Leadership: It's a Disposition, Not a Position with Ash Beckham

We explore how leadership is a disposition, not a position, and show practical ways to build trust, empower teams, and use AI without losing judgment. Ash shares tools for developing new leaders, designing inclusive meetings, and growing through small daily risks.

• redefining leadership beyond titles and org charts
• everyday habits for trust through clean agreements
• empowering with curiosity over quick answers
• reverse mentoring and cross‑generational insight
• authentic sharing without oversharing
• using AI as co‑pilot, not replacement
• making leadership growth measurable
• how to find mentors who elevate your presence
• practical coaching for new and aspiring managers

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Unpack Podcast with your host, Leadership Consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now, to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Well, good afternoon, everybody. This is Ron Harvey, the Vice President, the Chief Operating Officer for Global Course Strategies and Consulting, professional leadership firm out of Columbia, South Carolina. But we're coming to you today with another segment of Unpack with Ron Harvey with guests from around the world. Super excited to have Ash with us. And so what I always do is allow our guests to really introduce themselves and say what they want us to know about them versus me reading a bio in real time. I let them tell you who they are. So I'm going to move on out the way. I'm going to invite Ash to the microphone and I'm going to sit back and we'll get started once she tells us who she is and what she wants us to know.

Defining Everyday Leadership

SPEAKER_00 0:56

All right, great. Thanks so much, Ron. My name is Ash Beckham. I am a speaker and an author and an advocate. I'm passionate about leadership. Right now, I'm passionate about back to school. I have two little kids, a four-year-old and a seven-year-old, and they're both in their first full week of school. So that is a um that's a fun time and a little bit of a stressful time. I feel like you can pull in some of your leadership uh leadership strategies, I think, when you're going through transitions. So I feel like that is the most uh determined thing about me right now. Um I speak to uh corporations um and organizations around uh a new style of leadership that feels authentic and sustainable and rooted in who you are individually.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Yes, yes. Thank you, Ash. And you put some comedy with that too, is that you're buying, you know. So you you like to have a good time and leadership doesn't have to be serious and it doesn't have to be boring. So excited to listen and learn some from you as you go. So the kids are back in school. We we're on the other end of that, Ash. We um just moved our daughter into the dorm, our our final child. And so the dorm for our freshman year. So we're on the other end now.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Oh my goodness, I bet it goes by in a blink, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Yes, it goes by fast, and and it's totally different than when we went to school. I mean, I think when I left, I went into the military right out of high school. I think I left with a with a with one one bag in my ID. Yep. So we went now. They have a it's really, really good, but they have this conveyor system almost like an assembly line. I mean, you pull up, park your car, people like bomb rush your car, get everything out, sit it on the side, and off they tell you to go park the car. And I mean, it was phenomenal. It was like wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Oh, I remember you're hoofing it, you know. You I feel like my dad got frustrated waiting for the elevators, and we're putting all the stuff on our back, going up six flights.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Oh man, yeah, they have improved moving.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Sounds like it.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Yeah, I mean, Lily, we were we were we were, I was part completely unloaded and part in 30 minutes. Unbelievable, and the rest of the time was just setting up the room.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Wow, that is fantastic!

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Yes, yes. So if you listen to this podcast, Unpack with Ron Harvey. We we unpacked in 30 minutes uh for moving and we're upstairs, an entire system, volunteers, students everywhere. It was a it was not a it was not a nightmare of an experience. I tell people, and I was told it was gonna be a nightmare, it was not. Sure, it was oh my gosh, wow. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing who you are. I want to dive in a little bit. Um, on unpack, we spend time always trying to give people a little bit of what they may not know or see or we don't write about that they can't find on our websites. And I call it unpack because I just have a real conversation. Um, and everybody knows we're not sure what we're gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about leadership, but not sure where. So you've been you've been in the business for a while and and you're you know you're traveling around a lot. What are you noticing that's pretty current? What the difference between how you you grew up in leadership and what you see about what you speak about now?

