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The podcast for high-level leaders carrying the invisible weight of the world.
If you’re a founder, executive, or high-ranking leader, you already know this truth: the higher you rise, the fewer people you can safely talk to.
Lonely at the Top is a sanctuary in the storm—a space where the emotional cost of leadership is named, and where relief, clarity, and grounded support are always on the table.
Hosted by Soul Medic and former psychotherapist Rachel Alexandria, this podcast dives into the unspoken realities of high-level decision-making: the pressure, the isolation, the doubt, and the fatigue. Each episode offers insight, emotional tools, and conversations with seasoned leaders who’ve learned to navigate the weight of responsibility without losing themselves.
[00:00:00] Shivani: I have seen leadership and access to power really cost people their humanity in ways that are really scary to see. And so I like wanna name that kind of explicitly because I think there's so much in leadership and power that we don't always talk about. We talk about leadership as sort of this, you know, thing to always aspire to without really thinking about how leadership is also potentially proximity to or access to power. and that power can be used for good or for evil in a lot of different ways. Um,
[00:00:27] Rachel: Welcome to Lonely at the Top, a podcast for high-level leaders carrying the invisible weight of the world because you know the higher you rise, the fewer people you can safely talk to. Here we welcome founders, executives, and decision-makers who feel the isolation and pressure that comes with power.
[00:00:46] Lonely at the Top is your sanctuary in the storm, and I'm your host, executive coach and former psychotherapist, Rachel Alexandria. Today on the podcast, we have Shivani Mehta Bhatia. [00:01:00] She's a facilitator, advisor, and writer based in New York City. She works with senior leaders at justice-rooted organizations, especially queer folks and women of color, helping them use conflict as diagnostic information about power, culture, and what needs to change.
[00:01:20] She came to this work after a decade inside public health, crisis response, and community-based care, where she kept noticing the same pattern. The most persistent strategy problems were always relational ones rooted in power, story, and unaddressed conflict. She's also the author and host of Intimate Practice, an ongoing research project on birth, sex, and death work.
[00:01:48] You know this is gonna be a rich conversation today, and it's been a minute since we tried to, to get together, so thanks for getting here, Shivani.
[00:01:58] Shivani: Thanks for having me, Rachel. [00:02:00] I'm so thrilled to finally be here.
[00:02:05] Rachel: Yay. Okay. So, I guess I always start with how we know each other. we know each other mostly tangentially. We're both in an organization called Deeper Business Foundations. this is where I meet a lot of people who are doing really cool work in the world all over the globe really, 'cause you're in New York City
[00:02:27] Shivani: Yes, I am. Yeah
[00:02:28] Rachel: So how did you get into the kind of work that you do? That is what I'm most curious about to start with
[00:02:35] Shivani: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's-- I feel like I have a different answer to this question every single time, but, like, truest answer is that, I wanted to be a doctor when I was four or five years old. I was obsessed with anatomy and bodies and, like, how the body actually worked and how systems of care worked.
[00:02:52] I was like the, you know, the four, five, six-year-old kid feeding my dolls medicine that I pulled out of the backyard garden. I, I
[00:02:59] Rachel: was like [00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Shivani: second grade dragging my mother down to the library basement to pull out herbal medicine textbooks. Like, I just have always been interested in health and bodies and how we, how we recover from things.
[00:03:10] so that's kind of the oldest, the oldest story. That brought me into, what I thought was gonna be clinical work and actually ended up being systems of care and public health, which I absolutely loved. And in public health work, I was doing primarily maternal death prevention work, so I was facilitating this group of people around why do people die, during pregnancy or up, or, uh, up to a year postpartum?
[00:03:32] How
[00:03:32] Rachel: do we prevent
[00:03:33] Shivani: those deaths from happening? it was brilliant work, very contentious work. That's like the death work sort of part of my, part of my background. and then when the pandemic hit, I was deployed to the pandemic response. I was doing a lot of health equity work for a state. that was sort of my, my process was how do we design a health equity strategy in the middle of a, in the middle of a pandemic?
[00:03:53] and all of those strategy questions, all of that, like, facilitation work, all of those like, high octane sort of [00:04:00] death work and high-pressure situations, uh, were pressure cookers for conflict. And the way that we got through them was by working well with conflict, figuring out how to disagree really well together and, like, when to be pretty strategically on each other's side, when to, name the thing that nobody wanted to talk about.
[00:04:18] so yeah, that's, that's kind of how I found my way there. and,
[00:04:22] Rachel: and conflict
[00:04:23] Shivani: has sort of become a home ever since.
