Episode 25: Unlearning, Values, and Leading with Courage: A Conversation with Lindsey T.H. Jackson
Why true leadership starts with knowing — and living — your values
From unlearning toxic norms to practicing authentic leadership
Episode Summary:
What does it mean to actually live your values — even when it costs you something? In this episode of Hard at Work, Ellen sits down with executive coach, speaker, and visionary leader Lindsey T.H. Jackson to unpack the practice of unlearning, the courage it takes to align actions with values, and how mid-career women can reconnect with their authentic selves.
Lindsey shares powerful stories about walking away from VC funding to stay true to her company’s anti-racist values, why anger is a signal of potential, and how leaders can move beyond fear to create people-centered workplaces. Together, Ellen and Lindsey dig into generational shifts at work, why “lazy ease” is toxic, and the everyday practices that help us return to ourselves.
If you’ve ever felt stuck between old rules and the possibility of something better, this episode will help you imagine — and build — a healthier, more authentic way forward.
Tags: Leadership, Women at Work, Workplace Culture, Unlearning, Authentic Leadership, Values-Based Leadership, Diversity and Inclusion, Anti-Racist Leadership, Boundaries at Work, Career Growth, Women in Leadership, Personal Development, Mid-Career Women, Coaching, Resilience
Show Notes:
Melissa Urban’s book, The Book of Boundaries
The We Do Not Care Club with Melani Sanders
Episode Chapters
00:00 – Introduction & Why Unlearning Matters
03:40 – Lindsey’s Story: Diversity as the Norm
08:30 – Leading with Values vs. Leading with Fear
12:00 – When Values Have a Price Tag
16:40 – Living Your Values at Work: The iWeUs Framework
23:00 – Midlife, Anger, and the Awakening of Self
28:00 – Generational Shifts and Unlearning in the Workplace
38:00 – Lazy Ease vs. Strategic Leadership
42:00 – Practical Tools: Enneagram, Rocks, and Somatic Practices
48:30 – The Secret Art of Pebbling
51:00 – Upcoming Work
55:00 – Closing Reflections & Where to Find Lindsey
Key Takeaways
Unlearning is essential for growth. Most of what holds us back in life and work comes from social conditioning we need to consciously undo.
Values cost something. True values aren’t just slogans — they’re proven in action, and living them may mean losing money, relationships, or comfort.
Anger is data, not danger. Anger signals that something is misaligned with your true self — it’s the starting point for change, not something to fear.
Generational differences highlight unlearning. Younger workers reject “toxic professionalism” — leaders must adapt by questioning old rules instead of relying on “lazy ease.”
Practice makes values real. Tools like the Enneagram, grounding practices (like rocks or nature), and daily reflection help translate values from theory into lived action.
Transcript:
Ellen Whitlock Baker:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the hard at work podcast. I'm your host Ellen and I am so thrilled to be here with the amazing Lindsey T.H. Jackson. Hi Lindsey. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. It is so good to see you and Lindsey is a lot of amazing things but really is an executive coach to values based leaders.
Lindsey TH Jackson
Wow.
Ellen(03:48.022):
And I got to see Lindsey in action when I went to an event a few months ago and it was just incredible. And it was about unlearning some things that especially as white folks, we have learned. And I know that you focus a lot about unlearning in the work that you do, which is such a great concept and one that we don't always go for.
Lindsey:
Yes, I think, you know, every day I am aware of how much unlearning I am involved in, if I'm lucky.
Ellen:
Let's let everybody learn a little bit about you. I ask everyone, give us a 60 second Wikipedia entry. Who's Lindsey? What do you want the audience to know about you?
Lindsey:
Hi. If somebody ever writes a Wikipedia page about me, that would be fascinating. It'd probably be my daughter, just to like, name her soon. But yes, I, Lindsey T. H. Jackson, daughter to Jeffrey C. Jackson and Deborah Anita Holland, who have been married and making life together for over 45 years now and born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Appalachia, the Paris of Appalachia, we call Pittsburgh, and very much a child of curly fries and Mr. Rogers, which is made in Pittsburgh.
