How to find your way when you feel lost with Ify Walker

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I've made a lot of, let's call them unconventional career decisions in my life. Decisions that people, smart people, told me not to make. But my gut told me to do it. And every time those decisions ended up being right. But about 10 years ago, I made a job decision that ended up being a mistake. It was a big career leap. Bigger scope, bigger title, all that stuff that feels like winning on paper. But pretty quickly, something felt off. I felt exhausted instead of energized. I was showing up, doing the job. I'd sit in meetings nodding along, but inside I felt this tightening. Like I was holding my breath all day. At first I tried to muscle through it. I kept thinking, it'll get better. But the longer I stayed, the worse it got. Every decision felt heavier. Every conversation left me more confused. And because this was the type of job I'd always thought I wanted, the mismatch wasn't just disappointing. It was disorienting. I got lost. Not burnt out, not overwhelmed. Lost. For me, being lost at work felt like waking up every day inside the wrong story. Like I had stepped into a version of my career that didn't fit. But I didn't know how to step back out. And I stopped trusting myself. That's the part I hadn't experienced before. The part that really shook me. I wasn't just unsure what to do. I was unsure of who I was. And that is a very particular kind of lost. The thing about getting lost at work is that it feels like you're the only person in the world that this has ever happened to. Like everyone else is confidently striding down a clear path and you're just not. You're wandering in circles. And of course, the reality is that getting lost is incredibly common. But we don't have language for it, which makes it really hard to talk about. I didn't have a name for what I was feeling. That is, until I met Ify Walker. Ify is the founder and CEO of O4, a talent agency and recruiting firm that places executives at mission-driven businesses. She is also a brilliant writer and thinker. She talks openly about her version of being lost at work. What she calls the work twisties. The twisties are this very disorienting sense of losing position. Like where do I fit? Losing your sense of purpose. What am I supposed to be doing? Where am I headed? She compares it to what a gymnast feels when they lose their sense of place in the air. It's unsettling and destabilizing. And when Ify explained the work twisties to me, something clicked. It helped me understand my own experience better. I'm Molly Graham, and this is Work Life, a show where we untangle the messy human side of work. The work twisties can show up in so many different situations. Maybe you're in your own version right now. Maybe your entire industry feels like it's shifting under your feet. Maybe the thing you've been good at for years doesn't feel fun or stable or right anymore. And you're not sure what you should do next because you've stopped trusting yourself. And that is why I wanted to have Ify on the show. To share her story and to understand what she did to overcome the work twisties. This was actually the very first conversation I recorded for this podcast. And honestly, I learned a lot making this episode. I was nervous, but I knew Ify's story would help people because it helped me. So I wanted to make sure you heard it. To understand the type of person Ify is, you first have to hear the story of how she founded her company, O4. I stepped away from a job, a big job. And I was just about to get married. And I said, look, I'm looking around at everybody and I don't think anyone's happy. There are a whole set of things that I don't think actually align with the life that I'm trying to live. And so I just quit. And my parents were like, what are you doing? We don't understand how you just quit and don't have a plan. And so I was just thinking through what I was going to do next. And I get a call from a former colleague and he said, hey, I'm about to step down as CEO of this large nonprofit. I think my board would love you. Are you available to fly in and interview with them? And if they think you're great, the job is yours. And I remember sort of thinking, like, no, I don't want this job. And that's not for me. But give me a couple of days and I'll think of some people for you. And he said, how much do you charge for that? I didn't know that was a job. And I said, give me 24 hours. And I came back with a contract, signed it, and I was off to the races. And that was 15 years ago. You sound like someone that's really unafraid of the unknown. Like you say, I quit and I didn't know what I was going to do next. And my parents thought I was crazy. You say, give me 24 hours when someone sort of challenges you to do something that you didn't even know was a job. Is that scary for you? Or are you just like, I can figure it out? That's an interesting question. I've never, I hadn't really thought about it in that way. I will say that I think for most of my career, there's sort of been like a deep kind of knowing, like, that's not for me. I'm not supposed to do that. And also, I think because of how I grew up in an environment where I had to figure out what were the rules of rural America? What were the rules of being Nigerian? What were the rules of being a kid? What were the rules of navigating different spaces that were