[00:04:25] Rachel: So tell me, like I, I really wanna ask some clarifying
[00:04:29] Shivani: Yeah, of course
[00:04:30] Rachel: because, like I'm a smart person, but sometimes I'm slow to pick up on like
[00:04:34] Shivani: context
[00:04:35] Rachel: pieces. Yeah, and, and I just assume that people listening may know less than I do, or the same that I do so I like to clarify. What is health equity?
[00:04:47] Shivani: Yeah. Health equity is one of those, phrases that nobody knew about for the longest... quote-unquote nobody knew about for the longest time. It was like jargon up until 2020, and I remember the day that my mother called me. She's like, "You're the only [00:05:00] person I've ever heard use this phrase health equity, and now it's all over the news.
[00:05:03] What is happening?" And it was... it's such a pandemic phrase in a lot of ways. health equity is really, it's health and equity. So if you break those down, health is... I take a really expansive definition of health, that we, um, we have a h- a human right to, the dignity of choice when it comes to how we define our health and wellbeing, and this, it's not just the WHO, W- WHO definition is about, like, not just the absence of disease or infirmity, but actually this self-determined, sense of wellbeing.
[00:05:30] And it's, a very biopsychosocial kind of approach. So it's physiological, it's, social, it's psychological, which is like wellness sort of mean. So that's the health part of health equity. And then equity is, is usually, the kind of, paired phrase with equality, right? So equality is sameness.
[00:05:47] Equality is that everybody is treated the same. Equity is more about does everybody have what they need? equitable access is about do people have access in the ways that they need to, and also that are potentially modulated by different [00:06:00] power dynamics. So if you are a person who, like I live in a dis- disabled body, do I have access to the kinds of care that I need that might be different than an able-bodied person?
[00:06:09] that's one of the examples of equity. it's often also comes along in DEI as the acronym, diversity, equity, and inclusion. which, you know, we can, we can talk about the politics of that aside. But, the equity portion of that is, do people have what they need, and do they have what they need in equitable ways as opposed to, equal ways?
[00:06:29] Rachel: Hmm. Yeah, I was just reading an article this morning talking about how, lots of states' Medicaid programs, and Medicare, I forget which one, are, removing access to GLP-1s.
[00:06:41] Shivani: Hmm. Oh, interesting. I didn't
[00:06:43] Rachel: Yeah, y- just recently, because it's become expensive for them, and so you have, like, now it's going to be for a while, not like this is surprising about anything else about health, but the haves having access to GLP-1s and GLP-2s and the have-nots [00:07:00] not.
[00:07:00] And yeah, so I imagine this is something that would come up in health equity, like, the appropriate access based on your circumstance to what you need in order to really be well.
[00:07:13] Shivani: Yeah. Yeah. It's about access in terms of what you need to be well. It's also about, like, who kind of bears the burden of, like, the disproportionate burden of death, disease, and disability. so at least in, in my work with COVID, with maternal death prevention, it was, like, essentially how does systemic racism, how does systemic outcomes really affect certain populations differently?
[00:07:33] how does it lead to, you know, certain populations dying more frequently of COVID, for example? and how do we prevent that from happening or shift that from happening and make sure those resources are allocated well for those populations?
[00:07:45] Rachel: Wow. So when I invited you onto the
[00:07:48] Shivani: show,
[00:07:49] We were not gonna go down that rabbit hole.
[00:07:52] Rachel: No, no, no, I don't... You what? I honestly, I
[00:07:55] Shivani: am, it-
[00:07:55] Rachel: I don't wanna talk about constantly the same thing on the
[00:07:58] Shivani: Yeah.
[00:07:59] Rachel: I [00:08:00] really like meeting people and diving into people's experiences that are very different than mine, that are people who are ex- exercising leadership in all kinds of places and, and me and the audience, we all have to understand what is this other world in order to make sense of it, right?
[00:08:18] Like,
[00:08:19] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
[00:08:19] I don't want anything homogenized or overly simplistic. That's not interesting.
[00:08:23] Shivani: Yeah.
[00:08:24] Rachel: So no, I, I'm, I'm totally into it. I'm just, I'm, like, wondering because it's so different than my experience, right? And it's so different than, like, a corporate boss type experience. It sounds very community-oriented and when you talk about things like we, you say we a lot.
[00:08:44] who is the we? Are these different organizations you've been part of? Like, how does your work work, and who do you work with/for?
