The Restorative Rebel: Challenging Traditional Views on Leadership

In this episode of Revenue Remix, hosted by Summer Poletti, Founder and CRO of Rise of Us, we are joined by Danny Bicknell—educator, international activist, and author of The Restorative Rebel. Together, they delve into Danny's experiences as the founder of Dab Colab, her work advocating at UN organizations, and her dedication to fostering more inclusive, sustainable workplaces. The discussion covers the evolving landscape of leadership, the influence of internalized capitalism, and the benefits of empathetic leadership in driving sustainable growth. Danny shares insights from her book, strategic undervalued leadership, and the importance of radical empathy in business. Tune in for practical strategies that challenge traditional metrics of success and promote a more holistic approach to revenue growth.

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00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
01:45 Early Career and Surprising Jobs
03:08 Challenging Traditional Leadership
03:30 The Restorative Rebel: Book Insights
08:43 Empathy and Inclusive Leadership
19:32 Sustainable Business Practices
33:24 Measuring Success Beyond Profit
38:20 Self-Care and Work-Life Balance
40:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:01

Hello. Welcome back. I am Summer PAI fractional, chief Revenue Officer of Rise of Us and your host of Revenue remix. I'm joined today by Danny McNall. She's an educator, international activist, and author of The Restorative Rebel, actually our first author on this podcast. As the founder of Dab CoLab, she helps leaders and businesses navigate capitalism through a lens of social impact. Equity and sustainability. With experience in tech, entrepreneurship, and international development, including advocacy at UN organizations, she is dedicated to refining success and fostering more inclusive, sustainable workplaces. We talk a lot about the future of work. I feel like the future is sustainable. Let's have a good conversation here. Welcome, Danny. Welcome back to Revenue Remix, a podcast from Rise of Us where we take a fresh spin on driving revenue growth hosted by Summer Pauli, a fractional CRO, who works with business owners and leaders who feel held back by outdated systems. This podcast explores how adaptable unified frameworks can transform static processes, equipping teams to meet, evolving customer needs, and drive resilient, lasting growth. Each episode features insights from summer and her guests offering practical strategies to sidestep common pitfalls and build real revenue momentum. It's time to remix the way we think about growth. Enjoy the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat about this. We'll get to the reason why pretty soon, but we like to have a little fun here first. Okay. So could you tell us something that you did earlier in your career? Maybe a first job or a youth hobby, maybe something that might surprise us a little something. That I was thinking about was in college. I worked from a young age, you know, starting with like babysitting and doing odd jobs, but in college I was a tutor during the day and babysitting kids. And then I was a bartender at night at my college bar. And the similarities of watching children and then watching patrons of bars, the skills. Tended to transfer over quite seamlessly. And so in a short period of time, I found that even though the work was in many ways very different, yes, I could carry those skills over. And so that was a nice early lesson that like lived experience can really add value to the the different jobs that you hold. It's hilarious. Um, reminds yeah. I babysat little kids during the day and older kids during the night. There's the meme that drunk adults or toddlers or something, so that, that's hilarious. I love it. That is what I experienced many times over. Sorry, I've raised two kids. Yeah, I hear you. Okay, so let's go ahead and talk work. We're not just here to talk about silly stuff. So your work, your challenge, your work challenges, traditional values on leadership, which is really why I was excited to chat because I do that a little bit myself. So what inspired you to write the restorative rebel, and why do you think this message is especially important? In this moment today. Thank you for that question. I'm just starting to talk about this book, which was just pre-released a few weeks ago, and now I'm prepping for launch, but ultimately I wrote this book for myself, and so it is a little vulnerable for me to share it with an audience. But what I experienced for a really long time was I tried to play by the rules from this very prescriptive culture around capitalism and achievement and doing more, and it stopped working for me. And as a millennial that grew up with a lot of, I would say, the backsliding of capitalistic culture. And realized that it really turned into just this very simplistic way of looking at life without. Recognizing the full spectrum of humanity. We're complicated individuals and we can't survive if we're just focusing on this one metric. And so growing up through political, environmental, um. Social, just so many financial changes. You know, going from nine 11 to pandemic and having a career from the recession onwards, I started questioning these systems instead of questioning myself, which is something that I felt like internalized capitalism did, is it just said, work harder, push harder. And once you achieve. This, you know, quote unquote success, although it's really defined, you'll be happy. And so when I say I wrote the book for myself, it was to kind of challenge these myths that I believe this kind of