People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's episode of People First. And my guest is my new friend and colleague, Meredith Waters. Meredith is a high-performance coach, transformational strategist, and the founder of Thriving at Water's Edge, a high-performance coaching and strategic consulting firm that helps both individuals and mission-driven teams and organizations navigate disruption and lead with resilience. With more than two decades of experience in high stakes global leadership roles, including in post-conflict zones and climate vulnerable regions, Meredith brings a rare blend of strategic clarity, emotional intelligence and grounded ambition to her work. She is the creator of Resilient Ambition Framework, which we will be talking a little bit about, a transformational model that helps people move through career upheaval, burnout or identity shifts with clarity and confidence. Meredith, welcome to People First. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here with you. It's going to be a great conversation. Well, as you know, my shtick, my focus is that success in business is all about relationships. Success in life is all about connection. So I'm curious, as you reflect on your life to date, as you reflect on your career journey to date, what role have relationships played in how you got to where you are today so first of all even just thinking about your question gives me goosebumps like it just like full body goosebumps um and that's largely because I'm an only child and only children we're known to being very independent and I can do everything on my own and um life has taught me that being hyper independent, you, you can't do everything on your own. Um, and you're not an Island. And so for me, how I have found personal and professional success, that is rewarding. Not that just like, Oh, you have a title or the salary that goes with it and the relationships along the way, but the like, internal warming of just like it just lights me up of relationships is long time ago I worked alongside the military and one of their concepts is train the people below you to do your job and you strive and learn the job above you And in order to do any of that, you have to have relationships. You have to have good relationships with your team members and the staff below you. You also have to engage and navigate the relationships above you to understand that. And with that mindset in place, It has helped me have some of the most remarkable relationships with my staff and with my team members that just it's where you're laughing till you're crying. You can have heartfelt conversations. You can understand what's motivating your staff all because I'm taking away this boundary of. a competitiveness. Like, no, I want them to be able to do my job. I'm not worried that they're going to take my job. I'm not worried about any of that. I'm removing the boundaries of, I feel like the workplace can kind of set up and I'm engaging them and I'm lifting them up. And so no matter what I do, my goal is to, how can I lift you up? It doesn't mean into my spot. You may have other goals. How can I lift you up? Because as I go up, I want to bring other people with me. And you get to a point, too, where you're tired of climbing up the ladder. And so I'm like, because I have built really strong relationships with my team members, with my staff, with my friends, it's like I really enjoy holding the ladder and helping them climb to whatever goal, career, whatever they want to get into. because it fills my cup. And as someone who's hyper independent and it's like, I'm working on it. If you can't see my hands, I'm working on it. Having those relationships actually pull me back in. They keep me from being so independent and they help me rely on other people and trust other people. And that in itself just kind of helps create, better create you as a wholesome person is if you're out in the wind on your own, there are so many things you're missing out on but when you come back in and you've opened doors you've taken down boundaries and you're helping lift other people up they really help you to to trust to lean in to like let your guard down a little bit and then they can help you as well so for me like that mantra of training other people to do your job or or to at least lift them up is has selfishly been so satisfying in my own life, and it supported them and theirs, that that has just been, I love that relationship there. I love it. It's going to turn into a mutual goose experience, I think, because you touched on so many things that I explore both in my books and in other podcast conversations around. Yes, I, too, was independent early in my career. Let's face it, for the first half of my career, you could give me a challenge. I would go do it with the minimum of supervision. But to your point, it's the interdependence that allows us to achieve results fast. faster and it is the connection the quality of the relationships that make those results worthwhile the journey along the way to be fun because you can laugh until you cry as opposed to being on an island and feeling like you're having to carry the weight on your own yeah So in your own work, I'm curious about what helped you pivot from independence to interdependence. And you've coined this phrase ambition disruption. So tell me more about how those go together. So. The connection has been more so of when I was working within the international development space for roughly eighteen, twenty years. And along the way, I actually started coaching and doing it within my organizations and outside the organizations. And I started to see people were hitting a ceiling. And whether it was on their own ceiling