June 17, 2025 • 44 mins
Speaker Teresa Sande is CEO and Founder of Mirror Mirror Strategies, and author of Find Your Fierce: Interrupt Imposter Syndrome and Own your Success. Before publishing her book and launching her firm, she had a successful 25-year career with global corporate experience as an executive at companies like Intel, Capital One, Cargill, and UnitedHealth Group. She has dedicated her career to supporting and building effective leaders and helping top organizations identify, develop, and select their next top executives. Her holistic approach allows people to see themselves and their talents in a clear light and focus on the most important elements of their leadership journey.
From humble beginnings in Downtown Milwaukee, to an early career at Intel, to now owning her own business, Teresa has a unique perspective that resonates with audiences. Whether you are fresh out of school, or have been working in your industry for decades, you’ll leave Teresa’s session with a new nugget that will get you thinking.
As a speaker, Teresa focuses on topics of imposter syndrome, diversity and belonging, owning a success mindset, and transformational leadership. She is a frequent contributor to professional associations, research, and podcasts. Teresa splits her time between Minneapolis, MN and Palm Springs, CA, where she lives with her husband and pets and enjoys finding just about any way to be outside.
On today's episode of The Step UP: Leadership starts with leading yourself, and that’s our jam today. We dive into the fact that you can lead from any chair, whether you're flying solo or managing a massive crew—it's all about self-awareness and knowing your growth edges. Our guest, Teresa Sande, the brains behind Mirror Mirror Strategies, serves up some solid gold insights from her rich background in HR and executive coaching. We chat about the common traps leaders fall into, like thinking they’re special snowflakes or forgetting to celebrate their wins. So, if you're ready to step up your leadership game and unlock your potential, grab your headphones because we’re about to break it down!
Leadership doesn't just happen at the top; it starts with you leading yourself. In our latest chat, we dig into how every one of us can step up our game, whether we're running a team of one or a thousand. Teresa Sandy, our featured guest and founder of Mirror Mirror Strategies, emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and understanding your growth spots. We explore how the most successful leaders are those who recognize their blind spots and actively seek growth. It's all about knowing yourself first because if you can't lead yourself, how can you lead anyone else?
Takeaways:
- Effective leadership kicks off with self-leadership, so knowing yourself is key.
- Regardless of your title, you can lead from anywhere in your organization, even solo.
- Self-awareness is essential for leaders; understanding your growth edges is crucial for success.
- Successful leaders are those who recognize their blind spots and actively seek help when needed.
- Navigating leadership means adapting your approach as your responsibilities evolve over time.
- Compassionate leadership balances driving results while being clear and supportive to your team.
Links for today's show:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Leadership starts with leadingyourself. And this is why we say
that you can lead at anylevel, from any chair in the organization,
whether you have a team ofjust yourself or a team of a thousand
people globally. Right? And soit really is about those leaders
that develop self awareness.Those are the leaders that are most
(00:24):
successful. They're the onesthat are are in tune with their growth
spots, right? Their blindspots, their growth edges.
Hi there and welcome to theStep Up Expert Voices for Leadership
Growth. I'm your host, KentKnievel. Every week I talk to experts
who focus on helping leadersstep up their leadership game. If
(00:45):
you're new to the show, thenon whatever platform you're using,
I encourage you to subscribeso you never miss an episode. One
last thing. As a leadershipdevelopment consultant and executive
coach, I have a particularinterest in supporting, supporting
recent internally promotedleaders. If that's you, or if you
support a leader who has beenrecently promoted, I encourage you
to visit my website at KentCoach Playbook and download a free
(01:06):
copy of my 90 day blueprintfilled with practical advice for
you or the leader you supportin hitting the ground running and
truly stepping up to their newleadership level. Without further
ado, on with the show. Welcomeeveryone. We are talking about some
tips to unlock leadershipsuccess today. And with me for this
conversation is Teresa Sandy,CEO and founder of Mirror Mirror
(01:32):
Strategies. Teresa is anexecutive coach, talent and leadership
consultant, author and keynotespeaker. I've known her for a short
time through Shout Out SciTrain, a company we both have done
some work with. Super happy tohave you here today, Teresa. Welcome
to the podcast.
Thanks so much, Kent. It'sgreat to be here.
