Episode 28 - Self Care and Inclusive Leadership Behaviors with Faith Clarke
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What comes to mind when you hear the term “self-care”? I know for a lot of people it involves images of relaxing in the bath, heading out for a solo-hike, or getting pampered at the spa. And while that’s a lovely visual, there’s a lot more to it than that.
As Faith Clarke, my guest on this week’s podcast episode says, self care for leaders is really about recognizing the needs of self (since leaders often rank their own needs at the end of their to-do lists). What does this mean in action? Knowing yourself, knowing what and where you get energy from, advocating for yourself, and most importantly perhaps, trusting yourself.
Once you know yourself, you trust that you can be the person you need to be in any situation. You trust that you can take care of yourself when it matters most. And when you trust that you can take care of yourself, you trust that you can take care of the people around you as well. Because ultimately, you will take the best care of the people you are responsible for (or feel responsibility towards) when you are taking the best care of yourself first.
Our conversation starts with the idea that leadership often begins at home, and quickly moves into the importance of honouring our energy and rhythms, and how our self-care feeds that energy. We talk about how to meet the collective needs of a team, and the importance of flexibility inside of the structures we create. Because it is only when we are meeting the needs of the collective that we are beginning the journey into Belonging and Inclusion.
At the end of the day, nothing is permanent. Everything around us, including us, is going to change and hopefully grow. So when we think about Inclusion, it has to start with us and extend out from there. Faith asks us to think about who we aren’t allowed to show up as, or what parts of ourselves we aren’t allowing to show up so that we can start to recognize where we might not be allowing other people to show up fully as themselves as well.
One of the things that I think is so important in our conversation is the idea that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work needs to start at the micro-level. Because we so often focus on the macro-level, we have a tendency to overlook micro opportunities to practice inclusion. Faith emphasizes that we can start thinking about this work, talking about it, making room for it in groups of 2-3. We can start building our Inclusion muscle in smaller ways so that we are already in the practice for whatever situation we find ourselves in.
Faith Clarke is an Organizational Health and Inclusion Specialist and host of the Peak Performing Team podcast. Her fascination with human motivation and her personal experiences as a mom of a child with autism led to her doctoral studies in performance psychology. She has also taken her talents a step further, writing a best-selling book and becoming the Co-Founder/CEO of an educational organization helping families with autistic children.
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To learn more about Faith Clarke and how she helps women leaders in social impact organizations cultivate peak performance, create inclusive culture, and lead thriving teams visit: https://www.faithclarke.com/.