The Leadership Habit

Overcome Confidence Killers by Tapping into Your Unconscious with Michele Molitor On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast,  Jenn DeWall talks about confidence killers with Michele Molitor. Michele is the Founder and CEO of Nectar Consulting, Inc., and co-author of the best-selling book, Breakthrough Healing. She works with executives and entrepreneurs bringing over 25 years of experience, intuitive insights and strategic business savvy to their success. She is an expert at enhancing the capacity of leaders, their greater, emotional, social, and leadership wellbeing, helping them to build inclusive company cultures that result in trustworthy teams that are more productive, passionate, and profitable. Enjoy this episode as Michele and I sit down to talk about how we can tap into our unconscious to overcome your confidence killers. Meet Michele Molitor, CEO of Nectar Consulting, Inc. Jenn DeWall: On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I am sitting down with Michele Molitor, and we are going to talk, talk about how you can tap into your unconscious to reach your success. Holy cow, tapping into your unconscious. How did you even come to be, or how did your work come to be, Michele? And thank you so much for joining us on the show, but we’re going to be tackling something that I think is going to be so intriguing and so interesting today, but out of curiosity, how did you start your journey into this line of work? Michele Molitor: Well, first and foremost, thank you so much for having me on the show, Jenn, it’s a real delight to be here with you again. And gosh it was a strange and circuitous route that brought me to my work. I was a creative director in web development in my former career. And it was very exciting. It brought me here to the San Francisco bay area at the height of the Dot Com boom, the original one back in 2000. And it, it was really, really fabulous. I was building this amazing team as part of a global web development company and I hired two guys to be art directors underneath me, you know, on my team. And they made it really clear in short order that they didn’t like working for a woman. And I essentially got bullied out of my job by these two guys that I hired that had really big egos. And I didn’t have the chutzpah that I have now, and I didn’t know how to, I didn’t know how to handle it. And essentially they chipped away at my confidence that ultimately led me to getting fired. And it was devastating was really, really devastating. I had worked, you know, my whole career to get to that fancy corner office and that fancy six figure salary and boom, there I was and I was like, oh crap. Now what do I do? And I really suffered a whole huge imposter syndrome of what do I do now and who am I? And oh my gosh, no one will want me and I can’t give my resume to anybody. And so I hired a coach, this thing called career coaches back then, I was like, where do I find one of those? I’ve never heard of that. And so in the process of being coached, it was like all the cells in my body came into alignment and was like, “Do This!” I was like, oh, this is the work that I’m meant to be doing. So I literally changed careers. I got trained and certified and hung out my own shingle with Nectar Consulting in 2001. And I’ve been doing it ever since. And along that path, I’ve, I’m very curious. I’m a learning junkie. Can I have another workshop please? What is Rapid Transformational Therapy? Michele Molitor: And so I’ve been trained and certified in a variety of different coaching modalities and healing modalities. And the most recent one that I came upon that was so transformative for me in my own personal development is called Rapid Transformational Therapy or RTT for short and doing this work enabled me to get at blocks that I had been trying to root out for 20 something years in a matter of weeks. And so when I was able to create those shifts for myself like that, I was like, whoa. And it was the same thing. My whole body was like tingling. Like this is the next level of mastery. So I went and got trained and certified in RTT and have combined it with my coaching, my 20 years of coaching and what I call rapid rewiring. And so essentially all of that to say, I’m a little mind detective I go in and I work over zoom like this with people all over the world to help them discover the limiting beliefs they’re holding deeply lodged in their subconscious, that they don’t even know necessarily are there. They just know that they’re stuck or they’re blocked, or they’re having these chronic health issues that they just don’t know how to move beyond. And so when you can get at those root causes and literally rewrite the rewrite, the neural pathways in your brain with new empowering beliefs, everything shifts and changes for the better. And it’s, it’s a beautiful thing to behold, Jenn DeWall: Oh, that was a lot! And I’m so excited to dive more into tapping into our unconscious and our TTX. There’s so many questions that I have about your rapid rewiring process, but I want to also acknowledge, and also for our listeners, I’m sure you would do the same. There are so many people that are extremely talented that have found themselves in situations that are likely similar to yours, where you hire that person. You worked your tail off and invested time resources, sweat to get to that corner office, and then to have it not go as planned and to ultimately have it go in the opposite direction that you could have ever dreamed of. Jenn DeWall: And I just want to acknowledge the difficulty in being able to go from that place to where you are today. And I also hope that our listeners listening to this can also understand that those situations happen in work and you’re not flawed. You’re not, you know, you don’t lack, worthiness or value these things happen. And we’re going to talk about how we can tap into our consciousness and you’ll be inspired by Michele today. But I just wanted to acknowledge that because I do experience different or hurdles in my professional career. And I think in the beginning, you really start to take that as just a tattoo that’s printed on you. It’s part of you, it’s who you are. And it is incredibly difficult to see beyond it when you’re in it. Michele Molitor: Oh, totally. I couldn’t agree more. It literally took me years, years to get past what in my mind was shame and guilt. And I felt like such a fraud and oh, all of these things, but it truly was just these two men’s egos coming up against my ego. Right? And their hurt and their wounds coming up against my hurt and my wounds and it, and it created this garbled mess. Right? But once I was able to reframe it and look at it through different lenses, I was slowly able to regain my power to regain my confidence from it, which is why I’m so passionate about helping people reclaim their confidence to get past imposter syndrome, because it can be so painful and it can be so challenging and it really can stunt your career if you let those fears overtake your brain. Right. Why Should we Tap into Our Unconscious? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much for just like acknowledging again, bringing up your, your experience, your journey, how you were able to reflect. And you know, we don’t have to look back at these career challenges, obstacles with bitterness and still holding onto that negative energy that maybe was experienced in it. We can also learn to like move past that. And I, and that’s all about tapping into your unconscious. So, I mean, I know there’s more work beyond that, but why is it Michele? Why is it important to tap into your unconscious? Michele Molitor: So if you break down the workings of your brain, right, 90% of your brain power is operates from an subconscious unconscious level. Right? It’s only that 5 to 10%. That is our conscious, critical thinking, right? From our prefrontal cortex. So all your emotions, how you, your body works on automatically your, your beats all by itself, that’s all happening because of the subconscious elements happening in your brain and your nervous system. So the beliefs that we create about ourselves at a very young age, tend to get registered in our subconscious and then they stay there nice and neat and stored away until we come across something like that event as a young adult or an adult and your brain goes, oh, no, it remember that happened to you when you were five. Don’t do that again. Right? There’s a part of your brain called the amygdala, which is your fight, flight or freeze mechanism. I like to call her Amy. Amy’s the little lizard lady who lives in your limbic brain and she’s in charge of keeping you safe and alive and on the planet. Right? And so when you’re a little kid, if you have these traumatic events, whether it’s, you got bullied on the playground, or your parents said something ugly to you, or your siblings said something mean to you, or you suffered some kind of, you know, serious trauma or abuse. All of those from one end of the spectrum to the other, they leave these indelible marks in your subconscious. We make decisions about ourselves as little kids, because our brain just takes in this information and it lodges and stores there in our subconscious, it doesn’t get processed. It just drops in like a sponge. So you’ve got all this data sitting there, guiding how you move through the world to be safe, right. But as an adult, if you start to recognize, wow, I have this pattern, this way of operating in the world to stay safe, but it’s really not keeping me safe. It’s making me really uncomfortable. It’s making me anxious. It’s worrying me. It’s creating all these blocks in my world. Maybe I should get rid of it. But then you’re like, well, I don’t exactly know where to find it. Like what drawer is it in? In the back of the closet? I just don’t know where it is. And so through the work that I do with folks, I’m able to literally help them relax into an alpha brainwave state. It’s that half-awake, half asleep place, like you’ve just come out of a nap. And in that state, I’m able to access your subconscious and literally have a conversation with it and find out what is at the origin point of that belief or that block that you have. And from that point, we can literally rewrite it. We re we reduce, we eliminate the emotional charge that you made up about it however long ago it was. And we just neutralize it. It would be like pouring baking soda on it. That’s all we’re doing. Right? And then you rewire the neural pathways in your brain for new beliefs. I am enough. I do believe in myself, I am worthy. I have value, whatever those old belief stories are for you. And that enables you to show up with greater confidence to take back your power and to navigate through your world differently than you ever have before, because you’ve moved all of that old junk out of your trunk that you don’t need anymore. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I, you know, Michele, I think people may not even realize. So, you know, we talked about this in the, in the pre-call or I guess before we hit record, and I was just coming from a day of bouncing around meetings and I would identify as a workaholic. And when I make that connection, yes, it comes from that subconscious or unconscious belief, which was rooted in my childhood right on I’m older than a child. And I still hold on to the belief of I’m not good enough, which then throws into the workaholic mode. You got to work, got to prove it, got to do your best. And then ultimately I still feel like I’m dropping the ball because I don’t have enough time to actually do all the things in the way that I want to. But I say that because someone listening, you know that I’m not good enough. You might initially say that that’s not, that doesn’t relate to me, but what you might relate to is being a workaholic. Or like, what are you trying to prove? And maybe that’s the language that resonates with you, but you know, what do – what are the benefits when we can truly tap into our unconscious? And what are the benefits that people see? I know we talked about being able to flip it, but what have you noticed with your clients? Michele Molitor: Oh gosh, I have so many stories. Folks that I’ve worked with, you know, they’ll come to me with one thing. So they might say I have my own business and I keep coming up against this financial barrier. And I’d like to bust through that, that financial barrier. And, and every time I get close to that, you know, X dollar mark, I self-sabotage, my revenues fall. And then, oh yeah. And then I get this horrible bout of IBS or inflammatory bowel syndrome. I was like, oh, well, how about we fix that? She’s like, okay. Right. And so doing this work, what we got to at the root of it was a fear of being too powerful, of being too successful. Right. and so when we neutralize that we eliminated and then rewrote the story around it. Not only did she have her best month ever after we finished our work, but her body stopped doing the fear response of the IBS reaction. Right? So after 15 years of dealing with IBS, chronic IBS, it was gone. So it’s not only about increasing your confidence. It’s not only about feeling like you can create greater peace and calm in your body, but it’s also the mindsets we carry about ourselves often manifest as chronic physical ailments in our bodies. I’ve treated folks with chronic IBS, chronic fatigue migraines, psoriasis, arthritis, anxiety, depression, addictions, all of these tend to be rooted in these negative beliefs that we hold about ourselves. And then they get amplified over time by other events that happen in our lives. So we need to go back all the way to the root of it. And you change that story. Then it creates a positive ripple effect all the way forward, which has an amazing effect. The Power of Thoughts to Overcome Confidence Killers Jenn DeWall: I have a question and I was just more curiosity question for you because I was leading an event yesterday, and we were talking about the power of our thoughts and how they can impact what we do. And I know you and I share a lot around, you know, understanding how we’re setting yourself up for success in that regard. But I came across an individual and I love when I hear this individual that says I don’t have negative thoughts. I never have a single negative thought. And in my, I guess in my experience, I find it hard to believe that someone doesn’t, but I’m curious what you think about that? Michele Molitor: That’s a nice story that they’re telling themselves, because nobody escapes having negative thoughts, right? It’s it’s, we’re programmed from the moment we’re born, right. As a kid you’re growing up, you want to do something? No, don’t do that. No, don’t touch that. No, don’t do that. Right. We get reinforced with no’s all the time. And as we grow up those that programming that we received – good, bad or ugly. Right? Is what stays and reinforces in our own minds conversation. So I’ve been doing 20 years of personal development, right? I’m a personal development junkie. I will admit it. The brain fascinates me. I like to read things about neuroscience for fun. And, and I still have negative stuff happening. So the person who says, oh, I don’t have any, that’s a very nice facade of, I’m fine. I’m fine. Don’t look behind the screen. Don’t look the man behind the curtain. It’s like the wizard of Oz. So for those who are listening and they think, oh, I’m good, I’m fine. Like, great. And start to notice throughout your day. Like I always say, how, how, what percentage of your thoughts are above the line or below the line? So above the line is I’m peaceful. I’m happy. I’m ecstatic. I’m joyful. I’m excited below the line is I’m numb. I’m bored. I’m anxious. I’m worried. I’m upset. I’m depressed. I’m despondent. Right? It’s all vibrational energy emotions are just vibrations. And so the lower you are on the scale that the darker it gets. Or the higher you are on the scale, the brighter it gets. And so just start to notice how much of your day is spent above the line or below the line. And if you’re spending more of your time below the line, well, then you might want to get some help from someone, right. It might be a coach. It might be a therapist. It might be in RTT specialist. It might be your, your pastor at your church, it might be a close friend. But to help you process and move through those, because if we don’t process those emotions, then they will get stuck. Right. One of my favorite quotes is emotions that cannot find their vent in tears will cause other organs to weep. Oh, right. So that’s Dr. Henry Maudsley from like the 1895’s. Jenn DeWall: So our emotions that cannot find their voice in tears will cause other organs to weep. Michele Molitor: I.e., if you don’t process that emotion it’ll get stuck and then it will manifest in some other way. Jenn DeWall: Yes! Michele Molitor: Right. Cause we’re really good at stuffing our emotions in the closets. I’m fine. I’m good. I don’t have any negative emotions. Right? But if you just allow yourself to feel your feelings and let them move through you, then they they’re like clouds passing in the sky. They just keep going by. But when you take that dark, dark cloud and you stuff it in a box, well then now you had a dark cloud in the box, in the closet, and eventually he got a whole stack of them. And then when are you going to do with it? So but we’re, we’re taught to not feel our feelings. We’re taught not to, to show our fear, our worries, or anxiety. We have to keep it all together and look good. But no, we don’t, it’s actually really detrimental to your mental health and wellbeing by suppressing your emotions. Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I just thank you for sharing that quote. I think it’s, I hope that for the people that might have been initially listening to this kind of thinking, oh, this is another one of those woo-woo conversations that, you know, doesn’t impact me. It likely does. And maybe it’s just so rooted in your unconscious that you just haven’t, as you said, like paid attention to what’s below the waterline. This is just an opportunity to be more curious with yourself because we all have it. And I know even a lot of research I forget what podcast it was, you know, I was listening to Brené Brown, I forget the guests that she was interviewing and just talking about, even that burnout is a result of unprocessed emotions. You know? So if that’s a phrase that you understand, again, it’s tied to your emotions, so you’re a human being, you experience emotions, pay attention to them. And I like how you talked about you know, that dark cloud that you’re just putting it into a box. And maybe how I see that is I picture, and this is likely, I’m guessing the origins of this as a therapy term, but my husband and I just went through foster parent training and they really teach you to be aware of the invisible suitcase that a kid brings along. It’s what you can’t see that is there. It’s with them the entire time. And knowing that every single child has an invisible suitcase, that it’s your job to try and hold space and to help. And I think, you know, that’s what that black cloud reminded me of is that invisible suitcase that we all carry. So how do we see this show up when we’re a leader at work? Like what can this look like? So we’re talking about the unconscious, we’re talking about that, that cloud that’s in a box that is unprocessed emotions. How does this show up when we’re at work as a leader? Accept that Your Personal Life Comes to Work with You Michele Molitor: Well, and that’s a great question, Jenn, because a lot of people think, oh, I leave my personal life at home when I come to the office. Yeah. Except if you, you know, if you stubbed your toe really badly in the morning, are you limping around the office? Yeah. When do you do, I’ll ask them, and they are like, oh, I stubbed my toe really bad. Yeah. It’s the same thing. If you had an argument with your partner, right. Or your roommate or whomever, right? You show up at work as a leader. If you’ve got this noise happening in the background in your mind, it’s a distraction. Right. And emotionally it creates a toll that keeps you from being fully present and fully focused. Right. on the work at hand another, another way of coping with that emotional noise from our other parts of our lives is to be a workaholic. As a recovering workaholic, I used work as a way to keep myself busy, so I didn’t have to feel the feelings that I didn’t want to feel because they were uncomfortable. That was really uncomfortable. I don’t want to look at that. Hey, look, I can sit at my computer for four more hours. Yeah. That’s a good idea. And so as leaders, it’s really important to notice where is the edge of your comfort zone? Right. And noticing if I push past the edge of that comfort zone, am I going to die? Am I going to break? And what’s, what do I think is going to happen? If I do that thing that makes me feel really uncomfortable, right? And that might be as simple as speaking in front of a group, right. Or doing a big presentation for your boss and you get all nervous and anxious and worried and fretful and it has to be perfect. And it’s like, no, we’re all perfectly imperfect. Right. We talked about this the other day. And so just noticing what’s really needed here. And if I step beyond the edge of my comfort zone, what do I think is really going to happen? Not what my fear brain is telling me, but what my logical brain is telling me. Oh, well, I might, I might get something wrong, but I won’t die and I probably won’t get fired. So. Okay. And I’ll be human, just like everybody else. So it’s a way of giving yourself some more breathing room and giving yourself some grace. Jenn DeWall: I love that. I mean, that hits me because I know even from the workaholic perspective, I’ve always been on the line, so I know you’re not supposed to be there, by the way. So it’s, it’s, this is work that we will continuously do. And I think there’s the ebbs and flows of life that push us there, pull us back or, you know, we level out. But yeah, it’s hard to turn off the workaholic brain for me because it’s, well, will I miss an opportunity? Will I, you know, do something like I have to keep hustling. And when I think about that, and the periods where I’m not working long days, then yeah. I feel like, well, Jenn, you’re not doing anything, so nothing’s going to happen. You know? So it is, that is the fear piece. And, you know, just saying it to other people, if you’re thinking about how this really shows up at work, it could be you being a workaholic. But on the flip side, it could also be how you manage the relationships at work or how you treat people at work, how you treat your customer. You can be extremely frustrated with yourself and then lash out at someone, even though that’s not who you are at your core, or maybe, you know, it’s not just overworking. Maybe it’s been holding people to an unrealistic expectation of performance. Michele Molitor: Yes. That’s very, very common. Right. You know, I always say that the fish rots or thrives from the head down, right. So if you have a chief cheese in charge that is a workaholic, they usually have a high bar for everybody else on their team. And so everybody else is spinning really, really fast. Right. And, and so you get to notice is that culture, the right culture for you to be a part of, right. Is it healthy for you? Is it a place that has you feel like you’re thriving or is it depleting you actually? In the long run, right? And so that, you know what you were talking about that sense of, well, I’m not doing enough if you’re just resting, I’m not doing enough. That part of that is, you know, FOMO, fear of missing out. Right. Well, if I just do more, then I’ll be in the know I’ll be plugged in. Right. And I’ll have all these opportunities coming to me, but here’s a little secret Jenn, for you and everybody else who’s listening is that it takes balance. Right? We operate from our masculine and our feminine energy and our masculine energy. Is that doing, doing, doing that, getting from point A to point B that driving that accomplishing, whereas feminine energy is resting and receiving and allowing, right? So you can’t just like breathing. You can’t keep breathing out and not take a breath in. Right. You have to, you have to give and you have to receive, you have to give and you have to receive. So when you learn to find that balance in your life of giving and receiving right. Resting and working. Then you’ll have more space. Right. And you’ll have more mental space to then have the creative juices to do the things that you really love with more energy, more vitality and not feel so depleted all the time. The Rapid Rewiring Breakthrough Process Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Thank you for saying that, that really resonated the in, out of, you know, breathing in versa or breathing out all the time, like pushing forward, pushing forward doing, but like breathing in to reset. I love that example. So let’s, let’s dive a little bit more into RTT because I still feel like I can’t even appropriately remember what it stands for. That’s okay. Michele Molitor: Most people can’t, so we get some acronyms. Jenn DeWall: What is it doing in our unconscious like that process of RTT? Michele Molitor: So it is Rapid Transformational Therapy is a unique combination of what I think are the best of all worlds. Right? So it brings together cognitive behavioral therapy, neuro-linguistic programming and hypnotherapy. And I add in coaching to create my Rapid Rewiring Breakthrough process. Right. And so in this process, what we’re doing is essentially having you sit back and relax and you just listening to the sound of my voice. And as you listen to the sound of my voice, you becoming more and more relaxed. And as you become more and more relaxed, you’re allowing yourself to drift into a deeper and deeper state of rest and relaxation. And the more we go into it, the deeper you’re falling into this alpha brainwave state, that half-awake, half asleep place that we talked about a little earlier. And in that place, your subconscious, the gateway to your subconscious is more available, right? So I’m able to literally have a conversation with that 90% of your brain versus the 10% of your conscious brain and, and ask simply what’s at the root cause of this feeling not enough, this feeling of I’m not worthy, I’m not valued, whatever that, that underlying core belief is, that’s driving you to work so hard. Right. And in that your subconscious mind is like a brilliant computer. It has all the information stored away, neat and tidy. Right. And it’ll bubble up to the surface, just the right information that you need to know in that moment. And we do this a few times and you’re able to connect the dots between what might seem like disparate events in your life. Right. And you’re able to go, oh, now I understand why those things have me behave this way now. Right. So here’s a, here’s an amazing example. A woman that I worked with, she had unusually sweaty palms and feet. Right. I think we talked about this on our intake call. Right. And she had tried everything. It was embarrassing to her. She didn’t like it. And nothing seemed to really work. And so through the RTT, what we were able to determine was that she was really shy as a little girl. She didn’t like that her big sister got more attention than she did. And she felt scared when she had to be left on her own in front of her house. Her mom would have to leave her there and wait for her sister to come home while she went to work, all of these things in and of themselves, they make all sense. But when she put them together, she saw very clearly how, the sweating, the sweaty hands and the sweaty feet was the best way for her to process her emotions. Because you weren’t allowed to cry. She was British. Right. Don’t cry, stiff upper lip. Right. But to also get more attention than her sister, right. So her subconscious decided, oh, we can kill two birds with one stone here. Right. We’ll just create this little sweaty palm thing, right. To help you process. Literally she crying from her hands and feet. Right. And was getting this extra attention from her parents, more than her sister. Except she kept going and it kept going and it kept going. And she was 43 when she, you know, showed up to do this work. And she was like, I can’t stand this. How do we, you know, and literally being able to put those dots together just as her body created it as a way to protect her and to serve her, we are able to say, you know, we don’t need that anymore. And we turned it off literally. And it was done. Jenn DeWall: That is powerful. That’s incredible. I mean, the gift that you gave your client, like that’s incredible, but I think it takes, I mean, it takes doing the work. It takes really wanting to do the work to understand that we all have those invisible suitcases or that unconscious that is either working for, or against us. And I know one of the things that we want to talk about is also how, you know, we take that and understand unconscious, and there’s a huge physical issue to all of us as individuals, whether you’re a leader or not, it’s just if you’re human, but then also understanding how your unconscious really will impact your ability to be a confident leader. And so let’s talk about how our unconscious can impact our confidence. What ways have you seen that? Well, you know, because we make these decisions about ourselves unconsciously at different points in our lives, not just when you’re a child, but all throughout your life, right. What Are Your Confidence Killers? Michele Molitor: Something happens. You know, a significant other leaves, right. Just decides, Nope, don’t want to do this anymore or walking out. Right. And you’re like, whoa. And so then we unconsciously or consciously make a decision on, oh, I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy. I’m not lovable. Right. All of these decisions that we’ve made about ourselves are lodged in our subconscious and they impact how we show up. Right. And, and so if you’ve got decision points to say, no, don’t be too loud or don’t stand out or don’t toot your own horn. Right. That’s not what we do or that’s not how our culture does it, or that’s not how our family does it, whatever those beliefs are. It all can have a serious impact on your own level of confidence, which then has a huge impact on, on how you show up as a leader. You know, as I lost my confidence back in 2000, it felt like it really got shattered. I’ve spent a lot of time researching, like where does confidence come from? And where do you find it? Is it in your back pocket? Where is it stored? Can I buy some at the store? I need another dose please? Whatever that looks like. And what I found is it’s these beliefs that we hold about ourselves, that, that dim our confidence. We’re born confident. We’re born with self-esteem and self-worth, and self-love, but over time, those things get stolen from us or they get clouded or shrouded because of the fears from our life experiences. And so all of that impacts how, how we do our jobs and how we move through the world to be safe. And so when you’re able to identify those hidden beliefs, those negative beliefs that we hold, and flip them, then your confidence naturally starts to rise and your energy expands. You’re lighter, you’re brighter, you’re more magnetic and you become more what’s the word I’m looking for. You resonate differently as a leader from that place. And it’s the, it’s the very subtlety of it that most people don’t realize. And it’s that thing that people have, has people lean in and go, wow, I really liked that, Jen, there’s something really amazing about her. She’s just so vibrant? And so people want that vibrant energy. A lot of people don’t have it. Right. And so they lean into leaders who have that je ne sais quois, that I don’t know quite what they have, but I want some of that, please. I’ll have what she’s having thing that allows them to show up a little bit differently and then inspires other people to want to step into their own confidence in new ways. The Top 5 Confidence Killers Jenn DeWall: Yes. I mean, I, oh my gosh, I’m so excited, because we’re going to get into your five confidence killers, now! And just reminding us, you know, as you were talking about that, I’m sure someone could listen right now. Think about when you maybe didn’t get that promotion that could have created a message saying you weren’t, you weren’t good enough. Or when you got a piece of feedback that was maybe less than beautiful, right? Less than glowing. And then all of a sudden you computed that as like, oh, that’s another way that I made a misstep. So these things can be small instances that combine and cumulate over time. And I just want people to pay attention to maybe how they’re processing some of that stuff, because we’re going to talk about what gets into your confidence now or what essentially kills your confidence. And that is the thing that you need to have influence to have your team want to follow you. So, Michele, what are the five confidence killers? Confidence Killer #5 – The Habit of Discontent Michele Molitor: Oh, there’s a fun collection I found. And I like to count them down from five to one because they all have an impact, but the number one is just The Number One. So the fifth one number five is the habit of discontent. It’s that, Something’s not right, so let me do more, work more, have more to try to fill that hole of discontent. It’s that that sense of dis-ease. So we’re constantly looking outside of ourselves to fill that hole. So that’s where the habit of busy-ness starts. Right. So then we get caught in this swirl. I’m discontent. Maybe if I work a little harder than I’m really busy, but then I’m still discontent. Right. So that’s that constant searching, right. That can get on our way. And it’s that doing mode that masculine energy mode operating from there more and more and more of the time that can be really dangerous. Jenn DeWall: That’s me! That’s me right now! Michele Molitor: So how do you get unstuck from the habit of busyness? Well, first awareness is key. So you get to notice what you’re feeling, right. And then what are the complaints and the grievances that are constantly rolling through your head, right. As she get them out of your head and you write them all down and you can start to look at them like, oh, okay. So then once you’ve identified them, then what’s the one thing you can learn from that group of grievances. What’s the common denominator, the common thread, right? So let that information educate you, and then find the wisdom in it, the gift in it. And then have some gratitude for it. Like, oh, let me learn from this and then have some gratitude for it. Because as you have gratitude, when you focus on gratitude instead, it’s, it’s a sneaky little way to create a little burst of happy chemicals in your brain, you know, your dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So the more you can focus on what you’re grateful for instead of what you’re not grateful for. The more you can step into that happier place versus that place of discontent, right? So that’s number five. Confidence Killer #4 – Getting Caught Up in What-Ifs Michele Molitor: Number four is getting caught in the swirl of what ifs. What if it goes wrong? What if I don’t do a good enough? What if I get fired? What if I get stuck on the side of the road? What if, what if, what if, and that continued down and did this spiral all the way down the rabbit hole of, oh my God, blah. Right. It can be really, really stressful. So the trick to that is play the, What If Up Game with yourself. So instead of what if-ing yourself down into the pit, you can, what if yourself up? So what if I do a great job? What if I get a raise unexpectedly? What if a stranger helps me unexpectedly? What if I get a free cup of coffee today? You can just, you can just flip it, right. Instead of making yourself anxious, you can make yourself excited, right? Again, creating a little burst of happy chemicals in your brain and making you feel good versus, or crunchy. Right. Jenn DeWall: So if you’ve got a big meeting coming up, instead of saying, what if this doesn’t work or what if this goes wrong? It’s what if all of a sudden they buy more than I expected? What if all of a sudden, I, you know, do I build a new relationship that leads me to a new introduction. That is such, I love that advice, Michele. I think that’s so great because there are so many anxious people that are playing the what if down game, but they could just benefit by shifting into the excitement. Michele Molitor: Yes! And it’s as easy as that. Right. It can be just that quick. They go like, okay, this is the negative what if? What’s the positive what if? Just flip it and then you get to choose, right. Chocolate, vanilla, choose. Which one do you want? It’s just a choice. Right. Neither right or wrong. But which one feels better, right? Yeah. Jenn DeWall: You’re not gonna know either way until you do it! Confidence Killer #3 – Toxic Environments Michele Molitor: Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So confidence, killer number three is toxic environments. How many here have ever worked at a toxic environment? That’s raising my, I see all those hands out there. Right. That’s why I work for myself now, because if I don’t like the client, I can fire them. If I don’t want to you know, it’s just that easy. So you get to start to look at, take a pause and look across the landscape of your life. Right. Do you have any toxic relationships in your family? Do you have any toxic relationship with friends? Do you have any toxic relationship with colleagues? Do you have a toxic home environment? Do you have a toxic work environment? Do you have a toxic community environment where it’s leaving you feeling depleted drained, crunchy, stressed, worried, fearful, right? If, if the energy or the receiving from those environments is having you tighten up into a ball and want to hide out, you probably got some toxicity going on in there. So you get to rate each one of those, right. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being super toxic, 1 being not really big deal. Right. And anything over a five, you need to take a serious, hard look at like, Hmm, what do I need to do to change this? Right. And it might be stepping away from a friend or a colleague. I used to have a colleague years ago that I worked with, it was a negative Nelly blank and blank and blank complaint. And finally, one day I was like, wow, it sounds like you’re having really bad day. I have to go now, but I hope that gets better for you. So when you don’t buy into it instead of, oh my God, you’re right. Oh, that’s so horrible. Right. You’re basically feeding that negative Nelly. You’re feeding that toxicity. Right. But when you, I always say, just put on your coating of Teflon. Like, I’m really sorry, you’re having a bad day, but I got to go. Right. And you just leave them with their toxic present that they’re trying to hand off to you because they don’t want it. They are like here, take my poop. No, no, thanks. I really don’t want your poop today, but you have good day with that. Right? Blessings and love. And I got to go, right. And so nine times out of 10, that person who’s got that toxic stuff that they’re trying to offload. Right. Because they don’t know how to process it. They don’t know how to be with it. They’ll go find somebody else to give it to. Right. So it enables you to raise your vibration. Right. And they’re going to go wherever they’re going to go. Jenn DeWall: I think that one’s so important because I just had this conversation with with a friend and she’s like, well, I can’t, you know, I’m so sick of my organization. It’s so toxic. People complain all the time. Well, you know what? Like you, you can like, I’ll call her Julia for lack of that. Like, Julia, you actually can separate from that individual. But there are so many people that use the excuse. Like, no I can’t, no I can’t. Yes you can. And if you aren’t just handcuffed to that person to hear their negative their negative response and take their, their gift. And I want, if you’re making that excuse to like, you are not handcuffed to that person, you can say, I love that- love and blessings to you, but I’ve got to go. It sounds like you’re having a rough day. So you’re thinking in your head that you can’t do that. You absolutely can. That’s just an excuse for not having accountability for dealing with that. Michele Molitor: Right. And, and I will say, I will say there are situations, right? For example, and this is an extreme, but you know, let’s say if you’re a woman in an abusive relationship, right there, there are these situations where it can be dangerous to try and leave. Right. And so you have to, you have to seek out the right help to be able to do that. Like making connections at an abused woman’s shelter, for example, so that you can do that and make sure that you’re safe. Right. Because we want everyone to be safe too. So, but in the work environment, right. It’s important to know that there are ways to maneuver through those waters, even if you’ve got a toxic boss. Right. it’s challenging, but it, but it can be done. And it, a lot of it has to do with you and how you’re standing in your confidence and how you’re responding versus reacting to their negativity. Right. There’s a big difference. You’ve got the knee jerk reaction and then you’ve got a thoughtful, let me take a breath and then respond. Right. So that could be a whole other conversation. Confidence Killer #2 – Focusing on Your Failures Michele Molitor: So toxic confident killer. Number two is focusing on your failures. How often do we do this? Oh, I should have done this. Right. Oh, I could have done that. Oh. And we spin and spin and spin. And we spin because we forgot to cross the T or dot the I on the PowerPoint. And, oh my gosh, there was a typo. Right. and some people that’ll send them into a complete spin out, but in the big scheme of things, is it really gonna make a big difference? No. The best way to reframe it, I found is to think about it as if you were looking back on your life from your deathbed and in the grand scheme of things, how important is that thing that you’re spinning about? Right. And it gives you a whole different perspective. This is kind of a silly example, but I was talking to a dear friend of mine one day and I was like, oh gosh, I’m having such a bad hair day. She’s like, girl, any day you have hair is a good hair day. She’s a five time cancer survivor. Five times. I was like, oh, Mike drop. Right. I got great hair. I love my hair. Thank you. I have hair. Right. So it’s all in the perspective. It can change in an instant. Jenn DeWall: Yes. Oh my gosh. Picture if that was your last day. How would you want to spend it worrying about that? You know, probably not. That’s a fantastic reminder. Yeah. Confidence Killer #3 – Believing You Are Not Enough Michele Molitor: And then last but not least the ever popular number one confidence killer of all time is- I’m not enough. That belief, I’m not enough. I’m not worthy. I’m not deserving. I don’t provide value. All of that is kind of rolled up into that. I’m not enough simple statement. And it took me years and years and thousands of dollars of coaching and therapy and workshops and whatnot, to recognize that at the heart of my own stuff was that simple phrase. I was like, whoa, like mind blown kind of moment. And when you start to rewrite that and know I am enough, I am enough. I am enough, put little stickies, all of your house, put it in your car, sing a little tune to yourself, whatever you want. But the more you say it to yourself, right? The more it becomes true for you because your mind likes repetition. Right? Literally the more you think a thought, the more hard wired, those thoughts become a new neural pathways, right? So the more you remind yourself that you are enough, the more true it becomes for you. And the more true it becomes for you, the more you own it, the more you stand more confidently, you stand taller, proud to be who you are and do what you do in the world. I had one client who came to me and through our work together, she cleared out these confidence blocks that she had, right? Like that. And her husband of 30 years was like, what did you do? You look different, you look taller. Like, like he’s like, you’ll look taller. What did you, what do you have on shoes? She’s like, no, just smiling right? Because when you really take back your power from that, I’m not enough fear. You really do. It’s like your energy expands and you’re right. Makes a huge difference. And again, it’s that intangible. Something’s different. What did you do? You look really radiant. It’s like when we, we see a woman who’s pregnant, right? You might not know she’s pregnant, but they got that glow to them because their energy is very, very different. So that’s what I love about the work that they do. It’s this really subtle work sometimes that you can’t put your finger on, but it makes a huge, huge difference for people and, and the happiness, the joy, the peace of mind that they feel, because they’re able to let go of this belief. I’m not enough. I’m not worthy. It creates anxiety, depression, physical ailments, and so much more. And it’s just, it’s really a gift to be able to do this work and to help so many people move that junk out of their trunks so they can live the life. They’re here to live in and be of service and the way they’re here to be of service. Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I, you know, I think I love that final closing message of helping people recognize that you are absolutely more than enough. And I hope if there’s one thing everyone takes from this today, even though you’ve dropped so many valuable tools, tidbits, techniques, you know, just that reminder that you are more than enough, any thing you’ve ever heard or been told in any way, like you are more than enough, Michele, how can people get in touch with you? How to Get in Touch with Michele Michele Molitor: Well you can always come visit me at MicheleMolitor.com, M I C H E L E M O L I T O R .com. And if you’re curious and you want to have a chat, I’m happy to have a complimentary discovery call with you. You can book it there on my website. And you know, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram. I have a fun group in Facebook called Rewire for Success, always dropping helpful tips and hints and inspirations there for folks. So yeah, and I just recently published my latest and greatest ebook called, Do You Have Imposter Syndrome? Six Triggers That Can Crush Your Confidence. So come to my website, you can download that for free and yeah. Happy to have a chat with folks. Jenn DeWall: Michele, thank you so much for taking your time to just share your insights and experience with The Leadership Habit audience. I am so grateful for you, and I’m just grateful that you could give everyone that reminder again, that they are enough and that they need to start tapping into that unconscious to create their success. Thank you so much for being here. Michele Molitor: Oh, thank you. It’s been my real pleasure. Jenn, as always, to talk with you. Thank you. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of The Leadership Habit with Michele Molitor. You can connect with Michele at nectarconsulting.com. You can also connect with her in her personal wellbeing website at MicheleMolitor.com. And there you can book your complimentary discovery call and you can also find her newest book on imposter syndrome. In addition, if you want to check out her bestselling book, Breakthrough Healing, you can find it on Amazon. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of The Leadership Habit. Until next time.   The post Overcome Confidence Killers by Tapping into Your Unconscious with Michele Molitor appeared first on Crestcom International.

