Welcome to the celebrate brave podcast. 

I’m Nicole Trick Steinbach, your host, and the international bravery coach. On a mission to redefine brave. How we identify it, live it, and most importantly, celebrate it. Because when you build your brave, you change your world and that changes the world. Talk about something to celebrate. Let’s go.

Hello, brave people. I am so excited to welcome, Jenn Whitmer not Vidmar. American, not German, Nicole. Hello? Hello. Whitmer. To our…. . This is going to be so fun. Okay. You were already getting a sense of why I had to have her on here. We actually met each other a year ago almost to the day. We were both speaking at an event and there were a lot of speakers and there were some fantastic speakers and Jenn’s energy just leaped out to me. Her story at the time, I was like, wow, that’s so amazing. Then, I learned more of it and even recently I learned the depth of the transformation and was like, Holy moly. We are, we’re recording this and we’re sharing this cause talk about bravery. And so Jenn actually was in education for 20 years, which means she’s way more brave than me. I love my children. My children are fantastic and they go to school for a reason. This is not my thing. And in education, she experienced a pretty toxic environment, pretty rough situation. Incredible depth of experience there. That is just, it’s just eyeing because she was so invested in education she didn’t know where to go from there. But, and this is amazing. She learned the golden thread. No more red nonsense. We’re talking golden now guys. Golden thread is making complicated things, simple and heavy things light. It was the most freeing choice. And now, and we’re going to spend most of our time here, but now she actually supports other people in their learning choices, their difficult choices, through navigating conflict. And everybody knows that I’m a fan of conflict, you know, just learning about themselves so they can make that next choice. I’m going to do a plug at the very beginning. Y’all need to watch her LinkedIn videos. For real, like, I don’t watch many videos. Hers are a blast. Okay. So, Jenn welcome. Is there anything you want to add?

Thanks for having me after that introduction. I’m like, Oh, do I have to tell my story? That was so good. It was really good. 

So, but to your story, Can you share that? Wow. Yeah. It’s it’s transformational. Would you mind sharing with our audience, how you made this enormous leap? 

Yeah. So, you know, I’m going to give you the robust reader’s digest version. That’s what we’re going to call it.

So, so there are generations coming up right now that don’t know what a reader’s digest is. And I think that this is really, really sad. 

Totally true. 

Ok, robust reader’s digest.

 I just totally aged myself, the robust SparkNotes. How about that, there we go. I do live with gen Z. I do know how that goes. Uh, so I, as a really little kid wanted to be a teacher, totally had the Barbie dolls and the stuffed animals. Teaching them and very excited about teacher supply stores just for fun when I was 10. And so I always wanted to be in education. I started my career in a K eight building and I love teaching middle school. They were my favorites. And I firmly believe that if you can manage 13 and 12-year-olds, you’re good, great. And I really enjoyed the, those age groups. And then I had several children really fast. So I had three kids in three years, which meant teaching on a teaching salary was just a little bit much. So I stayed home for a couple of years and we had another, our little bookend. So we had four kids and I had the opportunity to go back into education as an administrator. It was this beautiful opportunity to be at my children’s private school. Um, I’d come from public and moving to private education and really getting to shape and influence what they were learning and really support their teachers. And I just loved leading in that capacity. So we had created in this really special school an environment in a city that’s fairly racially divided a really diverse community that was trying to care for one another and embrace the diversity intentionally and steward it well. And we were really academically excellent. The US department of education awarded us a blue ribbon as a blue ribbon school, which has only afforded 50 private schools a year. It was just fantastic. It was an ideal place for me to serve. We had a change of leadership that happened and things started to get a little interesting and over time.

Ding, ding, ding. 

