This is a recorded session from the 2025 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Taking on a leadership role comes with high expectations. What happens when you step into a position that feels larger than you imagined—meaning you must guide a team while grappling with imposter syndrome and uncertainty? In this session, leaders share their experiences of moving into roles that stretched their skills and pushed them far outside their comfort zones. They’ll discuss how discomfort can be a catalyst for growth and how embracing vulnerability, cultivating a growth mindset, and building trust allowed them to navigate new roles with confidence.
Speakers:
- Axel Estable, Director of Operations, Natural History Museum of Utah
- Stephen Ashton, Senior Director of the Butterfly Biosphere and Curiosity Farms
- Rayanne Darensbourg, Chief Executive Officer, Children’s Museum Houston
- Ken Wesler, CEO/COO, Universal Services Associates
- Paul Martin, Co-Director CIISL, Arizona State University
Additional Resources:
Handout from Out of Our Depth: Navigating Discomfort, Growth, and Trust in Leadership
Transcript
Axel Estable:
Good morning, everyone. I’m Axel Estable, I am with the Natural History Museum of Utah. And we are so excited to talk about leading from a place of discomfort, and what it feels like to sometimes be out of our depths, especially after a promotion, or a new job, but also in plenty of other situations. I already see somebody nodding in understanding, so, great.
So, thank you for being here very early at 8:30. I would just like to introduce my co-panelists. So first, we have Paul Martin, who is the co-director of the Center for Innovation in Informal STEM Learning at Arizona State University. We have Stephen Ashton, who is the senior director of the Butterfly Biosphere, and Curiosity Farms at Thanksgiving Point. Rayanne Darensbourg, who is the CEO of the Children’s Museum of Houston. And Ken Wesler, who is the CEO of… I can never remember the exact name.
Ken Wesler:
Universal Services Associates.
Axel Estable:
Universal Services Associates. Thank you. So, leading outside of our comfort zone, I’m sure that many of you have been there. Who is there now, leading outside of your depth? I only see one… Okay. All right. More people are raising their hands. You wouldn’t be here if everybody was completely okay with the position that they’re in right now. So a couple of months ago when Stephen and I were still colleagues, and we worked at the same level in the same organization for several years, and full disclosure, I am now in a different position, and I have been in that position at the Natural History Museum of Utah for 87 days, so I have three more days to finish my 90-day plan. But Stephen and I were chatting one day, and I always thought that Stephen was completely cool as a cucumber, and always very serene in meetings, while I was going home every night and screaming in a pillow for five minutes.
So, we chatted, we had lunch together, and I told Stephen candidly, “I don’t know if I can do this.” This sounded like such a good idea at the time. And Stephen said, “I know, me too.” And so, I thought that there is something to learn with each other and from each other about being at a place of discomfort, how to grow, how to learn when a promotion or a new job, that sounded like a really good idea at the time. Turns out to be a lot more than you thought.
First, so I know that most of you are in that place, but one thing I’d like to know is also where in your career you are. So, we have a live survey that may or may not work. Okay. All right, here we go. So, if you don’t mind scanning this QR code and just letting us know where you are in your career, just what your experience level is, and then you can use the same QR code to ask questions, and just type them in. You’ll see an audience Q&A there, and we’ll see them, and rather than having people step up, we can just answer the questions that we see on the screen.
Okay, lots of mid-career, established. Okay. Mid-career. I know it’s a tough place to be when expectations are starting to build up, and it feels very intimidating to need to meet those expectations. We all have different pathways and different positions, so we’re going to have this conversation about where our pathways came and are going, and how we’re responding to these expectations. So, I’d like to start with Rayanne. Sorry. So, Rayanne is the CEO of the Children’s Museum, and stepped into this position after the previous CEO had been there for 27 years. So, can you tell us about that transition?
Rayanne Darensbourg:
I now can breathe easier now that it’s been… I’m still counting in months. So now that it’s been 36, 37 months. But at the front-end, there were a lot of challenges. You have a leader that was there 27 years, a culture that… Solid, a very successful museum, large as well, looking at a million visitors. A combination of guests and our outreach coming out of COVID, a shrunken team. And also, my board had just adopted a new strategic plan about two months before I arrived.
So those were some of the challenges, but when I think about looking back on it on reflection, what has made it so successful? First, I would say, having the strategic plan turned out to be a real solid success, because it gave a framework. It told me that the board was not in conflict to our mission, or there was clear direction, which helped me have a platform to build on my staff, and build relationships, because then I could use it as a means to say, “Hey, you guys, let’s build this together. We have a road, but we don’t… We get to define what the lanes look like, how fast they will go, how slow, how we prioritize.” So, it actually turned out to be a really strong foundation for my listening sessions, and engagement with the team.
Axel Estable:
And did you come from the museum field before?
Rayanne Darensbourg:
No. I did not come from the museum field at all, and I was a new CEO, I did not come from another organization where I was a CEO, so I was constantly dealing with a lot of self-doubt, and literally visceral reactions. My health took a little bit of a nosedive at the beginning, and I had a lot of anxiety and anxiousness, and it took me about a good 6 to 8 months to figure out that, one, there was high trust in me from the board and from the team, and that my lived experiences were valuable. I had to really figure that out in ways that would lead me to be successful. I realized that I looked and had a background that was similar to our visitors, and that made a world of difference.