culture that's wrapped into an economic social, um. If I could take some of the pressure off myself. And so I started looking at all of my work experiences, working with leaders and trying to be a leader on teams myself, working in tech, entrepreneurship, international development, working in cross-sector collaborations, so for government, government organizations, nonprofits and startups and traditional businesses. And saw that we were only. Idolizing a certain type of leadership that was being perpetuated by the media and more and more by social media. You know, the saying of Andy Warhol, that was in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, uh, has really caught wind and so inadvertently, um. We're being directly influenced by this constant downpour of media. And more recently it's been really pushed towards a very aggressive competitive model. And so in my book I talk about leadership and there's a chapter called Strategically Undervalued Leadership that looks at this through an individual, a business, and a societal lens. And so, I think that was kind of my impetus to say. I've seen these different types of leadership. I've seen these different ways of being. I don't think that that's what's being promoted now. So let me put pen to paper because you know, I wanna make books great again and let's offer a framework that can show other ways of doing things so that I wouldn't, you know, quote unquote suffer myself. I had really taken on a lot of, you know. Disservice to my relationships, to my health, to my wellbeing, because I thought if I could, you know, continuously grow and burn out and overproduce and exploit others, that I would be quote unquote successful, and then I could magically spread that back and it just wasn't working for a while. So, yeah, that's a long way of answering the question, but here we are. That's okay. So I wanna talk about that chapter. Um,'cause that one spoke to me. Generationally, I, I'm different. I'm Gen X. We grew up in the big eighties. Mm-hmm. So it was crush, crush, crush all the time. And that doesn't really serve very many people very well anyway. I feel like when we think of business guy, it's that eighties guy, you know, with the briefcase and the this and that and the fancy car. So. So, yes, everything you just said in chapter five, you do talk about the idea of the strategically undervalued leadership. And I feel like that spoke to me personally, um, but it also spoke to me professionally because I look for leaders who are empathetic and who are not the micromanagers and who are not those toxic folks in the workplace. And I might do that because when I was coming up in my career. I was told that I didn't have leadership potential because I needed to be tougher, and like the image that they gave me was like, no, you need to strive for this if you want to get into management. And it was the person who would literally pound the table in the meeting and yell at people and say, swear words in the hallways. I, I, yeah, I wanted to advance my career and be a leader.'cause like in my heart, I knew I had that potential, but I didn't wanna become that person and sacrifice my own moral code and my own ethics in order to further my career. So let's talk about that chapter.'cause I think that, yeah, that's an important thing that I, I feel like finally I'm starting to hear other people talking about the fact that good leadership requires empathy. Yeah. But then how does that show up in everyday settings? Like let's get back to the topic of conversation. So. The idea behind that in your book, can you kind of break it down and then what does it look like in everyday settings? Maybe let's start to picture that. Yeah. I think that, especially in traditional business sense, we don't have a playbook that talks about leadership skills that are advantageous and once aren't. But we have tons of books, you know, thousands and thousands written by Mike alone. When I did some of my research just looking at different ways that we could look at business, entrepreneurship, leadership, there are very few books that are written by women or people of color that make up this idea of how leadership has traditionally been viewed. And so as you're talking about being part of Gen X, and I grew up with that myth of. Growing up in the nineties, but seeing that image of capitalistic success really captivated by this individual achievement individualism, I. Leadership often became defined by like really narrow metrics like power, wealth, and fame. And because that was emulated, we start to idolize individuals for their theatrics rather than their impact. And it's mm-hmm. Mistaking visibility for true skill instead of things like empathy and. In everyday settings, you can be in a situation where people will take all the credit for something or they will show very overly confident characteristics to get the job done without actually producing and not realizing that whenever you're working on a team, we're all artists with a di, a different toolkit. And so if we are looking at strategically undervalued leadership, we're basically looking at leadership values that have not been determined by a very small part of the population, which is cisgender white men. And that is only because historically they have created systems that have financially, socially, and legally excluded people. All other people are just starting to catch up in terms of writing books, in terms of actually being leaders themselves. And yet. We tend to, in this internalized capitalistic culture, talk about and glorify this come up story of these leaderships, of these leaders that overcome these insurmountable odds, and we believe them to be