A type of suburban upbringing that truly is the American dream. I often find myself very confused when other people feel what they're describing is the American dream and it's extremely homogenous or is extremely class neutral, right? Like I grew up in a true melting pot and in that time I understood that the American dream was that was the goal that we were meant to be nurtured in diversity and to celebrate that diversity as our point of difference. And so that very much informs the work that I do with leaders that to use a line from Robin Forskamp's, a wonderful researcher, that diversity is the norm, not the accept.
That's a very different way to move through your life if you're always expecting diversity.
Ellen:
I love that. I grew up in Hawaii, so that rings really true to me. it's so diverse there. when I moved to Washington, I was like, everybody looks like me here. But it definitely wasn't true when I grew up. I remember the first day I went to college, I stepped foot and I was like, where is everybody's white? What's happening? But that diversity, you know, not to sound trite, but is celebrated. And, you you learn so much about all the different holidays and, you experiences and they're part of your culture growing up in a way that they just aren't when you're not.
Lindsey:
Yes. And I think despite what we see on social media or some news stations, you would think that the majority of people are afraid of diversity. And that's just not my experience as someone who works with leaders the world over. I find that most leaders, they are excited by people. They actually enjoy people. And so therefore their desire to be a great people leader is rooted in that love of the diverse experiences that they're going to have and wanting to be adaptable, deliver whatever leadership looks like to each member of their team.
Yeah, so, you know, I think that there are more people like my clients, the ones that want to be truly values-based leaders who have integrated a practice. He's the leader that each member of their team needs.
Ellen: (08:37.486)
I love that so much. People-centric we use a lot on the podcast and it's definitely something I didn't really hear until after I started doing the podcast. It wasn't a common phrase in the workplaces that I grew up in or was involved in. Do you find that that approach of values-based, people-centric, I hear you say that leaders for the most part want to lead that way, but
Has it been hard to convince people that that or even just show that as another option to what we've all learned is this sort of like fair and equal, which is not equitable way of leading people. Everybody's the same, you know.
Lindsey:
Yes. To your question, I would say what's difficult is not the desire. Most people I meet have the desire. What they lack is the skill set. And then in the absence of the skill set, there's a lot of fear of being found out. Right. I'll be found out that I have no rigor here. haven't studied anything. Nobody's held me accountable to a practice or the models of leadership that I've seen. And then maybe still beholden to they don't care. And so or they have not been held accountable. And so I'm kind of in this rock hard place where there's an old guard of leadership that sometimes literally and sometimes metaphorically when I say the old guard and there's a new wave of individuals entering the workplace that are going, that's not our goal. We certainly don't want to be that. So a lot of my leaders are kind of mid career stuck in the middle saying, trying to survive this old guard and I'm trying to adapt to meet the needs of this new younger generation coming into the workplace. And I feel or I've convinced myself that I don't have time to go out and learn new skills or I don't know where to look for. And so I love one of my clients once said, you know, for a lot of people, your values are theoretical, but not practical. that I is very mmuch what lots of people are discovering during this moment that we're living through sociopolitically. Your values were theoretical. They were written on really lovely signs that were in your front garden, or you had it written across a t-shirt. But when it came to what does that look like in practice? What does it look like to put your body on line with your beliefs? They're like I don't know what I do. I wouldn't even know how to practice my belief that Black Lives Matter. I wouldn't know how to practice my belief that love is love, that science is real. Right. So the work that we do at LTHJ Global Inc. is to really teach leaders how to take their stated values and turn them into an integrated practice.
Ellen:
Can you give an example of, if you don't mind, some of a sort of a stated value that someone might learn how to put into practice that they might feel uncomfortable about at first, how do they, you know, what is it and how do they learn?
Lindsey:
Yeah, I'll give you one from my own career because you know to teach it you have to be practicing it. Sometimes unfortunately, right? If I could just be one of those people that don't do teach.
Ellen:
You gotta live it, yeah.
Lindsey:
You have to teach it and do it. But in the tenure of LTHJ Global, we had taken on some VC funding. were taking a new tech product, our online platform Sojourn, to market. And it was a smaller VC firm, but they were very excited about what we were doing, we thought. And at LTHJ Global, our values are very baked into the way that we work. Our values around determination, grace, accountability, creativity, flexibility, and all of that built on the foundation of this is an anti-racist organization. We truly believe that if you seed all of your values in that fertile soil, people are more creative. People are more flexible. People are more graceful. And I'm not going to say it's easier because being a diverse person does not necessarily make you by default anti-racist or anti-homophobic or anti-transphobic. But it does give you a certain lens by which to view the world.
