Episode 1: The She Leads & Succeeds Podcast is Here

Welcome to She Leads and Succeeds, a podcast for women executives who are ready to lead with more impact, clarity, and support. In this first episode, I share why I created this space: to move beyond surface-level leadership advice and into real strategies and radical support that so many women leaders are missing. You’ll hear about my journey as an organizational psychologist and executive coach, and why I believe no woman should have to lead alone. This episode sets the tone for what’s to come with honest insights, practical tools, and a powerful community of women who lead and succeed together.

Stay Connected with LaToya

🌐 leadbydesignlab.com
💼 Connect on LinkedIn
📅 Book a Discovery Call
🖊️ Get the She Leads & SucceedsTM Executive Planner

Transcript

LaToya: [00:00:00] Hello. Hello. Welcome to She Leads and Succeeds, a podcast designed for women executives to go beyond surface level leadership support and really move toward real talk, real strategies and real radical support for women leaders. My name's Latoya Jordan, and I am thrilled, quite frankly, giddy about this moment.

Finally launching this podcast. I gotta tell y'all, this has been a, a battle in my mind about whether or not to start this podcast because I wanted to make sure. That anything that I put out in the ethos added value. And I want it to not just be noise, but to be something that leaders could digest and grow through.

Because I a coach, as an executive coach in my own practice, now I am able to do that with one-on-one coaching, but I was feeling a little bit like, I'm not doing enough. I can't touch enough people. And so [00:01:00] after enough bowel beating from my team, I finally decided that this platform could be a way to. To reach more women leaders in order to radically support them and going beyond just surviving leadership, because that's how it feels sometimes when I'm working with my clients that they're just trying to survive week to week.

And I'm like, my goodness, you've reached the pinnacle. You've reached your goal and yet you are so unhappy. What is that about? And so we obviously spent a lot of time on that, but I just wanted to create a space where I can perhaps. Offer that type of support to a larger audience. And so that's how we got here today.

Let me just tell you a little bit more about me and then we'll go into what this series will be about. So as I mentioned, I'm Latoya Jordan and I am an organizational psychologist, which means basically that I have spent a lot of time studying the health of individuals at work. And the research that I've done, it's been around things like employee [00:02:00] engagement or different aspects of the individual in ensuring their success from a career's perspective at work, and what is the psychology behind that?

What are the components that are necessary in order for an individual to be successful at work? And the punchline, quite frankly, is leaders. The punchline is leaders, y'all, that people, they often, there's like lots of quotes, right? But one of them is like, people don't lose, the people don't leave companies, they leave their bosses leaders.

Are at the core of health and success for individuals at work. And so I've spent my, pretty much, my adult life studying that, working in that, being a part of that in different ways. The most recent way before starting my own practice was as an executive, and I've been in industry and in executive roles for well over, uh, 15, 18 years now.

Prior to then launching my [00:03:00] own practice, and so I have been either an executive woman or supporting executive women or supporting employees who have been led by executive women, and I've just become so infatuated by helping these women succeed. Going beyond surviving to get to the other side of feeling like they are succeeding as a leader.

That has become my life's work, and I've done that in many different ways internally. When I worked in corporate spaces and now. As an external consultant, strategist, and coach. I do that with my clients and now I get to do it here on this podcast. So I'm so thrilled that you decided to take a listen.

Your curiosity led you here, and I'm so grateful and I hope that you'll find this podcast to just be another tool in [00:04:00] your leadership tool belt to help you to sharpen your mind, your behavior, your outlook. As a woman leader, one of the things that I have said to my team as we've been thinking about, you know, what would this podcast look like?

You know, I, I said, listen, people who are coached by me say a couple of things consistently. One is that I'm gonna give you real talk, and so this podcast. We'll be about real talk, right? I'm, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, y'all. I'm gonna kind of go beyond that surface level of leadership support. I like to call it 1.0 because I do think it's important.

I do think it's critical that leaders have a baseline understanding about what leadership looks like, and so, you know, going to the leadership conferences from your association and getting an executive coach when you first become a senior leader. Those things to me are so, so important The. Concern for me is that often it is too surface for women leaders and in [00:05:00] particular if you have an additional layer of identity to you, whether or not it is that of being a woman of color, that, of being a nor divergent woman, that of being a woman in the L-G-B-T-Q-I-A community, that additional layer.

The surface leadership tools are not gonna be enough. It's just not gonna be enough, because once you add those additional weight, first of all, just as a woman. 1.0 coaching or 1.0 leadership support. Scratches just the surface. But as a woman, there is a nuance to it. There are unconscious things happening around that you are feeling, that you are experiencing.