almost godlike when we need to look at leaders as. No one person can really solve everything. And so that's another distorted view of leadership that I think puts unnecessary pressure on individuals, especially when they're working into a team. And so what I've seen from working across different sectors is that authentic leadership isn't just about. Personal gain or prestige, which is the simplified metrics that we show in leadership. And people really like their stamp of approval, their paycheck, their accolades, their material, their non-material wealth to kind of show like, this is how I'm doing well, but I. I saw so many inspiring examples that reject this like patriarchal notion of success that really favors empathy, service, and inclusivity. The media is rarely showing this because just like the saying, people start to slow down in a car accident to see what happens. We idolize the theatrics. And so inadvertently as a culture, we are idolizing people with very aggressive, competitive, defensive, conflict oriented ways of showing their leadership when throughout history and even in biology, we've noticed that working together in a lot of ways is actually better for our existence and growth. And I've seen this in business. Mm-hmm. So I look at this from an individual perspective by just saying like, what are the. The myths that you surround yourself with your own definition of self-worth value. Like what is your definition of time? I. What is your definition of happiness? And then as you are starting to look at any type of project or business oriented activity where you have people that are looking up to you, you have to walk the walk. So in an everyday business situation, it might not seem like it's causing harm, but you tell all your employees, you can totally, you know, close your computer by 5:00 PM You don't have to answer emails on the weekend. Nothing is urgent. But yet, if you are showing that characteristic and you are enforcing that behavior, it doesn't matter what you do. And there can be a lot of confusing signals, I think, with leaders that are trying to push back against this aggressive style, but they're actually not emulating it. And so I say you have to walk the walk. And then another one is. As you're looking at yourself, if you have been in a leadership capacity, you have to know when to to lean out, and so I do bring up white supremacy. I do bring up patriarchal norms in society just because, as I mentioned before, these are systems that have been designed this way, and so you can do plenty of research to see how different people were excluded from these systems. But in a leadership perspective, some of the best businesses have flourished when you have many different perspectives in a room. And so if we keep repeating the same mistake over and over again and expecting a different result, we'll call that insanity. And I'm sure we've all had some insane leaders in our lives. So going from there, yes, the table thumper. The chapter does look at ways that you can actually create frameworks for more empathetic cooperative leadership, how you can recognize different energies. I build on the work of David Data, which talks about masculine and feminine energy, which doesn't necessarily hold gender or a sex. It's just about different dynamics in the workplace. I talk about how we can look at white supremacy culture, not as something that we need to feel guilty of. You know, speaking as a cis white gender female, I love and know so many men out there who are pioneering this new way of leadership, but they don't have a lot of examples to emulate, and I don't need to. You know, we're, this is 2025 and we've just entered a new administration. There are even fewer examples to emulate. But at the same time, there are tips and tricks and ways to lean out in order to try and push a new narrative. And that is where I've seen innovation, um, at its best in America. Hmm. Internalized capitalism might be, something that kind of pervades and harms cultures and individuals, but it also requires them to be tenacious and resilient, scrappy. And so it can show up of consistently doing a million little acts of like, love and resistance for yourself in the workplace and in society, so that you're slowly pushing against those norms that you see as like harmful to yourself and others that you work with. Yeah. Well, and I, I live with a. White guy who's in leadership and they have a tough go as well.'cause there's just so much expected of them. Yes. Um, you know, they kind of wear the weight of the world on their shoulders and so maybe balancing out. Yeah, it's load. You know, things aren't working for them right now either. The PR for white men is not really good and it's not their fault. They need a new, um, PR rep or they need a new agency. Yeah. They need because, and a new superhero to follow or something. Right. It's also what I say is when I look at gender mainstreaming, which I talk about in the chapter, that might seem like a scary word, but sexism hurts men as well. I've seen them. Mm-hmm. As caretakers for children or family members. They are disproportionately, like left out of those conversations, talk about having, you know, this burden on them. If the system has been designed to disproportionately benefit them. In some ways, any non success that they have is seen, you know, as their personal failure. And so when I talk about. The might, it might be a triggering word, but it's just a, you know, a way of looking at leaning out so that you don't put so much pressure on yourself so that we can actually share this burden, because life is complicated enough. And so my argument is that no matter how. The word package goes in