[00:08:52] Shivani: Great question. Well, so that work that I talked about was all when I worked for a state government, so that was government public health. and I, I've worked [00:09:00] state, local, federal gov- I've worked with state, local, and federal government, public health agencies, and so that's, you know, all kind of layers of that.
[00:09:08] Now my work is both with those, with people within those agencies and entities, but also, the kind of network of organizations that support all of that work. So that's foundations, it's, philanthropies, nonprofits, even some social impact, mission-driven, for-profit companies, that are focused on creating some sort of change in the world, creating some sort of sense of wellbeing in the world, whatever that looks like, whatever.
[00:09:32] So I've worked with environmental justice groups. I've worked with reproductive justice groups. I've done, again, this, this kind of state, local public health work, community advocacy groups, policy groups, things like that. So the, we in public health is usually quite expansive because we take such a systems, we the profession take such a systems level approach to everything that, nobody really acts by themselves, right?
[00:09:54] And I mean, that kind of even just comes back to this, whole kind of driving concept of change and conflict is that [00:10:00] a we thing. We create change together. It's not something that, a person can act, on their own to effect in the same kind of way.
[00:10:07] Rachel: Okay. Thank you for explaining that. And yeah, that is, that is helpful. So it sounds like you've been part of or cooperating with in variety of different roles. What is your experience of like being in leadership, and do you ever experience it as lonely?
[00:10:27] Shivani: Yeah. Oh gosh, great question. It's interesting. I now working to support leaders within these agencies, I see the loneliness a lot more than I felt when I was doing it myself. Um, or than potentially I, I realized at the time. what I found, I, I work with a lot of, nonprofit executive directors in particular, or philanthropy program officers for example, who are, leading a, grant program or supporting a community engagement effort.
[00:10:54] And what I have found most often is, those are people who worked their [00:11:00] way up through the chain, right? They're often queer folks, they're often women of color, they're people who have worked their way up the chain, and worked their way up the chain often by calling out power dynamics, often by calling out, problems with the system.
[00:11:13] And then they get to a point of leadership that they have, you know, previously not had access to, and all of a sudden they are being accused of some of the similar things, some patterns that they were calling out before. and specifically the, the point of loneliness that I find in that is that, sometimes it's true that they are actually replicating those patterns of harm, and sometimes it's not true that they're replicating those patterns of harm, and they have to kind of work through that on their own.
[00:11:38] They don't often have support systems in place. The people that they used to go to for support, or to kind of, untangle whatever that thorny question is, are not the people that they, that they used to be able to turn to, or they can't turn to those people anymore. And so that I've found to be a really lonely, space to be in
[00:11:56] Rachel: so you're, at the time that you were in those kinds [00:12:00] of positions, you weren't cognizant of experiencing, that problem, is what I heard you say
[00:12:07] Shivani: Not explicitly. Like, I, I don't think... If you had asked me 10 years ago are you lonely in this job? I don't know that I would've said yes, because I was working with people all the time. And also looking back, absolutely. Absolutely
[00:12:20] Rachel: Yeah. I think that's a, it's a really good point about leadership, and I don't think we've talked about it a lot on the show yet, that people, and especially, especially in this moment of time where there is a fervor around the critique of any public person. You know, if you're on the right, you might call this cancel culture, right?
[00:12:41] But if you're on the left, it's just like we're holding people to account, and I mean, it's angry mobs. Like, a- and the angry mobs are sometimes right, and there's decisions that get made in leadership by any leader that are going to look [00:13:00] unpopular, that are going to be inscrutable to the people who are not in the private room, because they have to be. Like, compromises and deals have to be made sometimes, right?
[00:13:11] And so I can imagine... Like, I just, I watch a lot of public commentary about public figures in general. I don't tend to participate, but I read a lot, and I just watch how it just takes the slightest misstep for, people to suddenly have a bunch of haters who say somebody's sold out and that they're not a friend of the movement and whatever.
[00:13:34] And, yeah, so that, that has to be very alienating
[00:13:38] Shivani: Well, yeah, there's a couple, pieces of that that I've, or threads in that that I think I, I wanna tease out. There's one that is, I work with a lot of, women of color leaders in particular who, get to a certain level and there's often a question of, you know, they will make a decision and the question they receive often or the pushback they receive, kind of have to be in a space of like, "Is this [00:14:00] actually a question of my decision, or is this just somebody uncomfortable with a woman of color saying no?" So that's sort of one phenomenon and, you know, there's a lot kind of wrapped up for that leader in terms of how have they come to that decision? W- how do they kind of handle that pushback? How do they parse through what is that? What is actually critique or feedback that is worth, you know, taking and receiving and integrating in some kind of way?
