Tutti Taygerly 5/13/26 Tutti Taygerly 5/13/26

Running the Heroine's Journey Retreat: Five Lessons for Hosting Any Gathering

We rounded the corner and stopped dead. Workers were hauling folding chairs into “our” grove, setting up the aisle for an au naturel wedding.

I burst out laughing. Yeah… the universe really wanted me to learn a lesson.

My co-leader Irene and I been up early the day before scouting the coastline for an outdoor workshop space and solo hike. We’d walked for miles scoping out multiple sites and now were two strong-willed women squabbling over the perfect space for our retreat participants. I wanted that grove. Irene had other things that mattered to her. We settled on a plan satisfying both our inner control freaks. And now… Mendocino had other ideas.

Six years into leading this retreat and the lessons keep on coming from all directions. Have a plan and be in flow. So we found a spot on the bluff instead. It had the ocean on three sides, wind in everyone's hair. It was exactly right and I begrudgingly sent gratitude to the universe.

Irene and I have been running the Heroine's Journey, a four-day women's leadership retreat in Mendocino, California, since 2021. The women have all experienced some type of transformation. We’ve grown enormously as hosts and coaches. Here are my lessons on hosting an intentional gathering from this year’s experiences.

1. Curate for shared needs, not shared backgrounds

I used to worry about who was in the room. Would a founder connect with a nonprofit director? Would a woman in her sixties find common ground with someone in her mid-thirties? Would the woman who opened our circle talking of prayer feel at home with the woman who lived her life allergic to anything remotely spiritual?

The answer, every single year, is yes.

Surface differences don't matter nearly as much as the thing underneath. The women who come aren't a demographic. They're a psychographic: senior in their careers, caring deeply about people, carrying more than they've let on, and willing to do something about it. Everything else varies wildly: age, industry, race, or where they live.

The diversity isn't incidental. It's the point. Put people in a room who share the same deep need but come from completely different worlds, and the conversations go somewhere a homogeneous room never reaches.

Curate for the shared need. Leave everything else wide open.

The art activity representing their heroine selves showed such diverse creativity

2. Start with user research

Before every retreat, we get on Zoom with each woman who's coming. We ask what's keeping them up at night, where they’re stuck, and what they most want to shift. No two Heroine's Journeys have been the same. I learned that even more this year with three repeat heroines — women who'd come before, and still showed up with entirely different needs.

This year it was about growing confidence, quieting the inner critic, and finding their own leadership presence after years of performing someone else's version of it.

The intimacy of a small gathering makes this possible. Twelve women means we can actually design for the specific humans in front of us, not a generic version of who we think they are.

This is what designers do before they build anything: talk to the people they're designing for. For this gathering, we don't always give them exactly what they ask for, but the agenda is built from both their spoken and unspoken needs.

3. Belonging before learning

I am someone who learns best at the edge. Challenge, discomfort, the feeling of being slightly in over my head: that's where Irene and I grow. So in our early years, we designed the Heroine's Journey the way we would have wanted to attend it: curriculum packed tight, frameworks stacked on frameworks, every hour accounted for.

It was a lot. Too much.

Before anyone can learn anything, they need to feel comfortable enough to be present. Not still figuring out if they belong. Friday evening is always about setting that foundation, letting the women find common ground, and building enough trust that the real work can begin the next morning.

And then we stay flexible. Reading the room. Shifting what comes next based on where the women actually are, not where we planned for them to be. Some years a session we've run before lands completely differently because this particular group needs something else first.

The structure you arrive with is simply a starting point. Then you follow the energy of the participants.

4. Plan Tight, Run Loose

Saturday is our anchor day. Skills building, frameworks, deep coaching work, practice: we pack it full and hold it firmly. By afternoon and into Sunday we shift: s'mores, making art, kayaking through the Mendocino sea caves as a way to work with fear and physical limits in real time. The contrast is deliberate.

There's a version of retreat design, and off-site design, and workshop design, where every block is accounted for because empty space feels like a failure of planning. It isn't. The second half isn't unstructured. It's differently structured, designed to reach the body and brain in a completely different way — including solo writing and processing time to absorb what's just happened. Some lessons only land when you've stopped trying to learn them.

Protect your non-negotiables. Let everything else breathe.

5. The host gets to play

Here is something I wish someone had told me before our first retreat: if you spend the entire gathering managing the energy, monitoring the flow, and holding the structure, you will exhaust yourself.

Irene and I made a decision early on that we would both be in it, not just running it. When Irene leads, I participate. When I lead, she participates. We don't position ourselves above the circle as a guru on the hill: we're a part of it

This year we co-led a session together without a predetermined split between us. It was playful and alive in a way that a tightly scripted session rarely is. Releasing control makes it more spontaneous and silly.

It's more fun with two. Running a gathering with a trusted partner means you're never alone in the room. Someone else is thinking alongside you, reading what you're reading, finding the moments you might miss. The energy is different when you're building something together.

I design gatherings I would want to attend. That's the whole premise. Whatever you're creating — a retreat, an off-site, a dinner — build something you would genuinely want to be a participant in. That’s the design principle.

Each year on Monday, after everyone leaves, Irene and I go out to lunch and do a retrospective. And as we do every year, we looked at each other and said: that was the best retreat ever. We've decided that's our criterion: the year we can't say that is the year we stop.

Whatever gathering you're designing, I hope you find your own version of that bar. Know why you're hosting it and what you want from it. Think about what your participants actually need, how the time is structured, and who you do it with. Then show up ready to be surprised.

Tutti Taygerly 4/22/26 Tutti Taygerly 4/22/26

What I Learned About AI at Stanford

I was sitting with a rapt audience at Stanford’s new-to-me Computing and Data Science (CoDa) building on a Saturday morning, two days into a volunteer leadership event, when I heard one of the best talks about the state of AI.

Dr. Jonathan Chen discussing AI safety in medicine

The keynote was called AI in Medicine: Integrated Intelligence or Illusory Limitations? The speaker was Dr. Jonathan Chen, a professor of medicine and computer scientist, plus a talented magician. Yes, he showed lots of fascinating slides on AI safety in medicine. But what I took away from the talk was a better understanding of human beings when exposed to AI — what we do when we're overwhelmed and scared, and what happens when we have agency to choose to be better.

Dr. Chen shared stories from students and their first real exposure to ChatGPT from ye olden days of 2023. In the first year of AI usage, homework scores went up significantly. But then final exam scores went down. Significantly below previous years’ averages. What was happening was obvious: students were using AI to get the homework done, not to understand the material.

When AI showed up as a shortcut, they took it. Of course they did.

Survival Mode

This is what I think about when I hear people express shock at AI misuse in schools and workplaces: of course. Of course students used AI to complete assignments instead of understanding concepts. Of course professionals are using it to generate reports they skim rather than synthesize. We are busy. We are overwhelmed. We are operating in systems built on competition — grades, performance reviews, market share. When a new tool arrives that lets us clear the pile faster, the very human thing to do is use it that way.

I am not exempt from this. I have used AI to draft things I could have written from scratch. Some of those drafts I should have written from scratch. There's a version of me at twenty-five, bone-tired and trying to keep up at a design firm, who would have used every available shortcut and not thought twice.

Survival mode isn't a character flaw. It's what you do under pressure in a system that rewards output over understanding. The first year (or the first time you try out a new system) is rarely the right year to judge. We're often messy and all-too-human when we do something new for the first time.

The Experiment that Works

The next year or so, Dr. Chen described a different experiment. Students were taught not to use AI to do their work, but to use AI to learn. They were shown how to use it to summarize dense research papers, to quiz themselves on material they needed to retain, to question the outputs the model returned rather than accept them. They were taught to keep their own cognitive horsepower running while AI handled the scaffolding.

The results that year: both homework scores and exam scores went up.

Not one or the other. Both.

Yes, the technology kept developing, but what changed was the relationship to the tools, with a better understanding of how to use them. The experiments helped clarify the final outcome: to learn, not simply to do faster homework. Once students moved from "AI does the work" to "AI helps me learn," the gap between homework performance and exam performance closed. They knew the material. They had used AI to know it more deeply, not to avoid knowing it at all.

The Act of Choosing

Earlier that morning, Stanford President Jonathan Levin had given us a state of the university. He shared a small anecdote about AI, and something groundbreaking that had just happened at Stanford the week before.

For one-hundred years, Stanford has operated on an honor code. When I went to school, there was no proctoring or oversight for exams. Students were trusted, and the system held. It was one of the things that made Stanford, Stanford.

Last week, students voted to change it. For the first time in a century, exams will be proctored.

My first instinct was to feel something like loss. The end of a certain kind of trust, a certain kind of innocence. But then I stayed with it, and I understood it differently.

The students had agency. It wasn’t imposed by the Stanford administration. They voted it in themselves, collectively, looking at the AI landscape honestly and deciding that the old honor system needed new infrastructure. They looked at a changed world and asked: what do we need now, to keep this fair?

When AI Opens Us Up

I've been coaching founders and executives, and the pattern in those early AI homework scores is one I know intimately from the work.The survival mode instinct kicks in when the stakes feel high and the tools are new. We always make the most mistakes when we’re trying something for the first time.

What I also know is that this is never the end of the story. There's a second phase, and it's the more interesting one. After the scramble and the shortcuts, something shifts. People start asking: wait, what am I actually optimizing for? That's when AI stops being a cheat and starts becoming something genuinely useful. The Stanford students found this. They changed course not because someone forced them, but because they cared about learning more than homework scores.

Most of us have lived that first year in some form.

Something in us wants to do the actual work. Not all of us, not always, not immediately. But it's there underneath the armor, underneath the overwhelm. And given the right conditions and a little time, it tends to find its way back to the surface.

What excites me isn't where we are with AI right now. It's where we're headed once we've gotten past the first year. That's when the real possibility opens up.

Tutti Taygerly 12/17/25 Tutti Taygerly 12/17/25

Looking Back on 2025: Ease, Flow, and Agency in Unstable Times

December has always been a reflective month for me. Yes, it’s the end of the calendar year and it’s my birthday month. I also run my annual look-back, look-forward workshops with my community and my clients. December is for comparing the aspirational hopes and goals for the year with the unexpected celebrations and griefs of what actually happened.

Choosing Ease and Flow

Going into 2025, my intention word was ease and flow. I’ve always been great at hustling: to push, work hard and grind. 2025 was year six of running my own business, and it’s the longest I’ve ever stayed in one job. The beauty is that it doesn’t feel like one job as I can take a portfolio approach to my work:

Coaching startup CEOs
Working one-on-one in deeper spiritual and shamanic spaces
Facilitating groups and leadership teams
Teaching online courses
Running my annual women’s retreat
Keynote speaking and writing

Professional ease and flow through the year

The variety keeps me alive. I’ve always been someone who follows curiosity, who likes to chase ideas and shiny objects, who gets energy from exploring new theses about how people work and what actually helps them change. Coaching gives me an unusual privilege to gather data through deep, intimate conversations. I can then identify patterns and form my own theory of change.

This is the positive view. Honestly, the past couple of years have been very hard. There is a particular kind of helplessness that comes with parenting a teen who is struggling. It’s often said that it is hard to be happy when one of your kids is not okay. My family life over the past year and a half has been a deeply emotional rollercoaster.

Letting Go of Control

What finally stabilized in 2025 was my willingness to let go of control. Of course, I’m going to continue to do the research to make sure that my daughter is supported. However, I cannot direct my daughter’s path or shortcut her growth. I can only tend my own energy so that I can be present, grounded, and available. I can also choose work that gives me energy, protecting my own autonomy.

Psychological research backs this up. Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy shows that well-being is less correlated with external circumstances and more with a person’s belief in their ability to influence their responses and processes, even when outcomes are uncertain. When control disappears, agency moves inward.

I felt this shift viscerally in my work this year.

A fellow coach who also left the tech industry said something to me today that stopped me cold. She said, “Tutti, you’re the only coach I know who seems happy and also makes a sustainable living in an expensive city.”

My jaw dropped.

I’d lost track of my 2025 intention word of ease and flow (whoops!). In previous years, I had aggressively built pipelines, chased leads, hustled, and overextended. In year six, I was finally living ease and spaciousness. I was listening to my internal energy rather than trying to bend everything around me to my fierce will. This was the first year that I did not set a revenue goal, and yet it somehow has been my best financial year.

Last Thursday, Irene Salter and I ran our annual intention-setting workshop for 2026. The first half is always a look back. I was struck by how different my personal 2025 was from the collective mood in the room.

Our look back had people draw a river of their past year. They drew various features: the calm waters, rapids, waterfalls, and still pools. Then they pulled out themes:

People spoke of being churned, flooded, stalled. Of having no paddle, no oar, no boat. Of surviving rather than steering. One participant said, “What I tried to force didn’t happen. What I trusted to unfold did.” Another shared that after years of cancer treatment, she had finally climbed back into the boat and could captain her body again. Others spoke of funding cuts, political chaos, layoffs, family health crises, and prolonged uncertainty.

Very few people described clarity. There was grief in the room. But more importantly there was also a hope that it’s a turning point and that they could put some of this collective grief behind them.

Research on chronic stress and uncertainty shows that prolonged periods of unpredictability erode people’s sense of future orientation and agency. When the ground keeps shifting, the nervous system moves into survival mode. Seen through this lens, 2025 was a year that asked too much of people for too long.

Agency in Unstable Times

This is why agency and individual choice matter so much right now. Ease and flow do not require calm waters. They require discernment, knowing when to paddle and when to let the current carry you. You can stop believing that hustle and effort alone, is proof of worth. Agency is choosing how you travel through the river.

