How do we lead in the face of fear, when the stakes feel sky high and relentlessly personal?

The realities of political violence, hostility, and burnout shape how we show up. And they can chip away at your generous heart, opening the path for cynicism and doubt.

But if we can focus on what matters most, feel through our emotions–and help others do the same–and orient our gaze forward to the vision of our lives, work, and world that we want, we create an energy that cynicism can’t easily break down, even through setbacks.

We need to protect our hope and conviction that change is possible. The future is not a done deal. We have choices about how it unfolds.

In this Unburdened Leader conversation, we explore what it takes to lead with clarity, protect our capacity, and still believe that change is possible, even when everything around us tries to tell us otherwise.

Amanda Litman is the cofounder and president of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, diverse leaders running for local office. Since 2017, they’ve launched the careers of thousands of millennials and Gen Z candidates and in the process, changed what leadership looks like in America. She’s the author of two books: When We’re In Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership and Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself, a how-to manual for people running for office.

Before launching Run for Something, Amanda worked on multiple presidential and statewide political campaigns. She graduated from Northwestern University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two daughters, and their sometimes rowdy dog.

 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Amanda and the team at Run for Something support candidates in the face of real and present fears for their safety
• Why Gen Z’s refusal to accept “the way things are done” is energy we need 
• Why Amanda believes in the optimism of looking to what is possible
• Why getting involved on the local level is a powerful counter to pessimism
• The major disconnect of pop leadership advice with how most people encounter leadership
• How our current moment is making leadership uniquely challenging, isolating, and exhausting
• Why leadership isn’t about being your full self at work, but about responsible authenticity

 

Learn more about Amanda Litman:

• Website
• Run for Something
• Instagram: @amandalitm
• TikTok: @amandalitman
• Bluesky: @amandalitman.bsky.social
• Facebook: @amanda.litman
• Connect on LinkedIn

 

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

 

Resources:

• Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself
• When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership
• Dark Winds
• Along Came Amor, Alexis Daria
• You Had Me at Hola, Alexis Daria
• The Breakfast Club

 

Transcript:

Amanda Litman: There is one approach to, like, “The system sucks. We’ve got to burn it down.” And then there’s an approach where, like, “The system is broken, and I want to understand why and how to fix it and be part of making it better.” That doesn’t mean don’t break it down to the studs and rebuild it from the ground up, but it has a more futuristic approach. It looks at what is possible, not what needs to become impossible. We actually have to be really optimistic about the future, because if you are pessimistic, then you are saying that change can never happen. I think change is possible, and if we get the right people to lead it, it can be for good.

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Rebecca Ching: Hey, everyone! Before we get into the show, I just want to thank you for showing up here, and if you haven’t already done so, I’d be honored and so grateful if you left a rating, a review, and shared this episode, or the show overall, with some folks you think may benefit from it. This actually makes a big difference in getting the show in front of other people who may not otherwise be aware of it. So thank you!

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Rebecca Ching: All right. What does it mean to lead when fear takes over and the stakes feel relentlessly personal? Political violence, burnout, rising hostility in just about every space that we’re at these days, they’re not just headlines. They’re realities that shape how we show up, and they can chip away at our generous hearts too. Now, the leaders who stand out in the face of discomfort, fear, and challenge are the ones who stay the course with hope, conviction, and a deep commitment to living a life not consumed by work or fear. In this Unburdened Leader conversation, we explore what it takes to lead with clarity, protect our capacity, and still believe that change is possible even when everything around us tries to tell us otherwise.

2:05

I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

“How does it stop if we don’t stop it?” This quote from a show I was recently watching stopped me in my tracks. So in the show, a reporter was asking a nurse this question. It was in season two, episode four of Dark Winds, which by the way, I highly recommend this show. It’s a refreshing breath of fresh air. The first season actually kicks off in the summer of 1971, my birth year, with lots of landlines and old cars and boxy, old school TVs. I needed a break from dystopian or high-action TV and movies, and Dark Winds with its awesome storytelling but also the pace of everything, it was just a perfect fit for what my system needed.

So okay, let me go back to this episode here. The reporter was investigating a devastating consequence of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970. So the act was intended to help with healthcare issues and increase accessibility to family planning and other family health supports, especially to those who had a more difficult time to have access to healthcare, right? In this legislation, if a woman wanted to get sterilized, the legislation required a 30-day waiting period after they gave their consent. What they later found in some investigations, which these investigations were still pretty limited in their reach and scope from what I understand in my reading, is that women who were poor, and particularly Black women, and especially the women who were living on reservations, were being sterilized involuntarily.

4:16

Some did not even know until much later. And this data that I’ve encountered in researching about this, I don’t think they really got the whole scope of the impact of this incredibly unethical practice but the extent of the harm they think has reached up to 50-, to 60,000 women who were living on these reservations that were sterilized without their consent. Unethical doctors took what these clinics were supposed to do, something that was helpful to women and families, and ended up deeply, deeply violating them.

So in the show, the reporter was from the LA Times, and she didn’t stay silent. She kept getting rebuttals as she was trying to interview women impacted by this, and eventually she earned their trust, and the women impacted did not stay silent, the reporter didn’t stay silent. They didn’t just look away. They kept pursuing and sharing stories of women who had been victims of this kind of violence. And again, the quote, “How does it stop if we don’t stop it,” it lands, and it feels really timely.

Right now, I’m just drilling down into being wildly hopeful. Sometimes I call my hope scrappy. Sometimes it feels grounded. And sometimes it feels elusive. But in my conversation with my guest today, I feel like it was just the dose of hope that I needed, and she wisely noted (and I felt exceptionally encouraged by this) that not imagining a future that looks different from today just means that we don’t believe change is possible, and we need to refuse to do that. That belief makes today pointless. The future’s not a done deal. We have choices about how it unfolds.

6:02

And the leaders I work with, they care big. They’re involved in so much, not just at their work, but their families, their kids, their communities. And I hear from them, they’re like, “It’s so easy to get overwhelmed.” But I’ve found in my work with them, and even in my own practices, a few things helping me stay focused and wildy grounded in hope, I call them my three F’s, and it’s not an F-bomb even though lots of F-bombs are being said these days, but there’s always a little formula, right?

So the first F is focus, right? For myself and those I work with, I focus radically on our values. We check them relentlessly against our actions, our thought life, and how we use our time and our resources. I focus on the people who matter most (for me: my family, my clients, my friends, my community). I focus on supporting those stepping up, whether they’re political candidates, non-profit leaders, folks in corporate wanting to make change from the inside out, folks showing up for their people in everyday ways. Getting radically focused has helped me protect my outrage and stay connected to my agency and my hope.