very, that were just unfamiliar to me? What were the rules of asking billionaires for money? I didn't know. Prior to that, the only thing I'd sold were like Girl Scout cookies and those practically sell themselves. And so I was just sort of in these situations where I had to observe and sort of make meaning of, okay, this is, these are the terms of engagement. These are the real rules. That understanding of how to navigate new unfamiliar spaces is what makes Ify so successful. Ify's company, O4, took off like a rocket. She brought on new clients and was expanding her team. And then something happened that shook her sense of self. The triggering event for you going into the work twisties was losing your dad. It sounds like he was a grounding force. Will you talk about what that meant for you both in losing him and why you think that triggered it? And then also in finding yourself when he wasn't physically around anymore. I still remember, like I wanted to play football and my mom was like, absolutely not. You girls don't play football. And my dad was like, let her play. If she wants to go run with the boys, let her, let her play. And he went to the school and I was the first girl to ever play football. And he made sure it happened on my behalf. There was never sort of the pressure actually from him to be anything other than what I was My way through it. I don't think we have language for it. That's why I was so taken by it. I wanted to give executives, leaders in organizations, language for periods of our careers where we may feel like we have lost sense of place, position, purpose, and for me, protection. It sounds like almost losing trust in yourself. And you've talked about sort of having this strong sense of inner knowing. So for you, was it partially about losing that inner knowing? It was 100% about that because these are things that I'm supposed to be able to do. I still remember a meeting where someone asked me what the vision was for the company, and I think I just looked at her and I was like, I don't know, what do you think? It's my company. I started it. I began to sort of outsource this knowing, well, I don't know, and maybe you know, Molly, you know, maybe, maybe, does anyone, you know, let's just survey the crowd and let's see what people have to say because I didn't, I didn't know. And that used to be my calling card. I'm the oldest of six. In our culture, we have a title for the oldest daughter, you know, she's the Edda, and everybody sort of defers to that. I am used to understanding, knowing what to do in an emergency. I am the person you follow without a doubt, right? I will own that. But to be someone who suddenly doesn't know what to do next, who can't tell you whether you should go left or you should go right, was deeply crushing, right? That was, that's actually my identity. And I didn't trust myself to make decisions anymore. I didn't trust myself to respond to emails. I didn't trust myself to talk about the vision. I didn't trust myself to manage a team. And that's a really dangerous place to be in because I also started taking in and internalizing a lot of stories about myself and also asking for and taking in a lot of advice, which I think even further muddled my own ability to find my voice and figure out what I actually knew to be true. Yeah. So in that moment, which sounds a little bit like a dark hole. That's exactly what it was, Molly. Literally a dark hole. Literally, that's what it felt like, a dark hole. Yeah, I'm familiar with that feeling. Did you let yourself take a step? I mean, you were navigating the grief of losing your father while trying to run a company that you founded. Did you let yourself step back or did you just try to power through it? I tried to power through it. But that's my biggest regret, is if I were to go back and talk to myself, I would have said to myself, It's okay to go away, right? It's okay to, like, go away and see what happens in moments of quiet and silence. It's okay to get off the escalator. Just because it's going up does not mean you have to continue to ride. That moment when you don't know who you are anymore. When it's hard to do things that used to be easy. When you don't trust yourself to decide things or answer things or just take the next step. The triggers can look different for each person, but I'd argue the feelings, once you're lost, are universal. And that's why I'm so taken with this concept that Ify has developed. Because by naming it and understanding it, you can begin to find your way back to yourself. We'll get to how Ify worked through her twisties in just a minute. This episode is powered by AT&T Business. If you're running your own business, you know that the Sunday scaries are real. You're thinking about the invoices, the client calls, the inventory, the list that never actually ends. And honestly, we usually don't think about our internet or our phone service until it isn't working. Sometimes a simple glitch can feel like a total catastrophe. That feeling of powerlessness when your tech fails you is the worst. It's a reminder that our connectivity isn't just a bill we pay. It's the backbone of everything we do. AT&T Business gets that. They know that for a small business owner, good enough isn't good enough. 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So you can spend more time doing what you do best. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Upwork.com. Okay, Ify. So you're running a four. You're growing this company, but you completely lose your footing. You realize you need to reset. Can you talk a little bit about what your mindset was? How did you approach that challenge of resetting? It literally required reteaching myself fundamental things. And so what I mean by that is, you know, if I think about Simone, one of the things that she did was she had to go back to the last thing that she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she could do. She started doing cartwheels, right? She's been doing cartwheels since she's been two to prove to herself that she could do a cartwheel. And it's improving with these really basic fundamental skills and then beginning to practice things with greater complexity and accepting that the time that it would take would be the time that it would take, right? And so similarly, that's what I had to do. Yeah. So you said she found her place by jumping into big pits of balls and doing cartwheels. And that was, you know, safety and reorientation. What was your version of doing cartwheels? Like how did you start to learn your position and place in time again? Well, one, I stopped asking for advice. So I fired metaphorically other voices. And it's like, I'm not listening to you. You're fired. I'm not looking for your advice. That was number one. The second thing I would literally have to do was sometimes making a list of fact versus story. So if I was telling myself, I can't do this meeting. I don't know what happens next. Okay, what are the facts? Okay, the facts are that you have this meeting with Molly Graham. The facts are that this meeting is at 10 a.m. Central. The facts are that all the questions are about things that you know. Story is that it's going to be terrible. It's going to be a bomb. You're not going to be able to speak. The words aren't going to come out. Those are all stories. And being able to separate those two things was like a practice for me. And then at a very tactical level, I would just start with the smallest thing. I can send an email to my team that says, here are the three things that we're focusing on. That's it. That's it. Three bullet points. It doesn't have to be anything else. And I started to find things that I could, that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could do. You talked about advice being disorienting for you and adding, I think, to the pit of despair at the bottom. Tell me why advice was so disorienting for you. Because it was so easy to just take it, right? It was just, it was like a magic pill. It's like, that sounds good. You should do that. You don't get any closer to knowing because you've taken somebody else's advice. And in a lot of ways, I was sort of abdicating responsibility. I was passing that on to somebody else. And it also made it easier to blame them if something didn't go well because at least I didn't have to choose. I don't have to be wrong. And that constant sense of somebody else is in control. I think that's what was so disorienting. I had lost my ability to dictate and determine my life. And that was just confusing to me. If you met someone that was going through the work twisties right now that was listening, thinking, uh-oh, that's me, what would you tell them? I mean, I'd tell them This is furniture's commitment to you. Find the right furniture for you and your team at nbf.com and use the promo code POD10 to save 10%. That's nbf.com and experience the better way to buy office furniture. This episode is brought to you by Framer. 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When I sat down with Ify Walker to talk about the work twisties and how to regain your inner knowing when you've lost it, I also wanted to talk about her executive search firm, O4. I wanted to know what she'd say to people who are looking right now in this incredibly challenging job landscape. Because it's easy to lose yourself in the hiring process, trying to sound impressive, trying to be what you think people want. And I think her approach asks you to flip that. It rewards clarity about who you are, both for companies and for candidates. Listening to you talk about the work twisties, it's all about finding your footing again. And for you, and I think in general, that was about choosing courage over fear. And that's a thread that runs through your work at O4 too. You've, in my opinion, built a company that asks leaders to be brave, to look honestly at themselves and at their culture. So I'm curious what bravery looks like to you and your work and how it sort of creates your approach to working with companies. For us, it's shown up in a couple of ways, but I think the biggest is, or has been the decision to say, we are not going to play a game of pretend. We are not going to pretend that executive search or hiring is a meritocracy, which would mean that we look at the entire scan of the world for any role and that only the best people will rise to the top. Like it's just not how it actually plays out. And that we're not going to pretend that these things that are invisible, just because they're invisible, don't exist. And so what I mean by that is, early on when we started O4, we'd have a lot of conversations with boards and they would say things like, look, we just want to hire the best person. But when I actually would give them the statistics, I would say, I just want you to know that over the last several years, I