The Modern LeadHer Way

[104] The Real Identity Shift Behind Every Bold Transition

• Emma Clayton • Season 4 • Episode 104

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You’ve seen the shiny “before and after” stories of women who’ve left corporate, pivoted their careers, or changed their lives.

But what actually happens in those turning points?

In this episode, I’m walking you through the real identity shift that unfolds when a woman chooses to move beyond the version of success she was taught to want - and begins to lead her life from a place of deep alignment and self-trust.

We’ll walk through the Success Formula - the foundation of healthy feminine leadership - and I’ll share real-life examples from client journeys (and my own) to show what this looks like in action.

If you’re in a season of change, craving more meaning or clarity, or wondering what it actually takes to build a life that feels like home - this one’s for you.

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Speaker 1:

This is the Modern Leader Way a podcast for ambitious, driven career women who will feel good on the way to the top. I'm Emma Clayton and I'll be sharing with you tangible advice to help you stop sacrificing your soul in the name of success and experience more balance, confidence and fulfilment both in and out of work. Hello and welcome back to the Modern Leader Way, where we're continuing the conversation that I started over the last couple of episodes, where I've introduced this success roadmap and the idea that you could be striving for success. That is not even your definition of success, because it's your parents or someone else that you saw or something that you thought you had to pursue when you were younger. And it's okay if you are sitting there feeling a little bit void of any substance and wondering if this is it and not really knowing what next. It's okay, like that's a really good place to find yourself in because you have that awareness that it's not this and you have a world full of opportunities for what potentially next. So we introduce a success roadmap which is available to you as a free download. If you haven't had yours yet, then just head to emmaclaytonxocom and you'll find the link to that on my home homepage or the link is always in the show notes below, and the idea behind that is you really take that pause to actually have a look at whose definition of success has been driving me up until now and actually what's really important to me and does that fit, or do I need to adjust slightly? Course correct to get on my own path. Course correct to get on my own path. And then last week I introduced the slight change in emphasis and it's really an evolution. It's not a pivot or anything like that, but how.

Speaker 1:

I'm here very much for the big bold transitions, those people that are ready to make the big bold moves in their lives, whether that's in their corporate career. Or they've trained to be a teacher their entire life and they've decided that no, teaching is not for me anymore, but they don't know what next. Or they have created a business that's successful but doesn't feel good and they're looking at pivoting that and working out what they could do instead. Or you get into that point in life where you're like I'm thinking about early retirement, or actually you're just at that midlife point where kids are flowing the nest. It's now time for you to focus on you and really like your health and everything, and just reclaim all of who you are, really get to know who you are and, yeah, kind of own the next chapter of your life and really consciously create it. Or you're faced with redundancy and you're looking at what else you could be doing. So it's those real kind of pivotal moments in your life that I come in and I can come in at the very early ideation phase with a game plan or strategy day, or it could be actually supporting you in that transition and it's in this transition that the modern leader way really comes to life.

Speaker 1:

Because the modern leader way is very much the identity shift that is required to really embody the truth of who you are, your personal power, and do life in your way. Do life and success, success in the way that only you can do it, because you are you and you are unique and no one else has the vision on your heart that you do so. Today. I just wanted to spend a little bit of time walking you through what that identity shift looks like. I'm calling it the success formula and if you've been here any length of time, you would have heard me talk about these component parts before. And they are parts and pieces. They are not a linear journey. They are phases that we can dip in and out of as we go through this identity shift, as we go through the big, bold transitions.

Speaker 1:

So the formula in brief is when you know, like and trust yourself ie you know who you are beyond the roles and titles that you have acquired over your life. When you know what lights you the fuck up and you've learned to accept and love the skin you're in and you trust your body, you trust your intuitive knowing and you trust your voice. And when you lead yourself first ie you're walking your talk even when no one one's watching you take radical responsibility for your choices, for your energy and for your future. And when you bring your whole self to the table. So you've stopped editing, you've stopped diluting yourself to fit in, you show up as you are, you're fully expressed, you're grounded and you feel free in being yourself. And when you amplify that by leading in your own way ie not like someone else, your predecessor before you when you define your own rhythm, your own measures of success and you lead in a way that feels nourishing and not draining, then you get something that I call healthy feminine leadership. That's what you're creating in your life, and this is wholeness, your wholeness in action. It's a new way of leading in your life, one that honours all of you, your whole self. It's bringing in the masculine piece that you've already mastered the planning, the strategic thinking, the productivity, the logic, the leading from the head. It's bringing all of that, along with your creative flow, your relationship skills, your compassion and empathy, your intuition and your emotional intelligence, because those parts of you have been waiting for an invitation to come online, and this is it. So it's integrating both your feminine power and your masculine edge. This is the modern leader way. All right, so that's your success formula, and I want to bring this to life, really by talking about some examples of the women that I've worked with in big transitions, who have really mastered this and embodied this identity shift.