[00:14:21] And what is actually just, people a woman of color saying no?
[00:14:25] Rachel: Yeah
[00:14:26] Shivani: Um, there's a piece that's that. There's also a piece that, I, I was thinking about this when you, said this like holding people to account, right? I think we have a really messed up relationship with the word accountability, to be honest.
[00:14:38] there's a, a kind of, a few different pieces in this, right? Accountability is actually this really beautiful thing, can be this really beautiful thing. Most of the time when we are in relationship and I come to you and I say, "Hey, this thing that you said really hurt me,"
[00:14:52] is actually an invitation towards much deeper relationship, right?
[00:14:55] That's actually an invitation towards some kind of intimacy. That is some kind of, that is me saying, "I really [00:15:00] want to continue this relationship with you. I am trying, in the ways that I have access to, to mend something, to repair something, to move us into a better or more shared understanding of what just happened and who we are to each other and who we want to be to each other," right?
[00:15:17] So that process of accountability is actually, can be really beautiful. when it is used in this much more public fashion, we're not in relationship with some of those people. We can't actually hold people accountable who we are not in relationship with. and so this more like public phenomenon or online, I think, phenomenon of, quote-unquote, cancel culture or, you know, calling people out in this like public way, there are times that like it makes sense for public figures, sure.
[00:15:44] Yes, absolutely. And also, the way that we use it in these much more, personal sorts of ways like doesn't really make sense online. It doesn't really make sense as like that is not the space for it often. so yeah, it's, one of those words that I, I think, a lot of this thinking also I should say, [00:16:00] comes from Mia Mingus' framing of accountability and transformative justice and their like really phenomenal work in that movement.
[00:16:06] but it's, I think, a, a much, deeper and kinder, honestly, approach to accountability than, the much more flattened kind of version that we see in, public discourse.
[00:16:16] Rachel: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with everything you're saying. Like, I, I f- I just reread this quote the other day and now I'm not gonna remember who said it, unfortunately. but there's a, I wanna say
[00:16:28] celebrity, probably a male celebrity who said, "If somebody has a problem with me, they should text me."
[00:16:35] Like implying that if you know me well enough to have this conversation, you have my number
[00:16:41] Shivani: Right. Right. Yeah, I think the flip side of that is often, like, we're also not taught how to receive that feedback sometimes, and so we perceive, you know, if, I were to get a text, for example, to say, "Hey, you, like, really hurt me in this, in some way," it's very easy for me to have a shame response around that.
[00:16:55] For any of us, we've all kind of been taught you know, if somebody says, "Hey, you hurt me," that [00:17:00] means that you are bad, right? That means that I'm a bad person. I have done something bad. That's, so much of the conversation around, is this person racist or not? Is this person misogynist or not?
[00:17:09] Like, it's sort of beside the point in some ways. especially if we consider all of these things to be, like, systems of oppression. but I think the skill of that, the flip of that, is that we can then engage with that shame, right? We can engage with a, like, "Hey, this person is actually trying to have a better and deeper relationship with me, and can I take that as invitation, an act of love, and not, you know, not an attack, not something that I need to internalize as, like, I am a bad person?"
[00:17:34] Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's ve- you and I have, I think, very, companionable takes on conflict,
[00:17:40] Shivani: Yes.
[00:17:41] know?
[00:17:41] Rachel: Um, uh, so, I have like three different questions. Uh Do you advise people or like So you have this knowledge about dealing
[00:17:53] conflict, and it sounds like you work with these leaders
[00:17:58] experiencing loneliness.
[00:17:59] Are you [00:18:00] getting to advise them on navigating disagreements and conflict? Or
[00:18:05] Shivani: Yeah. I work, um, in a couple different ways. I work as a conflict facilitator and mediator, so when there is an active conflict, you can call me up and I will come in and kind of work through, like, what is, what is actually in front of us? What are all the stories beneath the stories?
[00:18:19] How do we choose what needs to be repaired here, what can't be repaired, and, and how do we choose to move forward? I do that with, groups of five to 25 people, depending on kind of what that, can look like. I also do it kind of before, right? Before the eruption actually happens.
[00:18:35] That's usually, like, the post-eruption, right? but I facilitate change processes when there is sort of a, like, we have a decision that we need to make and we don't want it to devolve. We have a new strategic plan. We need to invite a bunch of community engagement. We need to, you know, understand how people think about this, or we need to shift priorities.
