We were lucky to catch up with Lakweshia Ewing recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lakweshia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

. One of the most important lessons that I had in a job that I feel helped me not just in professional capacity, but also personally, was the lesson that I had to learn when managing the general generational mix as a Gen X or I had the privilege to manage Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Gen Y’s, millennials, all on the same team. And what I learned very quickly was that all these different generations did not see the same jobs even though they had similar similar roles or the same roles. They did not see them the same way and so as a leader, it was my job to lead or manage people based on their understanding of the context in which they view their job. And so very early, one of the things that I had to learn that I had to be strong enough to be vulnerable to ask for feedback or critique about my leadership style, because what I knew was that an employee that was a baby boomer, that employee needed me to sit in and have a meeting face to face and have a memo typed up and things like that. Whereas my my gen xers and Gen Y’s they were raised in the input, our input process output and so they really just needed me to tell me, tell them what I wanted them to do. Allow them to do it and then give some type of feedback. My Millennials wanted to literally wanted to know how long is this going? To take? How is it going to be measured? And when can I when what do I need to turn them and they wanted the least amount of interaction in terms of formalized meetings, and so as a leader, I have to be vulnerable enough to implement things like 360 Reviews. I’m huge on 360 reviews, and not even in my own life. I meet people who are my friends and people who love me and want to see me become a better version of myself to tell me what they’re seeing because sometimes we can get tunnel vision. And we think that what we see in ourselves is how we’re being actually received by other people. And so one of the strongest lessons that I learned as a young professional was that it’s okay to ask for help. Even if you think you have it all under control, one of the strongest pieces of of information can come from a person who actually is is subordinate to you and in the role as a team member, they can actually tell you some blind spots that you may not you may not be able to see in yourself. And this level of vulnerability as a leader will keep you humble and true to the work

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Unlearn Everything and Live, LLC , is a consulting firm with a niche focus on providing leadership, racial equity, institutional belonging and organizational team building strategies. We are there to improve understanding of LEADERSHIP, POWER AND PEOPLE

Unlearn everything and Live sessions are a customized, holistic, developmental process that provides behavioral insights intended to accelerate your personal or organization’s effectiveness and overall business results as a leader. The primary goal of UELive’s consulting is aimed at inspiring leaders or aspiring leaders to transform and empower themselves and the people around them.

Unlearn Everything & Live consulting sessions provide a collaborative, facilitative, relationship in which the trainee can receive an unbiased, objective perspective in regards to meeting professional objectives, that other forms of organizational support cannot.

Unlearn Everything & Live consulting allows the executive to address performance issues and professional goals, as well as develop their leadership skills in real time within the context of their current role.

We believe in helping people RETHINK the way they achieve success

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn the idea that failing is bad.

So serving on, my first board taught me so much, and it was a nonprofit. I won’t name them. They were a moderately small organization and I was working at the district level of the public school system at the time. What this organization would never know until now is that they actually were my muse for developing my consulting company Unlearn Everything and Live, LLC because they were abusing me as a board member. You see there were things that they were asking me to do because I worked with the school system and that made their job easy, because they never had to really build the relationships themselves. WHEN IT CAME SERVING PROFESSIONALLY, I learned quickly that RELATIONAL ALWAYS WINS OVER TRANSACTIONAL. As a board member I would consistently be asked to go talk to the Superintendent of Schools for some level of ask. One time is okay two times might still be alright, but when it becomes a regular occurence and you get an attitude when I say no, as if I worked for you. I became extremely inquisitive and would often ask myself, Is this how boards operate? So I started doing research on what other people were being asked to do on board of directors. And that’s when I saw the exploitation. And so it piqued my curiosity. I have to admit I was not really big on digging into the financial reports, because I may not have served on the Finance Committee and I’m not a CPA. But one day almost 20 years ago that would all change when we were looking at profit loss statement of a particular organization. I started looking deeply at the line items and I started asking myself, who is this consulting company? and what exactly do they do? The Presidents or CEOs of these different organizations where I served all seem to have similar responses ” Oh they there are our thought partners they help us with strategic planning and and you know, thinking through building the team out properly etc. My mind went off like a lightbulb because these companies were being paid contractually six figure numbers. They were working with them all year, making generational wealth possible for their families and communities, but yet, I’m over here trying to run on my lunch break to attend and offer “thought partnership: as board member while on my hourly job. I’m on the board but I had a job, But I had to be back in the office somebody’s gonna be looking for me an hour and a half. Right?
I started just making notes of all that kind of stuff, and saying okay, what is it that people pay for? And what is it that people get paid for? Because my thing is, if I’m going to give it for free, that’s fine. That’s my choice. Everything is not at a cost. I hope you are hearing that. But if this is something that I’m good at, maybe I got a skill that I didn’t know I had, so I started using boards to hone my skillset. By doing this I now know that I am not a fundraiser. But I do love charity. I love doing social good. So as I started making notes, and those were the boards where I chose to serve. That those are the things that I can say yes to super quick, because that’s my heart. There are things I don’t have to do it just because you asked me because actually all I would be is a figurehead You just want a black face or a woman so you don’t really care that I’m not good at it. You just need me to be there. So the earlier board of director experience that I SHOULD KNOW THE VALUE THAT IM BRINGING TO THE TABLE AND NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO BE COMPROMISED .

