It’s been a year of change:

New state (from ME -> VT, see more on The Gram.)

New home (big windows & nestled in the forest)

New team (big thank you, Allison, and welcome, Lucy)

New audiobook (more soon)

New life partner (wow!)

New company brand (more below!)

(Whew!)

As I’ve promised you, my top priority in my newsletters is you:

valuable ideas about leadership communication,

inspirational stories of mission-driven work, and

informative brain science to better understand it all.

(Ooh, it feels good to be here. I’ve missed this.)

With all the changes in my world lately, an episode of an HBR podcast caught my attention. It was the story of a young violinist headed for professional soloist success, and the shock that changed her trajectory. It’s about how change can be destabilizing for all of us. It’s an idea that’s been an earworm (ideaworm?) that I keep coming back to.

Change is hard not only because of the logistics, but because it threatens our story of ourselves.

Dr. Maya Shankar was a child prodigy violinist: accepted to Juilliard, home-schooled to give her more daily hours of practice time, and studied with world-renowned Itzhak Perlman.

One day, one moment, one note, she stretched her finger too far. Permanent damage to the nerves. (As a former professional cellist, I felt this one in my gut.)

No surgery could mend it, no stretch of time could heal it. The hours of practice and athletic feats required were no longer possible.

After all the varieties of emotions and stages that come with grief, she slowly started to look forward to the rest of her life.

And the question that nearly undid her was who am I now?

I’ve been sitting with that distinction ever since.

Because it maps so precisely onto what I watch happen with the leaders I work with: not in moments of injury, but in moments of growth. Whether the change is experienced as positive or negative, change is a stressor.

Maybe the change is when the team expands. Or when the promotion happens. Or the contract is lost. Or when you can’t put your finger on how you need to show up, but the team needs more from you than just the knowledge and expertise you started with.

Who are we in the new context?

That moment of who am I now is quieter than a career-ending injury. But it’s the same cognitive territory. It can also cause pain.

What Shankar found, and what I’ve watched bear out across hundreds of clients, is that the people who navigate change best are the ones who reconnect to something bigger than the role they’ve lost or outgrown. Not a new identity, exactly. A deeper one.

Dr. Shankar didn’t become someone else. She reconnected to why she loved the violin in the first place: the way music brought people together, the connection it made possible, the place she could serve and be a bridge to a new experience or thinking that people couldn’t reach without her.

She found a strategy to work with her own thinking, to change her own mind, to reorient herself in her new world back towards satisfaction, connection, and growth.

You can listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode with Dr. Maya Shankar HERE.

And it’s just the kind of experience I want this newsletter to bring you: research that connects the dots between your professional life, your mind, your mission, and your world. Ideas that are both useful and interesting to your whole Speakership.

Which brings me to the piece of news I mentioned above, speaking of change.

We have a new name.

MasterSpeaker Lab The Speakership Lab

After six years as MasterSpeaker Lab, we are now The Speakership Lab.

“Master” since we’re not a master, and communication is an ongoing practice, not a level of completion.

“Speakership,” since we see communication as a holistic collection of your ideas, presence, words, and skills, whatever room you’re in.

“Lab,” since this is where we gather to experiment and find out.

Yes, whenever we are asked, we’re excited to share the frameworks, skills, and questions that have helped other leaders. But the conversations we’re always here for are the ones about partnering with you on your path.

What is the project that is lighting you up?

Who are the people around you who could join you?

How do you need to show up, and what do you need to say and ask to make it happen?

Until you and I can have this person-to-person conversation, here is this collection of words that you are reading in your inbox.

And if these kinds of research, stories, and ideas are the kinds you want more of, reply and let me know.

That’s what this newsletter is here to do.

Good to be back.

— Margaret Watts Romney
Founder, The Speakership Lab | Formerly MasterSpeaker Lab