Empathy in Action + Resiliency with Heather R Younger (part 1)

Resilience isn't just about bouncing back—it's about breaking through walls and discovering your true strength on the other side. In this riveting conversation with Heather R Younger, we explore the remarkable journey of a woman who transformed childhood adversity into extraordinary leadership wisdom.

Heather candidly shares how growing up with parental addiction and feeling excluded as a child in an interracial family created a paradoxical foundation: exceptional self-reliance coupled with persistent feelings of unworthiness. "It created in me both a sense of self-reliance, because I had to find a way to get through it somehow... while at the same time creating this sense of not feeling like I was good enough for a very, very long time," she reveals.

What makes Heather's story so compelling is how each setback—from panic attacks to layoffs to identity crises—became a catalyst for profound growth. After one particularly difficult career transition, she recalls, "I just kind of got sick of myself. I flipped the switch in my head that said I needed to stay stuck in the place where those people put me and said, nope, don't need to be there." This mindset shift propelled her toward creating Employee Fanatics and becoming a trusted consultant to Fortune 100 companies.

The most powerful insight comes when Heather describes discovering that being both compassionate and strong isn't a contradiction—it's her superpower. This realization transformed her approach to leadership and forms the foundation of her work today. Her unique methodology of conducting focus groups before speaking engagements demonstrates this dual strength: the courage to listen deeply and the wisdom to respond effectively.

Whether you're navigating personal challenges or leading an organization through change, Heather's philosophy offers a refreshing alternative to traditional leadership models. As she puts it, "Every wall we hit is what makes us stronger. We s

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Transcript

Finding Your Inner Fire

Speaker 1 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. Resilience where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

Speaker 2 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I'm your co-host, Natalie Davis, and so excited to be back with everyone. It's been a little bit of time, but joining me, of course, is Pam Kass. Hey, Pam, how are you today?

Speaker 3 0:54

I am fabulous and it's so funny because, agreed, we have not been together recording for a while because we've both been kind of busy. But this last weekend I got to see one of our last guests in person like physically, in person, which is so much fun when we get to do that and I was able to share his episode and it had just launched. So this is so much awesome.

Speaker 2 1:14

That is exciting. I've had quite a few conversations about the last couple of episodes that we've aired, because there are some curveballs that come out of left field in some of those episodes.

Speaker 3 1:25

You're not expecting it, and then you're like you are, and you and I just put a smile on and we just muddle on, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 1:34

I'm like well, that is definitely a story about resiliency, that is absolutely, it Our lives. Yes, love it. We have a special guest that is joining us today as well, and I'm really excited to dive in. So, pam, I'm going to turn it over to you to tell our listeners who's joining us.

Speaker 3 1:51

Yes. Well, I am super excited about this guest. She happens to be my mentor in Speaker Academy that I'm going through right now. So today we have joining us Heather R Younger. Joining us, heather R Younger, jdcsp, shifted from the courtroom to the boardroom, where she helps leaders turn understanding into impact to create a leadership advantage that gets results.

Speaker 3 2:21

Heather is a former practicing lawyer who puts empathy into action as a leading expert on caring leadership. Leading expert on caring leadership, she is a trusted contributor to leading news outlets like Forbes, fast Company, bloomberg, nbc and ABC on caring leadership and active listening at work. She is the visionary founder and CEO of Employee Fanatics, a preemptive employee engagement and workspace culture consulting firm to Fortune 100 companies. Heather has been named to the Thinkers 50 Radar 25, an esteemed recognition that highlights the world's leading management thinkers shaping the future of leadership and talent development. Employee Fanatics conducts annual research on workplace culture, relying on employee voices for what is relevant now to help companies redefine a culture strategy that gets results. Heather has personally read over 30,000 employee surveys and facilitated over 100 employee focus groups, including her signature Art of Active Listening Sessions. Heather offers preemptive focus groups and site visits for speaking engagements to ensure complete customization. With over 25 years successfully managing teams, she has worked in customer experience, sales and large account management for multi-million dollar accounts and multiple industries such as tech, staffing, healthcare, professional services, the public sector and financial sector. She's a renowned keynote speaker, drawing insight from current data and putting into practice what she teaches in her caring leadership transformational model.