So, our museum, about 35 to 40% are a community that comes to the museum free of charge, and access is a huge part of what we do. And for me, the more I learned to embrace that, “Rayanne, you are a first-time college student, you are an immigrant to this country, your family… You’ve navigated some family struggles to get where you were.” And I saw that as a strength. So that’s not going to be everyone’s strength, but what I would say is that it’s very important early on to know your strengths, and to know how to make them work. And two tools I’ll offer that I found to be very helpful with StrengthsFinder and VIA. I think the combination of those two, and the tools that they give you to understand who you are as a leader, and then be able to create some really strong strategies around that, it was helpful for me, and I would share that with all of you.
Axel Estable:
So, you gave us some tips to work with the board, which can be very intimidating. How do you also engage with your team?
Rayanne Darensbourg:
So for my team, my approach was that, one, I knew, and I would say all of you, if you’re taking on a new role, you are entering into this with believing that you are in a successful organization, an organization that shines, and an organization that you’re connected to their mission. Don’t forget that. And that must mean that the team members there have led the museum to success, so lean into that, lean into the things that have been so powerful, and resist the urge to be a change agent, unless you were hired to be that change agent for an organization.
Resist that urge, and really spend some time in really solid listening, and learning, and building trust. And that looks differently for us, but again, I’d say leaning into your strengths to do that is important. But don’t forget your board, if you are in that role with your board. I have 40 board members and 60 advisory board members. That is a lot of relationships to manage, but what I found is, when I got in there early and knowing their why matters. Not talking about the business side of what you’re doing, but really understanding what motivates them, what keeps them engaged, who are friends in their circle that they would introduce you to. Use them as that advisory capacity. Really engaging them early on in those conversations will help build stronger relationships.
Axel Estable:
So, at this point, you’ve been in this position for how long? 30-
Rayanne Darensbourg:
36 months.
Axel Estable:
So, three years. What do you find to ground you or inspire you at the Children’s Museum of Houston?
Rayanne Darensbourg:
The things that ground me really strongly is our mission and our families. I think about myself as a child, I think of myself as an early learner, and the fact that we’re just able to build curiosity in really powerful ways that others in the community just cannot. I think of schools, I think of all the other things that are happening in our Houston space. And the things that we do are so different, and unique, and complimentary. I don’t view others as competitors, but really complimentary to what the community needs and all, and that has given me strength with our team.
Axel Estable:
And have you, in the last 36 months, have you set a new culture for your team, and changed the… Or reorient the workplace dynamics?
Rayanne Darensbourg:
I have, and I don’t say it because I think I have, I’m intentional about 360 reviews. So annually, for my review, my board reviews me, but also my team members, those that are direct reports to me. So that in itself was a cultural change to give me the feedback, and also for me to receive it, and for me to use that for my next year in terms of setting my objectives, my priorities, high self-awareness, and also high reflecting moments with my team. That’s a cultural shift, but also it sets the expectations for my managing directors, that they are also to use that type of feedback with their teams as well.
Axel Estable:
And how have you brought your own personality and personality traits to change that culture also?
Rayanne Darensbourg:
I love what I do, and I think that’s important for everyone to have that grounding. And that joy of experience has to come from you as a leader for your team to have that as well. I’m not sure what’s on the screen or not, I can’t see. As we were putting this together, I was sharing with the team that one of the mantras that I have lived by, and I keep in front of me is Kahlil Gibran. There was a quote early on that I wrote that work is love made visible. And I think it’s important, and for me, it’s been about treating your work as a tangible expression, just not a means to an end, and emphasizing the importance of finding meaning and satisfaction with your team as well.
I would say that we all are very focused on visitor experience, and that engagement for those that we serve, but what does that look like for us to be of service to each other as team members? How do you live that in a way that you know it will then roll down to how you serve your community, has been something that I have found very impactful.
Axel Estable:
Work is love made visible. I think that it’s a wonderful mantra to have. Thank you. Anything you’d like to add? Any last lesson that you’d like to share?
Rayanne Darensbourg:
I’m still navigating discomfort, it’s real. I think some things that have challenged and continue is, when you’re in rapid growth, for example, we’re in capital campaign, but it’s silent, but you can’t be silent, how do you… Navigating those things are really odd in the community. I’d also say navigating anticipation, when your community desires you do more and so forth, how do you hold back without showing everything? Because you don’t want people to burn out early. Especially if you’re in long phases, 5 to 10 years of growth, you don’t want to tell everyone everything early on, because you don’t know it either. So how do you just kind of dial it up, dial it up, where people are… They want to know more, but you can’t give more at the same time. So, you’ll always navigate discomfort, it’ll just look differently at different times.
Axel Estable:
Great. Thank you.
Stephen Ashton:
All right, Axel, are you ready for this?
Axel Estable:
Yeah, absolutely.
Stephen Ashton:
Okay. So, I had the great privilege of working with Axel for… How many years were you at Thanksgiving Point?
Axel Estable:
Six and a half years.