And so in working with this VC firm at one juncture, come to find out that many of their holdings partners were very transphobic and they did not seem to think that this was any problem. We were a company that was bringing a DEI platform to market and that we were extremely diverse team across the diversity spectrum. And that was a deal breaker for me, right? I cannot, one, look my team in the face and say, well, but they're giving us the money. And two, I have to be able to sleep at night to do good work. And when you sacrifice your values, you stop sleeping well at night, right? This is one that often surprises people. They'll come in, and they'll have been in therapy year after year, thousands of thousands of dollars, you know, that they've shelled out. And in one hour, I'll do a makeup for them and I'll go, see this right here? This where you are consistently sacrificing yourself and sacrificing your values.
This is why you're not sleeping at night. This is why you're not eating. Well, this is why you're so angry and so you can either not your values to your actions or you can keep paying that therapist, you know hundreds and thousands of dollars to ignore what is just glaring in your face. I didn't want that. I didn't have thousands of thousands of dollars. And so, you know, we lost a considerable amount of money because we had to buy back our own stock. And in this society, Black women receive on average 0.006 % of VC investment. So it was a huge hit to our company. But when we came together and we sat down as a company and we talked about the decision that the leadership had made and that initially, or at the end, was very much my decision.
There was no regrets right everybody up. This is the company that we signed up for these are the values that we practice and We would choose our values over money any day.
Ellen:
That's amazing. What was the process that you used? It's probably long, but you know, a lot of us have gone through values exercises at work and they often end up being relatively generic and then they live on a wall in your conference room. To have values that you live so strongly as a company, what, how did you get there? And how do you enforce it on an ongoing basis, right? Or not enforce, but live them, I guess is the better way to say that.
Lindsey:
Yeah, one of the things that I developed a few years back and it's a model that we work with a lot of leaders to develop for themselves is our I We Us framework. And so I work is the work that you are invested in the rest of your life to understand your own relationship to self and to everything that you are in relationship to. That's other people, that's nature, your language for God or source. That is very different for each individual. Some people tell me I have no word for that. And so there's other ways that we enter into that. They'll tell me I have no word for that. But then when I ask them, well, how do you decompress? They'll say I go out into the bush, right? And I lived in Australia for 10 years. I go out into the bush. And so I go out into the bush is your word for source, right? Go there to be connected. I go walk about whatever that for the individual that I work is the very necessary and very. I'm going to say delicious work of stripping away all of the things that you became in a society that told you you weren't enough as you are right. And so under there lives the self, right? Not the character, not the status play, but the self. And there is also where your values live. And so in defining that often when a company is truly living its values, people come to you. Like we very rarely at LTHA Global have to look for influence. People see our work and send we resumes all the time because they're saying this aligns at my source with how I want to be in the world and my work is an extension of my values. I think the challenge in our society and let's just stick in the context of the United States of America for right now is that we have lost connection with what our values are in the U.S.
It's very different if you ask someone in the Pacific Northwest versus someone in the South versus someone in the East, right? We couldn't tell you what the values of the United States of America are anymore. And then add to that that for many people from a very young age, people told them what their values should be and they adopted those as opposed to doing the work to nurture the child, to unearth their own lived values, state values. And so that's the beginning of the work is that you have to now, excuse me, develop that practice. You have to go through the work of dismantling the character to figure out who I am.
Once you do that, everything else is easy.
Ellen:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But that's so hard.
Lindsey:
Being the hardest part, but from the it's so hard and it's delicious because once you do that, you are grounded in yourself, in your existence, in the way that you are in relationship in a very different way.
Yeah. Why people don't do it is that initially it feels very scary.
Ellen:
It's terrifying. Yeah. Because you feel so safe. Well, I mean, there's all the brain science about why change is hard for us and wanting to keep us safe, but you feel safe in what you know. Even if you might be frustrated by it, you know what the outcome is gonna be if you act in certain ways and live certain values. So it's really scary to go outside of that for the first time, but it's so rewarding.