Thank you. Well, you know, I'dlove to give each guest the opportunity
(01:56):
to tell their own story. So Iwould love for you to give us, you
know, your career journey,your career arc. What led you eventually
into what you're doing today.
Yeah, definitely. So I wouldsay my career was a pretty traditional
one from the standpoint of,you know, an HR career as far as
that goes. I spent most of mytime in pretty large organizations,
(02:18):
Fortune 100 size global. Weworked together at the same, not
at the same time, but togetherat Cargill. That was one of the companies
that, that I had the goodfortune of working for. But I also
worked for intel and CapitalOne, and then I ended my corporate
career after about 26 years atUnitedHealth Group. So Fortune 4
(02:41):
at that time. So like I said,mostly larger organizations, Complicated,
Complex, Matrix Global, etcetera. And sometimes people say,
well, what was the tie rightyou know, you spent your career in
all these differentindustries. Agriculture, high tech,
manufacturing, insurance.Right. Financial services. And, and
(03:01):
I always say it's. It'speople. Right? People. And we're
all being asked to rise to theoccasion and lots of things are changing.
We're all living it. And whatI see and what I always say is leaders
have to lead. They have to begood at leading. And that's agnostic
of industry or what levelyou're at, you know, in leadership
(03:22):
or maybe even if you're anindividual contributor. Right. We're
still leading ourselves,leading projects. So, yeah, I spent,
like I said, about 26 yearsin, in that corporate setting. And
two things started to coincideabout five years ago. One is we were
making all kinds of changes atthe organization that I was at. And
(03:42):
the role that I was beingmoved into was okay. I mean, it was,
you know, would have been agreat role, would have been interesting.
But it was also kind of feltlike more of the same, you know,
kind of wanted a newchallenge, wanted to do something
different. And then the otherthing that was happening was that
I had a book that I hadwritten that was about to come out
(04:03):
called Find your Fierce. We'regoing to talk a little bit about
that. And it just felt likesuch a good intersection. And I had
always wanted to take a bet onmyself and go out into the consulting
and executive coaching world.And so I did it. So at the end of
2020, I founded Mirror MirrorStrategies and left corporate America
after just a great career. Andthe last five years have been, you
(04:27):
know, just a ton of fun. So,you know, there's definitely things
that I've seen that come upagain, like I said, agnostic of industry,
agnostic of level that makeleaders successful. So for today,
I kind of did a top fivethings that most successful leaders
are focusing on that I thoughtwould be helpful to share with your
audience.
Nice. Yeah. Well, and beforewe get into that, your variety in
(04:51):
your background from your timein HR is super interesting. Most
of the variety that I had inmy background was from my early consulting
days because like nobody, Istarted in consulting and then somehow
all of my HR experience fellsomewhere on the food supply chain
in some way, shape or form byjust happenstance. So I love all
(05:14):
the variety, you know, thatyou bring to the table because I
think that variety, you get tosee the different challenges. Well,
the similar challenges,frankly, that people are experiencing
at different places. Right.And I think leaders, we all kind
of suffer from terminaluniqueness. Right. And it's when
you get to kind of hop fromplace to place. You get to see. Well,
(05:35):
yeah, there's some uniqueness,but there's a lot of commonality,
especially when you look atsomething as maybe esoteric as. And
important as leadership. True.
It's so true. And the trap, Ithink, that people fall into is.
Is believing that I'm specialor this circumstance is special,
and it's, you know, just extrahard. It is hard. I mean, that's
(05:57):
an acknowledgement, but it'snot often that unique. And if we
get into that mindset, we cankind of get stuck into, like a victim
mentality instead of a growthmindset, a problem solving, you know,
fresh ideas, freshperspective. And so that's something
else I should probably saymaybe just a fun fact about me or
a little bit insight me in theway that I like to work. I named
(06:19):
my company Mirror MirrorStrategies because I believe that
one of the things mysuperpower is to hold up the mirror
with the clients that I'mworking with and not to hold up the
mirror and say, oh, look atall these things you're doing wrong.
A lot of times it's to helpthem see what they're doing. Right.
To help them see what theirsuperpowers are and tap into that.
Right. You know, during COVIDespecially, so many leaders said,
(06:42):
I don't know what to do inthese unprecedented times. And the
majority of the work that Idid with leaders was to actually
say, we do know what to do.People need clear communications.
They need connection. Theyneed to know that someone cares.