Many of us have been trained to equate agency with force, output, and control… but that doesn’t work in unstable times. Instead, we can always rely on attention, choice, and energy.

When I look back on 2025, I see both challenge and clarity. I learned that being in flow does not have to be passive. I learned that ease is not lazy.

That is what agency has come to mean for me.

There is something quietly hopeful about ending a hard year with this kind of clarity.

As I turn toward 2026, I’ve created my intention for the year ahead with renewed optimism. I wish this same sense of hope and agency for you.

Tutti Taygerly 12/11/25 Tutti Taygerly 12/11/25

Imagining Possible Futures in an AI-Powered World

I’ve always been obsessed with possibility and what the future could look like if we allowed ourselves more spaciousness, more imagination, and more courage to rethink the familiar. That instinct goes all the way back to childhood. As the daughter of an Asian tiger mom, I was encouraged to pursue any career I desired… as long as it was a doctor, lawyer or engineer. So when I started at Stanford, I dutifully chose computer science.

One of my early HCI projects at Stanford. Possibility looked a bit different in the 90s.

I was interested in technology and fascinated by systems, yet I quickly realized that my brain didn’t thrive on grinding through all-nighters coding or wrestling with first order logic. What I loved were the classes I took purely out of curiosity. Cognitive psychology. Linguistics. Philosophy of mind. The early days of AI.

One day I discovered that Stanford had a major that combined all of these: symbolic systems. My concentration was in human computer interaction with the goal of understanding how humans and machines think, communicate, and make meaning. Then building on that understanding to design interfaces that support creativity, capability, and joy.

That shift changed everything for me. It gave me the language to understand the relationship between people and technology. It became the foundation for my first career as a product designer, where my teams imagined possible futures for tech and media. We built prototypes and videos to explore how emerging technologies might help humans learn, connect, and express themselves more fully. Possibility was the job description.

An unexpected relief of my coaching career is not having to navigate the ethical contradictions of building inside a complicated company such as Facebook. And yet AI brings its own contradictions. I believe in its potential to expand human creativity. I also know the compute power behind it is disastrous for the environment, especially in a country that is actively undoing climate progress. Holding both truths is uncomfortable, and I do not have all the answers.

Theme 1: In an AI era, relational skills matter more than ever

We are in a moment where AI is reshaping our work and our lives. Some of it feels thrilling. Some of it feels unsettling. And much like my symbolic systems days, the deeper question is not what the technology can do, but what it asks of us as humans.

In my coaching work I continue to see one truth.

People are promoted for their technical expertise, but they succeed because of their relational expertise.

Most of us learned how to design, code, write, analyze, and ship. We did not learn how to build trust, navigate conflict, or create psychological safety. Yet these human skills determine whether someone can actually lead, especially as technology takes on more of the tactical work.

Theme 2: Leadership skills are built the same way technical skills are. Through reps.

Across hundreds of coaching conversations, I see a pattern. People assume relational skills should come naturally. That they should instinctively know how to give feedback or set boundaries.

But leadership is learned the same way any technical discipline is learned. Through practice.

The first time you give hard feedback or enforce a boundary will feel awkward (and also be awkward). That awkwardness is not a sign you are bad at it. It simply means you are in the early reps of a new skill. We would never expect a novice engineer to be fluent in a new language on day one. Leadership deserves the same grace.

Theme 3: AI helps us imagine possible futures

One of the joys of my design career was the ability to prototype futures that did not yet exist. AI brings that same sense of possibility back into leadership. It gives us a safe space to explore different ways a conversation might unfold and to try out new approaches without the risk of real-world consequences.

Instead of seeing AI as a threat, I see it as a place to rehearse the future. A way to test tone, experiment with choices, and imagine who we might become as leaders. The tech is not perfect. The avatar’s voice is janky and it’s good enough for practice prospective scenarios.

As I look toward the end of the year, I feel grateful that this work allows me to integrate my two professional identities of designer and coach. The season invites reflection. I am choosing curiosity, experimentation, and the belief that the tools of the future can support the most human parts of our leadership.

Tutti Taygerly 1/9/25 Tutti Taygerly 1/9/25

Five Years of Being in Business

2024 was a milestone year for me. In Chinese tradition, it was my fourth 12-year zodiac cycle, the fourth Year of the Dragon since I was born in 1976. I looked to the past and claimed the intention of Supreme Fortune for 2024 and by the end of the year learned that I had a new perspective of financial freedom. Nothing had changed with my numbers or data, I’d experienced a shift in mental prioritization and mindset. Cheesy? Yes. But hugely effective in easing daily stress, worry, and overwhelm that had continually been pulling me down.

An equally huge milestone is that in late 2024, I celebrated five years of working for myself. I have a multifaceted business — coaching startup founders and corporate leaders looking for exits, running women’s leadership retreats, writing books and articles, keynote speaking & facilitation, creating courses, a tiny bit of consulting and advising, and shamanic counseling.

The bulk of my work is with coaching and writing. My background is in tech and design and these are five universal lessons from my five years of business.

Lesson 1: Learn and Get the Reps In

I’ve been a life-long learner, typically curious, impatient and over-eager. That makes me a prime candidate to hire personal coaches. Over the past five years, I’ve had business coaches, book coaches, a family coach, speaking coach, relationship coach, therapists, shamanic teachers, and many peers in the community who support me. I believe that hiring a coach, or being part of a group with similar goals, has tremendously accelerated my learning. I continually seek help and expertise to help me grow my skillset and my business.

I also kept practicing. One of my first coaches, Rich Litvin, issued a challenge to have 100 coaching conversations and convert some of these into clients. In the spirit of the challenge, I signed up with a career coaching platform where I coached hundreds of people in fifteen minute increments. It wasn’t the most enjoyable, but the hundreds of hours gave me a lot of reps.

When I wanted to become a better public speaker, I enrolled in a 10-month program with Heroic Public Speaking to learn how to write for speaking as well as how to perform my ideas to best connect with the audience.

When I started on this business journey, I published a blog post once a week. This evolved into material for a book, and I continue to write for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.

In addition to learning, I had to un-learn many of the skills from my 22-year first career as a product designer. Instead of solving problems for my clients, I had to hold space and encourage them to solve their own problems.

Lesson 2: Become Comfortable with White Space

I was raised by an Asian tiger mom who taught me to hustle, work hard, and keep chasing external achievements —be valedictorian, attend Stanford, work at name brand companies, get promoted, and climb that career ladder. It was a straightforward, mostly linear path especially as I chose to go into tech.

Being a designer taught me about white space. That the space between the words and images. The uncertainty of creativity and how you needed to maintain energy while making brand new zero-to-one products for the world.

In my second year of business, I wrote about my path leaving the corporate world, publishing my first book Make Space to Lead: Break Patterns to Find Flow and Focus on What Matters. But I was still in go-go-go mode, completing the impossible task of writing and publishing a book in a ridiculous 9 months. There certainly wasn’t a lot of white space in my process. I was aware of the hypocrisy, but I couldn’t slow down.

Sitting with those concepts, now having five years proactively undoing decades of conditioning, I can say that my life this year finally feels spacious. I’m doing much more work in less time. I’m moving away from black-and-white thinking and becoming more comfortable with nuance and uncertainty.

Building a business (and a life) full of white space means that I can better manage my energy, prioritize my time, and have the spirit to raise teen girls on their own mental illness journeys.

Lesson 3: Set Both Metric-based and Learning Goals for the Win

I tend to have shiny object syndrome and I get energy from working on multiple things in parallel. Following the principle of many little bets works well with my tendencies.

Each initiative is an experiment. There is a success criterion that might be metric-based (e.g. get my second book on Asian American women published by a major publisher, or hit a particular monthly revenue target), however, it’s equally important to have a learning goal. I’ve had many failures, but still hit my learning goals. For example:

I did not get a publishing deal for my second book. Despite having multiple agents eager to represent me and finishing a book proposal with the help of several editors, the climate had changed and DEI topics were less attractive. However, I learned about the publishing industry business model , how to work with an agent to write a book proposal, and greatly improved my writing.
I taught a 12 week cohort on a pro bono basis, falsely thinking that it would lead to more paid work. But I met my learning goal of creating a curriculum arc and sharpening my group coaching & facilitation skills

If you have both a metrics-based and a learning goal, you win either way. It makes you a little more unattached to the outcome, and more willing to run experiments that succeed or fail.

Lesson 4: Experiment with Customer Acquisition and Target Audience

To build a business, you must know your customers, their unfulfilled problems, and your unique solution to that problem. It was challenging for me to find this immediately and I continued to iterate until I found the right combo of work I love and people willing to pay me for it.

I started out coaching anyone who would spend time with me. Then over the months and years, I iterated through different groups of people, carefully noting which niche — based on demographic or problem solved — responded best to me, and who I loved working with. I experimented with these focuses:

Resume, portfolio and interview coaching
Negotiation coaching
Asian American women
So-called “difficult people”
Immigrants and/or people of color
Corporate tech folks looking to cultivate a side hustle

After years of iteration, I’ve landed on my current model. I serve three groups of customers (remember that shiny object syndrome) with three different product types. And I serve them by delivering the products in a unique brand-of-Tutti way. This is where I am right now and I’m looking to expand to do more shamanic counseling work in 2025.

Lesson 5: Know your intrinsic (and extrinsic) motivations

One of the hardest things about working for yourself is that you must self-generate motivation. Without a team or community, it can feel awfully lonely.

Extrinsic motivations like hitting a financial goal or signing a new client can get you only so far. What helps is being clear on your intrinsic motivations. My formula is to:

Have clarity on my values (freedom, family, challenge are a subset) and how they get expressed in my work. For example, I choose to do the not-so-pleasant parts of outreach and business development because I know that having my own business gives me freedom to focus more time and energy on the teen girls that make up my family. I am also able to focus on different challenges with a variety of clients.
Know my own strengths from many decades of being a professional. I work with tech leaders where I can exercise product thinking & creativity. I write and generate new content. And I get to try many new things to see what might work.
Recognize that the core of this profession helps me continue to work on my personal self-transformation. I can’t coach or teach a path that I haven’t taken myself. One of the most exciting parts of my personal practice is diving into new realms of shamanic insight and plant medicine.

Finally, I know that this is a business and career that I can work on forever. It feels sustainable… at least for now. And when I get bored, I can change up the different people or products I work with.

Finding your own intrinsic motivations can be a fun exploration, and I always recommend starting with values.

That’s it! My five reflections on five years in business.

Tutti Taygerly 1/6/24 Tutti Taygerly 1/6/24

🇨🇺 Cuba Leadership Insights: Freedom Comes from Within 🇨🇺

Line of classic cars alongside the Parque Centrale in Havana

We spent 7 days over New Years in Cuba and I’m blown away by the experiences and people in this complicated country. It’s a juxtaposition of complex political leaders from the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s (hence the abundance of classic American cars) to the Cuban revolution with Che Guevara and the Communist reign of Fidel Castro to today’s inflation-plagued post-Castro survival mode.

And through all this, I was struck by the ingenuity of all the hardworking, optimistic people we met, each determined to forge their own paths for their families despite being seemingly trapped in a corrupt, chaotic system of bizarro rules and rampant inflation.

For some of them, it was clear that freedom comes from within. Each person still had individual choice to make.

In a socialist system, the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is met. With our mixture of poorly spoken Spanish and their English learned from watching movies, we tried to understand both the system and the Cuban people. Everyone has free housing (if it’s available), free education through university, and weekly or monthly rations of basic food like rice, beans, and eggs as well as petrol for official taxi drivers.

There’s enough to sustain a life but maybe just barely. Freedom comes from individual choice on the upper levels of the hierarchy of needs.

I’m still pondering so many life and leadership lessons from this experience. Many of us with good jobs, capitalist markets, and the fortune to live in a powerful democracy have a lot to learn. We feel our freedom is taken away when we’re laid off or our managers can’t fulfill the promises of raises or promotions we feel that our hard work is owed. We feel restricted when we have to compromise individual needs to please what the people we love truly desire.

We can’t always change the system (though many of us can keep fighting for equity!) yet we can understand it and our place within it. And we can always make individual choices. That is freedom.

These are five parts of the Cuban lessons that apply to leadership and my own growth journey:

Understanding the System
Freedom of Entrepreneurship
Freedom of Creativity
Freedom of Spirit
Freedom of Contentment

1. Understanding the System

I don’t profess to even have more than a surface understanding of the complex history and current political situation in Cuba. I’ve done some reading, and while I’ve been eager to get the first person perspective of all the people we’ve met, it’s been challenging with my limited Spanish, their English-learned-from-watching-movies, and the natural caution and hesitation of sharing too much with a transient tourist. Mostly, people will nod, smile, say “it’s complicated” and then move on to a different topic.

The Capitol in Havana juxtaposed between bicycle taxi and a classic car

In Havana, we were first surprised to see their Capitol as a replica of the US Capitol. Our taxi driver alluded to the fact that the American government supported the Bautista dictatorship. We were surrounded by relics of the American “friendship” that had US ownership of much of the country’s resources ranging from sugercane to tobacco. It felt like half the cars on the road were exquisitely-maintained American classics. Luxury hotels and bars had photos of American mobsters and 50s movie stars. One breakfast place had tables with legs made from the bases of old Singer sewing machines. Another Iranian restaurant had a wall of antique typewriters. Everything was reused, which we assume is because of the scarcity of imports.