Stephen Ashton:
So, six and a half years, and then just recently he went to the Natural History Museum of Utah. We miss him deeply; he has been so wonderful at Thanksgiving Point. I’d love for you to share with all of us, Axel, what’s been your pathway? And how did you get to your position that you’re in now?
Axel Estable:
So it’s been a gradual climb, and every time that I had a new position, from supervisor, to manager, to director, and now to another director, but in a different branch, because I was in education and facilitation for most of my 14-year career, and now I’m in operations. And so, there’s a lot to learn, it’s a very steep learning curve, but I love a challenge, and I love learning. I consider that if you’re not learning, then you’re really doing something wrong. You should really stay curious all the time and challenge yourself. So, every time, it’s been intimidating. Sometimes I’ve had moments like I was sharing earlier where I thought, “What have I done? It sounded like such a good idea at the time, and now I don’t know how to handle this.” But this is how you grow, it’s always outside of your comfort zone that you grow.
Stephen Ashton:
Awesome. And now that you’re in this new position, can you tell us a little bit about some of the tools that you’re now using?
Axel Estable:
So yeah, like I said, I’m still at the end of my first three months in this new position, so it’s something that I have to learn… Where I have a lot to learn. I am in charge now of facilities, I was in charge before of an interpretation education team, and now I have to learn how to read architectural blueprints, and talk with construction crews, or contractors, and know about the different kinds of light fixtures, et cetera. So, I’m consider myself very much in a learning phase right now, and sometimes… And my… I don’t want to call him my boss, but the person to whom I report is here in the room, so I hope that he won’t think less of me for saying that.
But I recognize that there’s a whole lot that I don’t know about this new position, but that there was a reason why I was hired. And because I may not have all the information, but I have some of the expertise and experience that is required to be in that position. I have skills like critical thinking, and systems thinking, et cetera. And so, gathering information about this specific position is, I wouldn’t say ancillary, but it’s secondary to all that experience. And so, like Rayanne was saying, just know your strengths, and lean into them, understand why it was that you were hired. The team who hired me knew perfectly well that I didn’t have experience with facilities and with construction but saw something that I could bring to the table. So, understanding that, leaning into it really helps keeping a clear head, and then being in an information gathering mode for a really long time.
Stephen Ashton:
Yes. So, you spoke about not knowing all the answers-
Axel Estable:
[inaudible 00:18:28].
Stephen Ashton:
… and you’ve talked about being willing to learn and having this learning mindset. How do you embrace that learning mindset while building a mutual trust with your team when you don’t have all the answers?
Axel Estable:
Yeah. I knew that I didn’t have all the answers, and I realized that sometimes I didn’t even know what the questions were going to be. And so, it’s remaining just super curious all the time. What I started by doing is, before I even interviewed, I collected all the information that I could on the website on any publicly available information, like the strategic plan, any document that I could find. Studied that, did my homework, and I came to the interview with a very long list of questions, that I then didn’t have time to ask, but I already knew what it was that I wanted to know, so I already presented that curiosity mindset.
I continued having a lot of questions, and what I continue to do, I mean, I hope that I’ll always have questions, and I’ll always continue to learn, but what I continue to do right now as I’m in this intensive information gathering phase is that I take frantic notes all the time. In every meeting, every conversation, every Zoom call, I take notes. Sometimes I ask if I can record the conversation, and then I review them.
So, I take notes on loose paper, and I reserve some time at the end of the day to transcribe those notes and complete them in a notebook that looks a little bit better and doesn’t fly all over the place. And that gives me a chance to reprocess those notes, add some thoughts, add some questions. And I found that this is a very important time for me to kind of reprocess, let the dust settle, and think about it. So, I make it a point every night to take 20, 30 minutes. And then at the end of every week, block a time on Friday afternoon, usually from 3:00 to 4:00 to go back over the week, and go over those notes, and reprocess, and think about new questions.
Stephen Ashton:
I’m a little envious. I feel like I sometimes don’t have that amount of time to reflect, but I love that you’re able to do that. I’d love to learn a little bit more about, and you and I have had discussions about this, about conventional employment frameworks and hierarchies, the way that we report, or the way that things are structured. Tell me a little bit about that with your role now.
Axel Estable:
So, I really don’t like being called a boss, because I don’t want to boss anyone around. I consider that my primary responsibility is supporting the team, so that they can do what they’re best at. I don’t like delegating, but I like empowering. And I realized that in the first 90 days, six months, whatever, you need information, but also you need relationships, and so that relationship-building. You know how sometimes at the end of the day you feel like I was running around, I was so busy all day, but I can’t tell you what I’ve done? And what you’ve done a lot of times is build relationships, because you’ve been talking with people, you’ve been solving problems, you’ve been finding some quick wins.
For example, I had one person who sent in a work request because the light over her desk kept flickering and going out, and her desk is 30 feet away from mine. So rather than escalating the work request, et cetera, I just grabbed the light from my desk, and I walked it over, and she was like, “Holy crap, it’s been three minutes, and my problem is already solved.” And then I spent a couple of minutes talking with her, learning about what she does, asking her what she’s most excited about, and now we have a good relationship.
