[00:01] Katie: Welcome to The Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now, here's your host. Katie.

[00:32] Katie: Welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus B show. I'm thrilled today to be here with Danielle McLeod. Danielle is the co founder of Remarkable Women. She is an executive coach, keynote speaker and author of Remarkably Easy. I had the privilege to speak by Danielle's side at a Woman in Tech conference and then invited her to the show. Thank you so much for being here today, Danielle.

[01:00] Danielle: Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be fun.

[01:03] Katie: Yes. Which is what it's all about, as you will soon find out. Before we begin, could you tell us a bit before we begin on the whole part about the zone of genius that's coming up, could you tell us a bit about your journey with leadership? How did you begin with leadership?

[01:22] Danielle: Well, I know you want me to go back to the day, so when I was young, I was very clear that I was going to be Prime Minister. So, clearly that went really well. And I sort of did that thing that I think lots of women do, which is I had ambition, but I gave away my career, to be honest. So a lot of hopefully people will notice I'm good and not really knowing what I wanted to do when I realized I wasn't going to be Prime Minister. And although I have checked back in on that ambition later in life, and, yeah, kind of landed in HR because I was good at working with people. And of course, that's where everybody puts girls who are good at working with people. And eventually, sort of in my late 30s, really had a bit of a light bulb moment and realized that I'd spent my whole career being a chameleon, really. You know that line in Pretty Woman where Richard Gear says, what's your name? And she says, what do you want it to be? That was literally how I'd built my career, really stronger, understanding what people needed and being that. And so in my mid thirty s, I decided to go on a big transformation program and discover who I was if I didn't care what people thought about me. And, yeah, I found a really different person, which was very exciting and surprising, and then led ultimately to me becoming a director of a big company and becoming customer service director, leading 10,000 people. So I literally went from 65 to 10,000 overnight. And it was just glorious, actually. It was really incredible to have such a privilege of owning so many people's contributions to society and life in my hands. And so, as part of that journey, we did a big thing on Women in Leadership, and I was invited to be one of the poster girls because I had such an unusual career. And I think it turned me into Frankenstein's monster because having never really given it much attention, I just suddenly got really excited about the prospect of more feminine leadership in the world, and I wanted to understand what was really holding us back. And so remarkable women has been all about how do we help women have the impact we know they want to have. Like, our research just showed us, hands down, that women want to make a difference without them being held back by their fears, which actually are usually about, I don't want to burn out, I don't want to become somebody. I don't like to fit in into that new world. I don't want to compromise my relationships. And so our work has always been about, there's an easier way than that once you get out of the way of your own head. And so, yeah, that's what I've been doing for the last almost five years. And it's been amazing, wonderful to hear.

[04:12] Katie: Your journey from wanting to be a prime minister to ending up in HR and to them being the director of this corporation and now having your own business. One of the huge aspects of leadership and where you also help women to be remarkable, is by stepping into their zone of genius. And this is what you discussed at the Women in Tech conference. I particularly loved it since then, as we were talking about it off air, I have read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks that's fantastic. And also dives into this. Could you explain a bit for my listeners what the zone of genius actually is and how we can tap into it?