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the most memorable pivotal moments in my life was when I decided to start my company and learn everything and live LLC. I’ve been working professionally for several years and was literally at the peak of my career. I have received many awards. I was moving up very quickly through the professional chain ad set in various levels of leadership all around the city where I was living and at the age of about 25. I was serving at a district level capacity. I often tell people one day I looked at myself and I said, you know, if I were to pass me on the street, or know that I would have known me see I was at the height of my career, but I felt like I was actively a part of this life I was living, but I wasn’t happy with it. So it would be this moment that I started to be more critical of every decision that I was making. And I started asking myself about the things that I was taught about faith and about family, about community about career. And as I saw blueprint, most emerged from this. And it was that all these lessons that I’ve been taught, built this life that I was living, but I wasn’t necessarily happy with the life that I was living. And in order for me to be happy with the life that I was living, what I knew I had to do, go back down and review that blueprint and teach myself the opposite of that thing. So where I might have been taught, you know, work hard, give myself self self sacrifice. I started saying what’s wrong with rest? What’s wrong with being happy with what you do? So I started mapping out this blueprint of unlearning. And I said, you know, in order to truly unlearn something, that means I have to write down all the things that I was taught about any particular thing. And then I have to get in the mindset where once I learned those things, or or recognize those things, I had to say, You know what, now I have to be willing to narrow the focus. So why is it that I believe that hard work and no rest generates this amount of revenue at this amount? of income, and that equals success? Somehow, I had to ask myself, help helped me understand what how I came to believe this. I had to recognize the patterns that I had created for my life around anything that I was achieving, and anything that was toxic. I had to unlearn it, I had to unpack it, and relearn unless, which meant I had to do a lot of self sacrificing and self digging self reflection in order to truly understand who it was that I had become. See, I had to unlearn everything in order for me to leave. And I learned this leaving the professional career that I had, and actually embracing the passion work that I always wanted to do. I’m very faith driven. And oftentimes I would tell people that you know, I would go and do these little side projects that were passionate driven that I love when I got off from work, and I found myself you know, taking a phone call here or taking a lunch there. I got convicted one day I literally got can spiritually convicted, and I felt as if I was cheating on my job with my journey. And I felt like God told me you got to break up with something that you’re faithful in all these other areas of your life, but in this particular area, you’re gonna have to break up with something and so I had to break up with the person who I was in order to become the person that I am. And that is one of the most pivotal lessons I ever had that you know what, it doesn’t matter what you were taught and what you were taught isn’t bringing you happiness is joy, if it’s breeding toxicity, if you feel that you’ve achieved everything in life, but yet you are not happy with where you are. You know, my faith pathology says what profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul. My soul was in Paris, but on the outside I looked like I was flourishing. So it took me stepping back, looking within myself praying and examining every single aspect of my life, to realize that you know what, there are several things I needed to unlearn there. were some things I mean to relearn. There were some things that I needed to learn cold turkey I’d never been exposed to. I’ve never been exposed to this level of peace, and rest, resilience and joy. It was all needed and it was all unnecessary.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.unlearneverythingandlive.com
• Instagram: unlearnlive
• Facebook: Lakweshia Ewing
• Other: My marketing business website is: www.strengthindesign.com (the rest was just to let you know if I only had one choice of what website to list I wanted strengthindesignstudios.com to be the one listed under website)

Image Credits
Pic 1- Venya Portrait Studios, Pic 2- MsDig & Lollipop Photography, Pic 3- CMF Photography, Pic 4 & 5- Marcherie Jamene Marketing, Pic 6 and 7- Moses Movement Media