And so we thought we had built this really amazing culture, which we had, and we had a leadership team of five people that was, as one of us joked, she would always say, you know, y’all we could run a university. And we really did. We had amazing skills. We were passionate about what we did. We loved kids. We’d love to teachers and we really embraced all the best practices to serve our parents and our students. And in this change of leadership now, looking back, the red flags are like ginormous um, signals, but at the moment, at the time it was, Oh, okay well maybe it’s just a different way. Oh, okay. Well, I guess maybe I haven’t had other experiences like this, so maybe this is the better way, but it never felt right. I like my intuition and I have learned to pay attention to that. But in this particular environment, it was almost called out to say, you’re just jumping to conclusions. That was never said directly, but that was the underhanded, passive, aggressive communication. And in the way it came out was you need to assume the best. And I was like, gosh, I really feel like I’m assuming the best. I just disagree with the method here. Like this doesn’t sound like it’s going to support the goals and mission and vision of the school, but it was never personal. It was always about that. And then it did change to be more personal, not in the way the leader chose to execute and the way the leader chose to manage and not lead. The way the leader chose to not lead. And the biggest symptom of the issue was conflict. And it came out in all kinds of ways. And again, looking back, I’m like, good Lord, Jennifer, what were you doing? 

But don’t, we all look at our first boyfriend slash girlfriend that way too. Like what was happening? 

So I was just like, Oh, okay but it was conflict. He just felt like there was all this conflict in the building and there was professional disagreement and there were a few personal things that started to escalate, but they were escalating because the leader wasn’t making choices, the leader wasn’t being clear, there was kind of like, well, what do you think there was a lot of. Like not making firm decisions that lead to more conflict because nobody felt secure. And so conflict was outsourced. Like, will you handle that? Well, we need to bring in an expert because conflict so bad, we need to bring in this person. And so over time, that conflict symptom was the acute need. You know, when you’ve got a cold and you’re like, I just have to breathe. I know that I’m not going to kill this virus. I just need to breathe. And that was the acute symptom. Was this conflict. And. In his lack of skill was so insecure. It started to come out as an attack and the biggest attack…..

 Oh, Oh one second. Say that again. 

In his lack of skill, he began to attack because of his own insecurity.

Y’all write that down, write it down. 

And that can happen to all of us if I get insecure and I don’t deal with my own stuff, I am also going to do that. And in fact, in that time I started recognizing in myself, I’m like, there’s something deeper here. And that’s when I first discovered the Enneagram, which is a personality framework that was really helpful to me. And that’s when I started looking at my own triggers and my own fears and, and recognizing that even in the best of times if this man were really healthy and a greatly skilled leader, we probably would have had some great professional disagreements. But because of the lack of skill, because of the lack of security, his own self-awareness was so deeply lacking. We didn’t have great professional disagreements. It turned into his personal attack of me being a scapegoat. Other people were always to blame the red flags exist. And so I want to say some of them. So if you’re in situations like this, you understand. So when blame is happening, When there’s no clear path to resolution of any kind, when there aren’t clear decisions, there’s constant. Well, let’s wait and think about that. Or there is triangulated communication and here’s what that means. I would have a meeting with the head of the school. Another fellow leader would have a meeting with the head of school about the same topic. And he would tell us different things. And then we would come together and say, wait, that’s not what we heard like this constant him playing other people off of each other. So he was never to blame. It was like, well, you guys disagree. And we’re like, We, we, we don’t, we just talked about this. And so we’re coming now to you together and the deflection. So those are some big red flags, some of the other things that happened as he started to silo us, we weren’t allowed to have certain conversations with certain other leaders and we weren’t allowed to talk to the board.

What? 

Yeah. So before we’d been a very collaborative working environment. So if communication had a question or I, as director of assessment, we collaborated about that. Like, what do you see from your perspective? What am I missing? Because I’m not the communication director. Okay. I’m going to communicate this. What I don’t see is I’m not a parent in that area because on the team, we also, we’re all, almost all parents of every grade level. So we could really have this great 360 approach and we then were not allowed to have some of those conversations. And by not allowed, it was never that clear because remember lack of clarity, it was just kind of passively, just not getting invited to meetings. 

I think it would be better if we focused on the participation of this meeting, do we really need to have knowledge and comms and dev and consulting and sales in the same meeting. Couldn’t we focus that in….. 

Yes. 

Yeah. That is not focusing on every situation. Often it’s silo-ing, it’s dividing triangulation, lack of decisiveness. Oh girl, I love that you were just giving us this bullet list of red flags. 

