Toni Will has spent years breaking the rules. She’s one of only a handful of women leading a men’s professional hockey team, for example. But when she broke the rules by having a drunken tantrum on the floor of a hotel lobby and ended up in jail, she knew it was time to break her drinking habit. In this episode in the 1,000 Cups of Coffee series, Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson talks with the women’s leadership coach, keynote speaker, and author of Rebellious Success about what happened when Toni stopped trying to fit in, stopped chasing likability, and began trusting herself to lead. It’s a conversation about becoming more fully yourself and using the power you’ve earned to build better rooms for the people coming behind you. Tune in for a conversation that will leave you feeling uplifted and ready to rebel against all the things that hold you back.
There was Toni 1.0.
And then there was Toni 2.0.
For Toni Will, the dividing line was the decision to remove alcohol from her life nearly six years ago.
She had already built an extraordinary career leading a men’s professional hockey organization. But quitting drinking forced her to confront something much bigger than what was in her glass: Who was she when she stopped trying so hard to fit in?
In this episode in the 1,000 Cups of Coffee series of the Ideas Love Community podcast, Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson sits down with the General Manager and Governor of the Kalamazoo Wings and author of Rebellious Success: Six Truths to Release Perceived Weaknesses and Become Unstoppable, for a deeply personal conversation about how losing your voice is the cost of trying to be likable.
Toni describes how alcohol had become intertwined with an identity built around being able to hang with the guys. After she quit, her leadership voice changed. It became more intentional and direct. And, as Toni laughingly admits, less likable.
She shares what it has taken to speak up as the first woman ever to serve on her league’s executive committee, including the moment she confronted the commissioner after a joke publicly chipped away at the credibility she had spent years building.
Toni shows us what happens when you release the need for everyone to understand you to create your own version of success.
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IN THIS EPISODE
൦ The moment Toni realized she was done with alcohol and why she decided to “quit out loud” after years of drinking out loud
൦ How becoming alcohol-free changed Toni’s identity, confidence and leadership voice
൦ What happens when you stop making likability the price of speaking honestly
൦ Being the outlier in male-dominated rooms and learning that being different can be an asset instead of something to hide
൦ The conversation Toni had with her league commissioner after a public joke undermined her credibility
൦ Why your intuition often starts as a whisper and what Toni regrets about the times she ignored hers
൦ The vulnerability of publishing a book that leaves almost nowhere to hide
൦ Why even accomplished leaders sometimes have to remind themselves: you are not the main character in everyone else’s life
൦ Turning frustration about women’s advancement into action by building the rooms, events and opportunities she wished had existed for her
൦ Toni’s antidote to “gold star anesthesia” for high achievers and perfectionists
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About Toni Will
Toni Will has spent nearly 12 years leading a men’s professional hockey organization in an industry where women are still very much the minority. As General Manager and Governor of the Kalamazoo Wings, she’s learned a thing or two about questioning the way things have always been done.
She’s also an international keynote speaker, coach, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker with more than 500,000 views, host of the top 2.5% globally ranked Women In... podcast, and author of the newly released Rebellious Success: Six Truths to Release Perceived Weaknesses and Become Unstoppable.
Going alcohol-free nearly six years ago became an unexpected catalyst for Toni to start questioning more than what was in her glass. She began questioning the rules she had inherited about leadership, ambition, achievement and what a successful life was supposed to look like.
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The Question to Take With You
Where are you still editing yourself to make other people more comfortable?
Toni’s story is an invitation to notice the places where you are trying to fit into someone else’s definition of success.
Ideas love community, so share yours.
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IDEAS LOVE COMMUNITY