This year has been a lot.
I am tired. Maybe you are too. And not just in your physical body, but probably in your emotional one; likely in your heart there is an aching reminiscent of heartbreak, of mourning, of deep grief.
I went to the doctor this week and took a pause at the depression screening questions: “In the last 2 weeks how often have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?” I mean, outside is a lot. How specific do we want to get about how often it is hard to locate hope?
Theon Freeman, one of High Tides producers recently preached a sermon on the topic of hope, and just listening to it reminded me that it can be found in community. Hope is a noun, but to hope is a verb, and we get to keep doing it, keep practicing it, keep journeying towards it.
It has been a strange and unfamiliar time.
But stranger things than our current experience have occurred, and we (humanity) have survived to evolve, grow and tell the tale, write the stories and speak the lessons.
Leading through the unfamiliar is hard. We learn to lead ourselves before we lead others (hopefully) and that is soul work.
I have no good segue here.
Inclusive Leadership is the only Leadership
I train leaders. I support people with interpersonal skill development, cultivating EQ, learning to listen, crafting better questions, getting curious about all the strange ways humans behave and interact and resist growth, and lean away from change. In 2020, people called it DEI or inclusive leadership training or whatever. But, to me,
Real leadership is always equity-centered all of the time. You can’t speak leadership and mean exclusive. That is incongruous.
Did you know that I have (through the power of the internet) trained more than 29,000 leaders in 25 languages in 147 countries?
Humanity and being human (compassionate, empathetic, feeling, caring) is universal. It’s not a trend and it’s not a “moment”. It doesn’t need special labels or acronyms. It has no natural boundaries.
Leadership training is always about inclusivity and equity and inclusion. Leadership courses (real ones) always center fairness and universal humanity, otherwise it’s doing something else–its a misnomer. Leadership calls us to an experience that is immersive and requires each person to be honest about themselves, and what they are feeling and how they are relating, and what the potential shared goals could be. It happens from the inside out.
Management courses for DEI? No, I’m a(n) [Inclusive] leadership coach. I design for (inclusive) leaders. I write for (inclusive) leaders.
Small is all, Local is Global
Last year (April 2024, actually) we started a journey to build a platform of asynchronous learning where I could house and market the same leadership courses I have licensed to others for years. And so I set out to see how I could bring some of that impact (and the income) closer to home. And it took a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and yes, money to do it. And we tested it, and we soft-launched it and I added ebooks to the platform (because I can’t help myself from curating tools) and now I have this great, big comprehensive site and
Meanwhile
Out in the world:
Fascism is sweeping the globe
Diversity is under attack
It is not safe to move about the cabin
Due process is an afterthought
The Black and brown aren’t the only ones being arrested without cause, profiled, assaulted, abused, dismissed, disregarded. They’re about 85% of it, but still.
Find me someone untouched and unbothered by recent events. I dare you.
And all of our pockets are coming up empty.
Check in on your neighbors. How often have you been bothered by feeling down. . .
If you aren’t bothered, shouldn’t that be worrisome?
I am learning how to balance concern with stress in distinct measure. I have a lot of concerns. I cannot afford for them to be stressful. I refuse to be overcome. My energy is precious.
Is that hope?
Before we tackle the world, maybe we could tackle our community, our household, ourselves.
We are Not Alone in Our Leadership Crisis
In my car I listen, not to the news, but rather to– philosophers, to researchers, sociologists, journalists, anthropologists, – many of those “non-professionals” that have fallen out of favor because of their adherence to seeking first to understand; educators, social workers, and therapists. They help me remember that I am not alone in my concern; remember that yes, these are strange times. That stranger times have been traversed. And that all signs point to evolution, not obliteration.
We win.
But first, the battle. And I do think most of the fighting is done internally.
We are in a leadership crisis. It is heartbreaking and destructive. But empires fall, companies fail, people file for bankruptcy, they get beat up, beat down . . . but we persevere.
Life is a circle. Don’t let the downslope have you forget about the upward climb.
Hope is looking to the horizon knowing the tide always shifts.
But I don’t think you can rush transformation anymore than you can the cycles of the moon.
Again, no good segue.
Compassionate Leadership Shouldn’t Feel Strange
I came here to tell you I have a shiny new landing page up on the Academy site. I wanted to tell you that we are offering a 7-day free trial to anyone seeking leadership support and ways to think through navigating relationships during transition. I came here to tell you, these courses are some of my best work in interpersonal skills training, inclusive leadership and teaching people management with an equity lens. And that it’s super accessible because I want to support leaders who still hope for the future – the ones who are picking up the slack in our communities to house, feed, train and support what is bound to come over the horizon.
For years, High Tides’ client roster has been full of for-profit marketing and communications companies that have fed the capitalist machine, but it has become clear that it’s the people of the republic that need feeding. I want nothing more than to be a support in that community ecosystem.
But, when there is so much to be bothered with, sometimes you wonder if yesterday’s labor is even worth talking about. I built a thing. I think it’s useful. I am hopeful it is right on time. Because Lord knows I took forever to painfully push it out, but if it’s not, stranger things have happened.
We need more people doing the work of hope. We need more people seeking first to understand. We need more people being brave enough to be vulnerable and risk being strange for the sake of being human. And hopefully if enough of us do that, we can normalize humanity together – let that not be strange.
We need leaders everywhere. Leaders who are feeling and speaking and connecting and communicating hope. And I am trusting that it is never too late to seize the moment and lead.
Leading against fascism
Antifa means anti-fascist. If fascism is characterized by a politics of “us” vs “them”, and weaponizing differences to challenge civil rights and undermining the needs of the majority to protect the interests of a few, then
I train leaders against fascism. My antifa looks like fighting for the always us, because the thems are us too. My antifa is standing for the civil rights and liberties of every person without prejudice. My antifa is up to the dismantling of social hierarchies, and creating a world where the people rule the day, and the government is in service to them.
And yea, if that kind of leadership speaks to you and yours, I would be honored if the bunch of tools I built are found useful in your journey. High Tides Academy is live. We have three powerful courses on inclusive leadership, and you can grab a free trial here.
References:
“Insisting on Hope” by Theon Freeman, Forefront Church, November 30, 2025 https://youtu.be/14EEMwfo4mo?si=k06Nhh4V188wZKd6
Hall, M. E. K. (2023). The January 6th, 2025, project: Fascist politics and the rising threats to American democracy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 708(1), 8–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162241234174
American Immigration Council. (n.d.). Due process and the courts. American Immigration Council.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/about-immigration/due-process-and-courts
Cummings, W. (2018, October 4). Full list of degrees and professional experience of Trump administration members. Newsweek.
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-degrees-professional-trump-administration-1108569