And that’s so important, and it’s also important with the team. And I think that, like I said, empowering rather than delegating, and while supporting, it gives the team the confidence that they know what they’re doing. And when you show them that confidence, when you show them that trust, then they can also trust you, and they’ll want to exercise that expertise to contribute to the team, not just to their job. And so, I think that having a distributed leadership model where you’re supporting the team, you’re not telling them what to do, but you’re supporting them, you’re telling them, “You’re the expert, I need to learn from you. How can I support you? But tell me what it is that you’re doing so that I understand better.” It creates a more solid foundation than somebody coming in and thinking that they have all the answers.
Stephen Ashton:
I totally agree with you. I think building those relationships of trust is extremely important. Anything else that you’d like to share?
Axel Estable:
So, I think that, as we established, many people experience some discomfort when they step into a new position, and I think… I mean, it’s absolutely normal. If you don’t, I think that you’re doing something wrong. But the way that I see it is that discomfort isn’t failure, that it’s feedback, and that it tells you that you’re growing, it tells you that you’re learning, it tells you that you’re challenging yourself. And it’s almost important to cultivate it, so that you never become complacent, but you always continue to challenge yourself, and find new ways to support your team, find new ways to support your organization. So, discomfort isn’t failure, it’s feedback.
Stephen Ashton:
Thank you, Axel.
Paul Martin:
Well, Stephen, we’re passing the baton, as you can tell. This is highly choreographed. We were going to do it in the aisle with dance steps, but we’re just going to sit-
Stephen Ashton:
So, watch out.
Paul Martin:
Yeah, watch out. Still could. The finale is really going to be something. So, Stephen, what’s your role right now, and how’s it different from what you used to do?
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah, so I’m at Thanksgiving Point, and I should just give a quick description of what Thanksgiving Point is for those that don’t know. We are in Utah, we’re about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City, and Thanksgiving Point is a multi-museum, farm and garden complex. We have five different museum discovery center experiences. And I’ve been at Thanksgiving Point for about 16 years, and so I’ve had a chance to see things grow a lot at Thanksgiving Point, and I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of growing as well.
And part of that happened a little over two years ago. So, my first role at Thanksgiving Point, I was on the exhibits team, I worked part-time, I was there for about a year and a half. And then I was hired full-time to head up the audience research and evaluation team. At that time, it was a team of one, just me. And then over time, I had another person join our team, and it was just the two of us, and sometimes we’d have interns, or other volunteers helping us out, but it was really just the two of us for about 10 years.
And to tell you the truth, I felt really comfortable with what I was doing, I felt like I had progressed a lot, and I felt like I was making meaningful contributions. At the same time, I also felt like, “Do I want to be doing this all the time?” And that was kind of percolating in the back of my mind when the CEO reached out to me, and said, “Hey, Stephen, we’re thinking about making some of these changes. How do you feel about becoming the senior director for the Butterfly Biosphere and for Curiosity Farms?” Which at that time was under construction. And I said, “That sounds really exciting. Let me think about it for a little bit.”
So, I remember chatting with my wife, and thinking, “This sounds like a really awesome opportunity. It’s going to bring a lot of change, and it’s going to bring a lot of discomfort.” And I’ve thought back, “I’m really comfortable with where I am.” But I think all of us, as we want to grow in our professional lives and even in our personal lives, I think it’s inevitable that we need to embrace change. And so, I said yes, I took the role, and now I’ve been in this role for about two and a half years, and I feel like I’ve been growing and stretching in more ways than I thought that I could.
Paul Martin:
So, do you find it at times overwhelming?
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah. Who else has ever felt overwhelmed with their work? Yes, I am in pleasant company then. So, it has definitely felt overwhelming. And I remember going from a team of two, where the person I worked with, she’s remarkable, and just never needed any kind of management, or any kind of correction. I felt like I was trying to keep up with her with the great work that she was doing. And then it switched over to where I now had many people reporting to me, and the teams under them made up about somewhere between 80 and 100 people. And all of a sudden, I’m responsible for all of the things that are happening in these different areas.
And so yeah, I did feel overwhelmed, and felt like, “Am I qualified for this? Am I good enough for this?” And there were times where I thought, “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to press forward the best that I can, and try to…” And Axel talked a lot about this, try to build the relationships. To me, I felt like that building the relationship is more important than getting stuff done or feeling like you have to do everything. And so, to me, it’s been an exercise in understanding, “Okay, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, what are the most important things that I ought to be focusing on?” And for me, it’s trying to strengthen those relationships, and help those team members that I work with to feel like I’m listening to them, and I’m wanting them to feel supported.
Paul Martin:
So, you have kind of a unique position at Thanksgiving Point, and I didn’t know this, but your parents were the founders?
Stephen Ashton:
Yes.
Paul Martin:
Or are the founders-
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah, they are.
Paul Martin:
They’re still active, right?
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah.
Paul Martin:
Wow. How did that work?
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah. So that’s been an interesting thing. So, my parents, my dad is Alan Ashton, my mom is Karen Ashen. My dad was the co-founder and inventor of WordPerfect. How many of you remember WordPerfect back in the day? Yeah, so if you’re old enough, you know what WordPerfect is. If you’re young enough, think of it as the predecessor to Word. And my-
Paul Martin:
But more perfect.