We always needed that. It justgot, you know, the need for it got
really elevated and reallyheightened during COVID but it was
(07:02):
helping leaders know thatthey're naturally creative, resourceful,
and whole, which is a coachingprinciple. Pull. And the more that
we can help leaders do thatand tap into their greatness, the
stronger they are as leaders.So that's big passion.
Well, and I know you. Youthought through five sort of big
themes that you've sort ofseen in your career in terms of sort
(07:24):
of tips for unlocking thatgreatness. So let's. Let's dive in.
Let's. What's the first oneyou wanted to talk about?
Yeah, so one of the firstones. This is maybe relevant especially
for leaders that are on thatarc of their career, and maybe they're
moving into some of theirfirst kind of bigger leadership roles
or bigger challenges thatmaybe they haven't seen before. And
this is what I always call it.The assignment has changed. So it's
(07:48):
classic, you know, what gotyou Here won't get you there. And
noticing the fact that thereason you were selected, the reason
you stood out, the reason yougot noticed and, you know, tapped
on the shoulder for thisbigger role, is that you had a high
capacity for work, you gotresults, great outputs, and now that
you're in these more seniorleadership positions, the work of
(08:10):
leadership is different. It'snot just, you know, how many tasks
can I get off my checklist forthe day? You know, how hard can I
work? How many hours can I putin? Leaders put a lot of time and
energy and hours in, don't getme wrong. But this is about understanding
that fundamentally theassignment has changed and now you're
(08:32):
required to be strategic, tobe thoughtful. The work of leadership
is to pause and say, let methink about that. You know, what
is it that I want to respondto this, this difference of responding
versus reacting. And if wewant to be a thoughtful, responding
leader, then we need time andwe need focus on being thoughtful.
(08:56):
It's no longer about just, youknow, having a huge work capacity
and being able to crank outsome results. It's also, you know,
I don't know if anyone pullsyou aside and says, hey, a big part
of your role now is managingall these different stakeholders.
Everybody wants a piece ofyou, right? Everybody has their thing
that they need from you. Andif leaders don't know how to manage
(09:18):
those stakeholders, you know,that's a big part of success. It's
a big part of assignment. It'stempting to get pulled into the squeakiest
wheel, right? Or, you know, asI say, you get picked off one by
one because you've got a lotof people that want a lot of your
time and, and feel like youare excess accessible. And so it's
finding that balance, but justknowing that the assignments changed.
(09:40):
So that's.
Yeah. There's three thingsI'll comment on from my own observation
too, that I think fit innicely here. One is, I don't think
that we often congratulatesomeone and tell them the story of.
Because I've seen this andheard this so many times when we're
talking about who to place inthis role, I hear them say, you know,
let's put Teresa in that role.And, and you hear this story kind
(10:03):
of in that back roomconversation of like, how quickly
Teresa adapted and changechanged in the previous assignment
they gave her. Right? And sowe don't remind people of that when
we promote them too, to say,hey, part of the reason we promoted
you is we've seen that agilitythat you had to adapt and learn the
new thing. We need you to dothat again. Right. Not necessarily
(10:24):
the new role. Right. Or the old.
The old role. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
It's so true. And, you know, Imean, this could be a whole nother
podcast. Right. But, but jobdescriptions are written on a list
of tasks. They're not writtenabout a list of outcomes. You know,
and, and, but, but really,that's what we' evaluated on, especially
at leadership levels. They'renot necessarily looking at what you
did on a Tuesday, on aWednesday, on a Thursday. They're
(10:46):
looking at the macro. How welldid you lead? How well did you create
followership? How well did youinspire and influence? And, you know,
there's maybe a bullet or twoon the job description about that
in leadership, but really theyardstick people are using is, you
know, while we're leading and,and, you know, behavioral things.
Yeah. So there's such amindset shift there, which is the
(11:09):
second thing I was going tosay, which is kind of recalibrating
from thinking about your ownproductivity to what is the team
producing. Right. It's notabout. I don't see senior leaders
patting junior leaders on theshoulder for the things that they
personally drove over thefinish line necessarily. Right. And
(11:31):
it's more about what is thatwhole team producing. You said one
other, one other thing, whichwas about peers. Right. And I see
a lot of leaders neglect thatwith great intention early on. Right.
It's like, let me hit. I'vebeen promoted because I, you know,
showed great skill. I know thepeople, I know the products or services.