terms of gender, mainstreaming, fa framework. There's tips, there's tricks, there's subtle ways that you can reframe your thinking and also trust others. And by creating consensus, building that is transparent, which is hard to do, takes a little bit of time, but doesn't cost a lot. It just requires investing in your employees so that you can honor their experience. You can actually build a more sustainable company. But right now we're kind of going through this very tumultuous time where we're seeing shareholder value increase. The more that you lay off people, the more that you're brutal, you know, ruthless with cutting costs. And yet these leaders that we're upholding, as CEOs. Their wealth has never been higher in the history of, of humanity, and we're reaching, you know, proportions of them being paid over 2000% more than their lowest paid employee. And so when I say no one person can emulate leadership, that should also be reflected financially where executives have learned very easily how to generate this idea that they are an island and that they've created. It themselves, but my argument just backed up by Adam Grant, a psychologist is backed up by many other like kind of philosophers, economists, policy makers. In the book that I talk about, I. Share that, that it doesn't have to actually be that way. Being generous, being kind, being cooperative, reinvesting in your workforce, those are ways that you can actually generate more revenue in the end. It's just not being emulated right now. So I think that the chapter really kind of questions mostly like. What are we being shown versus what do we know to be true and what do we wanna see? Mm-hmm. And then how can we subtly make that shift so that we can see it, and then once we see it, we can believe it And yeah. And that makes it possible for other people too. No, I get it. So a lot of the people I work with are small business owners. They're growth stage financial services, or maybe they're investor backed SaaS, but they're startups, so they're in their like culture matters to them a lot and their employees matter to them a lot. And I'm seeing now more than I saw five years ago or earlier. They understand the connection between treating your employees right, means giving good service means earning and retaining revenue. Mm-hmm. So I'm seeing small business owners understand that. Like your folks, you think it's your clients. But your clients don't come first, like your employees come first. Mm-hmm. So I, I kind of, I look through everything kind of thinking that yes, it's taking a while, but if you really watch the trend lines, some things are moving in the right direction. So yeah, the one thing, especially for small businesses, I would say, yeah, you know, they care. We're not well.'cause you see that person every day. Is it like if you're the CEO on the mountain and you don't see the 10001st employee ever, like it's, it's hard to be empathetic. If you come in the office every day and you have 10 employees and you see them all every day, like you know them, you love them, you care about them. You know, maybe, maybe that's the difference in the, the people I work with actually care about culture. Yeah, and culture is both something that you build and it's something that you inherit in terms of we inherit some business cultural values, but when you're working in small businesses, you really have an opportunity to your point of you seeing people every day and wanting to change the tide. And so. What I think is most inspiring is that there are business leaders out there that are through tremendous grit and perseverance. Going against this backlash that's just saying, you know, cast a wide net, be really aggressive, be really competitive. I've seen a lot of businesses grow through partnership, through cooperation, through breaking down silos. It just doesn't look like the same traditional 25% month over month. Growth targets that have just been absorbed as this is how you should grow at all costs in a different chapter. The previous chapter, chapter four, is called reworking work. I actually talk about how different departments within traditional business can use empathy, can use cooperation building. Mm-hmm. To re-envision the future of work because we have enough of a social experiment, which was. The pandemic of how we are re-envisioning the future of work. We also have ai. We also have massive shifts in the market, and climate change is real. So all of these external factors need to be embedded in how we are treating ourselves, how we are treating our employees, because there are too many external variables that we haven't been taking into account in a traditional business sense, which is making us. Burnout, which is making us not being able to adapt to what we need to be resilient to in the future. Yes. Yeah, for sure. And then I, I do see maybe more in the startup world where it's investor backed, it's high growth, there's a lot of pressure and I do still see that. High confidence, mediocre competence, person rising and getting attention. They get attention. So you need visibility. You need awareness, but how do you imagine I. Balancing that with some competence that will help the business grow.'cause like getting that attention is fine, but it's fleeting and, and it, mm-hmm. To me it just doesn't feel like it's a good recipe for sustainable growth. I completely agree. So in the chapter there's a section about media literacy, which I think shows you ways to question these types of leaders that are getting promoted because we also have to take into account that the media for some reason, consistently promotes. Successful entrepreneurs is this very narrow definition. We