From Corporate America to Self-Defined Success: Doris Jackson Chazier's Transformation

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Doris: From Gifted Kid to Coach
• 3:41 Raising Justice: A Motherhood Journey
• 7:16 Miami Roots and Cultural Connections
• 10:15 Overcoming People-Pleasing and External Expectations
• 16:25 Gratitude: Finding Balance with Ambition
• 19:47 Leading Gen Z and Final Wisdom

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. I'm debuting a new shirt today, if you're going to see this on video, so I'm very excited about that and to be doing it with Doris and Doris is my next guest has an incredible story. She was. Were you a gifted kid, doris?

Speaker 2: 0:21

I was a gifted kid. I was in a gifted program.

Speaker 1: 0:28

So she, like me, is, was a gifted kid. I was in a gifted program, so she, like me, is a recovering gifted kid. Um, you know, we did really good in school and then and then we got out of school and then stuff happened and then life hit us in the face and it wasn't like gifted classes anymore. So, doris, please take it away. Tell us a little bit about who you are, your story and now who you help out.

Speaker 2: 0:48

Oh, awesome, okay, so I'll start with who I am. I love to introduce myself in two different ways, because I think sometimes people get caught up in their titles and so they don't realize that they're telling people what they do instead of who they are. So who I am? I'm a mom to four. I have the unique parenting journey of having a. I have a 20 year old, but I also have a senior in high school, a sixth grader and a kindergartner, so I have children at all the different stages of life all at the same time. So I think that's pretty cool. So I'm a mom to four. I'm a wife to my college sweetheart. We've been together now about 22 years, and so you hear a little bit about that in my book, raising Justice. I am a daughter and I'm the sister, and I am, most importantly, a friend. I think that that's one of my best qualities that I've never met a stranger and I kind of just befriend anyone. So that's a little bit about who I am and what I do is.

Speaker 2: 1:47

I'm a leadership coach and management consultant, and so I'm a full-time entrepreneur now, and I love the fact that I get to partner with not only executives and leaders but also corporations to help them build high accountability, high morale environments and really help them through some of their people problems. So if they're dealing with conflict in the business maybe there's gossip going on or perhaps their team doesn't know how to hold others accountable, or they're struggling with the morale of the business or they want to grow their emotional intelligence, I'm someone that they can partner with to bring in, and I don't not only teach the team, maybe in a workshop, but I do group coaching or team coaching or I partner one-on-one with executives and directors and middle managers and help be a thought partner to them. And so that's a little bit about who I am and what I do currently. A little bit about my journey. I guess I became a full-time entrepreneur over the last two years, so I've been in this business full-time two years.

Speaker 2: 2:51

I've had the business for about five years. I worked in corporate America for the last 20 years. I try not to refer to it like I did time, but sometimes corporate America feels like you did your time. I did about 20 years in corporate America before deciding that I want to support corporate America. I don't necessarily want to be in the infrastructure of it, and so that's why I grow my business, where I get to support not only small but medium and large size companies. But I'm not necessarily inside the infrastructure anymore, and so that's a little bit about me.

Speaker 1: 3:29

I love that. No, that is just fantastic. That is awesome. So tell us about your journey. Tell us a little bit about your journey. You mentioned your book, so like let's dive into that and tell me all about how it came to be.

Speaker 2: 3:44

All right. So Raising Justice literally started as journal entries and so when my daughter was younger, so a lot of people were like, okay, raising Justice, like what is it? The title is twofold. Number one my child name is actually Justice, and so it's quite literal.

Speaker 2: 4:01

This book talks about my journey into motherhood. I often tell people that motherhood was my first leadership position, because sometimes I think we think we don't think of moms as necessarily leaders, especially as it translates into the workplace. And I'm here to tell you well, I became a mom at 19 and it definitely was Well, actually at 20, I was pregnant at 19. But it was definitely my first leadership position and a lot of things I learned in motherhood. I was able to transfer into the workforce. But about justice, or how the book came about, I started journaling really some of the funny things that she would do as a child and some of the ways that she would challenge me as a mom.