[00:18:52] Budget's been cut, something. leadership transition, like those kinds of transition points when we know a change is coming that is ripe for the [00:19:00] potential of conflict, I help facilitate those conversations. and then I also work one-on-one with leaders in, like, a coaching sort of process of how do you, how do we actually, how do you get better at not internalizing that feedback or, being able to discern what is the feedback that I actually do need to take and what is the feedback that I really don't need to take and how do you kind of both do that internally but also coach yourself, your team members or your other folks in your life around that?
[00:20:09] Rachel: And how did you get so good at that? I'm wondering if it's a similar story to mine
[00:20:21] Shivani: that's a great question. Um, I mean, I'm laughing because it's, you know, eldest immigrant daughter energy of, like, being the mediator always. And also, a- I mean, and also I, I was just writing about this actually a couple days ago of, People often ask me, like, "How did you become a facilitator?" Like, "What was the training that you had for this? How did you kind of get there?" And I was like, "You know, I've taken trainings on facilitation. I've, I've studied conflict mediation before, and also I facilitated a group of 35 people about death prevention every single, you know, every six weeks for, at 7:30 in the morning for three hours for five years."
[00:20:56] Rachel: That'll do
[00:20:56] Shivani: it
[00:20:57] yeah. I've, I've, you know, facilitated this group of [00:21:00] people in the middle of a pandemic response of how do we make sure that people don't die when we don't have the resources, from state or federal government that we need to have in order to make this happen effectively. Like, I just had a lot of conflict that we were working with, and I saw the potential for how to do it well.
[00:21:17] Rachel: Nice. Yeah, I get it. I mean, I find that people who are comfortable with difficult conversations are so relaxing to be around. You know, and I think I embody that. Like I, just did some work without getting into personal details about people that were involved. I facilitate a friend group situation and, there was several moments of pretty significant conflict that came up and someone was like, "You know, you don't need to intervene."
[00:21:50] And I'm like, " But I do, because you don't understand what will happen to this group if this is not resolved in some sort
[00:21:59] Shivani: Yeah. [00:22:00] Yeah. I think that's the other, I think the other piece of it, too, for even for my story also, is that I've had conflict go really badly. I've had relationships end when, conflict wasn't handled well, when we couldn't have the conversation, when we couldn't, find this point of connection, when we avoided the hard conversation 'cause we were afraid.
[00:22:18] You know? Like, the other side of this is I've, been asked before, like, "You must just be so good at this." I'm "N- no, actually, I learned some really hard lessons, too." Yes, I, like, have, become practiced, and I've built up a skill set around it, and I have frameworks and everything, too, but it's not, like, an innate thing that some people, I think, just go towards conflict and some people don't.
[00:22:36] I really believe that it is a set of relational skills that we can learn and practice and be with each other on. And part of why I believe that is because I have seen it go really badly, and I've lost relationships that meant the world to me, truly, truly the world to me, and were incredibly painful to lose because we didn't know how to handle conflict well or we couldn't, [00:23:00] repair the things that we needed to repair
[00:23:01] Rachel: Yeah. I mean, similar. Yeah. I, decided to get good at conflict because I had two very serious relationships end,
[00:23:13] and looking at the aftermath, I was like, "Well, which part is mine? What part on my street clean up?" And my part was I'm not good at conflict. I was scared of it. I thought it was better to avoid it, you know, to just resolve it inside myself, which doesn't
[00:23:29] you know?
[00:23:30] so yeah, I recognize it. I recognize what you're talking about. Okay. So let me get into,
[00:23:40] Yeah
[00:23:40] Well, I wanna ask this question because I always, I
[00:23:45] these questions. What is a leadership decision or season that really tested you?
[00:23:51] Shivani: Yeah. I would say that pandemic season really tested me. for, I mean, for many reasons. I had [00:24:00] already been doing a lot of death work. It was a very high pressure, time, a very frantic time. This was, about six months into the pandemic, so end of 2020. And so we were already kind of in this, Yeah, just state of intensity, state of panic, state of emergency for, such a long time.
[00:24:16] People were moving very quickly. I was also in a state at the time where... I mean, uh, and this wasn't just the state that I was in federally. Like, we're right now in the, even today in this moment where, you know, Fauci is getting questioned in these very aggressive ways. And I think a lot of people kind of outside of the public health or healthcare world, knew that it was difficult or knew that we were getting a lot of pressure, but maybe don't know quite how bad it was.
[00:24:43] And, we were told, at the department that I worked at to take our parking stickers off of our cars so that nobody would know where we worked or that nobody would know that we worked at the health department. because people were getting doxxed. People were getting harassed, for trying to save lives, trying to make sure that more people didn't die, trying to make sure that people [00:25:00] could quarantine safely, trying to make...