The last really, well there were two really big ones that happened. One was, we were not allowed to talk to the board. So if we went to our direct supervisor and then we came together as a team to the supervisor, you know, usually the next step is if we can’t resolve this, which is a totally appropriate conflict resolution response is to then talk to a higher authority. Once you’ve moved up the chain, you don’t skip them, give them the opportunity. But after three years of opportunity, we wanted to like, Hey, this is really a problem. And we were literally not allowed to you talk to the board. And what we found out later, is that he was telling the board all kinds of things that was slightly different than what he was telling the people running the school. 

And everybody that’s listening. We know that I focus on technology. This is so common in middle size to large organizations. I worked directly under the board of a Fortune 20 company. And there was this idea that you weren’t allowed to talk to them. In reality, everyone can talk to everyone. And this idea is actually a sign of missing skills leading into insecurity, which leads to attacks. Oh my gosh. This is so transferrable. Okay. Okay. Keep going. I just love this. 

So, yeah, and also it was a shift. This is the gaslighting. Well, what you don’t understand or, well, what you don’t understand is, and then tell us something that didn’t quite happen. Or well at my last place, and it was kind of a constant. And we did call him on it. So like, some people are like, well, why didn’t you tell them? I put it in my reviews. I said it in meetings, we said it in group meetings, like it was a constant piece of communication. Like this is an issue and it is impacting our work. Not, we don’t like you, this is what’s impacting our work.

And how did you know? Because part of the thing that I loved about your presentation a year ago, you were like, and so at some point, it’s not about the system. It’s not about these other people. I have to make the choice that’s right for me. How did you know, I love this school, I love what we created, I love these kids, I’m making a difference, I’m investing in my city that is, you know, doing all the things cities do. How did you know it was time? How did you make that transformational step? Because you’re way outside of your city, your way out of one school, your way out of one system, and you are investing and transforming so many lives. How did you make that shift? 

Well, I love the question, and I want to say that it was over time. So like, I think people are like, you just make the decision one day and it’s done. Well, I think there is a moment where you realize, I don’t think the decision is always instant and so. Again, kind of long story short after an explosion, a literal, shouting explosion of that, and then a large mediation meeting where it happened again.

Whoa. 

And nobody else is responding that way. But our white male leader is allowed to respond to that way. Then I was fired. And then offered this really strange position, mostly because of the last reason of a red flag that his wife was involved in knowing all of the intimate details of these meetings that we were having. So, which is actionable, like that’s something you could retain counsel for. And so it was kind of like, Hey, if I eliminate your position, then give you the strange job then I’m not firing you, but I got fired. But at the time my husband wasn’t working. So we had no other income. So I felt powerless, which wasn’t true, but that was the emotion. Just emphasizing that for people that you do feel powerless. Even though you’re not. So I just empathize with that so much.

And Jenn this is a part, I have never shared this on my podcast. That’s actually part of my story as well. My husband was a stay-at-home dad in a foreign country. We’d moved back to the States and when it was time for me to go, I was in the same shoes. And I did, I felt powerless. I think that’s really common. So we share that. I just want to honor that you were so brave to just share that because I’ve never shared that on this podcast. So thank you. 

Well, thank you for sharing. I think it’s so much more common than we think, even if your husband doesn’t have a job, but the feeling of feeling powerless like that emotion is so universal. And then, so for about six months, I started interviewing people like just doing these informational interviews. I went back to school because teachers do this, like, I don’t know what to do so I’m going to go get another master’s degree. That’s what teachers do. And so I was interviewing people and asking them questions and they were giving me back great questions. And this is the golden thread that I discovered from talking to them because they were like, what do you do well? what do you always get complimented on? What do you love? And it was that idea of making complicated things simple and heavy things light. I was the director of assessment. If I could stand a group of 200 parents and get them to laugh about statistics and testing, I feel like I’ve got a skill.

As a parent, I don’t understand it. So yeah, you have got a huge skill. . 