There are systems that were created without you in mind, right? And so to then get. The support from the system that didn't, that wasn't [00:06:00] developed for you. It's just not gonna be enough, y'all. It's not taking into account all the roles that you play at work and outside of work. It's not taking into account all the, let's say, conscious and unconscious biases that you experience at work and outside of work.

It doesn't take into account all that you're bringing. When you come into the space, all the pressure, all the triggers, all the worries, it doesn't take all that into account. And if it does, it does as like a slide in a deck, not the whole deck. And so I am going to lay it out straight. We're gonna have some real talk conversations, and I'm also hoping to give you some smart strategies that I've been able to establish for myself when I was in those roles, and also that I offer my clients now, having been in practice for over six years, this is something that I have seen different people go through where they're like, oh gosh, you know, I hear about gaslighting [00:07:00] all the time because folks are like, yeah, people are saying, I had one client who talked about how she really.

Was trying to achieve this, you know, end goal with her team and they found her tone to be one of aggression and she was like, and I'm not being aggressive. I'm just trying to get us to the, to the finish line. Like we, we have a deadline, this and that. And I, I'm not sure why I'm being seen this way and I'm so frustrated.

And so we have to unpack that and see like where that might be coming from and what might be true about that and what is just. A narrative that they have because of their own perceptions about the container she was in. Some of that was hard for her to hear because I gave it to her straight. And I hope today on this, as I launch this moment, this platform, you'll be open to hearing that type of real talk.

That's how I'm gonna give it to you. And I, I think it has in the past, unlocked so much for my clients so that I hope that it will do the [00:08:00] same for you. So you're gonna get some real talk. You can get some smart strategies because I've been around long enough to know. What works and what doesn't. Although I'm always learning, I'm always reading to learn about some new, new approaches.

This is gonna be an opportunity for you to get some 2.0 strategies to add to your toolkit, and most importantly, I hope that you will see this space, this platform, as one of real, true radical support that you'll feel enveloped not only by me, but by the community that is formed around this platform. So that you won't feel alone, because often when we are in these spaces, we do.

We might be the only person in a boardroom in a senior meeting, we might be the only person that looks like us on a stage and it can feel lonely because you're like, who can I vent to? Who can I be vulnerable to? There was a study recently about kind of the backlash of being vulnerable, right? So you, you start to get really [00:09:00] skittish about that thing.

So I hope that we will create a community where you can let your hair down and be vulnerable and share and get supported and get loved up on so that you can stand back up and go back out there and do what you were born to do. Right. I'm very excited to offer that platform and space for us here. I was talking to a friend, uh, the other day and she said that she had read recently that the thing that is like the thorn in your side.

Is what you were called to solve, right? The thing that annoys you the most, right? If you are someone that just annoy it just cannot stand mess, right? Things being all over the place in your house or paper all over the place, then that thorn means that you were meant to organize. Maybe you are. You are now a professional organizer.

Or maybe you are someone who creates awesome systems for your household, right? Or your team? Well, [00:10:00] for me, the thorn in my side is when I see leaders completely tank. Not because they didn't have it in them, but because they didn't have the right support around them. That sends me oh to another place because I get angry when I see it because I'm like, no, no, no.

She's prolific. She has it in her. She can do it. But y'all didn't set her up for success. That's why she didn't win. That's why she decided to quit her most senior job ever in less than a year because it was too much. No one can do anything without support. At least they can't do it for a long time. A bodybuilder can hold a very heavy weight for a little bit, but he can't.

He or she can't hold it for a long time, and neither can a lead her. So without the right support, we won't win. And then what'll happen, the narrative will be, well, we tried. We tried to put a woman in that president role. We tried to put a woman in that [00:11:00] CFO role, but it just didn't work out. So we'll go back to the model we know.

No, no, no. Try and give her all the support that she uniquely needs and watch her soar. That's what She Leads and Succeeds podcast will be about given the tools that you need to soar. So I hope that you are open to receive this support because I'm so honored and excited to give it to you. So I hope that not only you join the next conversation and the next series of conversations, but that you will formally subscribe, right?

Hit the buttons that need to be hit. Mm-hmm. To subscribe so that you can get alerted when a new episode has been uploaded. Leave a review if in fact that's something that you, that's on your heart to do, and more importantly, be in touch with us. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me [00:12:00] on the different platforms.

And don't worry, all of this is gonna be in the show notes below and so you can read them and see where, you'll see some links there of how to stay in touch with us, how you might be able to DM me, listen DM me some of your leadership mess so that maybe we can have a. Conversation one day about different stories that I'm receiving from you all and help to unravel your realtime stories and your realtime challenges right here on the podcast, right here within our community.

Um, so please, let's do this together. Let's build community together. Let's radically support each other together through this podcast. Again, thank you so much for joining and until next time, y'all take care. Bye.