Mindset Shift Beyond Titles

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yeah, you know, I think what's so interesting to me now is people they're waiting for permission to be leaders, right? I would I would speak in front of people and our you know, and we'd have these ideas of you know how to lead a team and how to have you know everything from clear agreements to 100% responsibility to all the things that we talk about, and they would say, Oh, Ash, I love what you had to say. When I get that degree, get that promotion, get that job title, I can't wait to implement that. And and so my idea, and the and the reason I wrote the book was because people can lead from exactly where they are, and so that doesn't matter if you're, you know, the Fortune 100 CEO or it's your first job, or you're the bench warmer on the sixth grade basketball team, right? Like you have an ability to lead from exactly where you are because it's not a position, it's a disposition. It's how people regard you, it's how you treat people, it's how you approach life and problems, your openness, how you address conflict, all of those things are leadership qualities. So, and and I would be in these rooms and and ever, you know, people come up to me and say that. And if you ask the person on the left or the right of them, they would think they were a leader, right? They'd be like, raise your hand if you think you're a leader, 30% of the room would raise your hand. Raise your hand if you think the person next to you is leader, 90% of the people. So it was a self-perception issue. So to me, that's what we're working on now is is there's no there's no weight to develop your leadership skills. No matter what you're doing right now, my four-year-old can work on his leadership skills.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Yeah. So what where does that mindset? I I have to agree. I think sometimes we wait for permission um or title or position to decide that you know we're we're leaders. So it's almost like something has to be where where is that development, though? I mean, I have to agree with you, but where does it come from?

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Well, I think you have, you know, org chart is something that runs organizations, um, and I think you need them for efficiency and um, you know, delineated responsibilities and all of those things, but it's really about having a more open mind about what leadership means, right? Like how are we bringing in our own soft skills, empathy, responsibility, humility, right? Those those those things that you don't necessarily see in the New York Times bestsellers leadership books, but are critical to developing your personal brand as a leader that you take throughout your journey. So I think it's really a mindset of not having such a linear idea of, again, direct reports or budget lines to define what a leader is, but how you show up in every meeting, right? Are you making sure all voices are heard? Are we creating environments where people can have their voices heard even if they're more introverted and speaking up in a meeting isn't, you know, how they best communicate their ideas? How are we enabling everyone to be the best version of themselves by the way we interact in our everyday lives?

Developing Leaders From Day One

SPEAKER_03 7:19

Yeah. I I love what I love what you're going at with it. The question for the people that are listening, and you mentioned you know, you have you have your your kids you just put back in school pretty young. When should we start developing our our younger generation, such as our kids or people in the workspace? Let's make it about adults. Someone's new on the job and they're just getting there. When do we start developing that? As you know, if I if I'm the leader of the organization, I'm I'm at the top of the org chart. When should I start developing the next generation?

SPEAKER_00 7:49

I think from the very beginning, because I I think we don't know how anything evolves. I think you know, the only constant in business is change. And so, how are we prepared to allow people to create their career paths and have the professional development that they want from the very beginning? And again, I think that's we need to create cultures within our organizations of redefining what leadership means, that it isn't, it isn't top-down, right? Like one of my favorite uh policies that people put in place is reverse mentoring programs, right? You have somebody that's brand new in the organization and and you place them with the executive. And if that executive thinks that that is a one-way flow of information, they are missing a huge opportunity to have an insight into not only the ideas, but the cultural trends and the preferences of a younger generation. And that's going to enrich not only their understanding of their entire organization, but maybe the direction the organization needs to go. So, so I think it starts with our highest, most developed, established leaders really, really getting um onto the micro level of what leadership looks like and see that there are opportunities in a bunch of different ways for people to pursue their leadership development.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Yeah, I love it. What do you say to the to the leader that that comes to the table with some insecurities about teaching people, you know, um, or you're not the smartest, and and you don't have all the answers? Because, you know, as I came up as a military person, it's almost like you couldn't say you didn't know. That's changed over time, but I don't think we're totally out of that zone yet. What do you tell the leader that feels like they have to have all the answers and they can't say I don't know?