The second F is feel. We have to feel the daily barrage of grief, loss, anger, move through the numb, disconnect, disbelief, overwhelm, whatever it may be. And that means taking care of ourselves physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually. It means helping those that I work with take care of their nervous systems and work with their inner protective systems, especially the parts that try to protect them through people pleasing, overfunctioning, powering over or through cynicism. We have to feel what we’re feeling to create ways to help others do the same without offloading onto others or steamrolling through them.

The third F is forward. If I’m not moving forward, I’m at least looking forward. I tell myself I can side-eye the past to reflect, gather data, and learn. But I always want to face forward.

8:07

I remember back early in my clinical career working with people in recovery, many healing from intense eating disorders and trauma or both, they say things like, “Oh, you know, I took two steps backwards today,” or “I’m back at the beginning or ground zero,” because of a lapse or an experience or a choice they made. And I gently remind them, “You can’t unexperience your healing and all you’ve fought for to be where you are today. Setbacks happen. Just keep facing forward.” Again, you can’t unlearn what you’ve discovered. I’ve learned that you either are facing forward, moving forward, or people just turn around and give up, right? Sometimes you may not be moving forward, but if you continue to look forward while you rest and recoup, because sometimes that’s all you can do in the moment, that’s enough because it’s a lot to adult these days, like a lot. And I believe if we focus on what matters most, metabolize and feel through our emotions, help others do the same, and orient our gaze forward towards the vision we’re working towards personally and professionally, even if that means pausing for breath, which we all need to take a beat, we’re creating a kind of energy that cynicism can’t easily break down.

Now, for those of us with a history of relational trauma, we’re often the canaries in the coalmine. We see things others don’t, and that can be lonely, especially in leadership. Now, parts of my still carry the echoes of relational wounds, and I can feel them get activated when I witness things happening and it feels like no one cares, reminiscent of how I felt when it seemed everyone looked the other way or didn’t see what was happening. And these parts scream, “Can’t you see what’s happening?” I can hear them just take over, and I feel them take over at times. But these parts want validation. They want support. They want solidarity. They want community. And I can give that to them within. When I check in with those parts of me, they don’t overwhelm, they don’t shut me down, and I get to remind them that we have lots of support and lots of agency. For me, these YOU-turns these days have been a lot, and I know that’s been the case for those I work with too.

10:19

Okay, so back to that quote from Dark Winds. “How does it stop if we don’t stop it?” And those parts of me rally in solidarity with that sentiment from the reporter. Wanting to make the unseen seen, help bring others to action, to stop injustices. And my guest today, she started a nonprofit, initially as a hobby, that turned into a multi-million dollar organization supporting people answering the call to step up and be a part of leading differently so they can stop the forces that silence and do harm to people and this planet.

Amanda Litman is the co-founder and president of Run For Something, which recruits and supports young diverse leaders running for local office. Since 2017, they’ve launched the careers of thousands of Millennials and Gen Z candidates, and in the process, changed what leadership looks like in America. She’s the author of two books, When We’re In Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership and Run For Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing The System Yourself, a how-to manual for people running for office. Before launching Run For Something, Amanda worked on multiple presidential and multiple state-wide political campaigns. She graduated from Northwestern University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two daughters, and their sometimes rowdy dog.

All right, everyone, let’s get to this Unburdened Leader conversation!

—–

Rebecca Ching: Amanda Litman, welcome to The Unburdened Leader podcast! I am so thrilled that we are speaking today. Thank you for coming on the show.

Amanda Litman: Thank you for having me! I am honored.

Rebecca Ching: Well, I love the work you do. I am so excited to dig into your work at your nonprofit and your new book.

12:04

But I think I would be remiss to not acknowledge that just 72 hours before this conversation right now, we all woke up to the news that Minnesota Speaker of the House, Representative Melissa Hortman, along with her husband Mark, were fatally shot, along with State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were also bravely wounded in what reports all call as politically motivated. And this guy had a list of 70 additional elected officials, business leaders, health leaders that was recovered in his car.

I just had to ask you. You’re a former presidential campaign staffer. You later founded a nonprofit called Run For Something. We’re gonna dig into both of those things in this conversation. And your nonprofit, you’ve supported thousands of candidates, younger candidates, interested in running for down-ballot offices. So what went through your mind when you first heard this news?

Amanda Litman: I felt sick to my stomach because I think about the, at this point, hundreds of thousands of people we have asked to run for office over the last eight years, and running for office always has required bravery. It’s putting your name on the ballot. It’s doing something courageous. It has never before required risking your life, and that we are in this moment where that has changed is crushing. It is so deeply sad. I was heartbroken for her family, sad for the state of Minnesota, and gutted by the idea that this might discourage good leaders from stepping up, that they might feel like they no longer feel safe.

And I will say, we heard this over the last three years, in particular, really since January 6th, 2021, that violence and threats against elected officials has gotten worse, that the hostility that elected officials were facing and candidates were facing felt even more omni-present.

14:03

But this is someone local. This could have been someone we had worked with. I know many, many of my peers across the democratic political space had worked with her and had said nothing but extraordinary things about her leadership and her efficacy. And just thinking about the bravery that we’re demanding of people right now is unimaginable. It’s unimaginable.

Rebecca Ching: It is unimaginable. And this happened in their homes. And I’m from the Twin Cities, and so, I have several classmates that lived near her and knew her and several folks in my previous political experience that also had the same things to say. And I think that you named something, that leadership, even zooming out, is asking so much more. And as a trauma-informed leadership coach, I had a lot of compassion for that fear. At the same time, I think for you and with your focus on leadership too, I’m curious as this news broke, and it was just days after we all witnessed in real time Senator Padilla who’s my senator now (I live in California) be pushed to the ground and be handcuffed and detained for doing his job asking a question, regardless of the spin that’s out there. How did you connect with your team and the candidates you support as the news spread, both of these things, actually, in the last handful of days? How did you lead amidst all of these events happening realtime?

Amanda Litman: So when the news broke on Saturday, I was able to get home pretty quickly. We were enrolling my toddler in school. So we were out and about a little bit. By the time things settled and we got home, I’d sent an email to our whole team. Someone else had reached out across the team Slack to say, “How are we talking with candidates about this? What are we gonna do here?” And I sent an email to the whole team basically saying, “I feel shook. I know this feels jarring. Our team members of our staff, our communications, and one of our chief executives will be putting together some guidance on how to talk to candidates and alumni. The two guiding ethos that we have right now if you talk to folks before that guidance is ready is, one, you’ve got to be honest, and two, you have to be brave. We have to be honest with people that we cannot stop every bad thing from happening. There is so much about running for office that we can’t control, but we have to be on the level about what kind of threats they’re facing. That’s why we’ve built up so many resources for people facing security challenges. And two, we have to make sure that folks realize part of the goal of these kinds of things is to scare good people out of stepping up.”

16:34

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Amanda Litman: “So we have to balance those two things, honesty and resiliency and encourage folks if you have questions, if you need space, take it,” but that more would be coming soon. By the end of the afternoon, our team had put together some pretty clear framework. We sent it out and circulated it with candidates and alumni, and we’re continuing these conversations throughout the week.

