Hey Friend,

I’m writing this from a hotel lobby, while eating mediocre scrambled eggs and breakfast potatoes (can you taste them?!).

Today is the last day of a whirlwind week that included seven facilitated engagements over seven days across three states. By Friday, I will have added 12 hours of 1:1 coaching and cap it all off with a close friend’s wedding this weekend. I am tired, grateful, and absolutely buzzing with everything I’ve been learning alongside the most incredible groups of leaders and changemakers.

I wanted to share a little of what’s been in the air and what we've discovered in each room I’ve been in this week. Consider these my postcards from the field.

1. Owning Mistakes and Imperfections Without Ceding Power w/ the Millennial Manager Collective. You can be wrong AND still be the leader. Accountability and authority are not opposites. In fact, the leaders who own their mistakes most clearly are almost always the ones whose teams trust them most deeply. Shrinking, over-apologizing, or disappearing after a misstep doesn’t make you more humble; it makes you less useful to the people who need you to stay in the room.
2. Compassionate Accountability Fundamentals w/ Missouri Educators Cohort. Accountability without compassion and compassion without accountability both create chaos. The magic (and the hard part) is learning to hold both at the same time, in the same breath, with the same person. It's possible, and we have a framework for that!!
3. Psychological Safety: What it Is and Never Was w/ our Compassionate Accountability Cohort. Psychological safety doesn’t mean nobody ever feels uncomfortable. It means people feel safe enough to say the uncomfortable thing. Often, when we successfully build psychological safety, we see MORE conflict and tension in the short term. This means it's WORKING.
4. The Anatomy of Trust Keynote w/ Vermont Afterschool Conference. Trust is not a subjective feeling. It is a set of behaviors, practiced consistently over time, that create the conditions for people to take risks, tell the truth, and show up fully. You cannot mandate it. You cannot rush it. But you can absolutely build it, using our Trust Factor framework
5. Trust & Relationships Deep Dive w/ Vermont Afterschool Conference. Trust breaks in moments but erodes in patterns. Usually by the time someone says “I don’t trust you,” they’re not talking about one thing, but a hundred small moments over time. Which means that rebuilding trust isn’t about a single grand gesture. It’s about showing up differently in the small moments, consistently, over time, until the pattern changes.
6. Managing Through Change, Crisis, and Uncertainty w/ Vermont Afterschool Conference. In moments of uncertainty, people don’t need you to have all the answers. They need you to be honest about what you know, clear about what you don’t, and steady enough that they can stay regulated while they wait for more information.
7. The Feedback Equation w/ CT Nonprofit Alliance. Most leaders avoid giving feedback because they fear the reaction. But the real risk isn’t the conversation; it’s what happens when it never happens. Ungiven feedback doesn’t disappear. It becomes resentment, disengagement, or a surprise termination that nobody saw coming. The most generous thing you can do for someone is tell them the truth while there’s still time to do something about it.

Seven rooms. Seven groups of people doing hard, important work. Seven reminders of why I have been doing this and loving this for the last seven years!!

Which of the above most resonates with you and your experience in the working world right now? Reply and let me know!!

I’ll be back next week with something longer and more substantive. For now, I’m going to go hang out with a few hundred people, give attention to my brilliant coachees, hug my friend at her wedding, and get some REST.

With love and a very full heart,
Marissa

PSST, we have a couple of public events coming up. Be sure to check out our Leadership Renewal Retreat in St. Louis and our free pop-up, "It's Not Just You: A Conversation for Millennials Feeling Stuck."