(11:52):
Let me hit the ground runningand just try to keep the wheels on
this bus. And so they focus ontheir team. They focus on, you know,
those individuals, what theyneed to do and learn. And it's like,
I'll get to the peers later.
Yeah.
And it, it's you then, youknow, you're. You're sitting at month
three or month six, somewherein that range. You're trying to get
an idea accepted. And thesepeople are like, we. We don't even
(12:13):
know you yet. Right.
Like, yeah, it's so true.Right. And that's, that's why I mentioned
this kind of stakeholderingand just understanding that that
is also the work. Who are yourstakeholders? Who are you going to,
you know, work with? And itactually kind of brings me, I guess,
to my second of the top five,which is, you know, are you building
your team and leveraging yourresources? So as leaders, it's not
(12:36):
just about sheer, you know,Herculean strength and getting things
done. It is saying, I can't doeverything anymore and actually you
shouldn't. In my coaching, Iso often have leaders say to me,
oh, you know, I just, I can'tdo that. I don't have time. And we'll
talk about the fact that it'snot can't. It's not can or can't,
(12:56):
it's should you even be doingthat work? Right.
I love that.
You know, it's almost like ifit's not about saying, I'm a diva
and I'm not going to do a taskthat's below me, but it understanding
that you are a corporatecompany resource that is paid very
differently from some otherresources and there are certain things
(13:17):
that other resources can andshould pick up from your plate and
there are things that only youcan do. Now as the leader, you can't
outsource certain things. Sogetting those, if you want to call
it a task list correct in yourmind and then leveraging the people
around you to make sure thatyou're getting work done. And you
know, my background from acorporate perspective in HR is talent
(13:39):
management and successionplanning and having a really strong
people strategy. And, youknow, if we're not delegating tasks
as leaders, if we're notteaching people and helping them
get the experiences they need,you're never going to go anywhere.
You're not going to move onbecause you have gaps behind you,
right. In your successionplan. I see that all the time. Leaders
(14:01):
that are ready to go to thenext thing and the organization says,
we can't let you go. Right?There's nobody that can fill your
spot, that can feel good for amoment, but that is also not great.
The other thing I tell peopleis if you're a leader, listen, if
you feel like you're thesmartest person in the room or if
(14:21):
you're noticing that you arethe person in the room that is the
only one that has the answer,an alarm bell should be going off
in their mind, right? Becauseyou need to surround yourself with
people that are smarter thanyou, that have their areas of expertise.
You're not the smartestperson. You shouldn't be.
That's a really good point.And it, and this challenge in particular,
I feel, is level agnostic. Ifeel like every level of leader that
(14:44):
I've worked with has thisvery, the same, very, very same challenge,
right. Of having to regularlyscan what is on my plate and asking
the tough question of is thisa thing that I uniquely need to do
where I uniquely Add value.And what am I hanging on to that
(15:05):
somebody else shouldabsolutely do? And then I. How do
you then break some of the bigthings apart as well? Right? Because
you could, you can kind ofmake a mountain out of a molehill
at times, too, and say, well,that has to be me. And it's like
A to Z has to be you. Can youbreak that up some? So I, that's,
It's an interesting challengethat if you can. I, I want to say
(15:26):
if you can figure it outearly, yeah, you're going to be.
You're going to have itfigured out. But no, you have to
re. Figure that out. Everysort of level you, you go.
You really do. And it's, it'sfunny, I swear, for anyone listening,
we did not practice this orprep like, you know, tip number three
or, you know, the third of thetop five list, which is, as a leader,
(15:48):
you need to get really focusedand expect results, but don't get
hung up on the process or howit's done. Right. Because you probably
did get promoted because ofhow good you were at doing something.