And to make people get on board and get excited about standardized testing and making sure that it’s used well, that’s, not this, you know, anyway we go about starting assessing, but like making sure that it’s great, that was a skill and I didn’t know that I had. And then the final straw of the decision where I was like, I have to take my power back was when there was a lack of integrity. There was something that happened that had to do with some grant money. And I was like, I can not be associated with this any longer. And so I left and the turning in of my resignation was I felt giddy. And, he was livid, he was livid because he thought he’d been so nice. Like he was like, I’ve been so kind to you. I’ve been so generous. I didn’t have to do this. And now you’re telling the board. Because in my resignation letter, I said, I’m giving you this. This is a copy of the letter that it’s already been sent to the board. I scheduled it to send at the beginning of our meeting. So they have this and this is what I’m going to send.

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. I am pulling that. I am pulling that up because so many of the women and men that I work with do not understand there is a strategy. To escalating a conflict and a resignation. So you walked into?

 I walked into a  standing meeting.

 A standing meeting and you had already scheduled to communicate to the final decision-makers. In this case, it was a board, your resignation with the same content that the individual who was managing you received. 

Exactly. 

Y’all, again, take note take note, because, in every situation of triangulation, this is how you create the clarity and the transparency of your values and your integrity. Yes. And this is so common. Well, I was good to you. You’re a woman. I actually literally had someone say, I passed you over for promotion because you have two little ones at home. And HR told me I was lucky to be so cared for.

 Oh, you know, luck like a punch in the eye. 

And I said, I actually said to him, Did I ask you to be my father?

I love you. 

Okay. So you’re resigning and you’ve got this giddy and he’s upset. And then?

I drove through our city singing the greatest showman. I was so free and it was.

Keala Settle and  I are like besties because I’m belting it with her. Because this is me. And one of the lines in that, it was like, I’m not going to let the shame sink in because he was a dealer in shame. And even in the very last meeting, he was trying to shame. And I’m like, no. I am giving you the same information. I’m not telling them something different. I mean, he busted out of that school, got on the phone, walked down the street. I mean, it was a tantrum. Which I was not shocked because I’d seen this behavior before, but that was the red flag that I didn’t pay attention to so long ago. So watching that happen felt like my power and my boundary and my agency in mind life. Now it’s back. Like, I have made the decision that’s good for us. So in that process of all of those months, like I said it wasn’t instant. I was on my couch, sobbing and in tears, after a meeting that he exploded on me. Like, why am I even a parent? I am such a worm of a person if I can’t even cope with this. And that’s how I felt after experiencing that type of wrath. And I’m not somebody who’s like, cause it was so personal. It was so personal and personally attacking about eight months later, being like, here are the reasons I’m leaving. Here’s the opportunity you have to connect. You need to work with me in this very refined space because I know that you don’t have somebody else to do that. And here’s what I’m telling the board. It’s all the same. Thank you. So from there, there was so much freedom away from the grey couch to being like this is me, you know, like we’re just doing it. It was so far apart. And then, then it was terrifying because, Oh my gosh, now I’ve leaped and I’m in the middle of the air. I have the power, but Oh crap. Now, what am I doing? So I also want to share that too, that it feels amazing and it was right. And it was good, but it was also terrifying because I didn’t know really what was coming. And then, so over time I started working as a writing coach and started changing and really studying the Enneagram and studying conflict resolution because that was that acute symptom again. I was like so many people can’t see the lack of skill of a leader or the insecurity of the leader because the surface level conflict is so great. It’s usually a symptom of something deeper, but sometimes it’s just lack of like, Oh, we don’t have to talk to each other and we need some help about this. And then as I was doing that conflict resolution work, discovering that all of those things I was studying and learning about myself with the Enneagram kept coming out in conflict. Because conflict is never just about the one issue. Conflict is always because there are limited resources and differing goals and those differing goals happen because we’re people. So when you’ve got the limited resources, which are always like time, money, and people. Almost always, it comes back to those things, but then you have people who think differently about how you should spend those resources. Then you have a conflict and underneath that are our own fears our own triggers. What if I’m rejected? What if I’m taken advantage of? What if I don’t know enough? What if I don’t achieve? That’s always a part of it. And if we’re unaware of it, then it has this really out-sized impact on the conflict and you can’t focus on actually, how do we solve the fact that we have limited resources? It’s now about my own fears, but when we notice our fears, that’s how I use the Enneagram., When we notice that, We notice how we start to approach things and how other people think very differently, then we can change our posture and it becomes, okay, it’s the two of us together trying to solve this resource problem or this other issue that’s outside of us, but we’re on a team together because now we know and can respect and care for each other. So in that way is how I help leaders and teams to work together because I never want them to have a grey couch moment. Where they feel like they’re worthless because somebody has resorted to shame and attacking because they don’t know what they’re doing either. 