Lindsey:
Yes, and to what you said, Ellen, I think what's fascinating is often in working with this, people realize that what they thought they knew was a fabrication, right? It was just, I think if I let go of this character of always knowing, always strong, always confident, then there'll be nothing left. I think if I let go of this character of always nice, always easy going, always compliant, then there'll be nothing left. Right? If I stop playing good daughter, good wife, good husband, good son, good right, there'll be nothing left. And so all of that are, it's smoke and mirrors, right? We create those as an externalized way to fabricate safety.
Ellen:
Yeah. Yes.
Lindsey:
But there's no safety in that. Any of that can be ripped from you at any moment. When you truly know thyself, right? We are back at Socrates. you truly know thyself and truly understand your own values, that is a...
I'm going to say the lack of fear there is...
It's like a... a... a... a tree. Firmly... and deep sea.
Ellen:
I feel like for a lot of women that I coach and know, this kind of happens after you're 40 for a lot of us. And there's so much going on, know, perimenopause and all, you you're in the height of it with potential if you have kids and your parents are aging. And, you I talk about that a lot. Like you're in this whirlwind of worrying about everybody else. You sort of forget who you are.
And then I can see in talking with you in this context, you retreat to the values that are easy and comfortable because everything else feels overwhelming. I don't know if you find the same, but I also would be curious, like if, if someone's listening to this and they're a woman and they're feeling, because that's my listeners are majority mid-career women. so. You know, what, are some things they could do to just start to investigate that within themselves if they don't have a coach or the luxury of having that at the moment.
Lindsey:
Yes. Well, I think one of things you said that's so interesting is that your values are not easy to come.
Right. So that's a, that's a huge difference. Right. I often say to people, if you'll know you've stumbled upon your values when they cost you something. Right. My values costs me a lot of money...
Ellen:
Ooh.
Lindsey:
in order to truly practice them. It cost me a lot of VC investment. It cost me double that to buy that back. Your values often have a price tag. And that price tag can be monetary, but it can also be boundaries that you have to set. It can be relationships that you have to say goodbye to. Right? It can be that externalized fabricated safety that you have to keep popping that bubble. Right? You'll stumble upon your values when you realize, whoa, this shit's expensive.
Right? That are safe and comfortable are often things that we've been conditioned to believe or to accept that have no real weight to them. And so those things, I would say, you know, I just started reading Melissa Urban, who
Ellen: (26:43.419)
Yeah, boundaries. I love her.
Lindsey:
Boundaries she sent it to me and a beautiful book I would recommend everybody pick it up but yes that that type of thing that you're talking about as we enter our 40s, which I've also heard as the NoFucks Given Years.
There's something there, one, as we all know that is happening hormonally that really helps as more estrogen is flooding into the body, right? Excuse me, more testosterone is flooding into the body. But I think ultimately what I see happen with a lot of my leaders as they enter in their 40s is that the disillusionment, there's enough data to parse through and say, all of these things that I was told, if I'm just this, I will feel safe. I will feel happy. I would feel protected. I write this, this exchange that we were invited to by the time you reach your forties with a little bit of critical thinking skills, you're able to go. None of that paid off.
Right? was told I just keep sacrificing myself, but I'll be happy. Why am I not happy? I was told if I just keep playing nice, that I'll be safe and protected. Why do I feel safe and protected? Right? I was told if I do this, that, that, that, that, that, I'll be worthy of love. Why does all this love feel cheap? And not fulfilled, right? By the time you reach your 40s, you have enough data to say, tried that tack, and all the things you told me I was going to get in return are either unfulfilling or spotty. And so, you know, I think you others of our peers, they're starting at 40 to wake up and go, so let me try some other stuff. Yeah, let me try what I'm actually thinking, right? My friend, your friend, Alicia and I this year, we have started a petty club. We're trying to make more petty. Thus far, all I've managed is when somebody says something or no, like when somebody walks through the door and doesn't say thank you. I've managed to go, you're welcome.
It's taken a lot to get me here. The girl is growing. And I say it like a Northeastern or two because that's where I'm from. You're welcome.
This caused me a little bit of heartburn afterwards, but I'm proud.
