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Former classical actress and equity-centered coach Megan Dowd joins Lauri Smith to unpack why the hardest role, on stage or in leadership, is the one with nothing to hide behind: yourself.

From a Shakespeare stage ruled by “the way it's always done” to a skipped safety rehearsal that pushed her off the stage for good, Megan reveals why convenience is never worth someone else's safety.

We talk clown training and the art of reading a room with nothing spoken, the role that taught her to command a stage with nothing but herself, and the question she now asks every client: what's the inconvenient truth of this season of your life?

Key Takeaways

• Untamed leadership means being willing to forgo convention when it no longer serves the people you're leading.
• Skipping a safety check for the sake of convenience reveals whose comfort is actually being protected.
• The hardest role to play — on stage or in leadership — is the one with no costume to hide behind: yourself.
• Real listening (audience, team, room) creates a spontaneity that over-rehearsing can’t touch.
• “You don't need those skills, you have them” can be the highest compliment disguised as a letdown.
• Naming the inconvenient truth of a season of life makes room to plan for reality, not an idealized capacity.
• Seeing people as individuals, not their status in the room, is a leadership strength — not a soft skill.
• Holding silence is a leadership skill not enough people train for

I’ve written a new book, Land Your Message, and I'd love for you to be a part of getting it into the world. Back the Indiegogo campaign, grab early access, or share it with someone who needs it: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/laurismith/land-your-message

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

If you love this show and you’re looking for some new shows to fill your queue, head over to feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything FPC has to offer.

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646

Send Lauri a message

Certified life coach and culture strategist Joni Woods spent years being told who she wasn't: not smart enough, not leadership material, only useful for how she looked.

After a divorce, a devastating house fire, and a full rebuild of her confidence, Joni discovered that boundaries, not performance, were the doorway to belonging.

In this conversation, Joni and Lauri trace the line from a coaching program that told a 17-year-old Joni she'd "never be good at this," through 15 years of marriage where she stayed "the problem," to the divorce that forced her to finally ask what she wanted instead of guessing what everyone else did. Joni shares how she rebuilt her confidence one small proof at a time, why she now teaches boundaries as a house you get to control the entrance to, and how choosing kindness over bitterness every single day became the most radical form of leadership she knows. If you've ever performed your way into someone else's approval and lost yourself doing it, this one's for you.

1. True leadership grows people; it doesn't diagnose them and walk away.
2. Spending years guessing what someone wants from us builds exhaustion, not connection.
3. Rock bottom can be the moment you stop being "the problem" and start setting the example for yourself, and for whoever's watching you.
4. Confidence and humility aren't opposites. We can know exactly what we're capable of and still stay teachable.
5. The boxes people build for us (pretty, agreeable, obedient) are rarely about who we are. They're about what makes them comfortable.
6. Choosing our response (like kindness over bitterness) is the one thing that stays entirely ours, no matter what’s been taken away.
7. Molding someone into who you think they should be is different from mentoring them into who they truly are.

I’ve written a new book, Land Your Message, and I'd love for you to be a part of getting it into the world. Back the Indiegogo campaign, grab early access, or share it with someone who needs it: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/laurismith/land-your-message

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

If you love this show and you’re looking for some new shows to fill your queue, head over to feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything FPC has to offer.

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646

Send Lauri a message

Executive coach Chip Scholz spent nearly 30 years helping leaders navigate change, and 25 years learning to lead himself. In this episode of the Untamed Leader Podcast, Chip and Lauri talk about what happens when the identity you built at work stops fitting.

They get into why being called a "team player" isn't always a compliment, the phone call Chip made two and a half decades later to make amends with someone he'd wronged, and why six frogs deciding to jump off a log doesn't mean any of them moved. Along the way: whether TED Talks have lost their edge, and the theater lesson called Semper Gumby that still guides how Chip leads today. If you've been mistaking your decisions for your actions, this conversation is your mirror.

• Deciding to change and actually changing are two different acts. Most of us stop at the decision and call it done.
• Identity built on title, visibility, or "being known" can quietly become the very cage we're trying to escape.
• Being a poor fit for corporate politics can be integrity refusing to compromise.
• Real leadership growth can take 25 years to complete.
• Directing a vision is not the same as controlling every last detail.
• Flexibility isn't the opposite of preparation. It's what preparation is for.
• You can't lead a team, a family business, or a room until you've done the harder work of leading yourself.