[00:25:01] You know, trying to make sure that people got vaccinated. and that, there's like a lot of moral injury I think wrapped up in that. right, both for, for so many of us in the field, but also kind of outside of the field as well of like how, how do you kind of grapple with the reality that when public health is successful it is silent.
[00:25:19] It's kind of, it's behind the scenes. People don't see it. And so when it all of a sudden is out in the open it's seen as a failure when it actually, had a lot of potential. So there's sort of that, that aspect of it. There was also this aspect of, like just the responsibility. I was, you know, working for a state that had 7 or so million people and we were...
[00:25:38] like, very intensely felt the responsibility of trying to create a health equity plan that would support 7 million people's lives, right? Like, it was not a small thing.
[00:25:47] Rachel: Yeah, that sounds very daunting
[00:25:50] Shivani: Yeah. And then the last, I think the last piece of that too is, the actual group that I was facilitating, we were call- called the Health Equity Working Group. I trained previously as a birth and abortion [00:26:00] doula. I have a lot of kind of background in trauma-informed care and rape crisis counseling and things like that.
[00:26:04] and so I was also kind of bringing a lot of that trauma-informed care to the facilitation practice. Like, how do we make this a supportive space for knowing that all of this moral injury is kind of around us for the 20 or so people who are in this room right now and are being actively traumatized and also trying to prevent a lot of other kind of secondary trauma, I'll call all the rest of it.
[00:26:24] how do we actually offer a trauma-informed space for that group? and like that part is, yes, it was like s- I'm, I'm describing all of the, the intensity of it and the pressure of it and the difficulty of it. That group was phenomenal. It was so incredible to work with. It was so profound to see how much people came together, how much they needed that space.
[00:26:43] Also, people talked about it as kind of like the most supportive aspect of the pandemic response for state-level employees at the time. Like, that was a really profound, thing to hear and also to kind of witness it happening, that we could all take care of each other in these ways and also, you know, make it so that undocumented people [00:27:00] had access to funding so that they could quarantine safely in a ways that they had not been able to before.
[00:27:04] that happened.
[00:27:06] Rachel: Oh, okay. Everybody, everybody listening take a big breath here. Yeah. you know, I don't know, I don't know if we'll ever be over the trauma of the pandemic because we never had a global, you know, ritual or reckoning or integration.
[00:27:28] Shivani: Yeah.
[00:27:28] Rachel: You know, I'm, I'm sure there are some people walking around who are okay, but, you know, let's just take a moment and, and acknowledge that most of us, life got thrown sideways when that happened, and we gradually came back to some sort of semblance of normalcy, but it's never been the same.
[00:27:50] And for most us, it was unacknowledged
[00:27:53] Shivani: completely, completely. And I, don't even know that in a sense that we had like a m- most of us have a sense of normalcy. I think it is a kind of suppressed thing. It [00:28:00] was a mass disabling event. people's bodies have changed, people's lives have changed, people lost so many of their loved ones.
[00:28:07] and yeah, we just, we had no, no acknowledgement of it here in the US whatsoever.
[00:28:12] Rachel: Mm-hmm. So if you're listening to this, maybe this is an opportunity, you know, sitting with the two of us to acknowledge, you know, safely, you know, not, not like while you're driving your car or doing something important, but maybe making a note to just acknowledge the grief and the difficulty and know that millions of other people went through that too,
[00:28:37] Shivani: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:38] Rachel: you're not alone.
[00:28:40] Yeah, it just feels important. Like talking about all that, I could feel it building in my body, and I was like, I love that you folks were there for each other, and sounds like it was really nourishing in the midst of a lot of emergency.
[00:28:56] Shivani: Yeah.
[00:28:57] Rachel: and, you know, I don't think anybody listening to this [00:29:00] show would do this, but, you know, don't attack people who are trying to help you.
[00:29:07] Oh, okay. So on this show, we get to look into the private ledger of leaders, because at the top, no one sees your balance sheet of burdens. But here we like to ask three things. First, what was one cost you paid for being in leadership?
[00:29:29] Shivani: I'm like trying to think back to that time too. I th- I mean, I left the field of public health in a lot of ways, so that might have been a cost. I think the moral injury of it had, you know, really forced me to kind of take stock of how do I wanna show up in this work? I gave a lot more of myself to it than I actually had to give, and I then paid the price of that by, like, having to step back for a very long time.