Vulnerability Over Having All Answers

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Well, I would say that that's not what a leader is. It's not a leader's job is to find the solution, not necessarily have all the answers. And if you're empowering your team to help you as part of that, it's hey, we're gonna figure this out together. It it allows you to lean in in a more collaborative way. I don't know, you know, maybe it's uh I, you know, I don't know that full answer, or this is a new problem, or this is something we haven't faced, or I think we need to take a new lens to this. What are your thoughts, right? And there's times where you have to, you know, draw the line and make the decision, and you know, kind of the buck stops here. But the more collaborative and inclusive we can be, it just allows us to get the best answer. If if anybody wanted to make all the decisions to have all the answers, then they should be in a sole proprietorship, right? But if you're gonna lead people, you have to listen to the people you are leading. You have to take the input because that's gonna give you the best possible answer. When we look at you know, diverse thought and and different ways that we look at problems, it increases our ability to creatively and innovatively solve problems when we take in all of the perspectives, not based solely on experience in the job field, but based on human experience and life experience. And we need to open up and know that we're coming up with better results when we do that. And when leaders can make the determination that that's how we're gonna approach problems, then all of a sudden it sets this cultural mindset of, yeah, your voice matters. Yeah, it's important that you're here. Yeah, your experience, even though you're just out of school and new to the job, you have input into the direction that we're going, right? That that everyone is open to learning. I mean, I feel like if you are a leader and you are no longer open to learning, then the trajectory of the organization is limited in the kindest way you could say it, if not doomed, right? Like you always have, if you're not learning something every day, and and you have to you're leaning on the greatest resource that you have, which is are you're who humans, right? That's who you can learn from.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Yes. How do you how do you help the leader that that you know you mentioned empowering, you know, being able to empower people? Is there are there some steps when you when you're coming into a leadership role that that you practice or you teach your clients or you talk from stage? How do you get better at empowering or delegating?

Empowerment Through Curiosity

SPEAKER_00 12:13

I think the most important thing you can do is be curious, right? That you start with questions as opposed to having answers, right? If somebody comes to you with a question, how do you reflect that back? How do you really again that's so empowering to them? Because the more empowered your team is, the more it's going to elevate. And the way that you empower it is to is to make them think critically, to make them think creatively by asking the question. And it takes longer and it takes more effort in the short term, but in the long term, it allows them the exploration to try to come up with new ways to solve, because it's probably, especially when we talk about our younger staff, it's the first time they've ever encountered that problem. I might have had it, I might have seen it a thousand times, and I could tell you in my sleep how to fix it. But if I can't help them figure out, if all they're gonna do is look for answers, they're gonna be limited in what they can do, right? Because you can Google answers. I feel like that's such a huge, a huge issue now, uh, a lot of times with people that are entering the workforce, is they know how to find answers, but they don't know how to solve problems, right? And and and problems are unique. And I think they take, you need to take a different angle and different lens on them to think creatively and not just search for the answer that somebody already came up with, but come up with it yourself. But we have to create environments where we're empowering the people to do that, that we don't need the fastest answer immediately. We give them a little bit of time to come up with something, and and and we don't have this, these unrealistic deadlines that prohibit creativity.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

Yes, yes. Yeah, I'm glad you I want to unpack something that I think is hitting everybody across all industries and all levels of leadership, AI and leadership. The answers are right in front of us. I mean, people can go into Chat GPT, have an answer in two seconds, but you mentioned that that's not problem solving. Um, and and uh you want people to be faster, you want them to leverage AI. How do you help leaders be able to respect it, use it, but don't lose the the critical thinking and the problem solving skills of our current workforce or the workforce of the future?

