Leading Lightly in Action: A Candid Conversation with Jody Michael

I want to let you in on something real: while bringing ALTAR to life as a physical space felt surprisingly easeful—like something that wanted to be born—stepping fully into the leadership of the business was a different story. Holding space, literally and figuratively, for this vision to thrive stretches me in ways I never expected. It’s been beautiful, yes—but also humbling, and at times, totally overwhelming.

So, I’m learning as I go. And I’ve noticed how easily I slip into the old habits I picked up in the corporate world, such as:

• Leading from a place of control 

• Pushing for outcomes 

• Managing everything to a fault 

  
  

It’s not lost on me how quickly that energy can drain the joy from something that’s meant to feel deeply nourishing, both for me and for the women ALTAR serves.

That’s why discovering Leading Lightly and the work of Jody Michael was such a moment of recognition. Her approach is centered on leading from clarity, resilience, and ease. The result is a leadership path that feels like permission to exhale. It’s deeply aligned with ALTAR’s mission of helping women reconnect with feminine ways of being across all aspects of life. Leading Lightly is exactly what I need as I learn to move away from fear and into flow.

I’m thrilled that Jody is bringing her transformational workshop to ALTAR this June. 

I recently got the chance to ask her some personal questions about burnout, clarity, and why the old ways of leading just aren’t working anymore.

If you’re carrying a lot (professionally, personally, or both), and want to feel more grounded and supported in how you lead, this conversation is for you:

Jody, can you tell me what it means to “lead lightly” — and why that matters now more than ever across all levels of leadership?

If you’re feeling heavy, drained, and dispirited at the end of the workday, you’re hardly alone. Many of us feel like we’re all in one big stew of stress. At least, that’s the conventional view. Leading Lightly is my alternative! 

Leading Lightly means no matter what happens during your day, you don’t become reactive and upset. You can approach everything with sustained ease and clarity. Importantly, it’s not about adding anything new—leading lightly is a state of being that arises naturally once you’ve learned to let go of internal noise and emotional clutter.

That noise and clutter is a collection of hidden beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives that color how you see yourself and everything around you. These judgements cause you to react in habitual ways that create — yes, create — unnecessary stress.

Things around us aren’t going to get easier any time soon. But you have the power to change and to lead lightly through the challenges we’re all facing. The methods I’ve created empower you to do just that.

I talk to so many women leaders who constantly struggle with perfectionism, people-pleasing, or burnout. How can your concepts help them move through those patterns more easily?

I’ll bet you, and many of your peers, have already tried many tips and techniques to change these patterns. You’ll find that there’s a little improvement… but you don’t really feel different inside. So what gives?

These states of discomfort are driven by deeply held—often subconscious—beliefs and assumptions. I call this your “underlying operating system,” and it’s held in place by the neuropathways in your brain. This is where we must go if we want to make real, permanent change. 

So, how do we get under the hood? Leading Lightly lays out the five muscles of mental fitness that help you not only manage the moment when a pattern is activated, but more importantly, loosen and reconfigure those stubborn neuropathways. Once you develop these five muscles, you can work through just about any pattern that isn’t serving you.

What’s powerful about the Leading Lightly workshop is that I’ve found a healthy, safe way to get around your brain’s natural resistance to looking at itself and its patterns. With my unique design, you’ll spend half a day looking in the mirror to fully see what you’ve been unable to see before — your self-sabotaging conscious and unconscious patterns of thought and mood. That’s the stuff that causes you to create perfectionism, people-pleasing, and burnout.

For someone who feels constantly “on,” reactive, or emotionally hijacked by work or life, what’s the first step to reclaim their sense of calm and clarity?

In the moment, the most immediately helpful thing is deep belly breathing. This provides much-needed oxygen and sends calming signals to your agitated nervous system.

But to sustainably reclaim a sense of calm and clarity, the real first step is awareness. Self-awareness is odd because it’s so easy to fool ourselves. As leaders, most of us—up to 95%, believe it or not—think we are self-aware. Through my work, I’ve found that only 10% actually are self-aware. 

With that in mind, I find many leaders to be in nearly constant states of anxiety and stress, but they’re not aware of how bad or pervasive it is. Typically, they’re also unaware of how much damage their negative mood states are inadvertently causing to the people around them at work and home.

Once they see that they are unintentionally creating these outcomes, I coach them to choose to take ownership — to stop blaming, criticizing, defending, and ruminating. Once they’ve really internalized this, they naturally want to create resilience and well-being. And off we go!

What can attendees (myself included!) expect to experience and walk away with in your upcoming workshop here at ALTAR Community?

As a woman in leadership, you’re likely expected to operate at the highest levels possible without the tools necessary to manage your time and energy. In my workshop, I’ll challenge you with the idea that every individual has the power—both as a choice and as a skill—to change their experience, no matter what is going on around them. Every single day offers hundreds of micro-opportunities to shift out of stress into resilience when you learn how.

Every aspect of my workshop is grounded in neuroscience and years of applied research on efficiently and effectively changing the brain and behavior.

We have such a transformative and value-packed day planned! You and your fellow attendees will:

• Complete an intriguing 20-minute, online assessment prior to the workshop used to guide your experience

• “Get under the hood” of your subconscious — a profound half-day of discovery that can otherwise take years of therapy to uncover —to identify your unconscious habits of thought and mood, and how exactly they’re creating your stress and pain.

• Gain the invaluable skill to steady yourself as soon as you’re triggered (in the moment, whenever you are) to quickly restore your cognitive capability.

• Discover how to create a success mindset by replacing your patterned lenses with lenses that are helpful, restorative, and generate a sustainable state of resilience rather than stress.

  
  

ALTAR is a space that invites women to grow and connect—and then go on to lead with impact and joy. How does your work align with that vision, and what excites you about bringing it to this community?

There’s so much alignment! Let’s start with “grow.” I coach people that holding a “growth mindset” is essential to effective leadership. And then, “impact.” Why be a leader at all, unless we wish to have a broad-scale impact on others and the world we live in? I coach people to embrace that potential and to create the best possible impact they can through clear, intentional choices and accountability.

And finally, “joy.” It might seem like a stretch, especially currently, to say that a leader could feel joy in their work. But I named my book “Leading Lightly” for a reason! Even in heavy circumstances, we do not have to feel heavy inside. Nor do we—or should we—perpetuate a heavy emotional environment for the people with whom we work and lead. In short, I’m thrilled to bring my ideas and methods to the women of ALTAR!

Thank you, Jody! I can’t wait to experience Leading Lightly for myself on June 6th!

Learn more about Leading Lightly and sign up for this transformative workshop here.