Author Megan Farrell Ragsdale On How Authenticity and Vulnerability Pay Off and Help You Win Personally and Professionally
An Interview With Maria Angelova
It keeps you from becoming an island. By nature, humans need social connection, and through vulnerability and sharing, we extend the invitation to others to know us on a deep and personal level, which makes relationships more fulfilling and people feel less alone.
Being vulnerable and authentic are some of today’s popular buzzwords. It may seem counterintuitive to be vulnerable, as many of us have been taught to project an air of confidence, be a boss, and act like we know everything. In Brene Brown’s words, “vulnerability takes courage.” So is vulnerability a strength or a weakness? Can someone be authentic without being vulnerable? How can being authentic and vulnerable help someone grow both personally and professionally? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders, mental health professionals and business and life coaches who can share stories and examples of “How Authenticity and Vulnerability Pay Off and Help You Win Personally and Professionally.”
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Megan Farrell Ragsdale. Megan is an executive coach, thought leader, author of “Risky Women: How To Reach the Top Levels of Leadership or Know When It’s Time to Get the Hell Out,” and C-Suite veteran with more than 20 years in the trenches with brands like Hulu, Dollar Shave Club, Deloitte, Motorola, SONY and The North Face. With a winning record in scaling businesses for investment and building high-performing teams and cultures, Megan’s greatest strength is meeting people where they are at while building a path to what’s possible.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I am the middle child of three girls and spent most of my childhood moving around the east coast as my father was in sales. I learned the art of negotiation and compromise pretty early with my sisters, and moving schools like I did forced me to become more independent and confident in myself at a young age. I also had a great example set for me by my mom, who returned to get her college degree when I was in high school. We both learned chemistry together, and she went on to become a funeral director, which intrigued her because there were not many women in the field at the time. My family are all very tight knit, and humor is really the shared core value among us all.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
One of the quotes I have been pondering lately is from George Bernard Shaw: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” As a seeker, and someone constantly trying to work into my growth edges, I can get caught up in the pursuit of trying to understand myself or improve the person I am today. I find it much freer to think about creating rather than refining. It requires a growth mindset and makes your potential limitless.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Yes. “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership” was a game-changer for me in both my professional and personal life. As a leader, it reminded me how important self-management and self-awareness are when we think about communicating with our teams for success — are we approaching an interaction with openness and curiosity or are we acting threatened and defensive? Applying that same thinking to my marriage, I focus much more on keeping my own side of the relationship in integrity than I do looking for perceived flaws in my partner’s interactions with me.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Let’s begin with a definition of terms so that each of us and our readers are on the same page. What exactly does being authentic mean?
How I like to think about authenticity is: Are you in this moment turning toward yourself or turning away from yourself? What I mean by that is, are you making a decision that feels right inside? Are you participating in an activity that feels like it is a good fit for your values? Is it a good match for what you uphold is important? Does it keep you in integrity with yourself? You will know the answers to these questions because in your body and in your brain you feel peaceful if you are turning toward yourself. If you have some sort of internal disturbance, then that’s usually something to listen to. It’s going to happen in your body first physiologically, and that’ll tell you if there is something more you need to consider in that moment. So, for me, being authentic means that you are in integrity with yourself in that moment.
What does being vulnerable mean? Can you explain?
Being vulnerable is taking a risk with sharing something true about yourself, which is sometimes quite personal. I equate vulnerability directly with taking a small or big risk where you open yourself up to the judgment of others.
What are the positive aspects of being authentic and vulnerable? Can you give a story or example to explain what you mean?
When you’re being authentic and vulnerable, when you feel like you can both turn towards yourself and be intact and with your values, and you’re also able to go to the next level of depth in conversation or in a relationship with somebody who you trust and can be vulnerable with, it is incredibly validating.
For example, when you are in a romantic relationship and authentic and vulnerable with your partner, you’re staying true to your own integrity and boundaries while at the same time taking a small risk with that person who may not be on the same page with you. They may not agree with your perspective or the way you are speaking or you’re acting. But, if you are able to practice taking that risk and practice that skill, and you’re able to navigate that situation or that conversation successfully, where you feel, heard and valued, that’s really what all of us want at the end of the day.
What I love about being both authentic and vulnerable is it sort of continues to build and retrain and reinforce your own intuition about knowing what is right for you personally.
Are there negative aspects to authenticity and vulnerability? Can you give a story or example to explain what you mean?
Vulnerability is not always safe for people. There are plenty of people in our society and culture who are marginalized and very much being authentic to themselves and being authentically out there as themselves, and they are being mistreated by others. So, I don’t think vulnerability is always best with people that you can’t trust. I think that you can be true to yourself and also protect yourself with healthy boundaries. I think vulnerability is really something that you reserve for people who have built some trust with you.
If you overexpose yourself to somebody or a group and perhaps divulge too much too soon, then it can make those around you uncomfortable and has the effect of pushing you back into your shell instead of accomplishing a true and valuable connection with other people. I think that understanding how to be vulnerable and how much of yourself to really share in a given situation is really something that’s practiced and learned over time, and it is kind of an in the moment judgment.
