#149 Curiosity, Courage, and Conscious Leadership

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode # 149 Meg Dennison

“Curiosity, Courage, and Conscious Leadership”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, I’m Dr. Doreen Downing, host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast, and I’m pleased today to introduce you to one of my favorite new friends. I just met her a few months ago in a program that I’m in, and she and I have connected, related, so you know you’re going to fall in love with her like I did. She’s so natural and so easy to be with. Her name is Meg Dennison. Hi, Meg. 

(00:29) Meg Dennison: Hi, Doreen. I’m so happy to be here. 

(00:32) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, you sent a bio. I’m going to read that first so that we get a little history. 

For a decade, Meg Denison has taught conscious leadership practices, empowering hundreds of women to meet their ambition and own their authority. She’s done this through one to one coaching, corporate team development, business workshops, and live retreats at her beautiful home in Santa Cruz, California. 

Meg’s passion has always been supporting women. Girls and women in their leadership journeys. She cares deeply that women have the skills and support to share their genius and achieve their vision.

Meg reimagined her own career in midlife and switched after launching her three kids, and she also reinvented her 38-year marriage to the same guy she met working on the college newspaper. 

Well, we’ll be able to hear some of that and some of the stories behind the changes that you made, but also your commitment and dedication to women—girls.

That’s always come through to me when we’ve had conversations—your curiosity or your vision. I know I’ve done workshops and masterclasses with you. 

(01:54) Meg Dennison: Yes, it’s great to be here because we have supported each other. 

(01:58) Doreen Downing: Yes. We already know a lot about each other personally, but I’m going to unzip you today in a way, so the audience gets to learn some new things about you because we’ve got a little time here. I always like to start with early life. You came into this world. You had a family. Who were they? Where were you? Say a little bit about that first. 

(02:26) Meg Dennison: Yes. I grew up in rural Vermont and my father was a doctor, but he wanted to escape the rat race of the mid-Atlantic states, so he moved to Vermont in the late sixties, and we really lived out in the boonies and in this falling down farmhouse. There was a working farm next to us, but really nobody else was around. 

So, I spent a lot of time literally in the woods, in the fields. I was probably eight or nine when we moved there, and just spent a lot of time by myself doing—I don’t know—just exploring. I learned all of the plants. I was pretty much an expert on all the edible plants of the area when I was 10 or 11. Yes, so I just spent a lot of time out in nature. 

(03:15) Doreen Downing: That to me feels like the start of a sense of freedom that many of us don’t have that are crunched into cities or apartments and then go off to classrooms. Everything is so container-like growing up. Just listening to you felt like “Oh,” I could take a breath and imagine you as a little one out there. Isn’t it interesting that what you already started doing was learning about your surroundings? 

(03:47) Meg Dennison: Yes. It’s funny you think of it like that. When you hear it, it feels like freedom. For me, actually there’s some freedom looking back on it, but I would say I also had a lot of loneliness. I definitely know how to entertain myself and have throughout my life, but it was very removed. I really wanted those people who had streets and they did those fun things on concrete.

(04:14) Doreen Downing: Well, thank you for filling out the picture, a little bit more emotionally, what that was for you. So, you didn’t have siblings. 

(04:21) Meg Dennison: Oh, I have three brothers, and then there were three neighborhood boys next door, so they weren’t people I wanted to hang out with. I had horses though. I had animals. My mom had sheep and so I helped with all that, all of the farm work. 

(04:36) Doreen Downing: It’s like painting a picture right now, and I feel like there’s the ruralness and then there’s the, you said, a rundown farmhouse and the family. It starts to become more colorful to me as you talk about what you actually did experience. So, in the house, what was it like being with mom and dad and brothers? 

(05:00) Meg Dennison: Yes. So, well, first I want to say how old the house was. It was built in 1790. So, very old, like when Vermont was new as a state. In the house with my brothers, we were very self-sufficient. We had a huge garden, so we grew all of our own food.

This is the early seventies, and Vermont was still a pretty backward place. We grew our own food and my mom was a—she had sheep and my dad wasn’t around that much because he actually worked really hard and had full days building his practice, building his medical practice.

We had lots of animals around and I would say we ate family dinner. That was a really important part of our family. I’m 12 years older than my youngest brother, so there’s a lot of space between them, and so family dinner—I’m the oldest, and it could be a serious thing sometimes, like you were supposed to contribute everything about your day or something, but I would often actually try and disrupt things. If someone said pass the butter, I would pick it up off the plate rather than passing the plate. I didn’t do that all the time, of course, but I had this way of just stirring things up. It was a little rebellious, my little rebellion there. 