Speaker 1:

And I want to talk about Kresh to start with, because Kresh was on the podcast. Actually, if you go back to episode 42, this was a rerun of an initial conversation I had with her back in 2022, I think, or 2021, where she was talking about working with me to overcome imposter syndrome, and this was as she transitioned from a vice president into a director role, where she went from being a client markets pricing actuary into being a market head. So she was head of Australia and New Zealand and she was going to be responsible for some cross-functional teams. She was going to be having conversations at a more senior level and in bigger rooms, right, and what crept up for her was some doubt around her ability to be able to hold herself in those conversations, to be able to bring value, and she was questioning whether or not she was really up to it.

Speaker 1:

And actually I've spoken about this many a time before when imposter syndrome strikes, it's likely that you're trying to be someone. You're not, and so a big part of the work Kresh and I did was about how she gets to bring her whole self to the table, and that did start with knowing who she was, and we used human design as a beautiful tool to help her tap into her natural nature, her leadership blueprint, so how she naturally moves through this life and how her energy is received when she walks in the room. That leadership presence that she has naturally and really understanding that and how she gets to leverage that in the room, enabled her really to bring her whole self to the table. That and a few techniques around how to manage her physiology when it changed. When that kind of fear strikes just as you're about to walk into a boardroom meeting or you're about to say something in the meeting and you've got that little niggle in your mind going, you can't say that, what if you get it wrong? And yeah, she totally nailed that and she's a smart woman, but she really grasped it really quickly so she was able to not just manage her physiology and her state walking into these rooms but she was able to really see how she gets to add value in that that space because she knew who she was and she knew, um, her skills and her kind of unique differentiators and what she brought to the room.

Speaker 1:

So that identity shift was a real fast in action and the it really culminated with creche in one of our sort of last conversations that we had, where she was like now I'm sort of in my flow, I get that, I can nail this, I can own it, but what else is there? Because there must be more to life than this. And I took her for a beautiful visualisation where she tapped into her vision of the future and like why she's here, like that bigger purpose, and it was so beautiful to see her tears flowing and like just really having this realization that there yes, there is like this role, this job that you have, that pays you well, gets to support you, to make a difference in the world in a more philanthropic way. That she saw for herself and Kresh is actually Sri Lankan and she saw where she can make a difference for underprivileged children in her home country, and so it's really beautiful and together we worked out how she could start to dip into that now, perhaps in a way that was more accessible to her while she was still new to her role, and that was through helping local kids in her hometown of Sydney. So, yeah, that was a whole beautiful moment where she has since gone on to totally smash her career. She went from being a market head to actually being the location head and having lots of teams under her, so lots of people reporting into her, and she's since started a new role in another company in a totally different field in a totally different field. So I'm really really pleased with the work that Kresh and I did together and how that gave her a really good foundation to help her really start to own things and put a step forward in the Modern Leader way. So that was Kresh.

Speaker 1:

Another one in terms of identity shift was Shima, and I've spoken about Shima. Shima's also been on the podcast more recently and um, she and I worked together over a few years, actually on and off, and um, we did some really deep work together because she had this opportunity ahead of her where she wasn't just stepping into a promotion but she was also moving countries right. She went from being a vice president into a director role. She went from being, you know, someone in a team to having a team. They were going to be across multiple locations in a new market, across Asia. She was again going to be exposed to conversations at different levels and and she had this whole I'm going to be in a totally different town without my friends, without my family. She really wanted to put her best foot forward and she also wanted to not go into it and just work 100% of the time. She wanted to really make sure that she prioritised her health in this change, in this transition, and to also put relationships up at the forefront of her goals. So not just making new friends, but potentially also getting out on the dating scene. So that was a big part of our conversation and again we brought human design in to help her really know like and trust herself, and that was a big part of the conversation that we had.