Ellen:
I know there's just this constant like, but I don't want to make anyone mad or let them down or all the things that we need to unlearn. And they're hard. But they're so important. love everything about what you're talking about is so true. we talk a lot here. I talk a lot about all of that specifically in the context of the workplace and how women and particularly women of color have been told, you know, act like a man and you'll get ahead. Well, no, that didn't work. know, sacrifice everything and work extra hard because you have to and you'll get ahead. That didn't work. You know, we're all a family. So there's this interesting, like, I think the way I felt it was that you were described that anger.
I got mad, you know, and then sad. And it's sort of like, have I wasted all of those years? I've been lied to, it didn't go the way they said, I never got that raise they promised, you know, all of the things that we go through at work. But it's such a personal experience too, that you're talking, it's life, not just work, to have that awakening. And so if there's any gift I want to give listeners is try to have it earlier, because we're talking about it here openly.
Lindsey:
You know, if you can, but I think you're right in that you have to kind of collect that data on your own because that's what you learned from. Two beautiful things there. One, I think it's a reminder to people that if you're mad, that is the beginning of your source voice speaking to you, right? So for a lot of women, we're conditioned to believe that mad or angry is, there's something wrong with us. That's a bad emotion, right? But mad and angry is just the other side of love, right? These two emotions live on a continuum.
And so we're angry where there is potential. And the self is saying, we haven't hit it. This is data. We're walking around angry and mad about stuff because the inner voice is saying something's off and it's trying to get you to recalibrate. It's sending the message. Remember the Soma speaks first.
All that heartburn all of that tightness in the chest those heart palpitations, that IBS, that gut issues, those headaches, those migraines the body's saying Listen up. We know something's off and we're trying to talk to you girl girl girl Down and listen, right?
And so the anger is the, I often call it the little self, right? Little Lindsey is saying, this isn't us, remember us? Because this isn't it. This is the character that you've been playing. And so anger is a great first step. If you can lean fully into anger, that is when you can begin to decipher or peel back what is wrong.
What's stuck? What's calcified that is no longer useful? The other thing that you said is this younger generation, I think they are getting it early. They too much data that they're just like... They don't even work for men. know, toxic masculinity doesn't seem to be working for them either.
Why would I do that? Everything that all the black feminist writers spoke about back in the 60s. But the challenge in the workplace is our generation and definitely our generation older are predated by their anger because one, we don't allow ourselves to admit that we're feeling humory and two, we're again, we're stuck. We're like, no, no, no, you should buy in. No, wait, don't buy in. No.
I can't get for a lot of my leaders when they come for me is that when they come for me, when they've been working with me, they sometimes come for me too, right? I'm like, ooh, bring that anger today. It's so little, it's so cute. When they come to me, it's that they have accepted that something else must be possible. They don't yet know how to imagine it, and how to bring it to bear. And so I help them do the peeling back to find little Ellen, to find little Lindsey, for example. And then the articulation of what can feel like science fiction at the beginning, right? Like could have a non-toxic work house that I saw it on Star Trek 1. Right? That science fiction work you have to first start with the imagining and then you just build systems.
Ellen:
I'm picturing a jungle. Like you have that sort of anger. You realize that there's something else, but you have to whack through a jungle to figure out what it is. So sci-fi, I don't know, that metaphor just popped into my head because it feels like that, because you don't know the path and there's a lot of stuff in your way and there's bugs and you might fall in a swamp, but you'll get there on the other side and you'll just be a little dirty. It's okay.
But it's better than the alternative, you know, and what you said about the younger generation, you know, I talk a lot about that too. We are in such a strange group of individuals, you and I. I'm right at the cusp of Gen X and millennial, so it depends on where you and you are too, right? So it's like, we've already grown up bridging those two gaps. some things I...
I I'm a little bit more millennial and some things I'm definitely more Gen X. It just kind of depends on what it is. So I think we already have this ability to see that maybe there's a different way of doing things, but you are sort of fighting yourself the first time you're really confronted with that. Like when I was working, I was told by someone else to tell a person on my team who was brand new to dress more professionally, and she was a woman of color and she was wearing like a crop top, not too bad, but you know, and some cargo pants, like casual. And I thought about it for a long time and like, I had the war in my head of like, yes, cause you're supposed to dress like your boss. And that's how, you know, that's how I learned is the way to get ahead is dress like your boss and make sure they never let you see you in any, jeans and you know, all this stuff. And I'm like, but the kind of work we're doing does not require any of that.