Stephen Ashton:
But more perfect. Absolutely. My father had been really successful with that, and he and my mom just felt so blessed for everything that they had received, they wanted to give thanks back to the community and back to God, and that’s why they established Thanksgiving Point, it’s this idea of giving thanks back. And so, I recognized this legacy of my parents wanting to have this really remarkable gathering place that now has over two million people a year that come to visit Thanksgiving Point.
And so, I’ve always thought, “I don’t ever want to just be hired or be given a promotion just because I’m an Ashton.” And so, I’ve thought about that a lot, and thought, “I want to make sure that I’m qualified.” So that’s part of the reason I wanted to get advanced degrees, so that if I did continue my work there, that it’s something where… I would ever want someone to say, “Well, the reason that Stephen’s there is he’s just… He’s part of the family.” I’ve tried to show that-
Paul Martin:
I didn’t have a clue.
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s good.
Paul Martin:
Yeah.
Stephen Ashton:
I wanted it to be something where I could demonstrate that I was qualified, and it wasn’t just the name, but that it was something that… I wanted to show that I truly cared about people, that I was willing to work hard, that I was willing to make sacrifices for the team, and for the job. And I don’t know how well I’m doing with that, but I’m trying.
Paul Martin:
Anybody who works for Stephen here? How’s he doing? Sorry, man. So, you and Axel had a conversation about email bankruptcy. That’s a new term to me.
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah, so-
Paul Martin:
Talk about that.
Stephen Ashton:
… I learned about it somewhere, and I thought… There got to a point, especially with this new role, I just kept getting emails and emails and emails, where it’s thousands of emails start piling up that are unread. I heard someone talk about email bankruptcy, where they determined, “I’m just going to mark everything as read, and I’m just going to move forward from there.” And I know it sounds absolutely outrageous, and almost like you’re throwing it all into the wind, and I… There was one point I just like, “I’ve got to do it.” I felt so bogged down by everything that I just said, “I’m going to declare bankruptcy with my emails.” I marked everything as read, and then I kept moving on, and I’ve realized things worked out okay, and nothing burned down. I did have a few people say, “Hey, Stephen. Remember I sent this?”
“Oh yes, let me take a look into that.” So, there were definitely moments like that, but I had to realize that as there were so many different pressures and so many things that were happening, I had to allow myself to move on and to not feel like I had to do everything. I just feel like if I did everything that I was supposed to be doing, I wouldn’t have enough time for anything. And for me, my family life is really important. My wife and I have a bunch of kids, and we really want to support… We have eight children, we have seven boys and one girl, so it’s a crazy household, and it’s so fun.
But I really value spending time with them, and so I had to realize I’m trying to find this right balance of being a leader on my team and supporting my team, while also being a leader at home, and showing my family that I love and support them, and there’s always this continual balancing act that we’re doing. And so sometimes things have to be let go, and that’s why I did the email bankruptcy. I’m trying to do better, and something I’m always working on.
Paul Martin:
And what advice would you have for folks coming into new roles as leaders-
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah, so-
Paul Martin:
… as you have?
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah, if you’re new, I say embrace the feeling of being overwhelmed. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed, it’s okay to feel stretched, and it’s okay to not know everything. To me, when I first started in this new role, I decided I want to be someone that cares about his team, and I want my team members to know that I’m there to listen to them. And I just really appreciate what Axel had said about building those relationships, and that’s something that’s been really paramount for me, where sometimes I get down the end of the day, and I think, “What did I do? Well, I did meet with this person. I helped them with this challenge that they had. I met with this person, helped them with this thing.” Or I was able to step out of my time in my office and help with this situation. And so, to me, I’m trying to do more to measure my success, not in the things that I get done, but in the relationships that I’m able to build, and help and support.
Paul Martin:
Awesome. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Ashton:
Yeah, you bet.
Ken Wesler:
Thank you so much. Paul.
Paul Martin:
Yes.
Ken Wesler:
Let us talk about imposter syndrome.
Paul Martin:
My God.
Ken Wesler:
So, let’s start with, what is it?
Paul Martin:
Well, I knew the term, but I didn’t quite know what it was all about. And those two words together to me really conjure up really powerful things, like some incurable disease, which it’s not, or something that is used in the espionage business, would be really helpful. And I guess I need to say that, and I said to these guys when we were playing in the session, I have this enormous comfort zone. I probably have been an imposter many times, but I’ve never felt this syndrome thing about it. And I’ve talked to people about it, and it’s real, and it’s about feeling out of your depth, and “Should I really be here?” One of the ways of dealing with that I think is to just talk to folks, and it is about relationships. That’s the recurring thing I think in all of our careers and all the work we’ve done is, it’s the relationships that we have with our colleagues, and the relationships that we now have with each other that we didn’t have a month ago, and the relationships that we have with people we work with, people we work for.
I’ve had the really great opportunity in my career to be a senior manager of hundreds of people and all that kind of stuff, but also to be out of my comfort zone in working with communities, and folks that I’m not part of their community, but I have been charged in my projects to work in those communities, and understand those communities, and help to create value for them on their terms, not on my terms. So, stepping out of being a professional. And the other theme that came up here was humility, and really being comfortable with that, being comfortable with not being the expert. And listening is a really incredible tool that we’ve all said. I just don’t want to linger on imposter syndrome, because it’s like something that it’s making more of something than… You need to get to the essence of what those two terms mean in this context, and deal with that.
