emails, and reports.  The review was a way to put all the disparate pieces together to create a cohesive picture of all the time and energy I put into the quarter. 

I shared my review on LinkedIn and several folks thanked me for reminding them to do theirs.  Y’all, it’s not too late. Any day is a good day to look back to bring forward lessons and reflections.  Before you talk yourself out of trying, here is a list of things you can do to start your review today.  I’ve even created a handout for folks who prefer a template to guide them through the process. 

Top 10

  1. Revisit your annual work plan, vision board, or quarterly goals.  No matter how you structured your goals, annual or quarterly, you can still pause every 90 days to see how things are going. 
  2. Leaders have areas they shine in and areas in which they struggle.  It’s important to spend time reflecting on both.  You don’t want to self-congratulate yourself out of growing.  Nor do you want to criticize yourself so much that you overlook important contributions you’re making.
  3. Those who have gone before us (living and ancestors) have left footprints for us to follow.  Pausing to pay homage each quarter grounds us in our collective leadership journey.  As Black women/femmes and women-identifying folx, we don’t walk alone.  Our culture values a shared experience as inspiration to keep going during tough times.
  4. Just because you set a goal doesn’t mean the goal can’t change.  Life, organization’s, the freakin world, are changing constantly.  We have to be flexible in how we adapt our goals to our lived reality.  Rigidity doesn’t serve leaders in the 21st century. 
  5. A leader’s success isn’t only in work.  It is also in joy and pleasure.  Don’t diminish the importance of prioritizing and experiencing both.  Often.
  6. Leaders have to cultivate the soil where they’ve planted seeds otherwise they will not reap a full harvest. Leaders who don’t tend to the not-fun part of leadership will never fully see the fruit of their labor.
  7. Self-Leadership.  Surround yourself with images, words, and sounds that inspire you to keep working toward what you really want.
  8. Reach back.  As a leader, make sure you create time to invest in others.  Whether it is a direct report or a promising intern.  Prioritize regular time supporting other leaders in their growth.
  9. Tell someone.  Y’all know I believe strongly in accountability.  Let someone know about your quarterly review and find ways to support each other over the next 90 days.
  10. Need a guide? Grab my ‘Not Your Mama’s Quarterly Review‘ to guide you through the process.

Kelli and Martha’s Top Ten Coping Strategies

I am thrilled to share today’s post with a beloved colleague, Martha Ann Toll. Martha and I met while serving on the board of Funders Together to End Homelessness. At that time, I was Vice President of Programs & Community Engagement at the Simmons Foundation in Houston, and Martha was the Executive Director of the Butler Family Fund.

After 26 amazing years running the Butler Family Fund, a social justice philanthropy, Martha left to write full-time in 2020. I transitioned earlier this year to solely focus on my coaching and consulting. We’ve stayed in touch about our new lives. Martha has been a wonderful support to me, giving me entrepreneur tips and sending me client referrals, and I’ve been fangirling as she prepares for the launch of her first novel. I am deeply grateful for her friendship.

Last week we were chatting in our LinkedIn DMs about how to cope with the relentless onslaught of horrifying and hope-crushing news. We discussed our strategies and wanted to share our list, in case it’s helpful.

  1. KKJ: Start a text thread with BFFs and incorporate TikToks, memes, and animal videos and not just the bad news of the world.
  2. MAT: Go on a serious news diet.

  3. KKJ: Have outdoor wine meetups with my people (fellow introverts will understand the italics). 
    MAT: Eat lunch with your girlfriends as often as possible but not so often that you feel overscheduled.
  4. KKJ and MAT: Start with exercise time as a repeating calendar item vs. fitting it in each day. 
  5. KKJ: Take 30-minute random brain breaks and choose from a menu of things you like (nap, read, neurofeedback, a casual walk, etc.)
    -Exercise with what you love. [Kelli is a “Gen X Peloton nerd” and a walker; Martha swims and walks, and when she can stand it, does the elliptical.].
    -Save administrative work for outside your peak hours.
    -Try delegating.
    -Most emails and texts can wait.
  6. KKJ and MAT: Eat dessert.
  7. KKJ and MAT: Get rid of any toxic people in your life.
  8. KKJ: Be intentional about ‘dates’ to FT with grandchildren, call your mom, and have a virtual paint party with your adult daughter.
    MAT: Hug your loved ones.
  9. MAT:  Give a charitable donation, or, at the very least a compliment and some love, every time you get a rejection.
  10. KKJ: Move at the speed of grief.

(Special note: Martha wrote and published this post first on her blog, and it has been slightly edited for mine.)

CLICK TO share your top coping strategies with us!