When you're setting up for events and working with students, why would you ever need to dress like your boss? So I had to have that internal argument with myself and really put aside those deep-seated beliefs that I grew up with. But I appreciated that I was able to at least have that argument with myself. And I think that our generation is maybe a little bit better at it, I guess. I don't know. I think we might be.
Seems to be, when I talk to leaders right now, one of the biggest things they say they have a challenge with is generations. Like, how do we work with Gen Z? And it's simple, I think we listen. But I mean, it's not that simple. it is, it's unlearning. It's exactly what we started out talking about what you talk about all the time. It's, there's a lot of unlearning we need to do in order to you know, go forward in a shared workplace with lots of different generations.
Lindsey:
Yes, one of the skills that I teach in organizations that are really trying to dismantle these old ways of being it is Normalize that everybody gets to ask the question why three times? You're saying you can't wear a crop top then I get to say what?
And so you explain, me that first reason, right? And then, okay, I received that. And now I get to ask why again. And if you can't justify a decision three times, it's not, you're just making shit up, right? Right. I remember, my parents, when I brought home my now ex-husband for the first time, you know, and I was all just so love and was a person and I'm married. And we were, I've been dating for ages and I brought him home for the first time. And my parents, you know, grew up in a very large home and this home had four levels to it. And we went to go to our rooms and my dad went, you're to be sleeping up on the top level to my now X. And I went, why? And he goes, I had to do it when I brought your mother home. So you have to do it. That's the only reason. That's not a reason.
No, but it is where we go first off. I had to pay my dues.
And that is not strategic decision-making, right? If anything, I call that lazy ease, right? I'm through lazy ease because we always did it that way. Because so-and-so said to do it. Right? That's all lazy ease. And we and our organizations are rife with lazy ease, right? It is just a way of speaking where nobody has to have any high level thought throughout the day. It's to work with sometimes five generations in a workplace and be truly strategic and innovative if the majority of your decisions are based on lazy ease.
Ellen: (41:47.406)
I totally agree. was just writing something about like the hidden signs that your workplace is toxic. And it's all of those lazy ease things, the things that, you know, the job description has always said other duties as assigned. And so that's what we just put in the job description when that's actually a terrible thing to say in some ways, because you've got to be clear about your responsibilities and you know, all of that, that's that lazy ease is very toxic and I love the three whys. I think that's such a good takeaway because if you're listening to this and you're wrestling with a problem like that at work or something that you're feeling like, I don't like what that person is doing because it's different. And if you can't answer why you don't like it three times, what a great temperature check. Something's up with you then, not them. Totally.
Lindsey:
Right? Right? In itself is that I work again to be brave enough to go, this is my stuff. There's nothing to do with them.
I wanted to come back to something you had asked about, you know, for the person that can't afford a coach. How do you go about this work? I think the first thing that I would offer is in my own life, how I entered this work was through a practice, excuse me, that allowed me to figure out or to explore what my identity is beneath character. For me, that tool is the Enneagram. Enneagram means picture, E double en, B-A, gram. There are many tools out there. And typology structures are ultimately meant to be a way to understand boxes that we put ourselves in and how to get out of those boxes. Right? And so in one's own practice, beginning to identify what are the boxes and characters that I put myself in? And how do I diversify the boxes and characters?
Ellen:
I love that.
Lindsey:
So that's one thing. The other thing is we do an exercise in a lot of my workshops called the rock exercise. And here's one of my rocks on my desk right here. And every student of mine has rocks that they've been taught to return to. And the rocks individually represent individual values.
And sometimes the best way to externalize the practice of connecting your values to the decision that you're about to make is to actually put your rocks, your values in your hand. And individuals go through and ask, how does this rock align with my value around diversity is the norm? How does this rock individually align with my right go through decision after decision value after value and find the alignment so sometimes you have to bring things out to the somatic practice make the theoretical practical use that use.
Ellen: (45:43.594)
Mm-hmm. So true. It's so true. again, like we're taught not to listen to our bodies, right? In a lot of ways. Just ignore all of those signs. Be the duck with your feet going under the water, but never show it above. And that is such a huge piece of that, returning to your body and that sort of physical, I love the idea of the rock, that physical, that reminds you of what you might need some grounding on. I had another guest who talks about how she just goes outside barefoot and steps in the grass. And that's how she comes back to herself when she needs to. And it's so powerful. So I hope people listening know that you should and could and maybe no should, I'm not gonna should on you, but you can take that time. You can take that time for yourself, to think and sit and think through your values and how the rock aligns or go outside or whatever it is you need to do to physically feel the change that you're making.