Beautiful decor — note the table legs— at Cafe Arcangel

Anique typewriters and cameras at Iranian cafe Topoly

On the streets, we were constantly approached by people asking if we wanted to change money. Several years ago, the government phased out their CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso) which was pegged to the dollar and moved to a single CUP (Cuban peso). In the last year, the Cuban peso’s value has plunged drastically. An ice cream bar which cost me 500 pesos (about 2 USD on the black market) would have cost 200 pesos a year ago.

Most of the store shelves were bare. When one of our drivers saw several pints of ice cream for sale at a gas station store, he bought one for his 3 year old daughter despite being a 1.5 hour drive away. Her reaction upon receiving it was pure joy!

Our taxi driver in Havana told us that the previous day, he got in line for gas at 9am. He finally was able to fill his tank at 4pm. At the few gas stations that had received a precious delivery, we saw lines of cars stretching 3–4 blocks long for gas.

Our driver from Havana to Vinales had a stash of fuel squirreled away to make our 3 hour drive possible

Even on the main highways, you’d see horse transport on the shoulders as the most accessible way of inter-city travel with the fuel shortage. (and no, this picture wasn’t taken on the highway)

This is a hard life. It’s gotten worst since the pandemic. Everyone has a different theory — fewer tourists visiting (with their inflation-proof dollars or euros), the corrupt or inept government, or perhaps the US embargo. The consensus that things have gone downhill since the Trump administration. Popular opinion is that everyone loves Obama, thinks Trump is loco, and looks at Biden as an old compromiser who won’t help them but won’t make things worse.

Everywhere we went, people assured us that while they don’t like the American government, they have nothing but love for the American people.

As an aside, many people have asked us how we were able to travel to Cuba as Americans. There are direct flights from Houston and Miami. You don’t need to go through a tour. You simply need to self-attest the purpose of your visit — most people select the option of “supporting the Cuban people.” We got a visa on demand for around $75 at the Houston airport. There’s a list of banned government-owned hotels which we avoided by using AirBnb to book home stays at people’s casa particulares. The biggest inconvenience was not having access to the US banking system or ATM cards, so we carried all the cash we needed for the trip. This wasn’t a concern for travelers from any other nation — their credit cards and ATM cards (when there was cash) worked just fine.

The system is complicated. Understanding the system helps provide context, history, and gives me empathy to what each ordinary person is doing to survive and find personal contentment.

In Cuba, we encountered so much inspiration and examples of individuals making countless personal choices and choose freedom. They could exercise this choice even within the restrictions of their Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist island-state with the Communist Party written into the constitution.

2. Freedom of Entrepreneurship

People were endlessly willing to talk about money. I suppose the price of goods and services must be on the forefront of one’s mind to survive in such rampant inflation. Most of the English speakers we met were well educated, with degrees in a variety of subjects ranging from Mechanical Engineering to Philosophy to Cybertechnology. One was making a living as a bike mechanic and gaining a bit of extra money from us as he played impromptu tour guide to his neighborhood. Our Havana home stay hosts had a daughter finishing up medical school. Once she’s done, she’ll make $30 US a month. One of our other guides had a brother-in-law who’s a doctor and is currently stationed in Africa with an organization similar to Doctors Without Borders — the Cuban education system is top notch, but there’s not much of a living to be made in the country.

By far the most lucrative industry is tourism. Not only was our nightly AirBnB rate in Havana around $35 (on the lowest end) but tourists also bring in a stable currency.

In the farming village of Vinales, we met a tobacco farmer and cigar expert. He’s required to sell 90% of his crop to the government. Yet he’s learned enough English to become a tour guide, sharing the fascinating process of tobacco growth, picking and drying, and educating us on the various parts of the plant. We learned that the strongest cigars, the Cohiba brand, comes from the top & most potent part of the plant; the next strongest is Montecristo from the middle leaves; and the mildest from the bottom comprises a range of brands including Romeo y Julieta. He makes a livelihood from tourism and selling his 10% crop. It’s a high value exchange for us: we learned so much about the process as well as how to roll a cigar by hand. And he proudly says that his cigars are “100% organico,” so pure — and because he removes the most addictive nicotine core — that they can be inhaled unlike the chemically treated commercial cigars from any factory.

Enjoying a cigar with the tobacco entrepreneur

Our AirBnB host Mariela was endlessly gracious. She and her mother made us a home cooked meal every morning, scouring the shops and hoarding a little bit of flour to bake us pancake balls or biscuits in addition to home-made jam. She took care of every part of the stay from restaurant recommendations, to our horse tour of the tobacco farm, to procuring mountain bikes for us to independently explore. Being part of the tourist trade gives people the most freedom of entrepreneurship.

Mariela’s husband Pacho is a chef at the state run restaurant down the street. Also, getting a kid passing by the house to take a photo will often result in his thumb selfie.

3. Freedom of Creativity

The biggest surprise of our trip was the richness of the art scene in Havana. All around us the streets had gorgeous unique street art and graffiti murals. We visited an homage of Gaudi’s work at Fusterlandia where artist Jose Fuster had painstakingly recreated his neighborhood as a mini Barcelona in colorful surreal mosaic.

At Fusterlandia with the Cuban flag mosaic

We also went to one of the most spectacular art experiences that I’ve ever seen. It would be at home in Manhattan or Berlin or Tokyo. The Fabrica de Arte Cubano is a massive 3 story building only open on weekend nights that’s a combo of a modern art gallery, sculpture garden, live music venue, and disco. Some of the art was sexually explicit and drop-dead gorgeous. We saw a solo pianist warble Beatles songs and danced with a crowd going wild for 3 Cuban rappers. Small food stalls and bars were spread throughout the space. We were surrounded by curious tourists and wealthy locals seeking the richness of the city’s nightlife.

Sculpture and moon at Fabrica de Arte Cubano

Art at Fabrica de Arte Cubano (not sharing our posed picture in front of this piece :p)

We visited numerous art galleries and studios in Havana, trying to have conversations with the artists. One memorable evening had us invited back to a private tango costume party at the artist’s studio! We couldn’t communicate much with anyone, but the dancing was fabulous.

We bought some art at Elojo de Cicion run by the artist Leo D’Lazaro

The artist Leo D’Lazaro at Elojo de Cicion, his studio / museum / tango party

We conjectured that the socialist system of having free studio space, education, and some level of rationed food left plenty of time for freedom of creativity. Artists and musician were free to pursue their creative endeavors. As we walked around Havana Vieja, music wafted out from all the bars and restaurants. I’d never felt such a festive street atmosphere — it reminded me of New Orleans or Salvador in Brazil. I was grateful for my first small taste of Caribbean culture.

Even within the system, many people were making choices for their art and creative pursuits.

4. Freedom of Spirit

I was delighted to learn about a unique underground Afro-Cuban religion known as Santeria. While many folks are practicing Catholics that go to mass, they also believe in a spiritual tradition with its own orishas and deities, that reminded me of voodoo practices in New Orleans. Santeria, with roots from the African slave trade, had to go underground when forbidden in the Communist regime. Many of the orishas were known by two names. For example, Chango the powerful masculine orisha of lightening and fire, is also known as Santa Barbara. I believe this altar ego was Chango’s cover-up name and gender-fluid disguise, so that Santeria followers could continue their freedom of spiritual worship.

As we walked through a pleasant park in Havana Vieja, we saw a dead rooster sacrificed at the base of a sacred ceiba tree, a brief glimpse into the aftermath of a Santeria ritual. We also visited Callejon De Hamel, an artist’s rendition of Santeria-as-art. Our local guide (the philosopher turned bike mechanic from above) explained that while a Santeria church wouldn’t have have been allowed, this street could flourish as an artist enclave. Sadly, we didn’t visit on Sunday when it turns into a rumba street party, drawing in many visitors.

My bruja (witch) was delighted to see the freedom of spirit covertly practiced within the system.

5. Freedom of Contentment

Given that we were in an island nation screwed over by global superpowers and military dictators, I would have expected to meet people in despair and fighting against their confinement. And don’t get me wrong, this does exist, as shown by the desperate exodus of Cuban immigrants making their way by boat or overland through central America to some type of freedom…. but that wasn’t our (rose-tinted) experience of Cuba.

Instead, the people we interacted with — all beneficiaries of tourism — seemed content with their entrepreneurial choices. Yes things were hard, yes it’s complicated, but most of them didn’t want to leave. This was their home and the hope is that next year will be better.

As we wound our way on horseback through the peaceful farms of the Vinales valley, taking turns singing songs in Spanish and English, I realized that our horseback guide Jesus was very content, or tranquillo as he put it. He had everything he wanted. He had a family farm that produced plenty of vegetables which he could trade with his neighbors (but not sell as that would require a different government license). That night, New Years Eve, friends and family would gather around a celebratory roast pig. He was wicked smart in his observations and enjoyed practicing English with us. He’d been to Havana a couple of times, but it was too busy. Life was good. Tranquillo.

I figured that overall, he had a freedom of contentment that I was still lacking in my busy, tech-filled San Francisco life.

Cuba was an amazing experience for us. It gave me so many lessons in trying to understand such a different system and realizing that ultimately, freedom comes from within. Even within this complicated system, we all continue to have individual choices.

The complicated juxtaposition of delighted tourists and weary driver outside the Hotel Nacionale

Tutti Taygerly 12/20/23 Tutti Taygerly 12/20/23

2024 Intention and Goal Setting

Four years ago, I made a major professional shift. I’d spent 22 years as a design leader in tech and I was finally ready to leave the corporate world and start my own business. Today, I’m an executive coach to Series A (and beyond) founders, author and keynote speaker focused on leadership, “otherness,” and creating your brand.

Through this journey, I’ve held different North Star visions for each year, as I simultaneously helped my clients and community set intentions for their years to come. As my self-leadership developed, my process has changed.

This last quarter of 2023 has been the most challenging period of my life, mainly due to personal and family priorities. While I continued serving my existing clients and speaking engagements, I pretty much stopped doing any outreach or new business development. I simply had to ruthlessly prioritize as my energy was laser focused on my family. However, my other priority was to become clear on what mattered to me most in 2024. Through the last three months, I’ve had that professional (and personal) goal gestating in the back of my mind. It didn’t need to take any active energy, yet I knew it was something I wanted to figure out by the end of the year.

One memory kept coming back to me repeatedly. My parents loved to travel, and when I was about six years old, we went on a family trip to Taiwan. According to family lore, my sister and I were at a temple and threw some fortune sticks. My older sister went first. She threw her sticks and received “middling fortune.” Now, anyone who knows our family, knows that my sister is viewed as pretty successful. I stepped up next to kneel, shake the container, and throw my sticks. I received “supreme fortune.” The ongoing family joke is that my sister is doing pretty well and if that is considered to be ”middling fortune,” we’re all still waiting for Tutti’s “supreme fortune.”

This is as bit of a silly story, and yet that memory kept coming back to me. Memories and emotions, similar to values, can help create a touchstone for an intention.

At the same time, as I reflected on my past two years with my business coach, I realized that I’d also shied away from setting monetary goals. I’d spent 22 years in my first career hustling and working hard, at the expense of time with my young girls, my marriage, and my own spaciousness. I knew how to set SMART goals and OKRs and then regularly hitting and exceeding them. In this new career, I was afraid of being setting big ambitious goals because to me, that big goal setting would automatically come with hustling.

I wrote my first book, Make Space to Lead: Break Patterns and Focus on What Matters Most, in a rapid 10 months from conception to launch — the process was most definitely not spacious! Yet through writing about the concepts and putting out the intention that this was the way of living that I yearned for, I’ve now realized that through 2022 and 2023, I’ve achieved balance and space in my integrated professional and personal life. We write what we most need to learn!

Intention-setting for me this year is a mixture of divergent, dreamy thinking (memories! emotions!) as well as structured goal setting, full of actions & metrics.

My intention for 2024 is “Supreme Fortune.” I have three above the line goals — to have this level of supreme abundance in my energy/capacity, with my two daughters, and in my love life. Those are the top priority.

Then, if those are not compromised, I am seeking wealth in my professional business. Supreme Fortune is a rich life.

Once I had the intention, the goals were easier. I’m sharing my professional business goals, although there are personal ones as well. While these look like a long list, they will be spread out as sub-goals for each quarter in 2024. And if I don’t reach them all, it’s okay. The goals are less important than the overarching intention for the year. And in this changing landscape, I can be certain of my Q1 goals while everything else is a rough swag. As humans, we tend to be bad at predicting the future, the further out it is.

Intention

Supreme Fortune. Three facets above the line (Energy, Love life, and Daughters). When those aren’t compromised, then Wealth.

Goals (and some roadmap)

Financial: 1.5x my revenue from 2023 with a mixture of coaching, consulting and speaking / workshops.
Speaking / Workshops: develop two new keynote speeches through a new speaking training program
Writing: Pivot my existing book proposal into an adjacent broader topic, learning from this past year, and creat a plan for publishing
Writing: Continue writing for HBR, Fast Company, etc. creating one pitch a month
Experiments: Develop a new self-service course with Udemy for Business — Developing Your Leadership Brand Using Generative AI
Deepening my personal shamanic practice

You can see a history of my intention-setting over the past 4 years with Grow (2020), White Space (2021), Satisfied (2022), and Shapeshifter (2023). My process changes and adapts over the years but it always has a combination of feeling / emotion / intuition plus more traditional structured goal-setting. If you’d like an overview of the process, take a look at my article on personal OKRs.