or they were having what I call their jets cooled, you know, a boss saying, hey, you're not quite ready for that promotion or there's just not a space for you at that level. And seeing what that felt like. And that is literally and it could be that's external, you know, for whatever reasons. But it's also internal things and getting on the personal side of like someone's battling cancer or they're having to shift over into a caregiver role. Um, or they're in the middle of like, I don't know what to do next. And just all of this, like my ambition is gone. And so you can have ambition disruption and you can also coin it as a life quake. So I would see, I love it, right? The life quake. Yes. And those little ones. And actually, like, if you look at the research is that everyone experiences a life quake of different magnitudes about every two years or so. And then on about every ten to fifteen years, there's a big one. like magnitude eight point O. And when we look at our own timelines, you will actually kind of see these lifequakes, whether you recognize them as like, you know, a death in the family, a loss of a job, you didn't get a goal, like you've had these little lifequakes along the way. And then when you also look at your timeline, though, that period after a lifequake, have we ever really examined what happens? after that lifequake. And so when I was looking at my own life of the different lifequakes I've had that rock me to my core, I realized that there were these periods of time where I wasn't very intentional. I was just kind of floating around. I mean, thank goodness dots got connected. And when I look at my staff and they didn't get a promotion or they hit a ceiling or got held back or felt like they were playing small, Is one they had to recognize that, yes, I'm in a period of ambition disruption. And a lot of times there's a sense of identity that's tied to that their feelings are hurt. There's just all these feelings and things going around it. They're rethinking everything. And so when we do this work on our own timeline, though, we start to see a fallow period. And going back to agricultural days, you know, if you think about crops, we actually give, you know, we look at a plot of land, divide it in four. You don't plant on all four pieces. You plant different crops on three and then you rest one of them. Well, it's in that rest. You're not just like sitting on the couch popping, you know. Bonbons and drinking a cocktail. But it's actually a intentional fallow period, intentional rest period, where you can also explore different things. You can utilize this time period where, oh, maybe I need to focus a little bit more on a couple boxes that I didn't know I needed to check on the career side. Like you didn't get that promotion. Well, maybe you need a little bit more technical skills, more this or a little bit of that. You know, and just kind of doing that honest assessment of saying, okay, well, let me see what I can do within this period. And, you know, or maybe let me spend some more time with my family. By not getting this ambition, not reaching that, I can actually spend more time with family or work on a personal goal. So you can create little boxes, little sandboxes within your fallow period to devote more time and energy to. as you're trying to move along this. And a lot of times people think, well, a fallow period, does that mean I don't have a job? No. That is a period of your life where you've hit a goal. For example, I'll use myself as an example. And I'm in a fallow period right now. I was a casualty of this current administration's decimation of the foreign assistance work that we do. And I was like, okay, I know what I need to do. I coach this all the time. And I'm in this fallow period now of like, what do I do next? Well, I need to rest. I need to figure out what's going on for me internally. Also, what's going on in the world? How do I fit into this new world now? What areas have I neglected and want to grow in? And, you know, also, too, where do I want to play a little bit? Where do I want to stretch myself? Let me see if I want to explore a little bit different avenues, things. And so by being very intentional in how I utilize this time, and I can go get a, you know, you can go get a job, you know, for those who, you know, were impacted with this. It's like it has nothing to do with employment status. It's all how you are expending your mental and physical energy. So as I listen, so the ambition disruptions then, they can be external. The loss of a job, in your case, the loss of an industry. Mm-hmm. therefore a loss of identity that might be tied to it. It can be self-imposed. The missing out on a promotion you thought you were ready for, some feedback that maybe was unexpected. It can be brought about because of a shift in our personal lives. And I know when my mum passed away, that was definitely ambition disruption because it shook my world as to what do I want my life to look like? What do I want my boys, my young boys at that time, there were only two, what do I want their lives to be and how involved am I going to be in them if I'm working full time? And so what you're saying is that the fallow period that comes afterwards, that pause, the opportunity to inhale is an opportunity to recalibrate. Yes. Yes. And it's interesting because I too have been going, and twenty twenty five has been a bit of a fallow year for me. And my colleague Eric actually helped me to signpost it because as high performing leaders, successful leaders, We are taught to always be on that hamster wheel, never stop spinning, go, go, go. And he finally kind of gave me a verbal shake where he says, this fallow period, he didn't use