Speaker 2: 4:45

So the book really tells the story. It starts with me as a 19-year-old, high-performing, high-achieving, on full scholarship, first person in the family to graduate high school and go to college. And then I find myself pregnant my sophomore year of college and I contemplate whether I'm going to continue this pregnancy. So first chapter begins in front of what I thought was an abortion clinic, and I love to tell people the beginning of the story and the ending of the story. And then the story ends with me sitting exactly 19 years later, me sitting at the graduation of the child that I thought that I wouldn't have, and at the same age that I was when I was contemplating having her. And so I raised Justice to now become a high performing teenager who graduates college at the age of 19. And so you really get to hear this full circle moment of.

Speaker 2: 5:43

I am someone who you know, I grew up in the inner city, miami, florida.

Speaker 2: 5:47

If you're familiar with the first 48 show a couple episodes in the neighborhood I grew up in and you know I get the dream of going off to college on full scholarship and then I find myself in this predicament and I tell pretty much the stories of me enduring and being resilient, but also how I learned how to parent in a way that I wasn't parented, and so I think this book is really important to not only the testament of resiliency or overcoming, but that mother-daughter relationship thing that kind of happens and we talk about how do you build those close relationships and connections and so you get to hear those different type of strategies through Justice and I's journey.

Speaker 2: 6:32

And again, my favorite part of the book is at the end to know that this child who maybe didn't come into the best of circumstances, or me who didn't come from the best of circumstances, not only makes it to a director level position of a major corporation, a national brand, but also I do this while building my family, while having a great relationship with my daughter, and then while seeing her graduate college at the age that I was contemplating even having her. So it's a pretty cool story.

Speaker 1: 7:10

That's an amazing story, um, coming around this little circle. Around that age I got pregnant, but I miscarried um, and so my book actually starts where with that day when I got that news. Um, that's like the first chapter and what happened since then. So so I that's. That's an amazing parallel right there.

Speaker 2: 7:30

Yeah, that's the same parallel. It starts literally the day I find out, so that's so so cool.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I like I resonated with that and then, and then, when you mentioned about Miami, I'm, like you know, sometimes I've told people, like you know, like grand theft auto, there's like a Liberty city. I live right near there, you know, I can see Liberty City from my house. Yeah, so, yeah, so, like I know all about Miami and all the different parts, because it's so varied, like there's so much variety in Miami, there's so many different pockets and it's so different. Now you know, like now we've got historic Overtown, um, and they're building out Coconut Grove, and you know, and, and things are just changing.

Speaker 2: 8:13

Oh my god the way, the way Overtown is right now. It's just still amazes me, because I grew up in the different parts of Miami as well. So I lived in Brownsville, I lived in Little Haiti, I lived by Alapata, I lived in Overtown, like. So I lived in all those different intricacies of miami, and so it's interesting when I go back to see how much it developed. And so I lived in brownsville but I went to school in corgables, so, yeah, and then at one point I lived like right by northwestern, and so I would catch the bus down to the metro rail, then catch the metro rail and then walk to Coral Gables High every day to be in the IB program. But my home school was Miami Northwestern and so, yeah, you know, being from Miami, you understand the intricacies of what that life is and what that experience is, and so, yeah, that's that's where I grew up yeah, I went to southwest.

Speaker 1: 9:07

So you went to northwest and I went to southwest so yeah, um, but that's really cool. Yeah, and and and, like the food down there, though, like now, like you go down there, the food, oh my god, it's unmatched, it's unmatched. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you find all these little pockets and these little restaurants, um, and it's just different than anything else you can find in Miami, oh God.

Speaker 2: 9:31

I was telling someone the other day I'm saying look, you can go on Caya Ocho and like literally you can find whatever you want, like from Venezuela. They just think Spanish food. I'm like no, no, no, no, it's not just Spanish food, you got a Venezuelan.

Speaker 1: 9:48

You got. You got Colombian, that there's Mexican, like that's all different. The Cuban, like that's the Cuban with the corner windows.

Speaker 2: 9:52

Yeah. So I would say that's probably what I miss the most about living in Miami is the food yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Yeah, like it's. You know, that's one of the best things, just the different. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome, okay, so that was like a nice little trip down memory lane, so thank you for that. So talk to me a little bit about that journey of overcoming yourself. You were, you were a gifted kid, you were straight A student. You go to college and then you end up pregnant. That's probably not what you were expecting to happen.