Speaker 3 4:01

Heather is an award-winning leader in the area of employee engagement, as recognized by Inspiring Workplaces, is a LinkedIn learning course partner, three-time best-selling author, tedx speaker and the host of the Popular Leadership with Heart podcast. Wow, that's amazing. All right, love that. And that's the short bio. That's the short bio I'm just gonna say. I'm just gonna say I, I have.

Speaker 4 4:30

I'm gonna say this to you because I can just do it. I get horrified when people read that whole thing and so, like my stage intro is about three sentences yes, I know but I was like there's so much more, there's so much there.

Speaker 3 4:41

I'm like, oh, when?

Speaker 4 4:42

you do that, I get exhausted. So hopefully, when you're hearing me, when you do that, I get exhausted. So hopefully, when you're hearing me now, you're not exhausted, you get energized.

Speaker 3 4:48

So, yes, totally energized. So I hand it over to you, so kind of share, your story and what got you to where you are today and all the amazing things you've done.

Heather R Younger's Resilience Journey

Speaker 4 4:56

You know it does start with the story. I think much early on gosh, there was drug addiction in my home. I'm the only child I had parents that had issues with addiction. I also am a product of an interracial and interfaith family and my mom is white and Jewish, my dad is black and Christian, and so my mom's parents weren't all happy about that marriage and often I was just kept on the outside. I was really hidden. I didn't have any pictures hanging on my grandparents' walls.

Speaker 4 5:22

My cousins were playing in the public and doing things together, but I was kind of always like hidden in the background, and so it created in me both of those scenarios, created me a sense of, for sure, self-reliance, because I had to find a way to get through it somehow and make it through it in a sane way, and at the same time it created this sense of not feeling like I was good enough for like a very, very long time, right.

Speaker 4 5:49

So there's like this, there's this like the sense of self-reliance and confidence in my ability to overcome, while at the same time simultaneously being at a place where I didn't feel like I was kind of worthy or good enough or those kinds of things, and it just, it was the chirping that followed me through a lot of my life and it didn't happen, probably until my 40s, to be honest, where I started to work through more and more and more of it and then realized the level of strength that was inside of me. So the strength that is coupled with my ability to be compassionate, to be leading with empathy and to listen the two things that are able to coexist at once is a big strength of mine, incredible.

Speaker 2 6:23

That's amazing, heather, and what I hear because I think that there's a common theme that we see quite a bit with our guests that come on is that you kind of go through life with these things. Right, they're in your backpack and it's just part of it, right. It's like if you have an ailment in your body or a pain, you just kind of go through it. It's like, oh, my back hurts, it's fine, it'll get better eventually over time. And then you have that light bulb moment or that realization in your forties. It's like you know what? This is not my crap and this is not my identity and this is not who I am. Was there a pivotal point where you realized I need to do the introspective work and kind of peel back? Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 7:01

And is this mine? Oh, there was so much of that. I think there there were bits and pieces of that. When I was in my, I went to law school here in colorado sea, boulder, and when, I would say in my 20s, I decided that first year of law school I would not go clerk at a law firm. I instead went to israel and I did that as a study abroad program and I was there for an entire summer and it was part of my like personal journey, of like self-discovery. So I would say that was probably one of the pivotal points, because I realized during my visit there that not everybody was like those elements of my family, that kind of exclusive stuff and all those things. So that was the first one and I think probably after that it probably was children. It was like my children.