Self-Care for Leadership Resilience with Jill Cruz, MS, CNS Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Jill Cruz. Jill Cruz, MS, CNS, specializes in weight loss, and she helps professional women over 40 enjoy the process of becoming the best versions of themselves. Jill has a Master of Science degree in Human Nutrition and is a Board Certified Nutrition Specialist. She combines her strong science-based background with tons of practical nutrition, fitness, and lifestyle guidance, helping women achieve greatness and happiness. And today on the show, Jill and I are going to be talking about how you as a leader can practice self-care so that you’re at your best. We’re going to be talking about stamina; we’re going to be talking about what you may be doing wrong. We’re going to be talking about a concept Jill coined called “healthy hedonism.” Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall, and in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I’m talking to Jill Cruz. Now you may not know Jill, but you want to because we as leaders— if we want to do our job, if we want to create success, and heck, if we want to enjoy the life that we love— it’s got to start with our own self-care. And that’s going to be the conversation that Jill and I have today. I know it’s not the usual topic on our leadership skills, but it’s a very, very important topic that sometimes we as leaders feel too busy to address. So Jill, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Could you just tell our audience a little bit about you? Meet Jill Cruz, MS, CNS Jill Cruz: Hi. Sure. Thank you for having me. So I live outside of New York City, and I’m a mom of two teenage girls. I had my own journey with struggling with my health and making sure that I was taking care of my body properly. And so that over the many years of working as a nutritionist led me to eventually start my own business, helping women to lose weight in a way that’s sustainable, healthy, and, dare I even say, pleasurable! Jenn DeWall: I don’t think that’s ever associated. Someone is like, losing weight? What? Pleasure? No, we think that we’re deprived of all of our pleasure—no more chocolate for you! Jill Cruz: That’s right. It’s one of the cornerstones of my work, actually, the pursuit of pleasure. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And it’s so important. Like how did you kind of become interested? Like what do you have a little bit more of a pain point, maybe that you experienced with your health that really made you open up your eyes and say, what am I doing? Something has to change. Jill Cruz: Yes. As a matter of fact, I do. I have a long, sordid history with what I call nighttime eating addiction. So when my daughter, who is now 19, when she was born, I started eating ice cream. Haagen-Dazs Bells and Chocolate, to be precise. And, I just, I ate it every night for years and years and years and years and years. And that eventually developed into this nighttime eating addiction. So dinner’s over, I’m not hungry, and I’m by myself in the dark, and everybody’s asleep. I’m eating this ice cream. And that actually lasted for 15 years at a certain point in time. It became, it shifted from ice cream to other foods, but essentially I had this problem and I, you know, the first seven or eight years, I didn’t even think it was a problem. I just thought it was normal for moms to want to de-stress. Uso, so eventually, I had to learn how to overcome that eating addiction and, and that sort of forms the foundation of all of the work that I do with clients. How are You Managing Stress? Jenn DeWall: I think a lot of people can relate, and maybe it’s not necessarily the Haagen-Dazs at night, but maybe it is thinking about how are you managing your stress? What are you paying attention to? What are you maybe doing? And not even realizing that it can have adverse effects on your body and your health. I mean, whether it could be alcohol for some, it could be, you know, a variety of things. We’re going to talk about practicing self-care today. Why do you think this is so important? I mean, we know that burnout is on the rise. Like what are you seeing with your clients, with people that you work with? Why is self-care so important to you? Jill Cruz: Well, I think especially for people who would be listening to this podcast, if you’re a leader or if, really, if you’re a working person, whether it’s working at home with your staying at home, with your kids or working out in the workforce, we all need stamina. Stamina is a thing that probably comes more naturally to women than men, I think. But you know, the stamina piece is so important, and we just take it for granted that we should have enough energy to get up and do all the things that we have to do in the home and then go out and work and be in a good mood all day, be nice to people and be productive. That requires stamina. And the other really important piece around this is stress management because we all are so stressed out. I mean, we are not designed to cope with chronic stress in the way that we are required to these days. So we have to set or build into our lifestyle a way to manage that stress. Otherwise, we’re, again, we’re not going to have the stamina. We’re not going to be as productive. We’re not gonna be happy, and most likely, we won’t be sleeping well at night as well. So there are a lot of downstream effects of not caring for your body while trying to be a super person, a superwoman or Superman, whatever it is. I see Jenn DeWall: I think the biggest way that I neglect self-care is when I’m in a burnout cycle that I feel like I might stay up a little bit later. I watch probably very bad television just to kind of- what I would say- turn my brain off. But then I compromise my sleep, and I do. I have a natural, I would say I have a natural, positive, upbeat personality, but when I am fatigued, I am not that person. I’m also more irritable. I’m not as loving and open-minded. I definitely don’t practice curiosity because my brain does not have time to think about that. It just has time to make a quick judgment. And I, you know, as a leader, that’s, it’s just so important because I think we don’t recognize that we could manage our teams in a different way. If we showed up in a different way, we could have, you know, more engaging and deeper, meaningful conversations with people. If we were just practicing self-care by getting enough rest, making sure that our stamina is where it needs to be. Because I think sometimes, then maybe this is just me, but I’m guessing some other people can relate to this, sometimes I can even get resentful when someone asks for something when I’m tired, like why would you even ask that of me? Like, I don’t have time for that. You know, we, we have a tendency to go into that victim state of like, everything’s happening to me instead of feeling like I actually control my life. And so when we see, I just love this topic. Why do you think people still treat it as an afterthought? Like why do we know better? I know this, but I can still tell you that I’m not necessarily doing everything to manage it. So why do we know better? We know that self-care is important, but we don’t DO better? Learning to Listen to Our Bodies Jill Cruz: Well. I think there are a couple of different things. One, we are not taught in our society. Maybe other cultures do this, but I know in American society, we are not taught to pay attention to our bodies. We all have this incredible body wisdom that we’ve— I think in on the opposite end— we’ve been actually taught to ignore it. So if you’re not really paying attention to it— now I’m not a fan of becoming obsessed about it. Every little ache and pain and situation, you don’t want to be obsessed about it, but certainly, we want to be paying attention. If you’re tired, that’s a message from your body. Something’s not right. But we are; it’s really ingrained in us to ignore that. Not even to not pay attention to it, but to ignore it. And I think that’s a big factor. And then, of course, our, well, I live on the east coast, but I think in any, you know, any like major city majorly populated area, it’s go, go, go, go, go. We are not rewarded for being relaxed and chill and calm. There is no reward for that in our society. On the flip side, we are rewarded for getting more done and being more productive and, you know, just working all the time. So I think societally, we’re not. It’s just not encouraged. And there is lip service paid to it. For sure. You could go to any corporate website and see: we are dedicated to the health of our… And some companies are more dedicated than others, but generally speaking, I think it’s really just lip service. It’s not true. Day-To-Day, oh, the people above me and the people below me actually recognize that self-care is important. Like, yeah, I don’t see evidence of that. Jenn DeWall: I think you’re absolutely right. Very rarely. I’ve never sat in an organization where they’re handing out awards, and they’re like, you know what, Jill, we really just want to acknowledge you for practicing healthy work-life integration, making sure that your health is there. I mean, I’ve never seen that in a meeting. I’ve seen it in the form of benefits and getting maybe incentives to, you know, get a gym membership or do something, but it’s never in the culture. And I love that. You talk about it being something that we just ignore that I don’t want to say that the people in your culture are bad people because they’re not doing this. Again, we’ve all been conditioned to ignore it. And, and of course in, or we have those generational lessons may be like, you know, as you were talking about like, don’t complain, keep going, put your head down, be productive, let it go. It’s not that big of a deal. Like, I don’t think people recognize how many of those messages really were given to them. Maybe through observing it in their first career or just from maybe a parent or teacher or friend saying what they needed to do that is maybe just in the opposite of what your body actually needs. Jill Cruz: Yeah, it is. It’s ingrained in our culture. I’m guilty of it. You know, I had to sort of retrain myself, but the thing is that when you’re 25, that when you’re 35, your body usually can keep up for most people. But once you hit 45, 55, 65, your body is just like, sorry! You know, there are going to be detrimental effects where you’re ignoring me. Like, you know, belly fat is a very common thing, which is oftentimes due to stress. So you know, fatigue, aches, and pains, not being able to go on five hours of sleep anymore, where you used to be able to, I have a client who has a high, high-stress job. She has a leadership position. And she says to me, like ten years ago, I was, I could do this. Now she’s really struggling. Finding Energetic Resilience Jenn DeWall: It’s hard! I think I’ve noticed a switch, and maybe it’s because 40 is right there for me. And I’ve just noticed that switch. I don’t have the same stamina. I don’t have the same. I would say energetic resilience. If that’s the phrase? To be able to bounce up, wake up in the morning, and just be enthusiastic. Like I, it’s so much more apparent that if I don’t prioritize sleep, I’m not going to have a great day. If I don’t prioritize sleep, I’m not going to be the best person that I can be. Or if I, you know, neglect my body or don’t work out. I guess the thing I’m pretty motivated to work out, and that’s more or less out of a place of fear. It’s not necessarily from a proactive place. I have MS so that I have this non-scientific belief that if I don’t move it, then my brain will stop like, you know, telling me and supporting me. And so I work out every day, I walk or do something of some sort, but it’s not necessarily for preventing burnout. Right. I do it because I’m afraid of this. But I think, you know, one thing that I got from my dad had a sterile, you know, ten years ago and one of the therapists said, and maybe this is a common therapist term, but if you don’t use it, you lose it. And so that’s kind of been the thing that I’ve really been trying to be mindful of and knowing that as we get older, that only becomes more true. Like your body does start to kind of shut down. What’s your take on that? With what, with where you see people going. Jill Cruz: Oh, it’s huge! The older you are, the more imperative it is that you are physically active. You can get away with it when you’re 25. When you’re 65 is just, it’s all downhill. Either, either you’re working against it and kind of try and keep off the aging as much as you can. Or you are. You’re losing muscle for sure. Like once you hit mid-forties, everybody’s losing muscle unless you’re actually doing something to slow that process down. And there’s a ton of research around physical activity, even, even just muscle mass on, on your body correlating with all kinds of health outcomes. So it’s absolutely important. And one thing that you’ve kind of touched upon a little bit that I really want to emphasize is that you know, people listening to this podcast, if you’re a leader, do you want to be just, okay, cause I bet you, a lot of people listening, I would imagine that they have some health practices because you don’t get to be very successful in life without doing some of these things. So that’s great, but there’s always room for improvement. And so, being at your best means being, as you mentioned, in a mood where you can be calm, where you’re not reactionary all the time. You can handle stressful situations in a much more calm way because you’re well-rested because you’re physically active because you’re eating the right foods that are fueling your brain properly. It’s all interconnected. So, so I just wanted to put that out there. And like some people maybe need a lot of work. Some people need less, but I think as a leader, and I consider myself a leader as well. My business is me. I have to take care of myself or my, if I don’t, my business will fail direct directly because I’ll be like you said, not in the best mood or I won’t have the motivation or the energy, the what did you call it? Resilience energy? Jenn DeWall: My energetic resilience, my made-up phrase! Jill Cruz: I love that you need energetic resilience all day long. You’re using willpower. You’re using willpower to be nice. When you want to be me to focus and concentrate, you’re using the central executive network function. You know, it’s the part of your brain where you’re focused, focused, focused. Your brain has to have the basic requirements for healthy functioning in order to do that at your best. How Do We Start Practicing Self-Care? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And do everything at your best. And I just want to emphasize for those that might even be listening to this like, oh, I’m about ready to turn this off because it’s not giving me this, this tool. This quick fix may be a problem you’re having. And I don’t want to minimize that problem, but I do want to still a good and bring awareness that we continuously ignore the conversation of self-care and mental health. We just think I’ll deal with it tomorrow. I think a lot of us have the I’ll deal with it tomorrow. I’ve got more important things today. This is important. And so, Jill, where do you start? Like, because self-care is so broad. I know we could likely go down the rabbit hole of the top tips that many people have heard, but where do you start? What does self-care even mean? Jill Cruz: Well, I would definitely very, very strongly emphasize to anybody listening that it starts with where you think it starts. Everybody is individual. So for one person, it may be, I need to focus on sleep. For another person, it may be, I know my breakfasts are just not the best. Or maybe it’s stress management or mindset. You know, mindset is a big piece of all of this. So I highly recommend that you kind of take stock of your life almost like you would evaluate any situation in the business environment. You can do that for yourself and see what most people know. When, when new clients come to me, they’re just talking, they’re telling me all the bad things that they’re doing. They know. So, so I would say that I, I wouldn’t have a blanket statement that everybody should start here. I think it needs to be individualized. There are two ways to look at this. One is low-hanging fruit. So if you know that your breakfast is not great and you can easily fix that, do it! If maybe you also know that your sleep is not great, but it’s overwhelming to think about dealing with that, just start with a good breakfast. And then, you know, so you don’t necessarily have to start with the biggest problem. You could also start with something that’s just a quick win because once you get that quick win, now that you’re eating a better breakfast, your brain is functioning better throughout the day. Now maybe you do have more wherewithal to address other issues. Start With the Low-Hanging Fruit Jenn DeWall: You know, I want to touch on two things that you just said, like the mindset piece, but first, I want to go into the low-hanging fruit. Because again, I think, I guarantee that the people that are listening to our podcast, right, the people that are listening to a podcast or type are typically probably thinking, what can I do to better myself. They’re very motivated. They’re ambitious. And so then thinking, yeah, when they look at the self-care, I think many of them will pick the biggest piece. Well, I’ve got to make sure that I’m working out every single day for 45 minutes a day and then change my diet out once and done, make sure I’m sleeping. And we are so- in a beautiful way- driven and ambitious, but we don’t recognize like failure’s likely right around the corner that follows your discouragement or whatever cycle comes with it. Jenn DeWall: And so I just love your prescription of really thinking, what is your low-hanging fruit? And please don’t try to do everything. Just start to practice self-care. Or start to, you know, if you already have a routine, what’s the other piece that you already know, as you said because we’ve basically done that SWOT analysis of our own health, like, and what are our threats? So on and so forth. What is the thing that you need to do that you’ve been maybe avoiding or haven’t prioritized? And I mean, and at what expense, like, I think people need to start to, I don’t know how you feel about this, and maybe this is a bad way to motivate people, but getting people to think as they get older, what are truly your consequences? If you don’t wake up now, what is it going to cost you? Jill Cruz: I mean, that’s – so we, as humans, are more motivated by short-term consequences. We will like to think things like, well, I don’t want to be like my mother who had health problems or whatever. I’m afraid of getting cancer. Those tend to be motivational factors, but they’re more long-term, and we’re just hard-wired to favor the short-term. That’s just, I mean, if you think about how we lived in very intense environments, we had to favor the short-term threats or positive or negative consequences. So so I do recommend thinking about those short-term, you can think about the long-term, but get some short-term as like full them. If there’s a feedback loop, it could be a negative feedback loop. Like, oh, if I eat that pizza at 10:00 PM, I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night with heartburn. That’s a negative feedback loop, which motivates people. Or it could be, well, if I don’t eat that pizza, tomorrow morning I’m going to have more energy to go to the gym and workout. And that could be a positive feedback loop. So definitely having those consequences, but the short term or a much more powerful and yeah, there was something else you said that I wanted to- Jenn DeWall: I think that ties also into the mindset piece of like, well, start to look at this as a mindset, not just an action that you’re taking to better your health, but just what’s your point of view on it? I mean, you know emotional intelligence is important for a leader. We know that we need to observe our surroundings. We need to pay attention to, you know and have self-awareness and self-management. So we need to also then transfer and apply this to the mindset of our health care. Like you or of our health. You’ve got to start to take responsibility, your self-awareness, and your health. Like I get, I think we can take stock of my self-awareness might be really high of what I do and don’t do in my career, what I need to do, what I don’t do. And then, I might take a lot more actions and understand those positive and negative feedback loops. But then, I am still discarding the fact that I need a body to be able to do all of it. Like I still just minimize all of that. So the mindset piece, I just wanted to talk a little bit more about that. Like, I mean, I don’t know if there are any blocks that you typically see what someone’s mindset like, I don’t know. I mean, I guess the number one that I would think of because I hear it in terms of, you know, just different reasons why people don’t take action. And what I hear is time. I don’t have time. I don’t have time, don’t have time. So when you thought, what do you, what do you say for your clients? Or how do you help them adjust that mindset piece? Having a Self-Care Mindset Jill Cruz: Well, people come to me, usually highly motivated, because my specialty is weight loss. So people are usually ready. And when they commit to working with me or my team, they are really highly motivated. So they may not come up with those types of so-called excuses, but if they do, and that often will come up as we’re working together more long-term. To me, there is always a solution. If you want it, there’s always a solution. It should not be difficult, challenging, this horrible journey. It should not be that way. So what I do and what I think any healthcare practitioner should do, is ask, how can we make this easy for you? Not hard. It’s like, oh, you should be exercising. You should be eating well. That mindset is like you were saying earlier, you’re already setting yourself up for failure. There’s really not a lot of other things that we endeavor to do. Jill Cruz: Like if you want to learn to play the guitar, I’m not going to ask you to play a song on the first day. I’m going to ask you to start very simply. Just give it five minutes a day. Why do we think that with healthcare practices, like exercise or nutrition that we have to be that perfect Instagram person in a week or a month, or even a year? It’s ridiculous. So I think that mindset of, I mean, 90% of what I do is a mindset. Really. Most of it is that, but there’s always a way if someone is coming up with excuses. There’s a reason for that. And we, we can explore that. Sometimes. It’s just. It’s hard. Yeah, definitely. Excuse. It’s hard. Okay. Well, why is it hard? What is it about it? And sometimes, it really is true logistical problems. My schedule is X, Y, and Z. All right, well, let’s see if we can work with those things, but if you find yourself wanting to take care of your body but coming up with excuses, either you’re not really committed because when people are committed, they do it. They do it. And a lot of times, unfortunately, work is a big blocking factor. Like, I literally don’t have time. Okay, well, maybe there’s a deeper conversation that needs to happen around that. I don’t mean to encourage anybody to quit their jobs or, you know, close up their businesses. But- Jenn DeWall: I will! I will! You, your life, and your health is starting to be at a detriment. You need to examine whether or not you are in the right career. I, you know, I will say that. And I know that sometimes people are like, I don’t know, but you can still, I guess for me, and this might be my own personal plea of passion is you have one life. You’ve got to make sure that you have the body and mindset and health to be able to live it, to enjoy it to the best of your ability. So I will say that! Like, do you need to reflect and leave a job, maybe? And I’m not saying that it’s going to be an easy decision, but you’ve got to prioritize yourself. Jill Cruz: Yeah. And it’s also again, and I love feedback loops. I love them. In biochemistry, a lot of the things that go on in your body, the reactions, their feedback, there’s tons of feedback loops in the body. So I love talking about them. But the feedback loop here is if you can just do a little bit in the beginning and start to feel a little bit better, have a little bit more energy. Guess what happens? You are more productive. You have that stamina, and you have that mental capacity, that mental focus. So you actually can get more work done in the same amount of time. That, for me, has always been the pursuit. How can I get be more productive in the same amount of time or less? How do I do that? Well, I have to absolutely be at my best. There’s no way because I know there are days when I’m not at my best, and I can tell there’s a huge difference in my productivity. A lot of it’s just energetic, you know, either pure energy, which you could call stamina, but also mental energy, patience drive, just having the drive to do something. Where does that come from? That comes from your physiology, your biochemistry working well. For the most part, again, when you’re 25 and you’re super ambitious, you can pretty much push through all of that. Jenn DeWall: I remember when I was able to push through it, I can’t do it anymore. So if there are some young 20 somethings, enjoy this, but try to think about how you can position yourself or when maybe your body isn’t as resilient as it was. Jill Cruz: And you could always be better. I mean, it’s like if I knew the stuff, I know now when I was 25, wow. I mean, I could’ve gotten a lot more done. Healthy Hedonism Jenn DeWall: Right. I just, and I love that. And that is the thing because now when I think about being older, like as I’m getting older, you know, productivity like I want to be my best all the time. I want to do my best to it is so important to me. And so I’m now I’m starting to notice natural things. Like, no, I, I don’t want to go to that dinner tonight because then I know I won’t get to bed until late. And you know, there’s that conscious trade-off. It’s not that I feel like I’m missing out in any way. It’s just that I love being at my best. And that self-care feels so good. And then when you experienced the pain, when I compromise that or, you know, the misery that I experienced, and it’s not that it’s true misery, but it is cognitive like cog-fog, or not being able to think clearly. Or I end up being more, you know, short-tempered, which is not the way that I want to be. Like when you experience those painful moments or misery moments, I’m just, you know, that much more motivated to be like, yep. Gonna reinforce that next decision. So I want to bring it into a concept that you talk about because I love it. Healthy hedonism, what the heck is a healthy hedonism, Jill? Jill Cruz: So I was, I came up with this concept, and there is this, there is such a thing. This is not—I didn’t. In other words, hedonism is inherently kind of almost a little bit of a negative connotation, but there is such a thing as positive hedonism. So that’s where you are. You are pursuing feeling good, but in a way that’s beneficial to you. So it’s not a negative pursuit. And so the way that I kind of came up with it as I think there are three major pieces to help. And the first is, well, there’s no first or last they kind of go feed off of each other. And body wisdom is one aspect of it. It’s very important for us to understand our bodies and listen to our bodies. And I have guidance that I give clients on how to do that. Jill Cruz: It’s not a talent. It’s a skill. So if you’re not used to tapping into your own body wisdom, it does take some knowledge and some practice, but you can. You can pick it up pretty quickly. So there’s body wisdom, and there’s the pursuit of pleasure, which we said in the beginning, weight loss should not be pleasurable. No, actually, if it’s not pleasurable, you are doing something wrong. Whether it’s weight loss or just trying to be, you know, just emphasizing your health, your self-care. If it’s miserable, if you are miserable doing it, you need to stop and figure out something that’s actually pleasurable because that’s sustainable. And, and then the other piece of it is what I call radical self-acceptance. Because, and especially for high-functioning, high-performing people, the self-criticism and the blame and the regret can be overwhelming. And so, by allowing yourself every day, this is a practice. This is not we’re again, and we’re not born with this tendency, not at all. We have to work against that tendency to self-criticize by waking up every day and saying, you know what? I love and accept myself for who I am right now, right here, no matter what. And that’s its radical self-acceptance, the pursuit of pleasure and body wisdom. And those three components kind of form the foundation of my work. Jenn DeWall: I love these concepts because it’s not just exclusive then to what are you doing for your food, for your exercise. And I want to dive a little bit deeper into the three of the three aspects or facets of healthy hedonism, so radical self-acceptance, body wisdom, and pursuit of pleasure. I am extremely passionate about, you know, radical self-acceptance, and I love that you talked about we’re not born with it. And I would actually argue that we’re also never educated to do it. What I find in my work as a coach is that so many people, and I’m sure you see this too, is that so many people were maybe brought up to look at yourself and like, say there’s always something that you could be doing better, like, or don’t even say that you’re doing something well, because then you’re too overconfident or cocky and like slow your roll. And so, I think it created what I see with my clients. And I’m sure you see this too. Is that an over-reliance on external validation? Just wanting to make sure other people are telling us that we’re getting it right. Instead of saying, wait, but do I think by my standards, by my efforts, my experience, I’m getting it right? I mean, it is the saddest thing. And I know that I suffer from it. I think many people do it is so hard to reprogram and rewire that brain. Just say you are enough just as you are. Even if you made that big mistake, you’re still going to be fine and so, radical self-acceptance. What are some of the ways that you see or maybe recommend people to start? Because self-acceptance is hard when we’re trying to combat those maybe messages that come up that say, I don’t know, Joe, don’t do that. Like you’re bragging now about yourself or, you know, you never really did it that well. I mean, I have an expert at shaming myself. I’m so glad that Brene Brown came around just to be able to give a name to what that is. Because as someone that’s very driven, a lot of my drive comes from telling myself that I suck or I’m not good enough or that I’m constantly missing the mark. And so, yeah, I’m curious what your thoughts are on that. Self-Care, Self-Awareness and Self-Acceptance Jill Cruz: Well, a lot, a lot, a lot of thoughts. I think one thing that has been one piece of my work that I take a lot of pleasure in is holding space for being that presence in someone’s life, who I am a hundred percent accepting and loving. So sometimes, even though you’re talking about this sort of endogenous feeling of- endogenous means from within the body, exogenous means from outside of the body, right? So this external approval and that sort of thing, we are sort of hard-wired to seek that out. And I think that comes from when we’re babies, you know, we, we want to get love and attention. So we’re going to try to please people like this is starts from birth. So it is a hard one to kind of just say, oh, well, I’m just going to accept myself now. Yeah, I’m done with that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But so, so it’s not easy. And sometimes, it does help to have an outside person who will hold that space for you. It could be your mother, it could be your therapist, you know, and not all of us can have that, but it’s, it is a piece of this. And I think the other piece is being present. So we, we tend to, again, especially ambitious, successful people. We’re always thinking about what’s next? What am I doing next? How how, how can I do that? Oh yeah, I did that. It was great. But how can I do that better next time? That same tendency. So, just being present for a few minutes every day is a great place to start, just even in the morning, getting up and just taking some deep breaths and just being present and saying, you know, I am right here, right now. It’s almost like a meditation, and the meditation is great for that. But I like to kind of maybe do a slow walk or that for me, cause I’m a physical person. I will walk, and I’ll just pay attention to my inner and my outer. So what do I smell? What do I see? What do I feel? And that sort of like a moving meditation, that one, when you’re present, you’re blissful. It’s when we’re worried about the future of the past or things we can’t control that we start to get into trouble. So that’s really important. And I tell you, I mean, there’s a lot of research on gratitude and just taking a few minutes every day, maybe at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day, to write down the things you appreciate that you have done. I have done this. I am this. Really, because sometimes we need again, especially really smart, driven people. I want the facts. Yeah. I’m not going to sit here and try to convince myself that I’m, that I weigh 120 pounds when I weigh 190. That’s ridiculous. I’m never going to believe that. But the fact is that I did this today, and I am motivated to take care of my body. So, so if you can find in when you’re writing your appreciation or thinking about it, actual factual things that I think goes a long way, instead of believing me, I love woo-woo. I love woo-woo stuff. I love mantras. You know, I love the idea of being positive, but it’s, it’s hard to do that. Let’s face it. So coming back to real facts, I think, can help us. Like I did this project, and I succeeded this way, and therefore I am somebody who is good at X. Showing Gratitude for Yourself Jenn DeWall: I love that. Yeah. And I think that you know, to everyone listening right now, I think it’s a great reminder that it’s not just writing down, you know, a gratitude list. Like I’m grateful for, you know, the food that I get to eat or the shelter that I have. And yes, there’s absolutely a place for that gratitude. But what, you know, what I heard you say is that we’re grateful for, you know, I’m grateful for my accomplishments. I am grateful for what I did well today. Like, and, or I am proud of myself. Like I am proud of myself that I got up and hit the gym, or I’m proud of myself that I took the time to create a to-do list to really be more structured and productive. And I think we breeze past some of those things, but you don’t have to do anything on any given day. So what you do can also be recognized and rewarded. And I just to set a reminder, what she’s saying is to write down what you’re grateful that YOU did. Not like something, it’s what you did. So, so just cause I think people aren’t used to seeing themselves, we’re so used to seeing other people, and they might be like, I don’t know, I don’t do anything special. I’m not X, you know, insert all that negative self-talk that can come up, or we just don’t see ourselves, but just starting to see ourselves and how strong, how smart, how valuable you are as an individual. I love that, Jill, like just, it’s not just writing that gratitude list. It’s thinking about what did you do? Or your achievement list or whatever. Jill Cruz: Yeah. I mean, it’s your personal bragging time. But the other thing that I think really helped me was to think about any baby that you have ever met in your life. A six-month-old baby, that baby has—I think pretty much almost everybody would agree that— that baby is entirely lovable and worthy of love. And we accept, I mean, that baby can poop on your hand, and you just wash it off. It’s a little gross, but you still love the baby. And I think if you can remember that you were a baby, all of us listening to this and talking here, we were all lovable babies worthy of unconditional love, and we’re- that’s still us. That’s still within us. So sometimes, I just try to fit. I have a friend who’s a relationship therapist. And she says she has a picture of herself when she was a little girl. And she reminds herself that she was a little girl one day and, and that little girl was a hundred percent worthy of love. And we all have that, even though we’re adults and we’re messy, and we’ve done bad things, and we have regrets, we’re still all worthy of that love. And I think that’s a very powerful kind of practice again, to remind yourself of that. Checking in With Your Body Jenn DeWall: I love that message because when it comes down to self-care, I think if we don’t see ourselves as lovable, then it’s really easy to just say, who cares if I don’t take care of myself because I’m not this. So really like for those listening, like recognize that those connections are happening and you are totally lovable. You are, you know, fantastic. And I love that. You said this too. We are all messy. We are all messy. None of us are perfect. Perfection doesn’t exist. We are all messy. And it’s okay if you’ve made mistakes like you are still lovable. Okay, let’s go. I know we don’t have a lot of time left. The second aspect, body wisdom. Now this one, you know, you talked about sleep and nutrition. How do you really gain more awareness? Like, are there any tips and tricks that you have around gaining awareness to really check in with your body? Jill Cruz: Absolutely. I have six factors that I ask my clients to pay attention to or anybody who will listen! And you can write them down. You can rate them, which is kind of nice on a regular basis. So there’s energy, mental clarity, mood, hunger, cravings, and gastrointestinal function. So if you are really honing in on those- again, not being obsessive about it, like, oh, I had gas today. Oh, dear. No, like, I mean if you had guests every day for the past three weeks. There’s a problem. So anything that’s consistently a problem, whether it’s fatigue, you know, mid-afternoon fatigue or moodiness, we are meant to have calm, sustained energy from morning till night. We are meant to become even-keeled and peaceful. That’s our default as humans, actually. And, except for in crisis, we’re very good at responding to a crisis. But then we go back, and just like animals, you see an animal can be super stressed out, but then once that situation is over, they are chill. That’s how we’re supposed to be. And so, and mental clarity, if you have brain fog, that’s assigned from your body. And so these factors, we can pay attention to them. Now, you’re, now you can start to see a pattern and maybe also use, keep track of what you’re eating. Maybe your sleep time, your physical activity, you know, it’s up to you, how far you want to go with this. But I will certainly say that if you’re tired all the time, that needs to be investigated. That is a message from your body, and we need to listen to it. And your body will give you a lot of feedback and information if you just pay attention. Jenn DeWall: I mean, and again, if you’re, if anyone listening is, is suffering from chronic stress, this is real, you know, your body is going to continue to tell you that, that it’s in stress mode and it’s not functioning well, I had a really good friend that had very bad stomach issues or gastrointestinal issues, and they were all stressed induced. I have interviewed people on this podcast that have had facial paralysis, all stress-induced. Your body is very, very connected to the stress that you are under at work. And we know that it can show up as a heart attack. It can show up as these things, as we get older, we’ve got to start to connect, and maybe you don’t have to take it. I love that you gave space. No, I’m not saying that you have to do a food journal. Take it however you want to, but start to at least pay attention and recognize that it’s on you to take responsibility for that because you know what, you matter.We want you here. We need you to do a good job, your family, you. And so you’ve got to start to say, what piece do I own? And maybe it’s just starting to look at your sleep because you are feeling consistently tired, or maybe it’s starting to look at your workload and say, maybe I need to ask for help. I just love this conversation. Self-Care and The Pursuit of Pleasure Jenn DeWall: Our last thing is the pursuit of pleasure. And I think that this is so important because again, how many people dread, maybe if they make a new year’s resolutions, they’re like, well, here goes my next month where I won’t be able to enjoy anything. And I’m on this new diet, and I’m doing this, but it doesn’t have to be that way because that’s where the mindset piece comes into it. So tell me, what are your tips and techniques to help us really get behind that pursuit of pleasure and not looking at this as a chore, but making it not a should, but a want! This is exciting. Jill Cruz: Yeah. I mean, first, you have to have that motivation, that inspiration to make the change. And that’s where people start. And then yes, they usually end up on some crazy diet for 30 days, and then they go back to where they were that’s miserable. Right? So that’s really important. Some other things that I often talk about, and we sort of talked about it. I want to. I was thinking about it earlier, too, is planning and strategizing. These are very important. Many of the problems that people have with diet and lifestyle practices are they just don’t plan. So I have a client I’m working with, and she’s, she said, you know, I don’t know what’s wrong. I just can’t do that. We’ve been working together for a couple of months, and she still hasn’t gotten the exercise at all. So I said to her, I said, look, this weekend, I want you to sit down, and I want you to write down how you can fit in 10 minutes of exercise four days a week. And I want you to not only write down when, but what, and how. If you have a plan, it’s so much easier to do things. If you have a plan, so that’s vital. And then another piece is the environment. We are subject. We are products of our environment. So if you think that you’re going to eat really healthily while someone is leaving potato chips and donuts and crackers and all kinds of things on the counter, you’re setting yourself up for failure, right? So so those pieces are really important. And then what I call training, we gotta train ourselves, and that’s really habits and habits have become much more popularized in the past few years. Pretty much everybody knows. You want to start small, almost laughable. So that’s why it’s 10 minutes or five minutes, not an hour jumping into something, or it’s, you know, every day when I come home, I have all these cravings. So instead of just leaving it to chance and my low willpower at the end of the day, I’m going to have carrots or something healthy in the fridge. And I was just reading a study yesterday. We, we are more likely to choose the food that’s the first thing we see in the fridge, as opposed to the second, third, fourth, or fifth. So have the healthy food front and center push all the crappy stuff to the back because your brain will take that first thing that you see. So set up your environment for success, not failure. Have your gym clothes out, ready to go. Know what time you’re working out. What you’re doing? What’s your plan. That’s my client’s problem. She says I like to walk. I like to dance. I have these weights; well, have a plan. And that’s about. I think being strategic. You, sorry, just one little last piece with the habits is once you have done something often enough, the motivation and the willpower switch can be turned off, and you’ll still do it. Habits are magical, magical, powerful things. They’re not infallible. You can have a habit for a year, and then you can stop. I know that, but it’s your biggest supporting factor in terms of living a healthy lifestyle. Habits. Because if you have to rely on willpower lives, I always say willpower is unreliable. Habits are reliable. So and, the path to building a habit is long, and it should be fun, and it should be gradual. Once you get there, it’s like, oh, this is easy. Jenn DeWall: I love that recommendation. I guess like the personal thing that I do, I’ve been, you know, I bought an apple watch at the end of 2020, and a lot of my friends have them. And so we’ve just been doing challenges. And now it’s to a place that we’re, you know, we’re either competing against as a team against another team, or we’re doing it individually, but I have really embraced gamification. And because of, you know, streaks, the, you know, they just tell you how many days you’ve worked out, or you hit your targets. Now I’m at. I don’t even know if I’m at 170 days. Like it’s something like that. I don’t want to break my streak. So that is also the other thing that keeps me going. Like, I love that. I can say that there are 100 days that I, you know, made sure that I stood once an hour, that I hit my activity goal, that I also hit my move goal in terms of caloric burn. And that makes me feel proud. And it doesn’t necessarily. It doesn’t matter how I get there every day. I don’t have to go down and do an intense CrossFit workout. I can just walk outside, but I just love that I have a manageable goal. Jill, what would be any last, you know, messages that you would want our audience to know? Jill Cruz: I think what’s coming to mind for me right now is to go easy on yourself. You, if you are a leader, you’re a successful person. That means that you’ve accomplished a lot in your life, and take a moment and appreciate that. And, and so I talk about this concept of the balance between striving and thriving. So w striving means, you know, you’re, you set your goals, you’re working towards your goals, and thriving means stopping and smelling the flowers. And we need to have a balance of both. If you’re always thriving and you’re always just smelling the flowers, you’re not going to move forward in life. But on the flip side, if you’re always, always striving, it’s never enough, then you’ll probably have regrets. So we want to get that balance between taking care of our bodies and appreciating all that we’ve done and all that we have and doing more good stuff for ourselves. How to Get In Touch With Jill Jenn DeWall: Yeah. That’s a really important last message. She’ll thank you so much. How does our audience get in touch with you? How can they connect with you? Jill Cruz: Well, I think the best way is to go to my website. I have a blog and lots and lots of interesting articles about many of the things that we talked about today. And so that’s probably the best place to get in touch with me. I mean, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook and Instagram, and all of those usual places as well. Jenn DeWall: So head on over to WYN, that’s, W Y N – wynweightloss.com, and we’ll reinforce that you can also find it in the show notes. Jill, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you so much for just stopping by to take time. To help our listeners focus on themselves was really a great conversation. And I just love your mindset around self-care. It’s not just yoga. It’s, you know, practicing healthy hedonism, understanding that we’ve got to pay attention to our body, the pursuit of pleasure, radical self-acceptance, and so much more. And even that difference between striving and thriving. Thank you so much, Jill! Jill Cruz: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me, Jenn, Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. If you want to find more about Jill or connect with Jill so you can start your own self-care journey, head on over to wynweightloss.com, that’s wynweightloss.com. And if you’re not sure where to start, you can go to our website. You can find the right way to nourish your body. You can head on over to https://www.tryinteract.com/share/quiz/5f7e3cc8eb45f400149f67fd. I would actually recommend going to our show notes to find this as it’s a more specific link, but there you can download and help get a better understanding of what’s the best diet for you. Remember; think about the stamina you want to have. Think about how you want to show up in life. If you know someone that could benefit from hearing this message today, please share this podcast with them. And if you personally enjoyed this podcast, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast, streaming service. And most importantly, if we can come into your organization and help you perform at your best, help your team be the best that they can be. Please go to Crestcom.com for a two-hour complimentary skills-building workshop, and we would love to help you! Until next time.   The post Self-Care for Leadership Resilience with Jill Cruz, MS, CNS appeared first on Crestcom International.