Tutti Taygerly 10/31/23 Tutti Taygerly 10/31/23

Mentor vs Coach: What Support Do You Need for Professional Success

You're a high achiever. You care about building your career and know that it's important to keep growing, acquiring new skills, and tackling new challenges

You wonder if there’s a secret to leadership that everyone else knows, but you’ve been missing. You’ve heard that it’s important to develop a board of directors or to work on your growth mindset or to find mentors — or was it a sponsor? — and also to build your network. Yet you’re not sure where to start.

You’ve heard of executive and career coaches. You’ve heard that other people have had great mentors.

How do you know if it’s the right time to get professional support? And which one — mentor or coach— might be the most needed for you right now?

The different approaches for mentorship vs coaching

Imagine that your goal is to learn to ride a bike. You might do it on your own by reading up on the process, watching YouTube videos or asking your friends to share their experience of learning to bike.

If you work with a mentor, someone who has years of experience and specific knowledge in the skillset of bike-riding, they will likely tell you about their own experience of learning to ride a bike. They will share common pitfalls and success strategies. They will be a wealth of information including pros/cons of different bike riding techniques and possibly the best bike brands to get started with. Your mentor will be doing most of the speaking to share their expertise.

If you work with a coach, their expertise with riding the bike matters less. They will support you in the experience of getting on a bike, perhaps holding the handlebars or creating other structures for you to feel safe and successful. When you fall, they will encourage you to get back up and keep trying, while learning from the process. The inquiry about bike riding might be:

- What’s most important to you about learning to ride a bike?

- When you’ve accomplished this goal, how will your life be different? What might be unlocked?

- What patterns are holding you back?

- What’s the biggest fear around this experience?

The coach holds space and helps you to process your own experience of bike riding, while completely supporting you along the way. Most of the time, the conversation will be split 50/50 between you and the coach. Sometimes the coach might have suggestions, but they are primarily to prompt your thinking.

Depending on your needs, either a mentor or a coach could accelerate your professional growth.

When is the right time to seek professional help?

The first step is to identify the goals you’d like to reach or the problems to be solved. I’ll share three common examples I’ve heard from coaching clients, mentees, and team members I’ve managed. Each of these examples could be supported by a mentor or a coach.

Rohit is an ambitious product manager who’s spent five years building his career. He now wants to be promoted to manage his own team. He feels that his boss hasn’t been listening to him and may be holding him back, constantly telling him that he’s not quite ready. Rohit doesn’t know how to get clear feedback on what to work on or what expectations he needs to meet to get promoted.

Leyla is a first-time CEO and cofounder with a sales background. She has a technical co-founder, a former colleague who she trusts deeply. Their startup just received Series A funding and is showing signs of early product market fit with some initial customer traction. She’s never been the big boss before. She’s not used to assuming all the power and having people treat her differently because she’s the CEO. Layla wants to be the best possible leader, fulfilling her obligations to the team who’s followed her as well as to her investors.

Jamie runs a large engineering team. She has high expectations of her team, cares about them deeply, and is the first to stay late and work through the weekend to diagnose the source of a high-impact bug. Recently, she’s felt overwhelmed, cranky, and under even more extreme pressure to meet tight deadlines. Her CEO has also given her feedback that others on the executive team find her difficult to work with. She doesn’t know what to do with this feedback. She feels terrible but is already operating at max capacity and needs to hustle and drive everyone around her harder to meet the company’s ambitious goals.

Rohit, Leyla and Jamie had exhausted their own resources, network or skillset. The tools and skills that have previously led to career success are no longer working. Once they have an understanding of the behaviors they wanted to change, or a goal they wanted to reach, it provided clarity so they knew it was the right time to seek professional help. Either a mentor or a coach could help. But which one?

Framework for Mentoring vs Coaching

There are six facets of how professional help can be viewed which can help you decide between if you’d like to seek out a mentor or hire a coach.

Your Role

Consider your motivation to be an active driver of this process. With a mentor, the more you put into it the more you get out of it. It’s on you to define a clear agenda and have focus questions. While a starting topic or challenge is helpful, the coach will often have a structure or direction to guide the client through exploring new perspectives.

Structure

The mentor will make time as needed and when requested by the mentee. The mentee will reach out when they have a question, and the meeting happens if the mentor has the bandwidth. Coaches will meet on a regular cadence, whether weekly, bi-weekly or rmonthly. Often, they will hold co-define actions or homework for the client to work on between sessions. Coaches also hold confidentiality and follow a code of ethics

Tools

Many high achievers are capable of great things but may lack the knowledge in an ambiguous space. A mentor who has trodden this path before will suggest tips, software, and strategies that have worked for them. Coaches provide a wide array of tools that have worked for a broad group of clients. Different tools will resonate with different people.

Investment

The mentorship relationship is at little to no cost. The biggest downside is that it can be challenging to find a mentor to donate time to your professional growth. Rates for coaching range from as little as $100 / hour on platforms such as BetterUp up to $50K for 6 months for top tier executive coaches. You get what you pay for.

Personal Accountability

This is often low with as a mentee may feel like they are already asking a lot of the mentor’s time. mentor as they are already helping you with their time. With a coach, the client, has higher personal accountability because of the investment of time and money to achieve a goal.

Outcome / Goal

This isn’t typically measured in a mentorship relationship. Many coaches have a process with intake forms and regular assessments to measure progress towards the goal. Often upon completion, the client will assess the monetary impact of coaching.

How to Get Started

First, as with the examples above figure out what issue you’d like to work on. If you’d prefer to find someone to give you answers based on their expertise, start looking for a mentor in your field or within your company. If you can’t find a single mentor, as this process can be lengthy and time-consuming, consider following this rule of 10 to get the opinions of ten smart people with a range of perspectives.

If you’d prefer a formal coaching arrangement, ask around for coach recommendations, especially from trusted colleagues who have first-hand experience with specific coaches. Consider narrowing down to coaches with experience in your field or who have worked with clients experiencing similar problems. Once you have a list, reach out and ask to have a conversation with each coach to evaluate fit and chemistry — it’s really a little bit like dating. You can also research other articles such as how to decide if an executive coach is right for you.

Finally, if budget is an issue, you may explore how to become your own career coach.

Tutti Taygerly 9/20/23 Tutti Taygerly 9/20/23

Life Lessons from Burning Man (Part 3 of 3)

If you missed it, catch up on:

In my first career as a designer, in addition to designing the digital products and interfaces, we spent time thinking about the customer journey from the first time a person might have heard of a product or brand, to the experience of using it, and continuing with what happens after their direct experience of using the product. This expansive, time-based design is often described as service design. It takes into account the full customer life cycle spanning before, during, and after the direct experience.

Burning Man is one of the rare events that considers the life cycle of a person’s relationship to the event. People often spend a lot of time in preparation, to make sure that they have the living setup, gear, food & water, as well as elaborate costumes to spend a week out in the desert. As part of a camp, you’ll plan for the gifts and experiences the camp will bring to the playa. Yet Burning Man also has the additional “after” design of how you transition back to the default world after the festival week. This is often referred to as decompression.

7. Decompression

Chill space at 2:00 on the edge of outer playa

The experience of a peak event, whether it’s a vacation, a retreat, an in-person visioning session with the team, or an intense war room sprint often feels fantastic, especially when experienced with a close group of people. I’ve often made the mistake of getting home late on a Sunday night from an exotic vacation, and then dragging myself out of bed to hustle into the regular Monday routine of going to work. That not-a-transition is brutal.

Humans need liminal spaces, the transition spaces between momentous events. This can be in architecture, where hallways are the spaces between rooms or with airports as the spaces between travel. We also need emotional space. Much as an athlete needs rest days in order to train harder, decompression is the space needed between a momentous experience such as Burning Man and the default world.

Burning Man holds formal decompression events often weeks or a month after the Labor Day main event. As with service design, it allows for a re-gathering of the community you spent time on the playa with. It can be hard to answer friends’ questions such as:

“That sounded terrible, are you okay?”
“Were you stuck?”
“Did you feel trapped?”

It can be hard to explain the experience to non-burners. Decompression events are mini-versions to let burners experience a little bit of liminal space of the playa back in the default world.

As for me, after many decades of hustling my way past vacation back into work, I now plan for transition spaces, blocking out a day or two after a vacation or a retreat. This time, I blocked out 2 days of non-client facing work after Burning Man. But it wasn’t enough. My body was so tired from the week of 4–6 hours of sleep each night that I found myself crashing at 9pm and sleeping through to 7am or 8am each morning. I needed mental and physical rest. And it took about a week for me to feel relatively normal.

The final lesson in this series is to think about the principles of service design and build in transition time after each momentous event — a huge product launch, a retreat, a vacation, or something else. When you return to work, perhaps plan for the first day to be meeting-free and a zone to catch up on emails.

And as part of Decompression, people often consider how they might incorporate the 10 Principles of Burning Man back into their every day default life. Is there one that resonates for you?

Radical Inclusion
Gifting
Decommodification
Radical Self-reliance
Radical Self-expression
Communal Effort
Civic Responsibility
Leaving No Trace
Participation
Immediacy (though I’d rename this one to be Presence)

For the full series:

Tutti Taygerly 9/14/23 Tutti Taygerly 9/14/23

Life Lessons from Burning Man (Part 2 of 3)

If you missed it, catch up on Part 1’s first three lessons.

The weather, with both rain, mud, and sand-storms, made 2023 a year to remember, allowing for a myriad of emotional highs and lows. Burners refer to our regular lives as the “default world,” implying that the ephemeral experience of Black Rock City is somehow special and unlike any other part of our lives.

I disagree.

I view Burning Man as the experimental container through which you can access a huge range of experiences — in a mostly safe environment — that can be hard to find in the default world. It’s set up so that instant community is easy to find, the gorgeous desert setting surrounded by art creates many chances for awe and joy, and the variety of camps expands your perspectives. Finally, the sheer power of nature and living outdoors means that you’ll have to deal with the physical adversity that our houses typically insulate us against.

Read on to hear about the range of emotions we experienced in a matter of days, and how beautiful the life lessons turned out to be. These continue to be applicable, both on playa and in the default world.

4. Seek Awe

A large part of Burning Man for me is about the art. But unlike a museum, the art here is interactive and people are a crucial element of the piece. Yes, wandering through the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Louvre or the Sagrada Familia allows us to gape and be transported into the artist’s vision of the world, yet we are often behind a glass plate or a rope divider reminding us to keep our distance and DON’T TOUCH. In contrast, the art at Burning Man is all about participation.

The playa is a giant playground. Each time you venture out, there’s new art to discover, even though you think you’ve traversed this path at least four times before. It’s impossible to see everything. Serendipitously following art cars or wandering with new friends leads you to even more new installations.

From a distance, you can see a giant mechanical winged pegasus. Yet when you get close, you realize you can get the sculpture to move. Awe comes when you’ve gotten three other people together, positioned on all four corners of “Wings of Glory” by Adrian Landon, and you realize that you must all press the buttons simultaneously. Three, two, one… FLY.

Inside the Temple of the Heart, everyone has left tributes and stories of the souls that have passed. She holds space for the community to process grief, and to be awed by the collective beauty of thousands of wooden flowers and home-crafted alters.

Personal shrines and collective grieving inside the Temple of the Heart

The Elder Mother tree by Charles Gadeken is a gathering place for people to marvel at the iridescent cubes, to listen to the fairytales from around the world, to control the colors of the tree by using interactive placards, and to try to conquer its heights by climbing. The art is magnetic — in one afternoon, we saw about 10 weddings at the base of the tree.

Burning Man helps facilitate these experiences of awe. And we can continue to seek them throughout our everyday lives.

Collective awe beneath the butterfly’s wings (and on the swing)

5. Celebrate New Experiences

The desert and survival conditions of Black Rock City make it an easy place to have new experiences. So often in our everyday lives, we fall into patterns of going to work or school (or zoom), making meals, exercise, watching media, then falling asleep to start this all over again. I got the privilege of experiencing Burning Man through the eyes of my first timer sister and through the week, we continued to remind ourselves to celebreate every single new experieince. That each of these was “the first time…”

—The first time… lying in the dust creating a sand angel.

—The first time… erecting a 10-foot shade structure in the hot sun as two short women.

—The first time… grieving our dad together at sunset in temple.

—The first time… biking blind through a sandstorm.

—The first time… staying up all night dancing and exploring under the blue supermoon.

Each experience was unique and breathtaking. Each was unforgettable.

Especially this last one.

I like to climb. In college, I used to rock climb. Now, I often climb tall trees. I climb most of the art structures we see. I generally take calculated risks and it mostly works out.

I said mostly.

This time, I learned that it’s not wise to climb structures that aren’t designed to be scaled. It’s not wise to climb slippery metal sculptures. Especially in the rain. Especially in a sleep deprived state.

My sister and friends watched in horror as I slipped down the Elder Mother tree, landing in an awkward face plant in the playa dust. I’m told I looked terrible with blood streaming from my mouth and chin.

There was some shock. Some pain. Some disbelief (remember that healthy ego of mine?). A lot of embarrassment.

It led us to explore the medical facilities where burners who are cardiologists, nurses, anesthesiologist in their regular lives, take on volunteer shifts. We got to ride a makeshift “ambulance” to Rampart, the bigger urgent care facility in center camp staffed by Nevada medical professionals, completely equipped to do X-rays, head scans, and many other urgent care facilities.

After the shock wore off. After it was became clear that all the blood was from light flesh wounds. After it was clear that I wasn’t concussed, I looked over at my sister and laughingly said:

—The first time… going to the Emergency Room at 3am at Burning Man.

We burst into laughter, relieved that there was no lasting damage.

