Pixie Dust

When my daughter Adi was seven, we were driving home from school on a misty, cold Seattle day, when, out of nowhere, Adi said, “Mom, I want Santa to bring me pixie dust. Not the fake stuff. The kind that actually makes you fly.”

Luckily, she couldn’t see my expression, which was equal parts amused (big smirk) and searching (hmmm, what am I going to say about this?). I put on my best-acting britches and tried to strike the right tone. Somewhere between pixie dust isn’t real and what do I know?

“Wouldn’t that be cool! I know Santa makes toys, but I’m not sure he can do pixie dust.”

I raised each of my hands (temporarily) off the steering wheel to contort my body into the shape of the I-don’t-know emoji.

But Adi didn’t miss a beat, “Well, Mom, maybe no one has ever ASKED before.” She said, sounding irritated with small thinkers.

Maybe no one has ever asked before…

My mind shoots back to a conversation that’s been keeping me up at night, staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. searching for an answer.

It’s a week before Adi’s pixie dust request. I’m with Darcy — my right-hand woman and second brain for all things WiRL — and we’re staring at a whiteboard with a blank org chart sketched out. CEO is at the top and all the other leadership positions spider down. We start filling out the chart with potential candidates for each leadership role: Product & Technology, Sales & Marketing, Operations, etc.

After an hour of brainstorming, Darcy points at the blank CEO position and says, “Why isn’t your name in that box?”

I was taken aback by the question (I’d never even considered the possibility of being CEO) but quick to answer.

“Honestly? I’ve never wanted to work 60–70 hours a week, be on call 24/7, and basically give up my life. That sounds hellish. I’m more than happy to give that job to someone else.” My tone was final and didn’t invite further conversations. Darcy read the signals.

“Hmmmm,” she said before promptly moving on to other matters.

At 23, Darcy hadn’t been in the corporate space long enough to adopt the unspoken rules and limited thinking that I had. Like Adi, she pushed me to question the things I thought were implicit truths.

As I recall this conversation, Adi begins drawing pictures on the foggy window in the backseat, and the fog starts to clear from my mind.

This is my company.

Maybe I can be a CEO in a way that works for me, my family, and my holistic goals. Maybe I can create a schedule that allows me to have breakfasts and dinners with my family, time to exercise, and plenty of time off to rest and still grow a thriving business. Maybe I don’t have to be one of those CEOs who works on weekends and never seems to unplug.

Maybe no one’s ever asked before…

I’d met many CEOs throughout my career. Many of them were smart, passionate, hardworking, and amazing at their jobs. And they were all in a near-constant state of stress. Pressure from investors. Pressure from the board. Working nights, weekends, and vacations. Never out of reach. Never off the clock.

They knew their work-life balance was shot. But they’d shrug and brush off any concern, “It’s part of the job. I know it’s hard on my family but this is what it takes.”

I believed them. And I didn’t want that life.

But on this day, driving Adi home and fielding questions about pixie dust, I remembered that the people who invent a system are not always the right people to fix it.

Maybe no one has ever asked before….

I thought about who defined the role of CEO, to begin with: Mostly white, upper-class men, who operated within the construct of capitalism: do more, faster, with fewer resources = more money and profits. Men who tended to have stay-at-home wives to do all the domestic work, raise the children, and make their lives operate smoothly.

Well, most of us don’t have that option, so what’s the alternative?

What if I don’t have to change who I am to be CEO? What if I’m already the leader I need to be?

I’m still driving down neighborhood roads with Adi in the backseat, slowing at each four-way intersection to avoid a fender bender, but my mind flies even further back, to the first time I had to break through limiting beliefs that were holding me back from thinking of myself as a leader.

I’m 26 and fresh off leading a 21-day Outward Bound expedition through the rivers, canyons, and mountains of Southern Utah and Colorado. That means it’s also been 21 days since I’ve had a shower. The only thing standing between me and what I know is about to be the greatest shower of my life is unpacking all the gear from the trip with my fellow instructors.

After everything is finally unloaded, cleaned, and dried, I make a beeline for my car so I can drive to the guide house and shower.

That’s when Mike Dehoff, the program director, motions for me to come into his office and says, “Hey Mitch, let’s chat.”

There is nothing I want to do less than chat right now. But this is my boss we’re talking about so I cheerily reply, “Sure! Right behind you.”

My mind is racing. Am I about to get fired? Did I fuck up on this expedition? Did someone complain about me?

We get to his office and Mike cuts right to the chase. “I want you to be the Course Director on the course that goes out next week.”

I’m stunned. “Me?” I say, looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t talking to someone else.

“You,” he says, smirking. “You’re ready for this, Mitch. The feedback on you has been strong. You are the right one to lead this.”

I swallow my fear and panic just long enough to stutter my way through a response.

“Ok. Wow! Great. Sounds good. Thanks, Mike.”

It was some of my best pretending.

I get in my car, drive to the guide house, and finally have my shower. I don’t even want to tell you how long it took for the water to run clear. I watch as 21 days’ worth of sweat, dirt, and grime pool around the already-clogged drain. I’m hoping the deep insecurity I’m feeling will wash off too.

But as I put on my one clean t-shirt and pair of shorts and walk onto the porch with dripping hair, I feel like a complete fraud. I try to stop the tears that are welling up in my eyes from falling, but I can’t.