You know, a certain job, youbecame an expert in something. But
now we have to let otherpeople sort of run the process and
(16:08):
do the tasks. But as a leader,it's tremendously valuable to talk
the field and to say, this isthe result we're trying to get. This
is the outcome we need. Likeyou said, you're accountable for
A through Z, but I'm notaccountable for, you know, every
little task that gets done andexactly how it gets done. That's
actually how we're buildingthe strength of our teams around
us. So often when leaders willcome to me and say, you know, I'm
(16:32):
struggling, I'm, I'm, I'mburning out, or, gosh, I don't notice
my team elevating, I often askthem, you know, how are you setting
expectations? How are yousaying what the need is, what the
result is? Are you clear onthat? And are you consistently showing
up that way? Because it's verytempting, right? When push comes
(16:53):
to shove, it's like, I gavethis to Kent. I asked him to do this
thing. I wanted it byThursday. It's Wednesday. I'm nervous
it's not coming. You knowwhat? I'm just going to log on. I'm
going to do it myself. Andyou're inconsistent in terms of when
you're diving in the weeds andwhen you're pulling up and looking
out on the horizon, or as theysometimes say, you know, when are
you on the balcony. When areyou on the dance floor? And leader.
(17:14):
As a leader, we want to be upon the balcony as much as possible,
because that's our job, is toscan, to think about the whole system,
to think about the. The wayall the parts work. Right. And the
total outcome, not eachindividual task or outcome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My. My funanalogy I'll throw out there is,
(17:36):
you know, you can't conductthe orchestra, you know, while you're
sitting in one of the chairs. Right.
Oh, true.
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Andwe. We didn't rehearse this. This
is fun because it's like, oh,fun. We're dealing with the same.
We're seeing the same things.
Well, it's your point, right?It's to the earlier point that this
is agnostic of industry orlevel or, you know, these different
nuances. These are like theevergreen challenges of leadership
(17:58):
and the things that makeleaders successful.
Yeah, I think we're on thenumber four. Are we already on number
four?
Yeah, yeah, we are on tonumber four. So number four, I would
say, is to incorporatecompassion. So I often have leaders,
and you mentioned peers as a.As a interesting nuance that happens,
especially as people ascendleadership ranks is, you know, maybe
(18:22):
somebody that you used to workfor, it becomes your peer, and maybe
they work for you one day.Right. And that changes a whole dynamic.
And I often have leaders sayto me, you know, well, I don't. I
want to be understanding andflexible and compassionate. You know,
I don't want to be this, like,hard driver. I want to maintain my
relationships. And there is abalance. It's not always an easy
(18:45):
one to strike, to havecompassion while driving for results.
Because as a leader, that isyour role, right. Is. Is to make
sure that you are gettingresults, and you're getting results
through others. And so makingsure that you're in balance there,
that you're not overly. I'mgonna. I'm. I'm not gonna be clear.
I'm gonna dance around thehard topic. I'm not gonna, you know,
(19:07):
give feedback. I don't wantthis person to get upset with me.
That's. One end of thespectrum is just not caring and,
you know, sort of blazing atrail, and you've got, you know,
a bunch of carnage behind you,and you're not even turning around
to see if anyone's followingyou. So it is finding that balance
of how do I make myselfaccessible? Demonstrate compassion,
(19:29):
literally have compassion, andbe very clear and consistent in the
results that are needed. Imean, that's probably the most kind
thing you can do as a leaderis to be clear and to be consistent.
So, again, that's. That'sanother one of those things. But
knowing that it takes effortto balance that. Right. You have
to be really thoughtful andpurposeful about your leadership
(19:52):
brand. You know, if you wantto be compassionate, and I hope leaders
do, but you also want to beclear and drive results, then you
have to be really purposefulin striking that balance if you want
to be successful.
Yeah. Yeah. You're making methink of both Brene Brown Clear as
kind, as well as Kim Scott,who wrote Radical Candor because
she talked a little bit aboutthis too. Right. And I've seen it
(20:15):
firsthand as a leader myself,as well as with other leaders. Pulling
your punches and not givingthe hard message or feedback that's
needed, you're not actuallybeing that nice.
No.
Right. Like, if you reallythink about it. And I think the one
thing that. I don't know ifshe said it exactly this way, but
the one thing Kim Scott hadsaid, you know, essentially in the
(20:36):
story she tells is like, youmight be the first person to ever
tell someone this feedback,and what. What might you actually
be unlocking for them? Whatfavor might you be doing for them
by drilling in. But to yourpoint, you have to have that compassion.
Right. Which is also. WheneverI've taught feedback to folks, you
should start with why you careand why you care enough to be giving
(20:59):
this feedback. And if youdon't care, that might be another
conversation you need to haveprobably with yourself first in terms
of determining what theconversation you really need to have
with your team.