get into that more, but at the same time that. It sounds like you're asking a hiring question, like how can these teams or a promoting question, either one. Yeah. Is looking at metrics that are not just based on these traditionally valued metrics of competition of, hmm. Winner takes all. Mm-hmm. And I have worked with teams to create KPIs and OKRs that talk about success from a revenue standpoint, which is a major attribute of this simplified version of internalized capitalism in in our culture. But also it's like what I call business generating qualities, which are operations, which are customer care, which are mm-hmm. Compliance, which are legal, which are administrative, which are relationship building. It's, it's a pie, and we might see that the pie, the biggest chunk is just this. This growth metric, but without acknowledging the other slices, then we're not going to be able to grow. Or what, when I've worked with big tech companies is as much as the US likes, uh, come up story, they love a take down story. I. So if you start cutting corners now, there will ultimately be something where you might be investor backed, but you're completely smeared. And we can think of many examples from Theranos to WeWork to I share some examples of, of companies that basically just did not deliver on what they said and the evidence was shown. Versus companies that take the time and kind of measure twice, cut once. And I've seen that in a lot of different cultures. I think that every culture has their own version of work and we've just been idealizing a very specific one that we're seeing isn't working and is promoting the wrong type of individual that we all know. Mm-hmm. To be ineffective. Mm-hmm. And so we'll talk about it in a comical sense. We'll talk about it in an obvious sense. But if we wanna talk about it in a practical sense, then we have to make some changes. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So then we talk about revenue. Everything I do is revenue, but it's a holistic look at revenue. It's not just new logo, it's, you know, you keep your customers, we talked about that. Happy customers stay longer, happy employees, make happy customers, all that good stuff. So it's not just revenue at all costs. Yeah, that's actually the fact that I learned that you could look at. Sales a different way was what got me into sales in the first place. Yeah. Because then like revenue at all costs. Sales at all costs. Like that's gross. I don't like that. So we don't do that over, over, over where I am, but like, and you know mm-hmm. Companies are looking for sales. I feel like companies are still looking for a certain type of, I see people a shift, I'll say. Mm-hmm. They want the guy who will pound the phones and, they want the leader who will hold people accountable, but they don't want someone destroying their culture and destroying their own reputation that they've worked so hard to create. And I think it's challenging to balance those two. Yeah. You know, do you have a perspective or maybe some insights about striking that balance, I guess is what I'm trying to get at. So I think that if you're speaking from a sales perspective, I'm gonna put some hypotheticals around this, especially if you're a small business, depending if you're delivering a product or a service, you have to. Hone in on your audience. And so I think that when you start off in business, you can say that sales only needs to look like one thing, which is dollars in, but actually we have to really understand our audience who we're serving. Mm-hmm. And that is how we're gonna create sustainable growth. Instead of what a lot of, I think, growth advisors suggest is if you cast this wide net and you just get somebody that's extremely aggressive, it will work. I think now we're starting to see, and I saw this in my research when I was looking at how different companies were pivoting during covid, is a lot of companies decided to go deep with their audiences instead of continuing to expand. And that really resonated. And so I found the best salespeople, and this is when I've traveled and worked worldwide, are the ones that are very clear. Share their value proposition, but they do not oversell. They do not peer pressure. They do not make you feel guilty. Um, and just the efficiency and the value of that clarity makes them more effective because they can know earlier on whether they have you or not. Versus what I think we glorify is somebody that keeps you on the line that for you some way agrees to something that they don't actually want or need, and they might. They might fall off. You know, they might ask for a refund later. They might not understand the product, they might not tell their friends to get that. And so I've seen it happen where, when companies are taking the time to invest early in, who their audience is, what their value proposition is, what their theory of changes, like how do they wanna move through the different segments of their business to then define their culture. And then say, okay, these are the types of salespeople we want. And of course there'll be trial and error. Um, and so I also coach and advise on different ways to set up your team and creating contracts that are mutually beneficial so that both parties mm-hmm. Can get. A sense of how is your lived and professional experience translating in into this work culture? Do you agree with it? Do you wanna help it grow? And then through transparency and consensus building saying yes, because we all have some type of equal role and what small businesses, having sort some type of equal ownership in the growing of the business, I think creates the best retention creates. The best brand