The truth is, I’d never even thought about being a Course Director. Every Course Director I’d worked with was a man. And (with one exception) they were all incredible people who were outstanding at their jobs. They’d become some of my best friends and mentors. Could I really be one of them?

I look up and see that Adam Duerk — one of my best friends and the Course Director I admire the most — has pulled up to the house and is watching me with a confused look on his face.

He motions for me to come sit with him at the picnic table that’s in between the guide house porch and parking lot. I walk over and plop down, my hair already almost completely dried by the arid Utah heat.

“Hey, what’s going on? Are you ok?”

I almost brush him off with a “Yep! Just got some shampoo in my eyes. Guess I forgot how to shower!” But I can’t lie to Adam.

“Mike just made me Course Director,” I say morosely.

A smile bursts across his face before the confused look returns. “Wait, isn’t that a good thing?”

Through tears, I say, “No!!!! Adam, I’m not ready! I’m terrified. I will nevvvver be able to lead like you!”

His posture sinks and tears well in his eyes now. My insecurity and self-doubt were painful for him to see. He lets silence fill the air for a moment, before looking me straight in the eyes for what feels like a beat too long. Then, he leans over the picnic table and grabs both of my hot sweaty hands in his.

Warmly and confidently, with tough love oozing in this tone, he says one of the kindest and truest things I’ve ever heard.

“Mitch. You don’t have to lead like me. You just have to lead like you.”

I trust Adam. I know he wouldn’t say that unless it was true. I’ve had plenty of times in my life when reassurance didn’t do a damn bit of good. This was not one of them. His words meant a lot.

All I can manage in response is a quiet “Ok.”

We make a plan to have beers and pizza with the rest of the crew later that night, and he stands up and heads toward the house.

When he reaches the bottom of the porch stairs, he looks back with a smile.“Hey, by the way, I’m the one who told DeHoff that it should be you,” he says nonchalantly, his ratty backpack slung over his left shoulder. “I said that you were the strongest candidate to be promoted to Course Director. You’re ready, Mitch. Don’t doubt yourself. You’re stellar at what you do. You’ve earned this.”

I have no more words. Just a look that says thank you and fuck you simultaneously, which makes us both laugh.

Years later, in a graduate-level Behavioral Science course, I would discover this phenomenon had a name: Internalized oppression. We believe things about ourselves because the world believes them about us. I doubted my leadership abilities because the world doubted them.

I’d never seen a woman Course Director. I hadn’t seen many women in leadership positions period. Maybe that’s because women aren’t meant to be leaders. Maybe it’s because they can’t be. These thoughts trickled in, often subconsciously, and took root in my brain. Little by little. One limiting belief at a time. People are not born lacking confidence. We learn that. I remember the first conversation I had with my dear friend and sister-CEO, Gwen Webber-McLeod. We talked about our shared vision to uplevel women leaders and our own respective leadership journeys.

“Mitch, when I became the CEO of my company — I was the first woman and the first Black person to be in a C-suite position,” she shared. “It was wild! Employees would come to my office and linger just outside in the hallway. They’d stare through the glass as if I was some kind of exotic animal at the zoo.”

I shared with Gwen that not long after being promoted to Course Director, I was leading an LCR course (Life, Career, Renewal) with adult “students” twice my age when one of them (a kind doctor from Chicago) confessed that he was in shock on day one when I stepped onto the bus to greet everyone. “Mitch, seeing a woman leading the course was shocking to me. After you introduced yourself and started giving us instructions, I lost the ability to hear what you were saying for a bit. My brain was confused and had to reconcile what I was seeing.” He waited three days to tell me this until I’d earned his respect and he was sure of my competence. He must have been a recovering Catholic like me because he seemed compelled to come clean on his bias. I was grateful. I saw his confession as a gift. It made me realize that the self-doubt I sometimes felt did not only live in me. It lived in others. Perceptions, like feelings, are contagious.

My insecurity was not my fault in a world where people (in some industries) are shocked to see a woman in a position of power.

It took me a long time — too long — to discover that I was measuring “right” by the wrong yardstick. The world’s predominant definition and perception of a “great leader” was a social construct. It was too narrowly defined. It did not include me and other white women who looked like me. It did not include Gwen and other Black women who looked like her. It did not include BIPOC people, by and large. And the world was suffering because of this all-too-narrow definition.

“Mom, how many more days before Santa comes?”

Adi’s voice jerks me out of this firehose of aha’s and back to the car with my pixie-dust-loving daughter.

I put my fingers up to indicate I’m calculating the days, but really I’m ruminating on a different question instead.

How many more people are going to have to tell me I’m a leader before I believe it myself?

“13 days, baby. So soon!”

The next day, I walk into the office and greet Darcy with a smile and a latte. I head straight to the whiteboard, grab a marker, and fill in the only empty box left on the org chart: Mitch Shepard, CEO.

Mitch Shepard is a Chief Truth-Teller, a trusted coach & adviser to some of the world’s top leaders, an applied behavioral scientist, an author, a passionate world traveler, a leader of life-changing Leadership Retreats, a sought-after speaker, a recovering Catholic, and an ass-kicker of cancer.

She lives in Seattle with her four favorite people on the planet (Brad, Adi, and Ben), and her dog (Gilly) who acts like a human.