that word, but this quieter time, it's not a punishment, Morag. It's an opportunity for me in this case to invest deeply tens of hours in a new keynote that I'm working on called You Don't Need More Meetings, You Need More Moments, which is introducing the concept of meaningful connectivity, connection to ourselves, to our teams. and to others and to our work. But for this fallow period, I would have been hustling to do that in and amongst the spare moments between the work, whereas I've been able to go deep and profound in a way that I've not had an opportunity for a while. It's actually a blessing. It's hard to change your mind. So we've got to do a lot of reframing in this space as well. It is a blessing of sorts of how you use it. It is. And you didn't get the job. You didn't get the promotion. That promotion actually would have had you working. you know, ten more hours a week and then you're not able to deal with the kids or you're not able to do the hobby or sports that you wanted to do or whatever it is. And so I always ask my my clients, I'm like, let's take a minute and let's reframe this. What what else? could you be doing now that would satisfy your soul what what can you take from a seven to a ten now that that didn't happen um and so yes this fallow period if we change it and we reframe it and utilize it because guess what you are now working on a keynote speech and you're phenomenal like you're you're public speaking you're phenomenal so I can't wait to hear this but like you're now so invested you've had the time the clarity the practice and then here you know you're going to be able to then shift it and and test drive it and pilot it to really hone it in you've got the mental capacity and the rest to do it is now when you're going to come out of this period You're going to grow exponentially. You're going to shoot out of this because you were intentional with it. And I know this is part of the work that you do as an executive coach. And in the resilient ambition framework that you designed, it is about leveraging that pause so that we don't just get back on the same old hamster wheel, you know, get back on the horse, get back on the bike, because that just repeats what's gone before. Instead of just bouncing back, walking it off, you talk about evolving forward. So what's the difference? Isn't this just... toxic positivity, smile and evolve. Okay. So help me understand, how is it different? So, you know, I appreciate toxic positivity. It has its place, but it doesn't produce anything. So when we're looking at positivity and having a positivity lens, where you know it's a toxic positivity is that it doesn't produce anything. There's no forward movement. And In this period of time, to me, it's extremely important that you have that forward movement. And I also call it failing forward, you know. Again, kind of going back into kind of my military, you know, kind of days and experience is that, you know, when you fail and you fall on your knees, guess what? When you fall on your knees, you're still falling forward. And when you take that step up to get up, if you physically look at that, that step to get up is still a forward step. And during this period of time, and I think you hit on this a second ago, is that as high performers, our productivity scale is up here. And personally, I'm dealing with this right now is, my productivity level is up here and my, my friends, my family think it's insane. They're like, you are, you have been moving so fast. Your, your definition of productivity is like of a superhero. And you know, when you have a life quake, your definition may have to change. Your definition of success has to change. I was, I was talking with a good coaching friend of mine yesterday and we were talking about how A lot of our clients in high performing jobs, they identify their definition of success based off of a bar. And they keep chasing the next level, the next bar, the next bar, the next bar. And based off of that bar, that is how they determine success. That bar itself defines it. And so when you have a life quake, let's say everything just comes coming down. And so during that fallow period, that is where we actually have to do a lot of work on redefining success. what we classify as productivity, what we classify as success, you know, what we love, how we want to expend our energy. It's a time where you actually can pivot and rewrite your own narrative. And people don't realize that. Sorry, I didn't. So what do we lose then if we fall back on the old habits of simply trying to bounce back? Oh, I love that. It's not necessarily that you're going to lose something. I will not tell you, like you could stand straight back up and keep doing the same thing that you were doing. And if that is, if that satisfies that scenario, okay. But at the same time is that's not ambition. That's not, that's not moving forward. That is checking a box of life. And again, it goes to how you personally define your life and how you want to move through your own life. There are times in our lives where we just need to check a box. We do, but most of the time though, we need to be moving forward. Even if it's just personal, whether it's just our mindset, it may not be career. You could be one of those people that I'm a program manager at this level that makes me happy and I have no desire to move up. I have no desire. And that's a tricky one when we look at, you know, in the workplace and all these people who are driven and then you have that one program manager that's happy to be right there. is that we judge that person but what we don't realize is that by that person staying in that space they have now had the door open to grow in so many