Using AI Without Losing Judgment

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Absolutely. I mean, I think AI is is incredible. I think it frees us up to do the things that we're passionate about, right? It allows us to work in our zone of genius and not get bogged down by the small details. Or if the details are something that we love, we allow AI to do a little bit more of the creative. But I don't think that AI is an end-to-end solution, right? You can ideate in the beginning and then start and then snowball and go from there, or you can fine-tune at the end, or you know, mid-process, you can look at alternative ways to proceed. But to think that you plug it in and take it for what it's worth without looking at it critically from beginning to end is not using it as the tool it is meant to be. So I think we it it does make us more efficient, but it has to still allow the individuality and authenticity of not only our organization, but of our people. And we'll be you're able to tell when that's part of it, right? That it be either becomes a jumping off point or the polish that you put on at the end. Like I am so, I'm such a proponent of people using it to enhance their creativity, right? To enhance their output, to enhance what they're doing as opposed to be a substitute for it. And I think it's important to know what do you really what do you love to do? Do you love to write the copy? Is that your favorite part? Do you love to design the slides? Which which part of your job do you love to do and which part feels more tedious? And if you can spend more time on the things that you love by letting AI do the things that feel tedious, then that is that's an amazing ability to kind of manage that workflow in a way that allows you to be the best version of yourself, to really tap into your individual strengths and allow some of the things that we get caught up on to be done by AI.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Yes, yes, love it, love it. Let me change gears again. I want to unpack something that we haven't talked about yet, but and I try to, you know, use it throughout the different podcasts. Who was when you think of mentoring, you know, as you came through your career and where you are now, what do you tell the the generation behind us and the people we're trained up? How important is mentoring? And how do you find a mentor? I mean, um, you know, as as you look at that question and you becoming who you are, how how do you find a mentor if they were important and what should you be looking for, you know, in this mentoring space, your role, your responsibility, the job of the mentor?

Finding Mentors And What To Seek

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I would say, you know, there's so many, either within organizations or local associations or groups that really want to provide mentorship and make those cross-generational connections a lot of time. So I think it might take a little bit of looking to find that kind of pairing service, but I I know that they're out there again, either internally or or externally within industry. But I think what's so important is when you interact with that person, right? When you see them speak, or you're getting how does it make you feel? Right. I feel like that's something that's so, so critical because that's something that it's is really hard to teach, right? Like we can teach the analytical skills, we can we can teach a lot, but but as a leader, how you make your team or your vendors or your partners or your peers feel is what they are gonna remember. And there's like a there's a secret sauce to that. And I feel like when you and and it doesn't work for everybody, right? I remember having a one of my one of my favorite leaders was a high school basketball coach of mine, and he treat us treated us all very differently. Yes, and I that was so frustrating to me because I would get chewed for whatever I you know, the play that I missed or whatever I did, and and then our you know, our like star player would never get chewed. And and I was so it made me so angry because it didn't feel equal. And he said, Well, it's not gonna be equal, but it'll always be fair. And I know, I mean, what what he prided himself in knowing his players well enough to know what motivated each of them, and it was different for each of them. And if he would have, you know, if he would have treated me with kid gloves, he would have gotten nothing out of me, right? And so I think it's I think it's knowing how how does that, what are the traits, those intangible traits that that person has that are just that that wow in them. And again, you don't it might not be somebody that's a leader for your whole career, but in that moment, in your current position, it's not the title that you want, it's not the direct reports that you want or the budget line. Again, it's it's not these, you know, kind of checkbox things. It's it's these intangibles of what what happens when they walk in a room. How do they address everyone? Right. Like that, that um the aura that they have to get a little bit woo-woo. I I think that is so much more impactful. When you see that is something that you want to replicate, that you want to be in the presence of, I think that is when you know, okay, that that person, I can learn a lot from them.

