Ever feel like you’re walking through your career without a script? Jordana Cole, founder of Ignited and a leadership powerhouse, joins Tina Fox to reveal how to unlock leadership potential by embracing your inner improviser. Forget the rigid five-year plans; Jordana shares her circuitous path from international affairs to TEDx stages, proving that resilience isn’t a trait you’re born with—it’s a muscle you build through daily practice. In this episode, learn why your professional persona might need a “Batman” alter ego to survive corporate burnout. Discover how to swap friction for playfulness, adapt to the unexpected, and ultimately, find the courage to play on.

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From International Affairs To Improv: Ignite Leadership Potential With Jordana Cole

Meet Jordana Cole: Energy And Identity

Everyone, you’re joining us for the show. This is another new friend of mine, Jordana Cole. I’m very excited to get to know her in this episode because we actually met in a unique space. Jordana is somebody who is not only the founder of Ignited, which we will talk about later, but I met her because I happened to be in Vienna, Virginia, and I was at a TEDx pitch forum where there were contestants that were on stage, and we got to hear them pitch for two minutes.

In the audience and on the panel of judges was Jordana. That’s because Jordana is one of the top ten percent of the most globally viewed TEDx’s herself. Of course, during break, we had a chance to chit-chat, and I loved hearing about her background, and she’s got energy. She’s got tons of energy. You all are going to feel that. I’d like to welcome Jordana to the show. Welcome.

Thank you. I’ve got to bring it. I’ve got to plug in over here to make sure the energy’s on full charge.

I have no doubt. I’m looking at the guitars hanging in your background. I’m like nothing but energy. It’s like creative energy, musical energy, all sorts of stuff. The other thing is I had a chance to learn that Jordana also has a nickname, and I wanted to kick off with that because it’s Jordana Rama Cole. You have been a person by day, and you have been a person by not day. Can you give us a little bit about this name, Jordana Rama Cole?

I joke that, like any good superhero, you’ve got your normal identity and you’ve got your superhero identity. Jordana Cole is my Bruce Wayne, and Jordana Rama Cole is my Batman. Where that comes from is that I did improv comedy for over a decade with comedy sports. For anybody who’s seen Whose Line Is It Anyway, Wild ‘n Out, or who has gone to Comedy Sports, I spent my Friday and Saturday nights after working all week performing unscripted shows on the spot for a live audience.

We get introduced with a nickname. You can create your own, or people give you suggestions for it. Mine became Jordana Rama. Part of that is that my name is long, but I also think of it like my name rhymes with banana, and there used to be, when you were a kid, Jordana, Fana, Faux Fana, me, my moment, that whole thing. I went with Jordana Rama, and I do not know if it works.

I love it. Let’s talk about who you were during the day because you are the founder of Ignited and you’re a leadership coach. You’re a consultant. You’re a workshop facilitator. You’re also a learning and development strategist, which is a lot of things. You do all of this because you want to empower leaders to transform behaviors that unlock team potential and drive business results.

That is your non-cape day. You did this thing at night. I’ve got a lot of questions about the improv stuff in a second. I find that fascinating. Talk to me about your day job and what it is that you have this passion for that you go out and do with Ignited. I told the audience a lot about you. Even the name of your company, Ignited, “She just brings the energy.” Tell us a little bit about what you do during the day.

It changes every single day. As you mentioned, I like to do a lot of different things, but ultimately I am somebody who likes to create transformation and impact. I’ve realized that we spend more time at work than anywhere else as adults. Every single one of us has a leader in some capacity, but not only in our professional lives. There are leaders in our community; there are leaders in our families, and leaders have the most influence on us, not only in our professional success, but also in how sometimes we see ourselves, how we go about every single day. We can talk all about my art career, because it’s been a windy one. It’s not linear. I call it a roller coaster.

What I realized in the learning space and in the corporate learning space is different than the higher education or K-12 learning space, where you’re just given information, you learn, you take tests, that thing. In the corporate learning space, it’s really focused on skills. The problem is learning about skills does not actually create skills. I started thinking about how we actually apply skills. How do we actually change as human beings? I brought in my experience in leadership, my experience with psychology from a graduate degree, and I have focused everything I do around behavioral change, but not just behavioral change that happens once, but behavioral change that sticks and behavioral change that spreads.

For me, leaders are that mechanism to ignite that spread, and I am the mechanism that helps to ignite leaders and teams. On any given day, I can be doing the following. Having one-on-one coaching conversations with a leader. Maybe they are at a transition point in their career, and they’re not sure what they want to do next. Maybe they’re struggling with some situations and leading their team, and they’re trying to get more engagement from their team. Maybe they’ve just gotten promoted to a new level, and they’re navigating what they thought they knew with where they’re going next.

I might be doing a global workshop. I might be leading a virtual workshop online for people from all across the globe within an organization, helping them lead and navigate change better as a leadership group. I might be having a conversation with one of my clients who I consult on their employee engagement strategy or their learning and development program for onboarding and for managers, or just talking about how they’re thinking about driving strong performance and engagement on their team on a day-to-day basis. I’m posting on LinkedIn and sharing just different nuggets here and there.

I work with a lot of different people. I work in a lot of different capacities. I span organizations from ten-person nonprofits to 300,000-person food and beverage companies. I work with everybody from frontline leadership all the way up to senior VP or the C-suite. The thing underneath it all is how do they build the right behaviors and habits so that they can be the best leader that they can be, and they can help bring out the right behaviors and habits in their team that bring out people’s potential and drive momentum for themselves and their organizations. That’s what I’m doing.

Navigating A Non-Linear Career Path

Every employee out there says thank you for helping develop culture through leadership and behavioral change. That’s where Jordana is today. I wanted to start with that today because I am going to back up what you said a minute ago, and you’re like, “I’m happy to talk about anything. My route was not linear. It was a roller coaster.” In that roller coaster, you started at GW undergrad, and you were in international affairs?

Yes. You did your homework, Tina.

I’d love to know how people started because our audience is filled with collegiate minds, and we’ve got people from all over the United States going to different colleges. You just happen to go to an outstanding college here in Washington, DC. You did not stop there. You decided to best yourself at UPenn, and you got your master’s at UPenn. You’re a real dummy, is what I’m telling the audience. Deanna just does not have a brain in her head. She just does not know. Alert, all joking aside, I was going to say the coolest part is that she’s super smart.

She has applied herself to this amazing business in leadership, behavioral change, culture building, and empowering teams. Your route was not linear. Your route was circuitous. One of the things that I loved is I started this show talking about the fact that you are one of the top ten percent globally viewed TEDx talks. Your title was What To Do When You Do Not Know What To Do Next. That applies to everything that you just said. You said, I can work with teams as small as 10, up to 300,000. You can work with these people. You gave examples of, and sometimes somebody’s just promoted, and they do not know what to do next.

Turning Burnout Into Professional Growth

Sometimes somebody’s been in a role, and they’re looking to backfill their role, and they do not know what to do next. Somebody’s in a role, and they’re trying to get everybody around to be on the same team and have the same mindset, and they do not know what to do next. I want to address your circuitous route and what to do next because there are a lot of people in higher ed who are like, “I’ve been doing this, going to school, going to class, checking in, doing my homework, doing my tests.” All of a sudden I’m getting this degree, and I do not know what to do next. Let’s start with your circuitous route.

First off, none of us know what to do next, even the people who tell you what to do next. You’re right. I went to GW. I studied international affairs, and a little bit of the backstory on that. When I was in high school, my high school offered three foreign languages, and I found that I loved foreign languages. I decided to take all three. I was the first student to take all three at one time. I thought when I went to college that I was going to become a translator or an interpreter or do something along the lines of international business. I was actually torn about where to go to school.

I got into, I had finalized to two schools. GW and UW Madison. This is like my sliding doors moment. My entire life would have been different if I had gone to UW Madison. I actually had deposits in both places. I had no idea where I wanted to go. I was really torn. My homeroom teacher said to me, “For what you are good at, for what you love, you have to go to GW.” I listened to her. We can talk about whether I should have, whatever. That’s a mentoring moment. I listened to her, and I got to GW. Within my first week at school, my entire reason for being there gets thrown out the window because I went because they have a really rigorous language requirement at the Elliott School.

You had to complete, to a junior level, your proficiency in a language. My primary language was French. I went into the placement, and I immediately placed out. I go, “Now what? I already met that requirement. Do I take a new language? Do I go further, except the only French classes that were available were things like French literature?” I’m talking like medieval French literature, not like actually using French on a day-to-day basis. I decided to take the highest level of French grammar and writing that they had that was above the requirement and get into that class. I am one of two freshmen in a room of 30. Everybody else is a senior.

Every single person in that room has been to France, except for me. I had only ever been out of the US to Canada and Mexico. The professor is speaking fluently, and they’re all speaking, and I am lost because I could not speak coherently, and I was really good at writing, but I did not have an environment where, in high school, we spoke French. We did not really speak it in the classroom. I had an identity crisis because suddenly I’m not good at this thing. What do I do with this? Should I even be in this major? I was also taking an Intro to International Affairs course, and I didn’t like it.

I was like, “This is about politics. This is like Model UN. This is not what I thought this would be. I’m more into international culture and thinking about media and business.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay at GW. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to change my major. Ultimately, I decided to stick with it, and here’s why. My major at that school was a very broad interdisciplinary liberal arts major. You had to take courses in things like political science, history, econ, anthropology, foreign languages, and mash them all together.

When I looked at other majors, I would have to take twenty courses in poli sci or twenty courses in business. I liked a lot of different things. I did not see one thing that I was like, “I would like that enough to really focus.” I was like, “I am going to treat this as a gift and figure out a way to cobble together a major with the requirements that is really interesting to me, allows me to learn, allows me to explore.

With this freed-up elective space that I have right now, let me actually take things that I wouldn’t have otherwise had to take, like classes in theater or classes in psychology, just because it’s interesting.” What I wound up majoring in was international affairs, but when I actually think about what it was at its core, it was people studies. Ironically, I graduated with a degree in international affairs, having only taken one course in the international affairs department. Yes, I’m serious.

This is okay for anybody who’s tuning in. This is a little secret. You think that there’s a name for something for a reason, and you make up stuff in your own head as to what that reason is. Jordana just blew that wide open and was like, you can graduate from GW at least at your time with an international affairs degree having only taken one class, but having done human studies, which I would argue that that probably has served you tremendously well because no matter what business you go into, even AI these days, you are going to have to deal with humans at some point. There is some human that’s being affected by whatever it is, whatever number you’re crunching, data you’re organizing, code you’re doing, there’s a human that is affected.

You nailed it.

I’m thinking this is good. You had the foresight, and you had the wherewithal to do that. Not everybody thinks that way, number one. I’m glad that you’re pulling that out. Number two, even if they did think that way, there might be a lot of pressure. Did you have any pressure from parents or anybody else, advisors that were like, “Fana”? No, that’s too broad. You need to really, like, “The riches are in the niches. You got to narrow this thing down.” Did anybody say that to you and take you off course a little bit? No, you were lucky that you got to do what you wanted to do.

I was definitely lucky. The place where I almost took off course at one point I wanted to be a theater maker because I discovered a love of student theater in college. My parents were like, absolutely not. I had to figure out a way that I could weave those theater courses into my degree and still explore and enjoy theater. That’s what I did. I actually didn’t get that because I was making it work within the confines of the program. I was the person who was coloring in the lines, but I was looking at like, “How can I just slightly go outside?”

What was interesting is halfway through my career there, the program changed. They actually changed the requirements moving forward. Because I was in the first semester of junior year, they gave us the option to go via the old path or the new path, and the old path gave me more flexibility. I said, “I’m sticking with that.” I fit it in the mold, but was able to tailor it to me. The reason why people didn’t push me so hard was that I was placed out of the language requirement. That was my reason for being there.

It’s a very good point, yes.

I had to figure something else out. Now what I will say is I did want to transfer before I made all those changes, and that was another barrier. I wanted to go out to California. My parents were like, nope. I had to figure out a way to make it work within GW in a way that still felt good to me and like I could do the things that I was interested in. I took some really cool courses. I graduated. I had no idea what I wanted to do. No idea what I wanted to do. No idea what I wanted to be. I was working while I was in college, so I was a work-study student. I had loans, I had grants, so I needed a job, like full stop. I had been working since I was fourteen years old in different ways.

I just started applying to anything that seemed interesting. I could have a conversation. Actually, my first job out of college was at a collegiate honor society. It was a nonprofit. There were seventeen people. My first job was literally the front desk person. I was the administrative assistant making pennies. What was super cool about that, as my first job was at age 22, I was managing 30 interns. At age 23, I was managing six full-time staff members, and I was managing national programs, mentoring programs, scholarship programs, award programs, and that really kicked off a love of leadership for me. Even being in that role, I didn’t have a plan.

I’ve never been a twenty-year plan person. I’ve never even been a five-year person. My plan is what do I like doing? What do I not like doing? What’s next? I’m in that job. I loved working with students. I thought I wanted to become a guidance counselor. I wound up leaving that nonprofit and going back to my alma mater to become an academic advisor. The reason I became an academic advisor, partially, was because I had had such a bad experience with guidance counseling in my high school that I wanted to be a different maker for students. I had also seen so many students come in with this rigid path that I wanted to help them explore in the way that I did. I worked at GW.

I started taking auditing classes that I needed for the master’s degree to become a guidance counselor, and realized immediately that I did not like this at all, not for me. I was dejected and demotivated in a job in a way that I never have been. “Here I am. I’ve come to make this difference for students, and most students just want to come to my office to get a form signed or to get me to remove a hold.” I’m somebody who’s really into growing things and building things. I’m in an organization where there’s a lot of order and hierarchy and system. I remember a friend of mine. I was telling him this story and how frustrated I was that students really didn’t want to leverage me.

He said to me, “I bet there are students that are. Find them.” He was spot on. That day I made a goal for myself where I said, “No matter how long I’m here, if by the time I leave, I can reflect back and honestly feel like I made a positive difference in at least one student’s life, then it was worth it.” With that mindset, I joined forces with another academic advisor, and we started a student organization that turned into a nonprofit that he still runs to this day, where we were pairing students. I was in the honors program.

He was in the business school. We were pairing students with local kids in the DC area for mentoring, for tutoring, to bring them to college and see what a college campus was like. This was some of what I had done in the nonprofit. It was bringing it to life in a local way and in a meaningful way. I had great relationships with at least a handful of students who I feel like I really helped on their path. Once again, going, “Now what?” I like education. I love students. I do not want to be a guidance counselor. I do not like working in a university.

I just started looking at jobs, looking, going back to nonprofit. I stumbled across a for-profit company that worked in the education space. They made technology for the higher education level that was software that helped schools recruit, enroll, and retain students. On the K-12 level was software that helped provide students with college and career pathways, guidance, and learning that they could work on with their parents and with their guidance counselor. My experience having worked in higher ed at a university and having worked with students was very attractive to me. I kept cascading up where it’s like, “I’m working with the students, and now I’m supporting the people who support the students.”

I went into a role where I basically managed a suite of university relationships where I was their partner in how to best leverage our tools and how to meet their recruitment, enrollment, and retention goals. What you’ll notice is I was a leader, I wasn’t a leader, I wasn’t a leader. I went back to leadership. About two years into that, I got promoted into a manager role again. That time my team size grew, we merged a couple of teams together, and I was basically leading a team of people like me in that role, but also people who were helping with some of the technical frontline support requests that came in.

I was a couple of years into my job, and I started feeling burnt out, and I did not know why. We took a management retreat, StrengthsFinder. I started thinking about, like, “What does this mean about me? What does this say about me?” I reflected on how I’ve had different jobs. There hasn’t been a clear path, but what’s the through line? What are the things that energize me? What are the things I gravitated to where I would raise my hand and go, “I want to be involved in that. What are even like the places I thought about from high school and college that I would get involved in extracurricular and why, and what does this have to do with my strengths? How could I connect these things?”

I realized that what I love doing is helping people see their own potential and capability and bringing it out of them. While I could do that as a manager, more of my day-to-day was less about bringing people out and putting out fires. Dealing with customer escalations and managing those types of relationships and managing numbers and things like that. As I was telling a friend of mine the story later on, she goes, that makes sense. You’re a fire starter who was in a job where she was a firefighter. She nailed it. Yes, burnt out, not loving this. I realized too, I’ve always been someone that’s about impact. I like being broad. I like helping as many people as possible.

Launching Ignited And Building Culture

That was part of the reason I became an advisor. I almost left my company. I got an offer from another company, and my CEO and our chief HR officer came to me, and after I talked to my VP, she was like, “Is there any chance we can keep you?” They said, “Look, what’s it going to take?” I had done a lot of soul searching, and I realized I didn’t want to be in that job anymore. I also realized that I had to know what I did want. Again, it wasn’t like I wanted this twenty-year plan. It’s “What do I know about myself that I like? What do I want next?” If I’m somebody that wants to make an impact, where do I want to make an impact? Where have I gotten the most joy out of the things that I’ve done?

Where have I added the most value? What I realized was, it was in the leadership space, and I wanted to help other people become better leaders. I told them this. I said, “Look, we’re a global organization. We have 400 people. We’ve just started doing some things like professional development, but I think that’s the space I want to go into. I want to help build that out and help people help our leaders become the best leaders that they can be so that we can really create a great team and drive strong results for the business.

By the way, I want to go back to school and get my master’s degree in this thing called applied positive psychology and bring what I learned into that, into this work. Also, by the way, we have a partnership with Gallup where we have the Strengths products in our K-12 offering for students to help them understand their strengths. We have it as a staff where we take it, but it just becomes this thing where we’ve taken it. That’s nice, and then what? Let me transform. Let me turn us into a strain space culture.

Let me actually embed this in how we operate and let us live this. They said to me, “We will take a leap of faith on you if you take a leap of faith on us.” It might not look 100% the way that you’ve mapped it out, but we’re willing to give it a shot. Despite having no background in learning and development and only just being the person who raises their hand to volunteer, to train and public speak, and teach, they gave me my first opportunity to move into that space.

Did they pay for you to go to UPenn too?

They paid for a big chunk of it, yeah.

I have to pause because that was definitely a roller coaster. What happened in college and being able to carve your own thing and saying, “I’m going to stay on the old track because it serves me.” One of the things that I heard in all of your descriptions of starting as a leader, not being a leader, going back to leadership, figuring out, “I definitely do not like that. This does not feel good.” I heard two things. I heard you change your mind. You have altered your mindset, even though you’re like, this is definite, I do not want to do guidance counseling. Nobody is leveraging me. You heard in a momentary mentorship through your friend.

You heard him say, “Go find the ones who are, because there are some that are doing it.” That was enough of a paradigm shift for you where you’re like, “He has a point. Let me change my mind. Let me go see what I can do about that.” I heard you changing your mind several times, but always in a way where you’re seeking something that is going to not only serve you, but serve others. The other thing that I recognize in everything that you’ve gone through is this resiliency, which today a lot of students ask about that resilience.

They do not know how you become resilient, but one of the top questions we are asking is, how do you just become resilient? I always say resiliency isn’t something that you train for in a course. Resiliency is life happening with you, to you, for you. As it’s happening, you find out that there are lows as well as highs. When you’re in a low, you want to get back up to not being in a low. That bounce back is the resiliency, but it’s practiced.

It’s not something you go and train for. Training is different. Practice is when you just show up, and all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation. You have to deal with it. You were very resilient, and you had a positive mindset in which you were willing to change it early and often, and you were willing to really figure out what works for you and what does not work for you.

You’re spot on. I actually love what you just said about training and practice because that’s my whole mindset around the work I do. It’s not training. It’s practice. That’s what behavioral change comes from. It comes from practice. We need a little bit of knowledge, but it’s the practice.

You do not know how good a non-UPenn grad feels. A UPenn grad is affirming right now. Thank you, Jordana. It is practice. You were working with them in the practice of their behaviors. That’s where the discovery lies.

That’s where the habits form. To your point, look, I studied resilience a lot in my graduate program. I can tell you the scientific research behind resilience. I can tell you some of the different things that you can do to train in resilience, but you’re actually spot on. It’s not about becoming resilient. We are resilient. The crux of all of this, and when I think about why I’ve been able to make these leaps, it comes from the space of being an improviser for me. One of the things I say in my TEDx talk is that improvisers are who we are. None of us are walking around with a script. You might have a plan, but when it comes down to it, the exact conversation that you’re having, the exact moment that you’re experiencing, you couldn’t have predicted every moment.

I’m just going to tee up my audience right here, because everything you’ve said is fascinating, but I did have the privilege of listening to your TEDx talk, and I love the whole idea around improvisation. As you all know, if you’re going to go up and do a TEDx talk, you are not promoting yourself, you’re not promoting a product or a service, you’re not doing a motivational talk. You are spreading an idea that is worthy of spreading and that goes viral. If your idea goes viral, you become like Jordana Cole, and you end up becoming part of the top ten percent worldwide.

The Human Edge: Why Improv Matters

In her talk, it’s like dialling in right now because she’s getting ready to tell you about this whole concept of improvisation and how we just do not know. I interrupted you because I just wanted to make sure that if anybody’s tuning in, they’re like, “I got to turn it up right now.” This is where they’re going to turn it up. What to Do When You Do Not Know What to Do Next, and this whole concept and idea around improvisation, please enlighten us.

First off, you should always be my hype person. Can you just come with me to every talk I do? I love this. The core thing that we are as human beings is improvisers. None of us is walking around with a script. None of us is walking around with an instruction manual. Literally from day one, when we decide to put our hand in our mouth, or we wail about this.

As a parent, I will say yes, 100%. I have messed up so many times. I am one of the many.

When you’re a little kid, and you’re twirling around and making up songs, or you’re me, and you still do that on a day-to-day basis because it’s fun. We are improvisers. It’s who we are. We just forget it. The thing that I love about being an improviser is, guess what? AI is not an improviser. AI has a pattern. That is the one thing that AI cannot do that is uniquely human. It cannot improvise because it’s all pattern recognition and taking in code and taking in prompts. This is what makes us human. Actually, I think tapping into your inner improviser and remembering that inner improviser is what makes you resilient.

The whole thing about improv is I do not know what’s going to happen when I get on that stage. I do not know what the audience is going to say to me. I do not know what my scene partners are going to say to me. I might have a plan in my head of where I think it’s going to go, and two seconds later someone says something and that plan is now out the window. I have to adjust, and I have to adapt, and I can do it in a way that brings friction and frustration to myself, that brings friction and frustration to the people I’m on the stage with, that brings friction and frustration to the audience because I’m holding on to this plan that I was obsessed with.

Freaking out that it’s not going right or it went wrong or this happened. I can approach it with acceptance that that plan no longer exists, and all I can do is focus on this present moment and move forward with the people that I’m with, aligned to my strengths, aligned to my values, and with that core purpose of connecting and building and creating a great show and creating a great scene. If it does not work out, that’s okay. That has been the crux. I did not see this back then.

That is so beautiful. That is so beautifully said because you’re right. The way you framed it about how you could create friction and frustration. Those were such good words for me personally, because you talked about friction and frustration for yourself, friction and frustration for those that are on stage with you, and then even the audience members. I physically could feel constraint and anxiety when you were describing that, because I was like, “Why would anybody want to do that? Why would anybody want to hold onto the controls so tight?”

I’m saying this. I’m guilty. Why would anybody want to do it? I’m so recognizing my own patterns here. Why would anybody want to do that so bad? You helped me see it in a different way, where what it’s creating is friction and frustration for all of those around you, including yourself. Why not go with what you are inherently born with, which is the ability to improvise, even though it could feel. When people hear the word improvise, Jordana, they hear it’s scratchy. It’s so uncomfortable. It’s like, “What’s going to happen next?” You just reframed it, and you do not know what’s going to happen next no matter what.

We do not. Look in the last few years. I feel like every week something is happening that I’m just like, “Okay then.” Literally, if the aliens came down tomorrow and had a dance party, I’d be like, “Yes, that tracks.” This is where we’ve been headed. This time has been so disruptive for people because we’ve been under the belief that if I just have a solid plan, I can make it happen. If I just tick the boxes on doing these right things, it will result in this. We’re not in control. I think that this timeline has shown us, actually, things change around us that we have no control over. The only thing that we can do is adapt to that. I’ve had a lot. My life is not what I thought it would be.

There’s different things that have happened along the way that have been hard. I’ve had times where jobs have gone away, not of my own choosing. The only thing I can choose at that moment is how I respond and what I build from it. Do I let that crush me? Do I fight back against it? That’s where the friction is. That’s not going to change that this is a reality. Even if I do not like it, how do I accept the reality and build what’s there? How do I reconnect with what’s important to me, what I value, what my strengths are, where I get energy, and then build from there? That does not mean that everything works out.

We just shared not only the recognition of the fact that we are not in control. If the last few years haven’t proven that to the world, then I do not know what will. The recognition isn’t important. Recognition is important. You just transferred into, and this is how, because that’s what people are going to ask is like, “I believe in what you say, Jordana. I accept the fact that things will change. I accept the fact that I need to adapt, but how?” There is a quote. I’m going to quote you. This is a Jordana quote that she uses in her TEDx, “Play the senior in, not the one you want to be in.”

That was so powerful to me because it does bring, “Everybody talks about just be in the present.” People that are always thinking about the future and do have goals set out for 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. They’re like, “Are you telling me not to have my goals?” I do not even understand how to be in the present. We’ve gone from recognition to how, and that quote of being playing into the scene that you’re in and not the one that you’re wanting to be. Talk to me a little bit more about that scene and talk to me a little bit more about the how.

Play The Scene You’re In: Radical Resilience

Thank you for bringing that up. This isn’t about having goals. It’s not about not having goals. Having goals is a good thing. Having a direction, having a North Star for yourself, is a good thing. It’s recognizing that the path to that goal might look different because of the reality that you’re in. It’s also okay with the fact that sometimes that goal might change as you grow and as things change around you. For me, I focus a lot more on goals, less about what I want to be or do by a certain age or title or dollar, and more about who I want to be and how I want to show up. The intrinsic. When you get to that, there are so many more pathways of potential.

There are so many more possibilities in making that work. When things do change that make that more difficult, guess what? You can adapt. I’ll be very vulnerable. I got married at a young age. I thought I would have a family. I was unable to have kids. I went through four years of IVF treatment unsuccessfully. My husband and I got divorced a couple of years ago. I had this map for my life that was going to be, “I’m going to have a family. This is the person that I’m going to be with.” I had a goal. I had resources and effort to put in to make that goal possible, and it did not happen. I could have just wailed at the universe for this being my lot, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything.

The reality, the scene that I am in, is that this path isn’t working for me. What are the things that are in my control that I could do? I have different choices and different choices that I could pursue, whether it be things like adoption or surrogacy or fostering, or I could zoom out and go, “What makes that so important to me?” I love helping people grow. Are there other ways that I can make that happen? Are there other things that I’d be willing to try? That’s ultimately the kind of path that I went down. It might not be right for everybody, but it was right for me. When I went down that path, I also wasn’t looking back at the other pathways with regret because those choices were gone.

I couldn’t make those choices. I couldn’t change the past. All that I can change right now is moving forward. If you’re in a position where you’re in a job that you do not like, you have options. Your options are, “The reality we’re in, the scene we’re in, this is the job. I’m in it right now. I do not like it. You cannot change those things.” What you can change are the things about your job that you do like. The people that you’re with, interesting work that you’re doing, how could you do more of that?

Are there things that are important to you in your life that this job allows you to do more of? Like, “I do not have to work a lot of long hours, so that means that I can spend time on my hobbies outside of work. I can spend time with my friends. I could spend time with my family. That’s why I go to this place that I do not love, because it lets me have the time and resources to do the things that I do love, or should I make a change?”

You introduced us in your own life and stories to not only resiliency and the power of mindset, but through your vulnerability, you just now introduced two other things about Jordana Cole that I really love, and that is that you have a positivity about you and a gratitude about you. Even in situations that you were just like, “Come on. What else do I need to do? I’ve thrown everything in the kitchen sink at this.” You have a level of positivity and gratitude. The other thing that you have and that you’re sharing, which I actually think is something that unfortunately is lacking today, is accountability.

Everything you just shared, even though you, as you said, could have said, “This is happening to me. Why to me?” You did not do that. You flipped it, and you were like, “This is the scene that I’m in, and this is what I’m being handed right now. What am I doing in this? How am I learning in this? What can I do differently in this?” There is a very high level of accountability that you hold yourself to that I believe goes back to the resiliency, which is the reason why you were able to be so resilient in this circuitous path that you took to where you are today is that you held yourself accountable. Even in the toughest of situations, you kept a positive attitude.

You changed your mindset on things. That’s how you got from low to high every time. It’s really amazing. This whole concept of improv and that you embrace improv, this very scary thing that is so unknown, just so much that you’ve already provided. Just so you know, I do not know what years are going to tune in to this, but that thought that you had when you decided that you were going to be a counselor, you’ve definitely hit more than one on this conversation. Thank you for going to that depth and bringing all of that forward on, “I do not have it figured out. I took the circuitous path.

I’m making the best of it. I’m now teaching other people how to do this. I love developing others, seeing the potential in others, and I’m doing it through leadership.” It’s through all these little pieces that you have pulled together in your life. It’s just amazing. Thank you for that. I want to end not just on the improvisation, but you talked about choosing your response. You talk about adaptation. You’ve also talked about energizing. This is that whole thing like igniting and energizing. We started this inner improv. For somebody who’s like an introvert or freaking out about, “No,” what advice would you give to them on that?

Play On: A Mindset For Every Leader

The biggest advice that I can give to you is that improv is just remembering how to play. It’s reconnecting with the thing that you knew how to do when you were a kid. That’s what I actually think my superpower is, and what improv reminded me is that I never forgot how to play. The whole adaptability stuff that you’re talking about, like that’s been at the root. Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously, and the world feels very heavy, but we can show up playfully any moment. How I play and how you play is very different. For some people, they’re big characters. For other people, they’re building like Legos. For other people, they’re exploring in the woods. It does not matter.