Yeah, only yellow couches. Purple couches, blue. We want, we want a colorful couch. 

I do love my grey couch, It’s very cozy. I just didn’t like crying on it.

I get that and I do not have a colorful couch yet. It’s a goal in my life. So when I was still in corporate and I still do some consulting around this now I do not focus on conflict. I focus on change. And so there are times when conflict arises and I personally see conflict as creation. Destruction, but also creation. one of the things and I’m wondering if you just gave me the language. One of the things that really would irritate me is when, particularly people in power, not necessarily authority, but power, would say let’s just focus on the content. And as a change manager and as a human, I would say yes, totally. And, you know we’ve got people in the room and so I hear you on the content. So now that you’re helping all these organizations, how do you navigate those situations where people are saying, let’s just focus on the content. 

I try to describe it to people like an archeological dig. Because there are layers that you have to get through multiple layers to see at the end of an archeological dig, you know, sometimes they find all this treasure or they uncover a still-standing city, you know, they have all this kind of thing, or they might reconstruct that in a museum later. But to get to the bottom, you have to shift and sift and kind of like, what are the layers? Cause sometimes there’s process conflict. Sometimes there is a structural issue. Sometimes there is resource management. Those are all the limited resources. The differing goals are the fears. And so those impact. What you’re doing, you can’t pretend all that dirt isn’t there. And then just pull out that beautiful gold plate in the bottom of the archeological dig, you have to sift through them. It’s required. And that does not mean people are being unprofessional. Now there are standards and norms of how we express our emotions or how we express what we think or what we want to do. But. That is being people. And so in the Enneagram, we teach there are three centers of intelligence. There’s a body gut center. What are you as an action center. There’s a heart center, which is our emotions. And then there’s an intelligence, a logic center, a head center. And so all three of those working together give us really balanced perspective on dealing with the content. That’s how we’re designed. And so if you can approach it, like, okay, what do we think about this? How do we feel about this? I feel nervous. I feel excited. I feel disconcerted. I feel insecure. Okay. So where does that come from? And then we use our thinking and then what do we want to do? What are the plans that we want to create? And if you can get that from every person who all think differently, the diversity of thought and perspective leads to better solutions. And so to pretend that interpersonal conflict is just about the content is shortchanging the great solution you could have in front of you. 

I am taking notes. I have literally just taking notes, you know, what do you think? What do you feel? 

Those are the buckets. 

And in short, you’re so right. It shortchanges the potential solutions. 

Yeah. So from lots and lots of pain, that’s still happening somewhat to this day, years later, the effects of that leader are still happening. In this organization and actually in my own family’s life. And it’s really challenging, and I just never want that to happen again because again, it short changes what the great solution is. My personal Enneagram type is very much an idealist, so I’m always like, Oh, let’s go for that really great, great thing. Let’s make it all win. And sometimes it doesn’t and that’s what was so hard about leaving. That’s what hit my heart as an idealist of like, Oh, I failed, I didn’t make it happen. But you said something to me one time that was like, I don’t own that. And I don’t owe it to them. So powerful. And so I think that like when I work with teams and clients, that’s always, what I’m trying to help them do is gain the skill to have the self-agency and the self-leadership to be great solution providers, to be great engaged employees, to be great leaders because we need that full self-awareness and the skills to manage conflict, to get to great solutions.

Absolutely. One of the things I really value in the Enneagram is that it has given me language to help prep people. So I, y’all will be so surprised mine is referred to by many people as the challenger. 

I call them the protective challengers. How about that? The protective challenger. 

