Chief Change Officer - #394 Rebecca Sutherns: Career on Her Terms—From Global Aid to Solopreneur Strategy — Part Two

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Rebecca Sutherns didn’t follow a straight path—and she’s the first to say that’s the point. As a strategy coach and solo entrepreneur for 27 years, she’s helped leaders rethink what’s next while doing the same for herself. In this two-part series, we talk about work-life trade-offs, momentum, and why imagining your future might be the most strategic thing you’ll do. If you’ve ever hit pause or felt stuck in place, this one’s worth a listen.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Midlife Isn’t a Crisis—It’s a Cue“I wasn’t burning out, but I could tell I was flatlining.”How Rebecca used a sabbatical to catch up with herself—not because she broke, but because she was ready for something deeper.What Comes After ‘I’ve Got This’“I kept getting hired for things I could do in my sleep. That’s when I knew it was time to stretch again.”The danger of being competent—and the invitation to do more than just deliver.Stop Filling Gaps You Don’t Want to Own“I could solve the problem, but that didn’t mean I should.”Why she stepped back from team leadership roles—even when others saw it as a step up.Sabbatical as Prototype“It was a test. Could I shift the pace and still be useful?”Why her sabbatical wasn’t a break from work—it was a strategic experiment in working differently.A Career Built Like a Hammock“The structure holds me, but it flexes.”Her metaphor for a work life that stretches without snapping—anchored but adjustable._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Rebecca Sutherns, PhD, CPF  --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Oshul is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today's guest is Rebecca Sultans, strategy coach, facilitator, and someone who's been running her own show for 27 years. She trained for international development, hit pause to raise four kids, and ended up

building a career that never stopped evolving. In this two-part series, we talk about the moments that change everything. Career profits, creative rocks, and what it really takes to keep moving forward without burning out. Rebecca's story is sharp, honest, and refreshingly unpolished. Let's get into it. Our rear view mirror backwards looking tools rather than future oriented tools. And we're not even aware of that. And so I think sometimes if we look at our data, for example, evidence, whatever that

might be, that almost by definition is what has happened in the past, right? We look for patterns that have happened in the past, or we look at our resume, our CV, we look at the experience and expertise we're bringing in our biography, our autobiography. All of that is good stuff, and it's really important in getting us to know the specifics of what we love. I love tapping into people's very sort of quirky, personal energy around what they love and what their own sort of superpowers are.

But I think the tendency for that is to be backwards looking rather than forwards looking of saying who could I become, what could I do in the future, and how could that history be a springboard into a new future as opposed to being an anchor that keeps me defined in a particular way or keeps me working in a particular methodology or whatever that might be that I think we underestimate the, I don't know if it's inertia or just the weight of our past. And as we get older, especially that past is longer and heavier and ties us into something. And so I think we often think of things like imagination and curiosity being

childlike or childhood things. And part of my interest is helping people grow into that rather than out of it. As we do get older, there's more of a history to anchor us. But at the same time, our curiosity actually stems from our memories. And so to the extent that adults have a larger memory bank, we have more experience to draw on to help us, in theory, be more curious, be more imaginative. So there are the good solid reasons why adults can actually be more curious, more imaginative than kids, if we are willing to be a bit more experimental, hold things loosely, not quite stay not quite as tied to our autobiography as we have been. And that also is true organizationally as it is personally to say,

we've shown up in the world in a particular way. We've taken on a particular position, a particular identity. And are we willing to either change that radically or tweak it in some ways that it'll take us along a path that is more energizing for us? And I think you're right. Helping people, first of all, to have a vision for that and then to fill that in greater detail with someone alongside to be that sort of coach and cheerleader. I realize that people hire me primarily for energy. It's to build momentum. It's to borrow my belief when they don't have some. It's to have some tools along the way that are gonna help them move through that liminal space, which our brains hate. We really don't like the uncertainty of that in-between season. And so even that adaptability tool I mentioned, it gives people some language and some practical

steps to keep moving because one of the things that's most motivating when you're going through transition is momentum. And so if I can help people both initiate and maintain momentum, the likelihood of them being able to then make some of the changes or some of the brave choices that they want to make is that much higher. You are one of the few guests, or maybe even the first, who has such deep experience on both sides of transformation, i.e. organizations and individuals. So I'd love to hear your take. What are the similarities between these two types of change? And just as important, what are the differences?

I feel like you're in a rare position to speak to both, and probably one of the best people to break it down clearly. I think one of the similarities is the importance of articulating clearly what a win looks like, what success looks like. And I think in certain business contexts that might be more obvious than others. So for example if I'm in a private sector firm that values shareholder value, profitability, revenues, market share, those kinds of things. You still need to have a bit of a conversation about those benchmarks of success, those performance indicators, but it's generally pretty well understood.