SPEAKER_03 19:35

Yes, yes. Love and response. What do you say to, you know, in our in my generation, you know, we were required to know just about everything about people on your team, but it's changed drastically. Technology, don't want to invade privacy, blah, blah, blah. You know, just the list goes on. How do you help leaders? What would you share with leaders? How do you get to know your people without crossing the line?

Authenticity Without Oversharing

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Absolutely. Well, I think the the best thing about authenticity is. That I don't have to tell you everything to tell you enough, right? I can tell you a little bit. We can get to know each other. I am a human. I my life exists when I close my laptop at the end of the day, right? And it doesn't, there are parts of it that impact my work availability. Like for me, pickup times are pretty important in scheduling. So I feel like there's some logistics of life outside. But like what makes you tick? Again, like when you sign off at the end of the day, I want to know what you do, right? Are you, are you, my son is now into Pokemon cards, and we went to this place, there's a world I knew nothing about in this trading store thing. And it was amazing. I was so curious as to what made those folks tick, right? Like, what do you do? And I think you the most important thing as a leader is you have to start to share that too. And again, you have your foot on the throttle the entire time. Some people want to share everything, some people only want to share a little. And we give people permission and space to be able to do that. But as a leader, we need our people to know that we're human, right? It's the the idea. My favorite example is I was at a meeting one time and it was intense, and it was, you know, we were coming up on a deadline, everybody was staying late, and we got the like, you're not gonna make it home for bedtime if you have kids. Get somebody to let your dog out. Like, we were gonna bang it out. And and the leader in the room who was kind of making all this happen and made the call that we were all gonna stay, said, All right, it's at seven o'clock, we're taking a break. And we're like, Okay, well, we don't do it. Is that really mean a break? Whatever. And he said, I'm gonna go tell my kids I love them and say goodnight. And it was the most honest forthcoming. He didn't have to say that. He could have been like, seven o'clock, be back in 15 minutes, we're all doing our own thing. But he told us what he was doing. Like we saw him in that moment as a dad and a husband who had the same pulls and the same challenges from staying late that we all did. And and that humanness, I think, makes you breathe a little bit easier, feel a little bit more connected, feel like you're kind of all rowing in the same direction, right? You're not all getting pulled in separate directions. We all have these same things, but as leaders, if we don't share at least a little bit of them, we can't possibly expect our the people that report to us to to share things too, because I think that feels too vulnerable. We we have to lead with that vulnerability.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Yes, yes. Now, what I'm what I'm hearing from you Ash is you know, if you want to know about your people, you go first. Um, yeah, yeah, you got to do that. 100% Ron, that's it exactly. Yeah, you go first because it used to be like leaders, they always taught what I was taught never let your team know enough about you. Like, you know, we were really taught that keep it personal and your your private separate. Yeah, so whatever your professional career is, keep it professional. You're personal, they don't get to know all that stuff, and that's changed drastically, you know, in my time of coming through leadership. And for those of you that are listening, you know, it's different. People want to know a little bit about you so they can feel you know comfortable with you and they can see the vulnerability. So um what Ash said to me is, hey, you go first, you want to know something about me, you share something. Um, I'm in South Carolina and they have this thing called Prime the Pump. Like a pump for a well doesn't work unless you put water in it first. So you got to put some water in that well to get something out of it from these people. So you go first. Let me change a little bit again. Right now, trust is a challenge in organizations across the board. Um, people are the workforce is not trusting the leader, the leaders are not trusting the workforce. It's just a a collision, uh, a collision happening constantly in in our society today with trust. How do you help us get back to where the there's a higher level or degree of trust where you know they trust us as their leaders, but but we trust them as the people that's going to get it done without looking over their shoulder and being helicopter leaders?