[00:29:50] and now I'm able to, you know, I, I support the field, I support people in the field, but I am not actively working for a public health department anymore, even though that is my, my training and background. that [00:30:00] a choice that I made. yeah, that, that feels like a, you know, a hard thing to name as a cost explicitly because it, it has brought me also so much,
[00:30:09] Rachel: Well, it, shifted your career trajectory
[00:30:12] Shivani: exactly. It, it pretty dramatically shifted my career trajectory, yeah.
[00:30:16] Rachel: That's a, that's a cost, right? Every time we have to, you know, step off of the path like that is taking us upward
[00:30:24] and start over in some sort of alternate branch, yeah, that's, that's a cost of time and, accrued abundance, honestly. So
[00:30:33] valid
[00:30:34] Shivani: Yeah. I'll say too, i- in the leaders that I've worked with or with the leaders with whom I've worked, I have seen leadership and access to power really cost people their humanity in ways that are really scary to see. And so I like wanna name that kind of explicitly because I think there's so much in leadership and power that we don't always talk about.
[00:30:53] We talk about leadership as sort of this, you know, thing to always aspire to without really thinking about how, [00:31:00] leadership is also potentially proximity to or access to power. and that power can be used for good or for evil in a l- in a lot of different ways. and so I, you know, it's that old adage, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[00:31:12] Like, I really, I think I've, seen power and access to leadership, shape people's access to their own humanity, and that is one of the most profound costs for me that I have, like, really, informs most of my work now in, in conflict and power and, and change
[00:31:25] Rachel: Yeah. I mean, this is probably too simplistic or too reductive, but I think a good rule of thumb is power, like money, amplifies what you already have going on.
[00:31:38] Shivani: I agree. I agree
[00:31:40] Rachel: it's one of the reasons why I work with the clientele I do. I work leaders because I really am passionate about helping them retain access to their humanity and be able to be their authentic selves in a healthy way without amplifying any of the bad patterns they [00:32:00] inherited or, you know, either taking it out on the people that they lead or taking it out on themselves, so
[00:32:08] Shivani: Yeah, I'm often asking people I work with, "How do you steward power well rather than wield it when you think you have it?" Yeah
[00:32:14] Rachel: Nice. Yeah, exactly. we are never the owners of money. We are not the owners of power when it comes to, the collective. Yeah, I agree with that. and that's the sickness, right? When we start to think that we do, and then it becomes a hoarding disease.
[00:32:31] Yeah
[00:32:32] Okay, so we're we're getting, we're getting into the systemic weeds here.
[00:32:37] Let's, uh, come back to, uh, what's one invisible asset you didn't realize you had at the time?
[00:32:44] Shivani: Yeah, I mean, turning towards the hard conversation, I think that has been, you know, said earlier it's not something innate and also I am something, I'm someone who turns towards the ha- hard conversation, as often as possible, right? Like, not always. I think I've, developed a sense of [00:33:00] discernment around that in a, in a much better way, than I had before.
[00:33:04] But I, for most of my life, have been willing to... Like, I will go have the hard conversation. I will go say the thing that feels really scary to say. and I've, you know, learned to do that with a lot more kindness and gentleness and discernment and all the rest of it, certainly, and also I think that's a, that's a skill I didn't know how to value at the beginning
[00:33:22] Rachel: Nice. Yeah. Definitely skillful. I love that. Okay, what's one investment that you're making now for your wellbeing or your soul?
[00:33:33] Shivani: Oh, yeah. a lot of space and time, a lot of writing. I- that has been, a real gift. I take really excellent care of my body now in a way that I did not used to when I was in leadership before, right? I really prioritize getting outside and moving my body and eating well and all of these things that we like, and sleep in a way that feels so basic to say.
[00:33:56] But, um, but I, I do think it's like one of those costs that we often [00:34:00] pay without totally realizing it, and it's become more of a non-negotiable for me. and so I am, feeding my body and my brain, with, you know, actual food and sleep and writing and creative practice and all the rest of it in ways that I did not let myself do, when I thought the work was kind of everything
[00:34:16] Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I really admire that and I co-sign that. Like, I know I cannot be the kind of leader that I want to be, that I am proud of being, unless I'm taking care of me, because my channels of receiving and understanding are muted or corroded or whatever if I'm not in a, place where I'm in good alignment with my body and my mind and
[00:34:43] heart.
[00:34:44] Yeah, nice. Okay, so we're coming towards the end of our conversation, but I have two questions before we wrap. The first one is, what do you wish more leaders felt permission to say out loud?
