Kelli King-Jackson, ACC

Coaching for Black women leading in white spaces.

personal development

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!

Grounded

Are you grounded?

What does that even mean?

I visualize grounding as the moment when dirt and plants connect to create the environment needed for something to grow.

Survey Results

When I recently wrote about the distress I was seeing in my coaching clients, I didn’t know if my readers would relate. I was curious enough to send out a survey in my newsletter and LinkedIn asking folks to tell me how they were REALLY doing.

Here’s what y’all said:

two surveys that use emoji faces to vote

Only 14% of the folx who took my survey had a smiling emoji. Everyone else ranged from 😐 to 😩.

I mean, I wasn’t shocked but then again I was.

Let me speak in I statements. I can say that MY life has totally gone off the rails since then. My fatigue meter went waaaay up and my capacity to take action went way down. Add in my perimenopausal symptoms and it’s a wrap.

I’m stuck.

My clients too.

What about you?

At What Cost?

Recently I started asking ‘at what cost’ anytime a client starts talking about being over-committed/burned out/exhausted. I get curious about how they gauge their capacity as leaders.

How did you get to an eight-day work week?

What will happen if you don’t respond to emails during your vacation?

What are you willing to drop to say yes to that new committee role?

I hold the coaching space for clients to explore. No judgment. No shame. Just a lot of openness for folks to slow down their pace long enough to self-determine what they want for themselves and their leadership. I like to ask questions that are not about the client’s calendar and or strategic plan.

What do you want?

What are you willing to let go to have it?

If having it all is not an option, what will you choose to pursue?

These are not thinking only questions. They are feeling, touching, and listening to questions, too.

Right now many of us are in cerebral land. Thoughts swirling around. Replaying conversations. Retraumaziting ourselves as we think about all the things that can and have gone wrong.

Turning off the loop is possible.

Isn’t it?

What if we collectively commit to stop the spinning and get grounded again?

Ways to Get Started

Here are some things I’ll be doing over the next 30 days. (Maybe something on this list will call you to it. 🤔)

  • Daily walks on my Peloton.
  • Drink more water.
  • Realign my calendar to my goals.
  • Re-engage with tools in my toolkit (Therapy, Tapping, Music, etc.).
  • Time outdoors (alone and with humans).

Full disclosure: Nothing on this list is new to me. I know that doing the things on this list will help me. Unfortunately, when in distress, rooting down to be present with and for MYSELF is the last thing on my mind. Instead, I flail around fighting, fleeing, and forgetting that I already have the resources I need to realign. Our human nature is strange that way. That’s why collective actions work. They create the energy needed for transformation to occur.

We can do this together, y’all. We certainly can’t do it alone.

Join me.

Share 1 or 2 commitments you will make to help get yourself grounded again.

Growing While Black

I recently reflected on my personal and professional development growth with one of my colleagues.  I went over my 2018 professional goals and was pleased that despite a heavy workload I had accomplished quite a bit.  I also acknowledged and expressed concerns about the sustainability of the pace.   

Over the weekend, I started replaying the conversation over in my head. Something hadn’t felt ‘right’ in the conversation but I had brushed it off at the time. In my gut, I started to feel like my reflections of my goals and my work fell short of some secret expectation.  Clearly, I had been unable to tap into my discontent at the time of the conversation but the truth of the exchange was no less important after the fact.

As a Black woman, working with mostly white people I have learned that the rules I need to know are never explicitly stated. Like, I don’t need to know about PTO and dress codes. Those are written in the handbook. I do need to know how unspoken rules about when to take time off and what attire is actually acceptable.

I quickly learned that those unspoken rules were actually things to change so I could be more like my white peers. The message = stand out less, blend in more. The senders of the message have been white women, white men, and Black men.  Honestly, I even get it from myself.

You talked too much in the meeting [from a Black male corporate partner]

You ask too many questions? Why can’t you just trust me [from a romantic partner]

You apologize too much. [ from a white woman executive]

You should not say ‘if I can be honest’ because it negates everything you’ve said before. [from a Black male community leader]

You really shouldn’t say anything because they might think you’re not a team player. [from ME]

Yes, all of these leaders have gone through professional development that makes them feel confident that they are giving me sound advice.  And, sometimes they could be right. But what I realized in my conversation is that rarely do I get any constructive feedback, just tips on how to not be too much/smart/vocal/strong/ etc.

Real talk: none of them has walked in my shoes as a Black woman so they have zero understanding of the tools I use to navigate my professional and personal lives.  

Truth: As a Black woman, I have spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about my words and actions.

This year, I decided to not do put as much emotional labor into thinking so much about what I would say and how I come across. I realized that the stress of that labor was having a negative impact on my mental and physical health. Instead, I looked inward this year and focused on my personal development. And I still had a dope year professionally! While I appreciate the acknowledgments of my peers, I am personally noting the things I did that I know contributed to my overall success:

  1. I took vacations;
  2. I was healthy this year and did not need to take any sick days;
  3. I showed up more consistently for my BestSisters;
  4. I maintained boundaries with loved ones about where I spend my time and money;
  5. I kept up with my planner;
  6. I made time to write;
  7. I more regularly went to bed before midnight;
  8. I stopped trying to fix things before/unless being asked for support;
  9. I proactively sought more outward-facing (i.e. public speaking) opportunities; and
  10. I said ‘no’ when I meant it.