I’m grateful for the medical staff and to also experience a whole new side of the playa infrastructure.

Hamming it up at the end of our Rampart Urgent Care visit

6.Embrace the Challenge

The heavy rains started on Friday afternoon.

Burning Man is a giant city of 70,000 and I was teaching a workshop at 2pm at Shaman Dome, a good 20 minute bike ride across the playa from our camp. We’d spent a lot of the wee hours of the morning at the ER and I wasn’t feeling great with bruises and a black eye starting to emerge. We headed over early so I could plan the session. I was secretly hoping no one would show up especially as the wind started howling at 2pm and I rushed to secure all the flapping sides of the canvas dome.

We had a full session. I ran a large group through a visualization of their power animals and how to shapeshift between the traits of collective animal guides present in the space and on the playa. As the heavy rains started to pound, I cut the session short, telling everyone to get back to their camp safely.

By 3:30pm, we were well and truly stuck. We couldn’t wheel our bikes more than 10 feet without them getting mired in sticky mud. We tried to walk, with our shoes covered by garbage bags, but the heavy rains made it impossible to get more than 100 feet without physical exhaustion.

So we stayed.

We spent hours in the dry-ish kitchen at Shaman Dome. I experienced my lowest point of the burn when I lost one of my contact lenses while scraping off the mud from my boots. I’m practically blind at a -9.5 in my left eye and when I lose my sight, I freak out. The kind folks at camp gave us the warm jackets off their backs, and told us they were setting up a tent with extra sleeping bags for us. Gradually, the energy shifted as we swapped stories and played games. The camp served a full hot meal for everyone present. It was close to dark, and as we were contemplating a sleepless night in wet tents, we heard a collective cheer outside and all around us.

In a brief break in the rain, you could see the most beautiful full double rainbow arch across the sky.

Drone shot of the double rainbow over playa. (If anyone knows the photographer’s identity, please let me know so I can credit them)

Taking it as a sign, we put on garbage bags and decided to trudge barefoot across the open playa back to camp. That hour-long mud walk, complete with full body falls while being blind in one eye, was one of the most breath-taking periods of joy that I remember. We danced, we sang, we twirled our way through the mud and rain. And eventually made it back to our warm dry camp.

Challenges teach you resilience and on the other side, brings amazing feelings of exuberance, having finally made it through. It may never be something we willingly choose to undergo, yet life is chaotic and uncontrollable. Burning Man simply brings more of those experiences to the forefront.

Pure joy on our hour-long mud trek back to camp

For the full series:

Tutti Taygerly 9/6/23 Tutti Taygerly 9/6/23

Life Lessons from Burning Man 2023 (Part 1 of 3)

As each of us got into cell service, we get inundated with texts:

“Are you safe?”

“Doing ok? Heard about burning man flood and murder”

“Was that your limo on fire?”

“Did you make it out?”

The news reports were dire with coverage in the New York Times, the BBC, and my personal favorite that President Biden had been briefed on “the situation.”

Burners are resilient, joyful people. We’ve created an ephemeral city in the harsh conditions of the Black Rock desert where we willingly put ourselves through these conditions to be part of an utterly unique experience of art, community, and to belong to a place that feels like home for me since my first burn in 1999.

As a life-long adventurer and leadership coach, every experience has lessons. Fresh from this spectacular burn, I’m sharing some leadership lessons in a three part series.

1.Plan your Burn; Burn your Plan

A huge amount of planning goes into Burning Man from creating roads, sanitation, and much other infrastructure needed to support 70,000 people. As part of radical self-reliance, we’ve spent months planning our camp community (Illumination Village at Esplanade and 3:00) including food, shelter, showers, gray water (unlike with camping, no liquid touches the playa), and propane to power all the fire art at our camp. A massive amount of planning — and goal setting — goes into prepping for burn. As with life, it’s great to have a plan and to set clear goals for what you want to do. As a first time burner, my sister downloaded 3 apps with camp info and activities and had very useful info for all the events we wanted to hit from creating light-up flowers for our bikes, to finding the best breakfast sandwiches, to geo-location of art on the open playa, and to locating 80s dance music amidst all the drum & bass.

It’s good to have a plan and clear goals.

And… it’s even more important to remain unattached to the goals. Many things can happen from an apocalyptic rain storm to falling into deep conversation with new friends who lead you away to some other amazing activity. Remaining present and open to serendipity can lead to many new and even better goals. It’s also impossible to control the chaos of weather. so you might as well remain fluid and flexible.

Sisters in muddy camp cleaning up the first morning after the storm.

2. Be the Community

Burning Man runs on 10 Principles which, similar to values in an organization, helps keep the entire 70,000 group of people following the same foundation. Three of the ten principles — Gifting, Communal Effort, and Participation — build upon the idea of No Spectators. We are all part of the community together. Much of Black Rock City is run by volunteers, from the medical staff (more about my 2am Emergency Room visit to come in part 2) to the gate crew to Recycle Camp to the DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles) to the Black Rock Rangers who keep some semblance of order. Each theme camp puts out offerings of entertainment, food & drink, or activities for everyone else. There is no commerce — everything with the exception of ice, is freely gifted.

And when the entire city shut down on Friday afternoon due to the storm that rendered the sticky, muddy playa impassable, the best of community effort came to light. We were trapped halfway across the city at Shaman Dome where I just cut my workshop short and the camp had people giving us the jackets off their back, setting up a tent with sleeping bags for us to stay the night, and feeding us a sumptuous meal. All across the city, everyone was helping to feed and shelter their neighbors.

There is no loneliness in Black Rock City. Everyone is open, hugely generous, and giving. I’ve never been anywhere else like this community of massive belonging, and I hope to bring this excess of generosity back into my “default world” life.

3. Cherish your Campmates

I brought my sister to the burn. She was the best campmate, both cheerful and adventurous, up for trying anything and able to keep going through all the unexpected twists and turns of weather. We also shared many hours mourning our dad and leaving his little shrines up at temple.

We camped with long-time friends in a village of veteran burners who had been coming since the mid 90s. Illumination Village had a lot of infrastructure and in the chaos of Sunday night, was one of the few camps completely up and running with our fire sculptures and sound system powered by backup propane. Our smaller camp was art support for Charles Gadeken, a San Francisco based artist who runs the Box Shop one of the only maker spaces left in SF, and who’s art installation, Elder Mother was a huge hit on the playa. Elder Mother was the gathering place for much community and the site of at least 20 weddings that we personally witnessed.

The artist Charles Gadeken and his wife beneath Elder Mother

While the community of strangers (lesson 2) is heartwarming, there’s nothing like cherishing the close community of your campmates, including the camaraderie of sharing food and then eventually making a break from the playa by exchanging most of your gear to carry out a whole car load of people early on Monday morning. We needed to get people out back to jobs or childcare. The gear could easily come later on the strike vehicles breaking down the major art projects.

These campmates were like family. We forged some life-long bonds going through the shared experience of this week’s unforgettable burn.

Part 2 continues with the disasters we encountered and the moments of pure awe.

For the full series:

Tutti Taygerly 7/20/23 Tutti Taygerly 7/20/23

6 Tips for Reaching Unattainable Goals: Leadership Lessons from Surfing the Perfect Wave

“I want to be barreled,” I wrote as my goal for the two days I was spending at the Surf Ranch, home of a man-made perfect wave in central California created by Kelly Slater, 11-time World Surf League champion, and his team.

Being inside the tube, getting barreled is the peak experience in surfing where you are completely encapsulated inside a breaking wave, also called being “in the green room.” Kelly Slater has described it as “a sacred place in nature… a peaceful place where the surfer is fully immersed in the present moment and everything else falls away.”

This wasn’t exactly nature, 100 miles away from the ocean in the central Californian farmland of Lemoore, California. And I wasn’t exactly a good enough surfer to get barreled. This was not a realistic goal and probably unattainable in the unpredictability of the open ocean. But at this man-made perfect wave, there would be the opportunity for many rounds of practice. And, as I coach my tech executive clients— often women, people of color, and immigrants— we want to dream big and drive hard towards the goal, while also holding it lightly, making room for pivots as you learn along the way.

Forget the goal of being barreled, I was also simply thrilled to get a chance to surf this wave as part of a cybersecurity company’s sales event celebrating their customers and prospects. Surfing, and life around us, is a rich source of leadership lessons and these are six tips to help reach unattainable goals.

1. New Experiences are Uncomfortable

We arrived at the Surf Ranch in the late afternoon, and our first experience of the wave was at night. Even with the bright spotlights, it felt terrifying to paddle out through the blackness of the water. Disconcertingly, unlike ocean surfing where you paddle away from the breaking wave to catch it, at this man-made wave, you had to paddle towards the wave to catch it. I tried to remind myself that I’d surfed this manmade wave once before, but it didn’t help. If anything, it made me feel worst. I felt like a complete n00b. The first time you do something is going to be hugely uncomfortable. Many high achievers also have a self-critical perfectionist voice that tells us that we’re supposed to be instantly good at something, even though we’ve never done it before.

I breathed into my discomfort. When my critical voice said, You’ve surfed this before, you really should know how to do this, I told her: That’s not helpful and reminded myself that I’d never surfed at night here. I continued breathing and reminded myself: This is a new experieince. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable.

2. Learn from Guides and Ask for Help

Many people I coach have trouble asking for help. Asking for help can feel like you’re showing a weakness or that you’re inconveniencing others with your problems. Luckily, with my “good student” identity and Hermione Granger-like upbringing, I’ve never had trouble learning from teachers. We were surrounded by the Surf Ranch’s expert surf team with a coach in the water beside us, the jet ski driver directing our path down the line, and additional support coaches to help review the drone and camera footage of our form.

“I need help,” I gasped at every new coach I met. I don’t tend to have a lot of ego and will eagerly follow whatever tips or expertise offered to me (often to a fault, with some teacher-pleasing tendencies). I asked the coach in the water to give me an extra push into the wave. I listened intently to the jet ski driver’s hollered directions. Every time we got out of the water, I headed straight to the video room to review the footage and map my experience of the wave to the reality of what the cameras captured.

Take every advantage you can. Learn from guides and ask for help.

3. Keep Iterating

Unlike the unpredictability of ocean waves, this man-made wave did exactly the same thing every single time. And I could watch the mistakes I made with each wave: not paddling one or two more strokes to get into the pocket, popping up (standing up) too soon and not getting in front of the wave, or not turning my board into the wave at a steep enough angle. The surf coaches were both kind and direct with their suggestions for what to try next. The camera never lies, mirroring back the reality of what I was doing.

And each time I went back out there, I iterated. I reminded myself to paddle two more strokes. I repeated, “belly, belly, belly” in my head to remind myself to stay lying down rather than popping up immediately. I aimed my gaze far off towards the fence, creating a more angled approach into the wave.

The wave didn’t change each time, so I had the luxury of experimenting against something constant. Keep iterating, keep learning, keep improving.

4. Look for Opportunities to Poach

In surfing etiquette, there is always a rider who has priority. Out in ocean, it’s the person closest to where the wave breaks. At the surf ranch, we all took turns being the priority surfer and each person would get 2-3 priority waves per session. However, as we pushed ourselves and iterated, the priority rider would sometimes fall or miss the wave. Then, everyone else had the opportunity to “poach,” or to take our turn catching the wave as it made its glorious 45 second run down the length of the wave pool.

In surfing as in life, you must take the opportunities that present themselves. I got ready to poach the wave every single time a new priority rider was up, it’s what the coach told me to do. Many of the other surfers in the water wouldn’t do that — let’s just say there were several surfers who were of such high talent, that it seemed impossible that they would fall or make a mistake — but I was hungry for waves, and I listened to my guides. It didn’t happen that often, and there were times when I couldn’t paddle fast enough to make the wave, but I did catch three gloriously poached waves. You’ve always got to try for the opportunity.

5. Celebrate the Shared Experience

I was in a funk as they called “last wave” on our first session that night. After a decent start on my first two waves, I’d flubbed my next two. I was frustrated with my performance and quite grumpy. One of the coaches looked at my face, laughed, and told me to “Loosen up and have fun. You’ll surf better.”

As we headed back to the end of the pool, under a starry night sky and hearing live music from the band Switchfoot, I felt a huge amount of gratitude for being here at the Surf Ranch. The feeling only magnified as we gathered together sharing stories of each other’s waves, cheering on the brand-new surfers who got up for the first time, and celebrating the experienced pros who made it into and out of their barrels unscathed.

My goal of getting barreled didn’t seem to matter. I was having a blast being here within a community gathered for this singular shared experience. We celebrated and cheered each other on.

6. Let Go of the Outcome

It was our final late afternoon session on the second day, and I was exhausted. I’d slept poorly in the gorgeous Airstream trailers on property, kept awake by the creaks of metal every time the wind blew, and by the noises of geese and other birds surrounding us. We’d spent several hours surfing, baking in the hot sun, and listening to an overview of the company’s technology advantage. My left side was bruised from an encounter with my surf fin and I was thinking ahead to the four-hour drive back to San Francisco and wondering how I’d make it.

As I walked back towards the deck, the head of sales looked at me and said, ‘You ready for that barrel?” I laughed and told him I was too tired and could barely paddle. The surf coach overheard the conversation and quipped, “Not with that attitude, you won’t.” I laughed, encouraged by their positive energy. As I sat in the water waiting for the wave, I could feel a sense of ease of flow. It didn’t really matter if I made the barrel or not, and I really didn’t expect to. I was filled with gratitude for simply having the shared experience and the chance to surf this perfect wave again. The nerves were gone. The tiredness was gone. Instead, I was calm with a sense of quiet confidence. I’d simply try my best.