I mean, it's. It's the onlything that makes the cliche saying
feedback is a gift. Really, agift is if you thought about the
(21:19):
person that you're giving itto. It shouldn't be, oh, Kent made
me really mad. I'm gonna givehim this feedback. It's like, I want
Ken to be successful. Was Iupset in the situation? Maybe. But
I'm watching Kent do somethings that is maybe not gonna set
him up for success. So if Icare enough about Kent, then I'm
gonna give this feedbackbecause I want to see him thrive
(21:41):
and be successful. Right. Notkeep. I just don't believe, fundamentally,
people show up at work andsay, how can I be ineffective today?
Right? I mean, we all go towork and say, I want to. I want to
knock it out of the park. Iwant to be successful. And so, you
know, if we can hold thatmindset, I think that then you know,
you're able to becompassionate and being clear and
(22:01):
consistent. When, when ouremployees or our team have an inconsistent
experience with us, we'reineffective because they're like,
oh, which version of Teresa amI going to get today? It's like that
recipe for disaster, right? Imean, so you want to make sure that
you're compassionate and, youknow, a human being, but that you're
very clear, you know, on theresults and, and that you are invested
(22:24):
in helping someone get thoseresults. Right. And them being successful.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. All right.
On the number five.
Okay. So number five is thatleadership starts with leading yourself.
And this is why that, youknow, you can lead at any level from
any chair in the organization,whether you have, you know, a team
of just yourself or a team ofa thousand people globally. Right.
(22:49):
And so it really is aboutthose leaders that develop self awareness
and they address theirinternal barriers. Those are the
leaders that are mostsuccessful. They're the ones that
are in tune with their growthspots. Right? They're blind spots.
They're growth edges. They'rethe ones that are humble enough to
(23:10):
say, I need some help. I needsome support. I don't know how to
do this yet. I'm, I'mlearning. And this, this kind of
comes full circle to why Iwrote the book that I wrote. So I
wrote a book, it's called Findyou'd Fierce. And it's all about
combating imposter syndrome.And the reason that I was so passionate
(23:31):
about writing this book isthat I had been coaching leaders
internally for years. And asthey were getting into these bigger,
broader roles, you know, youbuild up this trust and in those
quiet moments, they would sortof confide in you. Like Teresa, I
honestly think they might havemade a mistake. I don't think I'm
the right person for thisrole. I think people are going to
(23:54):
find out, like, I don't knoweverything that I'm doing. You know,
I'm kind of faking it till Imake it. And it's really giving me
a lot of anxiety. And what Iwas so surprised by was these were
the high flyers, these werethe top talents. They were the people
that absolutely should be inthese roles. And I started getting
curious. Actually, this waslike probably 12 or 13 years ago.
(24:17):
I started doing research like,can. Can really successful people
suddenly forget everythingthey've known? Can. You know, like
I was. It was just felt likesuch a phenomenon of what was happening.
Like these were such talentedpeople, but they were really second
guessing themselves. And theironic thing is they were starting
to sabotage themselves. Sothey would, you know, to combat these
(24:39):
feelings that they had, theywould start overworking and overanalyzing
and micromanaging their teams.And, you know, and then lo and behold,
the organization wouldquestion, like, wait a minute, maybe
we made a mistake. You know,this person was fantastic last year,
and now we put them into thisbigger role and they're exhibiting
some strange behaviors. Right?And I found that there was this term.
(25:01):
I mean, we're very familiarwith the term imposter syndrome now,
but 10, 15 years ago, it wasreally not that common. We weren't
talking about it a lot. And astheory, imposter syndrome has only
been around since like thelate 70s. And so as it gained more
awareness and more, you know,acceptance that it's a real thing,
it's not just something thatlike weak people feel, I would share
(25:25):
this with the people I wascoaching. You know, I'd say, well,
there's this thing, it'scalled imposter syndrome. And I'm
wondering, you know, I'm justcurious, does any of this resonate?
And I would share with people,you know, how it shows up and what
it looks like. And there'dusually be this long pause, and then
they'd say, oh, my gosh, okay,I'm not the only one that feels this
way. I didn't want to tellanyone, like, okay, it's normal to
(25:47):
feel this way. And thenimmediately they would say, what
do I do about it, Teresa? Andthat's where it got dicey. Right?
You know, because 10, 15 yearsago, there wasn't much out there.
The advice was, fake it tillyou make it.
Right?
