The Unburdened Leader Rebecca Ching, LMFT

Many of us are familiar with the kind of person who easily earns the moniker ‘toxic’ and instills fear, rage, and frustration in those around them.

What do you do when you work with a toxic leader?

How do you feel when toxic leaders continue to get promoted and receive accolades?

And what do you do when others make excuses for these toxic leaders, like saying their skill set or network is too important to the organization and you have to “take the good with the bad?”

Toxic leaders and cultures take a toll on you, especially when you have your own relational wounding history. You may try to speak up or feel shut down, but there’s another common theme: How betrayed you feel when your experiences are met with silence, inaction, or retribution.

We're at a critical moment regarding leading, accountability, and culture. But one thing that still feels constant is the impact of our history with relational wounding and relational trauma, and how that impacts how, or if, we speak up in the face of injustices from toxic leaders and toxic work culture.

Today’s guest wrote a book on the impact of toxic leaders and cultures, including how we often protect toxic leaders at great expense to the staff and the business. As someone who was bullied both as a child and in the workplace, she has some very special insight into this all-too-common experience.

Mita Mallick is a corporate change-maker with a track record of transforming businesses. She has had an extensive career as a marketer in the beauty and consumer product goods space, fiercely advocating for the inclusion and representation of Black and Brown communities. Her book, Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace, is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today Best Seller.

Listen to the full episode to hear:
The practical toll on the business of enabling toxic leaders to continue to manage teamsThe psychological and physical impact of the workplace trauma created by working under toxic leadersHow people end up in environments that recreate the harmful relational patterns of their pastWhy those with more power in the workplace need to speak up on behalf of othersHow executive coaching can be used as a Band-Aid to cover toxic behaviorHow guilt and empathy for the teammates we’d leave behind can keep us stuck in toxic environments
Learn more about Mita Mallick:
Connect with Mita on LinkedInBrown Table Talk PodcastReimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace
Learn more about Rebecca:
rebeccaching.comWork With RebeccaSign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email.
Resources:
Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier, Marisa MeltzerSia - UnstoppableBreaking Bad

Do you feel frustrated by recurring struggles with self-doubt, hypervigilance, and overwhelm?

Behind many of your inner doubts, self-judgements, fears, and insecurities lie echoes from old betrayals or relational hurts.

These breaches of trust in important relationships don’t necessarily lose their impact on how you lead and work just because they happened a long time ago.

So when you're doing something new or high stakes, or there's an experience in a relationship at work or in your personal life, or you respond to a collective trauma that taps the echoes of your old wound, it can bring up old ways of responding or old patterns that impact how you honor your boundaries and values. 

And the expectation that you should ‘be over this by now’ when you are human and working with others adds to your stress and frustration.

But the reality is that healing from relational wounds and betrayal traumas often comes in stages and seasons, and you may need support along the way.

Deran Young is a licensed therapist, New York Times Best-Selling Author, former military mental health officer, and the founder of Black Therapists Rock. This nonprofit organization mobilizes over 30,000 mental health professionals committed to reducing the psychological impact of systemic oppression and intergenerational trauma.
She obtained her social work degree from the University of Texas, where she studied abroad in Ghana, West Africa for two semesters, creating a high school counseling center for under-resourced students. She is a highly sought-after diversity and inclusion consultant working with companies like Facebook, Linked In, Field Trip Health, and YWCA. Deran has become a leading influencer and public figure committed to spreading mental health awareness and improving health equity.

Listen to the full episode to hear:
The importance of learning to recognize the cultural and familial legacy burdens that impact usHow shame and an inability to be vulnerable shut down speaking the truth about cultural and personal historiesHow early relational trauma can lead people to feeling out of place, not just at home, but in the world at largeWhy our earliest experiences with our caregivers have such a deep impact on our relationships later in lifeThe lasting impact of the roles we take on as children in dysfunctional families in how we lead ourselves and othersHow cultural expectations and perfectionism can dehumanize mothers and leadersThe potential for psychedelic-assisted therapy to change our relationships with our burdensLearn more about Deran Young:
Black Therapists RockInstagram: @blacktherapistsrockTikTok: @blacktherapistsrockBlack Therapists Rock Facebook GroupFollow Deran on Facebook
Learn more about Rebecca:
rebeccaching.comWork With RebeccaSign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email
Resources:
Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional FamiliesThe Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer, Harvey KarpThe Gifts of Imperfection, Brené BrownDaring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Brené BrownRage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, Soraya ChemalyEP 73: The Potential of Psychedelics to Help and Heal with Victor CabralWhole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life, Jill Bolte TaylorBeyoncé - COZYElemental

Have you ever done something steadily, week in and week out, for a period of time?