And yes… I did get barreled on my very last wave of the day. Perhaps it was only possible once I’d let go of the goal. The experience was messy. I barely made it into the wave. It was not elegant. I nearly lost my balance several times. I’m reminded that my self-critics will likely always stay with me. \

If you’re curious, you can watch the video of my wonderfully imperfect waves at the surf ranch.

Tutti Taygerly 7/7/23 Tutti Taygerly 7/7/23

I’m an Asian American mom. While the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision seems to benefit my 10th grader, it’s devastating for her future classrooms and workplaces

***Photo by*** ***Claudio Schwarz*** on ***Unsplash***

I am Asian American. I’m the mom of a rising 10th grader who is anxious about her college prospects and taking summer geometry to get a leg up on her classes next year. The Supreme Court’s racist ruling on affirmative action will directly benefit my family by increasing spots for white and Asian kids to attend colleges at the expense of black and brown kids. This is not leveling the playing field. It’s reducing the diversity of future classrooms and workplaces. It’s not worth the cost.

Last week’s ruling places us in an unrealistic world where we pretend that systemic racism doesn’t exist. Six members of the Supreme Court have said “We don’t see color” and that #AllLivesMatter equally. They are willfully claiming that the college admissions process—and the world around us—is color-blind. They believe an applicant’s race could be a part of their personal history, but that our country’s history of racism is no longer something that important American institutions will address. Even at their age, my daughters know that this point of view is false and disregards the communal history and individual lived experiences of people of color. Both my 10th grader and her 7th grade sister see the hypocrisy of striking down affirmative action practices at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina while providing an exemption for military academies. How is it okay to have more Black and brown people fighting wars for us but not earning their place in the elite workforce?

As an older generation, many of us weren’t raised to openly talk about racism. I was brought up by a Thai-Chinese “tiger mom” who pushed me to achieve at all costs. This single-minded ambition led me to be high school Valedictorian, move halfway around the world at sixteen to attend Stanford University, and climb the career ladder in Silicon Valley. I aspired to be like my peers around me. In youthful hubris, I believed that I achieved success through my own merit, perseverance, and hustle. For most of my career, I ignored the racism and sexism that I experienced. I now know that we can’t ignore it and pretend to be color-blind because that’s not the reality of the world we live in.

In the tech industry[1] as in higher education[2], Asians are part of the majority and I benefited from this inclusion. Only later in life did I realize how my race and the positive “model minority” associations of being Asian (hard-working, agreeable, with great technical skills at math) had afforded me privilege and benefits not shown to my other colleagues of color. Yet we are still “others.” Like most Asians, I’ve experienced casual racism on the streets with an uptick in incidents after the start of the pandemic, and I continue to hope that my continual vigilance will prevent more serious violence. Like all women working in technology, I’ve experienced sexism throughout the two decades of my career. From my first-hand experience running large teams at Meta and serving as an executive coach to startup founders and tech leaders, almost every single woman or person of color has experienced unconscious bias and systemic racism. Many shrug it off in an attempt to fit in and achieve workplace success. Not acknowledging our diversity of thought, based on our diversity of lived experiences, kills psychological safety and true innovation at work. The six members of the Supreme Court have reinforced this collective delusion that we don’t see color.

I fiercely love my daughters. As a mom, I want them to succeed in life. But never on the backs of others. Of course I want my 10th grader to get into a “good school.” It’ll benefit her to have the educational pedigree and build her network of peers that will help her succeed in life. But that desire must be balanced against what’s right for the greater good of all kids.

This next generation is wiser. Both my girls are educated within the San Francisco public school system. I’m proud that our teens have a clear understanding of racism and the vocabulary to talk about it. My daughters can see the differences in the (higher) expectations their teachers have for them versus what’s expected of their black and brown friends. My daughters are already privileged with the social-economic benefits of educated, professional parents and the racial benefits of being half-white and half-Asian.

What’s different from when I was my daughters’ age is that we have more language and the willingness to have the conversation. They see adult leaders such as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stand up for the rights of minorities and fight systemic racism. They can see the inequity of a ruling which personally benefits them but hurts the entire system. They can see that we are all part of America, with all its complex racial history, and can play our parts in making it better. That gives me hope for our future.

[1] https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/people/talent-flows-diversity/tech-talent/share-of-employees-at-silicon-valleys-largest-technology-companies-by-race-ethnicity/

[2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rfas.asp

Tutti Taygerly 5/31/23 Tutti Taygerly 5/31/23

Lessons from 'The Future of Tech Careers and AI' Panel

I had a freakout moment of major imposter syndrome yesterday. I was speaking at a panel at Google-sponsored Women in Tech event as part of San Francisco #TechWeek. The panel was on The Future of Tech Careers with an AI focus.

Throughout the course of the day, the two other panelists, a female tech CEO and another ML expert, dropped out for real-time emergencies. An airplane delay. A COVID-positive kid.

Oh sh*t! I'm now the solo remaining speaker. Hundreds of people are coming to listen to me talk about AI trends.

I didn't feel like an AI expert. Who am I to lead an entire hour-long session without the ability to hide behind my fellow panelists, and to be the expert talking to a room full of data scientists, product people, engineers and VCs???

The fear is real. I could feel my heart pounding. Worried that I'd be laughed at and exposed as a fraud for the dumb things I was going to say.

I took a deep breath, texted my business coaching group for support and reminded myself of some truths. I coach tech CEOs, serve as a product advisor, and personally use both ChatGPT and Midjourney. And right now, *nobody* is an expert on AI. We're all figuring it out as we go along and deal with unexpected crises like airplanes and COVID. Leaders adapt. That's what humans do best.

And here's my top take-aways if you're wondering how last night's talk went.:

You do you. The organizers made a deliberate choice to limit the room to 100 people, turning away 200+ applicants. They wanted the setting to be intimate and to be female-only. One male was so determined to get in that he ignored all the emails, made his way through building security, and physically entered the room. His face blanched as he saw the sea of female faces and I’d like to think he finally understood what it felt like to be a minority in tech. The organizers gently talked to him, and he left.
Lesson: when it’s your event, you can do whatever you want to curate the experience. As a participant, you can try everything possible to get in (more power to you!) and you may experience an unexpected learning.
Just try it. We heard amazing use cases for how women had incorporated text-based AI like ChatGPT or Bard into their work. This was a group of women in tech so everyone had tried it. One woman who had just finished an MBA used it to efficiently reduce her schoolwork by 10x (without plagiarism). A startup founder uses it for code efficiency. Another woman used it to write the first draft of legal docs for her immigration paperwork.
Lesson: there is a sea change here. Try these AI technologies for yourself — it’s simple— and see where it can help you. No one knows your own life and use cases. Imagine that you had a little magic fairy who can write for you. What would you ask her to to? The only limit is your imagination
AI for creativity. As a writer, I use ChatGPT for inspiration when I’m stuck on something. Even for this particular talk, I popped in the question: “How do AI technologies change businesses and the way we work?” as pure inspiration to give me talking points. Midjourney is an amazing tool for non-designers to visualize something that looks decent by using simple text-based prompts. You can ask it to “create a logo for a female-owned tow truck company in shades of purple” and keep iterating the versions. Midjourney is a little less accessible because there’s a minimal subscription fee and you’ll need to access it via Discord… it can feel intimidating but, hey not that hard, even 12 year old kids have a Discord server.
Lesson: let the machines help you get started, it’ll inspire you to something more creative as a human.
AI for perspective. Several women in the audience asked for some good prompts to use. What I've found is that it can be useful to write one perspective, e.g. "How can I best negotiate my salary?" and when the answers come back, as part of the refinement process, you can ask it to provide different perspectives. e.g. "How can I best negotiate my salary as a black woman?" or "How can I best negotiate my salary as written by a cat?" This can be an incredibly creative exercise to open up new perspectives.
No one is an expert / we are all experts. Back to my imposter syndrome yesterday afternoon, there was one moment in Q&A that felt paralyzing. Someone had asked: "What do you see is the future of AI as it impacts climate tech?" Inside my gut dropped as I truly felt like the clueless person people came to see, and happily Elena jumped in with some thoughts. But more importantly, we opened it up to the audience, asking " Does anyone have a perspective on this question?" And voila, the CEO of a climatetech startup stood up and shared her thoughts.
Lesson: we live in community and I am incredibly grateful for this Women in Tech community. We can admit when we don't know, and we can trust that someone else will help us learn.

So if you've been living with oh-so-natural fear and wondering if AI will take all our jobs, the answer is hell no. The human-ness is still absolutely needed. Like any new tool or technology, we're all figure out how to work with it. So jump into the arena and start playing!

Tutti Taygerly 1/13/23 Tutti Taygerly 1/13/23

Shapeshifting not Code-Switching

When you’re part of the minority at work, it can feel that you have to continually code-switch to get ahead. Code-switching may be a necessity to adapt to the majority way of working in order to be recognized and rewarded. The term originally comes from a linguistics perspective of having to shift from one language to another depending on the contextual setting. At work, code-switching is defined as changing our behaviors to conform to a normative standard that is different from how we would comfortably act at home.

Code-switching “has long been a strategy for black people to successfully navigate interracial interactions and has large implications for their well-being, economic advancement, and even physical survival” according to the Harvard Business Review article The Costs of Code-Switching.

The term has commonly had a negative connotation because often in the corporate context,

“The code switcher is obligated to transform in order to be considered worthy.”
— Samantha Soma

Yet, code-switching is an unavoidable part of life. It’s needed to navigate through a complex, multi-faceted world.

Minorities at work can reclaim our power by taking control of code-shifting and working with it on our own terms. I personally reframe it as shapeshifting — a choice to try on different behaviors with a playful and experimental mindset.

I’m a third culture kid, brought up multi-lingual and multi-cultural from the experience of moving to a new country every 3–4 years for my father’s work. I’m used to adapting to the social structures of new schools along with the cultural norms of a new country. Similarly, as a first-generation Thai-Chinese immigrant to California, I needed to observe the standard behaviors around me, and adjust to fit in to the community. At work, as an Asian woman, I spent many years adopting a traditional command-and-control style of leadership that is often practiced by older white men. As a designer, trying to get my voice heard and advocate for the end user, I would try every tactic possible to claw my way to a seat at the table.

I’ve long been familiar with code-switching and have practiced it for much of my life. This year, in 2023, my intention for the year is to be a shapeshifter and stop apologizing or feeling bad about my context switching. These are three steps to consider when moving to shapeshifting not code-switching in the professional world.

1. Understand what success means to you

Professional success at work often is about being promoted, getting a bigger title and receiving more compensation as recognition for your work. We naturally compare how we’re doing against our peers, wondering how that startup raised their Series A funding in this economic downturn, or how that colleague rose up the ranks so quickly. Yet everyone’s desires, context, and level of capacity to devote to their career is different. That’s even before we start considering the luck factors of the economic climate or the privilege factors of who you know.

Seek to understand what your version of success is. For example, if you are looking for a promotion, ask yourself why. It could be for your family’s economic security, for the recognition of your hard work, or simply for the prestige of making your dad proud. Consider adding some success factors that are entirely in your control such as skills you want to learn, knowledge you’d like to gain, or relationships you’d like to build in the course of this job.

2. Know your values and boundaries

Before you get into a code-switching situation, consider what you truly value in your leadership and identify the boundaries that you will hold strong. For example:

A Pakistani-American leader who fasts for Ramadan and won’t come into work in the office during that period because of the physical strains of commuting
A mom who leaves work at 3pm to coach her daughter’s soccer team
A black woman who is no longer willing to straighten her hair and wears it natural as her authentic identity
An ally who vows to always speak up when they hear comments in the workplace that make others uncomfortable

Also understand your gray areas, the places where you might be willing to play and experiment with. Clearly list these out to practice self-witnessing when these situations occur.

3. Run time-bound experiments to understand the cost of that success

Here’s the fun part! Rather than unconsciously code-switching to fit in, intentionally design experiments in shapeshifting. First, identify what different behaviors you’d like to try on and have a hypothesis for how this might contribute to your success. Next, start practicing these behaviors for a set amount of time, and at the end of the period, assess how it went.

In my research, I recently interviewed an Asian-American woman who self-identifies as a quiet leader. She wanted to practice behaviors to have her voice heard more. She approached a white man to be her mentor because, “it’s mind-blowing how differently they think.” Through the course of the months-long mentorship, she experimented with different behaviors including:

trying to speak up multiple times in a meeting, to make a point, to summarize the conversation or to ask a question
asking for 1–1 conversations to build closer relationships with individuals whose communication styles intimidated her
practicing interrupting others in a conversation to get her point across
volunteering to present at a brown-bag

Each behavior wasn’t natural to her leadership style at all, and sometimes went against her cultural upbringing, yet in the course of the mentorship she was committed to trying on leading in a different way. At the end of the mentorship she evaluated how she felt with each action, and learned that “I never want to lead like him,” yet she also found her own way to lead without “cheating who I am.”

In the course of the experiments, ask yourself these questions:

What did you learn?
How did it make you feel? What was the impact of trying on this behavior?
Did it achieve the outcome you wanted?

My Shapeshifting Experiments

I run my own business as an executive coach, writer, teacher, and speaker and one large theme for the coming year is integration of all aspects of my identity into my professional life. For me, this involves shapeshifting to truly be vulnerable and open enough to share parts of my identity that are considered outside of the norm.