Speaker 4 7:41

I grew up this is religious, but it is what it is. I grew up as a reformed Jewish person, looking like I do, and then my dad was a Christian, so having the two different religions kind of working together, celebrating all the things, and so then I started. I had kids at 31 and I'm like, hmm, I started to see my kids very early on taking to their faith and I realized, huh, do I don't need to stay there? I kept trying to stay there. So there, meaning in the back, and the history of like, trying to connect somehow to the family, I want to move forward in my life with my own family. And so then over time I decided, okay, I actually I don't need to stay connected. And at some point I decided to convert my husband's a cradle Catholic and I decided to convert to Catholicism and so I still have the heritage there. But in the end, yeah, that was, that was a whole nother. That's a whole nother set of journeys. I realize how unique my background is, so I get like it's so interesting. But that was another one, boom, okay, 31, 32, 33. I'm like I think I'm actually interested, more interested in my journey, going forward than trying to hold on to the past or like be a be a part of that family. I want, I want my own family. And then I would say after that line gosh, there's always like little tiny, little pivot points.

Confronting Personal Hurdles

Speaker 4 8:52

There was a time I was at, I was working, I was so I had now my third guy who's going away to the Naval Academy. Now I just had had him and I was working at this place and the manager I was working for who was a a tough relationship, let's just say and she didn't have any confidence in me and she didn't have. She just was every, at every turn. It didn't go well. And I remember being in the office and I was reporting. Someone was reporting to me and I went over to her and I was in my office.

Speaker 4 9:15

I felt like I was having, like my eyelids, my face, everything got numb, like I was. I didn't know what was happening. I thought I was having a stroke and I was in my late 30s Maybe I hadn't quite had him yet, but I was around that time so I feel like I'm having a stroke. So I come out of the office and I go to my team member and I go. I think, can you take me to the ER? I think I'm having a stroke, so I go to the ER. Was I having a stroke? I was having a major panic anxiety attack had shut me down.

Speaker 4 9:41

That was a big turning point for me, because what it was again, I think it was kind of like a point where you go up, you reach a level where you're like, oh, do I want this for my life, or like, oh, do I have to settle for this? Or oh, do I have to keep waiting for permission, waiting for approval, waiting for that seat at the table, waiting, waiting, waiting. And so that was a huge turning point for me when I and I I think like for a second they put, they gave me that day some Valium and I was I'm so I'm always like very anti-drug because of the drug stuff I had as a kid. So I was always like, just give me only, like what, only enough for right now, and I don't want any more pills, don't give me any more. I that's so, that's like you know, in the thirt, think it's just still like, oh, okay, I think now, like I want to make sure I'm going to the, going to the gym more, I want to make sure I'm going to get massages more, I want to like all the things that I call. I think these are resilience building strategies, like making sure that I'm filling myself up, not feeling as guilty.

Speaker 4 10:33

But I was traveling a lot for work and I was gone all the time and I started to feel guilty because, again, like four kids and they were all they were smaller as I was traveling in my early before, before I started speaking, I was already traveling and I just had this feeling, all this guilt, guilt, guilt of not being I'm not being good enough, not being a good enough mother. Again, the good enough but not good enough thing just kept coming along, coming along. And then my son, the one who's going to the academy, is the one who said and why do you keep coming home as much as you do in between all these engagements or all this traveling, and you don't have to come home as much? I'm like, well, I feel like I need to be there. And it was like boom. So it was like that sun knocked me ahead of, like why are you doing the things that are kind of breaking you down? Why don't you do the things that means like rest in between before you get to your next thing? And I was like what I can do that? So it was like I needed my own At that time.

Speaker 4 11:26

Or I went to a retreat where I was just exhausted, I was speaking, I spoke the year before way too much For me. It was a lot, I was on the plane, a lot and I was feeling just worn down and all the things that make you not resilient and I just went there to this retreat. It was a speaker retreat and people were going because they wanted to visualize this very successful speaking business and I already had that and I was like I want to visualize a beach. A beach, more calm, more centeredness. And then I got it last year. But a lot of awakening took place in that retreat and that's where that book, my latest book, the Art of Self-Leadership, came from. Because it starts off with me like hitting a wall and realizing that I had put, as I call it, way too much clay over my brilliance, and so I needed to do a lot of things to kind of uncover the clay and to become like my strong self, the strong, the person that I am.

