Episode 9: Going Against The Grain

EPISODE 9

Going Against The Grain

Radical Recentring with Nonie White

This is Radical Recentring with me, Nonie White. The show for ambitious women who are done pushing, proving and performing, and who are ready to build something unshakeable from who they are at their authentic best. If you're at an inflection point, ready for your next level of success, personal power and impact, and you want to do it differently, you're in the right place. Let's go.

Episode 9, going against the grain.

What if the most powerful thing that you could do for your success wasn't working harder, learning more, or pushing through? What if it was putting yourself at the centre of your life and work? Going against the grain, building something that works for your life instead of against it. Surely this is the autonomy and flexibility that we all want as entrepreneurs.

This is Stage 5 of the Unshakeable Method, and it might be the most radical and exciting move that you ever make.

The radical move. In the last episode, I shared the research from the Forbes-featured report I co-authored, The True Cost of Female Entrepreneurship. The epic stress, the constant anxiety, the burnout, and also the outliers, the people who were thriving by not following the same rules, by building something different and differently.

Just as there isn't one definition of success, there also isn't one blueprint for success. And forcing yourself into someone else's blueprint rarely works well, or for the long term. Most of us operate in a way in which we always put the business first, the clients first, the team first, the family first, everyone and everything before ourselves. We've absorbed the message that our needs are just deeply inconvenient and prioritising ourselves is selfish, a luxury. Or as one of my clients said the other day, self-serving. We've assimilated the belief that success requires hard work and sacrifice.

But the people who thrive, they flip this completely. They've thrown that out the window and they've realised that they are the source of everything. Their performance, their confidence, their results. It all flows from them. And if they're depleted or running on empty, everything and everyone suffers.

So they put themselves at the centre, not in a selfish way, but in a strategic way, understanding that what's best for them is best for the business and everyone else around them.

Radical doesn't mean dramatic. It just means deliberate, with intention. And this is what I mean by Radical Recentring.

What this actually looks like. Let me tell you about my client, Amelia. She came to me as co-founder of an award-winning, scaling FMCG business. She wanted to start a family, but she couldn't see how it was possible. She struggled to find role models who would show her how this worked. She couldn't imagine how she could step back from the business that needed her all the time. The work that we did together wasn't about maternity leave. It was about what ingrained conditioning and thinking patterns were getting in her way of achieving what she wanted, and who she actually was as an authentic leader. She remembered what made her feel great and what didn't. She got clear on her core values and her signature character strengths. She realised that her power wasn't in constantly being present. Her real, unique, highest contribution was as the source of the big picture vision for the brand and the business, the inspiration and the ability to shift the energy in the room.

So she adopted a new mantra, only do what only you can do. And she stopped doing everything else. She brought amazing people in to fill the gaps and she empowered them and she gave them space to excel and grow. Over time, she redesigned her role around her core strengths. She got really good at communicating her needs to her co-founder, her board, her senior leadership team, and she stepped fully into the most authentic, confident and flourishing leader that she could be. Now she's on her maternity leave. Confident, clear, proud of what she's modelling for her team and for other female founders.

Before she went on maternity leave, we had our final session and she was super excited about what the time away from work was going to mean for her and for the team and the business in her absence. A year earlier, she hadn't actually thought that any of this could be possible.

Or let's talk about a client I'll call Jess. Jess had been co-running a fast scaling business for five years. She'd invested everything into it and into everyone else, her co-founder, her team, her family, but she'd never invested in herself. She described living and working at a hundred miles an hour. She didn't want to lose any opportunities, but this also meant that she was completely reactive with no clear sense of who she was outside of the business. She said to me, if the company was suddenly gone tomorrow, where am I? I just wouldn't even know what I was good at. She was projecting confidence in meetings. She had a big old team and she was backing decisions with certainty whilst privately going and thinking, I have no idea why I just said that.