other areas of their life and that's where they have prioritized that so when we're talking about you know falling forward or just standing straight up and and not falling forward is that we have to it's very individual And so you have to identify within that fall is is this a scenario where I just need to stand up and I'm good and it could take a minute and I can still still take take some steps forward. Or if I luckily fell forward, then, you know, what looks next? And so that's why that fallow period is so important is it helps you find clarity of do I need to just stand straight up? Or is this an opportunity for me to move forward, to shift, to pivot? So you have choices. And so I always say people are like, well, you have to be moving forward. No, you don't. It's all but you have to be able to own it. You have to be able to think through it. And a lot of times people don't take the time to make that decision with the right components of that equation. So what are some of the components that go into that equation? What questions should people who are listening be asking themselves if they know that something's missing, they just don't know what? So that's kind of where I do the resilient ambition framework. and we kind of initiated like, it's really built around three pillars. We've got the identifying the ambition disruption or the lifequake. And you have to actually really look at this. It's not like, oh, I've skipped my knee, now what? It's a, how is this impacting everything? And for me, having lost a career in industry, there was a sense of an identity to a career and a self of fulfillment that I got from that career. And so in looking at how this disruption impacted my life, it impacted who and how I interact with people. It impacted how I travel, how I live my life at home. how I saw success how I defined productivity it impacted all of these things impacted my dating life it impacted everything and I said okay I see how I see how this disruption is impacting things and I have a choice to prioritize what I want to address I have a choice in how I want to address each thing. And also I can also identify, are there other areas that I actually want to spend more time on? And so for me, I was like, you know what? Like I could start job searching right now. I could, but I was like, I actually need a rest. And I need to use some more creativity in my life. I need other things moving and that can be okay. Like, so instead of though, though I felt I'm falling forward and I intentionally kind of lean when I start to fall, but I also take a minute and utilize that to say like, this is how I want to do it. And so the resilient ambition framework starts with clarity. We look at purpose and then we build emotional resilience. And that's the middle key pillar. And then we start to look at alignment and adaptability. And so kind of and there's not one particular place that we have to start with within this framework is when we do kind of this this work on the disruption level, we see where we need to kind of dive into the framework. And then utilize the various tools within that. Because at the end of the day, we want you to have resilient or shatterproof. Give that out to Miss Tasha Urich. Shatterproof our ambition and our goals. But you've got to have that work in place. And it gives you the ability to move and change and grow. Because just because you were doing something one way before the disruption happened doesn't mean it's going to serve you now. It doesn't mean it's not. But it gives you the opportunity to make a choice. So you are in your fallow period. You've touched on this a couple of times during a conversation with the loss of the international development industry, as it used to be. How are you choosing to test, retest and emerge like a phoenix from your own ambition disruption? Yeah. It has been, it's a journey, first of all. I'm about three months in and I've had to check myself a couple times. There's been some self-tough love and some friends, thankfully, you know, we have our own confidants who've checked me as well. is a couple of them have been like, you are working harder now than you were with this high level job. You're trying to job search. You're trying to expand your coaching business. You're expanding your consulting business. You're networking within that. You're also leveling up your own training. You're trying to also work within your community and give back like I always love doing and then teaching as well. And you're also trying to build up your health and improve your health because it was emotionally draining three months ago. You need to spend time with your family. You need the list just like to not end. And I was like, why am I working eighteen hour days? Because you're busy now. And I realized I was like, I, this is this is not serving me. I'm exhausted. And I need to utilize this as a moment of just like, it's a blessing. Like, it's heartbreaking, but it's a blessing that I thankfully I don't have to run. Right away and get the first job that appears because I was like, you know what? I love coaching. I've got a solid coaching business. Let me pour more into that because that's filling my cup. So what I first did was laid everything out. Sticky notes. I am one to sticky notes on the wall. And I started to see like what all is on my plate. And what is going to stay with me in the long haul? What do I want to bring with me in the long haul? And that helped me clear out the list a bit. And then I also went back and I looked at my timeline. You'll hear me talk a lot about timeline. There's a lot that we can do with it. And I do all the good stuff and neutral things go on top of the timeline and all of the