Lindsey:
Yes, sometimes I take my little bag when I'm feeling particularly discombobulated. my diff minor not just rocks now. There are many things that I collected on my journeys or been gifted. And sometimes I just need to love it. Like, Soliplex's face sometimes on my gut. I'm scared, you know? And it's just that realignment. And I, you know, for a lot of people, can sound silly, like, I'm an adult. don't know. Rocks are to be grounded. And it's like, well, I'm not going to deny that it's silly, but sillier is continually sacrificing yourself.
Ellen:
Yes. And ignoring your body.
Lindsey:
Right. Or is continually denying your true self in exchange for something that is, and running through a list of words and trying to find them and sitting in my values. Something that is less than the love.
That is the promise to all of us.
Ellen:
My gosh, Lindsey, we could keep talking for 100 years, like I would keep you here. But I know you have places to go and things to do. Let me ask you my last question and then we can talk a little bit about where people can find you and some of the things that you have coming up. So my last question is if you were going to give a TED talk on something other than your work, if possible, but sometimes the work is your life too, what would it be on and why?
Lindsey: (49:00.406)
I would give a TED talk on, other than my work, all of my life's connected, I would give a TED talk on secret art of pebbling.
Ellen:
Pebbling? What is pebbling?
Yes, so... Pebbling is the practice that penguins use. They bring little stones back to their life mate and sometimes to their children as well. And now it's often referred to the ways that we search for belonging and connection or to use the Gottmans language, make bids throughout the day with one another.
And it kind of like, remember back in the day, early text messaging, pebbling got really like creepy when your aunt would send you random messages like, text us to 10 people and...
Ellen:
Yeah, the chain letters.
Lindsey:
Like so it was a style of pebbling but it got really groomed But it's come back and my friends, you know who are spread out around the world. We have all one another throughout the day. You know things that we saw on social media that I thought you thought were funny or articles that I thought were intriguing that you should read or I love the voice memo, you know, where now I'm cooking dinner and I'm listening to 20 minutes of Ellen talking about who was petty and how she was petty back. That the secret art of pebbling is, I think, an antidote to the crisis of loneliness, that we are all suffering in bearing witness to mass loneliness.
Ellen:
I love that. I never thought about that sort of exchange of texts and memes and voice memos as pebbling, but yes. And it keeps you so connected to people who, you know, I may not know everything that's going on in their lives every day, but I know that they liked the meme I sent and I was thinking of them and that's why I sent it. That's really beautiful. I love that. Are you also still hosting the Unlearning series?
Lindsey:
Well, I will tell your audience the answer is yes, but we have been solicited by a very new and exciting partner. We are in the, you know, still hush, hush, final stages of ink on paper, but that would be out soon. So.
Ellen:
Very cool. Look, and I think people can watch past ones. I think they're online. That's how I met Lindsey and these are great events and your warmth and personality shines through. So it's a very, it's a wonderful experience to be in the audience and it makes you think and it makes your brain hurt, but in a good way. Well, thanks so much. And are you on any social media or how can folks find you LinkedIn?
Lindsey:
Yeah, you can find me at anything. Lindsey T.H. Jackson on LinkedIn, Instagram, website, YouTube, and we'll be there to unlearn together.
Ellen:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Lindsey. really appreciate it.
Lindsey:
This was lovely.
Ellen:
Wonderful. Well, we will see you all next time. Thank you for listening and have a lovely day.
Lindsey T.H. Jackson is a visionary systems thinker, executive coach, and embodied futurist working at the intersection of trauma healing, leadership development, and cultural transformation. As the founder of LTHJ Global and host of Unlearning with Lindsey T.H. Jackson, she is committed to removing the internal and systemic barriers that prevent individuals and organizations from reaching their highest potential. Through her signature methodologies—The Enneagram of Bias™ and I-We-Us Leadership Framework™—and her lived experience as a Black woman, mother, artist, and researcher, Lindsey helps leaders align their values with their behaviors, not as performance but as practice.