Play to Your Team’s Strengths with Strengths Performance Coach, Chris Failla Jenn DeWall: It’s Jenn DeWall, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Chris Failla. As a Gallup Certified Strengths Performance Coach, speaker, and trusted advisor. Chris helps unlock you and your team’s full potential through strengths. Chris has a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership with an emphasis in adult learning and development. Over the past 15 years, he’s coached or trained people on every inhabited continent. And at some point, he’ll get to Antarctica as well! Join us in our conversation as we talk about how to leverage the strengths of your team. Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit, I’m sitting down with Chris Failla! Chris Failla- some of you may know or may not. He is a leadership and relationship coach, as well as a speaker. And today, we are going to be talking about how to be intentional in taking care of your number one team. Chris, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Meet Certified Strengths Performance Coach, Chris Failla Chris Failla: I’m super excited, Jenn. Thank you so much for the opportunity! Jenn DeWall: Chris, how did you come to— or, rather, where does your interest rise with helping people? I know we’re going to be talking about strengths and helping leaders understand how to identify the strengths, how to bring those strengths together. How did you become interested in that subject? Chris Failla: Yeah. Thank you for that question. So not where many people would expect, but I got married in 2003 at the very undercooked age of 21. I had no idea who I was, what I was bringing to the table. I was very raw, and I met this woman that I was like, wow if I don’t propose to her soon, someone else will. And I will be so mad for the rest of my life. But early on into our marriage, we discovered this tool that was at that point called StrengthsFinder. And we were given this gift of language to help turn the things that we were initially drawn to each other about, right. Opposites attract, and all of these clichés are cliché because they’re true. So all these polarities, right? It’s, you’re initially drawn to somebody. You have the Jerry McGuire—you complete me— all, all of these things, right? But, but over time in a relationship, the things that were initially an attraction become an annoyance. And so, very early on, we were given this language for a positive approach and appreciation around the things that made us so different and initially drew us together. So this was a couple of years into our marriage, and I sometimes, with tongue in cheek, like to say that StrengthsFinder saved my marriage because it really was so much of it. Yeah. We’ve been married for 18 years and still going strong. But so much of it is because we have this positive, appreciative language to talk about our differences, who we are, our needs, our values. And so I thought if this could be so helpful for someone to, you know, two people as different as me and my wife, then who else could this be helpful for us? So we just jumped in and used it with every team, every organization, and have been going strong with it for the last 15 plus years. Get to Know Your “Internal Team” Jenn DeWall: Wow. I am so excited to hear a lot of the stories that I’m sure you’re going to share because I still think that strengths while we understand, right. It’s nothing new to say, let’s, let’s play to someone’s strengths. People still get it wrong. So that’s kind of what we’re going to be talking about today. Like what do we do wrong? But first and foremost, let’s talk about just the definition of what is an internal team. Chris Failla: Yeah. So I love that we get to talk about this because one of the things that, that I love that the world is realizing, right. Actually, no, I love that that the Western world is now realizing that relationship is so crucial. Right? We, you know, in, in the states for so many years, we’ve I guess I would say kind of celebrated or highlighted the people that are individualistic. I can do everything on my own. I can figure it out. Right. Independence is like a, is a major value of ours. But what we’re realizing from the rest of the world is that relationship is so core and so central. So understanding the team is crucial to get anything done, but we don’t just have the teams around us. We also have this. I like to call it our internal team because one of the dangers I see with strengths is when we over-identify with certain attributes within ourselves, and then those things begin to own us instead of us owning them. Jenn DeWall: Wait, what does that mean? What does that mean? So if I look at a strength of communication, how would I over-identify with that? Chris Failla: Right. So I’ll tell you a quick story, and I share this in the book I’m working on, and we’ll get, we’ll come back around to that at the back end of this. But I was sitting with a couple. So I work with executives. I work with teams. I work with families. I work with couples. I was sitting with a couple, and you can relate to this because you have this as number two. Okay. So this husband was getting himself in trouble because his positivity was having a hard time actually connecting with his wife with some of her struggles because he could always see that, right. The positivity in him can always see the bright side and can always, you want to encourage. And when it’s okay, it’s no big deal, right? Because he sees the silver lining, right. The golden thread in even the difficult things. But for her, she just wanted to be acknowledged that it was kind of sucky, that it was a little bit challenging, and that it wasn’t super, you know, that she didn’t want to need to be optimistic in this moment. But the way he framed it was what because I’m “positivity.” Right? And so, it almost became like an excuse. Well, because I am this, that essentially what he’s saying is I can’t not push that optimism on you. I can’t not force you to try to see the good, even when you’re not ready for it. So what I invited him to do was kind of back out of that a little bit and say, what if you’re not “positivity”? Well, what if you have positivity? But what if you need to balance that out with the awareness that sometimes people aren’t ready to look at the bright side because they actually need to move through the suck. They need to move through the difficulty, and then they can actually own what’s positive. And what’s possible on the other side of that instead of this, you know, kind of what could be seen as unrealistic or naive. So that was just an example of giving him some distance and saying, wait a minute, like you need to almost put your positivity in the corner for a few minutes and connect with your wife through a different part of you. Right. Whether it’s like you, for example, I’d be curious how this resonates with you having positivity so high. Does, does that story mean anything to you? Have you ever seen where your positivity actually gets you in trouble in a relationship because of—I’m kind of putting you on the spot. Discovering Your Strengths Jenn DeWall: I just love, like, I like need to, you know, share this conversation with my friends because they— I’m sure could tell you— that there are days when maybe they come to me for advice or for insights, and they’re just like, don’t want to hear it, Jenn. And so I always say, do you want to hear from Jenn, the coach, or do you want to hear from your friend Jenn, that can say, yeah, that’s awful. I like to ask that question, but absolutely that resonates. And just to catch up for everyone up to speed, we’re talking about CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinders) right now. And we actually, I, Chris, gave me the opportunity to take this test again. And one of my top characteristics or strengths is “positivity.” And so to bring this back. Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure some people actually, I can also look at it on a Monday morning, I roll into the office, and people are like, I don’t want to hear it. Done. Don’t care. Don’t want to be here. Chris Failla: Brightness down! Right. Turn down the brightness. We’re not ready. Right. And you’re like, why everybody? You come in with like a soundtrack playing in the background of your mind and heart, right? Like the birds are chirping. But that’s just how you see the world because your strengths are really the, it’s the lens right through which you, you can’t not see the world, but there’s a proverb in ancient Hebrew proverb that says something about like one who takes takes off a coat in heavy rain is like one who sings songs to a heavy heart. Right. And sorry, I’m not trying to be a downer to you. But listen to your positivity, even right there, it’s like, oh, like you viscerally. Oh, ouchies, right? But it’s, it’s so needed. Right. It’s such a beautiful strength until it stops serving your relationships. And so one of the things like if, if you and I were in a coaching session, for example, I would offer you, I mean, we would kind of get there together. Right? But just at a quick glance, you also have this strength, and your top five, called empathy and empathy and positivity, work together as superpowers. Because it’s this powerful ability to connect with people in their emotions, but then also bring them through it to the other side, to them are the positive, hopeful outcome. But if your positivity is kind of being overplayed and your empathy is being underplayed, then it’s going to come across to your friends. Right. Like, okay, I’m not ready for this, dial it back a little bit, Jenn. But if you lead with— here’s the question you could ask your friends— would you like, would you like empathy or positivity right now? Which one of my strengths would you like me to be leading with for this conversation? Do you need to just be seen and heard, or do you need some perspective and some hope? Jenn DeWall: I like that as a great coaching question. In general, even as a leader of thinking about, you know, asking your employee, like if they did their own strengths, assessment, assessment, then asking their employee, what one would you like? How would you like this? I think that that’s a really powerful way. So I want to bring this in because clearly, I know where I get it wrong. Where do a lot of people get it wrong? So like, I definitely can relate to being “too much.” I’m looking here at my strengths, communication, positivity. Woo. You choose to get empathy. I mean, I either seem like the most exciting colleague or think, goodness, I do not work with her. Probably some people. So, where do people get it wrong? Chris Failla: Well, it’s, by the way, I think you are perfect for hosting this podcast. And when I, when I was sharing with my wife, the results of your strength, she was like, and she gets to be the host of the podcast? That must be like her- that’s her wheelhouse. Right. She must love that. You really are. You’re you’re incredible. Even in the process leading up to this, I was like, I can’t wait because I know I’m in such good hands, and she’s going to bring such good energy. So, where do people get it wrong? Abraham Maslow is credited as saying, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And it’s when we, we kind of, we show up in every situation with a single sense of self of like, this is just how I am. This is how I operate. This is who I am. And so people just need to deal with me as I am, instead of realizing that we have all these tools to bring to the table in terms of how we show up. So whether it’s, I mean, how many times does somebody come to a brainstorming meeting, ready to get things checked off a list, and they’re sitting there so frustrated because either the leader didn’t set the context for what type of meeting it is. Right? And it’s like, Hey, I’m asking you to put aside your, your like executing parts of you that wants to just get stuff done. I’m asking you to just like, put that aside for a little bit and lead with your strategic, your, you know, your ability to generate ideas, your creativity. So if this is making sense, we get it wrong. When we show up the same way to every single thing, instead of front-loading, what is the best part of me that I need to lead within what situation? And knowing that on the front end, instead of kind of paying for that on the backend. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. And I love that it’s reminding us to be intentional and that we have to wake out of our autopilot tendencies of just being in the day-to-day of work. How do you understand the different parts of yourselves? How do you start to begin to understand that? Because I think self-awareness, we might be aware of some things like, Hey, I know time is a really big issue to me. If someone is late or if someone doesn’t respond to something right away, but where do you begin to understand the different parts of yourself? Chris Failla: Yeah. Well, so there are so many, it’s a big question. There are so many different angles at which to approach that, right? Because you have, you have the values piece, so right. We talked about pet peeves and things like that, but pet peeves are really kind of like superficial expressions of deep values. Right? So, so you can approach it from the values angle of well- let me say this. Often we can start with paying attention to our energy. Do we start by paying attention to how I am feeling at this moment? Why is this draining the life out of me? Why do I feel ignited right now? Why did I want to stay in that conversation forever? Or why was I crawling out of my skin and wanting to, why did I want to evacuate that conversation? It’s our body that will tell us things way before our mind or even heart will. Be Aware of What Energizes Your Team Jenn DeWall: And it’s so interesting because I want to talk about energy. That’s still kind of a new way to describe how to pay attention to yourself. Awareness. I think that people sometimes are like- energy? What the heck? That’s not, doesn’t seem logical, or it doesn’t seem rational, but I, I like the, you know, just that bringing to light that pay attention to the physical signs that your body is showing in a conversation as a first place. Keep going. I just love that. You said that because, and I want to call out the fact that there are some people that are like, what does that mean? But that was just thinking about how you’re feeling, and you’re thinking about energy. It’s just, how are you feeling? Chris Failla: Yeah. And you can watch, right? So you’re in a meeting, and you watch somebody’s body language, right? You say something, and their shoulders slump or their head goes down, or their face doesn’t move, and they don’t even realize it, paying attention to those cues that our bodies are indicators of what, of what we’re feeling right now and what the energy inside of us is doing that energy is connected to our needs, to our values, to our strengths, to our longings. So one of the things that I’ll do in a meeting is as I’ll actually tell somebody, you know, I’ll, if I’m- Okay, I’m going to come at this one angle and then I’ll come back around from another side because you asked, how do we start to identify language? Really, really the thing that we need is the language for it. Once somebody can name something for us, it’s, it’s like when you go to the doctor, and you just feel off, and even if the doctor doesn’t have great news for you, right? Like so many people, they away from the doctor. If the doctor is named for them, what’s going on. There’s a sense of relief because you’re able to kind of like, hang what you’re experiencing on to write a word. Okay. You have the flu. Okay. Well, just knowing that. Right? I can relax a little bit. It’s the same thing with our strengths, the more language we have to describe these internal dynamics, internal needs, these values, the more quickly we can connect with others and help other people meet them, you know, meet us in that and we can meet them. So there’s Gallup in the StrengthsFinder tool. I love that. It gives a quick overview. You don’t even need to take the assessment to get a quick kind of insight into four of the broad parts of how we operate. Right? So you know, I’m looking at your strengths report right here, but anybody can relate to that there are at least four different parts of us, four different kinds of domains that are our actions and behaviors fall into, right? So there’s the relational or the connection part of us, right? The part of us that wants to belong, the part of us wants to feel seen and be in a relationship. There’s the influencing part of us. We want to make a difference. We want to know that our work matters. We want to know that we’re making an impact on people. We have the executing side of us, which is about getting things done. It’s how we act. It’s how we behave. It’s what drives us to actually get things created and completed in the world. And then there’s the thinking side of us that sometimes just needs to process, sometimes needs to mull things over or make a plan. So what often happens is people will come to a “thinking time,” showing up with their “doer.” Right? Or they’ll come to a “doing time” showing up with their “thinker,” and that’s. Yeah. Jenn DeWall: Because, well, first and foremost, I’m looking again at my results, and you identified the four parts, executing, influencing relationship building, and strategic thinking. I have no purple in my job. I have no “executing.” Chris Failla: Yeah. So this is where, this is where coaching is really fun, right. Because it’s not until near number 15, so there, there are a couple of different, you know, meanings we could, we could extrapolate from this or guesses we can take at this, but here’s what I’ve observed of you. You actually, you do follow through, you do get things done. You do create. You do make things happen in the world. So it’s not an issue of what you can or can’t do. It’s how you get there. And so could I put a couple of questions out there for you? So let me ask you this. When a task gets delegated to you, is that, is that a common part of your role? Jenn DeWall: Yeah, having a task or project requires execution and then a lot of maybe even just coordination too that I do on behalf of our classes, making sure the students have the materials they need so on and so forth. Chris Failla: Okay. So let me ask you this. What are the most, if, if you feel comfortable answering this right on, on this podcast, but I’d be curious to hear what the most draining part of your job is? Jenn DeWall: Anything where it’s extremely detail-oriented? The greatest draining part is any administrative piece that’s detail-oriented. I just, you know, that’s not my top of mind. I’m really great at getting bigger things done. I’m great at pushing things forward. I’m great at having difficult conversations. When it comes down to individual emails. I mean, I’m going to be honest— and someone listening here knows I’m not even great at responding within whatever 24-hour window people expect. Like those are the things that are more draining for me is just the smaller pieces. Does that make sense based on my strengths? Chris Failla: Yeah. I, I, well, I resonate with that personally. Right. And that that does totally make sense. So let me, is it okay if we peel back some layers on this. Jenn DeWall: Yeah, let’s peel it back! Chris Failla: So to give you a feel of how this works. So here’s, if we peel it back, one of the questions I’d ask you is what the thought is? Or what’s the story you’re telling yourself when you approach your inbox, and you have these emails to respond to, what is the, if, if you could like put language to what’s going through your mind with your inbox facing you, what are you thinking? Jenn DeWall: I’m always behind. Chris Failla: I’m always behind. Jenn DeWall: I’m never caught up to where I should be. I’m always playing catch-up. And so then the emails can be very overwhelming and, you know, I think the other side is, can I hire someone? That’s the other bottom? Like, can someone manage this for me? No. It’s just really always going to it and being like, what did I miss now? How far behind am I? I like it, it’s interesting. Because you might think of the positivity, I absolutely am super critical of myself. So yeah. It’s what did I miss? How did I do something up? What do I have to do now? Like, oh my gosh, I just can’t seem to get ahead of it. That would be, those would be the core thoughts. Figure Out Who, Not How Chris Failla: Right. So you, you, you kind of brought us into to really, I guess, one really important thing that you can approach from two different angles, right? There’s a guy named Dan Sullivan, and I think he wrote this book with Benjamin Hardy. Are you familiar with the book? Who Not How? It’s, it’s brilliant; it’s a brilliant book that gets us thinking about the nature of procrastination, right? And often you can notice somebody that you seem to be like an idea and a people person. So what often happens? You can probably relate to this, but you have an idea, and you’re ignited by the idea of the possibility. Quickly, your mind goes to, okay, well, I better do something with that so that it can actually serve people in the world instead of just staying in this ethereal idea land. Right? And so your mind probably immediately goes to, okay, how do I do this? How do I get this done? And then what happens to your energy as soon as you start going into the details of what it’s going to take to make this happen. Jenn DeWall: That’s when I can go with… things aren’t finished. My follow-through probably isn’t as polished, and my enthusiasm drains. Chris Failla: So, and I’m, I’m exactly the same way. That’s why I can name it for you, right? It’s because I totally get it. So who not, how means what if the first question we asked wasn’t how do I do this? But rather, who is the best person to bring into this, to help support me and make it a reality? Jenn DeWall: Yes! Chris Failla: Because there’s, there’s a relational understanding there that we don’t have every strength, right? We’re not completely balanced along with the thinking executing, relating, influencing all of us, have a specific kind of bent or direction. One of the Gallup, you know, the researchers, the authors behind the Clifton strengths tool, one of the things that they say is you’re not meant to be a well-rounded person. You’re meant to be sharp. Jenn DeWall: Cause I think a lot of people think that if you’re going to be the perfect package or the ideal package, you are well-rounded and every skill that may be a team or an organization needs, or you believe that they need. Teams Should Be Well-Rounded, Individuals Should be Sharp Chris Failla: Yeah. It just doesn’t exist. Gallup’s Gallup’s statement is you’re not meant to be a well-rounded person. You’re meant to be sharp. And teams are meant to be well-rounded. So, so the invitation is to actually lean into our sharpness and say, okay, wait a minute, myself as Jenn, what if I got to spend 80% of my time creating, connecting, conversing, right? In this realm. And when it came to the details to the follow-through and stuff like that, what if that’s where you’re actually onto something, when your thought is, I just want to hire somebody. Because there might be somebody that would actually be lit up by coming alongside you and being like, Jenn, give me all of that stuff because there’s nothing more exciting than taking something across the finish line. There’s nothing more exciting for me than diving into the details and working it all through, and figuring out how to actually execute this idea. Right. And you’re sitting there like, ugh! And they’re like, just give that to me! Give that to me! Right? Because, so, but here’s the thing I could say a little bit more about that. I’ll just make this comment, but will you remind me to come back around to our internal team because that’s part of this whole conversation? But what I wanted to say with that real quick is two leadership challenges happen that strengths help us be aware of. One of those things is that we have a tendency to downplay our strengths because it’s so natural to us. It’s so close to home that we just assume wouldn’t everybody be able to do it this way? Doesn’t everybody just get this? Doesn’t that just click for them? Part of my story is I lived in China for just under five years, and I speak Spanish, but I also was learning Mandarin. And it was about 18 months into my time learning Mandarin that I just had this horrible day at class. Like my teacher was getting frustrated with me, and I was so discouraged, and things were not clicking. And I came home from class that day. And my wife noticed that I was just not in a good headspace. And she’s like, what’s going on with you? What happened? And I just told her that I had a super discouraging day. She’s like, wait a minute. Are you telling me that this is the first day you’ve had like that? I was like, yeah, what do you mean? She was like, baby, that’s how all of the rest of us have been feeling the whole entire time. I was like, oh, that sucks. Like it had never occurred to me. Right? Because I had actually been in a really good flow and a really good zone. And so it became, it was so natural to me, the language just made sense to me. Why wouldn’t it just make sense? The same way to everybody else? So what we do is we kind of project our strengths on the others, and we think, oh, well, right. If this is so easy for me, of course, it should be easy for them. And then when they don’t, you know, achieve or execute to the same level that we can, then we get frustrated because it’s like, it’s easy. Look, I can show you this is how you do it, instead of realizing right. That for them, they might have a way different wiring. The other side of that, though, the flip side of that is that we project what drains us onto other people. And so we’re afraid to ask other people to do things for us that would drain us because why would we want to be the drain on them? Jenn DeWall: I do that all the time. I never would ask someone to do something that I think is, oh my gosh, that’s daunting, draining, tedious, redundant. I don’t want to ask people to do that because I don’t want to inconvenience them or add that to their plate. Your Weaknesses are Someone Else’s Strengths Chris Failla: Isn’t that interesting? Right. And they might be sitting there, right? So you have at the bottom of your strengths-mix is things like analytical, which is that detail piece, right? Detail piece. Consistency, which is about kind of like that, that routine and doing things the same way over and over right. Discipline, which is about structuring your day, your world, and it’s all about creating structure and organizing things. And deliberative, which is all about implicational—thinking of really thinking everything through before you step into it, having the plan all the way figured out. And, but my wife has 1, 2, 3, 4 of your bottom five is in her top five. Jenn DeWall: So interesting. Can I hire your wife? Chris Failla: But what’s, so what’s fun about that is any like those things that you see as mundane or detailed or whatever. She’s like, I love that. Give me something mundane because it doesn’t take any energy for me. Right. Or give me something detailed, give me numbers to play with because that’s just where that’s just what makes sense to me in my world. And you’re like, I wouldn’t, why would I ever do that to you? Right. Why would I ever offer this food for you to eat when I hate that? And they’re like, that’s my favorite dish, and that’s my favorite meal. So just, just having a little bit of that distance to say, oh, wait a minute. What if everybody isn’t wired exactly like me, and what if we had more language to articulate, to identify, and to actually lean into these things? Will you let me bring this around quickly to the internal team piece of it? Jenn DeWall: Yes, I will! Let’s do it! Chris Failla: Let’s say we just don’t have the luxury of having that perfect complimentary partnership right at hand. Right? So, but in the same way that we can hand off a task or a facet of our work or activity or project to an external person, someone else on our team, I believe we can also hand things off to certain parts of ourselves. Jenn DeWall: Okay. Explain to me what you mean by that. Yeah. Explain it. Chris Failla: I want to put you on the spot real quick. Because you just had one of those nodding your head and had an insight moment. So I, I wanna, I’m curious what you think, what, what you started connecting there. Jenn DeWall: I don’t well, reframe that question one more time for me. Chris Failla: What was that insight you just had when you, when you started nodding your head? Jenn DeWall: No, I think it’s more like, how do you, or how do I apply it? Like how do I apply positivity to make myself more disciplined? Do I just say, Jenn, you can do this? I know that you have a plan. Is that what you mean? By being able to take that and look at your weakness and say, just face it head-on. Is that what you mean? Chris Failla: It’s, it’s not as much about taking a weakness and facing it head-on as saying, what is the best strength I have to get me the outcome that I need? And if I always lead with positivity, maybe what I need right now is actually right. So you have one in your top 10 called “activator.” You’re probably a powerhouse of getting things started. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. It’s just not finishing. Chris Failla: So, so there’s a few different directions. You can go with this. You could either just lean into that and say, Hey, you know, I need somebody to partner with me. That’s great at taking things across the finish line. Who is the follow-through person that loves that feeling of checking something off the list? And maybe that’s something you look for in who you hire, but it’s also when you have finished something. Because is it true that you’ve never followed through on something and like your entire life? Jenn DeWall: Yeah, absolutely not. I do it. I just procrastinate my way there. Self-Awareness is Key to Understanding Strengths Chris Failla: Right. So, so the thing to really- the self-awareness piece comes in to say, okay, when I have followed through, what is it that me there, what was the motivation? What was the thought? What was the thing that was helping get to that follow-through point? How do I reproduce that more on the front end and with more intentionality instead of just occasionally following through and being like, I did it don’t know how, but I got here! Versus, okay, this is what’s going on. Right. So we would look at some of your strengths and say, okay, when you follow through, which ones of your strengths have a follow-through component to them. And, but some people don’t have time for all of that, or they don’t have this assessment in front of them. Right. So, but what you can do is you can, you can just kind of say, okay, last time that I followed through on something, what was I telling myself that helped me get at that last 20%? Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I mean, and I think it’s Jenn like you’ve got goals, and this is the last little part of the hill that you have to climb. You’re almost there. That’s my positivity message. And let’s do it because you’ve got goals. Chris Failla: Yeah. Okay. So you’ve got goals. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, even as I watch your facial expression, when you talk about your goals, when you like, like there’s this energy there, right. So when you think about your goals, what’s what does that do for you? What what’s, what’s that connected to? Like, what do your goals mean to you, or what happens when you feel that sense of accomplishment? How, how does that come to you? Jenn DeWall: Confidence. But then, when I can accomplish my goals, or when I think about the vision of what I want to create, it excites me! You know, that builds up the energy of it builds up enthusiasm, which then makes me want to take action. But then I quickly go to. I want to do all things. Chris Failla: Right. But, so what you’ve, what I heard a little bit in there is some of that futuristic in you, right? I’ve got vision. I’ve got, I know where I want to take this. So there’s an invitation in here, right? In this conversation, if we were full-on coaching, it would be really excavating. What are those things that drive you? What are the things that help move you forward and keep that energy sustained so that you don’t peter out 30% into the project, right? Or 40% or whatever. And so for you hearing that, it’s about your goals. It’s about a vision for not only what you want to accomplish, but I heard a vision for the kind of person you want to be. Jenn DeWall: Yes! I always think in terms of long-term like, what type of life do I want to live? What am I creating every day? Chris Failla: So, so that’s an example (or futuristic), right? And so whether we attach that to a specific strength based on the language here, or whether we just know that that’s something you can, you can almost hack yourself, right? You can, and you can kind of like catch yourself when your energy is starting to wane and be like, wait a minute. Why did I start this in the first place? What was that vision I had for myself of the life I wanted to create? And, and how does this email play into that? How does, how does this little task play into the life I’m creating? And the vision I have for Jenn DeWall two years from now, three years from now. How do I pull that into the present and live from that now? Leading With Your Strengths Jenn DeWall: Yes. I love that. Connecting the dots to make sure I’m attaching the small or what I would perceive as maybe redundant or just meaningless tasks into why it’s so important. I love that. So, Chris, look, I know that we had so many more questions to even talk about this! How do you even begin to look at this as a leader? We went through and looked at some of my strengths. Like where does someone start if they hear this and they’re curious because this is a great tool to just again, get that reflection of yourself and to understand what your natural tendencies are, as well as what your blind spots are. Which mine are all executing, as you’re hearing, don’t email me. I may not respond. No, I’m kidding. But how do you start as a leader? How do you start to look at this? What would I know you had a framework? What would that be? Chris Failla: Yeah, so the framework is, I think part of it is, how do I primarily show up as my default way of leading? First of all, take the strengths assessment. If you, if you have a chance, it’s very worth your 20 bucks, right? It’s very worth the 20 bucks to get the language of Gallup Strengths. But if you don’t take that assessment, one of the places to start is okay. Would people describe me primarily as a relational leader? Do I get things done through collaboration, through connection? Do I create relational space? Am I more of an impactful and influencing leader? So do I show up wanting to move everybody else towards the goal? Do I want to get people bought in and release them into a vision? Am I more of an executing leader where I want to do it more myself? And I feel a sense of accomplishment based on what I’m producing day-to-day, or am I more of a strategic leader where it’s all about? I come up with the plan. I come up with the processes, and then I invite other people to kind of hold the relationships together and produce the results. So what’s your default way of what’s your core or primary way of showing up. But then within that, also realizing that you have these other things accessible to you and asking what’s needed at the moment what’s needed in this next conversation what’s needed in this next meeting and trying on different parts of you to say, Hey, I’m going to actually like I’ll give you, do we have time for a quick sports analogy? Jenn DeWall: Yes Yes! Chris Failla: So I’m I coach soccer, tennis doesn’t work as well in this, but I’ve coached quite a few sports, and I play a lot of sports, but sports gives us a quick analogy, right? To, to say the coach is not the players. And if I am coaching a soccer team, the more I know the different players on the field, the more I’m going to be to put them in their best position. Some people are just attackers by mindset. Some people are more defensive by mindset. Some people see the whole field and need to play in the midfield. So if I realize that I’m the coach, not the player, and I take the time to get to know the different parts of me, then here’s what can happen. I can realize that that for certain plays or parts of the game, I want a certain team captain. And I want certain people not to be a ball-hog. Right? So, so if the defense holds onto the ball the whole game and never gets it up to the attacker, and they’re like, well, nobody’s scoring on us. Right. But we never get up to the attackers. We’re not going to score and win. So it’s actually being able to look inside of ourselves and say, okay, is the executing part of me being a ball hog? Should I actually let that part of me pass the ball to my strategic thinker? And we make a more robust plan before we jump into action. Does my team need me to show up a little more relationally right now and strengthen our connection so that we’re, we realized we’re on the same page and then from there, right? So pass the ball to that relational part of you. And it just knowing that we have that inside of us helps us get that much closer to the actual output of it, instead of thinking that we only have one way of showing up. We’re much more complex and nuanced as humans than that. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. So what you’re saying is first start with understanding yourself. You could take this test for $20 USD but then think about it as you’re going into maybe a difficult conversation or a team meeting. I love that analogy of the soccer game or football as our international, you know, we’ll call it something different, but thinking about what is needed to play this game, what is needed for this meeting right now? And how do I need to show up? I think those are really important reminders because, again, we can’t just keep leading with our strength, going back to how we started this conversation, because it might actually create the opposite impact. Chris Failla: Yeah. So I hope that I don’t know if that answers your question. There’s obviously so much more we can. Jenn DeWall: I know. I feel like I need to have you back just so we can deep dive into this, or maybe we need to bring in a guest. So then you could go through and actually coach them how they would use it because I know it’d be fun to do something different. I’m sure they get sick of hearing the “positivity whoo-hoo” host to that. Chris Failla: No, but I know you have more to you than that. Jenn DeWall: How many would like, you know, I know I know that we have to wrap this up, but in curiosity, like how do you have any tips on how to be more, a little bit more intentional of what you recommend when you’re working with people? Because I already can hear the excuse, but my work is busy, but who has time to think about that? Do you have any tips for how we can really just slow down so we can speed up? Chris Failla: Yes. So slowing down is huge, right? One of the best pieces of leadership advice I ever got was from one of my, one of my professors in grad school. And he said he said someone gave him leadership advice. That was two words. And it was “be unhurried.” And that was really meaningful to me, right? Because that’s not, that’s even different than don’t hurry. Be unhurried- is a way of being that allows you to be more reflective, be more intentional. So that’s something that’s kind of a bigger picture, more philosophical approach to it. But realizing that as we “be unhurried,” we will have more time, more bandwidth to actually think about how we want to show up. But the second thing is it can happen in the little transitions, build in more margin into your time, right? So put 15 minutes in between your meetings and take three of those minutes to say, okay, who am I showing up to? What’s needed? What part of me do I want to be team captain for this next hour-long conversation and notice that your energy is going to shift dramatically just by taking that three-minute pause? It might even not take three minutes. Some might even take just one minute to say, whom do I want to be team captain here and show up into the meeting, leading with that part of you. And I have a feeling you will be surprised at what kind of energy and an outcome you get out of that just by knowing how to meet people, where they’re coming from, and what they need. Where to Find Chris and Learn More Jenn DeWall: I think that’s a great closing tip, too, to be unhurried. Slow down. Think about what’s appropriate, given the situation or circumstance that you’re walking to or walking into. Be unhurried. I think that’s a lesson that we all need to be reminded of probably daily. Chris, how can people get in touch with you? I know they can go to Chris failla.com when they’re they can connect with and probably book you for speaking. You can work with them on their own relationship or leadership challenges, anything I’m missing there? Chris Failla: That’s a great way to do it. Just if they want to know more about my work, they want to check out some of the resources I’ve put together. I’m, I’m more of an old school. I’m not much of an emailer either. And so I love when people just give me a call, right, or reach out over the phone. I love that human-to-human connection. I think that’s kind of a lost art. So, but I would say reach out in whatever form they’re kind of used to, but, but get a feel for my work and my website. Also, I’m going to make an offer for some of the things that I’m putting together. Some really big discounts and kind of accelerators for the listeners of this podcast. So if they go to ChrisFailla.com and I know you’ll have that spelled out in the show notes because not a lot of people spell my name, right, but ChrisFailla.com/podcast, then they’ll have access to some tools I’m putting together that help give language and help reinforce this framework so that they can show up at their best in every situation, not just on accident every once in a while. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, Chris, thank you so much for all of your insight. Thank you for coaching me today, and thank you for also giving and leaving us with a reminder to show up and be unhurried. It was truly a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much. Chris Failla: Yeah. And I love this. Thank you. I can’t wait. Let’s do it again. Jenn DeWall: I know we need to! Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast with Chris Failla. I hope you really enjoyed it and took away valuable and tips for how you can leverage the strengths of your team. If you want to connect with Chris, head on over to ChrisFailla.com, and there you can find his podcast and also download his e-book, Playing to Your Strengths. Now, of course, if you want to learn more about leadership development for your team or organization, don’t forget to head over to Crestcom.com. We offer complimentary to all our skills-building workshops, and we would love to come and help your organization. If you know someone that would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them. And don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service.   The post Play to Your Team’s Strengths with Strengths Performance Coach, Chris Failla appeared first on Crestcom International.

Achieving High-Performance Through Emotional Intelligence with Neuro-Leadership Expert, Maureen Chiana Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone! It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Maureen Chiana, who was the neuro-leadership and emotional intelligence consultant, speaker, and facilitator. She leverages brain science insights of how the brain works to empower executives, leaders, and educators to unlock potential, maximize performance, accelerate, and embed new behaviors to enable them and transform how they lead, work, and live! Maureen’s expertise is in behavioral change. Using the latest findings from neuroscience to help organizations become more human and their people to improve their quality of thinking to achieve sustainable success. She helps people mitigate the biases that negatively affect them and their decisions so they can flourish, excel and become limitless. Maureen and I sat down to discuss how we can create high-performing teams by understanding emotional intelligence. Enjoy! Meet Maureen Chiana, Neuro-Leadership Consultant Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone! On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. I’m sitting down with Maureen Chiana, who is a neuro-leadership consultant. That is a title, Maureen! How did you start this journey to become a neuro-leadership expert and consultant? Tell me a little bit about that, and welcome to the show. We’re so happy to have you. Maureen Chiana: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I’m so honored to be here. How did I become a neuro-leadership consultant? It’s a long story, but I’m going to give you the short version. My background is in biomedical sciences, and I’ve kind of done quite a bit of career changes into IT, into lecturing, and then opened a business. And it was after the business I opened, which was in hospitality. I had to close it after four years, or I’d rather have to sell it after four years. I really felt so low because I have big plans, and that didn’t happen. So, in the end, I really felt like a failure. I felt so low. I felt vulnerable. I felt, I just felt so bad. And then, a few months later, I lost my mom. So it was so many emotions that it was just a really tough time. Well, then I started asking the question, how do people fail and bounce back? How do people, you know, go through difficult situations and then come back and be okay? And I think my research brain kicked back in because I did use to work in medical research in the nineties. And I just started asking the questions, and that led me to neuroscience because it was more the brain. And I just really wanted to know how the brain works. And it was such an interesting journey because on discovering neuroscience in detail, the interesting thing is I have lectured in anatomy in the past, but not really neuroscience, not really how the brain really works. So it really just opened my eyes to a whole new field, the whole new area. And that was how I discovered the brain and the control that we have over the brain. And then, I was able to now use this in my role as the leader in educational management. And I just saw how quickly we’re able to turn around on top-performing departments, disengaged teams. It was just an eye-opener. So that was my introduction to neuro-leadership. Jenn DeWall: That’s a pretty powerful story of hitting bottom, but then recognizing, or I guess, as you described it, turning that research brain back on and recognizing that our brain can help us in those situations. I’m curious, how do you work with individuals in terms of neuro-leadership? Maureen Chiana: So what I do is working with organizations as a whole. Suppose I want to change their culture, then I’m working with individuals because it still comes back to people. And the key is in whatever aspect it is. It’s how do people, what makes people behave the way they do, what makes them act the way they are. So with individuals who are leaders in organizations or business owners, it’s finding out where they are—finding out where they want to go and then helping them kind of bridge the gap. And also, with a lot of leaders, it’s fi helping them get their team on board, helping them relate better to their team, helping them understand themselves first and foremost because then they can understand the people that are needed. And the key thing for me is really helping organizations and leaders understand that they’re dealing with human beings. So it’s really bringing the humanness back into the, into leadership. Back into, you know, so the focus is not so much on results and skills but on people, because once you focus on the people, the results will follow, and they will follow in such a massive way than when you’re focusing more on the skills. So it also to your question, how it’s going into an organization and finding out, you know, what the issues are, and then helping them create a program which I then deliver and usually over a period of time to help them. So I will use the training and coaching to have that because I don’t believe in one trade, one-day training or two-day training, and then going away. Because what we’re really looking at is helping people rewire their brains. So that’s my key. That’s the key thing I do. Really. How Do You Define Emotional Intelligence? Jenn DeWall: I love it. We’re going to be talking about how to achieve high-performance using emotional intelligence. And that has to do all with rewiring our brain, but just to kind of level set. How do you define emotional intelligence? Maureen Chiana: Emotional intelligence is the ability of anyone to first and foremost understand why you’re feeling the way you are—so understanding your emotions. Understanding what creates the emotions and then enabling you to recognize them. Enable you to control them and also enable you to manage your emotions and how you interact with other people, and how other people perceive you. The reason why emotional intelligence is so important is that every thought we have every piece of information coming into the brain has to go through a check in the emotional parts of the brain. So every thought has an emotion attached to it. That then leads to you taking an action that creates a habit and behavior. So if you cannot understand what is happening with the emotions, then you can go back to the basics, which is the thought process, and you can start changing that. So it’s really helping you understand your emotions, manage those emotions so you can adapt those emotions and adapt your actions, which then changes your behavior. Jenn DeWall: Why is emotional intelligence- I mean, I think I know, you know, we all know a base level of how emotional intelligence impacts the productivity of our teams, but let’s just restate it. You know, this is again the reminder, why is emotional intelligence so important? Maureen Chiana: Emotional intelligence is extremely important because it’s the emotions that you have that drive the actions that you take, which then translates into your performance. So if you have people who are disengaged, where you really start looking at it? When you look at one individual, why is that individual not engaged at work or not motivated? Or why are they stressed while they suffered anxiety or where they’d been absent a lot from work? Or why are they ill? You know, all those, all those are actions, but what actually creates that goes back to what’s the emotions that they’re dealing with. So if you understand how you can, it, you know, it’s the intelligence of emotions. It’s like when we define IQ. This is your talent, your skills, and overall that intelligence, but it’s really intelligent about the emotions because it’s the emotions that make you who you are, makes you act the way you act, makes you feel the way you do, makes you- makes you know, so that will determine, for example, of the manager criticizes the work you do, it’s the, it’s you being able to manage your emotions intelligently would determine you respond or whether you react. And that it goes on to determine your outputs, which then leads to the performance. Jenn DeWall: How, I mean, I know we talked earlier too, because emotional intelligence, you know, well, first I’ll say this, like in my coach training too, it was all about understanding If you wanted to change the outcomes you saw it, it sounds like this is where you are too. If you wanted to see different outcomes, you have to start with your core thought. So if your core thought is, I am not good enough, then you’re going to feel a lack of confidence. Then you likely won’t apply for that promotion or maybe speak up in a meeting. Is that kind of how you see it too? Like, or where do you see it starting? Understanding the Subconscious Brain Maureen Chiana: So basically, what happens in the brain is when you have a thought when the thought comes in, then the brain is assessing in that thought process to say, okay, what is this? Is it something I’m familiar with? Or is it something that is new to me? And your emotion, the emotional sense of the amygdala, you know, predominantly the amygdala and hippocampus are really looking at it to go, do we, do we know what this is? And if it’s something, for example, that says, I’m not good enough that they thought that it’s coming, I’m not good enough. If it’s something that is already wired in the brain that you’re already feeling, or you have the thought process of you’re not good enough, or someone has told you, you’re not good enough. And it’s already stored in memory. When you have this thought process, then what the next action is. The emotions are immediate, that’s attached to that thought kick in, and you then find yourself either avoiding doing an action or carrying out a task or holding back, self-sabotage kicks in, procrastination kicks in because you feel the main thing is the subconscious brain drives 90% of what we do. Jenn DeWall: Wait. Holy Cow! I need to pause for that one. The subconscious brain controls 90% of what we do. So is this the wake-up call that all leaders need right now? Like wake up, if you’re feeling may be low or frustrated or blank, this is your opportunity to rewire. Sorry. I just want to give that as our starting point for our audience. Maureen Chiana: Yeah, exactly. Because you see when the subconscious is what drives 90% of what we do, and it’s really on autopilot. So it’s the area of your mind that is just like, I use the iceberg as a typical example. The bit you don’t see, which is below the sea, is the main part of the iceberg. The top part is just a really little bit, which is the conscious brain. So if, if the subconscious is the bit we don’t see that has our beliefs has our values has all, you know, cultural background as all those things stored in it. And that’s what’s driving. Our actions are, you know, the way we perceive ourselves, our self-value. If it’s our branding, how we identify, how we perceive ourselves, if all that is in the subconscious, that means that a lot of actions that we’re taking, we actually take it from the place of non-conscious at play, unconscious aspect. So our behaviors are not conscious. Our actions are not conscious. If that’s the case, if you don’t start looking into what’s in the unconscious, the unconscious will keep driving you to do what you consciously want to do differently. So you want to run a business and be very successful. You want to be a great manager. You want to get your team engaged, but your subconscious has a different story. The story in your subconscious is I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. It’s too difficult. I’m not qualified enough. Your subconscious, because that’s the thoughts coming in, and that’s the thought coming in, will only drive you to do what you’re giving it. So in a way, the subconscious answers the questions you ask it, or it goes on. It does what you tell it to do, basically. So if you don’t change the narrative, it will keep going in the way that you don’t want it to go. And then, you know, look, that’s what, and that’s what creates reality for everyone. I always say that everyone’s reality is different, but the reality you have is the one that is wired in your brain. So the question is, what is wired in your own brain that then drives your behavior and action? Is Your Brain Wired for High-Performance? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, I’m pretty candid on the podcast, but a big part of rewiring. Because I’m, you know, you hear the expression, a recovering perfectionist, and the thought rooted in that is I am not good enough because that then motivated me. Let’s think about this earlier on in my career to do more research, to maybe study more, to spend more time at work depending on if we’re looking at college and my first job, but then when I think about the “I’m not good enough.” And how that actually showed up in my first career, I was really reluctant to want to contribute because I just assumed that someone else had a better answer or a better piece of feedback. And I also then would go into things, not feeling competent. So if I had an annual review, I would be very anticipatory of, okay, well, this is where they’re going to tell me where I’m missing the mark, because I need something that I need to work on, right? Perfectionist, like there’s some, I’m fundamentally flawed in some way, or I’m not good enough. And I say this, and I share my example because I think, you know, we all have it, and we all need to understand what messages we program in. I know that I am inherently at my core. I know that I’m good enough, but when I’m not tapped into that, my subconscious absolutely will take over and be like, Jenn, you’re missing the mark on this. You’re always behind. You need to work on this. And that is where I don’t. That feels awful. It feels awful. Maureen Chiana: Yeah. And when you think about it, and lots of what is wired in our brain has been wired in passively without us actively doing it. So things that we’ve absorbed from when we’re children, things we’ve absorbed. When we’re growing up. Things we listen to. Things people have said. All that is all that kind of goes into the brain passively, but it’s then in storage so that when you then want to do something, what is stored in the brain is the negatives. You know, I can’t, I can’t, you can’t, it’s too difficult. You’re not good enough. So when you then want to actually cautiously do something, the subconscious, which is so powerful, 90% is going, no, no, no. That’s, you know, but remember you’re not good enough. You can’t do this. And if you allow it, it will then drive your actions. But the interesting thing is, oh, it’s I use this quote, what you, what you focus on, expands. Whatever you give this- so whatever the subconscious brain is focusing on- is what it will, you know, the brain then filters every other thing out. So if you’re, if what you’re selling yourself is that you are not good enough, every other thing is filtered out. You know, the system filters everything else out. So all you’re seeing is I’m not good enough. Do you know? So your actions will be, I’m not good enough. You open a book. All you see are things I’m not good enough. You want to carry out an action. And you know what all you all you’re going to see is things that will confirm that you’re not good enough because your subconscious brain will help you confirm what you’re already telling it because it has to protect you from what it perceives as a threat. And the threat is anything that is different from what is already wired in it. Jenn DeWall: oh my gosh, I love, that’s a really powerful, you know, again, observation, to understand that it’s not true. What is the truth that you’re telling yourself? Because it’s your truth, but not THE truth. That’s the one that you have programmed and reinforced through experiences. And that’s the lens of how you’re going to observe your life. And so we have to challenge it and say, how true is it really? Is that like, so where do we start? How can we talk about how this emotional intelligence can impact the culture of a team? Like what, when we don’t have that right mindset, how does that actually show up in a team perspective? Maureen Chiana: One thing to also remember is that emotions are contagious. So if one person within a team comes in with negative emotion, that can spread really fast within a team. Really quickly. And then you start finding everyone else, you know, replicating that negative emotion. And also the brain in terms of when it’s trying to keep us away from stress, that is actually stronger than the positive is, you know, make it giving you a reward. And the reason for that is the brain is trying to keep you away from anything that is dangerous. So we did it seem, you’ve got a group of people with different thoughts, different beliefs, different values, different actions, and everything comes out in the form of emotion on action or a thought process. So a typical example is if they want to go through a change process or you want to implement something different, you will have people there who automatically would resist change because that’s the brain’s normal way. But there are people who are so risk-averse because of their upbringing, because of their culture, because of what is already wired in their brain. So the key there is, you see, when you have more of anything that ends up becoming the culture because the culture of any organization is the people. It is the accumulation of the different aspects of people. So if you don’t start making clear what you want the culture of the organization to be, you end up having is the, is the culture of what’s predominant in the people that you have. So it’s really important to set a tone on what you want so that people consciously can start changing their behavior pattern to suit the culture that you want. High-Performing Teams Start With Intentional Leadership Jenn DeWall: I, you know, I think that’s so important. I think that that’s often the piece that we might forget where we as leaders, you know, people that might be listening to this, maybe they have had the opportunity to take an emotional intelligence class, or they might have a little bit more familiarity. So any of you listening may have a better understanding of how you need to control your emotions because of the impact that it has on others. But I do feel like a lot of leaders forget to take that forward into the team environment and to put the responsibility onto those individuals that may not have had that training yet, or maybe you can help them with that training. But, you know, I think that we really do need to start educating people on the personal impact of when we do not show up in a way that’s productive or supportive how that can completely impact culture. Because I think again, employees put a lot of pressure on leaders to get it right. And sometimes that’s totally founded, but sometimes it’s really gotta be on the employees too, to say, how do I want to show up at work? I can’t just sit in victim mode and blame everything on the organizational hierarchy or the leader. Like, what part do I own? Sorry, that’s my little soapbox. But I think that we miss it as an opportunity. It’s often something that’s only discussed at maybe different levels of leadership. Maureen Chiana: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And the fact is that every single person is responsible for their own emotions. And this is where it’s really important for leaders themselves to understand how they are opposite leadership starts with yourself first. You’ve got to be able to lead yourself first. Then you can lead others because the whole aspect of emotional intelligence is once you understand your own emotions, then you can help others. It’s becoming a coach as a leader. You’ve got to also be a coach to your people, and getting them to then start being responsible for their own thoughts, their own emotions. Because as they say— what you don’t know, you don’t know. If people don’t understand that, actually, they can do something about the way they’re feeling or the way they’re thinking or the way they perceive things or the way their reality is. If they don’t know that, then they will, you know, they believe that the way they are, what they’re seeing is the truth. But the fact is, is it really the truth, or is it your truth that your brain has created? You know, then you believed it is the truth. And for them, it’s real because that’s, that’s what their brain knows. So it’s really important. I always say that it’s, you know, for any organization, it’s important to train the leaders, but get the leaders to work with the teams or train the teams. And, it has to be over a period of time because brain rewiring takes time. It is, you know, it’s repetition that enables you to create new wiring. Then you cut down the old wiring, and it starts disappearing. The new one becomes the main wiring, but it takes time. So it can’t just be given training. And that said, the question is, how do they then implement it. You know I’m working with a leader currently who, you know, she’s gone through the course. I think she’s on her seventh module, and she started having problems with one of the team members. And she went. I would never have even thought to even stop and ask the question to the team member. I would have just told them what to do or, you know, acted in a completely different way. So questioning is powerful too, to really engage people because it makes them stop and think. And that process then helps them start being accountable for their own actions as well. Leveraging Emotional Intelligence to Achieve High-Performance Jenn DeWall: I love that, asking those open-ended coaching questions, getting them to reflect instead of maybe just making an observation or an assumption, giving them the opportunity to think through it and describe, so I know we’ll probably weave this in, but so how can you use emotional intelligence to achieve high-performance? What is the framework? What does that look like? If you’re a leader, you’re thinking about how you can leverage the power of EI or emotional intelligence. How do you do that to achieve high-performance? Maureen Chiana: I think the main thing because I created a framework, and the main thing I start with is helping people understand that they can rewire their brains. Yeah, that’s the first piece to rewire the brain. Then the next part is emotional intelligence. So it’s able to understand the emotion, be able to control the emotion, manage those emotions, form those relationships effectively so that you can be a better influencer. And then the third one is adaptability, which is emotional agility, or emotional adaptability, which is being able to now change the behavior patterns. It’s possible because once you’ve been able to rewire the brain, then you know that you can actually adapt; you can be flexible. Now you know things are not fixed. And it’s learning how to go back and question your brain about what it is coming up with. So it’s the awareness first and foremost of what’s my brain saying? What are these questions coming up? What’s this trigger? What is causing this emotion I’m having? It’s able to ask those questions, you know, have the awareness, then be able to then adapt and change and know that you can adapt and change that action or behavior. And then the next thing is the connection. We know how you, how you connect with people, how empathetic are you? You know, not being sympathetic, but really being empathetic, how you communicate with people. You know, how do they feel? And this brings us to things like how, how do you make people feel when they’re working in your team? How do you allocate tasks to people? Is it fair? Is it fair? Or do they feel it’s fair? Do they perceive it as being fair? Or are you just doing it based on what you want? And then the last bit is the transformation, which is actually now taking you through the, you know, being able to be resilient, how to stay motivated. So those are the three, those are the three to five things that I use when training people, and it’s going through each of them are being able to apply them to your work. For everyone, it will be different. Because it’s, you know, I always say the first thing is recognizing yourself first because you, your actions will be driven by what’s wired in you. So it’s been able to now understand, ask the question, how do I respond to this? Am I doing this based on what I want or the way I’m feeling, or am I actually listening and thinking about the other person as well. Jenn DeWall: So if I was going to start this framework, the place that I would start as a leader is, I guess it probably would be having a conversation with your team or in one-on-ones and asking them, you know, maybe describing to them what this means, right? A mindset and the impact that it has in terms of their actions. But is it just as simple as saying, like, you know, what are some of the things that cause you confusion, stress, or lower your confidence? Do you have any like, you know, if step one is creating the question, what are some good questions that you can ask yourself? Maureen Chiana: So one of the things that I really start with the best thing I do is I use a brain mapping diagnostic tool. You know, I don’t use personality because personality kind of says, that’s the way you are. It’s almost like a fixed thing. You know, when you’re doing personality profiles and lots of people do it, I go, okay, that says, like, that, that says, you know, this profile is saying that I’m an introvert. I am like that. And subconsciously, people kind of believe that that’s the way they are. So they can’t change their behavior. Jenn DeWall: Can we talk about that? Like I, because I also don’t love personality assessments. Yeah. I don’t, I think they’re great for little nuggets, but I don’t think, I think a lot of people take them as like, well, first and foremost, we, you know, maybe idolize a different strength or something else that we don’t have. And then all we do is judge ourselves for not being that. I think that they should be used with caution because, again, I think it very quickly puts people into a fixed mindset, thinking that they can’t change it. I’m so glad to hear that you, you have kind of a similar belief on personality because I really, you know, I get that they can be of value to understand maybe how someone is. No, I don’t. I just don’t love that, especially for decision-making purposes or to hire because you’re not seeing the person as the full person. You’re taking it as one thing. And you have no idea how subjective it could be. I just wish that more and more people would maybe see the different side of a personality assessment. And that maybe it’s just a great point of view, but it’s not something that you should use to definitively make decisions on. Maureen Chiana: Spot on. So I don’t like them at all. So what I use is it’s a brain mapping diagnostic. What it looks at is your behavior patterns for particular things. So, for example, when you’re doing it, you’re you focus on the subject or aspect, which could be your leadership, which could be work. And then you’re asking a question based on the way you perceive that you know, that situation with that we are able to then determine with questioning. And the typical question could be, you know, relating to why, you know, why you kind of see something the way you do or why you respond to a particular situation the way you have or what we know, what makes you feel uncomfortable when you’re asked to carry out a particular task. Or why, you know, why do you find, you know, why do you find it difficult, having difficult conversations with people, which is a really interesting one. And just digging a bit deeper. Why do you panic when you’re asked to give a presentation? So it’s really able to use that behavior profile to dig a bit deeper into what causes it or into how you perceive the situation. And because you said at the end of the day, it’s all the perception of, you know, your reality. So it’s been able to dig that. And the key is knowing that it’s a pattern that you can change, a pattern that you’ve created that has developed over time, which you can change. And I always start from that aspect because it kind of enables the person to start reflecting on their own thoughts, reflecting on their behavior, reflecting on how they’ve responded to things in the past or reacted to things in the past. And then that gives us a framework or a basis, a foundation to be able to start working, which then leads us into what we now need to start rewiring. Because if you kind of just jump first into rewiring, how do you know what to rewire? How do you know? Because it, lots of times when you ask people how I get, a lot of people will tell you I’m very emotionally intelligent, but you find out it’s speaking to them that they’re not, you know, they, they don’t even have the (emotional) intelligence at all. So this is what it’s, it’s more like an eye open in a way it’s like a glass puts in a glass in front of you to be able to really dig deep and find out the truth about the way you really perceive things and the way you’ve responded to things in the past. And then that’s how you then know what to rewire. That then leads you into knowing how to then manage those emotions. Using Neuro-Science to Achieve High-Performance Jenn DeWall: I want to walk through the framework if we can, like, just thinking while you were, while you were speaking, the thought came up because I know a lot of leaders struggle, maybe emerging leaders really struggle at first with wanting to be liked. And so then we don’t have difficult conversations. And so let’s say that that is, or we don’t share valuable feedback, right? Because we don’t want to make someone mad or upset or sad, whatever that might be. Maureen Chiana: If I notice that I’m an avoider, how would I then go through this, the process of rewiring? What would that look like? Okay. So, for example, avoiding is a good one. Especially with the brain marker diagnostics we use. Because it comes out that, you know, it’s more when you’re really trying to- where your focus is on making people happy. It could be that, you know, you, you feel that you like supporting people, you really like helping people. You really want people to do well. In fact, that’s a typical example of someone I’m actually working with. And she, as well as, you know, found it so difficult to have difficult conversations or even delegate because she did not want people to feel offended. Or somebody I was working within the same category would, instead of telling people what to do, kind of go and do it himself. So he sort of telling them, giving them the tasks you would do to stuff, because he had told himself that they’re really busy, so why give them more work? And then he then, you know, ended up doing it, which meant that he was not able to do his role as a leader effectively because he was doing everybody else’s job. So when we then looked at it, and we started digging deep. And as you know, we started asking him the questions. Then it came out that he, you know, really did not like upsetting people, or he really wanted people to like him. And you know, on digging in even further, which sometimes is quite helpful, we kind of start looking at childhood what, let you know, you know, how did that start? Is it somewhere in your childhood that you noticed it? And then if at one of the people that I worked with was something that happened when she was young, that then made her feel that way, and she then carries on. Maureen Chiana: So the thing now is to then recognize, at this point, your own strengths. You know who you are. Let’s forget about people; who do you see yourself as? And one of the activities I really give people is to, is to go and, you know, they say. There is a worksheet I give them so that they can actually start identifying their own strengths, their characteristics, what people have said about them, you know all the, all the good things that they remember about them that people have said. And in some cases, when it’s quite extreme, I get them to paste it somewhere. They can actually see all the time. Because when you, when you then go past it, and you remind yourself of it, what you’re doing is wiring created wiring in the brain. And there’s a framework I use for rewiring. So some, some, an example, somewhat something might happen, and it comes up again. I’m not good enough. Because you’re now aware of it, you pick it up faster. So when that thought process comes, you pick it up, and then you can then stop immediately and start wiring. No, I’m good enough because I do this. This is who I am. I’ve got this strength. I’ve achieved this in the past. I know that I can do this. And that is the rewiring process taking place. And even when somebody says something to you that creates an emotion of being not, you know, the emotional that kind of comes with that might create anxiety, or that might create an emotion that makes you feel really flat, or somebody gives you feedback, and you suddenly feel like okay, I can’t do this. And you suddenly have that emotion of, of loneliness in our kind of call it that immediately. You’re picking it up. And that’s the emotional intelligence that, that ability to recognize it quite quickly. And then you can, then I call it, put the brakes on the brain and then start the rewiring process. And with the rewiring, I kind of call it. It’s able to recognize it, reframe it, release that negative emotion, then reinforce the new thought process that you want. And then the final one is reached, where you carry on doing it until it becomes effortless because then you know that it’s now wired into the brain. And, you know, it takes about 100 says it takes about a hundred days to create new wiring. I say, give it another hundred for it to become a habit and just keep going on until it’s completely effortless. If not, if you stop it and go back to the past, what you will find, is that it will go and pick up where you left off. So it’s important to keep reinforcing that new wiring. So that’s the emotional base. And then the adapting is now being able to really put this into practice so that if a situation happens, how do you quickly adapt to the situation? Instead of either going, no, I’m out, or the procrastination sets in, let me put it off. And you know, it all comes back to that initial stage of awareness. And then it just carries on to the transformation bit. Taking Ownership to Achieve High-Performance Jenn DeWall: I, I love, you know, I think the piece that if I would say anything, it’s just a reminder to people that you have the power you have, you always have it. You can choose how you respond to any situation. You can blame your boss, or you can say in what part of this, or what part of this do I control? I love that you shared. I’ve heard even the thoughts described. And this is a different term that I forget who I got this from. This is not from me, but understanding our thoughts is essential. If you’re observing a street and that each of your thoughts is the different cars that are driving by, and you can choose whether or not to get into that car and drive the I’m not good enough car or the I’m only this, or I’m just a this. And we can also choose to get in the car that says, I am good enough. I can figure this out. I believe in myself. And so this all starts with your ability to understand that it starts with you. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. I just love that quote because I think it just reminds us of the responsibility. If we want to show up in a different way as leaders, it has to start with us taking that responsibility. Maureen Chiana: Yeah. So one thing that you said, there’s a saying that goes, you see the world, not as it is, but as you are. It really starts with you. And one other analogy I use, which is similar to the car as well. You know the brain is like, you’ve got a car and then you sort of going into the driver’s seat and taking the steering and driving, you got to sit in the passenger seat, and somebody else is driving the car for you. And you might be in that car and then going, okay, can you tell him left for this person driving decides no, they want to turn right. You have no control. So they will go, right. Because they are in control of the desk there, even though you’re screaming at the top of your boat, voice, go left, go left, go left, go, right? Because that’s where they want to go. The only time you make a difference is when you stop that car, get into the driver’s seat, stop the engine and drive your car yourself. Then you are in control. And the fact is that we are totally in control. We have the ability to be controlled, but lots of times, we’d let somebody else or something else or the world or the society or whatever that might be, or our parents, you know, from the past or teachers being in control. So it’s really getting back into the driver’s seat and taking that control back. I think this is a great ending point. How are you going to get into your driver’s seat? Make sure you’re driving the car and not anyone else. Jenn DeWall: I think that’s a great final closing reminder. Maureen, how can people get in touch with you? Maureen Chiana: I’m on LinkedIn at Maureen Chiana. So if you look on my website, which is Maureenchiana.com, but also the I’ve got an online academy, which is the mindsight academy, which has the courses. And one of the great courses that I have is emotional intelligence for leadership, which is over nine weeks. And if you love podcasts, you can listen to my podcast on Lead to Excel podcast or anywhere, apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for the great conversation, Maureen. Thank you for just this beautiful motivation and reminder that our success is all in our hands is actually our mind. We got to get in that car. Thank you so much for joining us, Maureen. Maureen Chiana:! No, you’re welcome Really a great pleasure being here. Thank you for having me. Where to Find Maureen Chiana Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this conversation with Maureen Chiana as we talked about how we can create high-performing teams using emotional intelligence. If you want to connect with Maureen or join her nine-week course to help you build your emotional intelligence for leadership, you can join the mindset academy at MaureenChiana.com. If you know someone that could benefit from this podcast, share it. And of course, leave us a review on your favorite podcast, streaming service. If Crestcom can ever help you, please let us know. We offer complimentary two-hour workshops, where we come into your team, help you identify your leadership challenges and how you can connect to create organizational success.   The post Achieving High-Performance Through Emotionial Intelligence with Neuro-Leadership Expert, Maureen Chiana appeared first on Crestcom International.

Discover Your Hybrid Professional Identity with Creative Disruptor, Sarabeth Berk Jenn DeWall: Hi everybody, it’s Jenn DeWall here, and on this week’s episode of Crestcom’s The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down to talk with Dr. Sarabeth Berk all about our hybrid professional identity. For those that might be unfamiliar with Dr. Sarabeth Berk, she is the leading expert on hybrid professional identity and a hybrid professional herself. She was featured in Forbes. She’s a TEDx speaker. And as the author of the book, More Than My Title today, Sarabeth helps professionals discover and articulate their hybrid professional identity and unique value in the workforce. Since so many of us call ourselves that Jack of all trades or we wear many hats, and we struggle to express who we truly are. So I hope you enjoy this conversation about workplace hybridity, how to look for it in yourself, as well as how to find that within your teams. Enjoy! Meet Sarabeth Berk, Creative Disruptor Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I’m sitting down with Sarabeth Berk, and you might be like, who is she? Well, she is the thought leader. She is known as a creative disruptor, but she is the thought leader of all-around workplace hybridity. And many of you might be thinking, what is that concept? So we’re going to explore that what it means to you as a leader and why it’s an essential thing that we need to understand as we’re looking out into our career and how we can not only manage our own career trajectory but also those of our team, what can we do to create a place where everyone can thrive using their best strengths? Sarabeth, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We are so grateful to have you! Sarabeth Berk: Jenn, I was thrilled to be asked. I’m so excited to be here with you! Jenn DeWall: All right. So you have to explain it because I know that now I’m really obsessed with this topic, but I have to admit it. It was something that I didn’t know as much about. So could you share with our audience just what the heck? What do you do, Sarabeth, Beth, what do you do? Your creative disruptor. I love that title, but what do you do? Sarabeth Berk: It’s so funny that you start with that question because that is literally my research question. How do people answer the, what do you do? It’s a really hard question. So me in a nutshell, and just to clarify, I am a researcher of hybrid professional identity, and that is something no one’s really framed or phrased before. So I’m one part, a researcher from the identity world, like who are we as humans? Another part of my work is career development, and the third part is personal branding. Sarabeth Berk: So I’m sort of meshing all those together because the workforce is more than just experts in generalists these days. And people use that phrase. I wear a lot of hats because they’re trying to express, I do many things. I don’t know how to name myself. And what I found is that there’s this level of hybridity that certain workers have, and that’s what I’ve been tapping into and unlocking, and honestly, helping people rediscover who they really are in their work, which is their unique value prop. And then they can stand out and find their dream job and really fit into teams. Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I love this topic. So again, you’re going to want to listen to talk about how can we market ourselves? How can you answer that question? What do you do? What inspired you to want to, you know, begin researching or really thinking about how do we answer that question? What inspired you to want to go down that path? Becoming a Hybrid Professional Sarabeth Berk: Oh yeah. I was personally struggling with my own career. I never thought I’d become a researcher on this topic that was not on my radar. My background starts in art and education and design, but lo and behold, every time I had sort of a career change, or I was feeling stuck, I was actually going through an identity crisis, and no one ever told me that people usually look at you and they’re like, Oh, you’re just burned out. Or you’re having some depression or, you know, you’re going through a growth spurt. And really, people don’t talk about identity as part of our work. So when I was having this professional identity crisis and wondering who the heck am I and what do I call myself? And what job am I looking for? That’s when I realized what if I researched this? And I was in grad school working on my doctorate. So it was a perfect time to do more self-discovery and to use my research methodologies in real practice. So that’s how I got started was asking people like you, what do you really do? And what do you call yourself when you’re doing it? And it led me to this deep rabbit hole that people are so much more than their job titles. And lo and behold, this has become the passion I didn’t know I was supposed to bring into the world. Jenn DeWall: But it’s so important because I think that when we, and you wrote a book more than my title, when we think about, you know, us, not only just as the role that we play for an employer, but we can, I love the concept of hybridity and how we’re going to talk about that today because I feel like it gives us the initial vote of confidence. We get to see ourselves in the value that we can bring to a team or to an organization. And so I think it’s an important way that all of us as leaders start to look at ourselves, look at our teams because we are all more than our title. I just, I love that. Like that again, another plug for your book. I love that because I think it’s just empowerment. So what is hybrid work? You talk about that there’s kind of three different areas. Can you walk us through what those are? Hybrid Workplaces, Hybrid Jobs and Hybrid Workers Sarabeth Berk: Yeah. I’d love to give some definitions because I’m sure your listeners are still not clear about what we’re talking about. Yeah. Okay. So just to lay it out there, we are hearing so much in the media right now about hybrid work. It’s just like every headline- and what’s happening. I think the term hybrid work is becoming a catch-all phrase, and we really need to break it down into what we mean. So I believe hybrid work signifies three parts of the work world. The first is hybrid workplaces, which is really what the media has been talking about, where we’ve got the physical and the digital remote combinations of how workers are returning to work. So part one is the hybrid workplace. Part two is hybrid jobs and roles and like hybrid work itself. And then part three is hybrid workers. The people doing the work are hybrid. So if we take the term hybrid work and put it into workplaces, the jobs, and the people, that’s a very different framework for us to actually have a better conversation and then address what we need to, to meet people’s needs. Does that help a little bit? Jenn DeWall: Absolutely. Well, and I think it’s an important differentiator. We’re not talking about the blend or the return to work that you might be seeing in terms of going into a more hybrid working environment. We’re talking about what the, like who you are as an individual and your own unique hybridity as your job. And you talked about it in the difference. And again, I am not the expert, so that’s why we have Sarabeth here. So you’re going to watch me learning as we go or listen, but you talk about the difference between an expert versus a generalist. And that’s kind of a framework for how we can understand our own hybridity. What does that mean? Sarabeth Berk: Yeah. So first, I’ll just start with the definition of what a hybrid professional is or what a hybrid professional identity is because I think it’s a type of identity. So my definition is its people who have multiple professional identities and work at the intersection of those. So it’s the integration across these multiple identities that make somebody hybrid as opposed to other people that have a lot of identities, but they’re separated. So I give this definition and explanation in my TEDx talk where I’m like, here’s my main framework. There are three types of professional identities in the workforce. So singularity is the first type. And we usually reference this as experts and specialists. People that only have one professional identity, a singularity, the second type is multiplicity. You have many identities, and we referenced these people as generalists and gig workers, freelancers, or any version of multi-talented multi-passionate multi-hyphenate because that just means many. The third type of identity is hybridity. So think of a Venn diagram, and suddenly the circles are intersecting and overlapping. And so a hybrid professional is in those intersectional spaces because they’re blending and merging and intertwining identities literally into something that we don’t have a name to call it. They defy labels. So we need workers in the singularity bucket and workers in the multiples seat, and workers in the hybridity because the three of those together are doing different functions and serving a purpose on a team or in a business. But we’ve really been stuck as a society in a binary of just experts or specialists, sorry, experts or generalists, and that’s the singularity and multiplicity. So that’s why it’s such a breakthrough to give people a third choice, which is the permission to be all of their identities at the same time. And that’s the revelation. Naming New Hybrid Careers Jenn DeWall: What does that mean? Have to be your identity at the time? Could you give us an example of maybe what that looks like? Sarabeth Berk: Yeah, definitely. So let’s think back like ten years ago, we had workers in the workforce that were doing marketing, and they’re also doing some storytelling and some, you know, digital blogging, and they were taking photos of themselves and posting it. So back in the day, we’d be like, why aren’t you doing these four things like over here, you’re the marketer, but over here, you’re the photographer. And over here, you’re online. Like how does that fit together? And that’s where we’d say this person just does many things. They wear a lot of hats. But when they’re actually blending and merging those three or four areas together, we started naming that type of hybrid a social media influencer because that is the convergence of why you’re storytelling, taking photos, marketing, doing all this stuff. And we didn’t know what to call that. So that’s the beauty of hybridity is suddenly all these parts fit together in something much bigger. And it serves a new role in the workforce. Jenn DeWall: When we understand our hybridity, like, for example, if I was, let’s say I’m a social media influencer. I’m not. Because I can’t work on social media, but what does that mean for me? Is it more of that- I have my own understanding of who I am and the value that I bring? So it’s a confidence piece or a competence piece? What does that mean for the individual when we kind of now finally understands ourselves in this different way? Sarabeth Berk: Yeah. I love that. So I’ll, I’ll tell my own story to explain this one better. You know, earlier in my career, everyone was saying, Sarabeth, Beth, you can have a lot of interests, but you just have to choose one thing, right? Like, pick a path. And I had multiple interests, and I loved art. I love design. I love teaching. I wasn’t quite in my research stage yet. And it was like, I don’t want to just pick one, but I had to. So I ended up in the classroom, and I got compartmentalized, right? People are like, Oh, Sarabeth, you’re a teacher. And that became the identity I was known for. But I was like, no, over here, I’m making art and selling it in galleries. And over here, I’m creating websites. And I know these things are all part of me, but I don’t know how to show up with all those pieces connected. So I felt like I was being pigeon-holed, and I had to sort of turn on and off different parts of myself, depending on where I showed up or who knew me. That felt really exhausting and unfulfilling, right? I would go to one part of my job and just be that one thing. And then I would switch gears like at night or on the weekends. And I felt that I wanted to be seen. And I wanted to find a place in the workforce where I belonged because all of those different parts of myself mattered. So this notion of figuring out your hybrid professional identity is finally realized, realizing your fullest and truest professional self. And first of all, being able to identify it for you. Like, I did not know what to call myself as an artist, educator, researcher, designer. And when you list it out, that doesn’t sound like much. You’re just like, great. What does that mean? So the trick as a hybrid is the relationships between those identities. You have to be able to make sense of it for other people and for yourself. So at my convergence, that intersection of those four. That’s why I call myself a creative disruptor. I have a whole process on how you figure this out, but essentially you dive into those intersections and look deeply at what you’re really doing and who you really are. And you notice themes. And the themes that came up for me were being this like challenger and questioner and pushing people and whatnot. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m this creative disruptor. That’s me at my core. When all four of my identities are working in harmony, that helped me finally feel like I knew who I was and I could tell their people. So it was a part of self-confidence and empowerment that I didn’t just have to be one thing at a time. Finding Your Hybrid Professional Identity at the Intersections Jenn DeWall: Like I’m not just, I, and I love that because I think when we typically think about our resume or the past job experience that we have, typically we do reduce that experience in a very simple way, just down to the title, I’m saying, well, I was a merchandise specialist. I was a merchandise analyst. What does that even mean? And I think it’s, what does it mean for me when I know that in those roles, I also had many different things that I was doing that weren’t necessarily solely related to being an analyst or solely related to being, you know, whatever that title was. I feel like I almost forget all of it because it wasn’t reflected in my title. And like, that’s, that’s more or less how I see that. But I’m curious what, what do you think is the role, or I guess, how do we even start to begin your hybridity? Is it as simple as just saying like, I have different interests, this is what brings me joy, or is it much more complex than that? Sarabeth Berk: I mean, it’s essential that, but a lot more steps and a lot more digging what I’ve been learning as I interview and support people in discovering their true professional identity and their hybridity, which I think is the top of the journey in your career. If you don’t know who you are, then how do you express what you do and why you’re unique and how you stand out. So personally, I think identity work is the first step, not your resume. But, it does start with this notion when I ask people, okay, tell me what you do. And most people start just listing a number of things. To me, that’s a signal. They actually don’t have clarity on what’s their foundation. I call that what are your primary professional identities? And we typically have three or four is the upper limit because you have a lot of identities and things you do, but only certain ones you’re using frequently. They are your truest areas of expertise. So first, it really is kind of doing a self-assessment of, like, what are my professional identities, list them out, and then narrowing it down, which are the ones that are truly my best area and light me up. And I have a love, and I want to tell the world about it, and then the next step after that is a Venn diagram, put those primary identities into a circle and notice, okay, now who am I in the intersection between these different identities? That’s a really big question. So that’s where people get stuck, and I use a lot of different tools and processes. Some of it to your point is looking at feelings, like when you feel your best and then kind of letting go of the regular words you use, like, Oh, I feel my best when I’m problem-solving. I hear that a lot from people. And I say, you have to tell me how, like, what kind of problem-solving let’s get more specific. So we do this deep dive into the intersections, and then slowly but surely, there’s an aha moment where these new words just emerge. And it’s like my favorite moment in the process with people someone would say, like, you know, I’m really adjusting tension. That’s why I’m working with this team. And I go, Oh my gosh, did you just hear what you said? You’re the tension adjuster. And they were like, wow, that’s who I am. And so we have these like identity realization moments. Jenn DeWall: And it’s just, I love the concept of identity realization moments, because that, I think it’s, that is career clarity. That is that level of, if we’re thinking about, you know, the difficult job of a leader; sometimes it’s creating that environment. It’s creating meaningful work, especially for our younger generations or Gen Z and Gen Y. But when I can see how I can act, and I do that, how, in terms of recognizing, I do bring a lot of value to this team. How, like, what’s the leader’s role? I know we talked about this, and this is still broad, but what is the leader’s role and being able to help an employee figure out their own hybridity? Sarabeth Berk: Yeah. I think I’m just starting to investigate more about the organizational side. I think one part is a lot of people don’t feel seen in their work, right. So when I’ve done a little bit of this with teams in organizations, it’s sort of like going back to your strengths finders or some of your own personality assessments and bringing up those kinds of words you’ve learned about yourself. But as a leader, it’s saying, who are we beyond our job titles on this team? Like Jenn’s Director of this and Sarabeth’s, you know, Manager of that, like, what does that even mean? Do we know each other? So doing this kind of identity work with your team members and colleagues helps everybody strip away these job titles and start to reveal the words they want to call themselves and be known as, which is a very different way of being in your work. So when I’ve worked in organizations, my job title has been late Director of this program, right? Just pretty basic. But when I learned about my hybridity and started expressing that and using that more publicly, I said, hi, I’m Sarabeth. I’m the Director of this program, but I really call myself a Creative Disruptor because blah, blah, blah. When I did that double sort of introduction of my formal job title and then my hybrid title, people saw me differently. I got a different response and reaction. They would like to lean in and become intrigued. And it would open up dialogue because they saw me as more than just this program director, they really understood me, and there was more value created, and I felt a better sense of connection and understanding between us. So I think for teams, it’s really about revealing each other to each other and becoming clear on who people are and not just what they do. So that is so important. And maybe it’s because I’ve just read a book on collective intelligence. So it’s top of mind right now. But when I think of collective intelligence, the ability to, you know, leverage people’s strengths to come together, to hopefully solve a problem in a better way or make a different decision. I feel like hybridity and how we see ourselves is just such a compliment to really bringing the collective intelligence of a team, helping that team understand that you are all more than whatever. You know, someone created that title five, ten years ago, that may not even be the problem that you’re solving anymore, but when you can understand how you add value, I, I just think that this is such a liberating way to show up at work because obviously, it drives meaning, but then we can truly get the best of people. And we aren’t limited by just saying, Oh, they’re – and I think we talked about this in our prep call- Like, they’re, they’re “just a” this. Or they’re “just a” that. Like, no, this person, maybe as you’re talking, I’m thinking, what would I be? And I feel like I’m a connector in some way. I know I still need to flush out my hybrid title and what that would be. Jenn DeWall: But if I think about myself, not as a Leadership Development Strategist or Facilitator, but as a Connector, that inspires me to also take different actions into going all-in on really wanting to enhance that value that I bring. So instead of just saying, like, I don’t even know where to go. I think that that hybridity also just helps to understand and reduce our own confusion about what makes us work. I, I think this is so important because people don’t typically you and I are both coaches. Like we know that people don’t necessarily see their value, asking them where they bring value is, is a difficult question for a lot of people. But when we can start to break that into, you said, three or four little things, you can see so much value. And I feel like you show up in a, in a greater way. Or I guess if I come down to even the limitations of titles. I think about what it means to be a director at one organization versus what it means to be a director at another, and they could have the exact same title. It could be a customer experience director, whatever that might be. And the makeup of that role could be completely different. But then how do you even go and interview with a company? If you’re like, this is what I saw here. We get you still can’t deduce your value. So then you’re just grabbing onto whatever characteristic that they came up with to say, this is whom we’re looking for. Instead of saying, no, let me tell you why you want me. Maybe that was a tangent. I know, but I love that. Sarabeth Berk: You just hit the nail on the head. I mean, literally, that’s why we’re stuck in this world of words that are just generic and traditional. We don’t really express who we are. Like, how many coaches have you met and how many sales directors and just, we need to be able to use more than just these standard job titles, which are, you know, really about hierarchy and social ranking and status. It’s not about our authentic selves. So the tools I have and looking at people’s intersectionality is about revealing authenticity and communication because then you can understand your value and support it with your work history. And nobody’s doing that. Like I’ve talked to a lot of career development professionals and resume writers, and they’re, you know, building a story for you, but it’s not an intersectional story, which is different. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. That’s, Oh my gosh. I just love this topic because I think it’s, and again, think about how quickly when we understand who we are and we understand how we add value, think about how much more efficient we can be at solving problems or the quality of our decisions improves just because we can finally see how we add that. And I think that that’s got to be a little bit of a relief to leaders that by simply helping someone address and identify their own hybridity, that is one way of showing support. And then also showing them that you appreciate them, that you see their value. And so then they can, I feel, instead of saying, I don’t know what an analyst does besides looking at these numbers over here, but I know what I do here. And then, I feel like I can also self-motivate in a much different way in terms of adding value. I just love this topic. I know there’s a lot of different directions we can go, and I hope I’m not confusing things. Becoming More Than Your Title Sarabeth Berk: No, you’re doing great. I mean, I think in today’s society too, it’s about job mobility, right? And organizational mobility, because what I’m, I talk to a lot of recruiters and hiring managers too, and companies are trying to just break people down into skills. Okay. If we know you have these five things and this person has those, then when we have a new position open, and we need to restructure, we’re going to move these people here based on AI and keywords. And that’s a little problematic. But I think when we look at hybridity like Cyber Security Analyst is a hybrid job. Because it’s blending this AI world with, you know, online and security tools. And they’re finding people that were in financial roles, doing accounting and such actually make some of the best like cybersecurity analysts because of how they were already thinking and working. And that’s a match that’s not obvious, right? So there’s, there’s so much value in understanding the connection between what we do. And if it’s not clear to us as the person doing it, then it will never be clear to employers or our managers or bosses. So that’s why this work is important because everyone is changing jobs more and more like the statistics are people hold ten jobs in a lifetime, across three or four industries. So the non-linear career path is the norm. Like we need to get out of this old thinking. And so telling your story and understanding, okay, as I’m evolving and growing and gaining more identities or subtracting identities, you have to keep understanding, well, what do you do now? And if you’re just saying, I wear a lot of hats, that’s not helping you. Like that doesn’t make it better. Jenn DeWall: I don’t know. I just wear a lot of hats. I do whatever. No, I, yeah. That’s not empowering to say that actually sounds more exhausting. It’s where do you focus? Where are you producing the most value? Why is this important today? I mean, I think, and I know we talked about this too because the future of work is going to be different. Right? And I love that you talked about non-linear paths are not the norm and the way that they once were. But what’s interesting because I still feel like even the non-linear path fights with hybridity. Cause even I have clients that will still say, I don’t know, I invested five years or eight years into either this industry or this title, and I can’t change. So we still have to work at showing that you can, and it’s not your title. It’s the skill that you added value or not the skill, but it’s who you are. It’s your path. It’s that crossroads. It’s your own hybridity that added the value. I just think this is so important for where the future of work is going to go. Sarabeth Berk: Yeah. And I just want to say. If I said non-linear is not the norm, I meant the other way around. The non-linear is the norm. Just to clarify, because everyone thinks they’re abnormal, and it’s like, you’re not. But I do. I think this is the present of work. I think hybrid professionals are here already. It’s also the future, but truthfully, this has been going on for decades and centuries. I think I’m just one of the first researchers giving this the right language. Because when I studied this notion of multiplicity, right? People wearing many hats, the Jack of All Trades term has been around. We’ve been trying to name this for a long time. And I found over 25 different words that all reference multiplicity. None of them talk about integration. That’s why the hybrid is such a different construct that changes everything about what we’d known about professional identity. So to me, that was so critical to just finally give this world to the world and to the workforce to say you’re not just another Jack of all trades. You’re not just another multi-hyphenate. You can actually become this hybrid. And that’s why you’re struggling to name and talk about what you do, and the light bulb goes off. So I think for the future of work, essentially, any time you take two existing roles and blend them together, you’re creating a hybrid role. You’re creating something new. Now, eventually, the new thing becomes adopted and normalized. And so it’s not hybrid or new anymore, like social media influencer that’s normal. So there’s sort of this flare and focus where things are two parts that are taken, and then they merge. But then that thing that merged gets connected to something else like that is just the evolution of innovation. A lot of this research also connects to how we do product innovation and category innovation, and business innovation. But what I’m doing is applying it to humans and identities. So it’s, let’s take these external topics and apply them to people and say, we have a lot of different parts. And just for the record, as human beings, we are hybrid humans. Like we have many dimensions of our identity, race, class, gender, social, personal, all of that makes us us. Like, that’s why you’re called Jenn, and I’m called Sarabeth. Those are our hybrid identities. But the trick, this is where I really felt the pain point was if we narrow it down to just the dimension of professional identity. And then we say, wait a second. In our work, we have a whole other set of identities of what we’re doing. Holy cow, there’s hybridity there too. So it’s like sub-layer hybridity. That’s why this became like a new way of helping people see, okay, if I have multiple identities in my work, then I need to understand the intersectionality there as well. And it’s, it’s separate from just your human hybridity if that makes sense. Jenn DeWall: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we are. I just love this because, again, this research is all about inclusivity. What are we, what can we pull out? Because if we’re reducing someone to their title, I’m just going to say, and no data, I have no data, but I think an assumption that when you were reducing someone to their title, that you’re getting a portion of who they are and the value that they can bring. Whereas when you can like take away that title and just start to focus on who are you, what problems can you solve? What makes you tick? And really, look at that hybridity. I feel like that’s when you can almost cast that light and see the full person, instead of just that shell of a person that may be your culture has created, your, your title is created your leadership style, so on and so forth. And I think that also if I could think about even I, you know, my initial or my first career out of college, was that a more, I would say, competitive, you know, environment. You wanted to get promoted. You wanted to go there. And so you very much looked at everyone as competition. And then I think it creates that us versus them narrative, whereas hybridity really opens up that we all add value. It’s not just me. It’s not just you. We actually all do it in different ways, and we shouldn’t be alike. And I think it just supports that notion that every person we meet is both your teacher and your student because we all have something to share. I, I think you’re like going to help. I’m picturing it like the peace that everyone’s happy because they feel seen. Is this the utopia that we’re all going for? Can we create this? You Are More Than a List of Skills Sarabeth Berk: I love that. I really do think this is a movement that I’m starting? And you know, one of the questions I get asked a lot is Sarabeth, okay. If I’m a hybrid, then what am I an expert in? Because everybody feels like they need to be able to convey expertise because that’s kind of just how the job market works. And if you think about it this way- When you look at your Venn diagram and who you are in that intersection, you are the expert of your own hybridity. Nobody else is the same combination of ingredients. And that’s why you’re an expert in it. And so the analogy I use a lot in recipes, right? Like if we were a pizza and you’re putting all these awesome toppings on the pizza, you don’t eat the pizza one ingredient at a time. That’s not a pizza. You eat it as that melty, gooey delicious thing. And you don’t just call it a cheese pepperoni mushroom basil- like you don’t list the ingredients as the pizza title, you call it something fun and delicious. That’s what I think people need to think about is how are you a combination of ingredients, and what do you name that special recipe? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, I’m a, I’m hungry, but what name would I come up with? So one of the things that you help and I think that that’s a great example because I think that also we understand that we appreciate it so much more as this package of a pizza and what that is. But it’s also not just a general title. It’s like a self-identified. So I think it’s easier to grab on to. One of the things that you work with individuals with is around an elevator pitch. So how do we answer that? What do you do? What does that look like? And why does that piece matter? Is it because we’re able to like articulate? Hey, you met me. It goes back to what you said earlier. There’s kind of the, tell me more once you can answer that versus the cool. You’re just another one of those directors. No idea what you do, Sarabeth Berk: Jenn, you stole it from a mouth. That’s exactly right. I mean, because people glaze over. So the elevator pitch is a three-part thing. It’s a tool I have for free on my website. So go grab it, download it. It is probably one of the best, quick ways I’ve given people help. Because you can apply it in person, you can put it in a cover letter. It can help you with your LinkedIn like it’s adaptable. But the three parts to this pitch. And it’s really 10 seconds. When you say it out loud is part one, like name who you are, express your hybrid title, or that you are a hybrid professional. Part two, tell the parts that make up your hybridity. So what are those core professional identities? And part three is to explain the relationships. How do those identities fit? When you give people those three things because that’s what they anticipate. And they’re going to ask you anyway, you sound very complete and clear, and people do lean in and say, wow, I’ve never met that or heard of that before. Tell me more. So I’ll give a quick example of how it sounds. The Hybrid Professional Elevator Speech Sarabeth Berk: When I do my hybrid elevator pitch, it goes, hi, I’m Sarabeth. I’m a hybrid professional. I call myself a creative disruptor. And that means I work at the intersection of being an artist and a researcher, a designer, and an educator. And when I do that, I’m able to create innovative strategies that radically transform how people and systems are working. Nice to meet you. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I want to hire you! Or like, how can you help me? Sarabeth Berk: So it, like, it takes a little just to get there, and refinement, like your hybrid identity, doesn’t come out overnight. Like it’s a process. But even if people don’t know their hybrid title, they can just say, you know, I’m a hybrid professional, nice to you. You know, I combine being this, and this and this, or I work at the intersection of this and this and this. That, in a nutshell, gets the ball rolling. Because if you just list things you do, it sounds different than saying I work at the intersection of these three or four things. It really is just how our brain is programmed. The other thing it does triggers novelty. So our brain is always seeking novelty in life, new experiences, new smells, new tastes. So a novel title or novel introduction helps trigger that same kind of dopamine hit. That’s why people get curious. So there’s a psychological component to this. Jenn DeWall: Oh. I love that. We’re also talking about, you know, the gift of gab. If you want to think about that, understand how to better, you know, identify or introduce yourself, and that see where that goes. Because again, if I go into a networking event tonight, I say I’m a Leadership Development Strategist. I think most people will be like, I don’t know what I think about that. Sarabeth Berk: Or they’re like, oh, I’ve met another Leadership Strategist. Like they gloss over again. Jenn DeWall: Right. Whereas if I look at it, I guess, again, this is me peeling back the layers to try to understand my own hybridity. I know that I’m a connector. I know that I, you know, I’m an educator. I know that I inspire and inspire choice, I guess, would be what it is, like inspire you to see your own choices. And I think that that lends itself in a much more compelling way. Even to myself, I’m like, Oh, I would much rather talk to myself if that’s how I introduced it. Versus, I’m just saying I’m this. And it is. It does sound a lot more. I don’t know, just outdated, I guess, to continue to limit ourselves by not seeing this. The work has evolved. Why do we not evolve the way that titles need to look? Or that how can we, you know, shift the way that organizations are structured to make sure that we are getting the most? Because the other thing you might, you said it was a novelty. But when I think again, the clearer that we can define and understand our own hybridity, that is also the different, the flip side of novelty. I think that’s where innovation lives. That’s where creativity lives because we’re not so restricted by whatever the heck, you know, maybe company-generated title would be, or the perceived handcuffs. I think, too, when we see ourselves by a title like this is my role. Like I, I can’t solve that problem because that’s not a Leadership Development Strategist. So that doesn’t make sense. And I just think that you are opening up, but people’s ability to solve problems that you never even invited them to the table to help you solve before. Optimal Distinctiveness Sarabeth Berk: I’m going to drop one more term that I’m in love with. That’s going to blow your mind, and it’s called “Optimal Distinctiveness.” So this is a theory by Marilyn Brewer. And she was really talking about how people want to fit in while standing out. Right? So actually landing in this space of hybridity and learning how to articulate it and communicate. It helps us, I believe, get closer to this place of optimal distinctiveness, where we can express that we’re unique. But we also fit in that is highly desirable. Jenn DeWall: Oh! Optimal distinctiveness. See, I just, Oh my gosh, I love that phrase too. This is to some people that are still like, Holy cow, what is this? This is really, I think again, the key to getting the most out of everyone, including yourself, not shortchanging yourself in short, the small amount of time that we have on this planet, giving yourself. I think this also helps to answer, What’s my purpose? And I think that’s a big question that a lot of people struggle with, or they, you know, head-on into the midlife crisis, and they’re really struggling with it. Whereas this is just giving you answers earlier on. This is such a powerful tool. So how, where, how do they connect with you, Sarabeth? Like where can they get more info? I know that they can go down and download the elevator pitch. Where do they go for that? Connect with Sarabeth Sarabeth Berk: MoreThanMyTitle.com is where all my resources and tools. And I have a book called More Than My Title on Amazon, or you can find it through my website. I offer we can crash courses because people want to work with me and understand my process. There’s a, there’s a whole little workbook too, of course, but you know, I’m on social media, so I’m just kind of everywhere, but more than my total.com is the best spot. Jenn DeWall: So, More Than My Title dot com, there you can find access to other tools, resources. You can also get to know a little bit more about hybridity, discover your own hybridity in the form of an elevator pitch, which I feel like the second someone does that. I hope my hope for them would be to see you add value. You have meaning and look at it. You just haven’t seen it before because it’s been concealed or limited because of that title. Sarabeth, I love the research that you’re doing. I think it’s so important. Thank you so much for liberating us and giving us the habits and competence that we need to make sure that we’re maximizing our short time here by living beyond our titles. Thank you so much. Jenn DeWall: Oh, Jenn, I had the best time with you. I could do this any day, so thank you so much. Jenn DeWall: I want to go into more of these. I’d love to have you back. Well, I encourage people also to tell us, maybe write in and tell us what your new titles are, what you come up with, and we’ll have to have you back just to continue to explore this. Maybe it’s thinking about how we can help and coach our colleagues or peers, or excuse me, our direct reports to help them ignite and find their own brilliance. Thank you so much, Sarabeth. Sarabeth Berk: Oh, thank you. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast with Dr. Sarabeth Berk. If you want to connect with Dr. Sarabeth Berk, you can go ahead and get your free copy of the hybrid identity elevator pitch on her website at morethanmytitle.com. You can also join her newsletter. You can find her book, More Than My Title, on Amazon. If you know someone that maybe is struggling with how they identify themselves, share this podcast. And don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming platform until next time.     The post Discover Your Hybrid Professional Identity with Creative Disruptor, Sarabeth Berk appeared first on Crestcom International.