It has been really helpful. I think we had an all-staff meeting on Monday mid-day, and I really named for folks the weekend was a space for two emotions. One was a deep sadness and fear, and the other was deep joy of seeing the photos of the protests, of seeing the videos and the clips of my staff, my candidates and others in this moment and that we have to hold those two things in the same space, and that can be really challenging, and reminding people, as always has been true at Run For Something, if you need to take space away from work to gather your thoughts, to care for yourself, to care for your community, you can do it. Whatever you need, you can do it.

Rebecca Ching: And you say that and say, “You’ll be paid. Just take the time you need.”

Amanda Litman: Yeah, “Take time. Let your manager know. Get your work covered. If you need to take more than a day or two, we can figure something out more broadly. But this is your day. You’ve got to care for yourself because we’ve got to do this work for a long time, and if you need to take 48 hours away to do whatever you need to do, that’s okay. The work will be here when you come back.”

Rebecca Ching: What are some of the common themes that you’ve heard, whether from your team or from the candidates you’re supporting as you outreached them and said, “We’re acknowledging this is going on and reaching out to check in on folks.” What are some of the common themes that you heard back from folks?

18:12

Amanda Litman: Fear. They were afraid. I mean, for so many of the candidates we’ve worked with over the years, they’ve experienced threats to their life. They open their DMs on social media, they see their inboxes, they’ve had to work with law enforcement to be protective. Thinking about the way some of them maybe can’t have good relationships with law enforcement depending on where they are and what their identity might be, it resonated because it felt true to their experience. I think that was so sad to hear. And they appreciated the touch that we were there for them, at the very least to hear out and validate that they’re not crazy for being anxious here, not crazy for feeling like this is real for them. Even if there’s not much we can do, I mean, this was true after the Trump assassination attempt over the summer. The memory holds so much of last year, but when that happened, folks reached out to us to say, “If someone can shoot at the President who has the best security in the world, what about me?” And the answer is [Sigh] no answer. There is no clear answer, except that we have to be brave anyway and try and change the social conversation so that violence is not such an omnipresent part of our political experience.

Rebecca Ching: Well, that right there. I’m married to a historian. His first master’s thesis was in World War II nuclear proliferation, so that feels oddly, freakishly timely as we’re talking right now. And he said, “Well, this is –.” He was like, “This is kind of where political assassinations and this type of violence becomes normal.” And I’m like, “We can’t let it. We can’t just acquiesce to that.” And I love what you just said too, just acknowledging. We’re not trying to fix or bypass. And the power of the witness, just acknowledgement and listening really helps on a nervous system level, on a relational level.

And I sometimes know so many leaders are afraid to say the thing, that they don’t think it’s professional or it’s work appropriate. How do you respond to that?

20:15

Amanda Litman: Well, and the definition of professional is changing constantly, so I think it’s absolutely necessary to say the thing, especially when the thing needs to be said. But more than that, I think it’s about what your team needs to hear in order to accomplish their goals. Our team and our candidate community needs to hear that they are validated, that they are justified, that they’re not crazy, and that there are limits to what we can provide and that if that means they decide not to run, that’s a totally reasonable decision to make. I always say this. I never want to convince someone to do this. I want to open the door for them and make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. But if I have to convince you to do it, you’re not gonna be the best possible candidate because it is too hard for you to even have a little bit of wavering self-doubt. You need to be all in.

Rebecca Ching: So I want to zoom out a little bit to your background. You came up professionally in the intense world of campaign and politics. I danced in campaigns and working on The Hill for a while myself, and I know how intense it is and all-consuming it is where there are blurred lines between what’s personal, professional, trial-by-fire leadership. People are just thrown in and you go do it, and it’s life. It’s just all-consuming.

So for you, what was the moment that you realized something needed to change even in that space, and how did that lead to you starting Run For Something and then later writing a leadership book?

Amanda Litman: So I worked for Hillary Clinton for two years. It was my third cycle working on campaigns, and it was an honor and a privilege and hopefully the hardest thing I’ll ever do, God willing. About a week after election day, I’d started hearing from people I’d gone to high school and college with. “Hey, Amanda! I’m a public school teacher in Chicago. I’m thinking about running for office. What do I do? You’re the only person I know that works in politics. What do I do?”

22:07

And at the time, I didn’t have an answer for them because in November 2016, if you were young and you were newly excited about politics and you wanted to do more than vote and more than volunteer, there was nowhere you could go that would answer your call, and that, to me, felt like a symptom of big problems both in the democratic party and also in our democracy. There wasn’t an onramp for new leaders felt like a reason why we had a lot of older leaders.

So I reached out to a bunch of people with an idea. “What if we started an organization to solve this problem?” One of those folks became my cofounder, an operative named Ross Morales Rocketto, and we wrote a plan, and we built a website, and we launched Run For Something on Trump’s first inauguration day thinking it would be really small. We’d get 100 people in the first year, that this was gonna be our side project, that I was gonna get a real job, he was managing a congressional campaign at the time. We had 1,000 people sign up in the first week.

Rebecca Ching: Oh, my gosh.

Amanda Litman: As of today, we are up to about 210,000 young people across the country including nearly 50,000 who’ve signed up just since the November 2024 election. So what was gonna be my hobby is now a full-time, multi-million dollar nonprofit that works to recruit and support young diverse leaders running for local office all across the country.

Rebecca Ching: And are those numbers since you started Run For Something?

Amanda Litman: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ching: Okay. And then just this year you’ve had an additional 50,000 since the inauguration?

Amanda Litman: Yes, that’s right.

Rebecca Ching: And that’s exciting because, at least in my journey, I’ve always felt like the outlier as someone who cared about politics, and everyone kind of gave me the Heisman like, “I don’t do that,” and “Don’t be so political,” and I’m like — it just never made sense. Even though I have my views and they may disagree with people, you know, I get that part of it. But the part of civic engagement, it’s almost like it’s a population that we bash, you know? I see that with education. I see that with anyone who works for government, and especially political leaders.

24:02

So what is it about young folks not being cynical, not being tapped out, that is leading to those numbers, which is so exciting and encouraging to me? What are you seeing that’s saying, “I can do something. I have the confidence. I believe I can make a difference,” versus the cynical tap out piece that we see so often too?

Amanda Litman: You know, we’re seeing people step up to solve really specific problems in their community, to be very tactical and concrete about the thing they want to get better. It might be housing. It might be childcare. It might be schools. Whatever it is, they have very detailed things that they want to tackle. They also — and this is something I’m actually hearing more this year than we heard in years past — is, “I don’t want to wait my turn. I’m tired of being told it’s not my turn. I’m tired of hearing, ‘Get in line.’ No, screw that. It’s my turn,” and the way that we have gotten into this mess is by demanding fealty to a system that does not serve us. I think that has been really cool to hear this year, just a refusal to accept that the way things were done yesterday has to be the way they are going to be done tomorrow. And that’s really inspiring.

