In May 2023, I attended the Black Woman Leading LIVE Retreat + Conference and wrote about it in a four-part series afterward. Laura Knights, the founder of Black Woman Leading, opened the conference by asking us to set our intentions and write ourselves permission slips, reflecting on what we needed to give ourselves permission to do in order to be present. I sat with that question and set my intention: be open to receiving what is for me. My permission slip was to be open to meeting new people and adding to my community.

That permission slip mattered more than it might seem. I lead trainings and facilitate discussions regularly, in my work at LISC and through Mission ENSPIRE. Put me at the front of a room and I feel completely in my element. Put me in a social or networking setting with no agenda and no role to play, and I can be more of an introvert than people expect. Both of those things are true about me. The intention was not about becoming someone else for this event. It was about giving the quieter part of me permission to show up too.

And the intention did its work. In Dr. Chinasa Elue’s session on grief and career transitions, I heard grief applied to job transitions for the first time and it had me reflecting on my long tenure with my employer and what it will mean to eventually make a transition. I walked away with tools I knew would help me when that time comes. In Morgan Wider’s session, which I expected to be a lighthearted conversation about wardrobe, I learned that showing up with power and purpose starts with confidence and love for yourself, cultivated from within. An exercise on self-love and forgiveness landed with me in a way I did not expect, and I carried those words home with me. I do not think I would have received either session the same way if I had walked in simply trying to get through the agenda.

I have thought about that experience often, because I recognize a pattern in how so many leaders enter learning spaces. I see it in the women I support, and it shows up in rooms of every size.

We walk in still leading. We take notes for our teams. We listen for what we can pass along, what we can adapt for a staff meeting, what we already know. We register for every session because missing one feels like falling behind. By the end of the week, we have pages of notes and very little that actually reached us.

None of that comes from a bad place. It comes from being the person others count on. When you are used to being the one who gives, the one who holds the room, the one who brings it back to everyone else, it can feel unfamiliar to simply sit and receive. Being a participant asks you to set the role down for a while, and that can feel almost indulgent when you have so much you are responsible for.

Learning that only passes through you is not the same as learning that reaches you.

Receiving takes a kind of trust. It asks you to believe that you do not have to earn every good thing that comes to you, and that what is meant for you will find you if you leave room for it. I hold that as a matter of faith as much as a matter of practice. It is also why I think receiving is a choice you make before the first session begins, not something that just happens once you are in the room.

What does that choice look like in practice?

It starts with naming one thing you are there to receive. Not five things. One. Let it be what you actually need. Maybe you need language for something you have been feeling but cannot name. Maybe you need to hear from someone a few steps ahead of you. Maybe you need encouragement more than strategy right now. Whatever it is, write it down where you will see it before each session.

From there, let that intention choose your sessions instead of letting volume choose them for you. A full week of programming can quietly turn into one more thing to keep up with. You do not have to attend everything live to get what you came for. If recordings are available, let them hold the rest. They will still be there next week, and you will likely receive them better when you are not exhausted from trying to be everywhere at once.

Leave space between sessions, too. When one ends, resist the urge to rush straight into the next. Take a few minutes to sit with what stayed with you. Write down the one line you do not want to lose. Notice whether it connects to the intention you named at the start.

And leave room for one real connection. It might be a speaker whose words stayed with you long after the session ended. It might be someone in the chat who said exactly what you were thinking. Reaching out does not have to be a networking strategy. It can simply be your own version of the permission slip I gave myself years ago: an openness to adding to your community.

Next week, I enter a learning space in two roles at once. I am a Featured Speaker at the Top 100 Most Powerful Black Women Virtual Summit, and I am also an attendee. I plan to join some sessions live and watch others recorded, alongside the women who will be watching mine.

I will be honest with you. I have not named my intention for this summit yet. I am writing this post partly to find it. Being a speaker makes it easy to treat the whole week as work, to see every session through the lens of preparation and performance. What I do know is that I want to practice what I have written here. I want to walk into that week as a participant, too, open to receiving what is for me.

The Top 100 Most Powerful Black Women Virtual Summit runs October 19 through 23. My session, Own What You’re Building: The Work That Holds It Up, goes live Monday, October 19 at 8am Eastern. You can find my session and the full speaker lineup here. I would love for you to join me, and I hope you will come to the other sessions with an intention of your own.

Whether it is this summit, a conference on your calendar, or a single workshop you have been meaning to attend, the invitation is the same. Decide what you are there to receive before you walk in.

What are you going into your next learning space ready to receive?