The Paradox of Choice with Chief Choice Officer, Justin Hilton Jenn DeWall: Hi Everyone, It’s Jenn DeWall, and today on The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Justin Hilton. Justin Everett Hilton is a triple degreed alumnus of Kent State University and began his professional career as an architectural designer in Cleveland. Mr. Hilton returned to KSU Kent State University, continuing his career as an award-winning architecture professor and coordinator, and then became the university’s first, youngest African-American Success Solutions Consultant, Senior Associate Vice President, and Senior Administrator for Community Outreach. He’s the first African-American male to ever attain a Master of Architecture degree from KSU and has studied and lived in seven European countries. Moreover, he’s a motivational speaker, philanthropist, artist, entrepreneur, and community servant, and Justin and I sat down to talk about the paradox of choice. Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall, and in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I am so excited to be sitting down with Chief Choice Officer Justin Hilton from Ohio! Justin, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. It’s great to have you. Justin Hilton: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I am thrilled Jenn DeWall: Us Too! Justin. We’re going to be talking all about what you have described as the paradox of choice, but before we jump into it, can you just go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience? Meet Chief Choice Officer, Justin Everett Hilton Justin Hilton: Sure. I’m Justin Hilton. I’m born and raised in Akron, Ohio. And I’ve worked for Penn state university for over a quarter of a century. But I’ve also been a practicing architect. I’ve owned several businesses. Been a motivational speaker, lived all over the world. Life has been this tremendous amazing journey, and I’m just excited to be here and to be able to share little nuggets of wisdom that I’ve learned so far. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, we are so excited to have you and Justin, and I were talking to our audience, Justin, you were able to do something really, really neat that I think a lot of people would just love to be in your shoes because you were able to interview Daymond John. Can we talk about that? Like, can we talk about that? Is that you got to connect with someone that is, you know, an aspiration in the business world. Can you tell us what that was like and maybe introduce Daymond to people that maybe aren’t familiar with The Shark Tank? Justin Hilton: Sure, absolutely. So this came about as a result of a board that I sit on, which is the Better Business Bureau of Akron, which serves six different counties. And they had been providing service to businesses and entrepreneurs for a hundred years. So we thought, Hey, let’s do this Centennial celebration, and who better to bring in than Daymond John. And so that’s how it all got started. COVID, of course, changed those plans and moved us into a situation where we had to do it virtually. And so when we made that decision, we said, okay, we don’t want to have like a keynote on a stage behind a podium doing their thing. What we want is more of a conversation. We kind of like you and I are having right now, Jenn. And let’s invite the world in to listen. And so that’s what we did. I had the opportunity of doing a fireside chat with Daymond John, who is literally an African-American man who grew up in the worst parts of New York where statistically, he should have been either dead or incarcerated by age 18. And he wasn’t great at school. He was actually dyslexic, but he was never diagnosed. So he didn’t know it. So he struggled to think that he was intelligent or smart because of the traditional ways of determining that he struggled with. But I will say, and I asked him about this. He has a common-sense creative genius that you have. And so he was able to when he was struggling as a teenager he was able to stay away from the traditional trappings that lead you down the wrong path. And instead, he was able to take advantage of the new movement of that time, which was hip hop. And he just, you know, part of hip hop was a brand and, and clothing and music. And he just noticed that there were clothes that were part of this hip hop, you know, at the time that wasn’t really intentionally created for African-Americans and certainly young African Americans. And so that’s what he decided to do was to go into fashion and to create a fashion look and a brand that was specific to young African-Americans in the hip hop industry. And he knew nothing about business. He never went to business school. He never went to college. Like none of that, this was OJT, on-the-job training, and he talks about how he failed so so many times, but because he was in the beginning, he was able to make horrible mistakes. But he shut the business down three times over about a 10-year span because he made mistakes that almost killed the business, but, you know, eventually, it’s become a global icon of about $1 billion, and now he’s, you know, on Shark Tank. And he’s just had an amazing life. He has over 41 companies that he’s invested in. Choosing to Make Health a Priority Justin Hilton: And it’s just. He’s. He’s just a tremendous individual. Who’s never forgotten where he’s come from. He has a tremendous amount of business acumen. He connected with a whole bunch of people that we’re smarter than him, so they could mentor him and teach him the things that he didn’t know. And I’ll end with this one thing, which is, which is amazing. I have a tendency of asking people this question, if you could sum up your life’s purpose in three words or less, what would those words be? And I asked Damon John that, and of all the things I just shared with you, you wouldn’t think that his answer was his answer, but his answer was early detection. Isn’t that amazing? His answer was early detection. Come to find out. He was actually diagnosed with cancer. As a result of him following the advice of one of his mentors and getting an executive physical, which he knows is different from the typical physicals you get for various insurance and healthcare. And they found cancer early enough where they were able to treat it. And so he’s cancer-free now. And so he talks about, you can have all the money in the world, you can have all the, you know, you can have everything, but if you don’t have your health, you have nothing. And so he has really stood on this platform of encouraging people to do the mammograms, to do the colonoscopies, to do like, you know, do all of those early detection things, to make sure that you’re taking care of your number one asset, which is your health Jenn DeWall: A powerful lesson that I think honestly, leaders can forget about often we get so fixated on or caught up in the busywork, or just always, you know, having things to do. And we come last. I love that message because, again, we don’t. We don’t adhere to it very often. It’s it often takes the consequence for us to look that, look at that and, you know, make different choices, which is going to be our conversation today. But given John, what a great example of what it takes to be a leader, what a great example of persistent choices, and maybe this is a great opportunity to get into the paradox of choice. So you have come up with a concept called the paradox of choice, Justin. What does that mean? The Paradox of Choice Justin Hilton: So that really is a way to talk about how absurd I think life is. Right? In that, we all exist, right? I mean, we’re all here. We’re all alive and yet not really by our own conscious choosing, right? So I never chose to be born. I never chose to be born to my parents. I never chose to be born an African-American. I didn’t choose to be born in America. You know, I didn’t choose to be like all of these things that make me what I am and who I am. I actually didn’t choose. Right. And yet I know that every day that I get up, I’m gonna make on average 35,000 conscious decisions today. Thirty-five thousand conscious decisions today are what I’m going to make. That’s the average number of decisions that people make every single day. So the paradox of it all is I didn’t choose to be here. And yet, I’m making 35,000 choices every single day that will determine the entirety of my life while I am here, which seems absurd. Right? And so it seems like this crazy paradox, and this really hit home for me when I had my child, my daughter, who was a miracle. And so, just to extrapolate these numbers, 35,000 conscious decisions every day is 1.1 million per month, which is 12.7 million per year. So in the first year of my daughter’s life, I made 12.7 million choices. Her mother, my wife, made 12.7 million twice. That’s like 25 million choices that we made in the first year of my daughter’s life. By the time she’s 10, we will have made as a, as a, you know, mother and father, we will have made 250 million choices. And that’s just mom and dad. You add in their cousins, aunts, uncles, teachers, pastors, neighbors like when you think about it, by the time we’re ten years old, there have been hundreds of millions of choices that have affected who we are, what we value, what we think is good. What we think is bad, what we think is possible. It determines our hopes, our fears, our challenges, our drinks. Like all of these things are pre-determined by millions of choices that are made by the context that we have unchosen-ly been born into. And by the time you’re 20 years old, the person that you literally are is not really a result of you choosing to be that person. It’s all of these hundreds of millions of choices that have been made in the context in which you’ve been speaking. And that hit me when I was 20 years old. And I lived in Italy, and I had never been outside of the continental United States of America. And here I am, an African-American man in Italy with a bunch of students from Penn State that I didn’t really know. And for the first time in my life, I had this moment of who on earth am I? And, and how did I become this person? And that’s when it dawned on me that the person I was at age 20 was not the person that I chose to be. So I decided from that point on, I’m going to choose to be who I want to be. And that was easy for me to conceptualize because I was studying architecture overseas in Italy. And as an architectural designer, we make design decisions, right? We make decisions to design hospitals and hotels and houses and all these kinds of things. And then it hit me the greatest thing I could design. It isn’t a building typology. It’s actually my life. And that’s when I decided that I’m going to purpose these choices to become the best version of myself that I possibly could. And, and that’s kind of where this whole paradox of choice and becoming your own Chief Choice Officer started, Jenn DeWall: That’s a powerful example of just really showing you how much choice plays into our life, whether it was someone else’s choice and how that impacts us. I mean, I can’t even be thinking that we make, on average, like 12.7 million choices a year. It made me even when you’re first thinking, like how many choices have I made this morning so far? Whether it’s like, what I choose to drink or eat, or what time I choose to get up? Why is it so important to be aware of choice? Like, because I think that this is often the topic that I guess some people, maybe subconsciously, maybe consciously, don’t want to face their choices. Right. We like to think life happens to us, whereas choice is really showing us that it’s all your own intentionality. What, so what, what are you like, I guess, what challenges do you think people have from recognizing that they have a choice? We Don’t Choose to Wake Up, But We Choose to Get Up Justin Hilton: So so your words that you actually chose to speak encapsulate the answer, right? The challenge is recognizing it. That’s the first thing, like awareness. Like recognizing that, okay, who I am and what I am right now might not actually be as a result of my own choice. Right? So recognizing that is significantly important. And then being aware of the fact that I have the power to change that if I choose to. Right? So one of the crazy things about all these choices is if we’re all making 35,000 conscious decisions every single day, they’re going to be different, right. Because we’re all different, but here’s what’s crazy. We all start with the exact same choice, right? We choose to get up. We don’t choose to wake up. We choose to get up. And from that initial choice that every single person makes, then all the choices that we make are different. Justin Hilton: Right. But we all start with the exact same choice to get up. And that’s another interesting paradox we don’t choose to wake up. We choose to get up. So that’s where I think it’s so important for us to understand that if, in fact, we wake up, that means that there’s value in our life. That means that there’s purpose in our life for us. Or else we wouldn’t have woken up. Okay. So the fact that we are awake means there’s value, there’s a purpose, there’s opportunity. Like, so, okay. Let’s make the same choice. Get up. Okay. Now from there, how do you navigate 35,000 conscious decisions a day? Like, how do you, how do you actually make sense of that? For me, it starts with the most important choice that you can make after getting up. And that is choosing your wants, needs, desires, dreams, and goals, right personal to you. What Are Your Wants, Needs, Desires, Dreams and Goals? Justin Hilton: What are your wants, needs desires, dreams, and goals? And the reason that is so important is that it will become a gravitational force that will pull these 35,000 decisions you’re going to make. It will start to pull them in line so that you can actually start moving in the direction of your wants, needs, desires, dreams, and goals, right? They become like this GPS for your choices for that day. And the significance of that is when you are making those decisions in line with your dreams and goals, now you’re on an unrelenting path of success because I think success is not just the accomplishment of your dreams and goals. It’s the person you become along the process of pursuing your dreams and goals. And so that’s really what I think life is all about is this amazing process of us purposing our choices in alignment with our dreams and goals that allows us to become these amazing human beings that are able to share our lives with other people. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. That’s where fulfillment and happiness. We talked about this in our planning meeting. So you had mentioned that there are three important choices. And so the first important choice, if we’re thinking about our range, the first choice is to determine what our own wants, needs, desires, dreams, and goals are. So if you’re thinking about how I can even start to practice what Justin is saying, determine those things. So wants, needs, desires, dreams, goals, what is the second choice? Or excuse me. So it’s wants, needs, desires, dreams, and goals. Out of curiosity, what if you have a goal that you really want to accomplish? Let’s say it’s to be the CEO or let’s say, it’s even to get that promotion. What do you have to be aware of that could come up in your way, because you might choose the goal, but we all know that plenty of people set a new year’s resolution. And that doesn’t mean that they’re actually going to take action to do that. So what can you do to overcome even that initial resistance or to get yourself even more bought in and like, no, you, you chose this- now, go get it. Because I imagine that there are still some people that struggle with, like, yeah, I want that, but I’m not gonna really make a choice to go and get that. Justin Hilton: You’re right. So, so you’ve touched on a super important part of this conversation. Then, when you have the courage to write down your wants, needs, desires, and goals. And I use the term write down like I’m old school, right? Write down your dreams and goals— when you do that, and I encourage you to start with 10, but ultimately try and get to a hundred, right. Try and get to a hundred. When you do that, the first thing that you’re going to hear in your being is probably going to come from yourself, and it’s probably going to be negative. It’s probably going to be a. You can’t really have an Italian Villa and, you know, a place here. And like the first voice you’re going to hear is probably gonna be a negative voice. And that’s primarily because, again, as we mentioned, you have hundreds of millions of inputs, right? And let’s be Frank. I mean, the world is not this utopian society. I mean, there are really difficult places that we live in. There are difficult relational issues between people, races, religion, et cetera. If you have optimism, then there are also people that have negative perspectives. All of that input is in you subconsciously somewhere. I often say that the term “rationalize” means to tell one’s self a rational lie. The easiest person to lie to is yourself. So when you start thinking about all these wants, needs, desires, dreams, and goals, like you’re going to get inputs to say, I don’t know if you can do that. I don’t think you can accomplish that. I want for you to think that you can do blah, blah, blah, and you’ll start rationalizing the possibilities of achieving those things away because that’s just part of human nature, right? So the most important thing you can do after having the courage to think about them and to write them down is, in my opinion, to find a mentor, right? Find a Mentor Justin Hilton: Find your future self, which is all a mentor is, is your future self, and introduce yourself to that person and ask them to mentor you. Right? And if it’s not in a formal context, that’s fine. To develop relationships— I’ve said for years, relationships are the greatest currency in life, not money, but that’s the greatest currency in life through which all things flow. So once you write down your wants and desires, dreams, and goals, get a network of people that can support you. That can speak life into you. That can speak encouragement into you, that can give you information that you need to know. And by the way, that mentor doesn’t have to be an actual physical person, right? If you read a book that it took someone, so Daymond John. Daymond John just wrote a new book. And it was called Power Shift. So Daymond has taken like 40 years of wisdom and put it in a book. So you can read that book, and Daymond John can be your mentor through the book, right? So mentorship is so key. It’s so important because you can get information on what’s coming down the road. You can get information on the things that you don’t know that you need to know in order to succeed and achieve. And, but, but that in-person mentoring is so important because what you need ultimately in order to become your best self and which you ultimately need to pursue your dreams and goals in a realistic way is belief. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe that it’s possible. And the most important source of that belief is probably going to be other people who can speak belief into you because I really believe that ultimately, we don’t possess the amount of belief we need to attain our next level. We just don’t have it in and of ourselves. Right. We have to have other people along the journey with us that can speak into us and can speak that belief into us. So getting a mentor is the second most important step after choosing your wants, needs, desires, dreams, and goals. Internal Vs External Validation Jenn DeWall: I love that! So second choice. And I, you know, I think I want to ask because I, I just want to have, you know, a fun fireside chat, because I do think that sometimes we’re, we’re not aware of the fact that we can internally validate. Like, I, I think that I was gonna ask you, why do you think it is? Like, one of my perspectives is that I think that people just we’re so conditioned to rely on like, kind of that validation, whether it’s cultural, rites of passage like I’m getting married. I went to college, whatever that might look like. Those become the natural things that we kind of use. And I would love that because those are kind of choices that sometimes they’re intentional for us. Sometimes they’re not someone could have made them before, but I feel like a lot of people, you know, I almost like to look at it as a balance. Like we’ve been, we spend the majority of our lives up until adulthood relying on external validation. And that’s a great compass point. But then, when it comes down to those big scary goals, then you hear that self-doubt. And it’s saying. I don’t know, Jenn, who the heck do you think you are? So I love the idea of, yes, getting your squad, get your cheerleader there, get your bench. But also just thinking, how can you learn? I just want to plant a seed. Like how can you learn how to even tell yourself that you’re getting it right? That you’re going to figure it out, that you believe in yourself above everything else because sometimes the people aren’t going to be there. Or the words of support are going to be valuable, but you’ll need a little bit more. I’m curious about that. Like w if you have a point of view on internal versus external validation because there’s so much where I found myself in my twenties, just kind of thinking what is wrong with me, or what is this? Whereas if I changed my own perspective, it didn’t matter what some other people thought of me. And so why was I trying to appease them? Justin Hilton: So you’re exactly right. I liken it to a question. I ask people as it pertains to breathing, which one is more important, inhaling or exhaling, right? If you don’t do both at some equitable level, you’re going to be in trouble. Right? No, you’ll be passed out, looking for oxygen. Right. So they’re both necessary. Internal and external validation are both absolutely critical. And to your point, because we’re, we all are born dependent. Then we develop these habits of being dependent upon exterior validation. Right. But the most, the most powerful validation you can get is internal. Right? But that’s what. We’re not accustomed to habitually understanding how to create. So I did something very important when I was 20 years old. I wrote my own self-motivation message. It was my own mantra. It was my affirmation statement. And I memorized it. And it is an internal compass for me. Right. So no one can tell me who I am because I’ve told myself who I am, and I believe it. Right? And so is one of the critical steps that I would advise people is to have their own internal validation statements, your own affirmation statement that affirms who you are, it affirms the value of who you are, and it affirms the value and contribution that you can make this life. There are different ways and different methodologies to creating that that are out there. You know, some start from a position as extreme as, Hey, write your obituary, right? Because an obituary, you know, beyond saying that, you know, you lived and died. It does. It does actually articulate what it was that you’ve achieved in life. Like, you know, what the value of your life was. That dash your birthday and your death date, like your obituary, speaks to that dash. Right? And so you can do that. You can. You can. You can write that. Another exercise I like to tell people is, you know, we live in a society particularly here in America, where we’ll celebrate certain people within our society. Right. Entertainment as an example, right? You got the Golden Globes. You got the Oscars. You’ve got the Grammys. You’ve got, like. We have award shows all over the place. And I often ask people if you were to get a lifetime achievement award, right. What would that award be for? And what would your acceptance speech of that award sound like? Right. And, and I’ve done this with young kids, which is, and what they produce is amazing. Right. And then I asked them, okay, well, why don’t you just do that then? Like, if this is the lifetime achievement award that you would love to have, then why not just live a life in that direction of achieving that? Like, let’s just do that then, you know? So so creating that sort of lifetime achievement perspective that can be content that you can use to sort of creating this narrative about the importance and significance of your own life. And I will say there’s been research on this in terms of cognition. What you feed yourself, you will believe- good or bad. Right or wrong, you’ll believe so when you create that narrative, and you start to internalize that thing every single day, every single day, it starts to become a believed reality in your being. And you start believing that and believe in that thing and believe in that thing. And all of a sudden, it becomes the lenses through which you see life, and your life starts to begin to align with what it was that you’ve already spoken into existence. And that becomes this- once you get to that critical mass, nobody can tell you what you are and who you are and what your value is because you’ve already told yourself to the point where you believe it. And that is that that’s, that’s the wonderful place to be in life. Now that isn’t to say that, that when you dream even bigger dreams, that there’s fear that comes in and that there are challenges, you know, and because, you know, life isn’t perfect, life is going to send you hurricanes and tornadoes and things like that. And, and you’ll still need external people to help you and assist you and to encourage you and to motivate you and all those kinds of things. But man, that internal motivation, that is everything. Jenn DeWall: Yeah, absolutely. If we don’t believe it, how in the heck! I love that! Even in leadership, I think it’s an often, maybe under-realized thing that people can tell. They can tell whether you believe what you’re saying. They can tell, like, whether you believe in yourself. And you know, that’s not to judge yourself if you’re not showing up as competent as you want to be, but it is to be mindful of the fact that, you know, we can tell. And also just in the same way, if you’re not confident, it’s totally okay to say, you know what? I haven’t had this experience before. And so I’m still trying to figure out, you know, how to do this. I’m looking for learnings. I’m taking this. It’s okay to be vulnerable. And I know, so I, I just love the importance of understanding that it’s got to start with you and thank you so much for such a beautiful answer to, and that, that is one of the first choices that we get to have is to believe in ourselves. Choose to Get More Information Jenn DeWall: Okay. So the three important choices. So we’ve got to start with choosing our needs, wants, desires, dreams, and goals that we have to choose that power team or mentor that’s going to be there. What is the third choice that we have to make an important choice? Justin Hilton: Yeah. So for me, that third choice is to acquire as much information as you can. Right? Because you know, knowledge is super important. And we live in a situation in our, our time right now, where we have probably more access to information than ever before in human history, these, these smartphones, which every, everybody seems to have a smartphone. I mean, it doesn’t matter if you’re, you know, the CEO of a tech company, or if you happen to be, you know, a kid like Daymond John, where you’re in, you know, an underprivileged, under-supported neighborhood, we all have smartphones. I mean, it’s crazy. And, and those smartphones give us access to, so, so, so, so much. And so the reason information is so important is because when we take in that information, and we process that, and we formulate beliefs, our actions are based on what it is that we believe. That’s why it’s so important. You know, going back to what we just talked about, about belief, right? Because typically, our behavior is connected to our beliefs. If you believe something’s good, you’ll do it. If you believe something’s bad, you won’t do it. If you believe something, you know, so our behavior is connected to our beliefs, and our behavior over time creates habits. I mean, we’re essentially going to be victims in our life. We’re either going to be the victims of our good habits or the victims of our bad habits. But that’s what we determine our habits, right. Through our choices. Right? So once you get your positive habits set, the only thing you can become successful. If you have successful habits, that’s just the way it works. Right. But those habits are contingent upon the information that we allow into ourselves that we process that we formulate thoughts and beliefs on that we then behave on those behaviors, create habits and those habits put us in similar situations, but they can similar kinds of information. So I like to use this analogy if you had a coffee cup. Right. And it was like two weeks. Yeah. And imagine if you, if you had coffee in there and you went on a two-week vacation, and you forgot to empty your coffee, right? So you come back home, what on earth do you think is going to be in that coffee cup? I mean, you know, it’s nasty, right. But what if I came home to visit you, right? I came to your house to visit you because you’re back in town and I wanted to see you. Because we’re best friends. We’re twins. I say, Hey, just come up. And I said, Hey, can I have, you know, you said, Hey, do you want anything to drink? And I said, yeah, can I, can I have a glass of water? And you realize that you didn’t set your dishwasher. The only cup that you have is that cup of coffee with two-week-old nastiness in it. And I asked you for a cup of water, right? How would you bring me a cup of water without pouring out what’s in that cup? Right. The great thing to think about, right? How on earth could you do that? Right. Jenn DeWall: I don’t know. I feel like I’d be like, can you drink out of my hand if you’re saying I can’t pour it out? I don’t want to feed you Justin Hilton: What do you do? You take it to the sink, turn on the faucet, and you get as much water coming out of that faucet as you possibly can. And you hold that cup underneath that faucet for as long as it takes the, for the clean water to go in and eventually for all that stuff to start to flow out, right? And it might not be 20 seconds. It might not be 20 minutes. It might not be 20 hours. You might have to stand under there for two weeks. You might have to stand on there for two months, for two years, whatever it takes. Eventually, if you have enough clean, positive flow coming in. Eventually the negative, nasty stuff will flow out. Eventually. Right? And that’s the power of positive information. If you can put yourself in a position where you’re getting positive information about your wants, needs, desires, dreams, and goals. Positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, eventually all the negative stuff, there won’t be room for it because it will be supplanted by the positive. And eventually, it’ll just blow out. And what you’ll be left with is this unbelievably healthy, happy person who’s filled with positivity so that you can be of value to others. I like to say that I spend my time predominantly around three kinds of people. People who are where I want to be in life. Those are the mentors. We talked about that. And I believe in them, and they believe in me. Right? So so that’s key to have that mentorship relationship. And then I spend my time around people who are going in the same direction I’m going so that we can self-support. Nobody’s ever become successful on their own. It doesn’t happen. Right. And, and I don’t know that it could happen because ultimately success is about you becoming your best person and then positively affecting other people. So you have to have other people around you. So I spend my time around it. Do you know what I’m saying? Right. Choose Positive Relationships Jenn DeWall: Cause I think that people, and I’m sorry to interrupt you. I really think that people, you know, we, we are sometimes raised with this belief, that independence is where it’s at, which completely negates the fact that we’re all just interdependent. Whether we want to realize it or not. Justin Hilton: And you know, it’s funny. I ask people all the time. I say, Hey, who’s the most important person in your life. Right. And I get, I mean, I get like, well my mother or my dad or my sister, or like, they always tell me someone else. I rarely ever get someone that says, well, me, I’m the most important person in my life. Right. It’s always someone else. So that automatically tells you that we somehow have been created to be predisposed to be concerned with other people, almost more than we’re predisposed to be concerned with ourselves. So again, it goes back to that dichotomy of it’s both/and— it’s not either/or. It’s both/and. So yes, we have to have other people, and other people have to have us. Right. So that’s why I spend my, my a third of my time around people who are trying to get where I’m at so that I can help them become their best version and help them get to their next step, which may be where I’m at so I can mentor them. So I spend my time around people where I’m trying to get to people who are going in the same direction I’m going, and people were trying to get where I’m currently at. So that I can help them, and it’s all about that positive information. It’s all about that positive relationship. It’s all about, Hey, what are your wants, desires, dreams, and goals? How can we make those things come to life? And how can you become an amazing person as a result of pursuing this? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, I love this. Justin, every person is with your teacher and your student, because I think your final point is an important one is how we can serve? How can we help others recognize that someone is likely, you know, to offer a hand to us to help us? How can we continue to do that? Justin, this is pretty powerful. I mean, it’s, I love that. It might seem like a simple conversation on the surface. We’re talking about choice here, but you just brought up some really important things. Your life is here to be lived, and only you get to choose it whenever you decide to take responsibility for that. And what you had said, like your three important choices, choose your own, wants, needs, desires, dreams, goals. Find someone that’s going to help you get there, and then pursue them pursue. And I think it’s important. I love that you shared, too, our level of interdependence and surround yourself with the people that have been there, that are going there and that want to be there. I think that those aren’t really, you know, I think that that’s powerful too, because it shows that there’s a value in every single person we come into connection with. It doesn’t have to be a favorable thing, but you can still make it a lesson too. It doesn’t mean just your closing comments that you’d want to maybe share with our listeners today as we wrap up. Be Your Own Chief Choice Officer Justin Hilton: So my closing comment would just be to encourage people to really take this concept of being their own Chief Choice Officer. Right. We understand that there are C-suites that, in certain contexts, we hold highly, right? Your CEOs, your CFOs, your COO’s, right, your Chief, Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Operating Officers, you know, we’re creating different people and, and, and categories to fit in that C suite. But we understand that that C suite, I mean, they kind of run the world, right. You know, whether you’re the C-suite of an enormous corporation or whether you’re the C-suite of a local nonprofit that’s making an impact, you know w we understand that C-suite, but what has never existed within a C suite is the concept of a Chief Choice Officer. And I think that’s primarily because that position doesn’t need to exist inside of the context of a corporation or business. It needs to occur in the context of each of us individually. And when we’re able to get to the point where, as you mentioned, we’re able to have that awareness and understanding that I can choose today to be amazingly different. That’s when we take that chief choice officer from a title, and we make it part of our actual daily execution. So that’s, I would encourage people to do is to really take that Chief Choice Officer concept and implement it into their lives. Jenn DeWall: I love that maybe in closing everyone, I mean, they have to be thinking, what are you going to do differently based on what Justin just shared, what choices are you going to make today for yourself, for your dreams, goals for the life that you want to live? Justin, thank you so much for joining us on The Leadership Habit podcast. It has been a great conversation. I love this topic, and I think you just shared a very important message that hopefully is going to ignite some positive changes for our listeners. Thank you so much. Justin Hilton: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, and thank you for the platform. I mean, you are absolutely phenomenal. Your energy, your perspective, your impact mean all of it. It’s just. It’s just amazingly significant and needed and necessary. So thank you for doing everything you’re doing, and thank you for changing the world in the ways that you’re changing the world. I really do love and appreciate it. How to Connect with Justin Jenn DeWall: Thank you, Justin. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast with Justin Hilton. If you want to connect with him, you can head on over to LinkedIn there. You can ask them questions, get to know more about him, the work that he does in Ohio at Kent State University. And also take that conversation forward about the paradox of choice. If you know someone that might be struggling with stepping into the power of their choice, please share this podcast episode with them. And of course, if you liked this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service. Stick with us every single month. In addition to the podcast, Crestcom offers complimentary monthly webinars. In addition, we also offer the service to come into your organization and give your team a two-hour skills-building workshop.     The post The Paradox of Choice with Justin Hilton, Chief Choice Officer appeared first on Crestcom International.