[04:49] Danielle: Yeah, for sure. And I'll say up front that I love to teach this and also often I really watch people's faces of like, she's a little bit crazy, how is this going to work? Right, so it's a super simple model. I always draw it as three circles so inside each other, and the outer circle being this idea we have a zone of competence. So things that we do that if we were going to take an examine, then we would never get more than a pass mark. It doesn't matter how hard we try, we're never going to be that great at it. And so much of feedback that comes to us can be focused on your weaknesses. And I've been experimenting, actually, I did it through the very latter years of my corporate career as well. What happens if we let somebody else be good at those things and we focus on what we're good at instead? And so so many organizations are focusing on productivity, for example, and I'm really interested in untapping potential because I think there's so much more we can go for there, rather than how can we get you to do more of that, which maybe you don't enjoy or it's not really for you anyway. And so your zone of competence is stuff that you're at K at in my view, you shouldn't build your career around it. It's not going to make for a very exciting career for you. And then the next circle, which is further to the center, which I think is the trap, it's the real trap in the model is what we would describe as your zone of excellence. So that is the work that you're so good at. People ask you to do more of it, and you actually almost start to kid yourself that that's how you want to build your career. And yet, if you're truly honest about it, it just breaks your brain. It just breaks your brain. And so for me, that was really key in my career. My first director position, when I was leading the 65 people, I was Director of Change, and I'm a strategist. So we'll get to why that's got more nuance to it later. I was leading major change initiatives in a big 50 company, and I wanted that job. I worked so hard for it. Everybody told me I couldn't have it, I was in the wrong HR. People don't become change directors, technical change. And I was like, I'm having it. I'm having it. Oh, my God. I describe it as climbing Everest and finding a really crappy service station at the top and everyone drinking bad coffee. I hated it because I discovered that for all I'm a strategist, I don't care how widgets fit into other widgets. And so I did a really decent job of it. I got good marks in my performance reviews. People wanted me to do more of it. But what I saw over time was it just made me more and more unhappy. And that was the point at which I thought, I have to go and find out who I am. Really? Like, I don't think I know. And so your zone of excellence is so tempting because people pat you on the back for it, right? They give you more of it. And so you think, oh, this is how I'm supposed to build my career. And then there's your zone of genius, which in my mind, having spent a lot of time experimenting with it, is only three to five things. And it is those things that are easy for you, which are you and I just talked about is so counterintuitive, right? Because we don't think work should be easy and we think it should be hard. And yes, the mastering of those things brings challenge for you, but fundamentally, at the very heart of it, you're so excited by it and you enjoy it so much that it's a different kind of challenge than trying to bust your brain with something that your brain just doesn't naturally tune itself into. And so a lot of our work, when we're trying to help our women become more and more impactful in the world, is identifying your zone of genius and then doing the scary bit, which is weaning yourself off your zone of excellence so that it becomes easier and more impactful. And then after a while you're like, oh my word, why didn't I know this years ago? But you know, Katie, it's not easy to step off the absolutely, absolutely.

[08:51] Katie: I feel that the listeners, if you're watching this on YouTube because it'll be on YouTube and on audio, you will see from our smiles and how energized we feel about this, that for both of us, Danielle and I, speaking is part of our zone of genius. And essentially this is how we want you to feel when you're doing whatever is your zone of genius. And it doesn't have to be speaking. You don't have to take other people's zone of geniuses to see yours. It's what you said, Danielle, about finding what your zone of genius is. What energizes you, feels easy, still has some challenges, but it's fun and energizing. One question that has come to my mind since I've been diving into this and absorbing it most is what if someone's zone of genius can't be practically put in a job or career? So we're fortunate that speaking and maybe writing or in your case is also strategy are things that can be put in a career, but someone can have a zone of genius. For instance, let's say drawing, let's say something more autistic that could potentially be a career but might be a lot harder from a practical financial perspective. What can these people do? Should they spend their careers in zone of excellence anyway, and their hobby in zone of genius? Should they try and bring their zone of genius to their job anyway? What are your sort of tips on this?