What did you learn about yourself and the world around you in the process? Was there anything that came up that surprised you?

Putting in consistent reps and hundreds of hours towards something inevitably shapes and changes you, and producing this show has been no different for me.

Today I’m celebrating the 100th episode of The Unburdened Leader by sharing some behind-the-scenes stories, learnings, and reflections from starting a podcast in a pandemic to the pillars and themes of the show that have stood out over time.

Listen to the full episode to hear:
How unburdened leaders shape healing and growth through vulnerability and a willingness to be uncomfortableHow wrestling with perfectionism in the beginning has eased into taking actual pleasure in the process of working on the showThe positive impact of finding certainty anchors in the rhythms of productionHow good questions beget good questions, and how that guides who I want to have on the show
Learn more about Rebecca:
rebeccaching.comWork With RebeccaSign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email
Resources:
Yellow House MediaInternal Family SystemsGlass Onion

Have you ended a relationship to get relief from tension and conflict?

Do you struggle with developing a clear sense of boundaries around what’s your responsibility and what’s not, especially when feeling responsible for how others think and feel?
 
When relationships are toxic, abusive, and oppressive and the other person does not have the interest or capacity to work on the relationship, ending the relationship can bring grief but also relief, emotional healing, and health.

But when you regularly use emotional cutoffs to protect yourself from hurt and discomfort, you create a world that feels dangerous and small when the slightest sense of conflict or overwhelm arises. 

But if two people can come together with clear boundaries, shared values, compassion, curiosity, humility, and support to work through conflict and disagreement, an emotional cut-off may become unnecessary.

My guest today returns to the podcast to share his experience of an incident that could have ended his relationship with his father, and how they both committed to working through the conflict to maintain their connection, even through their differences.

Jonathan Merritt is a prolific and trusted writer on faith, culture, and politics whose articles have appeared regularly in outlets such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, USA Today, Christianity Today, and The Washington Post. He is the author of numerous critically acclaimed books, including Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing and How We Can Revive Them, which was named Book of the Year by Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of the forthcoming children’s book, My Guncle and Me, releasing in May 2024.
 
Jonathan has become a popular speaker at conferences, colleges, and churches and guest commentary on CNN, Fox News, CNN, NPR, PBS, and ABC World News. He holds graduate degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Emory University's Candler School of Theology.

Listen to the full episode to hear:
How being publicly outed forced Jonathan into a reckoning with his faith, his identity, and his family and communityThe role that dreams and expectations play in the way both parents and children respond to fundamental differences between themWhy an expectation of change cannot be a prerequisite for a relationshipWhy Jonathan says he and his father fight with each other in private and for each other in publicWhy finding healthy surrogates or outlets for processing is vital for healing when we truly can’t continue the relationshipNavigating past avoidance and confrontation to renegotiating the relationship with necessary boundaries and guardrailsHow “flash-card faith” stifles the questioning and openness to possibilities that underpin trust and faith and breeds binary divisiveness
Learn more about Jonathan Merritt:
WebsiteFacebook: @JonathanMerrittWriterInstagram: @jonathan_merrittTwitter: @JonathanMerrittLearning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing–and How We Can Revive ThemPreorder My Guncle and Me
Learn more about Rebecca:
rebeccaching.comWork With RebeccaSign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email
Resources:
Bowen Family SystemsFaith does not live by answers alone, Jonathan MerrittThe Artist's Way, Julia CameronWrite for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer, Julia CameronMother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover If a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences, Jedidiah JenkinsDarlin' (Christmas is Coming), Over the RhineIf We Make It Through December, Phoebe BridgersIf We Make It Through December, Merle HaggardJulia

What is your relationship with conflict and disagreement?

Do you see conflict as bad or dangerous or simply a natural part of relationships and being in a group or on a team?

What helps you move through conflict and differences of opinion when things are heavy and charged? 