In the kinds of work that I do organizationally, because I'm working in largely big community-facing initiatives, so that might be a university, it might be an organization working, say, in food security or affordable housing or a multi-service social service large agency or something. We often have to start with conversations collectively about what are we going after? What does a win look like? Because sometimes the wins are very hard to define or various people around the table have different definitions of what a win looks like. So one thing that's different in an organizational and individual context is organizationally

we need to have conversations as a group or multiple groups to say is the picture in your head of success matching the picture in my head or his head or their head or your head, and really develop that shared joint picture of success. Whereas when I'm working one-on-one, I only have to have that conversation with one person. But the conversation is similar in that you can't easily go after something if you don't know what it is you're going after. So I intentionally build into the strategizing processes that I do, and that's personal strategy and organizational too, lots of time to talk

about what the win looks like. I talk about how we're not, we're not like, I sometimes wish I was like a rower or some other kind of athlete that had a finish line and a time clock. And you just know if you've improved, you know, when you're done, because you know, when the race is over, you know, if you've improved. You know when you're done because you know when the race is over. You know if you've improved your time by three one hundredths of a second or something and you just have this really clear metric of success. Most of us don't have that in our individual lives or even in our corporate lives where we go, yes, that was a win. So I think part of what I can bring to a conversation is clarity around the jointly defined picture of success so that you can then go after that because there's tons of ways to define success.

There's all kinds of ways to be finding that win. So I mentioned earlier, part of for me earlier in my career, flexibility to be available to my family was part of my definition of success. I still want that, but I don't need it as desperately now that my children don't live at home. I'm looking for other kinds of abilities to combine paid work and travel. For example, that's one of my newer metrics of success.

And I really value learning. And so I've really built in some experimentation and some learning opportunities very explicitly into my work. And so helping my clients do that as well, individually and collectively, is a really important piece. And I think when you're doing it as a group, it also does depend on where in an organizational hierarchy or food chain you are actually intervening.

So I do tend to work with the boards and the C-suite executives of an organization who have a certain amount of ascribed power, at least, to be able to make the kinds of changes we're talking about. But even in that, around the C-suite table or around the board table, you need to have dialogue to say, do we have a shared understanding of what's going on or what we're going after? And so that's where my facilitation skills do come in really handy

because part of what facilitators are good at is structuring a conversation and making elements of that conversation visible to the whole room so that people can go, oh, that's where we are now, now let's have this conversation. Okay, that's where we are now, now let's have this conversation. Okay, that's where we are now, let's have it again.

And so it's providing some structured activities and almost like conversational containers to move a decision collectively forward. That's not that different than what I do in coaching. I provide containers, language, steps that say first let's talk about this, then let's talk about this. And I think overall what happens, I mentioned that I deal in energy, I do, but also in sort of feeling like people have some clarity, some insight where you go, oh, just even taking the time to pause and have those conversations has a learning element for the

people involved because so often we're just, we're going, right? We're on autopilot, we're doing our things. I think pausing strategically and wisely to say, what do I actually think? What do I actually want? And I can share a personal example about that. When you've, for me at least, when I raised for kids, I hadn't actually asked what I wanted, clearly, for quite a long time. What I wanted was kids. And so once you answer that question, what mom wants may not get asked again very much for the next 20 years.

And it's actually a much harder question than you think, especially if that muscle of asking and answering it has been atrophying. And so part of what I'm helping my clients to do in both of the spheres of organizations and individuals is to say, what do you really want? And that's part of what goes into building that vivid picture of that imagined future. And that can take some time because it's actually a very,

for most of us, it's a hard question and it surprises us that it's hard. You feel like you're supposed to know the answer to that. And some people really can just come up with the answer very quickly, but for others, it takes some time to reconnect with what makes you sing, what lights you up, and organizations can drift away from that too. So I see a lot of similarities, kind of a big picture dot connector kind of brain. So I seeing the similarities across those two modalities is clearer to me than seeing the differences. Earlier, you said something that really stuck with me, that history is a springboard to to the future, not a drag or inertia. It made me think of the comfort soul.