Ken Wesler:
All right. So, let’s come at it from a slightly different angle.
Paul Martin:
Yeah.
Ken Wesler:
What is not imposter syndrome?
Paul Martin:
I think what’s not imposter syndrome is being able to understand new situations, deal with new situations, ask for help in new situations. How many of you guys deal with funders? Okay. One of the great things that I’ve learned in dealing with funders is, you don’t ask them to help you, you figure out how you can help them. And that’s a really big deal, is understanding that you’re there to help, and in that, you build relationships that reciprocate, and really create value for everybody. And I think that’s kind of the opposite of imposter syndrome, it’s just being who you are.
Ken Wesler:
So, you sound like a really centered kind of person. So, I have to ask, what knocks you sideways? What knocks you off your center?
Paul Martin:
Well, the current political system is kind of rocking everybody’s center, or mine anyway. Do any of you know Elaine Gurian? Have you ever heard of Elaine? So, Elaine at an AAM talk probably 20 years ago said, “This is really all about love. It’s love of each other, it’s love of relationships, it’s love of our community, it’s love for how we can make a difference in the world.” And what knocks me off is when it becomes about fear, and hate, and divisiveness, because that’s really… As I said, I’ve been working with a lot of community groups, and they’re in the thick of all of this, from immigration issues and all that stuff to other things, but what I’ve learned from them is they say, “How are we’re going to deal with this, we’re just going to keep going. We’re going to keep doing the work. We’re going to keep engaging our communities, we’re going to keep advancing our communities in the midst of chaos and not knowing where things are going to go.”
Ken Wesler:
A recurring theme here has been fear, different words, anxiety, whatever. So, you just mentioned fear, do you feel fear? And if so, how do you get on top of it?
Paul Martin:
No, I’m kind of fearless. I’ve felt fear, and we all feel fear if we’re physically threatened and things like that, but in the environment that I’ve worked in, maybe early on I felt some fear, but it didn’t get me anywhere. And so, you have to be pretty fearless. And it’s a personal thing for me, it’s just not a very helpful tool.
Ken Wesler:
You seem to have a real perspective on these things, is this something that came to you over the length of your career, or do you think… Nature or nurture? Is really the question.
Paul Martin:
Well, I used to always be the youngest guy in the crowd, and I had terrific mentors. I’ve been in this game 50 years and had some really terrific mentors over the course of that. And one of my mentors, a woman by the name of Barbara Franco, who I worked with at the Minnesota Historical Society, she was fantastic. She had a management style, which was she’d climb way out on a branch, metaphorically, she’d climb way out on a branch, and she’d jump up and down really hard, and she’d say, “Come on out. It’s not going to break. And if it does, I don’t know.” And it was fantastic that she was so fearless in that, that that really worked as a model. I think it is nurture, I think I’ve learned from so many people, and that… I keep going back to Elaine’s thing of it’s about love.
Ken Wesler:
I’m really curious, people, raise your hand if you have a mentor. Yeah, a significant number. And this is a great place to find someone.
Paul Martin:
Yeah.
Ken Wesler:
Right. So, what are your closing thoughts about fear, and imposter syndrome, and getting through that?
Paul Martin:
Okay, so I used to work at the Field Museum long time ago, one of the first jobs that I had which was kind of a big job. And I was the design supervisor there under Michael Spock, when there was a lot of change happening back in the ’80s. And I had a colleague who was a designer, who talked about the rumored Field Museum Employee Assistance program. If you’re having trouble with your job, and particularly if you’re in a new position, you’d go to… They’d send you to this psychologist in Downtown Chicago, and they’d listen to you for about half an hour. And everybody who went there came back with the same story, after about half an hour of listening and nodding, they’d say, “That’s very interesting. Buck up, quit whining, and get back to work.” And that’s been a guiding principle for me, and it works.
Ken Wesler:
We only have a minute left, but a quick thought about this. I noticed that one of the bulletin boards out there talks about the many generations that are operating within our organizations right now and bringing alignment. And what you just said to me is a very boomer kind of… That old-fashioned-
Paul Martin:
Well, of course it is.
Ken Wesler:
… I’m talking… Look at me. So how do you reconcile that kind of buck up, shut up, and get back to work with the very real logical, positive, changing perspectives that we have now?
Paul Martin:
I don’t know, I’m going to retire someday, and that’s out in front of me closer than what was behind me, so I mean, I have relationships with the young… I work at a university, so I’m surrounded by young people all the time. And its projecting hope, it’s projecting that we can make a difference, and that we have to be humble in making a difference. Because often, you’re not being trained to be experts, you’re being trained… There’s a book that I love the title of, which is called Humility is the New Smart. And it was fostered by two women physicians in the Bay Area that found that they, as experts and the sort of physician mindset, they weren’t doing very well with immigrant communities. And when they started to listen to the immigrant communities… And Rayanne and I had a conversation about the Hmong community in the Twin Cities in Saint Paul, and it’s really about understanding different cultures and different ways of thinking to be effective. And so being humble, and listening, and acting. So, it’s not a passive thing, it’s a very active thing.