(06:31) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, it’s so literal—pass the butter. I love these little snapshots. I do know that in what you sent some information, and we’re talking about voice, right? So finding your voice amongst a family loaded with boys, males, and a father, you mentioned your father had a certain expectation. So, we move towards you. Did you have a voice or not? 

(07:01) Meg Dennison: I didn’t really feel like I had a voice. It felt like at least a strong expression. And I would say that my dad was really the person allowed to get angry or to be loud. He worked a lot, and so he wanted a quiet house when he came home. 

(07:20) Doreen Downing: Wow. Poor kid. 

(07:22) Meg Dennison: Yes, we were all readers. I was a big reader. I just read my way through my young life. That and nature and my horses. I was reading a lot, so I could definitely be quiet that way. 

Oh, and we lived—you know you think of the seventies and those long telephone cords. 

(07:40) Doreen Downing: Yes. 

(07:41) Meg Dennison: For anybody younger watching this or listening to this, the handle of the phone was attached to the rest of the phone by this very long cord. Well, I did have some friends through my horses and through pony club and I wasn’t allowed to call them except after a certain time of the evening when the rates were lower because even the town next door was a long distance call, so we just weren’t allowed to use the phone, really. They weren’t in my town, so I had a few friends in my town, but mostly from the town next door. 

(08:20) Doreen Downing: Well, it’s starting to make sense to me now because partly what happens is that when I meet people on the podcast, I’m always curious about what are the connections and how come this relates to, how come that, so when we’re talking about voice and pass the butter and you do this kind of outlandish gesture. It’s like you said, it was rebellious. So, in a way, there was probably some damping down of your spirit and you found your way to protest. 

(08:54) Meg Dennison: Yes, small ways to protest. The other thing is I had really long hair, long blonde hair, and I was required to wear it in braids. I could never have it out loose because that was just not okay. I’d walk to the bus, which was probably like a quarter mile to walk to the bus to get to school, and on the day of my sixth grade pictures, I did my hair up like I was supposed to, and then on the way to the bus, I took it out. I took my hair out of the braids and just let it be. I think I actually had it in pigtails, because you could tell it had been braided in my picture, but nobody knew that I’d broken that rule until the pictures came home. 

(09:37) Doreen Downing: Yes. Did you get in trouble?

(09:40) Meg Dennison: No, no, not really. You’re in sixth grade and parents start to think, “Oh, well, if that’s the only way she’s going to rebel, okay.” By taking your hair down. 

(09:49) Doreen Downing: Would you say that there are other rebellious acts as you go through that early life in high school and college? 

(09:55) Meg Dennison: Actually, I never really saw myself as a rebel and having that rebellious streak. I didn’t see that. It was a blind spot for me until the last, maybe, decade when I started doing coaching and I was in a group program and we were discussing something.

I said, “Hey, I think I’m a rebel.” And the whole room burst into laughter. 

(10:19) Doreen Downing: Like they said, “Of course,” or? 

(10:21) Meg Dennison: They were like, “Of course. You’re the only one who doesn’t know this.” 

(10:24) Doreen Downing: Oh, wow. This is great to get to some of the roots of your character and how you formed yourself and how your voice shows up. The knowing who we are, and actually being able to express who we are. I just went in thinking about it out loud, that we have our voice. You, we have our character. We have our self and it gets expressed whether we know it or not, and that seems like your story right there. You were already showing who you are. 

(10:59) Meg Dennison: Yes. 

(10:59) Doreen Downing: Your voice was already out there in a way that people would say that’s more on the line of rebellious. 

(11:06) Meg Dennison: Yes. I hadn’t ever really talked about this much until we started talking and thinking about finding my voice. I remember in high school, I wrote a paper, like a science paper, all in humor, like it was all humorous because I was bored. 

(11:26) Doreen Downing: Oh, Meg. Wow. 

(11:27) Meg Dennison: I got an okay grade on it because they were like, yes, you actually put some creativity into it. But it was those kinds of things that I did more to express myself than actually speaking. Very underhanded, I guess.

(11:44) Doreen Downing: Yes. That’s one frame. 

(11:47) Meg Dennison: Well, underhanded, I don’t mean in a negative way. 

(11:51) Doreen Downing: Right. 

(11:51) Meg Dennison: Yes. Well, if you have another word for it—

(11:54) Doreen Downing: I don’t yet, but it felt like—as long as we’re not calling that a negative. 

(12:00) Meg Dennison: No, no, I mean, not underhanded. There’s a word for it. Mischievous or creative. 

(12:08) Doreen Downing: Okay, great. Well, I’m really threading together the jewels and these nuggets of your life already. Thank you so much for being so natural and willing and authentic here with me today. 