When we started working together, after she'd realised that she was going at a million miles an hour, she also realised that that meant she had no time to think, no time to be. And so we started there. She got clear on her core values and her unique signature strengths, who she really was at her core. And something then shifted. She stopped trying to be the kind of leader she thought she should be, doing all the things that she thought she should be doing that actually completely depleted her. That wasn't her. Her core strengths were the vision, the energy, and inspiring others with where the business was going. So she redesigned her role exactly around that. And she brought some people whose strengths filled the gaps that hers left. She stopped trying to lead at 100 miles an hour and started leading more intentionally from who she actually was and what she actually wanted to happen.

She told me, I can see now what I can uniquely bring, whereas before I hadn't really seen the value in it or believed I was actually good at it. She wasn't a bad leader at all. She'd just been trying to lead from the wrong operating system.

Amelia redesigned her role so it really worked for her and then took six months of maternity leave. Jess stopped leading at a hundred miles an hour and started leading from her actual strengths. Both of them did this work inside the Unshakeable Method, my four month one-to-one programme. If you're ready to build something that genuinely works for you and your life, the link to find out more about working with me is in the show notes.

The resistance you'll face. When you start going against the grain and against what you've always done, it will be uncomfortable and you'll face resistance. Internal resistance first, the voice that says, who am I to do things differently? This feels wrong. This feels selfish. I should be able to handle things the normal way. That voice is your conditioning, the old operating system that has always tried to keep you safe, keep you fitting in, keep you doing exactly what's expected.

External resistance too, people expecting you to perform, perhaps questions from the board about why you're not doing it the normal way or why you're not following the usual path. Raised eyebrows when you suddenly start setting boundaries or saying no. This is where your grounded authority really matters. Having that pride, confidence and conviction in your decisions. This is everything we covered in Episodes 6 and 7. You need to really trust yourself to hold your own when it comes to doing things differently and not folding at the first sign of pushback.

The people who successfully go against the grain, they've done the earlier work, they've built those solid foundations, they know exactly who they are, they trust themselves. So when the resistance comes, they can hold their ground. They're not asking for permission, they're not waiting for validation. They're leading from their authentic edge with confidence, clarity and conviction, and they're building something that works.

The result. When you put yourself at the centre and when you build around who you truly are, everything shifts. Good foundations lead to good mood. Good mood leads to clearer thinking. Clearer thinking leads to better decisions. Better decisions lead to better results. Better results lead to more confidence, and more confidence leads to even stronger foundations again.

Work feels sustainable. You have energy for your life, not just your work. Your results often improve because you're operating from your authentic self, and you're attracting people who are like-minded and who completely resonate with who you are and what you care most about. You're not forcing yourself into an operating system that doesn't fit well, doesn't feel good, and that depletes you. You have capacity for what actually matters because you've created a values-aligned business and values-aligned goals.

Just like Jess did and like Amelia did. You stop feeling guilty for having needs. You realise how important it is to look after yourself in order to do your best work. You stop apologising for doing things differently. You stop waiting for the day when things will feel easier because you've actually built something that works already and that feels just as good as it looks.

That's the goal. Not just external achievement, not just the appearance of having it all together, but unshakeable performance, confidence and leadership built from you, that lasts. This is Stage 5, expression, where everything we've covered comes together.

So here's what I want you to sit with. How much could you achieve if you gave yourself permission to do what truly suited you the most? What would you build and how would you feel if you truly trusted yourself to go against the grain and do that?

In the final episode, I'm gonna share what it actually takes to step into your next level, not what most people think it takes, what it actually requires. And I'm going to invite you to do this work with me.

I'm Nonie White. This is Radical Recentring, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Thank you for being here. If today's episode resonated with you, check out the Leadership Identity Quiz. The link is in the show notes. It's free, takes two minutes, has 10 questions, and it will show you exactly how you're leading yourself and others now, as well as which patterns might be stopping you from reaching your next level of success. And if you know you're ready to do this work, there's a link to find out more about the Unshakeable Method, my four-month one-to-one coaching programme. I'm Nonie White. This is Radical Recentring, and I'll see you next time.