loyalty creates stronger sales teams, and I've seen this across all industries that I've worked in, but I don't think it's the ones that we see in the media too often. Well, the media likes drama, so there's that. So just question it. Yeah, just question the drama. They really, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Let's see. So I feel like you answered several of my questions. Um, so let's get back to the fact that both of us work with leaders who wanna scale their businesses. Are there leadership blind spots that might be holding a company back from sustainable growth? Summer Polli of Rise of Us helps her clients transform by building adaptable, customer-focused sales systems that replace outdated models. With these new frameworks, their teams can respond quickly to evolving customer needs, reduce friction, and work as one cohesive unit. This shift equips them with the tools to drive consistent growth, lowering churn, and creating lasting customer relationships. As a result, they achieve sustainable revenue growth that positions them ahead of competitors and prepared for future challenges. Together, you and Summer will create a foundation that not only meets today's demands, but supports long-term success. Yes, I mean, there's many, it just depends on how you wanna operate, and so being completely. Industry or you know, agnostic and not really honing in on a particular type of business. I think for small and growing businesses, just going against these ideas of simple metrics for success is a start. Because if you're investing early in your team and your growth from multiple different metrics, that will set you up for success.'cause that will build a more solid foundation. Remember a time in the, you know, tech world between 2010, 2015 where there was this emphasis on experiment. This was this emphasis on like take time to be creative build, because that will all get reincorporated into the company's growth, mission, value and everything. And that was great. And I'm seeing that less and less and more these stories of. Grow at all costs and be ruthless and really sell your company, get acquired or go public, uh, which are all very aggressive channels. Instead of know your customer base. Make sure that you have something that's valuable in the market. Make sure that you've got good stakeholders. Make sure that you're amplifying growth by working with others in your industry instead of just seeing them as competition. I think is ultimately the best path. And so when I see businesses making shortcuts, I always say those shortcuts will eventually catch up to them. Um, you know, corruption can work for a little while depending on the context, but ultimately it is corruption that will. Fail the system. So if we're working in a business context, pushing against that grain, pushing against this media portrayal, that it's just idolizing this one way of doing business and saying, no, I wanna check in with my own personal values. What matters to me, what put me in this position and how I wanna serve that to others is gonna be the most authentic, and I've seen it time and again, reach their customers more effectively. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, you're speaking my language there. Know your customer, know their problems. Get a sales person who cares about solving them. Okay. Um, now the one thing I'm curious about in the work that I do, we do a lot of tracking of, of course, growth metrics, but we'll also do things like customer health. There are signals that you can look at and just maybe picking your brain, what are one or two things that we could measure that maybe we are not thinking about measuring? Because we think about measuring profit, we think about measuring retention. We think about measuring year over year growth. Is there anything that just kind of, I, I threw you, I'm sorry I didn't write this down in advance. No, but I thought of it. Is there one or two things where you're like, nobody really measures this, but they probably should? When it comes to creating a good, sustainable culture. Yeah, I mean, so in a different chapter I talk about different cross-cultural perspectives that have been implemented in financial systems and just like the GDP, the gross domestic product is not an accurate way to measure wealth because it also, you know, profit goes up when you're cutting down trees or polluting rivers or putting smoke in the air. But in Bhutan, the country of Bhutan, which is close to Nepal and India. Actually incorporated a Global Happiness Index. And so this is a system that overlays on top of the GDP, but measures the. Wellbeing of its citizens according to different like learning objectives, health objectives, and things that are not traditionally measured. And so scaling back from that as much as you can look at traditional profit metrics. Wellbeing is a very individualized thing, but it really impacts how we show up to work. And so whether that is, um, a specific fund that creates either anything from commuter stipends to trying to finance gym memberships. Encouraging, you know, being more outside, whether that's a co-working office so that you're not as isolated or a stipend so that you can have a homeworking office or just different incentives to make sure that you're showing up in the same way is the bare minimum, but still contributes to what I think is a pretty wide definition of wellness. And then obviously the upper echelons are creating teams. That come up with these metrics for, okay, these are the employees that we have. This is what's important to them. So let's ask them what's important to them. Let's codify it. Let's find ways that we can grow it. Because