Do you avoid it at all costs? Or do you try to be a peacemaker and help everyone feel heard? Or do you dive right into the arena and take a stand for what you believe? 

You probably vacillate between all of these depending on the topic, the people you are around, how you experienced conflict growing up, and the combination of your unique personality, temperament, gender, race, class, etc.

Today’s guest shares a framework that offers a way to contain our overwhelm into some actionable practices that can help you connect to your purpose and your values while navigating the discomfort of disagreement, high-stakes decisions, and deep exhaustion.

Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, and lawyer. Deepa leads projects on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project, a national nonprofit organization. She conducts workshops and trainings, uplifts narratives through the Solidarity Is This podcast, and facilitates solidarity strategy for cohorts and networks.

Deepa’s first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future, chronicles community-based histories in the wake of 9/11 and received a 2016 American Book Award. Deepa’s most recent book, a guide based on the social change ecosystem map that she created, is called Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection.

Listen to the full episode to hear:
The three main components of an ecosystem-based approach to social changeHow an ecosystem creates a container where we can have uncomfortable conversations around our valuesWhy a clash in values isn’t an indicator of an unhealthy ecosystemHow ecosystems for social justice allow us to play to our strengths even in urgent times sustainablyQuestions to ask and red flags of an unhealthy ecosystemWhy finding joy in the midst of heartbreak is essential to sustainable movementsWhy it’s key to consider who holds power inside and outside an ecosystem when calling out bad behavior or policy
Learn more about Deepa Iyer:
WebsiteSolidarity Is This PodcastWe Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial FutureSocial Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and ConnectionInstagram: @deepaviyerX: @dviyer
Learn more about Rebecca:
rebeccaching.comWork With RebeccaSign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email
Resources:
(Un)known Project TrailSolidarity Is This: Truth Telling From The Banks of the Ohio River with Hannah Drake and Josh MillerMeena AlexanderHonor, Thrity UmrigarThe Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, Rashid KhalidiThe Mountain Goats - This YearBorgenThe Outsiders, S.E. HintonNothing Gold Can Stay, Robert FrostThe Social Change MapBuilding Movement Project

Do you find yourself in a constant state of proving? Proving that you are a good enough leader, parent, partner, fill in the blank? 

Do you know what drives your need to prove to others and yourself? 

When does the need to prove you are good enough and worthy enough show up the most? At work, in your relationships with others, or maybe in your relationship with yourself?

When you fall into a constant state of proving your worthiness and value, your unaddressed relational wounds fuel an excessive need for validation and recognition from those around you that exhausts and leaves you in an excessive loop of hustling, anxiety, and doubt. 

But when you commit to doing the work to understand your underlying motivations to constantly prove yourself, you can release these burdens and develop a more secure, confident approach to leadership, relationships, and conflict resolution in all areas of your life.

Arielle ​Estoria (she/her) is a poet, author, actor, and model. Her motto, "Words not for the ears but for the soul" stems from her dedication to remind anyone who encounters her work that words are meant to be felt and experienced not just heard, with a specific heart in empowering, encouraging and making space for audiences of women to feel free and at home in their own bodies.

Arielle has shared her work through custom spoken word pieces, workshops and themed keynote talks with companies such as Google, Sofar Sounds, Lululemon, Dressember, Tedx, the SKIMS campaign by Kim Kardashian and more. She has consecutively emceed annual conferences and has led various writing, embodiment and self-acceptance workshops in various settings ranging from students to professional development spaces.

Listen to the full episode to hear:
How Arielle has worked to cut ties with people pleasing and learned not to constantly explain herselfHow Arielle defines “secure proving” versus “insecure proving” in her lifeHow we can try so hard to prove ourselves that we forget the self we’re trying to proveBalancing performance and authenticity online, and how social media makes it hard to show up as your full selfHow Arielle defines success for herself, outside of the linear path through life that she was taught
Learn more about Arielle Estoria:
WebsiteInstagram: @arielleestoriaVagabonds and ZealotsWrite Bloody, Spill PrettyThe Unfolding
Learn more about Rebecca:
rebeccaching.comWork With RebeccaSign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email
Resources:
Thicker Than Water: A Memoir, Kerry WashingtonCleo WadeSula, Toni MorrisonJamila WoodsMaddie ZahmReservation DogsOnly Murders in the Building