Ash Beckham - Step Up: How to Live with Courage and Become an Everyday Leader

Table of Contents

To Dad,

my hero, my coach, and my inspiration.

I miss you every day.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

EACH EVERYDAY LEADER HAS A STARTING POINTHERES MINE

W hen I have to state my job title, I usually say accidental advocate. Speaking and activism are what Im known for today. But for the longest time, I had no idea this was what I was going to do with my life.

In 2010, I was happily living in Boulder, Colorado. I owned a couple of small businesses, and I had an amazing circle of friends. The nature of my work as an entrepreneur gave me the freedom to return home to Ohio to visit family whenever I wanted. To paraphrase the T-shirts, life was good! My activism was just being myself a shaved-headed, small-business-owning lesbian. I lived in a community that was safe for the most part. If I stayed in my lane, I didnt ruffle any feathers. Everyone was happy. I had achieved acceptance. That was the finish line I had been striving to cross. I was there. I had won the race, or at least Id had a respectable finish.

Then, suddenly, a lot of kids came into my life. I did not have kids of my own yet, but the people I loved all started having babies my sister and friends who were as close as family. I suddenly realized then that my sexuality and nonconforming gender expression (shaved head, baggy cargo shorts, etc.) affected more people than just me: at some point these kids were going to run into a challenge or a conflict because they loved me and because I was gay. Someone would say something in a hallway or a locker room that would be intentionally or unintentionally derogatory to gay people. And then these kids would be torn between what they had always known and this new (to them) tiered paradigm. I realized that despite my comfortable life and security in my identity, I had a responsibility to be part of cultural change. I needed to step up. It was my first inkling that I needed to attempt to make the world a better place. I wanted these kids (and everyone, for that matter) to love whoever they loved without having to worry about defending them. I knew from experience that just because people were different did not also mean they were dangerous.

Everyone has their own way of stepping up. To be the most effective, our methods of stepping up must be genuine. For me it wasnt about protests or policy change or guilting people into changing their behavior. I had yelled and screamed and soapboxed to no avail. For me, it was critical to engage with folks who were allies-in-waiting. My second hometown of Boulder, Colorado, is a liberal place, so it seemed like a good place to start. The conversation about marriage equality, for example, was moot; almost everyone was for it. But how do you get the good-hearted folks you see every day to make changes to their own behavior? I knew that resting on progressive political stances was not enough. Cultural change happens at a grassroots level, with small, intentional adjustments to how we live, how we act, and how we interact. It was that kind of change I wanted to inspire in people. I realized that I needed to lead not with the loudest voice but with the biggest heart.

My journey as an advocate started with a talk I gave at an Ignite Boulder event in February 2013, called Eliminating Gay as a Pejorative from our Lexicon. I was simply trying to get people to understand that their words make an impact on others. The talk quickly got traction online and shifted the course of my life permanently. We dont necessarily pick when we become leaders; sometimes our lives morph into a path of leadership. Since then, I have spoken in classrooms, ballrooms, and boardrooms around the world. My online talks currently have more than 15 million views. I have spoken at LGBTQ community centers with five people in the room and at Fortune 100 sales meetings with thousands of people in the room. The message is the same: before you look out, look in. Listen before you yell. Find humor in our shared experiences. Focus on our common goal of a better world, not on our differences. Dont start with politics or policy, start with human connection. We all have the capacity to be leaders in our own way; we just need to be brave enough to take action, to separate ourselves from the pack and change our own behavior first.

When I started speaking publicly, I ran into a fair amount of resistance. Not with the message people were inspired by my story. I started to lose them when I suggested that we could all be leaders. Now its your turn. Find your own path and blaze it. When they heard this message, people started to shut down. Some could never see themselves stepping up in the way I had. Overwhelmingly, the reason people did not believe they could fully be themselves is that they feared the repercussions and judgments that would come if they were truly authentic to their voice and their values.

For the first few years, I accepted that response. To fully be ourselves in the world takes a tremendous amount of courage. I just needed to find the people who had this courage and inspire them. But then I kept meeting folks who were already incredible leaders. They were making change happen in their companies and in their communities but they were afraid to assign themselves the label of leader. I wanted to find out what was driving all of this fear. Was it something people could overcome? Could we eliminate it?

The challenge is that as creatures of habit, we get into ruts. These ruts can be physical, emotional, or psychological. If we take the same way to work every day and mindlessly follow the route on autopilot, that is a rut. If we do the same routine at the gym every day, that is a rut. If we find ourselves continuously unwilling to stand up against micro-aggressions that we see happening around us, that is a rut.

We can also view ourselves in very fixed ways. We cannot imagine being a leader, even in an everyday kind of way. We cant envision ourselves with the courage to push our comfort zones. Anything that is a habitual pattern of behavior or thinking that has the sole justification of thats the way its always been is a rut. But as we begin to step up, that justification does not work anymore. Why would we hold ourselves back?

We all have ruts that we dont even think about. Let me show you right now.

Sit back and fold your arms. Really do this. Now, uncross them and recross them with the other arm on top. Feels different, yes? You just broke through an ingrained habit. That is what it feels like. The only reason the second way feels uncomfortable is because you have always done it in the other direction. For me, I put my left arm on top. When I put the right arm on top the first few times, I had to switch immediately. Something felt wrong and unnatural. But the more I crossed them the less habitual way, the more comfortable I became with that way, too. Now I dont even think twice about which way I cross my arms. Both feel natural. That is the beauty of our brains they have neuroplasticity, the ability to make new pathways.

We often dont try to change simply because it feels so much easier to do things as we have always done them. Doing things differently means facing the unknown. But we can change. And it can feel really good or at least interesting. Habits can be broken.

Sometimes, the biggest fear holding us back is the fear that we do not have the right or the ability to hold any kind of leadership role. We second-guess ourselves: