My dad was an Irish immigrant who built a cheap-ass pantry in our basement and stocked it with cans of V8 juice after every can-can sale. I absorbed more than the hoarding habit. I absorbed scarcity thinking — and carried it straight into my leadership for years. This episode is about that. About zero sum thinking, why it shows up in workplaces, and what it actually takes to get to the other side of it. Spoiler: it's not a policy. It's a choice you make every day.
My dad was an Irish immigrant who built a cheap-ass pantry in our basement and stocked it with cans of V8 juice after every can-can sale. I absorbed more than the hoarding habit. I absorbed scarcity thinking — and carried it straight into my leadership for years.
This episode is about that. About zero sum thinking, why it shows up in workplaces, and what it actually takes to get to the other side of it. Spoiler: it's not a policy. It's a choice you make every day.
What you'll take away:
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GOOD VIBES LEADERSHIP Hosted by Bernadette Smith
TEASER
This week, I'm talking about my dad's cheap ass basement pantry and what that scarcity mindset later taught me about leadership.
INTRO
Hey there. I'm Bernadette Smith. Whether you're in between meetings or on a quick commute, welcome to Good Vibes Leadership. This show focuses on playful, inclusive leadership through micro lessons you can actually use. My goal is to help you connect authentically with your team and clients and create a world where everyone actually wants to show up. Lead with joy, build for everyone. Let's go.
EPISODE
Hey there, it's Bernadette Smith, CEO of Equality Institute. Welcome back to Good Vibes Leadership. I'll be your guide to playful, inclusive leadership. Thanks for joining.
Years ago when I was a kid, my dad built a cheap ass pantry in our basement. So imagine the laundry room and on one wall, he built — uh, shelves, like not even like nice shelves, just shelves. And that is where he stored canned goods. So anytime there was a can sale at the grocery store, my dad would come home with dozens of cans of cream of mushroom soup, um, V8 juice. He loved stocking up on V8 juice. Not the name brand though. The knockoff brand of V8 juice, which for the record is disgusting — especially when mixed with vodka, which was his other thing. Anyway, that's a story for another day.
Um, you know, my parents were Irish immigrants. Uh, for them, money was really tight. My — and I — and I get it. You know, my dad was the oldest of 11. He grew up in a little three-bedroom house. He had to leave home when he was 14 to make room for his siblings and to send money home to the family. And, um, I understand. He literally started with nothing and came to the US and built something — and so did my mom. But the messages that they had around money and around scarcity were really hard for me to avoid absorbing.
So I absorbed lots of messages. Um, you know, the joy of a good deal, uh, stocking up on something, lots of it if you find something that you really like. Now to this day, if I find like a shirt or something, a garment that I really like and it's on sale, I will buy it in like every color that I like. So, you know, these types of scarcity behaviors, they can be really sneaky, really insidious. Um, you know, there's sort of an underlying message of hold on tight, there might not be more. And unlearning all of that has been part of my personal journey for years now.
Um, I really started to detangle from that only about ten years ago. You know, I didn't really notice all the ways that scarcity thinking had been showing up in my life. You know? Um, I thought it meant that I was just being careful, being responsible, being smart. But it also meant that sometimes I was seeing peers as competition, or protecting my ideas because I didn't want anyone to steal my ideas.
And the thing is that, of course, there's always irony everywhere. Right? So, you know, I do this work of inclusion. I teach people to ask better questions. I teach people to connect across difference, to create space for others, to have opportunities. I do that. And I was doing it even then — um, when I was teaching about LGBTQ weddings and planning them. But at the same time, I was also hoarding my ideas and, uh, and being competitive. So of course, you know, the irony of teaching about inclusion but also having a scarcity mindset — they're kind of polar opposite in a way. And it took me a while to really see that.
It probably takes a lot of people a while to see that and have an awareness of any sort of scarcity mindset you may have inherited — and how to detangle it. Um, and it can be hard to do that because it doesn't always announce itself. A sense of scarcity can show up really quietly. Maybe in your work, maybe in your workplace, it looks like not sharing credit, or feeling a little threatened when a colleague wins or gets an opportunity. Um, maybe treating belonging as a limited resource — like there's not enough room for everyone to belong. Um, maybe the sense of if there's more room at the table for you, then there's less for me, or my seat somehow gets smaller. So those are ways that scarcity thinking can show up at work.
Um, you know, and I see these patterns. Now that I have the awareness, I can see the patterns. You know, they're not always dramatic. They can be really quiet. And especially in this anti-DEI environment, it can even show up as inclusion efforts which are getting underfunded. Um, a team leader who is not even sharing their team's wins — they're sort of holding those close, a sense of scarcity, of hoarding them. Uh, a colleague who goes quiet, doesn't even really say congratulations when someone else gets promoted. It's the way scarcity can play out.
You know, the idea of zero-sum thinking is a concept which means when there's more for you, there's less for me. Right? But that sense of zero-sum thinking, it can be insidious and it spreads. And, um, people might feel like they need to hide and hoard their information, the wins that they have, the access that they have, the credit that they can take, the access to leadership that they have, the solutions that they've found. Teams may be hoarding those as a form of scarcity — especially if teams are competing against each other. Right? So, um, it can play out in a lot of different ways.
And I did a lot of hard work to get on the other side, to embrace a more abundance mindset. It's constant work. An abundance mindset is not just a one-time decision. It's a process. It's over and over again. It's noticing any kind of pantry-like behavior that I might have and making different choices. And it's truly a daily practice for me.
So some folks, listeners, would know that I have a tool called the ARC Method. It stands for Ask, Respect, Connect. It's a part of a lot of the work I do here at Equality Institute. But the thing about the ARC Method is that it only really works if you actually believe that the person that you're asking — that the person that you're curious about — actually has something worth knowing. You know, when you believe that someone has something worth knowing, that's the sense of abundance. That's seeing someone's abundance. It's saying to someone, essentially, hey, your experience matters. What you know and I don't is valuable. Share that with me. When you are curious about someone, you're actually making room for someone else to share their own sense, their own experiences, without feeling like they're shrinking yours. So that's the cool thing about the ARC Method — it is innately an abundance practice. So when you practice the ARC Method, when you're following the arc, you are practicing a form of abundance. It can be a daily habit.
After all of this work on overcoming my pantry behavior, my own scarcity mindset, one thing I know is that the antidote to all of this — besides the daily practice — is really having a genuine belief that there is enough for everyone. And I think this is a spiritual concept, that the more we give, the more comes back. I think that a lot of the major religions have similar tenets — what we give comes back to us — or the natural law of rhythm is a law of abundance, the ebb and the flow. Right? I've lived that. I've seen it play out over and over again. And I also know that it's a choice. It's a choice that every single one of us gets to make.
So my question for you this week is: where might scarcity thinking be showing up in your leadership? Might not be the big obvious things. It might be the little quiet examples that I shared. Think about that. Chew on that, folks. Where might scarcity be showing up, and how can you be more abundant with your energy, with your leadership style?
GOOD VIBES TO GO
Alright, folks. Thank you. Now let's move into this week's Good Vibes to Go. Check out Wanda Sykes' new Netflix special, Legacy. She is an awesome stand-up comic. She's a Black lesbian. It is Pride Month. She's hilarious. There's lots of great physical comedy in this special. Not safe for work — hardly any of the Good Vibes to Go I share are, um, at least the stand-up comics. Anyway.
OUTRO
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