challenging or negative things kind of go on the bottom. But I also then layer it with phases of life of where, like, you're just in the grind. Like, you had to get that project management experience. You had to check that box. And it's two years. And you had your head down and whatnot. But, like, after that, you soared and you got huge promotions. And you learned a lot of stuff along the way. Or you really head down and you trained and you ran that marathon. And then you got photo ops. And then you got a Nike deal. Like there are those things. And so when you look at your timeline is you can see where you had this great exponential piece. And we go back to those periods of like, what did you do? Well, I trained. And I not only did I focus on my project management skills, but I got my PMP and I actually was able to spend more time with family that was supportive. And they were able to babysit my kids so I could actually study for my PMP. And then I saw it. I'm like, that's a fallow period. You focus and you hit that ceiling, but you focus in on little sandboxes. And then once you did that, you were then able to exit. Right. And then you're able to continue on with that ambition or find new ones. See, what I like about that is, and this is the epiphany I just had, is that when we ask somebody what's your ambition or your dream, I tend to hear that question in one flavor, which is the traditional career path. Yeah. But what I'm hearing, especially with your timeline exercise, is not just the career highs and lows and troughs and accelerations and slowdowns. It's what's happening in your whole life. Yes. And if we actually do that exercise regularly, guided by the individual but with multiple lines so that it doesn't end up looking like a plate of spaghetti to be clear here but you could have that career line you could have the relationship line you could have the family line you could have the fun in life line and just see where were they in sync? Yes. And where were they coming for the train wreck of all train wrecks or just completely disconnected? Because that will give us clues well you call it was it adaptive ambition was that the phrase I heard you say so that ambition so that seems to bring all of those together say more about adaptive ambition so this is this is going back into my um monitoring and evaluation and learning days where we do like adaptive management and you just apply it to yourself. So what I love about adaptive ambition is that A, we're giving permission to change. We're giving permission to say, that's not serving me. That direction is not serving me. And I can change my mind. And adaptive is also built on evidence as well. Yes, you can pivot. You can change your mind at any point. But for me, when I think about adaptive ambition is that I look at my evidence-based data. Again, I'm a data-driven person. And I say, okay, I could go back into the international development space. I could. I've got ambitions there. I can continue climbing the ladder if I want. But was it serving me at all? How many hours was I working? How much of myself was I giving? Did I have the relationships that I wanted? And so having that adaptability to say, like, I'm looking at the pile of evidence of saying, you know what, maybe now's not the time for that. And you can pivot and go a different direction. Or, you know what, my ambition has been so focused on career that But I haven't really filled my cup in the dating space. I want to partner my life. And because I've been so mission driven on on career, I have let things go where I'm not as close with my family or I'm not spending as much time with my kids as I want to. is how can I adapt my ambition? So maybe just a slight alter of like you don't have to have the VP job. You could have a slightly lower job or something more technical that's not managing a crowd of people that allows you then to focus more on something else. So giving you the tools. So by looking at the clarity and your purpose and really coming to understand where you're at with your emotional intelligence and aligning with your ultimate life goals, were then able to take this big ambition that you had and say, does it need to shift? Do we need to alter it so that you can actually have more of the other things as well? So it gives you the permission to change course. I love it. So where can those who are watching us or listening to this conversation, where can people learn more about you and the work that you do? I feel like I'm on like all the platforms, but largely you'll find me on LinkedIn under Thriving at Water's Edge. You'll also find my website, www.thrivingatwatersedge.com. I am on both Facebook and LinkedIn. Again, same name, Thriving at Water's Edge. And, you know, one, what I love about those various platforms is that some are going to be a whole lot more of like into my life and you're going to see the bloopers. You're going to see how I apply it to myself as well or to the teams I'm working with. And then also, too, on the LinkedIn place is where you're going to find a little bit more of. science-based knowledge and some thought leadership if you're wanting to read more and that's where I also try to engage with leaders like yourself um and to showcase like hey let's let's bring this collective knowledge together and help as many people as we can okay so what's one message that you hope that our listeners take away from our conversation today Be okay with being in a fallow period. It is not a sign of failure that you are in there. It's an opportunity for growth. And you get to control what that growth looks like. Works for me. There's the mic drop moment. Meredith Waters, thank you for joining me on People First. Thank you.