These experiments include:

Using my passion for surfing and my connection to the ocean both as energy sources for my creative work as well as metaphors to illustrate leadership concepts
Sharing stories of interactions and learnings from my children as leadership lessons (while holding a strict boundary of not sharing their pictures or names)
Openly talking about my Asian heritage and racism that I’ve both experienced and perpetuated. Raising awareness and being that person who asks uncomfortable questions in larger conversations and within team coaching engagements
Talking about the role of intuition, energy management, creativity, and spirituality in my self-leadership. These are all aspects of a nonlinear, unseen, and divergent way of thinking. Pulling these from my personal life and integrating them into the business world. Even starting with shapeshifter as my intention for the year.

Note that experiments #1 and #2 are commonly accepted as “safe” topics of discussion. Both sports and family are considered acceptable topics in the professional world.

Many of us identify as the “other” at work and feel like we need to code-switch to fit in. Instead, try experimenting with a reframe to shapeshifting. Try it and see how it works for you.

Tutti Taygerly 12/28/22 Tutti Taygerly 12/28/22

Four Leadership Lessons from my Last Surf Session of 2022

It was Boxing Day, a day for family, but the swell and tide made it perfect conditions to surf a secret spot along the Pacific coast south of San Francisco. I hadn’t been able to make the last outing and had been envious of my friends’ stories of the long rides on this isolated break. The clincher for my decision to go? … the spot is named Dragons.

Lesson One: Find Your People (… who make you better)

I’ve surfed with these friends for years, a group of designers, data scientists, and tech people with a shared love of the ocean. One of us had a passion for finding secret spots. He researches and scopes them out for years and then, when the conditions are just right, he’ll suggest a field trip. We’ve been known to rappel down cliffs in search of the best, most uncrowded wave. We share an easy camaraderie, the ability to catch up with each other’s lives and work even if it’s been months since we’ve seen each other. And we share the thrill of watching others catch a beautiful wave or wipe-out in a punishing hold-down.

I’m the worst surfer in the bunch, amongst the oldest and the weakest physically. Yet surfing with these friends makes me better. They keep me going when it’s hard to motivate getting up at 5am and pulling on a wetsuit to jump in the freezing Pacific.

There’s never a bad session… even if you can’t make it out to the lineup through pounding Ocean Beach waves or when you get skunked. These are my people, my tribe of crazy adventure-seekers. Surfing with them pushes my limits, and expands my horizons to try secret spots.

So look for the people like you, who support you in new adventures and bring out your bravest self. And hope that you too make them better.

Lesson Two: The Best Way to Get from A to B Might not be a Straight Line

That secret spot, Dragons, is a reef break. You sit at the take-off point and choose to go left or right down this peaky A-frame. The best surfers ride down the line and then paddle back around to the starting point. I mostly wipe out and end up in a pile of whitewash maybe a swimming pool’s length away from the take-off point. The seemingly fastest way back from point A to B is a straight through the whitewash. But paddling against heavy whitewash is like being on a hamster wheel of continual exertion with zero movement. The only way to get back is to paddle sideways, away from the whitewash, towards a channel of clear water that gets you back to the takeoff point.

This is counter-intuitive. When I’m in a panic because I’ve just wiped out, I often keep hopelessly running in place trying to take that straight line from point A to Point B. After 5–10 minutes of struggle, the self-awareness usually kicks in and I try another path rather than single-mindedly pursuing a dead-end path.

So, if the shortest, most direct way doesn’t seem to be working, take a pause, consider the range of perspectives and and make a different choice.

Lesson Three: Ocean Conditions are Unpredictable

That day it was a big swell, big enough so that the nearby Maverick’s legendary break was going off. But it was long period, which means that there is a long time of waiting through placid waters before the next set of waves comes through.

The conditions changed drastically that day. In the span of 30 minutes, I was:

Fighting my way through endless whitewash
Frantically duck-diving the front face of a towering wave to make it through to safety on the other side
Sitting around shooting the shit with my friend, admiring the sunrise sky, and maybe starting to get a little bored

The ocean is a shapeshifter. Yet you have to stay on your toes because the conditions might change at any moment. This is similar to leadership in a chaotic, modern world. We believe we have some semblance of control, yet the only thing we have control over is our ability to keep on going / trying and our own mindset. Everything else is unpredictable.

Lesson Four: Focus on the Process, not the Outcome

Many people have a vision of surfers up and riding down the line, effortlessly controlling the board as they fly through the water. But that day, I was skunked and got zero waves. I was exhausted after the long paddle out from shore to reach the faraway reef, and then churned by too much whitewash.

Yet it didn’t matter.

What stays with me is sitting by the mysterious take-off point seemingly in the middle of the ocean. It was a boil of water that gurgled, hissed and spit like an underwater dragon trying to send us secret messages, the namesake of this Dragon’s spot. It started out eerie, but soon became comforting as the boil marked the take-off point where we’d paddle back towards the consistent A-frame wave.

I’ve spent many years of my life and work focusing on the outcome — that OKR, that promotion, that job offer. And time after time, I remember the feeling of accomplishing the outcome and still feeling empty. Often I would reset the milestone and move the goalposts in pursuit of the next outcome. Instead, I now try to focus on the process. The beauty of paddling out to a new spot and staying present to the dragon’s hissing. Or the continual learning that often happens with each new work project or each new boss.

That last surf session at Dragon’s was the most apt wrap-up for this year of growth where my intention for the year was, courtesy of Hamilton, ♫ I will always be satisfied.♫

I wish you the most satisfying of 2022s as we collectively look forward to dreaming in 2023.

Tutti Taygerly 12/15/22 Tutti Taygerly 12/15/22

How to Deliver an Idea Worth Spreading

Aka… how I threw out habits from a decade of keynote speaking in preparation for my second TEDx talk

“The woman on the stage is weaving wonder, not witchcraft. But her skills are as potent as any sorcery.”
—Chris Anderson, TED Curator, “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking”

I thought I was a good speaker. I had keynoted at industry conferences and spoken at South by Southwest on behalf of Facebook, undergoing grueling media training to ensure that my talk and responses to audience questions wouldn’t lead to negative press. I had crafted and delivered countless presentation decks to sell brilliant concepts to the world’s top brands as well as to create product visions for many tech companies. As a designer, I was proud of the minimal-yet-elegant slide design, the animation effects (always keynote, never powerpoint), and use of video and memes for sly humor.

Through COVID and working remotely, I patted myself on the back as I learned to improvise and give talks with no slides (while writing fancy blog posts about the process).

And… the experience of my first TEDx talk in New York and my current preparation for my second talk at TEDxRutgersCamden have completely humbled me.

There are three parts of delivering a TEDx talk that have stood out in my process:

Part 1: The Idea

I tend to be cerebral. In past talks, I’ve spent 90% — who am I kidding… actually 99% — of my time outlining the content of the talk. This next TEDx is on Asian American women and it’s based on the months of research I’ve been conducing for my second book, Hardworking Rebels: How to Lead as Asian American Women.

The content really matters to me. The points have to be data-backed, from reputable sources, and the findings should be original and surprising. I’ve spent the hard work outlining each point and making sure that viewer can follow along.

Now I’ve realized that that’s only the first step. It’s a crucial and important step, but probably only 50% of the effort and energy needed to deliver an idea worth spreading.

Aside: You can find many more sources online about finding your idea… this article is focused on the delivery.

Part 2: Make it Concise & Memorizable

TEDx talks also are intimately scripted for online consumption and must stay within 18 minutes. This is really difficult. Chris Anderson, TED curator, shares a story:

“President Woodrow Wilson was once asked about how long it took him to prepare for a speech. He replied: if it’s a minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.”

Limiting the highlight points of the idea is the first challenge. You’ve got to cut the majority of your content, and cutting things is hard. It feels like ripping out key parts of your message. Yet, it’ll make the content that remains so much more impactful.

The second challenge is memorization. Unlike a 45 minute keynote where there’s space for improvisation, most people memorize their talk so that they can stay within the time parameters.

For my first TEDx, when I had 5 days to memorize, I relied on old habits from school, the brute force repetition to cement the content in my brain. One helpful tip from my first coach Nathan Gold is to make an audio recording of your talk and listen to it 3x before you start trying to memorize a section).

I also realized that I often use slides as a crutch for memorization. That if I have a compelling image and a couple of bullet points, it’ll help me outline my next points. Through my first TEDx talk, I’ve learned that I didn’t really need my slides… they were a sense of false confidence that could vanish the instant the A/V team makes an oh-so-human mistake. I realized that I know my idea and with that confidence comes wonder.

Part 3: Adding Wonder

“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou

Creating wonder is being the magician who weaves attention and channels emotion with the audience for a brief period of time. To my surprise, the path towards wonder took both structured discipline and free-flow emotion.

The organizers outlined a rigorous calendar for the TEDx countdown:

4 months out: The final round of applications involved submitting a script and video of the full talk.
3 months out: Acceptance! It’s time to incorporate the organizers’ valuable and detailed feedback.
We now start weekly meetings with a speech coach
2 months out: Final script content and title are due and we start the process of memorizing the talk
1 month out (where I am right now): The full talk is memorized and we work on stage presence and emotional resonance

This calendar was initially CRAZY to me. I have a rebel streak and was chafing against the dictated structure. But eventually, realizing I had no choice as I’d contractually agreed to these terms, I relaxed into it and enjoyed the accountability of weekly meetings with a speech coach.

I’d improvised this process before for my first TEDx and had completed the script and slides 5 days before the actual talk. I’m happy with it as a messy first draft. This time around, I realize how much richer the talk is with my 4–6 weeks of diving into the emotional resonance of the talk.

This emotional resonance started with the memorization process. My speech coach, Kim Boudreau Smith, had me look at each paragraph of the script and focus on the energy of the words. Then without looking at the script, she had me deliver it blind. My process was:

Picture the women I was speaking to who most needed to hear the message
Imagine the emotions I wanted her to feel
If the script was focused on my story, I tapped into how I felt at the moment of telling the story.
If the script was telling someone else’s story, I thought of the woman and heard her voice sharing her story.
I wove all of these energies together felt the words, and delivered them

I’d been skeptical of this process, but as we went through the talk, it hit me: I didn’t need to memorize the words to deliver the emotional impact of the idea — simply focusing on the energy was the biggest impact.

This energy leads to wonder, and back to Chris Anderson.

“The woman on the stage is weaving wonder, not witchcraft. But her skills are as potent as any sorcery.”
— Chris Anderson, TED Curator, “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking”

Yes… I eventually did go back to memorize all the words, but it didn’t matter. I already had the energy of each beat of the talk, which means that should my mind go blank and not recall the exact phrasing, it wouldn’t matter — I already knew the intention and could improvise the mini-idea.

This story is to be continued… I give the talk on Jan 14, 2023 at TEDxRutgersCamden. I’m wholeheartedly bought into this three step process, and you can judge for yourself once the video is released. If you’d like to follow along the process, I will give regular updates via my newsletter (see examples).

Tutti Taygerly 11/11/22 Tutti Taygerly 11/11/22

The First Time I was Fired

The following piece is an excerpt from my book, Make Space to Lead.

The first time that I was fired, my “amazing leader who could hold it all together” façade was shattered. From 2006–2013, I worked for consulting firms that supported other companies. My last consulting job was for a Seattle-based development firm that coded products for clients. They wanted to move more into the strategic spaces of product and design. I’d worked with them on projects before, and I truly enjoyed spending time with the founders — we had similar values and visions. I joined them in a dual role that felt like a perfect fit for my ambitions. It fed my achievement monster a high-calorie diet. I was Head of Design and General Manager of the company’s brand-new San Francisco studio. I threw myself into the role, working hard on both business development and client projects, as well as bringing design culture and thinking into what had previously been an engineering company. I also got to flex my operational muscles by searching for the location of the new San Francisco office space. On top of that, I was the first and only woman to hold a leadership position in the company. I got energy from the work. I enjoyed winning new clients and working on unusual blends of hardware and software projects. I was riding high on these client wins and the visibility of my perfect dual job. It felt like I was leaning into two different strengths as well as my personal desires and managing to make it all work. Anyone who looked at me would have admired how wonderfully I seemed to balance it all and my seemingly glamorous life of travel and cutting-edge projects.

Underneath the armor though, I was barely holding on. I had two daughters under five. While they were accustomed to their mom working long hours, this was different. I had an apartment in Seattle and was staying there two-three nights a week in addition to the required travel to client sites. One of my daughters, only knowing that this mysterious “Seattle” was the competitor that was hogging all her Mama’s time, would often declare: “I hate Seattle. Seattle is bad.”

I was working around the clock trying to drum up business for our new San Francisco office in addition to servicing the existing clients. I was also in a fierce conflict with another member of the leadership team who seemed to feel challenged by a strong-willed woman. These conflicts and microaggressions made my days miserable. In addition, with all the travel, I wasn’t sleeping well, eating well, or exercising.

A year later, it seemed that pace might be finally letting up. The other member of the leadership team was no longer with the company. My then-husband, daughters and I headed off to a wonderful week-long vacation in Sayulita, Mexico with my best friend’s family. Between us we had four little girls, who all squealed in excitement about staying together in a villa with a pool right on the beach. My husband and I briefly reconnected through surfing warm water. It was rare for us to spend this much time together — our growing distance was a downside of the achievement monster — and I got to spend many wonderful hours simply talking to my adult friends. We wandered around barefoot, enjoying the warmth, and the company. Enveloped by the sea-salt smell and slow ambling pace of the people around us, I was able to relax. I spent my days eating ceviche from beach vendors and buying fresh-cut flowers from the mercados. I felt relieved that playing with the kids was fun again, and not a nightly parental chore.