I know you mentioned your coaching, but before we get into that, let me take a quick break and I’ll be right back because I’m so enjoying this and I just don’t want to leave your high school and college experience because I know there’s going to be so many more little nuggets, but we’ll be right back.

Hi, we’re back with Meg Dennison, my guest today. Somebody that’s not only entertaining us with her stories as she bounced through life early on, but also beginning to reveal and unfold right before our very eyes what it means to have a voice.

It’s not just words. It’s an expression. It’s a gesture. It’s how we show up and maybe we don’t even know that our voice is seen and heard by other folks.

So, that’s what we’ve just been listening to Meg and learning more about her. If you’re just tuning in, go back because I’m sure you’ll enjoy what we’ve been talking about already today. 

Okay. Catching up with Meg. Anything coming up for you right now that’s already—? 

(13:37) Meg Dennison: Well, we’re talking about finding our voices and really, sometimes we don’t give ourselves permission to speak. I’m thinking about my first job. I said I was a reader and I was also a writer, and I worked on the college newspaper. I met my husband on the college newspaper. When I graduated from college, I really wanted to be a reporter.

So, I did. I worked toward that. I got my first job with Associated Press, and I realized in that inquiry that the reason I wanted to be a reporter was so I could ask people questions, so I could ask interesting people questions. 

And when you think about owning your voice, owning your authority, in a way, I didn’t allow myself to ask the questions unless I had a formal—unless it was my job. When I realized that about myself—because it was very hard for me to ask the questions without someone else saying it was okay for me to do that. 

(14:48) Doreen Downing: I get it. I remember in the very beginning today with you and you talked about being in the rural area and living there and going out and learning probably the name of all the plants in your neighborhood. And so that “What is this?” To me, you’re starting with a question even way back then, that to me also feels like—when we get into a little bit in a few minutes here talking about your work and your business—who are you as a woman, as a leader. Can you be more conscious? Things like that. 

I think we’re going to move into pretty quickly here but thank you. That awareness of not really being allowed to be naturally yourself, so you get this job to do this thing you like to do.

(15:37) Meg Dennison: Yes. Ask questions. Be curious. I have a job where I got to ask questions and be curious and really dive deep on things, which is a lot of fun. 

(15:46) Doreen Downing: Yes, well, there you go again. I’m sure there’s some nuggets early on about diving deep but thank you. Well, let’s move on. Because I get that you realize that the job was a step for you, but what else would you say contributed to you having a voice or finding it? 

(16:05) Meg Dennison: I say that was a way of finding my voice, but I didn’t really—So, I’ll tell you as part of being a news reporter for the Associated Press in Vermont, which was really the top news organization there.

I was very lucky to have that job. It was just a great way to start. One of the things that I was invited to do as part of that, because I covered politics, I covered the state legislature—I also wrote feature stories, but I was invited a few times to be on the statewide news analysis show, so it was a weekly show, and all the news reporters from the major news outlets were invited to go on that, and I did it a couple of times, but I would get in there and just be terrified that I was going to say the wrong thing. Like I could ask the questions, but I really did not like doing the analysis.

I would get so scared that my knee was—It’s like a panel discussion of that week’s news. I would get so nervous that my knee was literally bouncing and hitting the bottom of the table. I was incredibly nervous. 

(17:15) Doreen Downing: So, did you continue or not? 

(17:18) Meg Dennison: No, I stopped doing it. It was too scary. I just felt terrible. I wish that I had gone on, but these are the kinds of things that when I look back on them and I think of, “Oh, if someone had been even encouraged or talked about fear or how to move through this or how to become a speaker, it would have been very helpful to me.”

(17:40) Doreen Downing: Well, you were naturally quieter. It sounds like what you’ve told us so far today. Plus, you were more comfortable listening and asking questions. And partly what we’ve talked about is that our voice doesn’t get practice. 

(17:59) Meg Dennison: Yes. 

(18:00) Doreen Downing: What’s the feel of it? What’s the sound of it? How do we project it? Are people listening? To me, it feels like it’s early learning, and for some of us, we didn’t get that early learning because we were quieter or just found our way into a comfort zone. 

(18:17) Meg Dennison: Yes. More comfortable being in the peanut gallery, like maybe not being the center of attention, but wanting to be, but not really. 

(18:29) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(18:30) Meg Dennison: Yes and having our voice—I think of it as just like when you say not having the practice, it really does take practice, and it takes practice even to like your voice. 

(18:43) Doreen Downing: Oh, I love the tone. What you just said there. 

(18:46) Meg Dennison: Yes, to even like your voice, the sound of it. 

(18:50) Doreen Downing: Well, that was like music, what you just did. You just went to a different note. It was lovely. It helps to [breathe deeply). 