Speaker 3 12:19

So, yeah, so when you, when you kind of hit that wall, when you were sitting there and your face is numb and you think you're having a stroke, were you an attorney at that time? Still, I wasn't practicing.

Speaker 4 12:29

I was, I mean it was. I Were you an attorney at that time, still working. I wasn't practicing. I was, I mean it was. I am a non-practicing attorney, but even then I wasn't practicing but I was doing like the contracts for the place. I was more like sales client service. I've been in client experience for a long time, yeah.

Speaker 3 12:40

Okay, and so when that happened, you said it was a big changing point. Did you walk away from that career? Did you change something about that career? When did you go from there to where you're at now, where you're speaking and author and you're speaking about topics that are obviously related to what you went through when you're working in these companies?

Speaker 4 13:00

So I left there. That particular person I was working for was like I had promoted, I had done a proposal saying that I wanted to be promoted to this particular position, and she and the CEO, like they were like oh no, we don't need the position. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm already doing this role and this role would really help as far as, like legitimacy or credibility with these hospital clients that I was working with and stuff. And so she, she said no, or she was like no, we don't need that. And I'm like, okay, fine, okay. So then I just went looking elsewhere, which is what people, we all do I mean this is what happens, right, well, many people do, maybe not, we all do. So I did it. So I was like I already had my mind, I knew the kind of role I wanted, I knew the kind of exposure I needed. So I went and I ended up finding another position and in that position that was one of the like, another pivot point that was around and so that I was doing client development there. I was going to another role that was leading client experience for a tech company, much bigger company, but I knew when I took the rollover they were going through a merger that there may be a layoff, and there was, which is what put me on the path of having my own company, employee Fanatics, because there was, after about a couple of years, there was a layoff which continued to help and to make me build that resilience muscle, because in every, every wall we hit is what makes us stronger and we should be looking for the walls. We should be looking for the walls to scale, we should be looking for them to run through right. That's really the gist there, and so that's what it was. I hit it and I'm like gosh, darn it, here's another dang wall. So I I left one place that gave me a whole anxiety to. I go there, but when I go there, what happened is I realized right before the layoff. So before the layoff I knew it was happening, like really going to happen to me.

Speaker 4 14:33

I had heard, I saw inside the culture that there was just like a lot of yuckiness going on. People were just feeling stressed, they didn't know what was happening in the merger. Not a lot of answers, but more questions. Let's say yeah. And so I find myself in the same place, feeling a little stuck, feeling small, feeling unheard and unseen, all those things. So I go to the head of HR and I tell her like we need to do something and the culture is really bad, it's awful, we need to do something. And she goes, you're right, you should go do something about that. And I'm like, wait, what I should do, what? Wait, what? I'm leading customer experience, what Me? So I already got at that point. I already acted kind of like this cultural ambassador person, like uplifting people in the culture, bringing people together. So I took her up on it, created an employee engagement council, brought people around there was five companies were merging and brought people from all those companies together to kind of think about how could we create more trust, how could we break down the walls and just make the merger better. And it started to work and we started to see some shifting dynamics internally.

From Crisis to Clarity

Speaker 4 15:32

But the merger didn't go well. Like period, they brought in too many high paid people say the product was on board too fast, all the things, and so the merger didn't go well. So there were about 200 people laid off and I was one of the first in that 200 people and I was like that wow, like wow. It hurt a lot. I had four kids, so breadwinner of a family of six and played that role predominantly the majority of my time having children, and it was an owie. Like it hurt. And I wanna say it was about two, three weeks of just woe is me and going on like victim woe is scary thingy going on. And then, like I say to people, like then I just kind of got sick of myself. I just flipped the switch in my head that said I needed to stay in the past or needed to stay stuck in the place where those people put me and said, nope, don't need to be there. And then I started to look, look back and think about all I had gained in that position and realize that the skills that were there, my great friends that were there, and I got a really great severance, so it allowed me to be building this business. And then I left there. Interesting enough, I left there and while I was building the business it still wasn't quite enough for all the family and all the stuff I had to do.