Ken Wesler:
Thank you.
Rayanne Darensbourg:
So, we’ve been getting lots of great questions, and after our interview, Ken, we’re going to address some of them. So, Ken, there’s this… You think about ambition, and then you think about current reality, and I think that you can offer some ideas and thoughts around that to our audience. So, speaking of challenges, how do you deal with challenges? What are some tools and some things that you have used to help you?
Ken Wesler:
The first thing is, one of my pet peeves is the phrase, I have multiple priorities. Priority, the word means prior, prior to anything else. At any given time, I only have one priority. And they may shift, and they may shift at lightning speed, but at any moment, only one thing. And so that’s what I focus on, what is my priority right now? And I do a thing, I call it the rule of threes. How will my decision affect things in three minutes, three hours, three days, three weeks, three months, and three years? And I try to evaluate every decision I make within that context, so I’m cognizant of its tactical impact, and also its strategic impact.
Rayanne Darensbourg:
So, I like that, multiple priorities. That makes complete sense, and I love that tool. I can imagine though that in day-to-day work, and being the leader that you are, you’ve had to deal with some failures along the way. How have you dealt with those failures? How have they made you, and kept you going as well?
Ken Wesler:
Let’s talk about the guitar, because it was an early failure. Let’s put the guitar up. By the way, I think if you’re not failing, you’re not doing enough stuff. I mean, really simply. Failure is a quantification of effort beyond the norm. I need to fail, or I just don’t feel like I’m moving the needle at all.
All right, so what’s on the screen here is a guitar that I built when I was a production student at Temple University in theater. And the charge was, we had the whole school year to build what they called the toy project, and other students made puppets and things like that, and I thought, “Okay, I’m going to be really ambitious, I’m going to build a guitar.” Really ambitious, especially since I’m a drummer. Okay, maybe stupid, but I felt ambitious. So, I built a guitar, I built it out of white oak, it was gorgeous, lots of beautiful scroll work, and played very, very badly.
So, I threw it in the trash, and I started again, and I built this guitar. And because I was so late, I only got half of the finishing coats on it. Can’t really see in the slide, but it’s not that glossy, shiny kind of electric guitar thing that you expect. And I got a B. And my schoolmates were shocked that this… There’s a marionette that gets an A, and here’s this functioning electric guitar that gets a B. And it was very clear to me that it deserved a B, at best, actually. My first role in the C-suite was in 1989, I became managing director of Walnut Street Theater, and I hung that guitar on my wall, and I would tell everybody that this was my B guitar. And it always had this reaction, “How could they have given you a B?” And I said, “Well, that’s easy. It doesn’t matter how ambitious you are, it’s the excellence with which you execute.”
So, keeping your ambitions within a manageable kind of project so you can succeed with excellence. You strive for perfection and settle for excellence; you probably have heard that. That’s what’s key, strive… Oh, is that new? I know I’m a font of useless sayings. By the way, I hung it on my wall, and I was then a CEO of the Performing Arts Center, and I was promoting B.B. King, and one of my operations folks said, “You should have B.B. sign your B guitar.” Because that’s what we all called it. And so, he did, and then the next week Glen Campbell was there, and he said, “Oh, let me sign it.” And that’s why it says, “And Glen Campbell.” And that just started a thing with all these artists signing this guitar. And the thing that makes it so fascinating to me is how this guitar has now become sort of an embodiment of that idea, and still on my wall.
Rayanne Darensbourg:
So, I hear another tip, keep mementos and memories around you that keep you grounded as well. Those things that you can… What a great story, things that make you. So that’s a great example of how you’ve dealt with what was a perceived failure. How do you deal with success? What does that look like for you?
Ken Wesler:
I don’t like the word success. Who defines success? This has been the challenge I’ve always had. When I was running performing arts centers, we’d have a budget surplus, and 200,000 people came in the doors, go us. And somebody would say it was successful, and I’d think, “Really?” I mean, what if we could have had 400,000 people through the door? What if we could have had triple the surplus, or triple the programs? I always view surplus as a program that wasn’t done. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t have responsible surpluses for financial health, so on and so forth.
So, I don’t like the word success. I’ve never thought of anything as successful. I’ve never thought of myself as successful, because I just don’t know what the yardstick is. And I think I’m more comfortable in the realm of saying goals. I set certain goals; did I achieve those goals? Although even then there’s a voice at the back of my head saying, “Were you aggressive enough with your goals?” After I retired as a performing arts center CEO, I became a fundraiser, and I used to say to my team, “If we don’t hit the goal at 11:59 PM of the last day of the fiscal year, the goal was too low.” We don’t celebrate it when we hit it a month before. Again, we just took resources away from programming folk, because our goal was too low. So, I get the heebie-jeebies at the word success.
Rayanne Darensbourg:
Yeah. That felt familiar with development there for a second. So, could you talk a little bit about the three toxicities that you think about when you think about leadership and us leading?