[00:34:59] Shivani: [00:35:00] this hurts and I'm sorry
[00:35:02] Rachel: Ooh, say more please
[00:35:04] Shivani: I think there is, there's a couple things. I think leaders are, especially the leaders that I work with, right, queer folks and women of color are often, having to be in positions where they are performing, and they have to kind of present a front of nothing can touch me, nothing can hurt me.
[00:35:19] And so I this saying that actually really hurt is, admitting to a vulnerability that feels really dangerous to say out loud sometimes, but can be really powerful. and as always, I, like, recommend a lot of discernment around this. I, I don't think that's just something we say to anybody, but I, I think, you know, it's an important thing to develop safety around and be able to say when and where it's safe to do so.
[00:35:40] and exactly the same with I'm sorry. I think it's, admitting to have caused harm in a way that, can also, like, be really dangerous potentially to, or can feel really dangerous to a leader and a p- somebody in, in power, somebody in, in a position, like, to admit fault, to admit, "I made a mistake.
[00:35:57] I messed this up in some way." Again, discernment as [00:36:00] always. But, that also is a skill set to, be able to say, I, like, "Yes, I, see that you are hurt, and I see that I caused this hurt," and the intention of what... or the intent that I had with this doesn't actually necessarily matter always. It's, you know, the impact of, of how this landed.
[00:36:14] yeah, I think those are the, those are the two things I wish people had, had a, a little bit more ability to say, and also that we, like, offered each other a little bit more safety in being able to receive it.
[00:36:24] Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, those are great.
[00:36:27] All right, before we get to our last question, you know, if people want to learn more about what you're doing, and I know that you have writing that you share, beautiful pieces and, you know, thought pieces, where would they find that?
[00:36:40] And is there any kind of way they can connect with you if they would like to?
[00:36:44] Shivani: Yeah, definitely. the best way to find all my work is on my website. It's www.shivani.co, S-H-I-V-A-N-I dot C-O. and I have both, like, essays and pieces on there, but, I share those out in a weekly newsletter called Intimate Practice. [00:37:00] Weekly-ish, I should say, newsletter called Intimate Practice, which you can also sign up for on, the site.
[00:37:04] That's really the best way to connect with me. and I also love working with people one-on-one. I think that's, like, one of my favorite... I love facilitating groups for sure, but I really enjoy working with people one-on-one, and I'm, I have a few spots this fall that I'm opening up for leaders, especially, again, women of color and queer folks in leadership, who want to go a little bit deeper on, like, how, how do I build this discernment?
[00:37:24] How do I build this skill set? so yeah, that's all on, all on my website.
[00:37:29] Rachel: Nice. Okay. Well, we'll put that in the show notes too, so people can access it. All right, so our last question is where we open the time machine. Yes. If you could go back in time, what would you say to yourself earlier in your career?
[00:37:49] Shivani: These are such great questions, Rachel. I would say to myself, I think I would, I would have really encouraged my younger self to, like, take up space in the kind of [00:38:00] fullness of herself in a way that I don't think, I ever really let myself do. I did a lot of that performance of like, I have to present a certain kind of a front, or a certain lack of vulnerability, that, I thought was keeping me safe, I thought would kind of protect me from, harm or, keep me in certain spaces that I wanted to stay in.
[00:38:18] And, they weren't actually accepting to the fullness of who I was, and so it never was gonna work in the beginning. So, yeah, that's, the encouragement that I would have for that younger version of me. With like, a lot of love and care for the fact that she did the best with the information that she had at the time, and also, um, yeah, I think that's the, wisdom
[00:38:37] of hindsight
[00:38:39] Rachel: I like that. it's sort of akin to fail faster, right? Be, be you more and, just push away all the people who aren't the right fit, who don't get it. But yeah, I like that. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been really a pleasure, yeah, to hear about your work [00:39:00] and your trajectory and,
[00:39:02] uh, I, yeah, we'll...
[00:39:04] I'm sure we'll be in touch
[00:39:06] Shivani: Yeah, I can't wait. Thanks, Rachel
[00:39:09] Rachel: Thanks for taking a moment to tune in with me today And thanks for listening to Lonely at the Top. If this conversation resonated today, I hope you'll give yourself permission to pause and check in with what you might be carrying because you don't have to hold it all alone.
[00:39:25] I am an executive coach who works with spiritually inclined powerhouses, especially those who wanna clean up difficult relationships and other secret messes. You can learn more at rachealexandria.com. If you know another leader who needs to hear this show, please send it their way because yeah, it's _Lonely At The Top_, but it doesn't have to stay that way
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