Design a More Productive Workspace with Biophilic Design Expert, Oliver Heath Jenn DeWall: Hi, it’s Jenn DeWall, and in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with an industry-recognized expert in the field of sustainable architectural and interior design, Oliver Heath. What? Are we talking about architecture and interior design on The Leadership Habit podcast? Yes! And we are going to be talking about how you can actually design and create workspaces that can improve productivity, reduce stress, and maybe actually make you want to go to work. Oliver is a trusted voice of authority in interior design. He’s written three books, and his last, Urban Eco Chic, sold over 30,000 copies in eight different languages. He is a frequent contributor to the likes of The Guardian, The Sunday Times, House Beautiful, and BD Online. And today, he is going to share with us how we can incorporate elements of a biophilic design to create and design the optimal workspace. Meet Oliver Heath, Biophilic Design Expert Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn, and I am so excited to be sitting down with Oliver Heath! Yeah, well, you may not know him, but he is someone well-known— at least in my book— and in the area of biophilic design. He is an architecture and interior designer who specializes in well-being. And I know what you might be thinking. What in the heck does that have to do with how I lead my teams? More than you think! Oliver, can you please go ahead and just introduce yourself and tell us how you came to be someone that was really vested in specializing in well-being and especially in terms of creating the spaces where we can be our best and perform at our best. Oliver Heath: I would love to, thank you! So I run an architectural and interior design practice in Brighton, in England, where we specialize in human-centered design. And when we talk about human-centered design is how we design with people in mind now in particular that investigates health and well-being and the impact that buildings have on people, on their physical, mental, and emotional states. And more specifically, the work that we do is around what we’ve called biophilic design, which essentially is how we enhance the human connection to nature in the buildings that are so important to our lives. Jenn DeWall: Okay. So biophilic design as a definition is how we can enhance our connection with nature in a physical office space. What is Biophilic Design? Oliver Heath: Well – biophilia means a love of nature. It kind of explains our innate attraction to nature and natural processes. It kind of explains it away. Why when we go on holiday, we choose to go to the beach, the mountains and the forest. And when we’re in those spaces, we get this incredible sense of calm and relaxation. And we start to react differently to people. We feel more positive, open, optimistic. We kind of get back to being at our best. And then we go back to the office, and we feel all that stress come back to and all that tension. And it’s as if we’ve never been awake before. So in a way, it’s about how we borrow some of that amazing well-being from being in nature and find sophisticated ways of bringing it back into the workplace. Jenn DeWall: I, you know, as someone that is a nature lover, I, you know, we just talked to prior to I was in the mountains this weekend, I love going there to recharge. Please tell me the secret. How do you harness the power of nature? Because I’m from someone that really does get that relaxing feeling, the calm, the sense of it’s okay. And you are removed from that stress. I would love to have it in every single space that I go to or to feel like that. So how do you harness that power? Oliver Heath: Well, I mean, I think that’s the amazing thing, that design styles come and go. They can be very polarizing people like this style or that style. It’s too minimal. There’s too much detail. The nice thing about nature is that everybody has had a positive experience of nature at some point. So in a way, it’s about eliciting a similar emotional response to space as we’ve had in nature. And it kind of reminding people how you remember the smell of that forest or the touch of the grain or all the verdant sort of diverse plants. And it’s about bringing that back into places that are ordinarily very cold and stark and lots of hard geometric lines that are very sort of cold and, and more, unlike nature than you’d have believed. So, you know, it’s about bringing some of that, that, that goodness. Now I feel like design doesn’t need to be that complicated. There are three key aspects to it. The first is how we bring in what we call the direct connection to nature? So this is how we bring in, you know, things like real plants, as you can see here in my office in Brighton. So it’s about trees, natural light, fresh air. It might be about the subtle changes that we see throughout the year. Maybe about water features. The second aspect is about indirect connections to nature. And this is how we mimic or evoke a feeling of nature using natural materials, colors, textures, patterns, and even technology. And the third one is what we call a human spatial response. And this is how and why we create spaces that are exciting and stimulating and aspirational, you know, to create buildings that we want to go to, but also to create places that are calming, relaxing, and restorative. Because so many of the spaces that we live and work in are exhausting, they’re overwhelming. And when we become tired and fatigued, our productivity goes down. So we need to treat people with some respect and make sure that they don’t get tired because that’s not good for anybody. And to keep them productive, we have to make sure they get this kind of level of micro recuperation. So they’re always performing at their best. How Can Bring Nature Into Office Design? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. So we said three things there- the direct connection, the indirect connection, and human spatial response. Is there one that’s easier or that you see as more common for smaller organizations to try and incorporate into their space? Oliver Heath: Well, you know, I mean the easiest thing, of course, you know, put a few plants in. The nice thing is these plants are just the most amazing things. You know, not only do they look lovely, they add a soft visual texture that we’re familiar with, that it’s kind of gently calming. They provide some movement, create some richness into the space. Many plants can also remove toxins that we find in interior environments, volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde particles that come from the emissions from cars, or all the burning substances. And they can also modify temperature and humidity, remove CO2, and countless studies have shown actually that reducing levels of CO2 can actually enhance decision-making in offices. So, multiple benefits. And, you know, they’re not just nice to look at. They can literally provide a measurable benefit to people and productivity. Jenn DeWall: Okay, let’s go into that because I think there might still be some people that are like, why in the heck are they talking about nature in the office of mayor myth? Let’s talk about the benefits of actually creating a place that incorporates nature, whether it’s through one of the three methods that you said. Well, let’s talk about the benefits that the organization can see for the individuals or just the organization itself. I know you, you talked about a few different statistics, which were pretty eye-opening for me, but what are the benefits of connecting with nature? How Design Affects Productivity Oliver Heath: Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects of biophilic design for me is that it’s what we call an evidence-based approach to design. Now, ordinarily, most design styles are picked from current trends or things that people have liked. But when we talk about an evidence-based approach, what we’re essentially suggesting is that the work that we produce as designers is underpinned by years of research studies by environmental psychologists that have demonstrated that an increased connection to nature in the built environment can have measurable and tangible benefits for occupants in the space, but also the organizations that run them. So across all sorts of building typologies, there are known benefits. So, in particular, workplace, studies have shown that actually when natural features have been applied, there’s a 15% reduction in absenteeism. Other studies have shown that when office workers were found to perform from 10 to 25% better on tests for mental recall and functioning when they had the best possible— so looking out onto nature and greenery and movement. And then separate studies by an organization that I work with very closely called interface have shown the office workers in workplaces that have increased levels of nature self-report a 15% higher level of well-being and a 6% more productive, and 15% more creative. So what’s important about this is essentially that we’re creating a business case. We’re saying this isn’t just nice to have. This is an essential component of how we create places that people want to work in and that support them and a physical a mental level to enhance productivity, communication, engagement, and involvement. And, you know, for me, it, it just says, you know, you’ve got to be doing this. It’s not a nice to have, you know, you’re, you’re now competing against other organizations in what we call the war for talent. So how do you get the people to come and work for you? Well, you create a beautiful lush environment where people walk in, and they can understand that through this sort of diverse element of greenery and spaces, that there’s a space that can actually support them, not just to survive, but to thrive and flourish. Jenn DeWall: You said a lot of really powerful things that I think, you know, a lot of leaders are like, I would love to reduce absenteeism. I would love to create a place where people are more productive, but then also, as we think right now, you know, burnout rates are so high. I love that when we can focus on creating that physical environment that’s better for someone’s space, we can have an impact on that mental well-being, which is so important. I love that this is one way that we can really approach mental wellness like mental health. Again, there are other options, but this is a great, easy, accessible one for people to start maybe incorporating. How has the pandemic affected this? Is it that people that are kind of creating spaces that are boxier then, and they don’t even look at that. Like, how has the pandemic impacted how we work and the biophilic design that you’ve done at home? Biophilic Design at Home Oliver Heath: Yeah, I think prior to the pandemic, it was clear that people felt that it was their employers who bore the responsibility of the health and well-being of the workplace. So there was an expectation that the workplace should be delivering on enhanced well-being through air quality, access to natural light, good ergonomics. Now, when the pandemic hit, we started to work from home. It was clear that we were all having to kind of find places in our homes. You know, we weren’t necessarily, it wasn’t a given that anybody had spaces, but we had to find spaces that could support our intended activity. And I think what happened was that because we were not having that rich diversity of spaces that we would have in our ordinary lives, that suddenly we recognized just how much architecture affects us, because, you know, we’re surrounded by it. It’s very, multi-sensory contains us. And it really does affect our physical, mental, and emotional states. So I think over the pandemic, what’s been clear is people have been locked at home in a single space. They started going a little bit stir crazy. They’ve got cabin fever. And I think people recognize the need to connect with nature as a means to recuperate, to relax and reduce stress maybe at the beginning of the day to get out and get what we call a photon shower, which is an intense burst of natural lights, very good for circadian rhythms, or perhaps at the end of the day, just to sort of de-stress to relax. So people have been getting out, walking, connecting with nature in the UK. We see a massive increase in the number of people who are now getting dogs and really benefiting from the kind of change in physical activity they have because of those dogs. So, you know, the lots of, lots of subtle ways people have really valued that, that nature connection. How Does Office Design Go Wrong? Jenn DeWall: Where do organizations get it wrong? I mean, I struggled because I— I will say this— and it’s a personal preference. Sometimes when for me, a building is very modern. I can see aesthetically that it’s wonderful and it’s beautiful, but it can also feel really sterile and not necessarily freeing. It doesn’t feel warm or relaxing. Even though I can appreciate the design, it doesn’t elicit a [positive] response. And I’m assuming many organizations might be like, yeah, I get the, you know, that modern, that trendy, that neat technique. And we don’t even consider that. So, where do companies get it wrong when they think about their office design space? Oliver Heath: Yeah. This is really interesting actually because I think a lot of organizations use design as a means to express identity, power, wealth, status. You know, we’re a big company, we’re powerful. Look at our design, you know, it’s cold, it’s hard, it’s all stair. We’ve got people inside this building, they’re doing jobs, and they’re doing well. They’re like little cogs in a machine. So that, so in a way that they’re using design to express an outward message of power and wealth and status, now I call that, you know, essentially that’s a very extrinsic message. It’s pushing it out there. And well, our approach is much more intrinsic. We say, well, what about if we turn that around completely? What if we just design buildings that put people in the best physical and mental state to do the task at hand? What would that look like? What would it feel like? What would it be like? What would it be like to walk in in the day? How would it help you to be productive when you’re sitting at your desk? How might that help you to connect with others and have creative conversations? And how might that help you feel better when you leave at the end of the day so that you have a good work-life balance that you can go home and not feel stressed and that you can sleep well and come back to work, feeling refreshed and had excited about doing another good day’s work. So this intrinsic approach it’s really about putting in that deep, in the best, most positive, optimistic, and open state so that when they pick up the phone to somebody, they’re not angry, they’re not stressed. They’re like, how are you doing? You know, having, you know, and having a really good open conversation because to me, that’s what I want from my staff. I want people to feel happy, to be excited about coming to work, and to be in a really good mental state to do the work that I need them to do. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. So organizations may get it wrong by just not including or incorporating any elements of nature and maybe not considering the warmth. So the warmth that it takes, and trying too hard to, I guess, lean into the brand of what they want that to look like instead of the human side. And I’ve definitely been in organizations where- and again, they look so glamorous, they look so cool, but it’s not necessarily the place that I would thrive in. And I know we’re going to talk a little bit about what you can do, but I think of even organizations that use a lot of like very bright colors and like how that can also feel overwhelming, it doesn’t feel as natural or just those hard lines. So if companies get it wrong, it might be leaning too much into your brand, creating a more sterile environment that doesn’t necessarily foster that. And it’s, so you’re not necessarily saying it can be any type of design. It’s just that when you do not include nature, so you could have a very modern, beautiful design, but you can incorporate nature. So we’re not saying any design is bad, right? We’re just saying that you need to also incorporate that element. Oliver Heath: Yes, yes. Biophilic design is an evolutionary design ethos. It sort of builds itself on that basis. But as human beings, we evolved in very close connection to nature for 99.5% of human evolution. And as a result, we have a genetic inheritance that allows us to recognize landscapes that can help us to survive, thrive, and flourish, and equally landscapes that are potentially threatening. So if you can imagine walking into a workplace where it’s just row upon row upon row of desks,                                                                                                 and you’re, you know, row F-5, you know, all of you know, A-Z rows of death. I mean, your heart’s going to sink at that. All it that’s all it is. Think about the lack of diversity, just the sort of monoculture of your daily experience. But if you were to walk into space where you can see that you can work in lots of different ways, there’s somewhere to sit and work by a window, to have a bit of privacy. There’s somewhere to have a little quiet conversation. You can pick up some food, some drinks. You can have a little conversation. There’s a meeting space, maybe a town hall. There is kind of little workspaces that have acoustically private or meeting rooms. And that there, this sort of diversity of spaces matched by diversity or furniture, but also plant life. You will immediately understand that this space is going to support you in all the different needs and physical and emotional needs that you need throughout the day. And also, your work needs so that you can work in different ways in a variety of different spaces. So in a way, it’s that sort of the richness of the diversity of spaces and products that you have in that, and of course, planting and greenery that immediately puts you at greater risk because space delivers on all your physical, mental, and emotional needs throughout that timeframe. Jenn DeWall: Okay. What do you do? Because I have absolutely worked for multiple organizations where I have been in the gray cube land. How do you even begin as an organization to approach this? Because I worked at one organization where there were over 3000 people in our corporate office. So if you could imagine the number of cubicles we had, we had a lot! But how do you start? Like, how do companies even start this is? I know we’re going to get more into the design, but how can you start with even cubicles? If you’re in an organization, what do you do? How do you take the gray and make it green? Great Workplace Design Can Attract Talent and Reduce Absenteeism Oliver Heath: You know, your organization is made up of people. And, and I think for a lot of organizations, 90% of typical business operating costs are on stuff. So you put your people first, and whilst you may have what we call in the UK facilities manager, do you have those in the states? They manage the building. Who may be the person in charge of the building and the layout? They may be the one that’s leading the kind of consideration of how well that space is working, but actually, it’s the people in that space that are going to be experiencing it on a day-to-day basis that really should be talked to. So what we promote is the idea of pre and post-occupancy evaluations. So essentially, it is surveys that help you understand more about the state of that space. There are quantitative aspects that measure things like the level of light temperature, humidity. You might be measuring things like absenteeism or workplace injury. Oliver Heath: So these are things you can put little numbers to. And then you’ve got the qualitative aspects. And very often, buildings are- qualitative aspects, basically asking people questions like, how do you feel when you walk into the space? Does it allow you to be productive? Do you have connections to people that you may not otherwise bump into? How do you feel at the end of the day? Do you sleep well? You know, some of these qualitative questions are really important because very often a building might measure or write in one aspect, but when you speak to people, okay, this building doesn’t reflect who we are. I don’t like it. I feel embarrassed by it. I’d never bring people here. And we’ve literally worked on buildings where the quantitative and the qualitative aspects are completely diametrically opposed. So we always suggest that the organizations undertake the survey to really get under the skin of what it’s like to work in that place. And we’ve written a white paper with our knowledge partners, Interface Flooring. You can download this from the interface or from our website, which is OliverHeath.com. And this is basically an introduction to pre and post-occupancy evaluation. Essentially it’s about getting your design right from the outset, not just having one person with an opinion, but gathering that data and understanding what it’s like to work there and how the needs of those people should inform what the design is eventually going to become. Jenn DeWall: So start with your people. I mean, have maybe you’re the secret ingredient and to making people want to go to work? Oliver Heath: Absolutely. Yeah, Jenn DeWall: I mean, if I knew that I was going into a place that was going to feel calmer, I would, you know, that absolutely changes the mindset that I have for going in and doing that, especially if it was in, you know, the cubicle environment where I may not even see a light that’s natural unless I go out for lunch. But if I eat at my desk, then chances are not. I think the only natural light I had, and I was very lucky in our cubicle land, was that there was a big atrium that I was next to. So I was fortunate to have that sunlight, but many people were just between gray cubes and white walls, which I don’t know why we ever thought, like, this is probably a great place for people to, to work. They’d probably love this. Like where, why did we start like that? Why is that the root of office design? It has to be there, you know, this basic, like we’ll put the gray cube there, we’ll get those white walls. This is all fine. Do you know anything about the history of when they decided to even create these color schemes or kind of the aesthetic of a modern-day office? Oliver Heath: Yeah, I mean, I think it was in the forties and fifties, maybe the sixties, when we started to look at how we might enhance the productivity in the layout of workplaces, you know, human beings are very adaptable. You know, we can technically work in those spaces. Are we getting the best out of people? Probably not. You know, so we really do need to kind of put people first and go, well, how, how would you feel better? How, how would you work without stress? The 20-20-20 Rule Oliver Heath: You know, stress is enormously damaging. A little bit of stress is probably good to have a deadline, but if people are under constant stress from their workload, from social media, from emails, from deadlines, then actually the body’s sympathetic nervous system doesn’t have an opportunity just to stop. If you think about how we evolve, we might have had intense periods of activity when we were hunting and tracking, but actually, being able to stop to recuperate allowed us to regain our physical and mental approach and to get back to being at our best. But if we’re always on, that’s when we’re at risk of burning out. So essentially, as biophilic designers, we look to kind of create places where people can have that intense level of work but also have that opportunity to stop, to reflect, to recuperate. And we promote this idea called the 20-20-20 rule, which means basically every 20 minutes, people stop for 20 seconds and look at a distance of 20 feet away. Oliver Heath: And that just relaxes their eyes. It kind of reframes you just for 20 seconds that allows you to get back to being at your best. So it’s kind of one small little thing that you can do, even if you’re in a cubicle, just stop and just get that longer view. You might have to stand up or stand on a chance to do it, but, you know, if it means that your productivity isn’t going to be hindered and your stress levels have kept managed, then I think that’s probably a good thing. Jenn DeWall: Okay. I just want to say it, but I want to say it a little bit slower, so excuse me. So now we’re moving into one way that you can, oh my gosh. Sorry. Hi. All right. So now we’re kind of talking about, you know, just different things that you can do in your own place. And one of the things that you just shared. So the 20-20-20 rule says that for me one more time, just a little bit slower. So every 20 minutes, I stop, and I, I know I looked for 20 feet distance of 20 feet. What was it again? Okay. Every 20 minutes for 20 seconds, look at a distance of at least 20 feet, but hopefully, outside, it’s gotta be outside? Oliver Heath: Yeah, no, not necessarily, but I think if you can look onto plants and greenery, what has been sort of demonstrated again, is that sort of around and exposed to nature is a very good way at reducing stress. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. Okay. Fantastic. Like, I love that it’s the 20-20-20 rule. That’s a pretty easy one. Just reminding yourself that you’re likely going to be, you might be grueling looking at a challenge, but taking that break just to give yourself that mental reset again, we’re talking about simple things that you can do to create an environment that supports your well-being because we do want to be so mindful of stress. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I have so many friends lately that as a result of the pandemic, have been overly burnt out with a lot of different health challenges, just from, you know, stress, keep going, keep going, keep going. And I love that here’s one accessible way that we can start to kind of make a better design place. So I want to back it up. You talked about the three different ways that we can do it. So if we’re starting with the direct connection, then that’s adding in plants and trees. Like if you wanted to approach having, or excuse me, incorporate the direct connection, what could you do? Natural Light is Essential to Workplace Design Oliver Heath: Yeah, so, so getting more natural light is probably fundamental to that. So, so natural light balances your circadian rhythms. Your circadian rhythms are your body’s reactions to periods of light and dark across a 24 hour period. It affects your mood, your behavior, and the body’s hormone release. In particular, is the release of melatonin and serotonin, which are the body’s sort of control of the sleep-wake cycles. So if we don’t have those sort of subtle changes that we see in natural light throughout the day as the sun, as the light goes from sort of orange in the morning to yellow, stimulating blue in the middle of the day, and then yellow and orange and red into the evening. Oliver Heath: And, you know, as we, as we spend so much of our time indoors, it’s under a single color temperature of light, but when we have more natural lights, our body can sync up to the kind of the changes the diurnal changes that we see. So having more natural light is really important. So doing a simple thing by moving our desk closer to the window, facing the window, means you’ve got light falling onto your face now. So when you’re doing a, you know, I kind of online conversation like this, you kind of well lit, but also you’ve got the art, the light falling into your, your eyes. So your body’s circadian systems are becoming more level and balanced. That will mean that you’ll sleep better at night, and you’ll wake up feeling more refreshed, able to do a good day’s work. So that’s a really simple thing when you have more natural light, the plants thank you as well. So they grow, they flourish, and we know that plants can help remove CO2, produce oxygen, remove toxins, modifying temperature, humidity, multiple benefits from plants. So, you know, natural light plants, they kind of go hand in hand together. And if plants can survive and flourish, then you know, so can humans. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, I, yes, I love the natural light comparison. You actually inspired me. I know that we had our pre-call a few weeks back or last week, and yesterday I took my laptop, excuse me. And I went, and I sat outside on my patio, and that’s what I did for work. I’m like, Oliver would tell me that I need to make the 20-20-20 rule and, or at least take a moment to look at nature because I think you gave me a tip on looking at nature, but I did do that yesterday. I’m like, am I? They’re going to work in my dining room facing the natural light, which is outside and a piece of nature, or going to work my back patio. And that’s what I did. So thank you very much for those tips because they very much stood with me and it was nice. It was nice to be removed from my environment that has natural elements to some extent but really doesn’t. And I know we’re going to talk and give a few more tips, but thank you for that. So when we go into indirect connection, that was all about then the colors of nature. So how do you replicate that? Is that just with, maybe we can change the way or the walls of cubes start there. Maybe I should write a letter to cube manufacturers. Can we start with not producing gray? Using Colors to Create a Productive Workspace Oliver Heath: Yes. Yes. So, we use a color theory called ecological balance that suggests that we react well to colors that we’ve had previous experiences of. Now, as a population in general, we’ve had positive experiences of nature. So the theory goes that if we use colors that are, have elicited a positive emotional response in nature, we bring them indoors. They can elicit a similar emotional response. So the suggestion goes that there are sort of shades of blue or calming, relaxing, and restorative that remind us of cool, calm pools of water. Whereas shades of green might be more energizing and inspirational, and creative. They remind us of the fresh shoots of spring and all that incredible energy that we get this time of the year. Whereas yellows might remind us of the wards that some sunshine and bright summer crops, they’re very kind of warming, welcoming, and sociable colors. So they’re great in kind of a canteen or cafeteria spaces, social areas of bringing people together, making people feel kind of happy and open and optimistic. And then sort of reds and oranges are more energizing and stimulating and have to be a little bit careful not to overwhelm people, but they’re a little bit like the energy associated with fresh fruits and berries and the energy that you might need to expend from gathering them, but also from eating them. Oliver Heath: So it’s about how you use those colors in the appropriate ways and appropriate proportion. So not overwhelming people with blues or greens or yellows, but just kind of introducing those colors. And it could be as simple as, you know, adding them into fabrics, maybe wall colors, maybe even paintings maybe, you know, there’s the color of surfaces as well. Jenn DeWall: So green is the one that’s energizing, right? So that’s spring. If I’m trying to remember, this blue is cooler— Oliver Heath: Great. So thinking about where you find them, so energizing and creative as green shades of blue and more calming and relaxing yellows, this kind of very warm, welcoming color. Reds, reds, and oranges, you know, more stimulating. Technology Can Help Bring Nature Indoors Jenn DeWall: Now, what did you mean when you said, okay, so we can consider those. That’s fantastic. What did you mean when you said technology? What technology with that nature? I think we’re talking to opposite sides. No, I’m teasing. Oliver Heath: And this is the amazing thing that actually, so much technology is developing to mimic and evoke a sense of nature. Both in the way that we produce materials but also how we represent nature. So think about, you know, our kind of really cliched one is you might have a TV screen with a flickering fireplace. Yeah? So we get all that kind of beautiful movement of the flames are getting the colors. You might have the sound of nature and, of course, that’s a TV screen representing it. But now, with high-definition TVs, what we see organizations do around the world, and I visited one in Japan recently was creating sort of recuperation rooms where it happens for great, big, very, very high definition TVs. They filmed local natural landscapes that people may have visited, just a static shot of a waterfall cascading down with trees and birds flying around. You can literally see the mess rising up. You can hear the water and people just sitting in chairs, looking back in a darkened room, watching this very calming, very gentle scene. And it brings up this idea of what we call non-rhythmic sensory stimuli. That’s kind of a complicated name for something you would probably know; non-rhythmic sensory stimuli is that very gentle calming feeling when you start to have a sense of movement. We see in nature like ripples moving on a pool of water, or maybe trees blowing in the wind. You know, it’s things that are constantly moving. It remained the same, that very non-threatening, and these things are very good at relaxing in the story. And you know, most built environments are very static. So introducing the sense of nature is really good. Oliver Heath: Now that might happen on a TV screen, but increasingly what we’re seeing are many technologies, be they acoustic or olfactory. So, you know how you produce scents or even sound to help multiple senses. So I’d say like a water wall might re-circulate water going down a wall. What that does is it introduces the sound of water. You get the beautiful non-rhythmic sensory stimuli of the movement. And you also get that increased humidity, which you can feel on the skin. So you think about the sort of three different senses that can refresh and restore and also help to distract from otherwise sort of potentially conflicting acoustic bits of information, what speech? Jenn DeWall: Sure. Oh my gosh. I wanted, like, I want this for every place that, you know, is that big gray corporation that I’ve worked in many times. And I know many people have just even having and replicating that experience. I think that’s such a great way to use and leverage your technology or do a sound system. Thank you so much for explaining more about how we can leverage technology right. It doesn’t always have to be a bucket of paint you can do or a picture. It could also just be putting an active, like a fireplace or a fire that’s on the screen or waterfall. Oliver Heath: Fish tanks are another good one. Do you know what I mean? There’s a lot of technology that goes into fish tanks, but again, it’s sort of produces that that beautiful movement and the richness of colors and that sense of nature. What is Human Spatial Response? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I love that. What about the human spatial response? So can we go a little bit into that one? I think that one’s probably the most. What does that mean? I don’t know what that means. What does the human spatial response? Oliver, I’m just gonna own that. I don’t necessarily know. Oliver Heath: It’s complicated. It’s okay. It’s okay. So, so basically, it’s about producing spaces that are exciting and stimulating that when you walk into them, you go like, wow, look at that, it’s amazing, but also spaces that are calming relaxing. So with know that certain types of architectural features excite us and stimulate us. So imagine I’m looking over an atrium over the handrail and looking down ten stories. What’s that going to do to you? You know, if you have vertigo, you’re going to get that sense of like that, you know, you’re going to feel that rush of blood. And if you walk under a gantry or around a waterfall, then again, it can, it can stimulate you. It can stimulate adrenaline. It can complicate your excitement about walking into space. Maybe, you know, it’s about creating areas that have that palpable sense of buzz and excitement. So that’s about creating that, that sense of real excitement or aspiration about the building. And equally, and I think this is the one thing that so many organizations get wrong is, is the kind of relaxation, recuperation, restoration aspect. You know, having people burn out is not good. You know, having people leave organizations to take time off costs organizations and incredible about money, but having somebody sit in a chair, look over a waterfall or a view of trees, or just have a moment in the sunlight. You know, even for five minutes, if that’s all it takes to relax somebody, to get them back to being at their best, to give them a moment, to get to, you know, reduce that stress and get them back to their desk. Then how damaging is that? Truly it’s far better to help people manage stress than to have a build-up to the point that they can’t come in. So, you know, it’s the one thing we see organizations really get wrong is going well, no, we’ve got all these spaces, so you’ve got, you know, it’s just on, on, on all the time, we’re not designed as human beings like technology just to be on all the time. We really do have to stop. We have to manage our sleep. We have to make sure that we stop to eat, to communicate, to have a break, to change our headsets, and even just have a moment to ourselves. It’s just so important. Jenn DeWall: I love that you bring that up because I’m going to translate that into maybe how I see it. And I was working with a client. This was actually last evening. And the reason that she is leaving her job, one of the reasons, is because she can’t even take a 15 to 25-minute break. If she was going to take one, right? She’s a salaried employee. She works more than eight hours. Let’s call it 10 or 12, but she can’t take a break because then if she’s away from her Slack or her Google Hangout, that’s when frustrating. They expect an on-demand response. And her challenge with that is I can’t even just go for a walk outside quick to, you know, decompress, to unwind, and we need to find and build-in opportunities for people to unplug. We cannot; I love that you said that we cannot be continuously on. There’s no way! We don’t have the momentum for that. You don’t leave me enough free cookies in the lobby to even make me go that far. No, I’m teasing, but really we have to be mindful of what we are doing in our spaces in our life to give people the breaks, to decompress, sit with nature and just unwind. So what, what are the simple things that we can do at home? Oliver Heath: Well, I, as I mentioned, you know, firstly, you know, reposition your desk near a window. If you can get a view onto some level of nature, whether that’s trees or plants that generally move, then that’s a really, really good thing. Make sure you take regular breaks. So go outside maybe in the morning, maybe in the evening, get some connection to nature. Fill your space with tactile surfaces and think about your what we call the haptic journeys. And haptic journeys are on a sort of sense of touch. So I think about, you know, what’s on the floor, maybe you’re going from stone floor in your bathroom to timber, to rugs. Think about your acoustic environment. I think very often people are working in, in not in spaces that are very distracting as human beings. We can’t actually filter out human speech very well. We can get used to all the sounds and get kind of habituated to it, but human speech is very difficult and very distracting for us. So minimizing that maybe masking it with other natural sounds of birds on the water is very, very good. And there are, there are lots of apps that you can download just to provide a sort of masking level, of water noise or background bird noise. What else can you do? Tactile surfaces, colors, even images of nature and walls can be very good. The Power of Soup Jenn DeWall: Little things. So even if you’re at home and you’re remote environment, you could add in some plans you can T you can turn your desk, and you have that window view. I love this. There are simple things, be intentional about the workspace that you’re creating because it has so many benefits to our mental health. Oliver, let’s talk about the final wrap-up story, which is just a beautiful tradition that you do within your organization. All about the power of soup! Because we’re bringing it back. We’ve got to bring it back. What is the power of soup? Oliver Heath: So the power of soup is an idea that we’ve developed in our office. And it’s a really simple thing. Ordinarily, in organizations and in many workplaces, people sort of sit and have lunch at my desk. I’ll bring a sandwich like I’ll buy one and sit at their desk and look at the computer. But that’s what they’ve been doing all day already. And they’re just sitting there in their chair. So what we do, or we ordinarily do before the pandemic, and we hope to get back to it. We really miss it. It is basically producing and making soup in the office. So basically what happens is mid-morning, we’ll start about the soup, cause it’s the highlight of the day, rather than working, you know, here. So, so we’ll start talking about ingredients. Somebody will pop out to the shops, and we’ll come back, chop, prepare the vegetables, put them into a soup maker, turn the soup maker on. And then half an hour later, we’ve got, we’ve got to have some whole pot of steaming, fresh soup. Everyone gathers around the table, and we just stop for half an hour, and we eat, and we share soup. Now the lovely thing about that is it. It’s very sort of democratic. Oliver Heath: Everybody sits around the table; everybody has to stop work. And that’s really important. You stop, you, you, you kind of don’t look at your screens, and we have a chat. You know, we talk about, you know, what are you watching? What box sets, what are you reading? You know, what things are you noticing that people are wearing, listening to, what are kind of trends? And it’s been so fantastic, just this opportunity to reconnect with the people around you. To start to recalibrate, but also to talk about ideas. And you know, one of the interesting things about biophilic design is that it’s not just about how it affects us individually, how it reduces stress and helps us to recuperate. There’s also an associated psychological element to it as well about how it can enhance the connection to places, spaces, and the people in those spaces. So thinking about the senses and using our gustatory senses, that sense of taste, we use soup as an opportunity to connect with one another, to bring people around our kind of mindful moment of sitting around a table and having a conversation really amazing. Oliver Heath: It’s just the number of ideas we have when sitting around the table, eating soup, you know, because you know, when you start to talk, you share ideas, you share knowledge, you say resources. And from all of those from different people, you start to innovate. You come up with new ideas, and a business-like us as designers thrives on innovation. So the “Power of Soup” is all about how we use our senses to get people, to connect, to talk, to share ideas, and come up with new ideas. Jenn DeWall: I love that, Oliver. I want to come over to Brighton sometime and get that soup. I would love it. And you’re right. Innovation is all about building on the other or on other’s ideas. How can we replicate that? How can we create a place where people can connect? They disconnect from the computer, and they’re actually still kind of working if you’re talking about different things, but it’s not in the same way. And we actually just get to build that sense of community over. Thank you so much for just sharing with us different ways that we can approach our mental well-being, how we can create spaces that people can thrive in. How can people get in touch with you? Because you go around the world, you work with a lot of different organizations to create different spaces. How can they get in touch with you? Oliver Heath: Yeah, yeah. We often work remotely. I mean, as say I’m not traveling quite as much as you can look at our website, which is oliverheath.com. And on there, there are lots of resources that you can download about biophilic design in the workplace. And we’ve got a new online course called biophilic design in the home as well. So if you want to really bring those ideas into the place that’s probably the most important place in your life, your home, then we’ve got a course you can look at and download, and it’s kind of full of great ideas. That’s really inspiring. It’s not about telling you. It’s got to look like this. It’s about using your own sense of style and helping you understand the framework to apply those ideas. Jenn DeWall: Fantastic. And you also, I want you to just hold up that white paper again, because if they go to https://www.oliverheath.com/online-courses/, that not only can you have access to this class for how you can incorporate it in your home, but they also have additional white papers called Creating Positive Spaces where you could download that and then help to understand what you can do in your organization. So you’re working remotely with clients. I think that’s fantastic. I love, you know, the adaptability that we all have to have, but Albert, thank you for the work that you do, especially in changing the way that you know, the environment we spend, the majority of our lives at work. Why do we sometimes forget that the environment plays that part? I’m so glad that you’re putting a platform and a spotlight on that and ways that we can actually create a place that people want to work in. Thank you so much for taking your time to be with us today, Oliver! Oliver Heath: It’s been a total pleasure talking with you! Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast with Oliver Heath. If you want to connect with Oliver, head on over to OliverHeath.com. If you know someone that could benefit from hearing this podcast and understanding how they can change and transform their workplace, don’t forget to share this with them. And of course, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast, streaming service, and side note. Here’s a promo. If you don’t already come, Crestcom offers complimentary monthly webinars. And we would love to see you there. You talk about a variety of different topics, all designed to help you become the best leader that you can be.   The post Design a More Productive Workspace with Biophilic Design Expert, Oliver Heath appeared first on Crestcom International.

Turning Your B.S.(Blind Sides) Into Leadership Success with Carla Romo Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Carla Romo. We talked about turning your B.S.— your blindsides— into leadership success. Let me tell you a little bit about Carla. Carla Romo is an author, speaker, certified life coach, and podcast host. And at age 24, she hit her rock bottom when she found herself in another toxic codependent relationship and in a cycle of burnout from her career in T.V., But this time, she got up and learned how to break free from codependency and get out of burnout—inspired by her self-growth journey. She took lemons and made lemonade, and today she helps people push through their B.S.- your Blind Sides- so they can thrive in all aspects of their life. Today, Carla leads worldwide workshops and talks to people from varying backgrounds for work ranges from small group settings to hundreds of attendees, either in person or virtual. She has spoken to or been featured in the Simon Business School, Milwaukee Bucks, Nissan Bravo, Verizon, Bumble, Lifetime, as well as other highly-rated iTunes podcasts. And today, Carla and I sat down to talk about how you can turn your B.S., your blind sides, into leadership success. Meet Carla Romo—Author, Speaker and Life Coach Jenn DeWall: Hi, everyone! It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I am so excited to be sitting down with author speaker certified life coach and podcast host. Woo! Another one! Carla Romo. Carla, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. Carla Romo: Thanks, Jenn! I’m super excited to be here! Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And we’re going to be talking about turning our B.S., the blind sides, into leadership success. How did you kind of navigate and find yourself really loving to help people through that? What does it even mean to have blind sides? Carla Romo: Well, I think really just my own blind sides I had to get through and the things that stopped me from thriving, and we’re talking intimate relationships, we’re talking career, personal life. I mean, blind sides can really go into any area, any aspect, but here’s the deal is that if you have blind sides, which basically are blocks that are stopping you from thriving in life, these are the things that are holding you back that you probably don’t even realize. Carla Romo: Or maybe you realize when you’re just sitting on it, these things that hold you back, rob you of your full potential. And so the idea is once you push through one block, maybe you think, gosh, my career’s just not where I want it to be. It’s just really frustrating for me. And you’re like, what do I do? Right. So you kind of sort out those blind sides in that area so that you can start to thrive in your career. But what you probably will realize, once you start doing this work, this inner work of blind sides is you’ll start to notice, Oh, this is also my personal life. My friendships, family, life relationships, all of these areas are affected by your blind sides. So I like to say it doesn’t discriminate— blind sides, you know— affect all of it. It’s just that maybe it’s coming out and bleeding through in one area, for example, like leadership. Jenn DeWall: Well, I think you talk about even how, first of all, I heard you say inner work, which is so important because I think that we just want the tool. We don’t want to do the inner work. Carla Romo: I just want the quick fix. Right? What are Some Common Blind Sides? Jenn DeWall: I also like that you talk about that we can’t look at life in a vacuum again. I think that was one of those myths that we’ve been conditioned to believe that we can somehow shut off a portion of ourselves when we go into the office. And it’s just not; it’s not the case. So I think that’s great that you talk about that. What are some examples of maybe some blind sides that people might have? Carla Romo: Being stuck in your career to a place of, Okay, I know I want more for myself. I know I really want to go after X type of role, but I feel really stuck in this one role. Another blind side is confidence. Just not feeling good enough to take on a different role or to lead. Imposter syndrome- insert right there. So that can also look like a blind side. And then just the value of yourself. So if you were to think about the value of yourself right now and what you bring, you probably haven’t been really thinking about that. What you’re probably thinking about as we are our own worst critic is, Oh, I’m not good enough, or I’m not worthy enough. Or I don’t have enough skill set in this area, or people are going to judge me, or people aren’t going to like me. Those are some of the major blind sides that show up and manifest in surface-level stuff. So that could look like, Oh, like, I don’t know. I don’t. I’m not really going to take on this leadership role. I’m too busy. It’s coming up with excuses because what’s really underneath that excuse of I’m too busy is I’m not worthy enough. I don’t have that confidence to go out there and do it. Jenn DeWall: Do you ever notice that I’m curious like I see this sometimes with clients that they might look at themselves and they look at their hard skills, and they look at that as how they determine confidence? So if they’re like, well, of course, I’m confident, but yet they don’t actually realize that they actually don’t have competence. They might have it on the specific hard skill, but they don’t have it internally. And I’m curious what, like how do you help people bring awareness to those blind sides? Because I think sometimes, I love it. Yeah. It’s blind. We don’t necessarily draw attention to it or realize the impact that it’s having. Carla Romo: Absolutely. So when people are looking at themselves and like, well, I’m confident I feel worthy enough. Okay. That’s fine. There’s a difference between where your emotional level is at and your logical level. Is that okay? So logic and emotion don’t always meet up. And so when you’re at a place of your right brain is the feeling side of things. Your left brain is logical. It wants to come to conclusions. So you might not feel okay, like you are good enough, but logically, look, that I’m good enough. I’m confident I did this before in the past. So it’s fine. Whatever. So you’ve got to meet yourself where you’re at that moment. So you just have to start peeling back the layers of the onion, is the way I like to put it. What is stopping you? So really ask yourself, what’s stopping me from my full potential at this moment? What is the thought behind it? And then what is the feeling that’s driving it. And if it’s the feeling of sadness or frustration or loneliness or anger, that is, what’s pulling you back, and the thing is you can’t compartmentalize your feelings. So maybe you’re like, I’m just going to power through it. Right? And look, we can all power through things and get through it, and you know, grit. Right? But what is so important here is to give yourself time to process your feelings, which does not take very long, but we like to just bypass our feelings and go to our left brain of logic. So when you can connect with how you’re feeling about something, then you can start to connect to where this left-brain logic is coming from. So maybe for you to bypass is like, I’m not feeling confident. I don’t feel very good. I feel lonely. I feel sad about it, but I know I’m confident. So whatever. Instead of dealing with it, it just kind of masks it. What Happens When We Ignore Our Blind Sides? Jenn DeWall: Yeah, Absolutely. And what are, you know, I, I want to, let’s give the call to action, right? To the people that might be struggling with really wanting to go deep, because again, it’s feelings. Yeah. What’s the consequence of not addressing these blind sides? Like what is the consequence to us, our success, and our ability to lead? Carla Romo: You’re holding yourself back 110%. And in order to lead, I truly believe that you’ve got to do your inner work. You’ve got to do that confidence-building that blindside building, because if you do not do that, how are you expecting to lead others through their blind sides, through what they’re going through and the more awareness and emotional intelligence that you can grow- because the beautiful thing is you can always grow your emotional intelligence, is to be able to do that work for yourself. And so doing that makes you a thriving leader would make you somebody who can lead- person, place, thing- whatever it is that you want to lead in life. And so doing that work is what gives you that, but not doing that work is actually what holds you back as being a true leader. Jenn DeWall: I think it probably plays into a lot of the challenges we see, or we’ve been really seeing more pronounced for the pandemic like burnout. Carla Romo: Absolutely. Jenn DeWall: It is about being able to do that. And they think, you know, you can give yourself the band-aid or pretend does it have an impact, or you can do the work and you can actually help establish better mental health, a better sense of confidence. You’re going to make better decisions. I mean, I love the topic that you talk about, Carla, because I think so many people, especially leaders, really struggle in silence. They don’t actually admit the way that this can make their role more challenging than they might feel like. Oh gosh, like what if my team doesn’t like me? What if I make the wrong decision? And that, it sounds like what you offer with overcoming our blind sides is just a way for us to have more peace and less stress and less burnout. Does that sound about right? Like what benefits do you see leaders have or individuals have when they actually do the work on their blind sides? Carla Romo: Absolutely. And I’ve coached a lot of executives at fortune 500 companies, startups, things like that. And the number one thing that I see with them is what was driving them to be successful. A lot of times is ego, and I’m not talking ego in the sense of I’m so great. I’m amazing. I’m actually talking to the other side of ego. I am so insignificant that I am significant and that a lot of times is what propels people. Okay. I got to prove myself. I got to get out there. I got to get out there. But when you can flip the script and really look at yourself here of, you know, what is it that’s driving me? What is it that’s propelling me forward? How is it holding me back? What is it? What is it that’s stopping me from thriving in leadership? So when I do this work with clients, a lot of times, they’re able to turn what’s driving them into their full purpose and meaning in life. And so they’re not driven by ego anymore. Instead, they’re actually driven because they want to contribute to society. They want to contribute as a leader to the workplace and their businesses and their careers. And that’s what propels them forward. Jenn DeWall: I love that. They’re driven by much more of that big picture, impact, and perspective. Carla Romo: And it’s that meaning and purpose again, you know, like we all have meaning, we all have purpose, but when we feel disconnected to it, it’s really actually the surface level indication of the blind side of being disconnected to ourselves. How Do We Start Turning Blind Sides into Leadership Success? Jenn DeWall: So how do we, Like, I know that this, again, it can be difficult to initially get in generate the awareness, but where do you start with your clients on this? How do you start? I guess what’s the path to overcoming your blind sides or what’s the process that you have to work through to actually turn that into a leadership success? Carla Romo: So, number one is what’s your, what stopped you? Like what’s your obstacle. Okay. So what are you unhappy with? Like, what is it that you feel not satisfied with? And maybe you’re like, well, I’m satisfied with everything in life. I have a good salary. I’ve got a great position at this company. Okay. Emotionally, internally, if you can’t think about things like that, right? Like sometimes, my clients come to me, like I’m just not satisfied with where I’m at and my position at work or whatever it might be. But if you’re like, I feel good about that. Like I have this, right? Like it shows where I’m at. Really? What is underneath that? Are you emotionally connected? Do you feel you have meaning? Do you feel you have a purpose? And it’s actually starting with that little piece, but before we even dive into that, it’s the awareness piece. You have to have the awareness to make any change in your life. So if you could start to become aware of like, you know, maybe take a little journal around with you or put it in your phone, start taking notes of things that maybe you don’t feel as connected to, or maybe you feel that you want to work toward, that you feel like is impossible. So really start to dream, get big, get out there. And that can start to feel uncomfortable because these blind sides are holding you back from really getting into your full potential. So once you have this awareness- taking notes, maybe it’s even just your burnout. You feel exhausted. It’s like I had a purpose once here, but now I don’t even know what I’m doing on the zoom call and this meeting with everybody. So really, just having that level of awareness, writing it down, and being honest with yourself immediately starts to pull out and call out these blind sides in your life. Jenn DeWall: So I love that thinking about where do you want to go? And what’s the first, I don’t know, maybe for lack of a better description, what’s the first “no” that your mind thinks of? Nope. You can’t do that because of this or no. You’re too old. Or no, you’re this like, what’s, what are your no’s that come up as you think about that? I kind of like that perspective. Because then it’s like, just think about this outside of yourself. Like, they’re just absolute thoughts. Like they come up, we all have them again. Carla and I both have them. Carla Romo: I have them. And that’s how I’ve got it. That’s how I created the blind siding work because, because of my own blind sides. Jenn DeWall: Okay. So we start, we get the awareness. We, I love the idea of like, even just pulling around your phone and just start to take a mental note, then what do we do? Okay. We have the awareness I’ve identified. Let’s say maybe it’s just feeling. I guess what I see, you know, in the work with Crestcom that we do, sometimes leaders just feeling like I wasn’t prepared to be a leader. And so then anything that they do, they might start to say, Oh gosh, can I, am I even up for the task? Do I have what it takes? So if that’s what we’re noticing that limiting belief of just feeling like we don’t have the experience, then what? Brainstorm Without Having to Decide Right Away Carla Romo: Absolutely. And the next step would be to start getting real with yourself. What do you want for yourself? And I like to go into brainstorm mode of like, just throw out everything, every single option that you have, that you could see for your future, your potential, maybe it’s a leadership track, every option with that. I mean, whatever it might be for yourself and just throw out the options, even the options you don’t want. Okay. So just make a list, just start throwing out ideas of what you want, the life that you want to create for yourself. What would be cool, what wouldn’t and then start to process by elimination. So you go through this list and you say, okay, here’s something, you know, I really like this aspect of the option or of my future, but I really don’t like this, and I’m not going to do that, that part. So cross it off. And then when you get down to maybe two or three, I want you to, just to like to sit on them. So I never have clients just make a quick decision impulse and run with it. Right. And so what I like to do is have people sit with it, try it out for the week. You know, let yourself think about this and put like that hat on of what you envision your future to be like, what this option could be for you. And so put that hat on for the week, go ahead and live it out and think about that and then try on the other hat, go for it. Maybe it’s two days, three days you think about, okay, if my future looked like this, and then if you know, like I said, two to three, so maybe have a third one, put that hat on, try it out. Your gut will guide you and will tell you. Whichever one you are the most excited about is the one that leads you. And so I think in order to understand what leads yourself will help you lead others because you’re connected with purpose. You’re connected with meaning, and you’re connected with what, with what drives you forward in leadership. And so I think at that moment, then that’s your gut saying, go for it. Now, this is also where blind sides come up and want to stop you because they’re freaking out on you. And they’re like, what are you doing? Like no way, like, are you kidding? Like my salary wouldn’t look the same or like, there’s no way I could pivot in this direction. Those are blind sides. That is not reality. The reality is if you have your basic needs met, then pushing past these blind sides is a mindset. So that’s where the work comes in around navigating some of these blind sides. But you now have an awareness of what you want to go after. So it’s now creating a commitment to yourself to building out these, this option or choice or goal for your life or future, and wearing that hat moving forward. Jenn DeWall: I feel like the expression that I’m thinking in my head is like, it’s only natural, of course, that you would have any level of fear that comes up. It’s okay. Carla Romo: We’re human. Yes. Unless I like to say, unless you’re a psychopath who cannot feel anything, even sociopaths can feel fear. So just want to put that out there that, you know, it’s totally normal, and the fear is a blind side, and that is, you know, there are little blind sides in different steps of what you’re overcoming. But having this awareness and willing to ground yourself in that option that leads you forward, that moves you forward, is amazing because now you have that awareness, and you, once you have the awareness, you can’t really go back. Jenn DeWall: Okay. So I’m going to mirror it back. Tell me if I got the process. Right. So initial piece is the awareness. Like what, like where do I want to go? And what potentially is holding me back? What would my life look like? Or my leadership style looks like it would be step two. And then I like giving yourself permission to just try, don’t make a decision, don’t run 110 miles per hour in that direction. Just maybe give short, incremental bites to try that out, see what you like, what you don’t like, what comes up for you, and then what? You Have to See More Than Just Your End Goal Carla Romo: And then, and then once you try that, it’s then, okay, how do we move forward? How do we put together this plan? What are the next steps? Now I am not somebody who goes all out. Like we need to just get that goal and go after it. That’s actually like really how you don’t achieve goals is just focusing on the end goal. So that can actually dwindle your future and put a damper on it if you’re only focused on the end goal. So what I like to do is— Jenn DeWall: Tell me why! Because that’s a counterpoint, right? Some People might say, what do you mean? I go for the end goal? Where am I getting it wrong? Carla Romo: They’re like, what are you talking about? It is absolutely impossible. Unless your end goal is to go to the grocery store that day, get food, and come home. It is absolutely impossible to achieve your end goal in one day. And when you have that mindset, and you have the first moment of blindside, discouragement, or fear come up, that can set you back big time because the end goal all of a sudden feels impossible and so far away because it is impossible. You can’t achieve it just in one day or just in one moment. So the idea is to break down the goal into bits and pieces so that when you get the end goal, it’s not completing you. It’s about that. It’s as cliche as it sounds. It’s all about embracing the journey to that end goal, that you will feel happy. You will feel happy, and you’ll feel purpose. I mean, that’s the whole goal with this. And so, you know, you, you take this end goal, and you chop it up in bits and pieces. So kind of like, I don’t I’ll picture, I like to always just like cakes and like funfetti cakes are totally my favorite here with buttercream frosting, domino confectionery, just sign up. Okay. So take this cake. And what you’re going to do is you’re just going to take apart every single piece of it until it is solid form flour, solid form, egg, you know, butter, sugar, whatever. Okay. Sprinkles. Cause it’s, you know, funfetti. So anyway, but you take all these bite-sized pieces, and you take apart the cake, and then you think to yourself, what do I need to focus on to put this cake together? So, okay. Do I need to make the icing yet? No, I really don’t need to focus on that, but I probably should start mixing the dry materials together. So that’s how you look at your plan. What do I need to do? What is the next step into making this awesome, delicious cake that I’m really excited to eat? So that’s really what you need to start focusing on is breaking down this goal into bite-sized pieces so that it is achievable. And also, look at it as one day at a time. I’m very big on that because that is actually what you can control is in one day. And that’s it. Jenn DeWall: It’s, again, only natural that we all want instant gratification. We all want it right away like that. Absolutely. Anyone that wouldn’t rather have their pain points solved or reach their ideal destination. Of course, we wanted that yesterday. That’s not, we know that, but yet I think we just forget that we forget that we have to put in the work that there are going to be perceived failures or missteps and even wins that aren’t necessarily going to pull us all the way, all the way to the finish line. And I think that’s great too, I guess, one of the things, cause sometimes it is easy for people when they look at their goal, they just look at this as, wow, this is such an overwhelming, I don’t know that path that I’m going to have to take to get there. And that can just be discouraging by the amount of work. And so I love just looking at it as what are all of the little micro components that are going to meet that goal. I think that’s such beautiful. I don’t know. It’s just helpful. Right? Because then we don’t absolutely think at once, which I know that I’m always overwhelmed by that. And that’s what my procrastination kicks in. Like why do anything if it means that it’s too overwhelming? Then I’m over here in my happy place. Like how could you die? So you have your goals, you have your pieces. I mean, what do you do when someone maybe feels like they hit a wall? Like how do you help them course-correct? Because I think that even though we understand that it happens, it’s still really very real that we might start to get discouraged. Is there any advice that you use with your clients when we feel like we have the ingredients put together, but then we still feel like we’ve maybe made a misstep or a perceived failure? How do you help them course-correct? To say it’s okay. Mistakes Are Part of the Process Carla Romo: So it is super important to understand that missteps and blocks are part of the process. So set your expectations to bringing in and inviting these. It’s when we resist them that’s when it becomes problematic. Right. And those are our blind sides. Once again, popping up and manifesting in different ways in the process. But it’s really recognizing and saying, okay, so what is the block? What can I learn from this? And really defining what your success and your failure definitions are. Because you might feel, Oh, I failed. This is it. You know that this is the end all be all. I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. It’s over. And when you hit a block like that, it’s getting real and leveling with yourself. Okay. So this is my definition of failure. And the way that I actually like to look at failure is it’s not failure. Carla Romo: It’s just gathering information readjusting, and moving forward. So if you feel like you’ve hit your failure or your block, or you just feel like you’re procrastinating, this is actually an amazing point to be in. And it should be embraced a lot more instead of the idea of like, how do we avoid these? How do we like to dodge them? Because when you welcome them in, you are open to learning and gaining new information about yourself or the process that you’re in, in order to propel yourself forward. So it’s kind of like, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those traveling rings that people go on and maybe if you’ve ever been in L.A., you’ve seen them on Venice beach, then people swing. So it’s like these rings on this like a jungle gym, adult jungle, gym, maybe kid jungle gym too. But you have to swing backward in order to swing forward. Carla Romo: Right. And it’s kind of like a Slingshot as well. If you’re like, what is she talking about? I don’t know what jungle gym rings. She’s saying think about it like a Slingshot. You have to pull it back in order to propel it forward. But once you pull it back and you release it, it just flies. Right? So think about that. When you get stuck, this is just your pulling back moment to make you Pat a pole further in the process. And so it’s embracing it, it’s welcoming it, and it’s allowing yourself to move through it. That is what’s important here. Jenn DeWall: I love it. You know, I think it’s important. The definitions of success, that one that has been a huge thing for me because I, you know, when I reflect on that, like my old definition of success was always like, everything needs to be done. Perfect. And everyone needs to be satisfied. Otherwise, it was a failure like that—my subconscious thing. And I, you know, until I really dug into it talking about awareness, I didn’t understand why I was so miserable. Even if you’ll where I would say from someone else’s perspective, they would say, Jenn, you did a great job. Or this was great. And in my head, I’d be like, no, I didn’t. And that’s, I think that’s such an important piece is that we don’t realize that we have these constructs of what success looks like, what that means, and that we can change it. I don’t. It doesn’t serve me to be a perfectionist because then I never have wins! Carla Romo: Absolutely. And a lot of leaders are perfectionists, right? I mean, that’s kind of the like thing. A lot of times, we need to get it right. And we need to move forward, and it all has to line up. And you know, that is a strength to an extent, but perfectionism can also kind of catch you up. Like you were just saying. Jenn DeWall: Gosh. So after, like, when you actually set this up, what would be your final thing? So, okay. You identify what it is, you know, where you need to go, you understand kind of those definitions of success. You break your goals into small parts, then what do you do? Make Adjustments as You Go Carla Romo: Yeah. You just keep moving forward on your plan, and you readjust as according. So if you are okay, so you put, you understand your success, you understand your failure, then it’s sometimes two steps forward. One step back, two steps forward, one step back until you get to that goal. And I’m going to be real. It’s not really sexy, right. This idea of like having this, Oh, I finally made it to here, or I’m doing this now. Like yeah. Like, you know, I think actually I’m just gonna throw this out here too. Social media has given so many people unrealistic expectations. You see a title change on LinkedIn, and you’re like, Whoa, like, Oh my gosh, but you don’t see the work. You don’t see the ups. You don’t see the downs. You don’t see the Slingshot moments, right. That propelled these people forward. So I think a lot of this, too, is setting your expectations to what is a reality for yourself. And at this moment, it’s like I said, continuing to push forward, readjusting as need be, but continuing and continuing and continuing. And when you get lost in that moment where you’re like, is it ever going to be over? Am I ever going to get there? Remind yourself back to what I work with my clients on in the very beginning. What is your purpose? And what is your meaning for that? And what got you excited? What drove you when you created this option or this goal for yourself to get to where you are at this moment? And so that’s really, I truly believe what it takes and eventually look, the goal will be done. I mean, you’ll achieve it. Let’s get real. You’re a leader. You’re not just here to like, hang out and do nothing. You’re the type of person that likes to see things through. So really push yourself to see this through. Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I love your expression of Slingshot moments because I feel like all of us probably could reflect and go back to periods of our life, where the world was. You know, we felt like we had just maybe failed, made an epic misstep. The world is ending, insert, whatever failure feels like for them. But really, that was just a slingshot moment because they likely have overcome it and then created something greater than what they ever thought. Like, I, I think about even my trajectory in corporate America because I, you know, it just, it wasn’t the greatest fit for me in what I was doing. And I was super driven. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to make an impact, and I was doing it in the business world, but in some ways, I wasn’t, and that looked like, Oh my gosh. Because I attached so much of my worth to our profession, to my professional success that initially at the moment, it was really hard to see that as a Slingshot moment. But now, I wouldn’t be where I was today. If I didn’t go through that adversity, I might still be working in a job that I don’t love just because, you know, it was like, Oh, well, this works out fine enough. Like I might be a miserable kind of outside of work, but it’s a paycheck, and that’s a really good one. But no, these are just your moments where you have the opportunity to fail forward. Carla Romo: Absolutely. I love that failing forward. Yeah, totally. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. But that’s, it doesn’t mean it’s okay to be embarrassed. I guess if I’m probably vulnerable. I know when I failed, it felt really public to me because I attached a lot again, of my meaning to my professional success that I was, you know, I felt shame for not getting that next promotion or not getting to the next thing. And it’s not that, and you hit the nail on the head. We need to stop comparing. We need to stop comparing to where someone else is and just pay attention to those as Slingshot moments. Like, what is this, what am I being called to do differently? Or where is my passion really taking me that I might be resisting? Gosh, Carla, I love this. Carla Romo: I’m glad. I’m glad. Jenn DeWall: Because I just, I feel like, I guess what would you say to the person that maybe feels embarrassed? Cause I, I absolutely felt shame around not getting things right the first time not getting to that perfect level. And how do you work with people on, you know, kind of overcoming their own, I guess, feelings around their perceived failures? Do you have any special recommendations for that? Feel Your Feelings Carla Romo: Absolutely, so number one is to feel your feelings. That’s how they pass and also to recognize the humanity that you can feel because when you feel, you’re able to move through, right? And when you try to compartmentalize your feelings, you actually can’t. You shut yourself off from happiness. You shut yourself off from joy when you’re trying to shut yourself off from shame or embarrassment. So allow those to come in. Because like I said with the Slingshot moment is that that might feel like it’s pulling you back, but really it’s gaining momentum to push you forward. So I even can say for myself, I mean, I have had tons of Slingshot moments in life. And even when I decided to leave my world and television and entertainment in Los Angeles and start my business, one of my biggest fears was if I fail, everybody will know I left this career that was stable, and I was growing in, and you know, whatever for something that just, wow. Yeah, she couldn’t even make it right. But that’s my own internal dialogue. That was a reflection of the work I needed to do even in that step in life. Those were my blind sides coming out. Those were those, you know, peeling back the layers of the onion. And what does that attach to you? Okay. That thought is attached to the ego. It’s attached to my self-worth. And then once I was actually able to push through that and say, you know what, here’s my goal. I’m breaking it down. I’m trusting the process. Everything settled out for me. So really, when you’re going through that moment, allow yourself to be human, allow yourself to feel through those emotions. And then also give yourself a chance to be able to say, okay, what are other options here? What else? Where else can I go? Because it can get to that tunnel vision like you were saying, kind of that like you’re stuck there, that’s it that black and white thinking, but life is not in black and white. Right? So we see color. And so, right there, what are the colors in your life? Where can you pivot? Where can you move? And if you are a leader, you have these skills already within. Jenn DeWall: Carla, what would be your closing advice for anyone that’s trying to push past their blind sides? I love that you’ve given them, you know, the perspective of like really, what are you not going after in life right now? Because it’s likely something that you can absolutely change just by creating awareness. What would be your final advice to someone that might be struggling with this? Carla Romo: I want to know what drives you in life. And maybe this is your imagination, right? Like you’re like, well, I’m not in this current role. So I, you know, that doesn’t drive me, but what is it that drives you? What is it that gets you excited? Okay. It could be a genre thing, right? Like I have a client who was working in finance and is switching over now to working in the dark world of some aspect because that’s where she finds meaning. That’s where she finds purpose. And so it’s asking yourself right now, what is it that drives you? What gives you purpose? What gives you meaning whatever that resistance is right there that you’re feeling. When all of a sudden you have the thought, you get excited and then you think, Oh, I don’t know. That’s your blind side. Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I love that. I, there was one coach that I worked with. I was telling you about her. She always gave the advice, make your “why” bigger than your “but.” Carla Romo: Woo. I love it. Yes. Jenn DeWall: I understand like your why then every, but that you have, you’re like, but, but this is what we need to do this. I thought that was such fun- It was a funny way to say that. Carla Romo: That is fun! I like that. Yeah. How to Get in Touch with Carla Jenn DeWall: How can people get in touch with you? And like, we didn’t get to go in like, tell me how can people get in touch with you? How can they work with you? Carla Romo: Absolutely. So if you are looking for one-on-one coaching, you can go to my website, CarlaRomo.com. If you want some, just feel good inspiration. You can check me out on Instagram @IamCarlaRomo. Jenn DeWall: Awesome. Carla, thank you so much for our tips on how we can overcome blind sides, so We can create our leadership success. It was great to have you on the podcast today. Carla Romo: Thank you so much, Jenn. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast with Carla Romo. If you want to connect with Carla, you can go to CarlaRomo.com, or  https://www.instagram.com/iamcarlaromo/. You can find her there for speaking for coaching, and you can also find her book. And of course, if you know someone that might be struggling with overcoming their own blind sides, share this episode with them. This is how we can all get our successes by sharing valuable tools and experiences to help each other thrive. And if you enjoyed this episode personally, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast. Streaming service stay connected with us at Crestcom.com. You can find on our events schedule that we do monthly webinars on a variety of different leadership topics. And you can also stay current on our newest podcasts! Until next time.   The post Turning Your B.S. (Blind Sides) Into Leadership Success with Carla Romo appeared first on Crestcom International.