Speaker 4 16:40

So I go work, take on a position at a county here in Colorado and I'm going. First I'm leading customer experience and then I they, they do a reorg and I lead organizational development and then they do a reorg and I lead organizational development, and then they do a reorg. They just keep doing a reorg. I mean the change was rampant. I was going through between murders and light ops and reorg. It was like, oh my, like, yeah, train, yes.

Speaker 4 16:59

So I do that and and say, like it being a hit, like, and at one point, when they take me out of one role to the next, I don't have a team anymore. So I had been like leading teams for like 20 something years and I don't have a team anymore. So I had been like leading teams for like 20 something years and I don't have a team. It's just me. Actually, it happened twice. It happened during the merger situation, when they brought me in or I was in there, and then they decided they were merging roles and they put me in charge of something. It was still customer experience, but it was over like tech stuff, which I had no experience on. But it was okay Because I learned a lot there in that tech space, like I didn't really know it. I learned a lot.

Speaker 4 17:31

So that happened and I didn't have a team for like three months. Then I go into another place, I have a team, I'm doing this. And then they do two orgs and I'm in organizational development all by myself, like it's just me, I'm managing organizational development for this large county. And then they started bringing more people on any more people on but it was just me for again, another three months by myself, and I'm tell you, it's so weird. I had no identity. I'm so used to leading team, like being I was being a contributor and leading people often, but it was weird not having like other people coming to me, not leading. It was so that happened. So those are multiple things that just kept hitting me. Hit me I was writing a book first book, self-publishing a book, consulting all at the same time like traveling, and oh I gotta tell you and getting bounced around from department mergers.

Speaker 3 18:18

Bounced around Identity, no identity. Identity, no identity.

Speaker 2 18:22

Exactly exactly, and you have a vision like there's something bigger and I need to get to it. But I've, you know, here I am. Oh my gosh, I love that. Heather. Would you look at like the journey of writing your first book, because you're barely head above water right as you're. I mean no judgment. This is the same space.

Speaker 4 18:44

I don't feel judged and I could care less. Anyway, I told you I'm past that point, that's right.

Speaker 2 18:51

But head barely above water and then you go into not only like creating this business, knowing that you have a greater the ability to have a greater impact, and writing a book, kind of talk to us, about that segment of your life that you were also pouring yourself into.

Building a Life of Leadership

Speaker 4 20:03

Well, luckily, I had 13 months of unemployment, okay, and so while I was there, I was doing the writing and so by the time I got that job, that was kind of the rebound job. Once I got the rebound job, just to hold me well until I could kind of get all of the things in place, then I was already like 70% done with the book. Okay, so, so easy to do, yeah, so that. So that wasn't too bad Cause. Then when I I got there, I was just finishing and tweaking. The biggest part, to be honest, was the job that I had taken was about 40 to 45 minutes from my house, but my kids were kind of like at different schools. They were at a different school. They were already like I would say 45 minutes from our house, but then they were like 45 minutes from me and then I was like playing checkers, like we're all people, we're all the parts, we're all the things. So, as the mom who's like I'm the only child but like at the same time, like these are my. I'm like these are like my little birdies, like little chickadees, I'm like, okay, my chickadees over here and I'm here, and now I start to post on linkedin and people start to ask me to come and consult for them.