Reconnecting with that playful source is what helps you tap into what’s possible when things are hard. I’ll even share, like, that’s true with my business. I was scared when I went on my own and started my business. I was working in organizations. I’ve been working since I was fourteen, and now I’m responsible for my own salary. It’s going to be a question mark of how I’m going to get clients. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to be successful, hit this goal, to do X. I have to do this by X. All the same things that I was trying to work with students not to do. One day I flipped the switch for myself, and I said to myself two things. I’m going to treat this like an experiment.

Instead of having to hit X, I’m going to treat this year as an experiment where I’m betting on myself, and I’m going to allow myself to be playful with it. At the end of the year, I’m going to ask myself two questions. Question one. Did I make money where I was financially okay? Maybe not all the money in the world that I want to make, but did I have my needs met? Two, am I enjoying what I’m doing? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, play on.

If the answer to either of those questions is no, then reflect on what I learned from that experience. Be proud of taking that risk because jumping into risk experimentation, guess what? That’s another form of play. Take away the insights and then make a different choice based on what I’ve learned. You do not have to go to an improv school or take an improv class. What I want you to do is just take a couple of minutes to give yourself permission and be playful, especially in those serious moments.

Do it in a way that feels right to you. At its core, when you are playful, you’re present. You’re present with yourself. You’re present with activities. You’re present with other people. That’s the opening that you need to face whatever’s going to happen because whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. You get to choose. You have the agency. You get to choose how you show up in those moments.

We just had part two of your TEDx. It’s going to be play on. That was a mic drop moment. Play on. I heard that like it was thunder in my head. Play on. Yes, everything has been so serious. You’re right. Play on is a brilliant way to think about improv. I’d never heard it thought of that way. I’m an ambivert. I’m like part extrovert, but I also need my downtime. If I were an introvert, I would be like, “That was really like simplified, and we all like to play.”

That is absolutely perfection. I know after people hear this, they’re going to be on. They’re going to want to know how they can get in touch with you. Where do you want me to direct them for you? Certainly LinkedIn. LinkedIn is super easy, right? You’re on LinkedIn. Anybody can go to LinkedIn, and I’m hoping you’re answering on LinkedIn. I hope I do not steer them in the wrong direction, but where else can they get in touch with you?

LinkedIn is great. I post things constantly about leadership thoughts, human thoughts. Please hang out with me there. You can check out my website, IgnitedByJordana.com. There’s a link that you can send me an email straight from there. If you want to get in touch that way, you can. If you want to take me home with you, then put my TEDx talk on your bookmark bar and share it with other people in your life.

It’s such a great TEDx talk. It’s only thirteen minutes and change. She went underneath the eighteen minutes. It’s an awesome TEDx talk. Jordana, I’ve had so much fun with you on this chat. I knew when I met you, I was like, “She does, and you did not disappoint on the energy, on ignited, on just dropping a ton of wisdom and making it so simple, but the best part of it all is play on.” I’m looking forward to playing on.

I hope you all play this on repeat many times. For those of you interested, we’ll have more episodes, but I just want to say thank you again to my new friend, Jordana Cole. I just really had a wonderful time. Until next time, we’ll have everything printed underneath this for anybody who’s interested in more, and we’ll see you on the next TED Talk. Thank you, everyone, and thank you, Jordana.

Thanks, Tina.

Important Links

• Jordana Cole on LinkedIn
• Ignited
• What to Do When You do not Know What to Do Next on YouTube

About Jordana Cole

Jordana Cole is an igniter of leadership and team potential. Combining her master’s degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, expertise in leadership development, and more than a decade of global enterprise learning and development leadership spanning multiple industries in the for profit and non profit sectors, Jordana is committed to creating impactful behavioral change that not only sticks, it spreads. As a multi-certified coach, facilitator, and consultant, Jordana has worked with thousands globally to translate research and real-world strategy into accessible, actionable, energizing packages that anyone can implement. Jordana believes that leadership is the most needed and most durable skillset in our changing world, and the one that AI can’t replace.

She’s been featured on a variety of podcasts and webinars discussing the connections between leadership, well-being, AI, and organizational success. She’s on a mission to help everyone lead themselves and others better through uncertainty. Her TEDx talk on this topic: “What to Do When You Don’t Know What’s Next” currently ranks in the top 10% of views for all TEDx talks globally.