Cool. I’m in. It also translates in other languages into the revolutionary. Isn’t that fascinating? And I’m like, yup. I mean, literally, I went down the list and I read the names in English and then in German. And I was like, I am pretty sure I am this one, just by the label. And then I did like all the prep work and things, and it has helped me because it gives me a language to say, For example, I just started a new consulting thing and I was able to say that to the team, Hey, this is where I’m from I lived in Germany for 13 years. I have two kids. I live here, I do this, and then say, and there’s this thing called the Enneagram, some of you might know about it, but I’m just going to let you know that I’m the challenger. So when I come and I challenge and I question, and I’m curious, it’s always with this intention to make things better. And so anytime you feel, maybe like I’ve asked, you know, so many questions, it’s because I’m making things better and I’m so excited to work with you. And people have a very different response to that when I have the language to it. 

Absolutely. 

It is like you said, with the content. Like the language of that is so powerful.

That’s what I think one of the greatest gifts of the Enneagram is, is it gives us vocabulary to describe our inner world because we’re swimming in it. We’re like, what is this? It’s a fish in water. It’s the same kind of concept about culture. How do you describe culture? Organizational culture and family culture and national cultures. It’s hard to get language around it. And the Enneagram gives us language. Describe this inner world that we just think is normal. What we realize is, Oh, wait. Other people actually think, feel, and do life differently than I do, and it’s not wrong. But how do I describe what I feel, think, and do. To them when it’s foreign, not only do we not have the words to describe what’s around us all the time, like culture, then somebody else is like a foreign language. So the Enneagram gives us this common translation of how we can describe our inner worlds that brings so much power to teams, to relationships, even to our own just thought life of like, Oh, that’s what’s happening inside of me. It creates that agency even internally. 

I don’t even know how to follow that up. That was gorgeous. Gorgeous. I’m just like, yeah mic  dropping, 

Oh no these mics are expensive, we are not dropping them.

So question. And this will be the last question I have. Whose a model of bravery for you, who is someone that, that lives brave for you? 

I’m going to choose a really personal example of somebody I don’t know. My great grandparents left Italy, left Sicily when right in the middle of world war one and got on a boat and left for America and they never returned. They were the people that literally came with their child. And my grandfather was six. They came with their child and everybody had a suitcase and that’s it. And they left the world they knew behind. And I think about that in the tapestry of my life, of where I am and them landing on Ellis Island and their names getting changed and then moving to the middle of the United States and who I am and where I am, because they made a choice to leave a mountain village on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. And the bravery, it took to leave their family and never see them again because they knew that there was something. That was where they were called to, that they felt would be better, is always still so amazing to me. Cause it’s not the same if I decided to move to another country now, which I would still love to do. I mean, I’m going to hop on a plane fly, and left. I mean, that’s no big deal. I’m texting and FaceTime and all the things, like we all know how to zoom and all of that, but they didn’t have any of that. My life would not be what I have today if they had not done that. And I just think, I think back to that bravery a lot. And even though I never met them, they died before I was born. I think about them and that example of bravery.

And that lines up so wonderfully to what you do in the world now. Your idealism.

They got on that boat and they didn’t know what was coming off the cliff either. I said, you know, I left and I didn’t know what was coming. But having faith to know that there’s good coming my way, even if it feels really scary right now. 

Oh, you are a gift. You are a gift. All right. Yeah. I’m telling you, follow on LinkedIn. At least watch the videos. They will give you a huge smile. Where else can people get into contact with you and benefit from your wisdom? 

Yes, LinkedIn and Instagram are where I play the most. On my website, if you go to Jen whitmer.com/freebies, I usually have some kind of free workshop running once a month. And some other downloads you can get about how to apologize, 20 helpful phrases, and difficult conversations. There’s some free download things for you there. 

What! 

I know, and if you’d like, I would love to invite people into my private Facebook group called the women leader circle. It’s a free community. It’s not a paid community, but it’s a free community. And we talk about using the Enneagram for life and business and how do we grow and become better self-aware leaders. That’s what we do. So I’d love that. 

Well, I will see y’all there. I am joining. That sounds exciting. How did I miss that? That’s so fun. Thank you so much. And I hope y’all had a pen and paper and took notes. That’s all I am going to say, all right, take care. Bye.

Bye. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the celebrate brave podcast.

If you’re ready to build your brave, to live a life you love, and create a career that matters to you. Reach out! Together we can spend time one-on-one to explore how I can help you. And until then share this episode with people in your life. People who can join our movement. To redefine brave how we identify it, experience it, and celebrate it.