Rebecca Ching: That’s so inspiring. Can you say a little bit more because it’s hard to explain. There’s a little bit of a zeitgeist of, “This is what you do, and you’ve done your time, and you have to put in your time.” That kind of culture, it’s pretty thick in the political space, but it’s really thick in corporate too. What do you say when folks are responding like, “Oh, my gosh, the hubris of the young people today. How dare they do this?” What would you say to someone who’s genuinely not just tapping out and being kind of douchey but just like, “I don’t get it. I had to put in my time. Why are people wanting to jump the line and go do something that I had to wait years to do?”

26:00

Amanda Litman: Just because you suffered doesn’t mean they have to suffer. Your suffering didn’t serve you. The misery didn’t make it better. And especially in this moment and basically every circumstance, the systems that we have built that allowed for this moment to exist didn’t serve everyone. Who is winning right now? I think that clarity that we have to try stuff differently and we have to try it differently with leaders who are inclined towards good, not evil, is really important. They’ve got to be open to it. It’s not burn it down. It’s rebuild. There’s a difference.

Rebecca Ching: Can you say more about that difference?

Amanda Litman: Yeah, I think this is a little bit partisan, but it’s also I think even more generational and sort of philosophical even. There is one approach to, like, “The system sucks. We’ve got to burn it down. We’ve got to light it on fire, tear it apart from limb to limb” And then there’s an approach where, like, “The system is broken, and I want to understand why and how to fix it and be part of making it better.” That doesn’t mean don’t break it down to the studs and rebuild it from the ground up, but it has a more futuristic approach. It looks at what is possible, not what needs to become impossible.

I think about the leadership that I push for Run For Something candidates, and a lot of them that I write about in the book is that we actually have to be really optimistic about the future, because if you are pessimistic, then you are saying that change can never happen. I think change is possible, and if we get the right people to lead it, it can be for good.

Rebecca Ching: Do you ever have people push back on you saying that that’s naive or Pollyanna that you are radically hopeful about the future?

Amanda Litman: Sure, cool, do it your way. I’m gonna keep doing it my way. I think my way is nice, and I think anytime anybody pushes back on me I’m like, “Great, you don’t have to be a part of this. That’s for you.” I think everyone is entitled to take their own position and their own approach to making the world a better place or not. But if my way doesn’t work for you, great. Do it your way. Catch you in a couple of years. Let me know how it goes.

28:12

Rebecca Ching: Stop trying to convince people who don’t want to be convinced and stay the course of what you’re focused on.

Amanda Litman: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: I love it. Before we get into your book, I’m curious what you would say to folks who are like, “I don’t feel the call to run for office, but how do I support people that are wanting to make these needed changes? How do I support these folks? How do I get involved in a way that feels true to me even though I’m not running for office or don’t want to run a campaign?” What are ways that leaders and citizens of all kinds can be a part of this change even if they’re not running for office themselves?

Amanda Litman: The more local you can do the work, the better. I think about this both for political action and also for news consumption. Pick the poison that you’ve got the antidote for, and most often, the antidote is local engagement, whether it’s getting involved in a local campaign, mutual aid, community service. The smaller scale, often the bigger impact because it’s more personal. It also allows you to build up the muscle of winning, which I think is really important. When you get involved in a fight, let’s say, about a bike lane, yeah, it can feel really small potatoes, but you can usually win it eventually. If you know the right pressure points, you can strategize to win it, and then you get to bike down it, and that experience of biking down the bike lane that you helped get is such a morale boost. It proves that this is possible, and that helps you get stronger and more motivated for the next fight, which could be a little bit bigger.

Rebecca Ching: I think that’s a really powerful counter to, “What’s the point? You’re working on a bike lane while people are getting bombed or people are starving,” or whatever the big thing is. And that just really is just such a buzzkill on the next level versus this is where you build the muscle, and it’s generative, and you’re doing something versus just sitting in the cheap seats hurling criticism. So I love that answer.

[Inspirational Music]

30:13

Rebecca Ching: Leading is hard. Leading is also often controversial as you navigate staying aligned to your values, your mission, and your boundaries. There are a lot of shoulds out there these days, and it can get noisy. Navigating the inevitable controversy, and it seems like there are a lot of them these days, can challenge your confidence, clarity, and calm. I know you don’t mind making the hard decisions, but sometimes the stakes seem higher and higher and can bring up echoes of old doubts and insecurities during times when you need to feel rock solid on your plan and action.

Finding a coach who gets the nuances of your business and leading in our complex and polarized world can help you identify the blocks that can keep you playing it safe and small. Leading today is not a fancy title or fluffy bragging rights. It’s brave and bold work to stay the course when the future is so unknown and the doubts and pains from the past keep showing up to shake things up. Internal emotional practices and systemic strategies are needed to keep the protector of cynicism at bay and foster a hope that is actionable and aligned.

So when the stakes are high and you don’t want to lose focus, when you want to navigate inevitable conflict between your ears and with those you lead, when time is of the essence and you want to make hard decisions with confidence and clarity, then Unburdened Leader Coaching is for you and where you deepen the capacity to tolerate the vulnerability of change, innovation, and doing things differently than you were taught.

To start your Unburdened Leader Coaching process with me go to www.rebeccaching.com and book a free connection call. I can’t wait to hear from you!

[Inspirational Music]

32:02

Rebecca Ching: Okay, so you wrote a leadership book. It wasn’t just a political book. When I first heard you interviewing, I thought it was gonna be about politics. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh! I need to talk to Amanda!” And your book’s titled When We’re In Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership. And I loved — you talked about this and you wrote about this — you read over 60 leadership books. I probably read a lot of those too, and I had a little nausea in my stomach when I heard that you did that kind of all at once because I know a lot of what’s in there. And I’m curious, in that reading, what were some of the things that stood out to you as you were diving into what’s been written about leadership?

Amanda Litman: A couple things. One, I was struck by how many leadership books are written by people who’ve never been leaders or have not been in the weeds in a while. Talking about leadership is very different than being a  leader, and leading in the military is a little bit different. Leading a very big company at the very top of a big food chain is a little different. It’s not how most people experience leadership. Most people experience leadership in your PTA, in a small business, in a nonprofit, in a group chat. Most people are leaders on a much smaller scale. That’s not to say that stuff isn’t applicable, but it’s not how most people experience it.

The second is that most of it was written through the lens of mostly older, mostly white, mostly men. If you scroll through the top 25 leadership books on Amazon, it takes you ‘til, I think, 9 or 10 to get something written by a woman, and it’s usually Dr. Brené Brown. You don’t get another one until 20-ish, and I don’t think there are any written by someone under the age of 40. That’s not to say that those don’t have valuable lived experience or wisdom or all of that, but it’s very disconnected from how me and my peers (I’m 35 years old) experience work, life, all of that.