if you are getting the professional development you need, you're getting the support that you need, you are showing up in a way that a lot of other employees aren't. That gives you a competitive edge. So it doesn't have to be one or two generic metrics. It's really just about taking the time to ask your employees. Mm-hmm. Like what matters to you, and making sure that you are creating a metric that encompasses individuals and how they are scrappy on how they act under pressure, on how they cooperate with changing deadlines with different ambiguous situations, because that's usually very rarely codified in performance. Metrics or reports or reviews, but are ones that can ultimately make or break a business. And so that's an aside from the kind of wellness metrics I was thinking about, but if you wanna have fun with that, yeah, that's a topic for another day. But I like where you placed it. I think too often, and I'm guilty of this sometimes too, like too often the leaders get in the room and they figure things out because they feel like they should, but like it's so simple. You wanna know what makes your employees happy, go ask them. Go ask them. Yeah. And I talk about this idea of radical empathy, which is if you are somebody in any type of leadership position and you are based on, you know, your role in society, your role in your personal lives, your role in. School, your role in work, your role in whatever aspect that you're participating in. Know when to honor other people's experiences so you can get the most information out of that, so that you can model better leadership styles instead of being defensive and hearing. The experience is somebody else as a direct attack on you, because once again, that's reaffirming this idea that one leader is gonna solve everything. I think that mostly teams and employees want to share their experiences to not place blame, but to say, this is how we can make it better. And so by being able to empathize radically with the people that you're working with and saying, I don't have to relate entirely to your experience. Experience. I'm gonna like honor that you're having it. I'm gonna believe you. That I think, is a game changer because that builds trust. But those things are very hard to measure, so you just have to work on them. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, so I wanna start wrapping it up. We always do something fun at the end. You talked a little bit about wellness, so I always wrap it up with what is something that you do in your life? I mean, writing a book, promoting a book, everything you've done, that's a lot of work stuff. But what do you do to bring your life happiness and and balance, or one thing? Um, I schedule self-care, so I am a recovering workaholic. Suffered from internalized capitalism, definitely in a place of writing. The book was a cathartic experience, but also kind of got me back into that idea that I just need to produce something. I need to get it out there. And so what has become an effective tool for me is if I use my calendar for work, I should also use it for my life. And so I'll schedule blocks throughout the day to like take a walk, to eat, to do things that are not just scheduling meetings and reports, because if I don't, I will forget about them. And so it doesn't mean that I a hundred percent follow it all the time, but just having that reminder of, okay, I didn't have my walk today, but I saw it in my calendar. I'm gonna do it later today, or I'm gonna do it tomorrow, is a game changer. It really allows me to be accountable to myself, but in a different way, which is, the old way was only if, if it's only work, then it matters. If it's not work, then it doesn't matter. So I don't need to take care of myself or anyone else. But this magical trick of scheduling, it just kind of tricks the brain a little bit to be like, okay, well you gotta show up in this way. And I love a good to-do list, so I'm like, okay, check, check, check. Gonna take my walk, gonna make my tea, gonna read my book. Going to do things that bring me like joy, because that. Will make me a better worker in the end. That will make me show up for my family and friends in a much more present way than feeling really scattered. Yeah, no, I agree. I. Do that also, um, a couple hours before we chatted was my little block of go take a hike and I strapped on my shoes and I got outside and I took a hike and I learned that if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't get done. And yeah, you have to'cause you feel your best mentally when you feel your best physically. So, could not agree more. Yeah, I'm grouchy if I don't get outside and get that exercise. Yeah. And then I don't do my best work for my clients and you know, I need it, so I feel like it's okay. Right. Absolutely. It's necessary. I love it. That's a great bit of balance. Well, I promise that I would get you out on time'cause you have a book to promote. So I appreciate you coming and sharing your perspectives. I'm so grateful. Thank you. And yeah, thank you for taking the time to meet with me. It's been such a great conversation and I really hope that it resonates with your audience in terms of just looking at things in a few different ways and maybe Sure. Questioning your own preconceived definition of, of leadership. So if, if you're questioning what you used to think, at the very least, that is what I came to achieve. Yeah, that's okay. There's a lot changing in the world and in the work world right now, and it is a great time to question what you think you always know and to maybe just look at little changes. It's all good. You gave us some food for thought. Thank you. Oh, thank you for having me.