[10:13] Danielle: I think your game, if you're willing to play it, is to try to bring more of it to where you are. So actually, you offer a really lovely example there around drawing. You've seen me speak live. I wouldn't say my zone of genius is drawing, but I'm creative and I hate PowerPoint. It's totally zone of excellence at best for me. It makes me want to cry at the screen. If I spend my time preparing a talk and I center it around PowerPoint, you will not get the best of me. And so it's really important to me that I get on stage and I'm enjoying myself and I've enjoyed myself in the lead up to it. And so I sketch all of my little drawings. I don't have any to show you today, but you've seen them little drawings that I hold up or I give people teaching sheets that are hand sketched. And recently I've been working with several clients who are like, oh, my word. Keynote speakers. For example, I hate PowerPoint. And I've bought them this book that is called Thinking with Your Pen. And it's been just so beautiful to watch them start sketching for their talks. And of course they go, but I'm not very good at it. And I say, it won't matter. I promise you it won't matter. And so many of them write back to me and say, oh, my word, Danielle, you won't believe how much more engaged people were, how much more they enjoyed the talk for me, holding up these scrappy little sketches. And so often, your zone of genius, it takes a bit of work to think about, how do I do it more? How do I do it more? But if you I mean, that's just such a lovely example. It's an easy one. So we might want to come to some tougher ones in a minute, but if you think about how many board meetings or exec meetings lots of us have prepared steering group packs for, and you look at these great big PowerPoint decks, and you're like, kill me now. How lovely it would have been for somebody to come in with a big cartoon graphic, a visual, and energize you with you kind of going, what's that? And what's that meant to mean? And all the rest of it. And so I see all the time that there are ways that people can apply those inner genius that they've never thought of before. So I'll give you an example of my last company. I will say up front, it was a TV company. I worked in operations, so I didn't do any of the sexy stuff. We had a guy who was and this is a bonkers zone of genius, right? This is bonkers. I want to show you how it plays through. We had a guy who was a graduate, and he was on a graduate scheme, and god bless him, like lots of graduates, he'd been moved around loads of different places, and everybody really liked him, but nobody could find out what he was good at. It was really quite challenging, and he was kind of good at stuff, but he wasn't in his zone. And it's hard when you're younger. I think you've got more experimenting to do to test things. Anyway, this will make you laugh if you've seen the show, and if you haven't, guys go and look at it. He used to do these amazing impersonations of Gary tank commander. I'm not saying that Gary tank commander was his genius, but the fact that he was just so funny and engaging was incredible. And so you'd often walk into the office and he would be doing his Gary tank commander impression because it would make everybody laugh. And somebody had the genius idea, the genius idea. Let's not have our director of communications host the annual recognition awards this year. Let's let him do it, right? And so this young guy in his early 20s got up on stage and hosted this entire event with not a nerve. I don't know if he was nervous or not, but the guy was in his zone of genius. Like, we were just laughing our heads off all evening. He was talking to the major celebrities and we found a talent that didn't make any sense in the organization. But now, as well as working in communications, he's also a producer on one of the major channels in his 20s, right. Because he was good at Gary tank Commander. And so I'm going to put the argument to you, because I've got loads of these examples that it takes a bit of thinking and a bit of bravery, but actually almost every organization right now needs people who are good on camera and most people are terrible at it. And so if you can start to demonstrate with your own initiative and I would talk about this. I wrote a blog a long time ago called Are You Undiscovered? And it was about people who are just really frustrated that their talents aren't being seen. And in my experience, you can't just keep putting your hand up and go, see my talent. See my talent. You demonstrate it and you find ways to demonstrate it. So people go, Hang on a minute, that's really interesting. And if you're not clear how to apply it, then go find somebody who's zone of genius, who's coming up with creative ideas and go, how do I put this into my working life? And in my experience, you can find a way. And when you find that way, people suddenly see you in a new light because you're not doing things you're average at anymore.

[15:13] Katie: Such a wonderful perspective. I feel it's so much better than just having your zone of genius in your hobby and then you work in your zone of excellence, because fundamentally, we won't feel fulfilled if we work in our zone of excellence. So the more we can bring in zone of genius and that was such a wonderful example, the more we can bring it in to our job and career every day, the better it is. So this is such an interesting creative way, a new perspective to look at it, so we can have more of this. What have you seen are some of the biggest struggles when it comes to leaving the zone of excellence? We talked a bit about this again off air before beginning the podcast, that it can almost feel too easy to be in our zone of genius and like we're doing something wrong and it should be harder. So this is maybe one of the obstacles, but what other obstacles have you found?