The day after we got home, both my daughters developed a stomach bug. They were in agony, endlessly throwing up in-between desperate dashes to use the potty. After my week away, the Seattle company’s CEO and COO urgently needed to talk to me. I gamely hopped on a video call while keeping one eye on my miserable little girls. In a haze of shock, I listened as they told me that they had taken another look at the company financials and had decided to shut down the San Francisco office. I was being let go. They needed me to tell everyone in the San Francisco office that they were out of a job. I had never been fired before. I knew that it was supposed to feel like a colossal failure. That achievement monster was going to eat me alive. Yet surprisingly, something different emerged from this space. Even amid losing my job and the maternal ache of caring for my daughters, I felt a giant rush of relief.

I was aware that I had been holding up a house of cards, trying to make it all work. I was trying to be the perfect Head of Design, the perfect San Francisco General Manager, and the perfect mom. Of course, deep down, I knew I wasn’t doing any of these well. It wasn’t sustainable. I had set myself up for failure by doing two jobs for the company. I was stretched out way too thin. I was putting my family at risk and missing valuable time with my young girls. The week earlier in Sayulita, with surf and friends, had reminded me of the calm that had been missing from the previous year.

Of course, that feeling of relief and spaciousness didn’t last.

In my typical pragmatic and high-achieving mode, I shut off all my emotions and set to work. I needed to find a way out of our building lease. I needed to figure out a plan for the remaining designers up in Seattle and make sure that my successor would be supported through the coming months. I needed to negotiate the best exit packages for the San Francisco team. And most agonizingly, I needed to communicate the news to each team member and help them find their next jobs. That last part wasn’t my job, but I felt personally responsible. I had recruited and hired them. I fell back into feeding the achievement monster because I felt driven to complete this exit from the company with grace. I never questioned that it was my role to do so. I had no space to reflect or question my assumptions.

I’d tried meditation on and off over the past year at a suggestion from my coach to build in more reflection to my busy days, but the practice had never stuck. Yet this time, some inner knowing — perhaps the source of my relief? — desperately craved solitude. I spent the first day of unemployment at Spirit Rock, a meditation retreat center a couple of hours north of San Francisco. I was in silence for a lot of the day, either indoors with the teacher or outside walking the beautiful northern California hills in a slow, ambling meditation. I could see the dry pale grass undulating in the wind. Hawks lazily flew overhead, while lizards darted between the rocks at my feet. My long-suppressed emotions erupted. I wept. I re-hashed past conversations and yelled at the COO. I blamed the CEO for not hiring a salesperson. Mostly, I blamed myself for failing. I had trouble staying with my breath. Each thought brought my mind back to what I could have done better. But I kept going. As I slowly walked the hills, I felt my shoulders dropping, my jaw unclenching, and my anxiety fading away to stillness. Inside, I settled into the hours of meditation. I still had trouble staying with my breath. I reset back to my breath each time my monkey-mind whirled away. Surrounded by fellow silence-seekers, as the hours passed, nothing outside this space seemed to matter. For perhaps a minute at a time, I felt at peace and able to focus on my breath. I didn’t need to speak, move quickly, or prove myself to anyone else. I was simply another person savoring the space of silence.

I reminded myself of that initial sensation of relief and how blessed I was in the space of having no responsibilities to an office, employees, or corporate expectations. For that single day at the retreat center, I didn’t have to strive or achieve. I didn’t have to be a mom. I was no longer responsible for the design practice or the San Francisco office. I was free to simply be in this temporary reprieve. I had the space to be free from the achievement monster for one day.

Months later, I was able to look back with deep gratitude for having been fired and released from the expectations of doing two jobs — a futile task to begin with, especially with my impossibly high standards. I wouldn’t have been able to do it for myself, so I was grateful for the external push.

You don’t have to have been fired to see yourself in this story. Those moments when we’re caught up feeding the achievement monster can feel all-consuming. It’s difficult to see the way out. I had believed I was doing the right thing. I kept going because I was afraid of saying no, afraid of slowing down, afraid of backing off from this prestigious job. Being fired had been my deepest fear, yet with the space of Spirit Rock I felt freed by it. I started to ask myself: What matters most in my next job? What do I want to achieve for me, and not for someone else? How might I find the people and company who value me as I am? What if I could slow down?”

Perhaps unwilling space has also been forced upon you, or perhaps my story can give you permission to slow down. I’ve learned how to support clients to transition out of unwinnable work situations, or to discover what’s next for them after being fired. Relief has been a consistent emotion that reminds all of us that the path of the achievement monster always has been, and always will be, unsustainable.

Tutti Taygerly 6/23/22 Tutti Taygerly 6/23/22

Making Tiny Choices Each Day

With homage to a Cherokee legend of the black wolf and the white wolf

White wolf and dark wolf at The Wolf Heart Ranch in Southern California

We often think about big goals—to take the company public, to get a C-suite title, to keynote at the leading industry conference. These are important. They are big sweeping visions that shape the direction of our lives and careers. Yet equally important to these touchstone goals are the tiny choices we make every single day.

This past weekend I had the privilege of spending time with wolves at a spiritual retreat. My teacher had brought us to visit his non-profit organization—The Wolf Connection— focused on empowering at-risk youth and rescuing wolfdogs. Watching and feeling the energy of these majestic creatures helped me deeply experience of each minute in their presence. It helped to balance out both the big questions as well as stay in the moment and become aware of the tiny choices we make each day.

Which Wolf Will Win?

There’s a Native American legend, I believe that it’s Cherokee, which I’ve heard multiple times and am now retelling with creative license.

A grandmother is talking with her granddaughter. The conversation is happening outside under a blanket of stars by the light of a flickering campfire. The grandmother tells the girl: “There is a continual fight happening inside me. It is a fierce fight between two wolves. One is the black wolf. She is arrogance, shame, envy, perfectionism, and over-confidence. There is also a white wolf. She is joy, love, compassion, forgiveness, wonder, and humility. The two wolves continue to fight inside me. The same fight is happening inside you and within every single person.”

The girl listens thoughtful then asks her grandmother, “Which wolf will win?”

You may have heard a version of this story where the grandmother replies, “The one you feed.”

I’ve heard a different ending to the story. Perhaps it’s from the Cherokee world, perhaps it’s from my re-claiming or appropriation as I can’t find the source. Or perhaps it’s a dreaming up of my own answer.

The grandmother replies, “If you feed them right, they both win. If you only feed the white wolf, the black one goes into hiding. She is suppressed, pushed down, and ignored. She will jump up and bite to get the attention she deserves. But if you acknowledge the black wolf, she is happy. Both wolves can co-exist together. Both wolves are needed. Feeding and caring for both acknowledges that there doesn’t need to be a fight or an internal struggle for your attention. Without that exhausting battle it’s easier to listen to the voice of deeper knowing. It’s easier to make choices.”

Feed the Wolf with Tiny Choices Each Day

One mistake I often make is to think in terms of black or white. I’ll succeed in my goal of talking to 10 people each week or writing 1000 words each day. I’ll hit a big milestone of success when I reach a certain title or financial milestone. If I don’t achieve them within a certain expected timeframe, then I’ll have failed.

Our world doesn’t exist in black or white and these are false dichotomies. There are so many more nuances, shades of gray, and complexities in both the modern working world and in our lives. We live in ambiguous times when it’s not as simple as feeding the black wolf or the white wolf.

Instead, we feed both wolves. We will continue to have the self-critical voices, the fear, the frustration, and the irritation of living in a world where the cat throws up on your pants when you’re rushing out the door late for a crucial appointment. There will never be a perfectly enlightened state where this darkness completely goes away. Yes there’s times where this fear drives hustle, commitment, and the ability to push through and get shit done. And this fear can lead to success. Personally, it’s helped me for many decades of my life, leading me to a lucrative career in technology.

At the same time, we feed the white wolf by choosing joy, gratitude, and turning towards people around us. We keep making things and staying in flow each day.

The daily practice is staying aware of both the black wolf and the white wolf. Of noticing your patterns and making tiny choices each day that feed the different wolves:

Perhaps today is the day to choose rest and vegging out with Netflix
Or the day to step on that gas pedal and finally finish the report
Or simply to put on pants with buttons and leave the house for brief moment
Or to stop for a moment and smell that delicious coffee aroma and revel in the first warm sip

The big goals are truly important. And it’s also the tiny steps and choices you make every single day that keep you moving on and going forward.

Update: A reader shared with me how the story of the black wolf and the white wolf reinforces bias with the “black is bad, white is good” narrative. I 100% agree and also personally realized that it was something I failed to realize would be a trigger when sharing this story. We all have unconscious bias. I’m leaving this story up because I believe that all the shades of gray of emotion are needed and it’s our choice in each moment. I reject thinking in black and white.

Intentionally Observe the Wolves

We will make mistakes. Some days, it feels like we keep repeating the pattern of bad choices. We will feed one wolf and forget about the other. Or the two will wrestle for days as we feel stuck in unwinnable situations. This is the messyness of life. All you can do is observe the choices and notice which wolf has gotten more attention that minute, that hour, that day.

Then with no additional judgement or self-criticism, simply decide what the next choice will be. If it’s made with intention, consider that there might never be a wrong choice.

Bottom-Line

Being in the presence of these wild, free creatures reminds me that they live in the present. They are curious when they see humans enter their pen. But soon they get bored and wander away back to their napping or grooming. There is no past or future, only now. Taking inspiration from their energy helps to de-pressure the intensity and expectations of achieving long-term goals. Instead, it opens up space to make tiny choices each day.

Tutti Taygerly 6/5/22 Tutti Taygerly 6/5/22

Shifting Fear to Excitement for Big Events

Take a moment and think back to the last big event in your life. It might have been leading an important presentation, sharing big ideas on a conference stage, running a workshop, or holding space for a vision-setting planning session. It might have been making a toast at a wedding, or celebrating a milestone birthday.

For me, the anticipation and preparation for a big event involves the dual emotions of fear and excitement. They seem to feed into each other. I recently ran a four-day women’s leadership retreat and I could feel the familiar swirl:

Will my co-leader and I disagree on the programming?
What if nobody shows up?
What if I get distracted and forget what to say?
Will everyone laugh at what I present? Will it be a massive waste of time for them?
What will go wrong with the logistics (weather/food/lodging)?

And at the same time, I could feel the excitement and sense of possibility:

I love speaking, talking and teaching. This energizes me.
I can’t wait to meet and learn from the other leaders attending. They are so cool!
I’m thrilled to spend time away from the day-to-day and in an outdoor setting.
It’s exciting to see what will unfold.
There’s magic in the serendipity of bringing a like-minded group of people together in person.

All these emotions are present. All these thoughts run through our ruminating monkey-minds. We can let all these emotions be present, and simultaneously reframe them to aid our leadership.

Here are four strategies to help shift fear into excitement.

1. Recognize that emotions are in our control

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a neuroscientist and researcher who studies emotions. Her research argues that emotions aren’t simply something that happens to us, but a way for the brain to process the world, and tell you how to feel. In her 18 minute TED talk she explains:

“Emotions are guesses. They are guesses that your brain constructs in the moment where billions of brain cells are working together, and you have more control over those guesses than you might imagine that you do.”

The physical feelings of excitement & fear are not too dissimilar — heart pounding, butterflies in your stomach, maybe a tingle throughout your body. Dr. Barrett suggests that you can influence whether you’re feeling excitement or fear with a change in perspective… and lots of practice. Your brain can reframe these physical feelings and channel them from fear into excitement.

Let’s play with how.

2. Remember patterns of success from the past

Your brain remembers emotions from the past. Think back to other big events that have happened in your life, other times that you’ve been on stage, or led a meeting, or drove a vision workshop.

On the emotional side, focus on the highlight moments, the celebrations, and feelings of accomplishment. Remember what it felt like to complete that meeting or get a compliment on how you ran it. Paint a scene of the success. Relive how it made you feel.

On the intellectual side, take stock of the strategies that worked for you. Perhaps it was taking the time to rehearse the presentation multiple times, or to identify allies in the room. Perhaps there’s something that didn’t go well and you now want to adjust and experiment with for the future.

Visualize these emotional and intellectual patterns of success. The more you think about these, the stronger you reinforce these brain patterns.

3. Reframe uncertainty into possibility

Fear often comes from uncertainty. We can ruminate and anticipate all the possible things that could go wrong. Instead, think about the possibilities of what might go right at the big event. When we plan and anticipate good things, it can be even better than the actual experience. This New York Times article on vacation anticipation claims that: “Anticipation is such a valuable source of pleasure.”

So rather than think through all the negative outcomes, envision the hugest possible win from the event. Open up creative energy to dream big about what might unfold and become possible.

Are you starting to feel excited?

4. Channel other people’s energy

And despite all that, it can be hard to mitigate the fear. The last strategy is to think about the other people who will be present at the event. Look to your co-collaborators or allies who are equally invested in everyone’s mutual success. Think about their excitement and have their words or actions fuel you.

Beyond your co-collaborators, consider the audience that will be present. Think about what’s drawing them to the event and how their lives or work might be transformed by the information they hear or the experience they have.

Bottom-Line

Often both fear and excitement will exist when preparing for a big event. Both feed off each other as natural companions. If you find yourself swirling with fear and anxiety, consider these four strategies to shift into excitement:

Recognize that emotions are in our control
Remember patterns of success from the past
Reframe uncertainty into possibility
Channel other people’s energy