How to break through fear and become a leader | Valerie Montgomery Rice

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hue. Today's episode of TED Talks Daily is presented by Walmart Business. There's a particular kind of failure I think a lot of us know, the public kind, the kind that leaves you embarrassed, ashamed, and afraid you might not come back from it. I've had one of those, maybe you have too.

That fear of failing in a way everyone can see is something Valerie Montgomery Rice, physician and president of Morehouse School of Medicine, understands quite well. She was one of the youngest medical school deans in the country when a new president asked her to step down.

Valerie Montgomery Rice (0:43)

I was devastated.

I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I was fearful. Fear was what I felt most of all.

Elise Hu (0:55)

To find her way through, Valerie reached back to a little pink house in Reds, Georgia, her grandmother's home, where she first learned what resilience looked like by watching the women who raised her. In this talk from 2023, she shares three lessons on leadership.

Valerie Montgomery Rice (1:09)

You can still be afraid. And so you may not be able to cancel that fear out completely, but you can put it to sleep.

You can learn how to lean into your fear.

Elise Hu (1:21)

Valerie argues that great leaders aren't produced by the number of titles or degrees they hold, but by their life experiences, the distance traveled, the tables they sit at, and what they choose to do with what they've learned. That's coming up.

Valerie Montgomery Rice (1:41)

Let me tell you how a little pink house prepared me for my first workplace termination and set me on a path of resilience, grit and fearlessness. About two-and-a-half hours south of Atlanta is a little town of Rens, Georgia, about 2,000 people. My grandmother lived in Rens, Georgia, in a pink house nested off a dirt road right off of East 88 Highway. It had a massive yard, the kind of yard that was made for little five-year-old girls who liked to make mud pies or run chicken races with their cousins to see who could run the fastest, the chickens or the cousins.

That was summer at grandmother's house. And if I think about it, I can remember and feel that Georgia sign on my face. I can remember when I was just tall enough to jump off the bed, to use the pot next door to the bed, because the pink house didn't get indoor plumbing until 1968 Those are the memories that serve as my foundation. That's what helped me to become the woman that I am today. In the midst of those challenges, I can hear my grandmother's voice, laced with a little bit of sternness, when she said, Valerie, it's your time to go get the eggs at the chicken coop, or sometimes even select the chicken for that day, for dinner. I learned then that I would, I should, and I could. Now, all of our memories are clearly not laced with warmth, because I can also remember when my family struggled, when my mother struggled. And I think about that pink house. That pink house was not only my classroom, but it was my mother's refuge.

My mother was my sort of first view into leadership. And when I think about her and all the other women who went through challenges, and how they used those challenges so as to catapult them into becoming the women that they were to be. Lesson number one.

Several years ago, I had to learn what it meant to accept loss, but not defeat. I was riding high on my career. I was a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist who was clearly, smoothly transitioning to an academic administrative research career. I became the chair of the department. I founded the Center for Women's Health Research and the Emma Heron Medical College, which was the first center of its kind. And then I became the dean of the School of Medicine. And at that time, I was the youngest dean of a medical school in the country.

Then it all came tumbling down. When the new president of the school asked me to step down, he asked me to step down. I was devastated. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed.

I was fearful. Fear was what I felt, most of all. Would I ever be able to get another job like this? What about this sense of loss, humiliation? What would my family and my friends think about me? Would they have a negative view of me as I went through?

I had to reach back to that pink house, and I had to recall how my mother had gone through a similar crossroads in her life when she had to gather her four little daughters in the middle of the night to leave an abusive husband. Lost but not defeated. What did she do? First of all, she was accountable. She actually said what of my actions potentially could have contributed to the situation that I find myself in.