[16:04] Danielle: I think that idea of I'm being lazy is challenging, but actually, as you start to see the impact increasing, that gets really exciting. The other one, I think, is that often we forget that there are a thousand ways, if not more, of doing any job. So I guarantee, Katie, if you went behind the scenes of your business, and you went behind the scenes of mine, that which largely look like they do the same thing, we do not spend our time on the same things because we're not the same people, right? And so we have a load of autonomy around where we put our time. And so one of the things I see when I'm coaching, really, senior women, is they think they have to follow in the footsteps of their predecessor, especially if their predecessor was talented. And so this idea that, well, they're really talented at advertising campaigns, and I want to be the next chief marketing officer, or in my case, when I went to be customer service director, the guy before me was a genius at operating models. Like, really, really hot at it. And I was good at it. I could put it in my zone of excellence, but I was never going to be as good as him, ever. I'd always have to defer. I'd always have to walk into a meeting and go, I've done this. Is it. Okay? And he would play with it because it was his zone of genius, right? And so we can think that we have to do it the way other people do it. And actually, in most organizations, in my experience, nobody really notices how you do it. If the results are good and if people around you are happy, I think if you stir up ****, that's really different. But if the results are good, nobody is leaning over your shoulder going, excuse me, it's Temp of Ten. What are you doing now? Are you at your desk doing the spreadsheet? Because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. But it can be super tempting to go, oh, I should do it the way they've done it. And the other one for me, I think, is FOMO. Like, I need to be seen in these places so that people will see me. And so I just experience a lot of my clients as rocking up to meetings where they would rather stick pens in their eyes, but they want to be there because there's a status attachment to it. And so, as always, it's up here like it's nowhere else. It's the mind going, it's the ego actually going, you need to be seen. People need to think this of you. They need to think that you need to look like you're trying hard. All of this noise in our head is just a huge distraction. And I have to say, for me, and it's happened in the Pandemic, I've just written a blog about it. I run out of energy this year, and I work at the speed of light. One of my gifts and one of my shadows is I can get 100 things done in the time that other people would take to do 20. And people like me are terrible at delegating because I can do it faster than everybody else, but I can spend a lot of time in my zone of excellence as a consequence. And even though I've been working on it for years, this year I just didn't have the same energy and focus that I had before. And so I had to sit down with this sentence, which is, most things make no difference at all. Danielle, what would happen if you only spent your time in your zone of genius knowing that you've got less energy than you have ever had? What would happen? And so a big decision I made, I used to think writing was in my zone of genius. And I want to talk about this, the nuancing, because actually what I saw over time was writing wasn't in my zone of genius at all. Teaching is my zone of genius and I happen to do that through writing sometimes. But I hate and I didn't see this until this year. I hate copywriting. I'm really good at it. It is proper zone of excellence. I'm better at it than lots and lots of people. But put it on my list, it's the last thing I'm going to choose to do. And I'm going to be like, oh, I have to write this message out to my clients or whatever. And so this year I sat down with my brilliant business partner and I said, we'll take a gamble. I will only enroll clients on our latest program by using my zone of genius, which means we will not send a single email to our mailing list because she doesn't write them. And she just totally backs this as a concept. So she said, do it, do it. And so all I did for three weeks around international Women's Week was I took on as many speaking events as I could. I was usually doing one a day, maybe two. It's all I had energy for. I couldn't do anything else apart from maybe see one client. That was it. Didn't write a single email, not one. And we smashed our target, our stretch, target our mailing list. I don't think even know we've opened the program and our project manager came to me and said, is it my imagination or has this been really easy? And I said, yeah, it has, really easy, because I love doing those talks and I can find the energy to do them because I'm in my zone, I'm in flow, and I'll do ten of them to write one copywriting email. But yeah, everything in the world would say, target your mailing list, target your mailing list. And so it was a big experiment this year to say, no, we won't and let's do what a zone of genius is, which is teach and see what happens then. And I will say that to everybody who's thinking about this. You only have to try this a few times. You know this because you've been trying it too. You get hooked on it because you start to see these results and this impact unfolds with grace and ease. And then you realize that your ambition to make a difference is achievable at whole new levels if you are willing to stay in the belief that if I focus on the things I love and that I am. Excellent. At and that I sorry that I'm not excellent at, that are in my zone of genius, that I'm committed to becoming a master of. Because you don't have to be an expert at it for it to be zone of genius. You just have to be hooked on the thrill of getting better at it. Right? That's different. If I'm willing to dedicate my life to this, then, hey, presto, worst case scenario, I'm just going to have a hell of a lot more fun. I'm never going to go, oh my God, that's an hour of my life I wouldn't get back. And best case, things are going to unfold with ease. And the only time I see this failing, Katie, is when people don't go all in. And I don't mean you have to do it all tomorrow. I mean that you don't really believe it's going to work and you get sucked back to the old way of being. That's the only time I see it failing. And the good news about that is you can go again. Just go again.

[22:54] Katie: This links back to the part you mentioned about FOMO. And here we can really tell that it takes that bold move, that bold decision to let go, not have the FOMO of the newsletter, to go all in, like you said, and believe in it and fully tap in. And I think this is where a lot of people get stuck because they don't have that courage, maybe, or they have that fear because fear holds us back a lot and so they try and do too many things. And typically when we're doing a lot, this links to focus, which is one of my favorite topics, because when we focus on our zone of genius, the results are excellent. When we scatter our focus everywhere, we can't be excellent everywhere and we can't enjoy all of it either. So it's about taking and making that bold move and decision, which can be very tricky for some people and also going against, not against, but managing to ignore some of the external voices. So you were fortunate that your co founder partner also supported this. But what if they hadn't? What if other people in the company had said, well, I think this is ridiculous, it's stupid. What about the newsletter? And this is where it gets tricky. So how can people really trust themselves? Because we talked about courage, but here it's a lot about trust. How can people really trust themselves? Especially if it's the first time you know about this. You know, you zone of genius, you've done it before. But what about people who are starting off? How can they have this trust?