Oh, I just want to keep on going and going today. We’re getting closer to the end, so I want to make sure that we talk about your current business. I know, obviously, you have enough of a voice, that you are out there in the world, as we’ve talked about in the bio—coaching and doing conscious leadership.

(19:18) Meg Dennison: Well, yes. I want to tell you a little bit about my journey there because I really feel like I’ve done so much work. I’m sitting here today. We’re having this great conversation and I’m enjoying it. My knee is not hitting the table. My throat is not tight. I’m enjoying it. 

I did a lot of things. They actually came from some of the coaching work that I was doing as I was doing training. I had a couple of experiences where people either reacted negatively to me—because I do actually have a lot of that forward energy—and a couple of times, I got scared, but it was hurting my career.

It was hurting my desire to be a coach and to be a facilitator, and what I did about it—that’s what I want to tell you because I decided that I was not going to have my fear and my inability to speak easily get in the way, so I did improv every Saturday morning. I live in Santa Cruz, California, and every Saturday morning, there’s this really great improv class.

I went there for two years, at least two years, pretty much every Saturday, and what happened is, I not only learned how to speak and make mistakes because that’s what improvisational comedy is. Basically, learning to fail and building on what someone else says. 

I learned to have people look at me, to stand on a stage and not feel like I was melting in front of their eyes, to really own and feel physically safe. It’s a practice. You asked me just a minute ago when you said I had a note of singing. 

I took singing lessons. Two years ago, so not that long ago, and it’s not something that I continued, but I remember the first day that I went to this—it was a group, and the teacher said, “Okay, we’re going to start.”

I thought she was going to talk about singing. No. You open your mouth and the sound comes out. I was like, “Oh my goodness. We’re not going to talk about it. We’re not going to like—” She’s not going to say how we do this. It was just, we did it. And Those things really changed everything for me. They gave me confidence. 

I really think it’s important when you’re finding your voice to practice, to practice speaking, to practice singing, whether it’s in the shower or wherever it is that you want to do it. 

(22:06) Doreen Downing: Well, one word I used in the very beginning in my own relation to rural was freedom and hearing now is how to free the voice. At least in the work that I do, it’s not about performance techniques. It’s more about, if I were to suggest anything for people, it would be improv, because it’s so much natural to shake up what you think you should be saying and how you should be saying it, to everything is okay, and in that, it’s not mistake, it’s “miss” takes.

You’re taking, you’re taking, you take another take, another take, until you go, “Oh yes, that’s it. I feel like I’m here now. I’m grounded and I’m present. I’m in the moment, and I’m with—ah, that feels good. I’m home in my own self, in my own voice.” So, improv, and singing lessons, and speaking in as many situations as you can.

(23:07) Meg Dennison: Yes, and well, what you’re just talking about, about the improv and everything, that’s a great segue into what I do as a coach because there’s so much of that. In leadership—I work with women in leadership—it’s wanting, like, how can you be in the present moment? How can you be with yourself in whatever’s happening? 

So, there’s that inner work of leadership. There are tips and tricks, but it’s the inner work to become that leader and you do have to try out some things and you do have to practice and that’s what I do with my clients.

That’s what I do in my program. There’s a lot of practice. When you were describing it at the beginning, I said, “It’s the practice of conscious leadership,” because you don’t get it all at once. It’s learning. It’s creating new neural pathways in the same way that my comfort here, I’ve changed that for myself.

(24:05) Doreen Downing: Yes, well, you definitely are a model of “Change is possible.” I think that that gives you, and it’s the same for me because we have journeyed through and put ourselves in those riskier, improv situations, to grow ourselves so that we can—to me, it feels like, “Okay, now, let’s pass on what we’re learning.”

So how do people find you if they want to get you? 

(24:33) Meg Dennison: They can connect with me through my website, which is www.megdennison.com or email me at meg@megdennison.com. I think you’ll have some things in the show notes, some other ways to connect, but that’s really the best way. If someone feels moved hearing this, I’d love to just chat, just book a call, and get to know each other. 

(24:58) Doreen Downing: Get to know each other. Well, it’s been fun getting to know you better and better each time we have conversations. Thank you for showing up today. Before we end, is there anything that feels like it wants to be—that you hear yourself wanting to say to the audience? 

(25:18) Meg Dennison: Yes. Well, I would say, really, that no matter where you are in your life, the world needs you and the ability to speak up, to have impact, no matter what the circle is, is important and it is enlivening. That’s the best part. When you get to speak and express yourself, you just get lit up.

(25:45) Doreen Downing: Oh, thank you. Thank you for lighting us up today, Meg. 

(25:48) Meg Dennison: Thank you, Doreen.