Speaker 4 21:04

And now, now I'm traveling, I have one client, I have a couple, but one in particular that has me coming to Pasco, washington, so I have to go into Seattle, fly to Pasco, and doing that like once a month for several months. So I was doing that. It might have even been like even a couple times a month and taking off all the max pay. Good news I had really a lot of good max time off at this place I was at, so I was taking off max time off flying over there, having my chickadees all over the place, and at one point I'm just like again about to jump off a cliff. This is just like a lot to manage this full-time thing, right? So finally, I say, yeah, I think I've reached my level and now I'm ready to make a decision to leave the day job and do my full-time thing, and that was October of 2017.

Speaker 3 21:50

I feel like you have earned a PhD in resilience.

Speaker 4 21:55

When you asked me, I was like and so like, I don't need that. No prep time here.

Speaker 2 22:01

No, I mean, I'm just like it's the story of my life.

Speaker 4 22:04

You're like see, I told you you're like I'm exhausted.

Speaker 3 22:07

It's no big deal. Yeah, just you know, kids travel, jobs, book, blah, blah blah.

Speaker 4 22:14

I love that.

Speaker 3 22:15

Every one of these positions and raising the kids and traveling and consulting all of that is building the knowledge that you have today, which is shared in your books and your consulting and all the other incredible things that you do.

Speaker 4 22:27

Yes, exactly. And it's so funny because even when I'm like the good thing about like that background early on and then where I'm at now, is that, oh, when I was unemployed so I was 13 months unemployment guess what I had to do as an attorney who, like you know whatever, like thought of it, whatever I had to do food stamps for about six months. That was you want to know about. So in the middle of the resilience, there's this humility factor that gets you get smacked in your face and you're like, ooh, maybe you're not all that in a bag of chips potentially. And so I did that because I kind of had to it what this is, all of us here. And then I got off as quickly as I could and I was back on working and hadn't looked back since, but still, that was like another little hiccup. I was like, oh gosh, I gotta go like do this thing and I have to. Yeah, so it was a card and I was like, oh, it's a card, so no one really knows. I mean, these are the things that are embedded. So when I'm going to like, say, I speak to the department of Human Services or I speak to frontline people at a corporation or I speak to.

Speaker 4 23:23

I have so many facets of my background that I'm able to relate to the level of my level of empathy and then, like compassion those two combined is so high because of that journey.

Speaker 4 23:33

That wasn't smooth and most of us haven't had smooth journeys. Mine's a little rough here than most maybe, but especially early on I'd say, and so, but that allows me, it gives me like a different lens than most people. And then I think one of the things I discovered, probably in the last few years, was that most, most people might there could be people who are like on the softer side and then they show their care and they but they don't like have a backbone or like they're not as strong, like people will say that right, and what I discovered is I'm both and that I was a jewel in and of itself. It was like this undiscovered thing that I really hadn't really thought about it myself and then I started to realize then it was just like, like it used to be. I want you. I thought I was judged or I thought that whole not good enough for all those things and I realized I was way better than good enough. You, you know, in that process of discovery, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 24:24

Oh my gosh, I think that's tremendous. And here you are now fast forward, working with companies and organizations and individuals and you're diving into leadership and organizational culture or corporate culture, all the while, like I've seen it along the way, as you've shared your story, all the while being this visionary leader yourself, right, like seeing the opportunities, seeing the future, seeing the opportunities that are ahead for yourself and the companies that you're with. And so, as you're kind of going through these pieces of, like the organizational culture piece, the leadership training you just mentioned, the empathy coming off of you know, kind of that humility, that test that you got, to go through.

Empathy in Action Approach

Speaker 2 25:05

And I'm in the space when we look at like leadership, training and development. We talk about the importance of you know, like the emotional intelligence and having empathy and the connection, but if we're really going to where the individuals are, like, are we truly stepping into that space of empathy, Like? Are we truly doing that.

Speaker 4 25:22

Yes.