Speaker 2: 10:24

No, it wasn't a part of the plan. It definitely wasn't a part of the plan and I think it grew me up in a lot of ways. And I think one of the things there's about two things that in your journey to being, I guess, like a full, mature and authentic adult, you kind of go through and I think I think I went through it a little bit early because of that situation but one of them is getting over what people think of you when you find yourself pregnant, you know, at 19. And again, I probably did more mental damage than myself than anybody else did, because I was so ashamed, so embarrassed. I felt like I had disappointed my family and I carried that with me. But the first lesson that I had to learn was how to get over myself Right, and sometimes it takes people a lot longer. So I got over. I had that lesson at 1920, like, well, get over what other people think of you, right. And and what that then does is it releases you from people pleasing. And so I meet people to this day. They're in their thirties and their forties and they still haven't overcame people pleasing and it's a struggle for them. There's things that they are going through because they haven't understood how to stop that behavior. And so one of the things that I was able to learn very quickly and I'm so grateful that I was able to get those lessons early on because it allowed me to soar in my career I was already over what people think and I was already over people pleasing through that experience, and so that really, really helped me as I made my journey into corporate America, because you have to find a good, good balance in order to survive there.

Speaker 2: 12:06

So, yeah, and I went through another iteration later on in my career, when I exited corporate America, where I had to overcome myself again and it was how do you define success? So most of my life, I defined it by the standard that was put before me. If you had a college degree if you were, you know, you know married you know like just the different things. If you had a college degree if you were, you know, you know married you know like just the different things If you bought a home, if you have a certain amount of money in the bank, and so those were all the things that I used to define success. And as I matured and growed in you know, my title was really important to me at one point in my life. And now I got the you know, I'm senior director of leadership development and all this big stuff and the company car and the black car, and it's just all these different things, and I felt like, oh man, this is success.

Speaker 2: 12:55

And then COVID happens. I find myself hospitalized for seven days, I find myself on oxygen treatment for three months, and in the stillness of that experience and in the quietness of that experience and really thinking about man you almost left here, have you really done the things that you wanted to do in this life? You know, are you really successful? And it's like, yeah, I'm successful in the eyes of a lot of people. I got the title, I got a six-figure salary, I own a home, I have all these things.

Speaker 2: 13:31

But internally I wasn't successful because I had started writing my first book at 15, and I started 10 books and had never completed one. I never completed one. I knew that I was supposed to be coaching other people and helping them to start their businesses or refine and scale their businesses, but I wasn't out there doing it. And so what success looked like for me began to shift, and then I had to again remind myself it's not about what everybody else thinks. It's not about what everybody else thinks success is. It's about what I think success is. And so, yes, I've checked all those boxes and I'm about to give it all up to go after what I think success is.

Speaker 2: 14:14

And right now, success is not only wealth, but it's flexibility and it's freedom. And so I walked away from all of it, and some days I'm still feeling like a crazy person. But I walked away from all of it to do success on my terms. And I have the flexibility now to get my kid off the bus stop where my other three kids they all only knew afterschool programs or daycares until six. But my last child gets to see me every day at three o'clock when they get off the bus. Like that's success to me now. So I think that's the other part of overcoming yourself. How do you define success? Is it through your lens or is it through the lens of what the world has told you? And I think for a long time in my life it was through the lens that the world had told me, and now it's through my own lens, and I'm grateful for that.

Speaker 1: 15:08

I love that. I love that so much. I wrote an article about people pleasing in Authority Magazine recently and yeah, thanks. And then one of the things I talked about was I heard a quote when someone said it to me that like, if you're on a fence and you're leaning on going towards the left, everyone on the right is going to criticize you, and then if you're leaning towards going to the right, everyone on the left is going to criticize you. But if you stay on the fence and you don't go either way, both sides are going to call you lazy and indecisive, so you can't win.

Speaker 2: 15:39

Yeah, yeah yeah, so I love that.

Speaker 1: 15:42

I love that and, speaking of which, as we're wrapping up here, one of the things that I talked about when we are trying to overcome people-pleasing, we're setting boundaries. We're doing all these things is practicing gratitude so that we can feel grateful for ourselves, we can value ourselves, and that building our self-confidence is going to make it easier to set those boundaries, because saying yes just doesn't make sense anymore. You're just like no, I don't want to do that. So can you talk to me a little bit about the role that gratitude has played in this journey for you?