Full Transcript Below:  Jenn DeWall: Hi Everyone! It is Jenn DeWall with The Leadership Habit podcast for Crestcom. On today’s show, I sat down with Heather Younger. For those that may not know Heather Younger, she recently spoke at Crestcom Leadership Summit. We are so happy to have her, but let me tell you a little more about her. Heather Younger is a best-selling author, international speaker, consultant, adjunct organizational leadership professor, and facilitator who has earned her reputation as an employee whisperer. Her experiences as an entrepreneur, manager, attorney, writer, coach, listener, speaker, collaborator, and mother all lend themselves to a laser-focused clarity into what makes employees, organizations, and companies large and small tick. As the champion for positive change in workplaces communities and the world, Heather founded employee fanatics, a leading employee engagement, and leadership development consulting and training firm. She wants to inspire others by teaching the kind of caring leadership that drives real results. Heather hosts the weekly podcast, Leadership With Heart, which uncovers what drives leaders from all over the world and all walks of life to be more emotionally intelligent leaders. Her book, The Seven Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty, hit the Forbes Must-Read List and is a go-to source for HR professionals and organizational leaders seeking insight into their organization’s dynamics. Her latest book, The Art of Caring Leadership, was picked up by Berrett-Koehler Publishers and was released in April 2021. Today, Heather and I sat down to talk about her newest book, The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations. Enjoy. Welcome Back Heather R. Younger, Author of The Art of Caring Leadership Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for tuning into this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit. This is Jenn DeWall. And today, I am sitting down with author— also described as the employee whisper— consultant and speaker, Heather Younger. And we are here. You may recognize that voice. We’ve talked with her before! But now we’re here. And she is here with us to talk about her newest book, The Art of Caring Leadership. Heather, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Heather R. Younger: Thanks for having me. I am so excited to be here with you. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, Heather, we have to dive right into it. This is a new book. What inspired you to write The Art of Caring Leadership? Heather R. Younger: You know, to be honest, it was because there’s so much pain in the world, so much pain from employees caused by their leaders. They would just, you know, employees would come to me over the years, or I’d be reading all these survey comments. And I would see that how, how much basically the leaders would just miss the mark as it related to what their people needed. They had in my mind no clue what they needed to do to keep them happy, to keep them wanting to be on the team, willing to go over and above being innovative, creative. They just were missing it. So I saw all that over the years and read it and witnessed it, listening sessions and such. And someone’s got to do something about this. Someone’s gotta be the voice. Someone’s got to show some alignment. So I, what I did is I took all these years I culminated in listening to all the employees and stuff. And then I took that, and I also talked to a lot of leaders on my podcast, Leadership at Heart. And when I was talking to them, I started to synthesize what it was that they did. That was like, Ooh, it was like the aha moments. I’d be like, Oh, that’s it right there. That’s it. That’s it. That’s brilliant. And after I did that, like 170 times, I said, there are nine behaviors that align with what employees want and what these particular leaders were doing. And I highlighted them in this book. Who Should Read The Art of Caring Leadership? Jenn DeWall: Oh gosh, I’m so excited to dive into these. And for those that might be listening, Heather just joined Crestcom’s Leadership Summit, where she gave us a sneak peek into this book. But out of curiosity, who— when you wrote this— who is that end reader that you’re hoping to make an impact with? Heather R. Younger: Well, I say in the book, you know, it’s for leaders, it’s for those who see themselves as leaders is for those in HR, not in HR, but in the end, I’d love to get into the hands of the jerks. You heard me say that that’s like a good quote. I want to get this book in the hands of the jerks. It’s the ones who just don’t show care. They either don’t get it. They don’t care, but they get it. They’re not willing to do anything. And I would like for them to be like, get a clue, get a clue. I want you to be able to change the lives of the employees that are looking to you for guidance, that are relying on your leadership. And so this book is, that’s what I would like. I’d like it to get into the hands of those people who just don’t get it. And they don’t. They’re just not expressing care. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I think there are a lot of people listening that are also probably echoing that, yes, please get it to this person because you know what? I don’t love working with them. And they could definitely benefit from this. How does changing the way that we show up benefit an organization? Because I think, again, people look at some of this, we’re talking about caring leadership. Like you get the people that think that that’s too “woo- woo.” I guess, you know, I love it, but I know that there are the resistors that are like, what do you mean? People should be happy. They have a job. You know, or what type of, I guess, pushback did you anticipate? Or what have you seen in terms of maybe people’s reluctance to embrace caring leadership? Heather R. Younger: Well, then I’m going to answer in two ways. One is if you don’t show care, you don’t get any of the hard-line results that you want. And, and, and if you think for yourself, those listening to a time when you worked at a place, and you were so jazzed and so excited to get to work, to do, to do the work, you felt like the work was meaningful. You felt like you were fulfilled. I want you to think back on what that manager, that supervisor was for you, how, how did they help you during that journey? Were they the jerks I’m talking about? Or, were they the people that expressed the care, the behaviors we’re going to talk about this. The one thing I want to put that out there for you to be thinking about as we talk, but secondarily in the book, I highlight the ROI on caring leadership. I highlight stories like Gary Ridge, the CEO, WD 40 company, who moved the company from multiple hundreds of millions of dollars company to a market cap of 2.2 billion by putting his people first. I highlight people like Ron Alvesteffer, president and CEO of Service Express, the same exact thing where he was so focused on the process. You’d meet people, talk about projects, talking about how we’re going to move forward sales. And he did that and did that. And one day, he realized this is getting me nowhere. So we started to meet people where they’re at. He sat with them, had deeper conversations with them, and start to realize that, wait a second, putting people first is my strategy and move the company from a double-digit million dollar company to a triple-digit, $200- $300 million company by really focusing on putting the people first. And these are just a couple of examples of how really the ROI of caring leadership really does pay off. The ROI of Caring Leadership Jenn DeWall: Where do people get it wrong? I know you just hit one, you know, the example of maybe putting process over people, but what are some examples of where people get maybe caring leadership wrong or just leadership in general that could be working counter to the ROI that you want to achieve? Heather R. Younger: Yeah, I think, I mean, in order to be a caring leader, there’s like a three prerequisites one. You have to have an awareness that there’s a, there’s a gap you’re creating for your people. The second is you have to have a desire to want to change it. And then the third is really having this momentum, this, this desire, this energy to keep, like stamina to keep up with the change that you’re looking for. So I think the biggest thing is that where people go wrong is they don’t have an awareness, or they have an awareness, and they have no desire to change it. And then the third one is again, and they have no stamina. They’re like, I see it. I think we probably need to do something about it, but can we do that in like six months? And so they’re not looking at, this is a long term play that’s in place that you have that this is something that when you’re looking at caring leadership, it’s about expressing caring, concern, and kindness for those who lead in consistent ways daily. And so daily means for the rep forever. Right? And that’s an exhausting concept for most. I know, but if anything that’s worth having is worth fighting for, and if you want to have the bigger market cap, you want to have more customer satisfaction. You want to have, you know, fewer losses when it comes to safety. Right? All of those things, if you express care more often, more consistently, you’re going to get the things that you’re looking for. Jenn DeWall: Oh gosh. Could you please repeat that definition of caring leadership again? So you had said consistent, you know, we’ve got to show up consistently. It’s gotta be daily. That’s what I heard. What else? Cause I want to really drive home on that. That’s such a good Heather R. Younger: So caring leadership is taking daily actions to show concern and kindness for those you lead. That’s the definition of caring leadership. And in order to be known as a caring leader, even start that journey, you have to have an awareness that you’re creating a gap for those that look to you for guidance. You have to have a desire to do something about it. And then you have to have a kind of stamina or the wherewithal to keep it going because it doesn’t ever end. Those would be the three things I would say that are really important. Caring Leadership Requires Self-Awareness Jenn DeWall: What are some of the gaps that we might create? Because I’m excited to dive into the content. I’m curious, like, what are some of the gaps that we create as a leader? And it’s likely I know what you’re saying. It’s likely subconscious. We just aren’t aware- it’s what you said. Self-Awareness what are some of those gaps that you can create as a leader? Heather R. Younger: Well, when we look at kind of the first requirement of caring leadership, it’s this idea of self-leadership, which I did talk about at the summit. We didn’t obviously go very, very deep on it. But this idea of self-leadership is if we, if we have, if you think about this, if we have a cup as a teacup and you have lots of tea on it, tea in it, and it’s overflowing onto the saucer, and you’re like, you have so much in it. You’ve put a lot into yourself. You’ve owned your own growth. You’re authentic, and you’re congruent. You’ve exercised self-care. You’ve done all these things that are for yourself. Now you can give from the saucer the overflow from the cup. If your cup is empty, you can’t give much from it. You can’t lead well if you aren’t leading yourself first. So that is one of the gaps that’s left just first because they haven’t actually begun to meet their own needs. They aren’t aware of where they’re at, where the gaps are for themselves. And so then they can’t give, then we start to look into the other behaviors. We’re looking at things like creating safe spaces for team members. We, this is kind of a buzzword we’ve heard, particularly after the George Floyd stuff and everything related to race relations, mostly in the US, so this idea of safe spaces, it’s like, well, do people feel comfortable speaking up? Do they feel like they can step outside themselves and say things that they maybe ordinarily wouldn’t feel comfortable doing? Because their leaders have helped them to feel comfortable. And by the way, safe spaces aren’t created, just because we say viola! We’re going to create a round table event. And we want you all to come and tell the truth. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen because you didn’t create the trust first. You didn’t create a sense of respect first. So those are some of the foundations of the safe spaces. Then we think of this idea of whole-person leadership. Well, when you think about zoom and deans, we’ve been seeing a lot more of people lately, right? We see their kids running behind them. We see people aren’t running around half-dressed. We might hear people yelling at each other. We may see an elderly person in the background. There’s so much that’s going on in the homes that you never saw before, but now you see it. Don’t forget what you saw. Don’t forget what you found out. Use that even when you get back to face-to-face or in a hybrid situation because you have to continue to dig deep to understand who your team members are. So you can lead them fully. You get more out of them as a result. Another thing we talk about is this idea of listening. Creating a culture of listening and the listening stuff is so darn critical. It’s almost like the foundation of all of it because self-leadership is about listening to ourselves, right? It’s understanding who we are, listening, being aware, hypersensitive to what we’re feeling and how we’re showing up in the world. So this concept of creating and listening culture is kind of an in and out exercise. And it really is this idea of taking in what we hear and all the mediums. I mean, taking it all in, reflecting on it in a really kind of pensive way in a way that makes you, you’re not just knee-jerk with any reactions you’re thinking through, how does this work with strategy? How does this relate to this person and this department? Really reflecting that way. And then from there, it’s acting upon what we can, if we can act upon it, making sure we’re taking strategic action based upon what we hear, whether we hear it in a one-on-one meeting, whether we hear it in team meetings, whether the organizational leaders here at the above organization, we’re going to be strategic about that action. And then we’re going to go back around and flip back around, and we’re going to connect the dots. We’re going to say, okay, so I heard you. Here’s what I think I heard you say, I acted upon what it is. You said, and guess what? We did this thing. And it was because of what you said, boom, power, like a huge amount of power, because now they’re like, Oh my gosh, my voice, when I open my mouth, it’s safe to do so you listened to me, you reflect, you act upon it. And now you’re telling me you did these things because I said it, Holy smokes. There’s power in that. So those are some of the behaviors that caring leaders do. And when they don’t do it, they leave people feeling devalued. They leave people wanting to leave. So turnover becomes a huge issue. Listening To Employees Takes More Than an Annual Survey Jenn DeWall: Yes. And you said so many valuable pieces. I mean, I think one for me, and maybe this is kind of. If I’m going back to my 20-year-old self, this might be a little bit of how jaded I was- I really had a strong dislike for company surveys primarily because why do them? They don’t do anything! And so then it becomes this drain on your time. And it also creates this sense of, I mean, I just didn’t trust it. I’m like, why do they keep trying to pretend that they’re doing this? Even though they would never do it. And I think, you know, if I was, I had a client that was talking about even, they don’t even share openly on the surveys because they’re, they’re afraid of anonymity and whether or not like whether that’s going to come back to them. So I think there are so many reasons why employees are just kind of turned off. And you, you hit up the important thing. You’ve got to close the loop. You have to just say we heard you. Not thanks so much; we’re happy we surveyed you. We won’t have to follow up on that. Heather R. Younger: And then you’ll never hear anything back. Thank you for your service. And I hate that. That is the reason why employee phonetics does this— we help organizations create cultures of listening because I can’t stand this thing where it stops like that. They’ll listen, and they’ll, they may reflect even as a group at a table. And then they’re like, now what do we do? And then they may even act on a few things, but then they never tell people what they did, even if they just never, they never tell that you missed the opportunity when you don’t tell those you need that their voices are so important to you. That our voices are what make us us. So if we, if we, if our voices aren’t important to those who we look to for guidance who are supposed to lead us, what does it say about us? We feel rejected, right? So it’s so critical, really critical piece. Jenn DeWall: Well, let’s, let’s dive into the book a little bit. I know there are multiple different principles, and we’ve touched on a few of them. What are the ones that you would want to share with our audience? We’re not going to give it all away, but where do you start to practice The Art of Caring Leadership? Caring Leadership Requires Consistency Heather R. Younger: Well, I mean, I, I did give. Obviously, I did give a few of those just now. I would say one of the ones I didn’t really touch on and this idea of making them feel important. And there are a lot of different sub-components that the good thing in the book is that there, there are not only just like these high level strategic or like philosophical things I talk about, but I drill it down into kind of sub practices or behaviors. I also back it up with stories and data. So you have all of it for those who are learner learners and learn in different ways. This makes them feel important. One of the things that I talk about in there is spending time with them, spending time with them in very specific ways. So in that connect, connecting with them one-on-one or in team meetings, making a regular cadence of doing that. This is not rocket science. This is not anything you’ve not heard before, but guess what? Many leaders don’t do it consistently. And so what happens is when you don’t do it that way, what you tell your people is that you aren’t all that important to me. You aren’t all that valued in the work that you do because you aren’t taking the time to spend that time. So there’s a spontaneous time where you’re just available for them when they need you. There’s that setup time when you have that one-on-one or team meeting. And there’s also this idea of like getting in the trenches with them, like standing next to them and the work that needs to get done, don’t be so up here in the ivory tower and away from them stay connected to their needs and what it is that they need. So these are some of the ways that we do it. Of course, we do it by showing them appreciation, right? Recognizing them and their way, finding out what’s meaningful for them, what motivates them, and then recognizing them in that way, that helps them feel important as well. Jenn DeWall: It’s so interesting that the topic, again, it’s, you know, make someone feel that they matter. And one way of doing that is just by not canceling your meetings. If you have a one-on-one scheduled, and it’s so interesting because I think people don’t realize, like, it might seem like a simple cancel. I’ve got a lot going on. I’m going to cancel this one-on-one, but yes, you are. You’re not saying it to them, but you’re saying to them that they don’t matter. Something else came in. I think most people will understand if something’s come up, but a lot of times, it might be just canceling it. I’ve got something else and then no reschedule until next month’s check-in. Right? And then they’re like, Oh, I know we didn’t have the one. I think that people, cause it seems so obvious to me that you would think most leaders are like, yeah, like leadership 101, probably show them that they matter. But yet I know it’s not that common because we get caught up in our own distractions or whatnot. But like, what do you notice of like, what gets, what gets in people’s way of being able to show that their employees are important? Heather R. Younger: Well, I mean, I think as you would probably imagine it is that day-to-day, it’s just us getting caught up in the day-to-day. I mean, I have had to cancel meetings myself, and I’ve written multiple books on this. I speak on this. Right. I have had to cancel, but here’s what I do. I always right away- I get it back on the calendar. There’s no them running after me trying to see where I’m at. And I’m also really good at spontaneously showing up to just check-in. If I didn’t have the formal meeting, checking in, seeing what I can do to remove barriers. Is there anything I can do? You? I was at a this has been several years ago, I was working in a government, local government space. And I was in an interview with one of my team members. We were interviewing a guy that we really want to bring on. And the gentlemen asks, well, what’s so good about your team. Like, why should I come? Why should I come to join you and not this other organization? And there was a silence, and it was super awkward. And I didn’t want to answer. I was like letting I wanted the team member to answer. The team member took a little minute. And he says you know what? This lady right here. And I went, what? And he says, no, here’s why, because before you came, no managers really stopped by to check on us. We didn’t really feel that important. No one ever set up meetings to come see us or for us to go see them. They, you just took the time to make us feel special, and that made all the difference. And that’s the reason why I think you should join this team because Heather does that. And it’s, this is not to prop me up. It’s about the practice that I’m talking about. So I’m sharing a practice that I know when I put in the book. It’s the practice of it. It’s the expression of the behaviors, daily actions, and being consistent, right? It’s not doing it once in a while. It’s not meeting with your team member once every three weeks or three months or whatever that is. It’s not just a performance review that you take that time to understand and know who they are. It’s going to the bottom of it. I’ve had many team members come to my office in tears. One woman came in. That’s the same, the same employer. She came into me, and she was really upset because she felt like someone was like stalking her at home. And so we were like, okay, how do we get with local authorities? So I’m working with her on all this stuff that has nothing to do with work. But I’m helping her because I want her. I know she needs to feel safe. She can’t even concentrate at work. She has to feel safe outside of work for her to feel comfortable inside and for her to even be able to do her job. So again, considering the whole person means all the other, the different, the complexities of the person. And when we meet them there, they feel completely enveloped, right? They feel like, Ah! And safety is so critical, and having that sense of care and belonging is a huge one too. Caring Leaders Manage the Whole Person Jenn DeWall: I have to dig deeper on this one because I think, you know, you just talked about something that, again, many people were conditioned to beware of in leadership. You are blurring a line! You’re just supposed to focus on what they’re doing in the office. What? I don’t care what happens outside, and no, they may not necessarily feel like they don’t care, but they were taught to show that that’s not okay to care. Where do you think that we even learned the lesson to only see half of the person or to only see them at work? Heather R. Younger: I hate to say it, but I think there were a lot of HR practices that just early on made us be so afraid of the legalities of going too close or getting too close to our team members. I am a lawyer by training, so I’m gonna just put that out there. Don’t hold it against me. I think the key here, though, I rather them smack me a little bit on my hand. I’m going to lean on the side of people, on humanity, on meeting them where they’re at. Then I will, the other side, I know a lot of people live more in a, a place of fear or compliance. And I understand that, but you are not getting the most you can get out of your team. And I know what I mean by that is kind of, if you want unity, you want, you want cohesiveness, you want to deliver great results. You want a team that’s shiny. You’re going to do the things I’m talking to you about, just plain and simple. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I want to go so much all in on this because I think when you post a job description; you’re never looking for an individual who will separate their work persona from their home persona. Or the individual that will challenge the status quo. The individual that will not show emotions. How do organizations or cultures end up kind of abiding by that unwritten rule of that expectation for us to show it because they would never post something like that? Like, Hey, looking for half a person, thank you. We do a lot of great here, but then people and even your top dealers end up showing up that way. How do you think that happens? It’s because we’re not caring leaders. I know. That’s what I mean. Heather R. Younger: Here’s the thing. I’m going to make sure I state this too. I write about this. I speak about this. And I’m a caring leader in development. And we all are. We’re on this journey together. Some of us are closer, like we are further in, right? And some of us have some more ways to go, but we are all on that journey together. So this book is not about perfection. These concepts are not about perfection. It’s about continuous improvement. It’s about consistent daily actions to show concern and kindness for those you lead. Consistent didn’t say perfect- notice that I didn’t say consistently perfectly delivered. No. And it’s because, like the art, the idea is that we all have our own brushstrokes to how we deliver on these things and how, and the end-user of our leadership experience is the employee. Right? So as a leader, it’s those who look to us for guidance that actually are the ones who are the gauge, whether we care or not because they feel the care. It’s not just our expression. And it’s the end-user experience that makes it. See, it’s creative; there’s a creative element to it. That’s why it’s the art. Because it’s the brush strokes that we as individual leaders add to the mix of all of it. And so I think that when we think about why that, why cultures are created that way, I mean, I think we’re just all, unfortunately, it’s ingrained in us and all early leadership and management training where they say, this is how you do it, and you do this. And we kind of, it would just like pass down like a legacy of this, right? Well, I want to basically pass down this radical power of care. This it’s not candor; it’s care. And it’s, how do we do that for people all over the world. I want to create a new legacy, a legacy of care, and it’s not rocket science, but I can tell you this you’ll know it. When the person receives it on the other end, you’ll see it on their face, and you’ll see it in the results they deliver. What Mistakes Do Caring Leaders Make? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh, I love that. And it’s just. I love that you made, you know, really, it’s not about perfection people, no one is expecting you. You likely already make yourself like, put all that pressure on to be that. But it is about trying, and out of curiosity, wherein your experience, or from your shoes, how do you think the pandemic has impacted our ability to show that we’re a caring leader? Like what are some missteps maybe, or just some subconscious, like errors that people have been making in that way? Heather R. Younger: I actually think the pandemic has helped in this regard. And that is because we have no choice but to lead the person that’s on the screen with the kid screaming in the background and all the, we just get no work done. We get nothing done. Suppose we don’t lead the whole, that person behind the screen. I mean, my dog walks in. My kids start yelling again. The other day was like. I was on the phone with somebody; they were doing a podcast of me. I was on their show, and they had like, their elderly parent was like coming through their virtual background. Like, this is what happens. And we have to have, now we have to say, Oh, that’s your child. What’s their name? I mean, if you don’t, of course, you’re looking at the idiot, and you won’t look at your care, but most of us were saying, Oh, what’s their name? Oh my gosh, you have a dog. What’s her name? So now we’re actually getting we’re opening. The doors are opening, right. The window shades are opening. And so it’s actually made it easier in that regard, that the old idea of the leading the whole person. Now having those difficult conversations has not gotten easier for anybody if you haven’t felt just more comfortable leaning into that. Right? So this idea of, you know, how, when you asked earlier, well, how has it, how, how come it’s hard for organizations to have that and where to start? I think it’s, and there is definitely a discomfort with this idea of leading into these conversations, this, this going deep. I had a team member of mine before, have I called them to see what was going on just with some other project. And they were going in a full, they had a full-on anxiety episode, and it was happening right on when I was on the call with them. And I didn’t go, okay, well, I’m sorry about that. So then the project, what was happening to the project? No, I didn’t do that. I set that need aside and just said, okay, I’ll take care of that another time. What is happening with you? Okay. You right now, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to get off the phone, and when you go for a run, I want you to do this. So I’m just immediately going into her as a person. Right. And yeah, most of you would be uncomfortable with that, but again, you can’t, you can’t get her back on track, which was solutioning from a rational place if you don’t start her from that place or him from that place. Right. So those are just the things I’m talking about. We’re all humans, and none of us are perfect. And if you lead that way, understanding that people are gonna have their faults, and no one’s going to show up perfectly every day. It just makes it. I don’t know. It just, it’s just a warmer, better ride. People want to come to work to be with you. Leading Authentically as Complex Humans Jenn DeWall: Yes. I want to come to a place that someone could see. Because I think of many different work environments, and I’m sure there are other people listening that might’ve had a really bad day at work. And then you leave work in the way that I would— I was in tears. And then there’s a lot of judgment, right? There’s a lot of shame like, oh, I’m really mad that I made this mistake, or I’m really upset that I, you know, showed an emotional response. Right. And I think that it’s so important. I just love that you gave people permission to think about it is okay for someone to have a bad day. And by placing the expectation that they should show that anyone else should show up. As some superhuman is just unfair. But sometimes we do that. I mean, I feel like I go back to my earlier pieces of feedback in my twenties. Like Jenn, like, you need to do this, or you need to do that. Like, shut off this. And it’s like, but, but can I just be human? Like, I don’t understand this expectation that it adds. It only perpetuates the stress or the discomfort going into work. Heather R. Younger: And I love your humanity. I just love every bit of you. There are parts I didn’t even know about you. And then the other day you started singing before our conference started and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I already loved her. Now. I really love her. But that’s the thing is like, people need to feel comfortable. They were just letting loose. Now I know people think, well, authenticity. Oh, shoot, that means the jerks can be more jerkish. Like, now we’re allowing the jerks to say whatever they want or people to use racist comments. No,  like there are rules here. There are rules of engagement as it relates to respect, you know, human dignity, fairness. There are some basic things that obviously you have to pepper throughout this authenticity thing. We’re talking about revealing parts of yourself, letting other people reveal parts of themselves, you meeting them where they’re at, you embracing who they are. Those are all important things, but there are some counterbalances there. And so as a leader, it’s our job to say, there’s a piece of this person and a piece of this person, and these two it’s all right that there’s some healthy conflict there. Right? But this thing right here is actually just not right. Like it’s not along with our value system at work. So how do I find a way to align their behaviors with behaviors we accept at work? And so there are all these, humans, we are complex. Right? There’s just so much, though, that you can peel back. And why not take more time to do that with your people? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I just, and I know that I’m coming back to this because it was something that I didn’t understand. I worked for a large fortune 500 company. I’m one of the few pieces of feedback I got where you need to be more vanilla. I’m more of a yes-man. And if you can imagine how difficult that would be, it just feels like, well, I am missing the mark in life here, you know, naturally, if you’re a driven person and you’re like, I guess, and I know there’s truth in feedback right. There absolutely is. Yes. But also, if we want that conformity, I just remember it in the back of my brain. Like you, you legitimately asked me to be a yes-man. And what would that do for innovation? What would that do for an ethical workplace, you know, but yet we somehow have this expectation that we want to create these- I don’t want to say clones because I don’t think it’s ever the initial intent. I think it’s a result of subconscious actions that you create. I don’t think there are leaders out there that are like, let’s create this vanilla workforce. Well, I guess if it was in the case of giving me that feedback, then I guess you might be striving for that. It’s just. I am so perplexed. Why it is such a challenging thing to understand that authenticity is a huge value to your team and organization. Yet we want to control it by making everyone the same, and I just don’t get it. Heather R. Younger: Yeah, I know. And I hats off to the organizations who have kind of been, been okay with, like allowing more of that individuality to come through. And, and also, again, it’s a constant, I’m not going to say this is easy coming out as a totally authentic organization where you’re allowing her to be authentic is not going to be an easy process because there will be a counter, there’ll be conflict. So the counterbalancing ways that people show up, I know this to be true. And, but it is, that’s why we get paid the big bucks. That’s why we have power and authority we have is we have to figure out the human relations side of things. And so we have to say, how do we, how do we balance the two? I’ve been talking a lot to leaders now about this whole idea of a return to work and that there are some who are returning to work, who have been at home and don’t really want to come back, or they’d only want to come back in a hybrid way. And then you have the other ones who actually already have their team members who had to be at work the entire time who never left. Who’s been wearing masks nonstop for the last year? And then the leaders sitting in the middle, having these like squeamish really weird feelings. Because they’ve been at home too, and they’re having a hard time figuring out how do you stand in the middle of that and how do you decipher it? And how do you make sure that whatever your decision is, it’s fair? And it is your job to do that. It is your job to step out of your shoes and into the shoes of the team, the people that look to you for guidance. It’s just, that is the job we have. It’s not for everybody, which is why not everybody should be promoted as to be a manager or a leader of people. But it is a job that needs to get done in order for us to lead them well. Jenn DeWall: I, you know, and that’s such a valuable thing, it’s, it is an intentional effort to get the most out of your people. It is not just applying the fanciest tool or trend. It is something that you visit every single day. Oh my gosh. And I love what you just shared too. Not everyone is meant to be a leader, and you know what? That’s okay too. But yeah, we have this expectation that if you want to be successful, you’ve got to be a people leader. And I just like, you was inviting liability into your leadership, if you are forcing everyone to do that. Heather R. Younger: Yes. And actually, and I, and I’m going to qualify that statement too. I’m going to qualify my statement. If I said that, my statement would be this, not everybody should be a manager of people. Everybody should be a leader of themselves. So I want to make sure I call it that as anybody’s listening, I don’t care if you have a title that that’s really actually relevant is how do you show up in a more caring way to those you lead? It’s showing, listen. It’s showing concern and kindness for those who look to you for guidance and or those that look to you for leadership. It doesn’t have to come with a title. If you do have a title, though, you have even more power, and you can change that to be more positive power, not like the negative authoritative type of power. So I just wanted to qualify that. Caring Leadership is Self-Leadership Too Jenn DeWall: Yeah, no, I think that’s so important. You don’t have to just be a leader of people to be a leader. It is. And I know that’s one of your first principles— self-leadership. Like, how are you showing up? What are you, how do you want to come across? What would be any last takeaways that you would want to share with our listeners about The Art of Caring Leadership? Because this is a powerful book, it’s powerful right now. I mean, as a millennial, I can say that this is absolutely what many Millennials want, many Gen Zs. They want to be seen as a person that has value. Like we’re done feeling like we’re just a cog in a wheel. No one wants to feel that way anymore. So what would be, you know, any last pieces of advice that you would want to share? Heather R. Younger: I would say one thing that I, I mean, I’m very, very proud of the book, but one thing I’m proud of is that we an entire support system, it’s kind of caring leadership ecosystem or the whole universe for people to enter into. And so we have a self-assessment that you take, there’s an invitation you get at the end of the book, after you take the self-assessment, you’re invited to come into the care and leadership community with other people, caring leaders in development, on the journey with you, so you’re not alone. Aside from that, there’s a caring leadership Academy. So that if there are some gaps that you want to fill those gaps, we talked about that you might be creating for your people, and you see it in his self-assessment. We have the online Academy that’s there. It’s based upon every behavior in the book. And you’re able to go take that. And then we also have caring leadership coaches, literally right there to work with you, to all of it, to say, you don’t have to be on alone generally. And you can have someone as a partner with you along the way. So I’m really super-proud of the book, but I’m proud of the entire support system. After the fact, remember caring leadership is taking daily actions to show concern and kindness for those you lead. This is not rocket science. I promise you. But what it does deliver for you are some hard-line results and people who will go over and above for you, no matter what. Jenn DeWall: Gosh, I love that in closing. Would you share one, maybe small thing that anyone could do today, or one or two that you could do today to show that you care? Heather R. Younger: Please go to your calendars right now. And if you have five team members, go set up your one-on-one meetings and make it be done in perpetuity. Heather R. Younger: Not just this thing, like, Oh yeah, I remember that I should do that. I’m going to actually make this uptake of recurring meetings every week with every direct report. And I promise you that you will not regret it. Yes. And don’t kids let her try to be, you know, unless you have to, but be transparent. Heather R. Younger: And Re-schedule it immediately or stop in, you know, spontaneously do something to make up for it. Jenn DeWall: So Heather, how do they get access to these resources? I know you just talked about the team. You talked about taking the assessment. Where did we go to be able to access that? Where to Find Heather R. Younger Heather R. Younger: So there, I would say two places. If you go to TheArtOfCaringLeadership.com, you’ll actually get like four or five different downloads you can get from that site. Cool, like infographics and postcards that you can do, you can get. And then also you can go to theartofcaringleadership.com. And that one is where all the self-assessment the community, the Academy, the coaches, those, those are all there. So they all work together again as a whole system, you start with a book. I mean, it’s like a guide people who have read it and reviewed it so far, it’s like, this is you can go chapter by chapter. You can keep coming back. You’re going to put lots of stickies on it, but it is going to be your guidebook to show more care. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for writing this book, Heather, I, on behalf of anyone that’s also ever worked with that difficult employee, I hope that this also lands in the hands of office jerks, but of course, that we all recognize that you are, you provided a great level of tools, skills, and things that people can try so they can create the work environment where everyone can thrive. Thank you so much for writing that book. Heather R. Younger: Thank you. Jenn DeWall: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, featuring Heather Younger. If you want to connect with Heather and pick up her newest book, The Art of Caring Leadership, head on over to TheArtOfCaringLeadership.com. There, you can find additional resources as well as pick up your own copy of The Art of Caring Leadership. It’s also available on Amazon too for anyone shipping internationally. If you found that this episode was meaningful or, you know, someone that could benefit from hearing this podcast, please do not forget to share this with them. And of course, if you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service. As always, stay with Crestcom. We offer monthly webinars that cover a variety of different leadership topics to address your needs and the challenges of leaders today.   The post The Art of Caring Leadership with Author Heather R. Younger appeared first on Crestcom International.