Speaker 2 25:23

Do we have a high level executive that may have come. You know that's coming off of a down spell that you know maybe they were on food stamps or they didn't have health insurance coverage, or they have bills that have piled up or they're coming out of foreclosure. Like can we enter into leadership from a place of empathy and understanding for individuals, with where they are? And I think there's huge opportunity for us there because there's not a lot of emphasis placed on that.

Speaker 4 25:48

Oh yeah, and I've got, I mean, some of the things you mentioned. I've had all the financial calamities and I've got, and I've just clawed my way back up to the top of having the top credit score and the top this and the top of all those things. Right, but I've had all this, I've had it all. I've had all this, I've had it all. I've had it all. The journey, like you know, you can, you can, we can all just kind of do little mile markers of all the things. I'm giving you the big rocks. I mean, you forget there's other advance of every talk.

Speaker 4 26:07

I do focus groups.

Speaker 4 26:08

I'll go on site if I can to.

Speaker 4 26:10

If it's a corporate type of environment, I'm able to go into a hospital, to a service and parts place, to whatever it is, and I really try to get in because for me, what I know to be true is the people that are there are like especially if you don't come from the industry and nine times out of 10, I won't they're like now, this person right, and they're like I have this person now right, and so immediately in order to like, say that elephants in the room.

Speaker 4 26:43

Hey, I'm completely aware that I do not walk in your shoes every day, as you don't mind. But what I'm doing by doing the focus group or going on site is I'm just trying to open the door, to peek through a tiny, so when I come to talk to you, I can use your language, I can see some of the pain points, use your language, I can see some of the pinpoints, I can meet some of the people and even kind of be able to relate, and it works. And it works like brilliance every time, because what happens is those people come up to me and they're they're very like, grateful and they shake their hand. I give them recognition, I do all kinds of things to really bring them into the fold, but then to let them know that I'm really deep, I'm trying to understand, see, I'm trying to understand which most are not. Yeah, that's why listening is kind of at the core of a lot of my work, because we just don't do it very well and for me it's the golden ticket for many things.

Speaker 3 27:26

Well and I love that you do that because you think of somebody stepping into a leadership position how many of them take the time to almost do focus groups inside the organization to get to know the people that are there? They're just stepping into a role and just kind of boop boop doing a job and completely unaware which impacts the culture and the trust and everything.

Speaker 4 27:47

Absolutely. I'm definitely a person who does that. Like people say, well, what's your vision? I'm like, well, let's see. I mean, I can tell you what best practices are, but I can't take my vision until I speak to the people who are in the front, who are actually like serving our clients or whatever it is. You know, I just can't do that and I people think that's the strangest thing.

Speaker 4 28:02

Or even like if I'm going into a pre-booking call, let's say on the speaking side, and I'll say, well, just so you know, like here are the options, but I'm not going to tell you right now which way this should go until I either like I need to ask you more questions. I'd love to have a focus group with some of your people that I need. So that's why that kind of research mind, that real deep curiosity mind, is another different trainer for me, cause I just I can't, it's hard for me to just it drives me bonkers. If someone wants me to come in and just take something off the shelf, it's like that's not doing any of this justice at all. Oh not at all.

Speaker 2 28:31

Not only take it off the shelf, take it off the shelf and fix it Right no-transcript.

Episode Closing

Speaker 4 28:46

I didn't say you're seeking to agree. I'm saying you're seeking to understand. It's going in with the curiosity, it's gaining clarity so that you can make better decisions, and so it's just. And it's, by the way, it's so interesting because the listening applies. Whether I leadership, like, are we listening to yourself? Like, what are the things that you? Are you peeling back and being introspective about who you are, what you stand for, what your limitations are, all those things. So, because you can't very well lead other people if you don't have a good handle on it. And I realized that even just as I look back on my leadership journey, thinking about where there might've been some hills and valleys on my own leadership because again, 25 years of managing teams, I can I can think of times where maybe I wasn't the best and what were the contributing factors of that. And a lot of it was about the stuff. That's the earliest story.

Speaker 1 29:29

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