Speaker 2: 16:21

Wow, great question. And I think gratitude has been important at every stage of the journey, because I have to strike a balance. I'm naturally an ambitious person and I think gratitude keeps me humble. Gratitude allows me to live a little bit in the moment. When you're a person that I focus a lot in the future. I'm always planning, I'm always looking at what's the next thing to do, because part of my job for so long was to goal set for my team. So it's like we got to make this quarter and then we make the quarter. Well, the next quarter is here. We got to make this quarter too.

Speaker 2: 17:01

And so when you live in a space where you're always having to achieve a goal or meet a metric, you really stay rooted and always looking forward. But I think gratitude is that tool that keeps you present, because it makes you step back and look at what you have now. And so I think gratitude has been instrumental in finding balance, as I've been on this journey. So, although I, you know, I was working in college and wanting that degree, gratitude allowed me to appreciate every single semester that I passed, you know, until I got to that degree. And then, once I got that job, gratitude allowed me to be grateful for the position that I was in, even though I was going for the next position. So I think gratitude is important in finding that balance and really being able to lock in happiness as you are going through this journey of life.

Speaker 1: 17:56

I love that. I love that, and I think it's important how you, how you mention it, cause in my book I talk about it as well. It's not about being grateful and that's it. I'm done. I'm grateful for what I have.

Speaker 2: 18:08

It's not about complacency.

Speaker 1: 18:09

Yeah, exactly it's about. It's about finding that joy, learning to live in joy, enjoying the moment, but we're still working towards that next thing. I'm enjoying what I have now, but I'm still working towards that other thing. So I think that's really important. And sometimes I talk about gratitude and people are like no, but it's not, you can't just be complacent. I'm not talking about being complacent.

Speaker 2: 18:30

No, that's different. That's different, not at all.

Speaker 1: 18:33

I'm just grateful for where I am right now, because I can't like, if I want a million dollars and a million dollars over there, but I'm not being grateful for what I have now. Well, how are you going to feel grateful for when you get to a million? Because it's exactly what you said you get to a million, you're like great. I made a million, you're like great.

Speaker 2: 18:50

I made a million.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Now it's five million, now it's a hundred million and then and then you're always just moving that goalpost, so that's such a big deal yeah, no, it's so important to balance you.

Speaker 2: 18:59

You gotta manage the gratitude with the ambition or literally you will always be dissatisfied, always you know, yes, that is such a big key.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Um, yeah, because what's the point of having all that stuff if you're not satisfied, like we are, you're miserable, like you're just. Oh, I don't like these people, I don't like this house, I don't like I got all this stuff, but I'd rather be doing this. Well, why didn't you do that? Like exactly so yeah, gratitude.

Speaker 2: 19:26

Yeah, gratitude helps you to to manage that. If you can find that, that that level of great gratefulness and appreciation for the things that you have while you're on the journey or while you're on your way to the ultimate goal, then you really have great balance as you're moving along.

Speaker 1: 19:43

I love that, I love it, love it. Now, how can we stay in touch with you, doris?

Speaker 2: 19:49

Oh man, All right, so I have a couple of different ways you can stay in touch with me. So the easiest way is my website. It's my name, dorisjacksonchaziercom and that's my author page. I also have a website, Chazier Coaching Consult, and that page is pretty much. If you want my business services, I have my team on there and really, if you're looking for your team to be inspired, if you're looking for a guest speaker to come in and maybe do a team building exercise or help you with a people problem on your job, Shazier Coaching Console is the best.

Speaker 2: 20:21

You can still get me at dorisjacksonshaziercom. You'll see more of personal aspects and about my books on that website. My name Social media I'm all over it. So hit me up on LinkedIn. Please connect at Doris Jackson Shazier, but also Shazier Coaching Consult on Facebook or Instagram will connect you directly to me. My name is also for TikTok, Doris Jackson Shazier, but yeah, I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn, so definitely lots of different ways to connect. I also have a YouTube page, so definitely you can throw my name in Shazia Coaching and Consulting and I'm on YouTube as well.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Awesome, and all of those links, as you mentioned, will be down in the show notes so you don't have to worry about trying to figure out where they are. They're down there. And you mentioned that you had a special gift that you're working on for the audience. You want to tell us a little bit about it?