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The third thing is that a lot of it felt disconnected from how people work today, from what it means to show up in the office when the office is Zoom or Slack chats, and how to have executive presence over video, and how to run your own personal social media when your staff might follow you, or even how to have a personal brand if I’ve been online since I was 15. I have had a MySpace page. I’ve had Facebook alone since I was a high school student. I would read these personal branding guides, and I was like, “You are assuming that I have not been online my entire life! This is disconnected from how I experience the internet.” There’s a lot of other stuff too by management by walking around and bring your full self to work, where it’s like I don’t actually believe in any of that. And I think a lot of people have experienced the challenges that come with that.

The final thing is that a lot of the management and leadership books I read didn’t talk about the psychic toll that leadership takes.

Rebecca Ching: Nope.

Amanda Litman: They don’t want to say it’s hard. And I think that made me feel — you know, I speak for myself here, but I did hear this in basically every conversation I had with leaders about the book was, like, “Am I finding this hard because I am not good enough to do it, or am I finding this hard because this is structurally incredibly hard?”

Rebecca Ching: Yes.

Amanda Litman: And the answer is the latter, it’s structurally incredibly hard. Understanding that was really important.

Rebecca Ching: So speaking of these leaders that you interviewed, you had a really cool section of leaders from all identities and industries for the book. I’m curious, what story or insight most surprised you? Maybe it’s something you haven’t even shared about yet, I don’t know. But maybe share one that challenged your assumptions most about what leadership looks like today?

Amanda Litman: That’s an interesting question. I talked to a lot of people who would say — and there are a couple in mind. There’s someone who runs a media company and someone who runs a tech company who are both mid-thirties who would say, “I think I lead like a boomer.” And I ask them, “Why? Tell me more about that.”

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They’re like, “Yeah, I don’t feel like I’m the right fit for this book because I think I lead like a boomer.” Like, “Well, the only examples I have are the older, mostly white dudes who I’ve been modeling my leadership style after. I lead the way that my bosses always led,” which changes what you think is possible. They’re like, “You know, I’ve been chafing against that. I’ve felt the discomfort in that, but I don’t have good role models for how to do it differently.” And that, I think, is part of the challenge.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, I think that’s such a great point too is there’s a lot of us doing things kind of counter to what we were taught to do, whether it’s leading, parenting, you name it. We’re like, “Where’s the map?” We’re kind of doing it ourselves.

You touched a little bit on kind of the mental and relational toll of leading. Anything else really stand out to you? Obviously, that’s a really big interest of mine. Anything really that you identified in these conversations or in your research or even from your own personal experience that feels essential for leaders leading in the year 2025?

Amanda Litman: It’s so lonely. It’s so deeply lonely. And I think it has always been true that it’s lonely at the top, “heavy is the head that wears the crown,” all of that is true. But in particular, in this moment, the demands on leaders are so extensive. It is both get the job done, hit your goals whatever they may be and manage your employees’ feelings, care for your own emotional wellbeing, bring your full self to work, be authentic but not too authentic. So many folks use the term, “I feel like I’m running an adult daycare.”

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Amanda Litman: Having to do the emotional labor for your team as well as the literal labor, and that the divide between work and life has become so porous thanks to remote work, which I think is good. I think flexible work is good. But because it has become so porous and because we don’t have the muscle of building boundaries and we don’t have the system to build those guardrails, it is even harder to disconnect and to take a break.

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I think that loneliness and exhaustion, the burnout that is possible for leaders at the top that then seeps through to the rest of their team is so omnipresent. It was a theme in basically every conversation that I had. Regardless of where they were leading, how long they’d been in the position, what kind of industry, scale or scope of work, everyone was troubling with how hard it was and how lonely it was.

Rebecca Ching: How hard and lonely has it been for you and your work?

Amanda Litman: I am very lucky that, for the first eight years of this work, I had a cofounder, Ross, who was a great partner. And even with that, it was lonely, especially because my leadership role is more public. I am the spokesperson for the org. I have to talk on the internet a lot. I do a lot of press. I’m out and about, which means I get more of the hate. I always know when an interview that I’ve done has broken through the echo chamber when I start getting a lot of negative feedback. I’m like, “Ah, it’s reached the people who disagree with me. Great.”

It is very challenging, in particular, to be a younger woman in a position of leadership. I remember distinctly when I — I have two little kids. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old and an eight-month-old. She’ll be nine months old next week. When I had my first daughter and I was looking for other leaders who’d been in  my position who were running teams, had been executives, and also became new moms, in particular, new birthing parents, in particular, because we were going through that experience. And there were only a couple that I could find who had literally been in these shoes and could give me advice for how to navigate that and how to think about taking maternity leave and re-entry to work and what my time would look like after, who also didn’t have the support structure of lots and lots of money to pay for nannies or Sheryl Sandberg, very famously, built the nursery next to her office at Yahoo!. It’s like I can’t do that.

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What are we talking about here? Most women can’t do that. So that isolation of that experience as well was something that I really had to work through.

Rebecca Ching: I’m really glad that you’re naming all of these things. Those were some of the things that stood out to me, especially. When I expanded my clinical business, gosh, 14 years ago, my kids were one and three, and what’s interesting too is there was very little support. It was more like, “What are you doing?” And so, I’m like, “This is a vision, a mission I have. I’ve got to execute it.” But what about — yeah, “Versus how can I help?” Yeah, I’m thinking particularly for women.

I had to narrow the list down because there were so many incredible points that — you’re redefining a lot of the status quo of how we talk and think about a lot of things in the workplace, and I’d love to riff on a few of these topics with you.

Amanda Litman: Yeah!

Rebecca Ching: First is — and you touched on it earlier in our conversation — how do you define or talk about professionalism?

Amanda Litman: Professionalism is rapidly changing. I think COVID and the pandemic really sped us through some of those cycles in that you could work from home, or had to work from home, got rid of the hard pants, changed dress codes. You show up in the office on Zoom like, “I am wearing pajama pants. I’m very comfortable, and I’m very happy, and also I’m an executive who is wearing pajama pants.” I think it has been really meaningful to see the definition of professionalism expand as the kinds of leaders who’ve entered these positions of power have changed. I think we see this in politics most prominently because political leaders are very out in public, but they’re not the only ones where this is the case where the way you can dress as a leader has shifted, tattoos, makeup, piercings.

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It would be ridiculous now to not hire someone because they have tattoos. Like, who cares? But that was a real concern as recently as, like, five or ten years ago.

I remember I had a nose ring when I was in college. I had purple hair for a while when I was a little younger, and I loved it. It was so fun. I took the nose ring out because I had to have surgery and they made me take it out, and I just never put it back in. But one of my mom’s concerns was, “Well, will people take you seriously with a nose ring?” I was like, “Yeah! Who cares? Who cares.” That expansion of what a leader looks like is both really good and also means that the options for business professional, business casual are very different.