Becoming an Unapologetic Leader with Bold Move Expert, Rick Clemons Jenn DeWall: Hi, everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with unapologetic leader Rick Clemons. Rick is a culture disruptor. He shakes up the status quo. He’s a closet-buster. He’s shattered those silly beliefs and is a bold move expert like Superman without the muscles and cape. His superpower is guiding people to make bold moves so they can live life on their terms. Everything Rick’s discovered living his life this way, he learned from coming out of the closet at the age of 36, getting laid off from two sweet corporate jobs, and making the crazy decision to become an entrepreneur at the age of 43. Rick’s book, Frankly My Dear, I’m Gay, his podcast Life Uncloseted, coaching, speaking, and workshops that represent his no BS approach for making bold moves without a safety net to be found. He was put on this earth to remind people that closets are for clothes, not living. He is a husband and has one, surviving raising two girls, thus the reason he’s bald! And he will gladly work for wine but prefers money to pay for things like toilet paper and ice cream. Today Rick and I sat down to talk about how you can lead unapologetically. Jenn DeWall: Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And in this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I’m sitting down with Rick Clemons, who is a keynote speaker, facilitator, and let’s all talk about global, but he is the man that you go to if you want to make bold moves. And it’s only fitting then to talk to the expert that helps us understand how we can overcome our own obstacles, how we can actually live the life that we want to. And he is actually going to be helping us learn how to show up as an unapologetic leader. This is a voice that we all need as it’s a very important topic that many leaders struggle with. Rick, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. It is so great to have you. Thank you. Meet Rick Clemons, Unapologetic Leader, Coach, Speaker and Author Rick Clemons: I’m so excited to be here. I’m seriously excited. And I’m not just saying that, like the guest who’s like, oh, I’m so excited. I’m really excited to be here because I think leaders need to learn the importance of being unapologetic without being a jerk. So I’m just kind of sliding that in cause I know where we’re going, but listen, if you want to learn how to do that. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I love this topic because I think it’s what even some of you put an ear to the ground. This might be what your employees want. They just don’t have the courage to say, or that’s maybe how they want to show up. And so it’s someone else trying to determine their style, but Rick, before we dive into the content, cause I know you and I will have a great conversation. Can you just tell our audience a little bit about you? Rick Clemons: I was born. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. My mother went through absolute, you know, long, long labor for me because I was six foot four, so was like, wow. But I come from the corporate world. I was always. I was always the guy who never quite got to that next tier up. I’d come in. I work hard. I do the thing that I do. I’m really good at what I do most of the time. And I’m just the worker-bee guy. But as a leader, I never quite got to that next tier. And then I’d move on to the next job and then, the same thing. And then I’d not quite get there and not quite get there. And as that pattern repeated itself, I started getting burnt out, but I was always apologizing to myself. It’s okay. You know you didn’t quite do this. So, you know, here are the excuses of why I didn’t get where I was going until the big day that I got laid off, and I literally got laid off. I came back to work on a Monday from a week-long vacation on Cape Cod. I’m like, okay, cool. And the company I was working for at that time, we were making some pretty big strides. I’d help them move from zero revenue to almost 5 million in revenue in about three years’ time. And I knew we were on some big projects, and I walk in, and okay, maybe I’m a little bit like jet lag coming from East Coast to West Coast. And then maybe I had a few too many drinks on the plane, and I’m like, cool, let’s get this thing going. And they literally like, Hey, can you come to have a chat with us? I’m like, sure. I figured we’re just going to start strategizing. Right. Rick’s got his vacation. So now, let’s start working him to death again. Right? We’re letting you go. And I was like— I can’t believe this, this happened six years ago. So those you realize like, well then you must be a bad egg. I know I wasn’t a bad egg. I was the guy that projected that, Hey, I could just, you know, I can do anything. And that was literally what they said to me, Jenn. Like we really need to cut back, and we know you’re the guy that’s gonna bounce back. And that was the moment I was like, I’m not doing this anymore. If I’m going to be a leader and I’m going to lead anything, it’s going to be my own business. And I was scared to death. And I started having all the fears and the imposter syndrome showing up. And then I said, you know what? There’s no apologizing this time. You’re going for it. And that’s what launched everything. Now, when that happened, would I’ve seen that I would have created this beautiful brand with no fears, no excuses, no apologies. Oh no. There was so much going on in my head at that point, like— okay, Big Boy, so you’re going to do this. You’re going to put the, you know, you’re going to draw a line in the sand. You’re going to make your big, bold move. What the heck are you going to do? And it was such an interesting journey to be in that space to walk away from corporate to go, okay, I’m going to go solo. I’m literally going solo. Luckily I had a spouse who had a good income, and I wasn’t needing to lean on them, but wow, what a journey. And without that journey, Jenn, I don’t think I would have learned some of the things that we’re going to talk about today, about what it really means to become that unapologetic leader, create unapologetic mindsets, help your teams get into space where they live, breathe and act from a place of no excuses and no fears. What Does it Mean to Be an Unapologetic Leader? Jenn DeWall: Wow, it’s just a true story of resilience. And I love also given, you know, many people have likely just walked in on that Monday and had that very similar meeting over the last year of finding out that they were either furloughed or they were let go because of, you know, all, everything as a result of the pandemic. And I love that we’re starting from how you went from maybe being that person that, you know, apologized, apologized and apologized, just saying, you know what, I’m going to show up. I’m going to believe in myself, and I’m going to be resilient. I think this message is so essential for so many people to hear right now. Rick Clemons: Well, I think not only are people needing to hear it but here’s the interesting thing in the last year. I have seen so many people step into that because so many people got, whether they got laid off or they’re like, wow, I wasn’t really ready to be this work from home, teach kids from home, all that sort of stuff. I saw more people in my worlds, the couple that I play in, for sure. One being the speaking coach where you and I met. I saw so many people grab on to literally grab onto; if not now, when will I? And they took that mentality, and they unapologetically said, now’s the time to go do this? Now’s the time to go the, do that, whatever it was for them, whatever their, this or that was. And in my private coaching practice, along with the speaker lab coaching that I do, so many people stepped up to that plate. The key is you got to give yourself permission to go there. And I saw a lot of people giving themselves permission this year. Jenn DeWall: It’s so interesting. Do you feel like it was very intentional like the pandemic shook you to recognize your priorities? Or do you feel like, for many people, it was whoops, I guess I just have to do this? Like, do you think I guess the pandemic forced them to do it or created the awareness to do it? Rick Clemons: I think it did both. And I also think it not only did it force some people, others, but it also created the awareness, and for others, it was the big idea. It was like, wow, okay. I’ve, I’ve worked from home now for a month, two months, three months—I kind of like this. I guess I could do this. Do you know? And I think we’ll see, this is such the Petri dish, even now, you know, as companies are starting to like, well, let’s do we come back or do we come back hybrid? And half the workforce is here, and half the workforce is at home or whatever it might be. I think we’re in the midst of the revolution. I think the way we do business and the way we work, and how we show up in the world, we’re still in the Petri dish and for leaders, for leaders, especially. And I, and I’m going to kind of redefine leaders. We all are leaders. We lead ourselves every day. We lead ourselves to get up out of bed, which is a real chore for me, trust me. But we lead ourselves every day. And when we realize that unapologetic leadership starts with ourselves, but as leaders, think about how much you could be apologizing for whatever has happened for the last year, but what is that going to get you? Pick up yourself, take that mindset of no excuses, no fears, step into it and go, okay. If I’m going to unapologetically lead this team that half of them may be from home, and half of them may be coming in the office or the hybrid where this week you’re in the office the next week you’re not. Think about the beautiful opportunities for you as a leader to unapologetically go, and we’re going to embrace. We are going to embrace this new way of being in the world. It’s huge. Jenn DeWall: Well, and it’s huge just for, we need that leader still. We need that leader that is going to confidently say in the face of uncertainty— we will figure this out. So let’s baseline it. What does it mean to show up as an unapologetic or unapologetic leader? What does that look like? Or I guess what would be the definition of an unapologetic leader? Rick Clemons: You know, Jenn, it’s interesting because it’s so personal yet it involves everybody else. So I could be an unapologetic leader and be like, Nope, no apologies for the way I act. No apologies for the way I show up at work. No apologies. I’m the King bee, and you all bow down to me. Okay. That could be an unapologetic leader. But I believe the real, unapologetic leaders are the ones that say, I’m going to unapologetically admit when I screw up, I am unapologetically going to admit when I’m saying, this is the way we’re going to do things. I’m unapologetically going to be empathetic. Be the listening ear. Even when some employees may say, you sure do spend a lot of time with Jenn. You sure do let her, you know, come to your office and talk about her woes a lot. Sometimes you have to unapologetically say, and if that’s what Jenn actually needs for Jenn to continue to be successful on our team, then I’m going to make room for that. If I have to unapologetically say, here’s the cutback that we’re going to make, but I know this is in the best interest of everyone concerned. Otherwise, we’re not going to have a team to even need to bring to the office if we don’t make this happen. That, to me, is what unapologetic means. Realizing that you’re going to have tough decisions, but don’t apologize for those tough decisions, unapologetically embrace them. This is what we gotta do. This is how we got to show up. This is what’s got to get done and keep moving forward. But at the core of it, align it with your own personal values, as much as you can, because when you’re in core alignment with your personal values, then you can unapologetically do anything Unapologetic Does Not Mean Uncaring Jenn DeWall: I love. Yes. I love the values talk, but I think it’s, you’re bringing up a really, I guess I would say a misstep that a lot of leaders make, which is that they bear the burden of the difficult news as if they are the one that personally decided it and wanted it. They hold onto that weight of the world. And boy, does that make leadership challenging if you’re apologizing for the fact that the organization needs to make layoffs. And there’s a difference I’m guessing too, like that you would say, then there’s a difference between, yeah, I’m sorry that we’re making this layoff, versus judging yourself for being the one that has to do the news. You can also apologize as a human, but understand that that’s just a way to lead. How do you kind of describe that? I guess delicate dichotomy that people have to play where I’m apologizing for the company, and you know, just, I loved working with you. I guess the point that I’m trying to say is like, how do you even balance that as a leader to not burden yourself? Because I think a lot of people, especially if you’re tasked with layoffs, you initially go to judgment guilt. It’s not easy. I don’t know very many people that can just fire someone without any, even if there were a lot of wrongs like people are still we’re humans. Right? And so how do you differentiate that as being able to apologize and from a humane, caring, supportive perspective versus apologizing because I’m bearing the ownership of the difficult choice. Rick Clemons: I believe it comes down to how you view it. And I’m so glad you used the terms bearing that, you know, bearing that burden. It comes down to how you view bearing that burden. If you’re like, this sucks. I shouldn’t have to be the one that does this. It’s a whole different apologetic stance you’re taking versus you know what? This is a tough decision. And yes, I don’t like the fact that I’m the one being called to this, but I invite everyone listening, whether you’re the leader or somebody else in the room. So to speak, to realize if this is what you’re being called to do, this is what you’re being called to. Do you have the opportunity to do this? It all comes down to your own mindset. And if I enter into it like, Oh my God, this sucks. I really don’t want to do it. Even if it was my best girlfriend, Jenn, that I’m going to have to let go, which is never going to happen because I’m never letting go of Jenn, just saying it. But if I know in my heart that what I’m about to do is because this is what’s going to be best in the situation. I’m not going to own it. Like you suck Rick, you really suck at this. I don’t like this situation. But to me, an unapologetic leader will say, I don’t like this situation, but I understand, and I own the fact that this is what needs to occur. Then there’s no real apology in my mind that needs to happen. Yes, Jenn, I’m really sorry. Yes, because I am, I’m really sorry, human to human, that this is what I have to do. But I do know at that moment, and this was a biggie for me, Jenn, because I was really ticked off when this happened to me at that point in time. But then, of course, years later, when I’m like, cool, look at me, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m doing all these great things. I don’t have to go to the office. I get to sit in my underwear, and you know, yada, yada yada, right. It was such a big shift because then it suddenly became clear. What happened for me was the best thing that could ever happen. Whether it’s laying somebody off deciding to add a whole new team that’s going to maybe cause us not to be able to give raises, there are things that are happening because they’re meant to be happening. Now we can’t look in the crystal ball, of course, but if something’s happening, the situation is showing up because this is the next best move. And when we look at things through that scope, which is really hard because we’re humans, and we get in our little human heads, and we go, Oh my gosh, this is going to be so bad. We do not know that until it actually happens. And that’s the key, don’t overanalyze this stuff because the moment you start or over-analyzing it, what do you start hearing? I’m so sorry we have to do this. Think about it every time we overanalyze; we’re one step away from the excuse or the apology. Jenn DeWall: It’s you know this, and I know out of curiosity, from your perspective, I know you, you coach people, you, you know, have written a book about living bolder. How do you think that people initially, or why do we personalize so much as leaders? Why don’t we? I know I do it as a leader. I personalize every time I step in front of a classroom for Crestcom. I, you know, personalize that experience. I, if I get one bad review or if someone doesn’t like an exercise, I can, you know, personalize that even though it may not have anything to do with me. And I think it’s always just if I am really great at taking any negative and personalizing it, but I really great at not even looking at a positive and saying, but I did that, no, I’m much better at that personally assigning the ways that I am not adding up. Rick Clemons: Yeah. I know this because I know Jenn really well. And she has like this girl scout badge, that’s all her negative. She has a negative badge, which she just adds to the, to her little, you know, sash thing. But great question because here’s how I look at it. Why do we do this? Three letters- E G O. It’s our egos. Our egos are what causes this every freaking time. Okay. I’m going to do this. In fact, I’m going to do a training this evening, and I’m already in there. I am already in there. Okay. I just gotta be like this, and this is going to happen here. And I’ve already changed shirts three times trying to figure out, okay, which shirt is not going to show my sweat? Because I know I sweat. I know it’s going to happen. I’ve already determined. It’s going to happen tonight. And I got to make sure I wear the right shirt so that, you know, and I’m like, Rick, you’re causing the sweat already. Now, granted, it’s going to be outside, and it’s going to be, you know, low seventies, which is some people are like, that’s cool. Not when you’re a big boy, like me, that’s hot. So, but it’s our ego. We need the stroke. We want to make sure we don’t screw up. We need to make sure we get the accolade. Oh wow. Rick, let me ask you this question. Do you know what you’re going to do tonight? Have you done this before? Do you love the industry? I’m doing something for the wine industry. Do you love the industry you’re doing it for? Do you enjoy being with those kinds of people? Oh, so far, there has been a checkmark to every question I just asked myself, then why are you letting your ego get in the way? Why don’t you just go do what you do, know that you know how to do it, and see what happens? Now that doesn’t mean chuck everything out the window, like, okay, let’s just show up and say, right. You know, don’t be prepared, no- be prepared, but it’s our ego that causes this, Jenn. Jenn DeWall: I wish I could, because for me, and I think that this could be the case for many leaders, whether they are new, whether they’re more established, I do feel and put a tremendous amount of pressure that if I am leading an organization, a training, whatever I am leading, then I want to be liked. And it’s just because I want to make everyone happy. And that is, I know at a baseline that’s impossible, but yet I still put this expectation out there. And so then that is my biggest obstacle and showing up unapologetically because, Oh gosh, I never ever want to, in some way, not meet someone’s expectations. Of course, or give them the wrong impression, but yet, where do we? How do I get that muscle every day? I’m going to work on it. And I know even work with people on this, but it’s, that is I think the biggest challenge for me if we’re just talking about what holds us back from showing up out apologetically, I still struggle. And I will always have to struggle with just that needing to be liked. Moving out of Confusion into Curiosity Rick Clemons: But that’s part of what we, I think as humans, and I’m going to generalize here, which I don’t like to do too often, but I’m going to blatantly going to admit, I’m going to make a generalization here. I think we thrive in the confusion because if we start thriving in this confusion of, okay, am I going to be really good? Well, I’m probably not going to be really good. But well, you know what, if I don’t- guess what? Then we actually don’t have to do anything. All we get to do is sit here and spin most of the time when we’re in these spaces, even though we were marching towards that, I’m, you know, I’m marching, you know, and another three hours, I’m going to be walking into that winery, unable to drink out. Let’s just make that clear cause I’m training. So no drinking. Unfortunately, no, there probably will be some afterward, but it’s the confusion that I’m almost starting to thrive in because we need, we need other stuff to keep us kind of occupied from doing the thing we need to do. And it’s such an interesting space when we realize we are creating the confusion, and we’re letting our ego be the master planner of all this. There is not one thing I can do tonight— unless I just really blatantly screw up— that isn’t going to be just as it should be. I’ve been. I’ve done this numerous times. I know my content really well. And why should I sit there and go, okay, but what if, what if, what if? What is that going to get me? I’m going to be so worked up by the time I get there that I probably will screw up. So instead, we step out of the confusion, and we start to talk about, Hmm, what else could I do? Is that really possible? How can this be different? Because we’re now getting really curious. And I would love the listeners to think about this. And even, you know, Jenn, you don’t have to listen to this. This is now my show. So you just sit there. Okay. But I want you to think about the last time you started to like getting really antsy about something. And you started worrying about what you were going to do, and you kept thinking, okay, well, but you know, this is, I could do this, and that’s going to screw it up. And then I’m going to, you know, the podcast, isn’t going to be like, Rick and I are having this conversation, and I forgot to turn the record button on. All that stuff could have been going through your head until you did one thing. You asked yourself some questions. You got curious. Well, how can I make sure I turned the record button on? Hm. I put a little post-it note on my computer turn the record button on. How can I be really comfortable with the guest on the podcast? Let’s have a five-minute chat before we get on there. What can I do? Because we got curious. Jenn DeWall: Yeah. I think that’s a powerful thing that we thrive in that confusion and because it keeps us busy. Right? We, in some way, think that it’s probably maybe reducing our anxiety, making sure we’re as prepared as possible, even though it’s doing the opposite, it’s likely adding. I love the foundational trust that you’re talking about. The trust that I’m going to, you know, just as you had talked about with your training, I know tonight you’re going to deliver a training, you know, your content, you know, you’re going to do it great, but then sure. We can just, you know, add a little complexity by jumping into confusion with it. Instead of trusting yourself that you’ve done everything that you could to best position yourself. And I think that’s the true definition of being unapologetic is just saying I did my best. I guess what I’m thinking of now, as you’re talking, is really the four agreements and one of the agreements, which is always doing your best, and that’s all you can give. Rick Clemons: And the other interesting thing about being a leader, if you think about what starts to happen on teams. If you truly want to be unapologetic as a leader, you will quickly learn how to quit causing confusion. You will recognize when confusion is happening and get your team curious. Get yourself curious because you cannot be confused and be curious at the same time. Because when you get curious and you ask questions, you start getting answers. If you have answers, can you be confused? Not very often. The answers might cause you some more confusion, but the more curious you keep getting, and the more questions and the more things you keep doing, you’re going to get out of that confused state. But there are leaders, and there are leaders kind of raising my hand just a little bit, who at times can be really good at, let’s just confuse everybody. Let’s just get you because this is how I’m going to. This is how I’m going to feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I had one of those bosses when I was in the hotel industry; I hated him. I absolutely hated the guy because he would literally like tell one side of us to do one thing and tell the other side to do that. And then like, so I don’t understand why nothing’s getting done right here, people. Because you told us both to do different things! You’re not going to be a good leader if you create confusion, and you can’t be an unapologetic leader if you’re constantly saying I’m sorry I got you so confused. I’m sorry I stirred up the crud at work. I’m sorry that the team’s not—Really? Who’s at the center of the team not working together. You, buddy boy. You, miss thing. The Six C’s of Unapologetic Leadership Jenn DeWall: I love that. Okay. So let’s jump into your six C’s! Because you have six C’s to becoming an unapologetic leader, and I think this is important. And again, it may be you’re sitting there in my chair. You are someone that struggles with the need to be liked, or maybe you are creating confusion, which we can do again as a result of not having competence in ourselves. So let’s talk about how we can show up. I am all ears for this. Rick, what are the six C’s to becoming an unapologetic leader? Confusion & Curiosity Rick Clemons: You touched on two of them. So that’s confusion and curiosity. Think about anything that’s going on with your team or anything. That’s going on with you personally. As a leader, if you are struggling, I can almost a hundred percent say if you are struggling, it’s because you are confused. And the more you sit in your confusion, the more you’re going to feel like you’re a victim. The more you’re going to feel like everybody’s got it out for you. The more you feel like you’re going to be a failure, that little voice, that that’s the imposter syndrome, who’s going for the Oscar nominee. They’re going to be playing full out because you’re allowing confusion to take you there. But the flip side of that is curiosity. Because as soon as you start to get curious, guess what happens without confusion, and with curiosity, it’s really hard to make excuses for why things are going wrong because you’re getting the answers. You’re getting the input. And one of the quickest ways to get rid of excuses is to get into curiosity mode. It’s so simple. And if you, again, if people are sitting there thinking, God, I hope to God, they’re not falling asleep, but hopefully, they’re thinking about everything we’re saying here. It’s such an interesting space to play in. When you think about the last big explosion that may have happened in your personal life or in your work life or anything that you’ve been doing, why did it happen? Because there was some conflict, there was some confusion about what needed to be done or a direction to go. Confusion is the space you got to move out of. And into curiosity, because once you start asking the questions, good questions. Not yes or no. Do we like the boss? No, that’s not going to help. What is it we don’t like about the way our boss is leading? Now we’re going to get someplace. What is it he doesn’t like about the way the team is not collaborating? Now we’re going to get someplace. What is she doing when she says, I’m going to be listening to you when she closes the door and says, I don’t have time to listen to you. These are the things that are going to help you start to figure out how do we get curious to start solving the problem? Because as soon as you start getting super curious, we step into the arena where we can do one thing, which is facing our fears because, with the answers, we can start looking at the fears. Well, I don’t know if this is going to work. I don’t think we should put Tom in that position. You know, Tom, all he wants to do is play video games in the afternoons, you know, whatever it is, the thing is, is the fears are sitting there. But the more curious you got, the more courage you’re going to have. So there’s number three C- the courage you’re going to have to start moving forward, to start facing a fear, to literally commit to I am going to do this. So courage and commitment go together. How do I know this works? I want you to think back, Jenn, to maybe the first time you tried to do something, ride a bike, roller skate, do your own nails, whatever it was. There was probably a little bit of excitement, but also, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can do this. It was scary, right? Yeah. I mean, I remember the first time I tried to do my own nails. I was scared to death to do them, you know, and I guess, you know, mom was gonna catch me doing my own nails or something like that, but it was kind of scary. But as soon as I started asking myself questions, well, but what would be really fun about being able to ride my bike down that hill with my buddies? Well, what will I really enjoy about being able to swim in the pool, you know, in the middle of the summer versus being scared? Or what might happen if I really do go off that high dive? Will I enjoy it or not? What will be the most fun thing about it? Suddenly once I started asking those questions, I’m like, yeah, let’s try. Because then I have the courage, and I have the ability to commit to doing something. So as a leader, what is something you, Jenn, have seen yourself curious about that I don’t have the courage to go do this as a leader? Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. I mean, the example is now outside of leadership that I keep thinking of, and maybe I’m thinking about how I did these in quick succession. I think about a vacation that I had taken pre-pandemic. I was hiking, and I am I’m terrified of heights. I don’t like heights at all. And the first part of this 12-mile hike that my lovely friends helped me go on was basically walking. You had a rope that you could hold on to, but it was just a drop-off. And before we got there, I, because it gave the warnings, which I didn’t know about. I had no idea until I got to the trailhead, and initially, it was confusion. I’m like, do I go back? We had just hiked up this mountain. Like we just, because that’s the way that you get to the trailhead. And then I don’t know if I went to curiosity, but my curiosity, went to, how will I make it through? Should I crawl on my hands and knees? What do I do? Rick Clemons: But that is curiosity. Those are questions you’re asking yourself because in those questions, what were you starting to realize? Jenn DeWall: That I can figure it out, it’s going to be a short moment. I can describe it. And then yes. I mean, tears down my face. I legitimately grabbed onto the rope, and I just walked. And I know to some people that if you’re not afraid of heights, it probably if I showed you this, you would say that’s nothing done. But when you were terrified of heights, that is something. And I think that I went to the courage and I’m like, okay, I’ve got to do this. Like I’m already seeing how I went through. Even these six things to show up in a more cause at again, the basis of unapologetic leaders, confidence and it’s yeah. I just, okay. Continue on. I’m just, that’s how I’m seeing that. Courage and Commitment Rick Clemons: No, you, you went right through it because you got the courage, and you’re like, okay, I know, okay, here’s the rope. Okay. I can hold onto this. I can get through this. I asked myself, the question is, well, what if I do, what am I going to do? Walk back down the hill? What am I going to do? Sit here while they all go up? What, how much fun will that be? All those things were probably because you were curious. You were starting to ask all the right questions. And then finally, because you’re like, well, I could do this and I, you know, I’ll hold onto the rope and I’ll, I’ll pull myself up on my knees, like get scraped all the way up to the top if I have to, to get it done. Right? But then, with that courage, you committed. Because courage is where commitment shows up, and this is such an interesting little dynamic that I discovered as I was working on this process and thinking through everything and where this all came on in my own life. Suddenly in that drive home from the office, after getting laid off, you know, all this was happening really rapidly. And none of this was actually even on the forefront of like, oh, I’m coming up with this really great thing that’s going to make me super famous. Not that I am super famous, but this has become the backbone of my coaching. I’m sitting in that car. And now I can literally think about what happened on that drive from orange County, California, home to where I live. So a good 60-minute drive. I realized I was super confused. What’s going to happen next? But by God, I’m figuring it out. What can I do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And the more I started asking the questions, the more courage I got. And by the time I got home, even when I walked in and said, honey, I got laid off, but I’m going to build a business. I was committed. I had no clue what I was going to do. But in that little hour, I worked through those first four steps. I got rid of excuses for the time being they showed up. Like, you know, later that night when I had a glass of wine, then I’m going to be the, you know, all that was going down. Right. But I now can see how I went through this process, and suddenly I was committed. I’m like, I am not. I remember literally with a glass of wine in my hand, turned into my husband. I said I am never, I am never going to work for anybody else again, which isn’t true because now I am working for somebody else again, but I’m doing it out of a real love of what I do. But that was such commitment. And because of the courage and the commitment, the fears started to go away. That didn’t mean they went gone far. They were sitting over there in the shadows, watching me drink. The wine is waiting for me to like, get a little more glass of wine in me. So they come back roaring at me. But it’s such an interesting space when you see that courage and commitment can help you squash the fears. But you can’t stop there because, okay, great, we created this wonderful thing. It’s not quite the best seller like the four agreements, but Oh, look what I created. If you don’t act on it and the action is okay, I’m committed. I’ve got the courage, but do I actually believe I can do this? Do I actually have the confidence to go do what I want to go do? And I think for many leaders, they sit there, and they dream about being the guy in the corner office, or they dream about being the director or running the team, or I could do this better. All that’s great. They got the courage and the commitment to do it. And then suddenly, the opportunity shows up. Now, I don’t know. Now I’m not going to go for it. Why? You’re right there. You’re standing on the cusp. Well, you know, I probably wouldn’t be really good. Oh, there’s the apology. Well, it probably isn’t the best time for me to do this in my life right now. Oh, there’s the apology. Well, you know, I’ve never really been good with people. Oh, there’s the apology. Then why the heck were you saying you wanted to do this for so long? If you don’t get the confidence to move it forward, you will never consistently show up doing what you want to do. Confidence and Consistency Rick Clemons: If I had not said, Rick, you can become a coach. You can do the work. You can go through the— you can be that guy. You can go do all these things, but you’re going to have to consistently show up saying, this is what I do. This is who I am. This is who the people I help. This is how I do it. Suppose I don’t have the confidence to consistently show up. And if you’re listening and you’re dreaming, and you’re having those lovely little middle of the night dreams, like I’m going to have the corner office and you don’t have the confidence to have the corner office. And you can’t consistently see yourself sitting in the corner office, which isn’t all that defines you as a leader. But it’s a really good visual for most people. You won’t be there. Trust me, because you will find every excuse and apology in the world for not showing up there. But in my mind, in the way, I think about this, and then my process and what will be in my new book someday is the confidence, and the consistency is what makes you a true leader. The confidence to say, okay, I screwed up. The confidence to say, I hear you. I understand what you’re saying. And based on everything that I know that’s going on for us as a company, I still think this is the best route for us to go. And I’m confident that it is. And I’m going to do everything in my power to consistently make that work. That, to me, is what an unapologetic leader does. They lean into their confidence, and they consistently show up supporting that. That doesn’t mean they’re stubborn. It doesn’t mean that they’re like, it’s my way or the highway, but they get really confident and consistent in how they’re going to do it. That means they’ll flex, too, like, Hey, that’s not working. So let’s kind of back up. Let’s go get curious again. Let’s make another run at this. Okay. Yeah. I got the courage. We’re going to try something new. Great. Now we’re going to commit to this. All right. Now, can I be committed to this and be confident that I can do this? Yep. Okay. Now that you’re saying, you’re confident you can do it. How do you consistently show up and do that day in, day out, day in, day out? Jenn DeWall: Where do you think- so the six C’s: confusion, curiosity, courage, commitment, confidence, and consistency. Where do you think if someone is approaching a challenge or that uncertainty, right? Where it all might begin for some people, what step do you think they just get stuck at? And that’s the kind of starting point for them showing up apologetically. Rick Clemons: I think there’s a couple; a lot of people get stuck right in confusion. It’s still— it’s all comfy. If I just keep saying, well, I don’t know how I would do it, or I don’t know if I’m capable, then they don’t have to move forward. They don’t have to move forward. The next critical one actually to me is between commitment and confidence. I can commit all day long. Yes. I believe I’m a great coach. And that’s like, but Oh, what do I have the confidence to go out there and get gigs to have the confidence to go out there and find clients? No, but I’m a really good coach. I am committed to being a really good coach. I don’t care how committed you are to be in a really good coach. I don’t care how committed you are to being a really good leader. If you don’t go out there and take action on it and are confident in going and doing it, you’re going to fail. And that’s, that’s the bridge where I think a lot of people fall into. Some of this is really easy. You can, all, most of us can build up the courage to do anything. I mean, you got enough courage to walk up to that mountain and go, okay, here I am. But it took the commitment. But even as you got started with the commitment, you could have faltered right there, but you were confident that I’m going to do this. Jenn can do this even if it’s thread by thread of this rope that I’m shredding as I’m grabbing onto it, trying to get up that hill. It’s the confidence that you had in yourself to make it happen. That’s where the breakdowns happen. Now. Of course, it can happen for anybody in different places, but those are the two places I see for most people. I have a guy I’m coaching right now—an amazing guy, very talented. And we’re right up to the brink. I’m clear where I want to go. I’m I know what I want to do. I’ve got the courage that I’m going to make this happen. He’s made some big moves about making it happen. He’s committed. And we are in imposter syndrome central right now because his confidence is not quite there. Good news for me, because I’m like, well, just keep paying me as a coach. But it is an interesting space, Jenn. Great question. By the way. I love that question. Jenn DeWall: No, cause I, I do see a lot of it. I think confusion can be. We genuinely don’t know. And so I can see that, you know, I think a popular expression and I’m sure you’ve heard this, that along the way, as well as the paralysis by analysis, that’s the piece of confusion. But then I also feel there is that opportunity to really be a victim. And I think that’s the piece of, are you also telling yourself that there’s no possible option or solution for you to get out of this or that the world is against you? Like, and maybe it doesn’t show up directly as confusion, but I think it’s confusion in understanding where we have responsibility. Yes. Like, and that’s, so I liked that one cause I’m like, I think there, I just think of basic examples. There are plenty of leaders that I work with that will stay in confusion. I don’t know how to get out of this. My team isn’t working together, but it all starts that they’re just confused that it actually starts with them, and they don’t want to take that ownership. Rick Clemons: And from the commitment to confidence means you’re taking responsibility. It’s an interesting little place right there where you’re like, okay, I’m going to be responsible for moving myself into that confidence space to go make this happen. Now it’s so interesting, and responsibility shows up every step of the way, but the higher the stakes get, the more your responsibility to yourself is going to show up, and it’s going to show up, and it’s going to stare you in the face every time, every time. In the last couple of times, I’ve had the opportunity show up in the last few years to step into something like higher roles; even though I was working for myself, but there was a couple of opportunities that presented themselves. I really had to stand in that space of commitment and confidence and realizing are you going to take responsibility if I decide to step up into this? Are you willing to be confident enough to go do this? Is this an exciting enough opportunity for you to consistently say, this is what I do? And I got really clear. I, I had two chairs set up, and I’d sit in one chair as a coach. And then I’d set my a little butt over there, and then I’d sit over here. And I was going back and forth, walking myself through my process. And both times, I got to the point where, you know what, I’m not quite ready to take the responsibility to step confidently into this and consistently go do what I’m being offered to do. It was not a match, not just because I was using the whole chair thing, but I also, I mean, I got tired, and I lost like five pounds doing the chair exercise that day, you know? But it’s, it’s one of those things where I dove into my own values too. And I think this six-step process, if you kind of couch it and I know I’ve thrown a lot at the listeners, but if you kind of couch it every step of the way by asking yourself, what do you value? What do you value? What do you value? You’re gonna find it really moves you through there pretty quickly. Jenn DeWall: I, I just lost my train of thought. Rick Clemons: Because you’re stuck in the chair, you’re like trying to visualize Rick jumping back and forth between chairs. And you’re like. He’s onto a new weight loss idea. You just jump from chair to chair. Jenn DeWall: That’s how we do our exercise. No, but I think that this is because the piece that we haven’t maybe touched on as much, but I think you brought up from your chair example. This is a great way to get confidence in your choices. Like if I, I think that again, many people leaders might say yes to something employees might say yes to something, even though they’re already working 60 hours a week and there’s not actually a way that they can do it because we don’t want to have to let someone down or not do that. And I love that you’re also saying apply these six steps to also find your no’s and get confidence in your no’s. That it’s not just to give you do these six steps because this is all about your success in whatever you’re going towards, but also reverse this, make sure to show up unapologetically in what is important to you, not what you feel like someone would want you to do, which I know is again, coming back to my own issue of wanting to be liked. I absolutely love saying yes to everything because I don’t want to let anyone down, but I love that this is a great tool to think. No, like you have to have the confidence in your no, and that’s the only, you’re going to be able to actually say that. Rick Clemons: I tried, I tried to say no to this podcast with you for weeks. And finally, I just had to give up. I had the confidence to finally say, yes, I’m going to do this, Jenn, if you will promise to leave me alone. But, no, I love that you, I love that you pulled that together because there is something interesting about giving yourself full permission to, without apologies, say no to something. It’s freeing, especially as a leader. You are going to come up against some things as a leader that you’re going to have to say no to. And it’s probably going to test you the most. But if you say no, without apologies, in a really healthy, strong way, you will grow so much as a leader. Jenn DeWall: Oh my gosh. And I think it also just like, I would add to that. If you follow the six C’s to becoming an unapologetic leader, I feel like you’re also going to be able to lead with more openness and transparency because you have done the work. You’ve got data to pull from. You have maybe points of view or considerations of why you can’t do something. So instead of even just saying to your employee, no. You can at least give a little bit more of an explanation, which is what people want because they just want to be heard. And so I love that too, that that comes out of this as, by giving yourself that framework. You’re then just getting more information that not only boosts your confidence, but also it can help you connect more with others that they don’t think it was some passive yes or no. Or, you know, you’re not transparent. Advice for Aspiring Unapologetic Leaders Jenn DeWall: Rick, what would be, I want to ask two final questions, which is the thing would be what would be a final consideration that you would want to say to maybe a leader that is really struggling to show up apologetically or unapologetically? Like what would be one small piece of advice for them as they’re thinking about adopting these six C’s and then second, how can people get in touch with you? Rick Clemons: So this is the backbone of any time I have the opportunity to do something like this. And thank you, Jenn, for having me. It’s the backbone of my whole philosophy around unapologetic living. It’s the truth of who you are, is far more powerful than the false truth you’re pretending to be. So show people the truth of who you are as a leader. It will never fail you. It will never fail you. You may fail because somebody may not like the truth of who you are as a leader, but be grateful for that because that means you’re not supposed to be where you’re at. And the more I have learned to live that, embrace that in my own life, from everything, from who I am and coming out of the closet and starting a business and, and making decisions about where I was going with my business, the more truthful I was about who I was and who I was not going to pretend to be, the more successful I become. And that’s a really important piece of my whole puzzle of living that truth. And as far as where you can find me, I hang out in Jenn’s closet in her house when she lets me out of it to come out, to play, so to speak. But RickClemons.com is my website, C L E M O N S. And I’d love to talk to anybody. Who’s like, okay, I’m really struggling with this. Yes. You’re going to land on my website, and it’s going to say it’s only for men. I’m not misogynistic. It’s just that’s where I concentrate my work. I love women. I love working with anybody. As long as you’re going to do the work, don’t come, don’t come calling on me. If you’re not going to do the work, because you can kind of tell I’m kind of a sassy guy. So I call you on the carpet. Jenn DeWall: I love you as my coach. And Rick, you just made me tear up, though, just reminding people because, at the end of the day, I know that this is a leadership podcast, but we do have a small amount of time here. And just reminding ourselves that we deserve to show up unapologetically as who we are. To be who you want. Not everyone’s going to love it, and that’s okay, but you always need to stand up and be you and I just get emotional because I think everyone, we always need that reminder to live our dash, to live the best life, to whatever you want to call it. So I just appreciate that. So they can head on over to I’ll stop crying now- which I’m sure some people are used to my emotional way, but if you want to connect with Rick, you can contact him. He’s an author. You can check out his book. It will help you live and be bolder in your life. He’s a trainer. He’s a coach. He’s my coach for speaking, which I love so much. Rick, thank you so much for sharing your gift with the world. Thank you for being you, and thank you for showing us how to show up unapologetically. Rick Clemons: You bet. Thanks, Jenn. Jenn DeWall: I hope you enjoyed this conversation between Rick and me. It’s a very important topic that many leaders struggle with today, how we can lead unapologetically. If you want to connect with Rick, you can head on over to his website. There you can book him for speaking and coaching, and you can also find his book at RickClemons.com. In addition, if you know someone that could benefit from hearing the message of leading unapologetically, don’t forget to share this podcast with them. And of course, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service podcasts. Aren’t the only thing that Crestcom does. If you want to connect with us, we offer complimentary two-hour leadership workshops where we can come into your team, virtual-live, or in-person to help you solve today’s leadership challenges.   The post Becoming an Unapologetic Leader with Bold Move Expert, Rick Clemons appeared first on Crestcom International.