can count on one hand the number of people that have been hired that were not already known to my client, known to their network, or known to us. That would suggest that we have a monopoly on the best people, which we know that's not true. So what it does mean is that we hire the best of who we know. So knowing that, how do we want to design, right? And so it's sort of like calling certain things into question. Another key example would just be this idea that if I just tell you, I need a CFO who's run a company of excise and at a SaaS company that looks like this, that that's all there is to it. When we would say, well, no, I mean, there's this piece called culture, and it's an almost invisible in some places. And there are unspoken rules of success. And we actually are not going to be able and you are not going to be able to find the right person if you don't understand what's in your cultural waters, if you don't understand what allergens or contaminants you might have. And you don't have to be ashamed of those things, but you need to know that they're there so that the people who are who can thrive in those waters are sort of joining your team and your organization. But also the people who might not can also opt out and save both sides, you know, heartache. Is there a moment or a search that really captures what this looks like in practice, the kind of honesty and bravery that you're talking about? Yeah, I'm thinking about a CEO search many, many moons ago where, yeah, I had the opportunity. I was in the boardroom and board members were discussing two finalists. And one of the board members said, and I'll never forget this, he said about this African-American candidate, he said, I know that he looks good on paper and that he has all the experience that we've said that we wanted, but I can't help but thinking it's all bullshit. Those were the exact words. And I remember this sort of very sort of stateswoman like board member who just said, hey guys, I mean, she was maybe one of two women on the board. And she says, let's just call it what it is. He doesn't remind you of your sons or your nephews, the analysts that you probably have helped groom at your financial organizations. And he makes you uncomfortable. And they all laughed. They all laughed like they were all in on the joke. And she said, you shouldn't hire him because you'll set him up for failure. And I supported that. They absolutely should not have hired him because they didn't believe in him. And so that's sort of the example that stands out for me. That example is crazy. But also, but also not as crazy as you might think, sadly, sadly. And there's so there's so many examples, Molly. And I use that one because it's like, you could sort of see it, but it's, there are examples of people doing it because someone's pregnant or somebody, you know, things that are clearly illegal. But, but the thing is, that's actually why I'm so fascinated by this and fascinated about how we hire and the decisions that we make, because I think we do ourselves a disservice to pretend that certain things are not there, right? To pretend that we don't have an orientation, to pretend that we don't have an affinity for people who make us comfortable, right? Who we've seen before. We've seen an archetype of that individual before. And I think our charge as a firm has always been to like, say, let's just put the challenging things on the table. Let's talk about who makes it here. Why don't we just talk about that up front so that everybody understands what the rules of engagement are. It sounds a little heartbreaking sometimes. Why? Say, say more. Why? Well, I think there's a way we wish the world worked. Yeah, it is. And part of your bravery and your firm's bravery in the process that you run is being blunt about reality. Yeah. And it sounds like also a fundamental belief that being blunt about reality leads to a higher chance of success for everyone, candidate and company. Absolutely. Let's just close the gap between expectations and reality. That's what we exist to do. Let's eliminate that daylight. That's where all the problems live. If I'm a candidate, because it's a hard market out there right now. Yeah, it is. If I'm a candidate, what should I take away from what you've learned, you know, building and running 04 and doing all of these searches? Be yourself so the people who are looking for you can find you. Being really clear about exactly who you are and in leading into that versus trying to be everything, which is what I'm seeing a lot of right now. It's like, I could do that. I could do that. I could do that. I could do that. Like, are you, you know that book, because we both have kids. Are you my mother? Where that like baby duck is like walking around asking like, are you my mother? Are you my mother? I see a lot of are you my mothers right now. And that is what I find to be heartbreaking because people who I think are actually going through their own version of the work twisties where for so much of their career, people were tapping them on the shoulder. People were knighting them and saying, Molly, you're phenomenal. You should come and run this. You should go do this. And they've done it. And now they're at this moment where through circumstance or choice, they're saying, wait, I have to go seek it. I have to go choose and decide for myself. And that is disorienting, especially when your calling card has been like, I