Glennon Doyle Says Employees Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Authenticity and Belonging

As a young girl and later as a young woman, Glennon Doyle battled drug addiction, eating disorders, and depression. When the activist and best-selling author finally found sobriety at 25, she also found that her problems had not dried up even as she had. 

She was, to her lasting relief, finally sober. But she was far from fulfilled. 

“We can either have our individuality and be our wild, unique self,” she told an audience of talent leaders earlier today at Talent Connect 2022 in Los Angeles, “or we can have our belonging, right? But we can’t have both. We have to choose one or the other.”

She challenged attendees to help create organizations “where we can get both,” what Glennon says her family calls both being held and being free, organizations where people can bring their authentic selves to work AND feel like they belong.

Her message of authenticity and belonging she also shared in her book Untamed, which sold more than 2 million copies, became a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick, and turned its author into a feminist icon. (Her first book, Love Warrior, was picked as an Oprah’s Book Club selection.)

At Talent Connect, she talked about her own journey to find those two qualities and why they should resonate with talent leaders.

1. Build trust, unity, and purpose at your organization

In addition to being a best-selling author, Glennon is also the founder of Together Rising, a women-led nonprofit that has revolutionized grassroots philanthropy. Together Rising helps women, children, and families in crisis and has raised more than $35 million dollars, with the most frequent donation being $25. The organization distributed more than $10 million to help reunify families that had been separated at the U.S. border and $653,000 to Australian families affected by the 2020 wildfires. 

So, Glennon knows a thing or two about running organizations, building trust with teams and staying true to your purpose.  

When employees “bring their whole self to the table,” believing that they can be free and held,  “we need,” Glennon said, “to show solidarity in the moment.” People need to know that the rest of us have their backs.  “It’s irresponsible,” she told the LA Live audience, “to tell people they can bring their whole selves to work, if we don’t also tell them how everybody else is going to catch them.”

To achieve these goals, Glennon explains, organizations need to create work environments based on “heart-forward humanity,” where people feel safe being themselves, where “dissent is celebrated.” She suggested that with a strong company culture, when somebody voices concern in a meeting that this doesn’t sound right, everyone immediately thinks, “Now we’re about to get to the good stuff.” 

2. Embrace courage, boldness, and purpose in your life’s work 

Over the past two years, employees have made it clear that they are looking for meaningful work. For Glennon, that means that teams need to allow each member to bring their biggest, boldest version of themselves to work. In Untamed, she asks, “What is the truest, most beautiful life you can imagine?”

She imagined this herself in May of 2021, when she launched the podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, with her sister, Amanda Doyle, and Abby. In the podcast, the three cohosts (and their guests) speak with searing honesty about women’s experiences. They have attracted such a large audience that they were named the No. 1 new podcast of 2021 on Apple podcasts. 

It took courage and boldness to raise their voices, but Glennon — who has a highly engaged social media following of 3 million people — argues that these qualities are essential to building a happy life and thriving teams.

“Each of us,” she writes in Untamed, “was born to bring forth something that has never existed: a way of being, a family, an idea, art, a community — something brand new.” Glennon believes that it doesn’t serve the world, or an organization, to contort yourself to fit in. She encourages people instead to “unleash ourselves and watch the world reorder itself in front of our eyes.” This courage and boldness can help create purpose in work. 

3. Care for your mental health 

One of the reasons Glennon has so many fans is that she’s been up front about her mental health struggles, which have included depression, alcoholism, and an eating disorder. She knows how important it is to take care of your mental health, particularly in the workplace. 

This was especially true, she says, during the early parts of the pandemic. During that time, she awoke every morning and asked herself, “What do I have to do today not to lose my s***?” It was an experience many women had, as they carried additional burdens when schools closed. Glennon suggests the people allow themselves to feel their feelings; ask “what do I need today?”; and address the needs that surface. In Untamed, she writes that struggling with mental health is not a sign of weakness but is rather a part of being human. 

Managers can help team members with mental health challenges by being empathetic and by allowing employees to speak honestly about what’s going on. Creating safe spaces where everyone can speak their truth helps too. 

Final thoughts: We can do hard things

Before she was a famous podcaster and author and wife of soccer star Abby Wambach, Glennon was a third-grade teacher. Every day, she would walk her class to lunch using the long route, so her kids would walk by the second-grade classroom that sported a sign that spoke to Glennon, if not her students. It said simply: We can do hard things.

She said that phrase became the anthem for her sobriety, her activism, her family, and her daily life. Glennon noted that earlier this week she was at the airport, worried she was going to miss her flight, when a woman behind her said, “You’re at the wrong gate, but . . . we can do hard things.”

She acknowledged the difficulties talent leaders have confronted over the last three years. “You’ve already done hard things,” she said, “and you can do them again.”

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