[24:18] Danielle: Well, firstly, you're going to be experimenting in two ways, right? So the first experiment is, is this my zone of genius or not? So you have to put that to the test to see. And so I've been talking for two years, actually in reality about writing being my zone of genius before I got clear. I know it's very specifically this. I thought I wanted to be change director because I knew strategy was my zone of genius. But actually what I'm so much clearer about now is it is strategy in relation to people dynamics and behavior, right? That's what I'm interested in. So you ask me to do strategy that's widgets connecting to widgets, I don't care. So you might have a big thing. So, for example, I'm going to bet that if I said to you, you say to me, speaking is in my zone of genius, and I say you but stand up and talk about this really dull thing over here, that's not going to be fun for you, right? Because it's more nuanced than that. And so you start with a big thing that's very generic and then you start to test it, right? So you start to look at, when I do more of this, did I enjoy? No, I did not. Right? So now I need to start to look at how do I nuance that down? A little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. So you want to play with ideas like what are the conversations I desperately want to be part of, right, at work? Because there's a clue in there and it's not, I desperately want to be part of it because I want a promotion, it's I desperately want to be part of it because what they're doing is fun. Right? So there's the nuance there. So that you can start to test, is this my zone of genius or not? I think you'll get to about 50% of it on your first stab and you'll then need to iterate over time. And of course that's where the fun comes in because the more and more you get clear on it, the more differences you see happen. So it's like it's the gift that keeps on giving. And then the other thing is you start to experiment with and I think you can start in the smallest of places. If I took my to do list now or the thing or took my diary for this week and I said, right, I'm just going to play with 5% off of stuff that I think is zone of excellence and zone of competence and 5% in that is zone of genius. I'm just going to play with that for a week, two weeks, and I'm going to see what happens. I think most of us know nobody will notice a 5% change. Like nobody will notice that you're not doing something. They may start to notice that you're increasing in your impact, but it will take time. You will notice it like, did my week feel five or 10% better this week? Yeah, it did. Right, because that gives you the courage to go again. The next week and dial it up a bit more. And so I am not typically a leap off the cliff kind of coach. I often say we can stand at the top of the cliff for like a year going, shall I jump? Shall I not? And we don't notice there are steps. We could just take the steps and it might feel like it's going to take longer, but it won't because we're not standing frigid with fear. And so for me, I am not saying walk into a conversation with your boss tomorrow and go, right, I'm only doing my zone of genius now because you don't have permission to do that yet. Right. But I am saying most things make no difference at all. And I promise that you can look at your to do list and take some things off it to create space. I promise.

[27:44] Katie: That so true. It's about allowing ourselves the permission to do that and also allowing ourselves to step away from busy and step away from hard. Because, as we said, it can be easy for us to be in our zone of genius. And we can feel bad because we've been conditioned to believe it needs to be hard. I can't believe we're already arriving to the very last part of minute or so of our podcast. It flew by. This is what happens when two people in their zone of genius. Time flies. This is another indicator for real when you're in flow, which is when you're most productive, time flies by. Any last notes on this topic, Daniel? I know we could both talk about it all day. Any last things that come to your mind that you'd like to discuss now?

[28:28] Danielle: I just want to say I'm so excited by a world where we live into our potential. I'm so excited by it. And I think most of us are tapping into 20 or 30%. And if I ask anyone on this call right now to say, how much of your time are you spending in your zone of genius? It's very rare for me to see anyone, say over 60%. That's 40% of potential. That is uncapped. Right? And so my invitation to anyone listening is just give it a go in service of curiosity over how much more fun you could have, how much more impact you could create, because we need more people living into their talents right now and you and I are living examples of how much fun it is to do it.

[29:15] Katie: Absolutely. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Danielle. Really, really enjoyed it. Wonderful topic. Beautifully explained and illustrated.

[29:23] Danielle: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[29:26] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing close.