From Amy:

Anyone who has been in my world even briefly knows that my work is about books... and yes, I do love a well-written book... and my work is about supporting real-life authors and working creatives... and / but / also there's this affective healing side I'm always paying attention to. This understanding leads people I know to make introductions of people they think I should meet. Kris Jennings was one of those people.

What interested me about Kris, and why I wanted to talk with her on my podcast, is that she managed to accomplish big leadership goals in the corporate world...while also living with anxiety. Despite that great anxiety, she supported top leaders behind the scenes... and she's built a small business despite that anxiety too. And Kris has written a book about all that. There's this myth that high-achieving people have it all together in ways that the rest of us don't, like such people are somehow more calm. In my experience, it isn't necessarily true.

Accomplishment can actually mask fears. And yet—those fears don't need to stop us from being the human leaders we're meant to be.

This conversation is about Kris's book. But this conversation is also about the very understandable fear of becoming an author, and how Kris allowed herself to do that in a way that her nervous system could handle, and I really think THAT's a topic we could stand to talk more about. Someone once told me that I had published and released my first book "wrong" because I hadn't gotten it to best-seller status on Amazon. And they missed the whole point that publishing any book at all was a really big deal for me, and that publishing my memoir WAS the accomplishment I celebrate. The fact that people wanted to read it was gravy. Nobody gets to decide your book path for you.

So while I do think that you should read Kris's book because the topic of Courageous Leadership is valuable in its own right, this episode is a master class in how you feel the fears and show up anyway, without ever needing to hide our human emotions the way we so often do.

Kris Jennings has more than three decades serving organizations during change. Her designs have helped more than a million people change their behaviors—and feel good about it. She's the author of Inspired by Fear: Becoming a Courageous Change Leader.

Best place to find Kris, learn more about her, and buy her book is on her website:

https://krisjennings.com

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kris-jennings/

Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats.

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