I think often of the conversations I have in some of my group chats where I’m like, “I have to go to this conference. Is this work appropriate?” And the answer is, like, “Who knows? Maybe.” But the fact that the rules have changed is both very freeing and very frightening, and both of those things can be true at the same time.

Rebecca Ching: You know, a couple things are striking me as you talk about this. Like, “Okay, go for it! You do you. Let me know how that’s working. Who cares?” So many women, their confidence gets buried by the burdens. I mean, hello, we’ve got the cultural burdens just of sexism. There are just a lot of shoulds, a lot of have-to’s, a lack of role models, a lot of mixed messages. Where do you draw that from, and how are you protecting where you can access your confidence and your truth without it getting buried under all of the shoulds? I’m loving hearing this where so many people show up with me where it got buried, and they’ve got to reconnect with it. But I’m sensing you’ve maintained a real connection to who you are, to what matters, and kind of where you are and others begin, and you don’t get all in the weeds with everyone’s ish and stay the course on your path and focus. Where do you draw that from in your story?

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Amanda Litman: That’s a very kind thing to say. Thank you. I think part of it is being so clear, right, about the work that I’m here to do. I know what my mission is. I know what our goals are. I know that there are lots of things that I might also want to do that aren’t necessarily related to that mission and that goal, and that doesn’t mean that those aren’t important things, but I am here for the work that Run For Something does and the the work more broadly to redefine leadership, point one.

The second is I have an incredible partner. My husband is just the best. He’s a therapist. He’s very thoughtful. The things that make him very good in his practice also make him a very good partner. And he is both very good at lifting me up but also reminding me not to take myself too seriously, which I think is a very important trait for any partnership like that.

The third thing is being really clear-eyed about what feedback is useful and what feedback is not actually about me. I get negative feedback all the time. It has been so helpful to remind myself that their responses are rarely a reflection of what I am saying and more about how they feel about themselves. I was actually just having this conversation with a friend last night who was telling me she’s expecting a baby. She’s so excited, and she’s had some people who didn’t respond very well when she told them. And it brought me back to when I was pregnant with my first daughter and I told someone about the baby, and they gave me a very negative reaction. And I told my therapist about it, and he was like, “The way that people respond when you tell them that you’re gonna have a kid is about their relationship to parenthood, not yours.” It’s about that particular instance, but that is true in so many other circumstances. If someone is mad about what I am saying or giving me negative feedback, it’s almost never really about me. Sometimes it is, and then I should take it seriously and think about how I can change, but it’s usually not, and therefore I can just blow it off.

Rebecca Ching: How do you discern when it’s something that you do need to take in? What are the tells of feedback that, oh, this is for you?

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Amanda Litman: You know, I think when it is how is this affecting my ability to achieve my goals. Is it feedback about how I look? I don’t care. Is it feedback about whether — did my message not get through in the way that I wanted it to? Did my behavior in a meeting change the way that my team was able to accomplish what they needed to accomplish? But then I’m self-sabotaging if I don’t take that seriously. If it’s just you’re too self-promotional, I’m like, well, at this point, being self-promotional actually really serves my purposes because it helps us get candidates and raise money and, yes, sell the book, but it serves my goals. That’s you being irritated that you’re jealous or frustrated or want to do more yourself and feel uncomfortable about it. That’s not about me. I think that discernment of is this helping my goals or not is really useful.

Rebecca Ching: Your values and your goals. They really are centering for you. How do you navigate when loneliness hits, when the loneliness of leadership hits you and you’re just kind of looking around knowing that this is stuff for you to carry and you alone to carry as part of being a leader and just moving through those feelings of isolation? How do you navigate that when it hits?

Amanda Litman: Having very good friend groups is really useful, and (I talk about this in the book) I’m in group chats with all kinds of executives where we can challenge each other and push each other and also ask questions like, “Am I alone in this, or is this everyone,” and the answer is almost always this is everyone.

I’ve also been really intentional about building friendships outside of work with people for whom what I do for a living is the least interesting thing about me.

Rebecca Ching: So important! I learned that one too late. But I finally got a clue on the importance of that one, yeah.

Amanda Litman: And I’ll give it to my husband. It’s actually been a goal of ours this year (2025). He made a New Year’s resolution to host dinner at our home every Saturday. We tweaked it a little. A few Saturdays we’ve gone over to other people’s houses or going to a minor league baseball game but to spend time with adults, and often their kids and our kids, every Saturday.

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We have done it every Saturday this year. We’re 23 Saturdays in, and we’ve got them planned, at least now, through July. And it has been so helpful to ensure that at every point I am never more than six days away from having an adult conversation about something that is not work, and that’s really nice.

Rebecca Ching: You know, I read that in your book, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh!” We kicked off, we call them Social Saturdays in our family, and so, we started inviting different people just in our community just to connect with. So I saw that, and I smiled big when, yeah, you did that.

So I want to go back to some of the terms real quick too. You instituted the four-day work week, and I’ve been following the research of this from the folks over in the UK for a while. There’s a really cool study with different businesses, and I see people playing around with it. One of the biggest falls is that I see they instituted but the leaders don’t do it. They say, “I can’t do it,” and I keep telling them, “It won’t work unless you’re doing it too.” “Then we can’t do it!” I’m like, “Then don’t! But I think you could, but you’ve got to be all in for everybody or not.” And I’d just love for you to share a little bit about why you’re such a fan of the four-day work week, why you made that choice, and how’s it going.

Amanda Litman: So we sort of inched our way into the four-day work week. We started in 2019 with Summer Fridays, which was we’ll end the days on Fridays at, like, two o’clock, no meetings, no work. You can log off. Go have a good time from Memorial Day to Labor Day. 2020 hit, and by April we were like, “Ooh, what if Summer Fridays started early in April?” a couple weeks into lockdown. We did, and then we kept them going through the fall and into 2021 because it was having no impact on our productivity. By 2021, my cofounder Ross and I started chewing on, “What if no work on Fridays at all? What if we tried that?” So we asked our COO, Cassandra Gaddo, to explore what that could look like and put together a proposal for a pilot. We wanted to test it. She actually ended up enrolling us in one of the studies that they did out of the UK, a four-day work week study.

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Rebecca Ching: Oh, cool!

Amanda Litman: Which was amazing, both because they provided some upscaling for our staff, but also they did surveys. So they were able to help us measure the impact of this. And what we found when we instituted it starting January 2022 was that every possible metric you’d want to see go up about work/life satisfaction, about balance, about productivity, about impact went up, and every number you’d want to see go down went down (burnout, anxiety, depression, all of that). Our retention as a team has been sky high, sometimes too high. Every job we post, we get hundreds if not thousands of resumes for some positions. It’s insane. And it has been so meaningful for me as a leader. The only reason the book exists is because I was able to work on it on Fridays when I didn’t have Run For Something stuff to do.