Speaker 1:

Um Shima has a beautiful, massive heart. She is already a very feminine leader feminine led, she leads from the heart. She is all about compassion and empathy for her fellow humans. She is a big advocate for underprivileged, underrepresented kind of groups of people and she actually comes from Pakistan. She was born in Pakistan, brought up in in Australia and she has a big affinity with what is going on in Gaza right now and she was also featured on my Gaza round table earlier this year. So she has a big heart and what we wanted to do in this identity shift as she moved was really ensure that that heart she was able to lead with it, that she was able to show her team that she has heart, that she's not just this robot, um, that it showed her clients and her peers and her manager that this is how she leads and she really did find a rhythm and a place for herself by leaning into really knowing who, that, what, who she is and how she wants to lead, without looking at who'd been before her, because she hadn't actually known the person that had gone before her and, yeah, the work we did together was absolutely beautiful. Um, she's made some cracking amazing friends. She hired a PT and has really gone down this route of aiming for balance in her life to really support her body and her energy. And, yeah, that required a whole shift in identity from who she was being when she was in based in Sydney to based in Singapore, and that transition was a great time for her to implement all of those things. So Shima is, um, yeah, just killing it.

Speaker 1:

She is very sought after by her peers and by her management team, often want to give her more, because she does seem to have a very natural way of coping with more and also just has very natural skills when it comes to team and people leadership. And it's because she really has put her heart first and I will never forget a conversation that she brought to the podcast, actually when I interviewed her, was she was interviewed internally as part of her 100 days first 100 days in her role and she ended up crying on this broadcast and she actually felt quite bad about it when she first came away. But the beautiful thing that happened was it connected with so many people. That vulnerability she showed when she shared a very personal story about how she lost her cousin during COVID and how that inspires her every day to show up and do the scary thing, to just lead herself first, everything to, um, yeah, just lead herself first. And the amount of people that it touched and who reached out to her and said thank you for showing us your heart, for showing that vulnerability, for showing us that it's okay to do that in this setting. It was absolutely wonderful and that was all just her being her whole unapologetic self. And they are two like two of the examples that I've got of women who've spoken openly about their work with me. Obviously, a lot of the work that I do behind the scenes is confidential and therefore remains confidential, and it's why I often bring in my own story as well.

Speaker 1:

And I think the biggest transition I've been through is going from my, my corporate career into being a coach, or from being self-employed to being and sorry, from being employed to being self-employed. Um, that was a huge transition, a huge, huge transition, and one where I actually rejected a lot of my masculine skills when I left. So I threw out the to-do list. I used to have lengthy to-do lists. I had to-do lists per project. I had to-do lists for home. I had to-do lists for my social life. I had to-do lists for each team member.

Speaker 1:

It was quite exhausting being me, I think, in the corporate world but I'd learned this way of being very logical and very organized and very on it and um, I rejected that when I left and I was like I'm never having to do this ever again and I didn't for a few years and um, then I realized that that doesn't serve me either. So I had this real, let's say, challenge yeah, challenge Going unsupported, I think that was. The thing is I didn't have someone that had been there before that could say like this is what you need to decondition from, unlearn about your corporate career of 20 years, because actually doing business on your own, it's not going to be done that way. You need to very much like learn who you are and what you naturally bring to your business, and you need to outsource the rest or learn it, but ideally outsource it so that you can focus on really your genius and bringing that to the table. A big part of my work was also bringing my wholesale to the table right.

Speaker 1:

What you hear on this podcast is a very raw and real account of anything. I'm an open book. When you get in the secret leader files, which is my low cost subscription, where I truth tell in the moment, that's another level of truth that you get from me. But it's all real and it's all something. All the things that I've learned throughout this identity shift of it being OK to bring my whole self to the table, because it never used to be. I never used to spill what I did. I used to suffer in silence behind the scenes. I used to portray the elegant swan on the surface and be like the you know, paddling duck underneath. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't pleasant being me all the time, and now I feel like I've had to really embody this, knowing that I am here to tell, to share my story because it does resonate, and the amount of people I get that reach out and say, oh my god, your story is so aligned with mine. Only, I've never like met anyone that's been open about it before and that I feel that's my job. But that was a whole shift.