Ken Wesler:
Yeah, I have two plaques on my wall. One says, “No blame, no credit, no fear.” And I think of those as the three toxicities, blame, credit and fear. It’s what creates politics, it impedes productivity, it hurts people’s feelings. You have to operate with the idea that you’re not looking to blame anyone for anything that goes wrong. And I think where we can go sideways is in our effort to discover what there is to learn so we don’t repeat a mistake, we get a little over enthusiastic, I feel, about who did it. And I think we’re well-served when we excise that idea, and focus on what went wrong, and what allowed the thing to go wrong, what supports were missing.
All right, so John is responsible, why? What did he not have? What did he have too much of? Who was he not talking to? I mean, if you’re managing people, you are responsible for their success. So, I don’t like blame. Credit is the opposite side of exactly the same thing. If you don’t have blame, it’s very hard to have credit. Now, mind you, I give a lot of credit to folks in the organization, but I’m very quick to try to step on, and I use those words really intentionally, any attempt for anyone to take credit.
So, if you said to me, I did an amazing job this was all me, I’m going to say, “Well, look, remember blah, blah, blah.” But if you don’t say that, I’m going to be saying to you, “You did an amazing job, and you deserve a lot of credit for getting this done.” It sounds weird, but that’s kind of how I feel. Fear, when I think about every single bad decision I’ve ever made as a human being in my life, every single one of them can be distilled down to fear, without exception. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of commitment, fear of expansion, fear of contraction, whatever. And so, I don’t live with fear, I love discomfort, I pursue it. When I’ve gotten comfortable in a position, I leave, and I became an extreme diver to pursue that.
Rayanne Darensbourg:
That’s great. So, to make sure that we’ve been capturing a lot of thoughts, Axel is going to share some of those, and there’s some standout questions that we think may be helpful.
Axel Estable:
And I want to thank all of you who have contributed to this little thought exercise of how you cope with discomfort. So, one of the questions is, will those be shared with the audience? I’m going to compile them at the end. You’ll have a QR code where we have some of our tactics and tools that we’ve been talking about, and I’ll just add those to the end of it. But give me at least a half hour before I do that.
I have this one question that was just asked, which is, how did you know when it was time to change roles? How do you know when you’re ready for the next step, when the position you leave will be okay without you? And you just mentioned that, Ken, when you’re-
Ken Wesler:
When I’m no longer uncomfortable.
Axel Estable:
Yeah, exactly.
Ken Wesler:
I can’t explain it, it’s one of those, I know it when it happens. And it’s not complacency, I think it would become complacency, and I think that’s what I’m so afraid of. It’s just when things are becoming routine, when the machine is moving, and I feel like the systems, and processes, and people are just flowing beautifully, I start to think, “What am I doing here?”
Axel Estable:
And I also have a very quick answer to that, it’s from the movie Blown Away with Lloyd Bridges and Jeff Bridges, and Lloyd Bridges said, “I knew that it was time to leave my role when I started wondering if it was time to leave my role.”
We have lots of great questions. I’m so sorry that we only have a few minutes left. There’s one that I think is really important, is, how do you navigate imposter syndrome when starting a new role after leading a toxic workplace? But also, about imposter syndrome… It got upvoted. I’d be interested to hear from the other panelists about their thoughts on navigating imposter syndrome, this is especially real for women in the workplace.
Rayanne Darensbourg:
It is. I think it’s very real, especially if you are in a role… Well, regardless. I think, for me, I have not had… A few dynamics, I have not had a female board president in 30 years at the Children’s Museum. I have fantastic board presidents and so forth, but we just have not. Secondly is, I felt like an imposter going to the homes of my board members and donors, because I didn’t have that lived experience. And I really felt as though initially, that’s what they desired. I can’t tell you about my summer trips in Italy when I was growing up, I can’t tell you about the things that may have been conversations that made me feel, especially in group settings of that. So, I think it’s very real.
But I think the turning point for me or those in leadership positions is when you are able to grab the nuggets, and see how unique your lived experience is valuable, and you also have stories, and capturing those stories and those moments in meaningful ways could help your donors and your board members connect to your mission, and using that connector point. Because they have a why, but it’s not necessarily as deep as the mission, and why you chose your role. So being able to grab that I think allows you to let go of some of that imposter feeling that you are having. No one else is knowing this necessarily, it’s what you’re experiencing inside, and allows you to grab this thread that you’re able to pull in very strong ways. Did you have feelings, Steve?
Stephen Ashton:
I still have feelings of imposter syndrome sometimes, where even though I talked about trying to be qualified, I still feel like, “Am I really qualified? I can think about this other person, they’re much better this, this, and this, and I lack those things.” And when that happens, I just have to remind myself, “I’m guessing others feel the same way.” And even if they don’t, it’s okay to feel that way, and it’s okay to keep moving forward.
Axel Estable:
I’m sorry to say we have many other great questions, we are running out of time, it’s just 9:30. For those of you who asked them, I would love to have you come up and we have this conversation directly. I want to thank all of you for being here, for coming at 8:30 in the morning, for participating in this session, and participating to this thought experiment. The QR code that’s up there, I’m going to update the file that’s on it with all of your thoughts. So, if you want to bookmark that and revisit it in about an hour, I’ll just copy and paste everything that you said. And I really want to thank you again for being here and for participating.
This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.