For authenticity, I like to think of it as a continuum. We are constantly changing and growing, and what feels like truth in one season of our lives may not feel like our truth in a different season. Sometimes we are confidently growing in a direction that feels good and sometimes we are shrinking back out of fear. Building the muscle of authenticity is being able to build trust with yourself and build trust with others. Society has a lot of messages for women and marginalized people in our culture on how we need to show up and what we’re supposed to be. And I think when you intake that messaging for so many years, it makes it really hard to actually know at the core what are the beliefs that were handed to you by other people and what are the beliefs about yourself that actually feel true?
Authenticity sort of assumes that there is an inner trust in knowing who we are, but that may sometimes feel elusive, because we’re really multidimensional as people and although our values typically remain static, our beliefs can be challenged. If we’re seekers and if we’re people who are continually working on ourselves and in development, it takes a while to peel back all of the stories that have been handed to us by others, by ourselves, and by our families over the years. Authenticity implies that you are comfortable knowing what this present version of yourself really cares about, what your internal compass needs, and what direction you want to go, or at a minimum, authenticity implies that you trust your decision making in this moment.
To develop a sense of authenticity, I think you have to get below the surface layer that everybody else is seeing and really understand your internal states and preferences. That requires a lot of thoughtful work and internal inquiry.
From your experience or perspective, what are some of the common barriers that hold someone back from being authentic and vulnerable?
One of them I mentioned already — how can you be authentic by knowing yourself, trusting yourself and turning toward yourself? A lot of people that I come across, both as a leader in an organization and as a coach, have a really big gap between who they are showing to the world and being in touch with what they actually think and feel about themselves. They have never done any kind of values work and that can also cause a lot of misalignment. If you’ve never really set that internal architecture for yourself, then it’s really hard to identify when there is a problem with it.
How I start to address that with people is looking at what is their overall treatment of themselves in terms of their mental and physical well-being. Are they doing a great job of taking care of the body that they’re in, of their brains, of their cognitive functioning? If they’re not sleeping, if they’re numbing — through alcohol, shopping, or other mechanisms, whatever it is, it’s really hard to get through the white noise and get to the core of what feels right and to tap back into that internal knowing and intuition that, especially for women, gets really covered up over time.
So I think the barriers are old stories and beliefs that people haven’t radically questioned themselves about. I think if you’ve had a past experience where you’ve taken a risk and it went very badly for you, it definitely makes you more hesitant the next time around to share in that same capacity. Culturally, we are all getting a barrage of messages every single day about what is revered and acceptable in our society, and if what feels authentically you does not fit into that mold, than it can make the risk burden too high for someone to feel comfortable operating authentically and especially vulnerably in the world.
Here is the central question of our discussion. What are five ways that being authentic and vulnerable pay off, and help you win, both personally and professionally?
- It strengthens personal relationships. If you can be both yourself and vulnerable with someone you trust, the other person in the relationship feels more inclined to return your transparency by revealing something personal about themselves, creating a unique and meaningful bond of connection.
- It builds trust in professional relationships. When you move into a leadership role, a client or customer facing role, it is increasingly important for the people you are working with to believe that you are trustworthy. When you work with someone who is genuine and vulnerable, it creates a feeling of psychological safety for the other party, allowing a partnership to flourish.
- It keeps you focused on putting energy into the things that will bring long-term happiness into your life, not distractions. If you truly know yourself and your growth needs deeply, you can easily separate a core need from a surface level desire that will only bring short-term happiness. While others are caught in the wheel of the grind or numbing themselves from their own intuition, you will stay focused on achieving the goals that will bring you closer to a life of meaning and purpose.
- It teaches you the skill of risk taking. If you’re able to take a small risk with someone and show a little bit of yourself to them, it builds the confidence to take some bigger risks down the road. You cannot build a life of meaning and connection with other people without taking those personal risks.
- It keeps you from becoming an island. By nature, humans need social connection, and through vulnerability and sharing, we extend the invitation to others to know us on a deep and personal level, which makes relationships more fulfilling and people feel less alone.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
The movement that I’m trying to inspire is to get more people to take risks, and in particular, women. When I talk about risk, I don’t mean big sweeping risks like jumping off a cliff or betting it all on black. What I mean is being conscious of your own internal states, preferences and knowledge of yourself that you can make decisions in favor of what will most support the direction you’re trying to go in.
I want women to catalyze their impatience for change in the workplace by quitting their jobs more often and starting their own businesses. The data is too bleak, especially after COVID. In order to reach economic parity in the workplace, more women need to be in positions of leadership in all spheres. That will require many of us to have the courage to leave when we are undervalued and begin a new workplace paradigm that allows us to succeed at the highest levels.
That is far easier said than done, so I want to provide the tools women need to help de-risk those career decisions, and I believe that we can tap into the natural defensive risk-taking skills that women have honed over time and turn those into an unbeatable offensive game.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
When I need inspiration and am looking for somebody who I think is an evolved version of authenticity, of turning toward herself, of taking risks to be vulnerable and really putting herself out there, I think of Bozoma Saint John, the former CMO of Netflix. I would absolutely love to have lunch with her because she is a powerful voice in our culture for what it means to tap into your individual power and strengths as a woman.
How can our readers follow you online?
Megan Farrell Ragsdale, CLC | LinkedIn
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.