Rebuilding Trust With Clean Agreements

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a I think that's a great point and and and really present right now. And I think that that's not something we can't mandate trust, right? It has to be earned. And we and we do it in incremental ways, right? We don't all of a sudden have everybody lean in and decide, okay, I'm gonna trust you to get this project done by this deadline, that it's gonna be impactful throughout the entire organization, right? That I think we have we start in these in these little ways, and I think a really critical part in building trust is having clean agreements, right? That we agreed on the same thing. I know these are this is what you're responsible for, this is what I'm responsible for, and not in in I'm telling you you've got to get this done. But we're sitting down and collaborating collaboratively coming to terms on, okay, we're gonna get this project done by this time. If you need help by this time, you're gonna come to me. And I think we started in these very small ways where, hey, what I'm gonna do what I say I'm gonna do, and you're gonna do what you say you're gonna do, and we're gonna show up. And I and I think every time it builds a little bit. And you know as well as I do, word spreads like wildfire in organizations. And once you start to build trust with one person on your team individually, you're doing, then you can kind of bring it together collectively, but you have to build that foundation, right? It's like a pyramid. You have to have that foundation of trust in the little things. So you when it actually matters, you really count on each other. And I think vulnerability is a huge way to do that, right? How are we starting our one-on-ones or our team meetings with a question around something individual to them? What did you do this week that you were proud of? What did you what do you wish you had more time for in your life outside of work, right? These little connection points, because I think I don't trust someone in a role, right? I don't trust them in their transactional relationship to me at work. I trust a human. I trust a human that I know is excited for college football season, right? Or just got a new book, or loves this Netflix series that just dropped. I don't have to love the same things that they love, but I know that human. And the way that our culture is so crossed and those things happen, it allows us to relate to each other. So I think it are it's those little things of getting to know each other that builds that foundation that then we then build on because I see you more than my event coordinator, right? Or my uh director of markets, or you are not, you are so much more than that to me that we start to build an actual relationship.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Yeah, I love it. Get past the titles and positions and what people can deliver to you, see them as a human being. So, you know, you've you've been in it, you do it for a while. I mean, you're you're traveling and you're speaking. Are there any things that stand out that you share to um that are super important for leaders that say, I just want to get better? What two things or three things would you share to help us become, or the people that are listening, become more effective? What are some things you see in this natural go-to recipes for you?

Practical Habits To Level Up

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, like they say a business, what gets measured, gets changed. So how are you holding yourself accountable, right? How do you, as part of your professional development, as part of your you know, quarterly goals, just as you know, maintaining a certain margin is or sales goals, or whatever the goals are in your role, where is leadership development on there, right? How is that a box that you're checking that you're dedicating time to your leadership development? I think that's a huge one. Your self-awareness. I think getting feedback from each of your individual direct reports and the people that you interact with regularly on your leadership style, on your communication style, being open to what that feedback looks like and working on it. And then we go back and we reassess it again, right? So I think making it something that feels kind of nebulous, making it measurable is is huge. Um, and then also I think you know, every time you are I I feel like I try to challenge myself that every time I am a question or a problem is brought to me as a leader, I want my first reaction to be a question back, right? I want to acknowledge that that's a that that's a concern, and I want to and acknowledge how they're feeling, and I want to reflect back right on them. I think having that curiosity, having that openness, having that there are no problems, right? There's just opportunities. And how do we address it together? That openness really sets the tone for, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna work on this together. We're gonna pull in people from here, we're gonna do what we need to do, but like let's look at it as an opportunity. And that's when, you know, I feel like so much of us get in that fix-it mindset of a problem comes, you're like, okay, this, this, this, this, this, check, check, check, and move on to the next thing. But like a little bit more patience, practicing a little bit more patience with intention, I think really allows for that openness.

SPEAKER_03 29:22

Yes, yes. Thank you, thank you. Two questions. Um, as people listen to the podcast, you know, what are some things that may be going on in their organization or in their teams that that you say, hey, if this is going on, give me a call. I'd love to talk to you more. You know, so this is an opportunity to promote the business that you do. What are the things that that people will call you for um to be able to do service with you?