Speaker 2: 21:16

Yes, so what you'll be able to see is when you go to my website, you will have to enter your email address, but you will receive an ebook, and so the book is about how do you lead and love Gen Z? It's the hot topic right now, at least in the corporate space, is our Generation Z is coming into the workforce, and they're coming in with just a different personality to work with, and so people are always like, oh, they're this way, they're entitled, they don't get it. Well, here's the thing Not only do I have had a chance to manage Gen Z, but I live with Gen Z, and so I created a small little e-book with some tips on how do you lead and love them.

Speaker 2: 21:56

They're different, but really there is a way to extract the best out of them, and it's in how you lead and love them. Going to give my take on the best things to do, how to listen to them properly, how to coach them in the best way, and so I wanted to share that. So email address and then you get your free link to check out how to lead and love Gen Z. Also, if you're on my website, raising Justice is there. It's also available on Amazon, and then my second and third book will drop at the same time time. And then my second and third book will drop at the same time. It's called Pieces to Peace how I Overcame COVID and Corporate, and I talk to leaders about how do you navigate, thrive and heal from toxic work environments. So it's a pretty good book that's going to be dropping as well.

Speaker 1: 22:46

That is amazing and, yes, the cool thing about Gen Z. The problem with Gen Z, that, from the articles that I've read, is that they do not put up with the old tactics. They don't.

Speaker 1: 22:58

It's not going to work at all they are going to have to level up, because they do have very high expectations. But you know, it's a good thing, right? Because they're like I'm not I'm not doing all these things that my grandparents did and you use them Like that's not going to happen with me, and so I love them for that, yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:17

Again, I admire Gen Z. It's now about teaching them the balance, Because also, the thing that I find with Gen Z is sometimes they think everything is toxic and I'm like, no, that's just work Like that's not toxic. That's what having a boss is Like how do like?

Speaker 1: 23:31

no, that's just work like that's not toxic.

Speaker 2: 23:33

That's what having a boss is like expectations for them, and so, yeah, I'll talk a little bit about that in the ebook on how to build better relationships with gen z, so that you can get the best out of them but, I think they're going to be. They're one of the coolest generations out there as far as their awareness and their ability to stand up for themselves.

Speaker 1: 23:54

Yes, yes yes, so I love that, I love that so much and I think that's just such a fascinating topic, so that is amazing. So last tip, big tip, what is a big takeaway Like? What's that tip that you give your clients? Or the advice that gives them the biggest aha moment?

Speaker 2: 24:13

Ooh, I feel like I give a lot of good advice. No, I'm just kidding. Here's what just came top of mind for me today.

Speaker 2: 24:21

I love to remind people to stay curious and suspend judgment. I think sometimes, whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in friendship, whether it's in relationships and families, sometimes we're not curious enough, meaning we don't ask enough questions. We lead with assumption, like we tell the whole story in our head, right? So we don't ask enough questions and then we rush to judge that, we rush to put a label on it or assign something to it. Stay curious, just ask questions, seek to understand, but then also suspend judgment. Let it play out, see where the person is coming from with that. Don't feel the need to kind of put a button on something, and so I try and practice that.

Speaker 2: 25:03

I ask a lot of questions. I like to tell people I have a high level of intellectual curiosity. It just means I'm nosy. I found a fancy way to say it. I have a lot of questions, so I stay curious and then I suspend judgment. I wait before I assign judgment to a person you know. I want to hear the full story, I want to know where you're coming from with that, and I stay in a place of understanding. So stay curious and suspend judgment.

Speaker 1: 25:31

I love that.

Speaker 2: 25:31

I love like that trend we listen and we don't judge right.

Speaker 1: 25:38

So that's exactly that's what I thought of when you said that. So, yes, so I think that's such great advice listen, don't judge, ask questions. And it's so true, because most like, even even like movies and stuff like what is the problem, the crux of the problem? 99% of the time it's communication issues.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Yeah, it's the miscommunication they assume you were doing that because you were trying to da-da-da-da. Nobody said they were doing that Like you said all of that.

Speaker 1: 26:07

And fights too, like in our families, you know a kid is like I'm doing this. And and fights too, like in our families. You know a kid is like I'm doing this. And you assume, oh my god, you're gonna go with no parents who said that, like they're perfect to me, you know. So yeah, so I love that, I love that. So stay curious, guys. Um, this has been an amazing episode. Thank you so much for being here with us, doris, and we will see you guys next time on the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast bye, thank you.