I have not been perfect in any of these 10 areas. 

And still I rose…

I showed up for ME in 2018.

I was afraid of letting people down. 

I was oftentimes reluctant to be more bold.  

And yet I moved…

I still have a LOT of work to do on ME.  I’m proud to say that for the first time in a long time I have the emotional bandwidth to think about me.  Next year is going to mean big changes for me personally and professionally.  Once you see the possibility of freedom, you cannot go back.  

The overarching theme of my growth this year was dismantling whiteness. I put down the mantle of whiteness – in my career and my personal life. However, I still struggle to not be defined by whiteness. Thankfully, I am more fully able to walk as a Black woman in all spaces of my life.  I am not cowering to hide my Blackness in all its forms.

I no longer have to explain myself.  I am no longer chasing the ever-moving target of approval.  I can continue to do an excellent job while also serving my community and showing up for my family in healthy ways.  I do not have to justify when, how, and why service to others fills my bank to overflowing.  And I can do all of that while being Blackity Black.

I’m curious, how are you growing while Black? What are you learning about yourself?

kelli

I Won’t Go Back: What I’m Carrying Forward into 2021

Maaaaan, 2020 kicked my ass. In the I-started-a-new-workout-so-I’m-sore type of way. Somehow during the most devastating year of my generations collective life I have managed to be ok.

Yes, this year has been full of pain, suffering, and death. However, this year of physical distance from outsiders has also given me the gift of being at home. As an introvert I have not missed outside AT ALL. I don’t miss unsolicited hugs from huggers or driving an hour each way to get to a 30-minute meeting.

I haven’t been at home like this since the mid-2000s. Working from home showed me a lot of things I could not see before because I was moving so fast. Always in a car or on an airplane. At home, even being on Zoom most of the day, I can see my new coworkers (aka my husband, daughter, and dog). I hear them being loud in the kitchen…or on their own work calls. I feel the vibration of our family text thread (that includes our son) with a link to some random TikTok.

Club Quarantine has been my balm…

Even though I do not mind being in the house, those early days of knowing the world was on fire metaphorically and literally was hard. I certainly didn’t think I would be in a goodish headspace at the end of the year. But here I am. In a better place than I have been in a long time. I have no idea how that happened and I do not take it for granted. I am so, so grateful.

Quarantine started off shaky. I did not want to work from home. I was one of the last people to pack up and leave the office. During the first two months of quarantine I drank too much and spent too much time reading the news. Thanks to my best friend, somewhere around May I reconnected with girlfriends from college. We started having weekly Zoom kee-kee-fests where we would talk about work, relationships, and challenge each other to get back to practicing self-care. Without pressure, I felt accountable to find my footing and soon enough I was walking every day. Collective care was/is been a gift I didn’t know I wanted/needed.

When George Floyd was murdered at the end of May, I was clear that something IN ME had shifted. I didn’t have the words for what was happening but something shifted for me professionally as well. I started declining meetings when my calendar looked too full. Next, I decided that unless unavoidable I was going to stop having back-to-back Zoom meetings. Then I went rogue and deleted the one-hour meeting option from my online scheduler. I mean, surely whatever someone wanted to say to me could be done in 30 minutes, right?! I even started making time during my workday for my walks and NAPS! Y’all, who have I become??

All of these changes happened gradually, over the summer and through the fall. These days instead of blindly saying yes, I have a little voice in my gut that reminds me to check in with it before responding. I started asking myself, why was it ever a good idea to be in back-to-back meetings? Is there another way to show I am engaged in a meeting without having my video on all day? What criteria should I revisit before saying ‘yes’ to a meeting? Is my job to be on every committee asked of me or the ones where my leadership is needed?

By making these changes I was able to move at a pace that allowed me to be intentional. To think.

I won’t go back.

I can’t.

Don’t be mistaken, my work is still intense and I have a long way to go in terms of right-sizing my workload and workday. But I’ve seen a new way of being and leading and I want more of it. As the saying goes, ‘once you see, you can’t unsee.’ I want regular time to vision and strategize. I want to spend less time with people who want to talk and sound important and more time with folks putting it all on the line to make life/work/community better.

I am learning to decenter the doing and embrace being. Being is enough, y’all. I’ve said it for years but now I’m living like I believe it! If I can be myself you will see my expertise. I don’t have to work as hard as I have been to show my knowledge, skills, etc. You know that thing that happens when you are the only Black woman in the room and folks act like you’re not there. When you say ‘yes’ to the committee/board/commission because you would be the first/only and it’s important for Black folx to ‘be at the table.’

I’m not playing the game anymore. I want something more for career. My legacy is not going to be reacting to whiteness and its norms. I’ve been doing that for twenty dayum years.

So, as I hear people in distress saying they are longing to go back to life before COVID, I actually get nervous. What I was doing before was not working for me. The way I moved in the world was not serving me well. I ain’t going back.

As I think about 2021 and what it holds, I am looking forward to the renewed life I am building. I’ll get there by:

  1. Saying no to things that don’t serve me, my people, or my community
  2. Having more dates with people I love
  3. Feeling more, numbing less
  4. Only doing work that grounds me
  5. Being paid what I’m worth
  6. Taking more VACATIONS
  7. Reading, writing, and crafting
  8. Reconnecting with my ancestors
  9. Spending less time sitting in traffic
  10. Coaching YOU

kelli

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