I am very grateful and lucky that I have five days of childcare and four days of work, which means I get a Friday to myself every week, which as any working parent knows, weekends with two little kids is very long. It’s very long, so being able to have that Friday to myself to clean the apartment, go to the doctor, go to a yoga class, have lunch with a friend, get my nails done, whatever I want to do. It’s my time. I can be a better parent, a better partner, and a better leader, a better boss, a better manager because I have that space for myself. It is so meaningful.

There are always moments like, for example, we talked about earlier, I know the shooting in Minnesota happened on a Saturday. So yeah, me and a couple folks from my team jumped online to handle the crisis and to work through it, but those are the exception, not the rule. I think the overarching ethos for all of this is that our mission is urgent and important, not every task in service of that mission is urgent and important. Being able to discern the difference between those things is fundamental to being able to sustain this work for the long haul.

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Rebecca Ching: And I would say, too, it’s crucial for the leaders to live that and model that or else it’s gonna be just all words, right? So you live it. Is there anything that you find is the biggest challenge that gets in the way of, yes, the mission’s critical but not every task is critical? Is there anything that can kind of creep in and trip you up that you have to recalibrate?

Amanda Litman: You know, I think it has been really teaching myself and our team about the challenges of prioritization and being really rigorous about not letting our scope creep beyond our scope, or not letting the work creep beyond the scope. There are so many good ideas and so many ways in which we could tackle the problem we’re trying to solve at Run For Something. We say no to good ideas all the time because the ability for our staff to sustain this work for the long haul is more important than chasing every good idea.

That sucks sometimes. It means we have to say no to stuff sometimes. But I think it allows — the way that one of our team members said it at one point was like the things I have to say no to at work are made up by the things I get to say yes to outside of it.

Rebecca Ching: I’m speechless. I’m like, “That’s it!” And how to scale that is really hard in a world that is about optimizing what is productive and hyper productivity.

One other thing I want to flush out with you that I really value you talking about is we need to talk about politics at work, and how can leaders acknowledge — because again, given the tragedies that we’re talking about that happened in Minnesota just permeated across our country and our world. To not talk about it, because it was politically motivated, would be, to me, harmful. Can you talk about the guardrails that you have around when you say, “Yeah, we need to talk about this at work because we’re online throughout the day, we sense things, and our work –.” I love how you write this. “Our work can’t be our political home.” Even you wrote this, as someone who’s been working in politics your whole adult career.

Can you say a little bit more about what would you say to leaders that go, “What? Politics at work? I couldn’t do that, and that’s not allowed, and that would be just a dumpster fire.” What would you say to the often objections to that?

Amanda Litman: If you’re building an inclusive and psychologically safe team culture, which is the foundation that you need, you can create space for politics at work and you can be really clear with your team about what politics can provide and what it cannot. And you need to, as the leader, give people time and resources to practice politics outside of it. Point one is psychologically safe in an inclusive workspace. Lots of things I get into in the book on how to do that, how to think about that, the tactics you can use to create that. But if you have that, you have the ability to turn down the temperature when conversations get heated. Having a really strong code of conduct that is really specific about what it looks like when we’re practicing it. More than just don’t be an asshole. Often you’ll see, “Oh, that’s our code of conduct.” We had that for a while, and you know what? Actually, people have very different definitions of what asshole means. So we’ve got to be a little bit more precise.

The second of your job as a leader is to be very clear about what the boundaries of work political activity can be, and I encourage people to push those boundaries in this moment because neutrality is not always the right thing in this particular circumstance. But Run For Something doesn’t make statements on any issues. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to support candidates. Our organization does not engage in foreign policy. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to support local candidates. I don’t make statements on most issues beyond the things that personally affect me as a New Yorker, specifically. As a New Yorker I actually have very strong opinions about New York City politics and, you know, I want to take a stand on those. And even on that, sometimes I have to shut up because it could harm the mission or the work. So being really careful and clear about what the goals and values are.

And then the final piece is we give people time, as I talked about earlier, to step away from work to do political engagement. You’ve got to give people paid time off to vote, to volunteer, if they want to protest, if they want to do civic engagement in some way. Work may not be the right place to do that and may not be the right container for it. So how can you give people time outside of it?

Rebecca Ching: That’s my favorite one. Now, one of my other favorite topics that you talked about in your book and you talk about it in other interviews you’ve given about authenticity. As someone who’s been a facilitator of Brené Brown’s work, gosh I started training with her back in 2012. So I’ve been a part of their team for a long time. That caught my eye right away. And I love what you have to say about this. You reject the idea of the expectation of being 100% yourself all the time.

So can you walk me through in how you’ve evolved in thinking about authenticity, especially as a leader in high-stakes spaces, and share the rubric that you use to help others operationalize it?

Amanda Litman: No because I think the job of the leader is not to be my full self or my real self. It’s to create space for people to be their full selves and their real selves. It’s not about me. My leadership is never about me. Even when I’m talking about me, it’s not about me. It’s about my team and our goals. And when you reframe it about that, I think about what version of myself do I need to be in any given space in order to create the permission structure, the space, the model for other people to be their best selves. That might mean not wearing makeup so people can feel like they can not have to put on a full face before they go to work or jump on a Zoom call. It might mean be really intentional about what emojis I use in the Slack chat and what chitter chatter I participate in. It might be talking about my kids and, “No, I actually have to log off at 5pm because I have to go pick up my daughters from daycare, but I’ll see you online tomorrow morning.” All of that is what I call responsible authenticity. It is being myself in a way that serves my goals. And you know, when I talk about this, people are like, “You’re telling people to fake it. You’re telling people to calculate it.” I’m like, “No, I’m telling people to be strategic and international. There’s no wrong way to show up. There’s just the way that serves your goals and the way that doesn’t.”

When we think about what authenticity looks like, the models that we have are often influencers, celebrities, politicians, athletes. These are folks who are performing a version of themselves, and they will tell you straight up, “Yeah, that’s me mostly. I’m being me 90% of the way.” But if you do not have strong boundaries about what parts of yourself you keep for you, for your family, for your loved ones, or for whatever version is outside of your leadership role, it will destroy you because the feedback, the negative criticism, the haters (and there will always be haters no matter how popular you are), if you are bringing your full, full self out, then that hate will be hard to have a cushion against.

So I have been pretty vocal about this of, like, even politicians — I talk about this in campaigns, but it’s true in any other space. I don’t want you to bring your full self to work. Work is not the right place for your full self. Work is the right place for your best self, and that doesn’t mean a fake version of you. It means the best version of you that helps you get things done and serves your team. There’s a difference.