Services, Books, And Resources

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of times if you if we're blending teams, right? So we've got a reorg that's happening and we've got teams together and we have different dynamics and we need to kind of blend and take the old and the new and and put them together to create new team interactions. That's one of the big ones I work on. Uh, and then also if you are um executive and you have middle managers or or aspiring managers or people that you are training to lead for the first time, uh, to come in and have a summit for those leadership development skills and really put them on a leadership coaching program as they start out that process. Because I think a lot of times people are put into they're you know really good at their job. And then because of that, they're put in a leadership role, but they're never given a lot of the background to be able to actually lead people and lead people that are different than they are, right? Because they just know their task. So that that's another one of new leaders really developing their individual leadership skill set and style and brand to be able to lead uh most effectively and efficiently in a way that's really authentic.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

Awesome. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Ash. Any books or products out there? I mean, do you have any books out or anything that you that you would love the audience to know about?

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a book um called Step Up, How to Live with Courage and Become an Everyday Leader that gives a kind of a tool, it's I think of it as a tool belt for um for leaders to be able to kind of assess the situation and decide which of their skills um most apply to that situation to be the leader that they want to be and give some tips on on how to hone those skills that maybe don't come as naturally to us. So um, yeah, it's uh I would I would love anybody that would uh take a look at it and and and read it and and I'd love to interact, of course.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Awesome, awesome. Where can they find it at? So step up visit a book. Where can they find your book at?

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Yep, absolutely. So it's on Amazon and and all of the big retailers and then um bookshop.org and local uh independent bookstores, both those places and all those links are on my website, which is ashbeckum.com.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Yes, yes, I love it, love it. Uh so you have a book out, step up. So outside of your book, is there one book that comes to mind that that literally around leadership? So I'm a new leader, just coming position. What book would you recommend?

Final Challenge And Closing

SPEAKER_00 32:06

I would say I I recently read Inner Excellence. Yes. Um, and that one really hit me because I feel like now it is the personal and professional, like you said before, right? We used to be so siloed. This is me from nine to five, you know, it almost like when I punch in or punch out or open my laptop and close it. This is me. And then I'm a completely different person outside. And I feel like that development of being these humans, where it's so we go back and forth between work and and all the other aspects of our lives, and we're sending emails at 10 o'clock at night, and we're, you know what I mean? We we flow so much more that that delineation isn't is no longer the case. So to me, that is a is more of a holistic self-improvement leadership book that really resonated with me that is equally as useful in my dynamics with my wife and my kids as it is in my leadership role at work.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Yes, yes, love it, love it. Thank you for sharing. The best way to reach you.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Um, my website, ashbeckham.com, uh, and then I'm on all of the socials at Ash Beckham.

SPEAKER_03 33:17

Awesome, awesome. It's been great, it's been uh phenomenal. Thank you for joining us for everyone that's on the show. You know, I always we'll we'll close out. So everybody knows how to reach me, you know, Ron Harvey, unpacked, um, but also leadership development or global core strategies consulting. But I'm gonna hand the mic back over to Ash. And Ash, what solid piece of advice would you give everybody as we close out?

SPEAKER_00 33:41

I would say in you know, leadership development feels pretty scary sometimes, right? We don't want to try new things, we feel established and it feels risky. And I would say do one thing in your leadership every day that makes you uncomfortable, right? Like just push that envelope just a little bit, especially for those like that are really risk averse. Like push a little bit if you have that feeling in the bit in the pit of your stomach of like, oh, that feels like too much. That is exactly what you're looking for to develop your leadership skills.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Yes, love it, love it. Thank you, Ash. It's been phenomenal for everyone. Uh Ash and I will be signing off. And until next time, you guys have a wonderful week and tell people about us. Um, if you listen to this, also rate our show. We need ratings, we need feedback. Send us a message, tell us how well we're doing, and share it with your friends. Uh, Ash and I are signing off. And until next time, we will see you on Unpack Leadership with Ron Harvey. Have a great day, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpack Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron Unpacks Sound Advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are for the people you serve. Because people always matter.