Sometimes that soul becomes so comfortable people don't want to leave it. Given your own life experience, raising four children, now with two grandchildren. You've lived through many transitions yourself. So when you work with people who are in that more mature stage of life, how do you help them reimagine, gain clarity, and actually take action? How do you get them to use the past as a launchpad? Not a reason to stay seated in the same old armchair? I think for me on a mindset level,

really going deep in thinking about whether I believe that the best is yet to come or whether the best days are behind me as someone who is at midlife, has been a really important exercise. And also thinking about the math of it, because for those of us that live with a certain level of privilege,

we can probably expect to live, say, round numbers to 100. And so if I'm 55 this year, and I'm thinking I'm just on the later side of halfway done. If that's true, I think so much of our CV and life experience gets filed in our 20s and 30s and we still have this ingrained ageism and this ingrained sort of timeframe that says something like work goes till we're 65.

And then what happens? You've got like potentially another 35 years after that And so I think rethinking the math and helping other people to realize that all being well We have a long story and a lot of life ahead of us Not just behind us can help the other thing I think about is I wrote a book last year called elastic and you talked about comfort zones and it's a bit about that where we need if we think about the metaphor of a rubber band is not useful just sitting on our desk. And in fact, if it does just sit on our desk, it gets brittle and you go to use it and it snaps and crumbles in your hand, right? An elastic is only useful if it is stretched.

But if you stretch it too fast, too much, for too long, it is also not useful. And by definition, an elastic snaps back into its original shape. But sometimes snapping back into old shapes isn't what we most need either. So I think about post-pandemic life when people were asked to snap back into old jobs or old ways of doing old jobs,

that they were going, no, I used to do that, but that's not who I am now. And so I feel like that helping people through the use of metaphor can also be helpful to say in our midlife or later years, are we still willing to stretch or have we just sat on the desk and getting and we're getting brittle? Are we still stretching but not stretching so much that we will snap or lose our stretchiness like our stretchy pants. So I think giving people some images like that to say what does an optimal level of

stretch look and feel like for you and that's where some of that adaptability work comes in for me because again it's not about will you be adaptable or not, will you adapt or not. It's about what's your personal preferred pathway to adaptability. So some people lean into certain aspects more than others. So if you're a really persistent, perseverant kind of person, you're going to leverage something like grit or resilience to be adaptable. Somebody else says, no, that's not me. I'm not the climb Mount Everest kind of person, but I am a really good big picture thinker. Okay, big picture thinkers are more adaptable than really highly detailed people.

That's useful. Or I'm going to leverage my team support inside the corporation where I work because our environments and our individual relationships can encourage us to take risks and push our edges of our comfort zone in some ways, whereas other team environments will keep us risk-averse and small. So there's lots of different tools in the toolbox to push us into learning spaces without feeling like we're gonna snap or without feeling like we're having to take somebody else's path to get there. So that's the reassurance that I enjoy

exploring with people is you don't get to choose whether you adapt or not, but you do get to choose the extent and the speed and the pathways you take to get there that feel like you. And so helping people visualize both the changes that we are moving toward or that are being put upon us, but also what continues because I think the other thing we can do to reassure our brain and our nervous system is to be clear that not everything changes at the same time. It did feel during some of those darker years that everything was changing, but even in the midst of pandemic insanity, we still had to buy

groceries, we still had to cook dinner, we still had to look after our families or whatever it was. And so helping our brains calm down by saying some things are not changing, even as other things are, can really reassure us. And so reading with an individual person or an organization to say, are they someone who craves challenge and adventure? Could we tap into that? Are they someone who craves connection and belonging and relationship?

Can we tap into that? Do they need more contribution? They've become a bit sort of self-focused. Do they need some outward orientation and more service in their life that's going to put them in a whole different mindset toward paying attention to what's going on with others around them rather than themselves. There's just all kinds of tools we can use to help people push a little so that they

feel energized and that they're making a meaningful, purposeful contribution, but they don't feel so threatened that they shut down. Here comes the break place to close our conversation. If one of your four children came to you and said, Mom, I feel stuck in my career or just in life, what would you say? or just in life, what would you say? They're probably in their 20s or 30s now, right in the thick of building their lives. And as we know, every generation

is facing its own challenges in today's world. With all your experience guiding others, individuals, leaders, organizations, how do you bring those same lessons and tools into your own family life? Or do you blend in those insights in a subtle manner through how you show up as a parent, maybe even now as a grandparent. Enough to hear how your work and wisdom show up in the most personal part of your life. Yeah, I love that. Thanks for asking, Matt.