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

If you love this show and you’re looking for some new shows to fill your queue, head over to feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything FPC has to offer.

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646

Send Lauri a message

What if the thing standing between you and your legacy is a boardroom in your own head?

Linda Berger, founder of the Mission-Led Institute and creator of the Mission Activation Framework, joins Lauri Smith to unpack 27 years of watching business owners hit the moment their work starts asking more of them than they've been willing and able to give.

They explore the “friction lock” that keeps us circling instead of claiming what's ours, why old trauma patterns were once acts of courage rather than something to be ashamed of, and how naming an inner protector (a warrior, a wild woman, a rebel) can help us move past the old voices asking “who do you think you are?!”

If you're ready to claim ownership of what you’ve already built, this episode is for you.

1. The loudest resistance to claiming your work can sound exactly like the people who raised you.
2. Sometimes the only thing standing between you and your next evolution is an old version of you.
3. Trauma patterns aren't weaknesses to shame away — they're strategies a much younger you invented to survive.
4. A business that keeps asking more of you is evolving … and it wants to take you with it.
5. Naming an inner protector a warrior, a wild woman, or a rebel, can transform a pattern that's kept you small.
6. Intuition is evidence, even before the business case for it exists.
7. Short, focused containers can outperform open-ended timelines — urgency sharpens both attention and courage.

I’ve written a new book, Land Your Message, and I'd love for you to be a part of getting it into the world. Back the Indiegogo campaign, grab early access, or share it with someone who needs it: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/laurismith/land-your-message

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

If you love this show and you’re looking for some new shows to fill your queue, head over to feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything FPC has to offer.

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646

Send Lauri a message

Speaker, author, and purpose-driven coach Larry Kesslin joins Untamed Leader to unpack the difference between the self you were trained to perform and the one underneath it. After four waves of depression over eight years, Larry stopped treating it as something broken in him and started calling it deep rest: his body's way of refusing to keep playing a character that was never really his.

We talk about the discomfort of silence on stage, why most of us have never separated identity from ego from self, what leadership looks like when it's conducted instead of commanded, and his "20-something rule": the world spends your first twenty years telling you who to be, and the rest of your life is yours to decide whether you'll listen. If you've been running at 300% to prove something nobody's actually asking of you, this conversation is your permission to set it down.

1. Silence isn't empty … it's where some of the most riveting leadership is born.
2. Depression can be deep rest from a character you're tired of playing.
3. Identity, ego, and self are three different things. Many of us have never separated them, which is why the outside world feels impossible to control.
4. Untamed leadership works like conducting an orchestra: listening and responding in the movement toward harmony.
5. Every system produces exactly the results it was built to get. Want different results? Change the system.
6. Our best ideas come from the quiet. The conscious mind's job is to execute them, not run the show.
7. Handing responsibility over to whoever best knows the terrain is true leadership, not surrender.

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

If you love this show and you’re looking for some new shows to fill your queue, head over to feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything FPC has to offer.

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646

Send Lauri a message

Former Chief People Officer Oksana Lukash used to lock her knees in fear before speaking in public. Now she's a TEDx speaker who built her career on one habit: asking the question she was scared to ask.

In this Untamed Leader conversation, Lauri and Oksana trace what happens when curiosity becomes a leadership practice: from a stranger at a summer social, to a keynote in the Caribbean, to the TEDx stage where the story finally left her head and moved into her body.

They talk about why “that’s how we’ve always done it” might be the most dangerous phrase in leadership, what changes when you stop performing for validation, and why the people who love you without needing your dream to make sense are the ones worth keeping close.

Tune in if you’ve ever swallowed a question, a compliment, or a “crazy idea” because it didn’t seem practical.

1. Curiosity is a leadership skill, not a personality quirk. Asking the uncomfortable question, even risking a no, beats walking away wondering “what if.”

2. Fear and calling can live in the same body: Oksana's knees locked before her TEDx talk, and she still walked on stage and delivered it from muscle memory and heart.

3. “That’s how we’ve always done it” is the sound of a system resisting its own growth.

4. When the focus shifts from performing perfectly to reaching the one person who needs the message, the fear loses its grip.

5. Pay attention to who pulls back when you start to grow, and who stays.

6. Small out-loud moments, like a compliment to a stranger or a real answer to “what can I do for you?” can be the doorway to the biggest opportunities.