Rebecca Ching: And I really think a lot of folks struggle with figuring that out. A lot of the conversations I’m having is, “I know what I’m supposed to do, but who am I, and how do I merge that or figure out what that is on a spectrum.” And you call BS on the idea that people want their leaders to be authentic.

Amanda Litman: No, they don’t.

Rebecca Ching: What do you think they actually want?

Amanda Litman: They want permission for them to be authentic.

Rebecca Ching: There it is again.

Amanda Litman: It’s not about me. It’s about you. It’s about the team. It’s about the goals. And I think that recentering is so necessary for leaders to hold at the center of the work so that it’s just, “It’s not about me.” Even when it’s about me, it’s not about me because leadership is not about the leader. It’s about the followers. That is the core of the argument that I’m trying to make.

Rebecca Ching: And with what you just said, you can bring that intersection in, the intersection of responsible authenticity while still serving and supporting those that you lead. I love it. How do you define leadership?

Amanda Litman: Building trust. Having a vision and building trust with a community in order to get them to take an action, and doing so in a way that is joyful and intentional and thoughtful and humane and still effective, all of those things.

Rebecca Ching: How has that definition evolved from what you were taught growing up?

Amanda Litman: You know, I think a lot about the first example people usually have as a  leader is a parent, and I’m very lucky. I have great parents. And for a lot of folks, there is a particular, especially people my age, there’s a millennial style of parenting right now of trying to reparent ourselves to break the cycle and do it differently with our kids, and I feel that myself in how I talk to my daughters and the way I want to talk to them differently than my parents talked to me. Not that my parents did the wrong way but I want to do it differently. And I think that is true in work leadership as well. I’ve had good bosses and bad bosses. I want to do it differently than any of them.

Rebecca Ching: How do you see leaders embracing the complexities of this moment right now while staying true to themselves?

Amanda Litman: I think some are doing it better than others. I think that the ones who are so clear about both what they’re trying to accomplish and the values they hold while they do so are able to navigate this moment. The ones where they’re trying to debate not just how do I communicate what I believe but what do I believe in the first place, this is true in business, this is true in politics, if the work is a group debate about what is it that we stand for in the first place, you’re not gonna get anywhere.

Rebecca Ching: Thank you for that. I like to ask my guest kind of some fun, light hearted quickfire questions. So before we leave, I want to wrap up with some fun questions! So first is what are you reading right now?

Amanda Litman: I just finished a book late last night. Alexis Daria’s new romance novel. It’s a good one. I forget what it’s called. It’s the third in a series about three cousins. I think the first one was You Had Me At Hola. Just Google Alexis Daria. She’s a great writer.

Rebecca Ching: Awesome. What song are you playing on repeat?

Amanda Litman: “Elmo’s Song.” [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: Sounds about right. Sounds about right. I’m really curious what your answer will be to this one. What is the best TV show or movie that you’ve seen recently?

Amanda Litman: I have not watched TV or movies since my kids were born. Whatever Daniel Tiger episode my toddler’s on. That is the thing that has fallen by the wayside with kids. I read books. I watch TikTok. I don’t watch that much TV or movies anymore. So Daniel Tiger, unfortunately.

Rebecca Ching: There are some good shows waiting for you when you have some time. I mention I’m a Gen Xer, so I like to ask everybody what is your favorite piece of eighties pop culture, and if you’ve got nothing, your favorite piece of pop culture from your generation?

Amanda Litman: Breakfast Club. I love that movie.

Rebecca Ching: It’s the best of the best. What is your mantra right now?

Amanda Litman: “The only way out is through.”

Rebecca Ching: What’s an unpopular opinion you hold?

Amanda Litman: Oh, I hold a lot of unpopular opinions.

Rebecca Ching: I know.

Amanda Litman: You can never really own an umbrella. You only borrow one from the universe.

Rebecca Ching: And who or what inspires you to be a better leader and human?

Amanda Litman: My kids. My kids. They’re so cute. They’re little demons. But they make me want to be better.

Rebecca Ching: Raising little demons to be leaders is a privilege and an honor, and it’s full contact.

Amanda Litman: Mm-hmm!

Rebecca Ching: Amanda, where can listeners connect with you, your work, and your book?

Amanda Litman: So you can get the book When We’re In Charge wherever you get your books. It’s in hardcover, an audiobook that I narrate (so if you like the sound of this podcast, you’ll love the audiobook), and an ebook. I am online on just every social media platform so annoyingly – BlueSky, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, LinkedIn, I have a Substack that I’m trying to do every week. It’s all some variation of @amandalitman or @amandalitm.

Rebecca Ching: Amanda, it was a real joy to talk with you. I really appreciate all that you’re putting out in the world, how you’re showing up, and just cheering you on. Thanks for what you do!

Amanda Litman: Thank you for having me! This was such a thoughtful conversation. I really appreciate it.

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Rebecca Ching: Hey, everyone! Thank you for listening to this conversation. Man, Amanda reminded us why it’s so important to name the weight of leadership and why we can’t carry it alone and why it’s still so important to step up even when it feels like everyone’s trying to silence you. She made it clear that leadership isn’t about being the loudest or the most polished. It’s about building trust, leading with intention, creating space for others to lead too. And she proves that hope is not naive; it’s strategic, it’s a choice, it’s a refusal to let cynicism call the shots.

So before you go, here are some of the key takeaways from this Unburdened Leader conversation with Amanda Litman. Leadership starts with clarity on your values, your mission, and your goals (right, the focused part). Responsible authenticity isn’t about sharing everything. It’s about showing up in ways that serve your team and your purpose. They’re your priority, right? Not you, but they are. That doesn’t mean you’re not important. But when you’re leading, I love this. I love that responsible authenticity piece that she brings into this. And the loneliness of leadership is real. I mean, you all know this. But that building trusted community, both inside and outside of work, matters. And she also said rest is not a reward; it’s a requirement for sustainable leadership. Again, hope is a strategy. So is joy. So is refusing to normalize despair. She was talking my language, y’all!

So as you think about our conversation, I want to invite you to consider where do you feel called to step up, even when fear makes you hesitate? What does responsible authenticity look like in how you lead? And what might shift if you believe your presence, your voice, and your energy could truly make a difference beyond just the bells and whistles of what you do every day? Amanda reminds us that if we want things to change, we can’t just wait for permission, and we can’t lead alone. I really hope you choose one way to support a leader in your community this week. Maybe that’s you too. Maybe it’s asking for support too, whether it’s donating, volunteering, reaching out, or simply offering encouragement. And if you’re the leader, take one step to protect your capacity while staying engaged. And this is the ongoing work of an Unburdened Leader.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Unburdened Leader! You can find this episode, show notes, free Unburdened Leader resources, ways to sign up for my new Substack, and ways to work with me at www.rebeccaching.com. And if this episode was of value to you, I’d be honored if you left a rating, a review, and shared it with folks that you think would benefit from it. And this episode was produced and supported by the incredible team at Yellow House Media!

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