There's things that you wanna talk to your parents about and there's things that you don't, right? And so I'm grateful that I'm close with all of my kids and we talk about lots of things. And also I'm sure that there's things that they don't share with me or that I wouldn't be the person that they would choose to come to. I want to honor everybody's space to choose who they want to speak to about

certain things, but we do have a bit of a joke in my family that I should have been one of those high school guidance counselor kind of people. I love, I've really enjoyed helping my kids figure out what university to attend, for example, and what pathways to follow. And as I mentioned, we love travel and there's a lot of sort of trip planning and trip imagining and dreaming that goes on. We took a sabbatical I told you about in 2017, but we certainly have, we've done home exchanges and lots of other creative ways to travel the world. And so I feel like if any of them were sitting here, they would say, what do I ask mom to do? I ask her to edit my

essays. I ask her to plan my trips. I ask her to plan my trips. I ask her to help my friends and I decide what schools to attend. Those kinds of things come up. And you mentioned that I host a book club. I do. I host a monthly leadership book club. And the idea is that we cover four to six titles a month, but you don't have to read the books.

I read the books. It's one of the occupational hazards of having a PhD is that I know how to read really quickly. So I read the books and I talk about them for an hour or so. I'm like the human blinkers. When people come on for an hour and they hear about four to six recent titles in the leadership and self development space and decide if they want to read them or if that gives them enough of a sense, if it comes up in conversation, they can at least chat about it intelligently. And a couple of my kids come to that book club.

And so it's interesting to me, the different little parts of my work that, that are starting to intersect with their lives, they're all into their own things. But it's, I think it's really important that obviously the skills that we bring to our paid clients are also ones that, I don't know, it makes me think of the word integrity. And I mean that from the actual meaning of the word, that there's a fullness that says, this is the kind of person I am and this is how I show up in the world. And whether I'm talking about those things with my own children or with my paid clients or with my friends, it's how I show up.

And I think when you have, I guess, a personal brand as opposed to a corporate brand, there's an authenticity there that I think has to come through. And I won't be for everyone. That's okay with me. But I think if I can show that level of consistent integrity across what I do, I'm hoping that my own family and my paid clients would know that what is what you get. And the way that people describe the work that I do is this warm energy combined with insight.

And if that can be helpful to my own family, so much the better. Yes, absolutely. And you're so right. The balance between guiding and letting go is such a delicate part of parenting, especially for those who lead others in their careers. You want to share what you've learned, offer your support,

maybe even pass down a few tools. But at the same time, your kids aren't your clients. They are their own people. So instead of controlling the outcome and even the process, it becomes more about preparing them, helping them view their own judgment, confidence, and resilience. And yes, that means allowing them to make decisions, even the wrong ones, and being there to support them through the consequences. I was gonna say, I feel like you've just described

the parenting journey, but I think one of the things that we've really valued in our family is learning, is teachability. Our kids have had the benefit of having some really great coaches in the sports that they've done and their music and that kind of thing. They've had some really great teachers, they've had some really not great ones, and we've really encouraged them to seek out good role models and good mentors and be people who

value feedback. Three of our kids were dancers and they learned through one particular dance studio that they studied with for years that corrections are gold. They would say that. If I said to any of my girls, corrections are, they would all say gold because they learn that being given feedback to get better is a gift and they know to thank people for that.

And so I hope that has really permeated and it makes me realize that the people that I most enjoy working with are people, like whether they are my kids or paid clients, are people who are teachable people who really want to learn from people who inspire them and who want to get better and who want to level up. And I wanna be modeling that in my own practice and work.

And I want to encourage that in other people, whether they choose to tap into any wisdom that I might bring or to what other people are saying, I really am valuing that combination of curiosity and teachability that I think great leaders have. Sure, Rebecca, we've covered so much ground today. Truly a lot of rich and thoughtful insights. a lot of rich and thoughtful insights. Before we close, is there anything you'd like to add? If folks are curious about giving some language to maybe what they are experiencing right now that feels like transition, we'll make sure in the show notes that there's a link to a podcast page on my site that takes them to a little quiz that you can try that will give you some idea of where you're at right now across five different areas that most people in transition

are craving. And also you can order there an e-copy of the book Elastic that I mentioned. And so would love people to get that in their hands. It's got that metaphor. It's got an acronym of Elastic across seven different leadership qualities that I think are underwritten about, underplayed in terms of leadership work. And it's got some interesting case studies that are not the typical large kind of

American Silicon Valley case studies, but that are more local organizations that are really putting this adaptable, nimble leadership into practice. So I'd love to draw people to that space to get some of those resources. And Vince, I really appreciate the opportunity for the conversation today. Thank you for it.

That's where we'll leave it. Rebecca doesn't offer tidy answers, but she does offer frameworks, metaphors, and the kind of permission a lot of us need right now. Reinvention doesn't mean changing everything. Sometimes it's just seeing your life from a new angle. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host.

Until next time, take care.