Speaker 1:

I've spent the last five years learning myself through the tool that is human design that I've mentioned, with the last two clients that I brought in. It's something I love bringing in with my clients because I've been on my own human design journey for five years now. I've learned so much about myself. It's not to put me in a box, but it's to say, oh, that's why I do that thing or that's my natural nature, so that's how I want to build a business around my natural operating modus operandi, right? Um? So human design has been a huge part of my journey and it's why I always bring it into my one-to-one work during this identity shift, because it's like if you don't know who you are, or who you're not actually who you've been being, that's actually not who you are then how do you know who you are? And I think human design is a great indication, like for you to go yeah, that makes sense. That doesn't like not to put you in a box. So that's been a big part of my identity shift.

Speaker 1:

And then like getting to lead in my own way. This has been huge. I wanted a camper van and I was like but how does that fit with this? Like brand online, this? Like I work with corporate women at the time, um, so how does that like fit? But it's like no, fuck that shit. I want a camper van. I want to be able to grab my dog not grab it but put a lead on my dog grab my laptop and some lunch and head out for the day in my camper van and work from the cliffs and go for a walk and just like. Like that is me creating the life that feels fulfilling to me. It's fulfilling to me that I get to move my body in the morning and I get to take my dog with me and I get to take my laptop and sit up the cliffs and still deliver work and still deliver for my clients and show up for my community. And, yeah, there's nothing better than that. But I didn't. That wasn't even, I didn't even fathom that that was a possibility when I was still in corporate. So that's been an identity shift as well to really own the way that I work and that I want to lead.

Speaker 1:

And then the the whole healthy, feminine leadership piece is this is a whole other conversation that I'm going to bring back for another episode. I'm going to save it for another episode. But for me, this, like my health reclamation journey, this identity shift that I'm in as we speak in terms of using Manjaro as a tool to allow me to shift my entire health journey from where it was to where I see it being, where I'm the healthiest and in the best shape of my life moving into 50, which is a few years down the line yet but this is an identity shift. I'm in the middle of of my life moving into 50, which is a few years down the line yet, but this is an identity shift. I'm in the middle of an identity shift.

Speaker 1:

Exactly what I talk about and teach and preach is what I'm in at the moment and I definitely feel like there is more that I get to share around the actual realities of it in the moment, and this is what I do in the Secret Lead Hair Files. If you're interested in joining that, you can go to the link in my show notes or you can head to my website again, emmaclaytonxocom, and go to ways to work with me and you can find more details there. This is a super confidential space where I bring the real raw, messy middle that you don't necessarily hear here, because by the time I've got to this formulated episode, I'm telling you it in hindsight, whereas in the secret leader files it's very much in the moment and it's how I'm leading myself through this. It's a big part of the conversation. When the ladies come with their stuff it's like okay, what are you doing to lead yourself through this? What are you doing to take radical responsibility for the situation? What are you doing to shift yourself out of imposter syndrome to move through resistance? What are you doing to change your current environment? Like it's? This is the big part of the conversation. This is the identity shift that you get to make as you move through the transitions that you know you're here to make. That's a little bit about the Monoleda success formula and what it's all about.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, get your success roadmap and there is more in there and if you ever want a conversation about how I can help you either think about your next big move or make the actual moves, or tap into this bigger purpose that you have for this lifetime, then please do reach out.

Speaker 1:

I do do free discovery calls as well. I'll do a couple a week. I'm very happy to jump on a 25 minute call with you and talk about where you're at and what it is I can do to help you and support you. Yeah, please do. Please, don't even think twice about it, just reach out. I'm here to have a very yeah, open conversation where you will get no pressure from me to sign up to anything, but you will leave very clear on how I can support you if that's a course of action you want to take. So let's leave that here. Don't forget when you lead yourself first, when you bring your whole self to the table, when you lead in your own way, and when you know, like and trust yourself, you create what I call healthy feminine leadership, and this is the modern leader way, aka your way, which is the only way really in it. So, with I will see you next week and in the meantime, take care, thank you.

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Emma Clayton

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