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646

Send Lauri a message

Master certified coach Linda Bucher used to wear a crown in a jail cell she built herself, performing “poor Linda” so convincingly that even she almost believed it. In this episode of the Untamed Leader Podcast, Linda walks Lauri through the belief continuum that carried her from a locked hallway of impossible to an untamed life she calls easy, abundant, and fully her own.

Along the way: the moment mid-training as a master coach when freezing in front of an audience became her clearest lesson in untamed leadership, why envy is often longing wearing a disguise, and why you can't be an imposter while you're being yourself.

If you've ever performed a version of yourself just to keep the peace, this conversation hands you a way out.

🔗 Find Linda: lindabucher.com

1. Untamed doesn't mean rabid. It means one of a kind. It's what's left when you stop performing for safety.
2. Self-abandonment can look like personality for years, until life or your body forces a different choice.
3. There's a difference between believing something is possible and believing it's possible for you, and the gap between them is where most of us get stuck.
4. Envy points at what you’re longing for and being called toward, not a blueprint to copy.
5. Imposter syndrome shows up when you're borrowing someone else's script. You can't be an imposter while you're being yourself.
6. Sometimes Untamed Leadership is as simple as noticing when you're not present, and having the courage to pause.
7. Give attention, don’t get attention: the difference between performing leadership and actually serving the room.
8. Freedom looks like being able to say no to a good opportunity that simply isn't yours to say yes to.

I’ve written a new book, Land Your Message, and I'd love for you to be a part of getting it into the world. Back the Indiegogo campaign, grab early access, or share it with someone who needs it: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/laurismith/land-your-message

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

If you love this show and you’re looking for some new shows to fill your queue, head over to feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything FPC has to offer.

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646

Send Lauri a message

What if untaming your presence isn't about becoming someone new, but remembering who you already are?

In this off-season episode, Lauri Smith joins Linda Bucher on Conversations Worth Your While to explore what it costs mission-driven leaders to keep performing the version of themselves that feels safe, and what opens up when they stop. They cover the difference between fitting in and belonging, why your issues are in your tissues, and how to set an intention that puts your soul self in charge instead of your inner critic.

Linda also shares her own story of physical breakdown as a signal (back pain, gallbladder failure, 20 pounds) and what it took to finally listen. If you've ever felt the gap between who you are when you're trying to get it right and who you are when you're fully alive, this conversation goes there.

🎙️ Originally aired on Conversations Worth Your While with Linda Bucher

🔗 Find Linda: lindabucher.com/podcast

Takeaways

1. Untaming is a releasing, not an adding on.

We think we need to fix, acquire, or become something new. In reality, untaming is about shedding identities that were never ours (the shoulds, the protective postures, the contortions we learned to make ourselves acceptable) and returning to who we already are.

2. Your issues are in your tissues.

The body keeps the score of every place we've gone against our essential self. Jaw tension, headaches that last 15 days, a back that won't let you sit, a gallbladder working at 25%. That’s the body communicating. When we finally listen, it stops having to scream.

3. The catch-22 of performing to belong.

When we contort ourselves to fit in, we stop knowing whether the world loves us or loves the person we're pretending to be. Worthiness feels elusive because we're not showing anyone the real thing.

4. Fitting in requires you to change. Belonging doesn't.

5. You are here to live your purpose, not figure it out.

Purpose isn't a puzzle to solve. It's a discovery: something you uncover by removing what doesn't fit rather than by adding on what you think should.

6. Leadership shows up in many forms (including your own life).

Leadership isn't necessarily running for president or building a movement with millions. It's the sensation in your gut and spine when something needs to be said and no one else is saying it. Sometimes it’s hosting the salon, speaking the truth in a room of six people, or showing up where your soul is called to hold space.

7. Set an intention for what you want to create, not what you want to avoid.

When we don't set an intention, our protectors do it for us. When they do they focus on avoiding danger. "I hope I don't upset her." "I hope I don't screw this up." Flip it: What do I want to create? More trust, more connection, more aliveness … that's where the soul self gets to drive.

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Support the show

Thank you so much for listening!

Take the free Speaker Alter Ego Quiz to find out which protective mask is hiding your wild, untamed radiance.
https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Follow me on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/voice_matters_llc/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauri-smith-voice-matters/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@voicematters9646