That is horrible advice fromimposter syndrome standpoint. I mean,
you can fake it till you makeit and get through a meeting, you
know, maybe get through aquick presentation, but if you really
(26:11):
want to fight impostersyndrome, you have to do the work
on yourself, right? The. Sothat's point number five. Whether
it's imposter syndrome or justdeveloping your own self awareness
of any internal limitingbeliefs that you might have is to
do the work on yourself andmake sure that you're setting yourself
up for success and you're notjust sort of fumbling through it.
(26:32):
Right. And just making it upas you go.
Yeah. One thing I'm verycurious about is, is part of it,
because I have just had KevinWieldy on, and we were talking, we
were talking aboutcoachability, right? You know, the
higher you go on anorganization, the lonelier it gets.
And that the typical Approachis, you know, for leaders, if you're
(26:56):
not sort of given thisencouragement or you don't have the
self awareness or the drive,you know, for learning, the tendency
is to stop seeking feedback.Right. And to, you know, stop, I
should know. I should, Ishould have it together. Which I
imagine is a big part of, orat least a part of imposter syndrome.
(27:18):
But yeah, I'd love to. Youknow, what are some of the other
things people can be on thelookout for or do to combat this?
Yeah, so just to kind of helpbreak this down a little bit in the
book, the way I arrange thecontent in the book is something
I call a framework, and it hasan acronym in the middle. It's F
R A I M. So AIM is awareness,interruption and momentum. So the
(27:41):
first thing is awareness. It'sself awareness, but it's also awareness
of what is imposter syndrome.Why do we experience it? How does
it show up for us? Because itcan be very subtle. It doesn't show
up with a big banner. That'slike imposter syndrome, right. It
shows up in these more sneakyways, like I get promoted and then
all of a sudden I believe thatI don't belong here, or I get a bigger
(28:05):
team and I start diving downin the weeds and overanalyzing their
work results, perfectionismtendencies start coming out. So it's
the awareness piece is justknowing what's happening and noticing
that it's happening. Once youknow something, you can't unknow
it. And so once once you seesomething, you can't unsee it. And
(28:26):
that's a big part of thisjourney with imposter syndrome is
just tapping into and saying,oh, okay, this is happening. It's
normal. This is what'striggering me. And now I can move
into some kind of action andsay, what do I want to do about it?
And then it's sort of twoprongs from there. Interruption are
quick things that you can doin the moment to kind of flip the
(28:48):
script, right? So if younotice yourself, the little voice,
a little devil on yourshoulder saying, you know, they're
gonna figure you out. They'regonna figure out that you're not
that smart and you don't knowwhat you're talking about. And so
then you start noticing thatyou don't speak up in meetings or
you're over preparing forthings, right? You're overanalyzing
and overthinking. We have tojust like stopping the flow of water,
(29:10):
we have to interrupt thosethoughts. So in the moment if you
hear a voice in your head thatsays, oh, gosh, I'm just really lucky,
you know, I got here. I don'teven know how I landed in this role.
It's like, pause. That wouldbe a negative belief or a limiting
belief. Instead, reframe thatthought and say, well, what else
might be possible? Maybe I waspromoted because I have a lot that
(29:35):
I can contribute, or maybe Ideserve to be here. It shows up in
other ways too, though. So,like, one common way that I'll see
it is you get a compliment ona presentation. Ken, nice job on
that presentation. Really likethe way you framed that up and you
go, oh, no, no, no, it was. Itwas nothing. And also, I kind of
blew it. And. Right. You know,we, like, do this negative self talk.
(29:57):
Notice that you're doing it,pause for a moment, say, thank you,
I appreciate that. Right. Andthen it's like in your brain, you
actually have to re flip thescript and say, well, what else is.
Maybe it was just easy for youbecause it's your superpower. I mean,
when someone compliments youand says, great job, you know, that
was masterful. Why do weminimize it? Why do we give our power
(30:21):
away? It might be easy foryou. Chances are it wasn't. Chances
are you worked really hard.But even if it did come natural to
you, it's a gift. It'ssomething that is valuable and so
owning that. So first you haveto notice that you're minimizing
it. Second, you have toreframe and kind of flip the script.
Those are quick in the momentthings. My favorite interruption
(30:43):
question, when we are onsomething that I call the rumination
wheel of awfulization, which is.
I like that.
Yeah, this is. I've done itmyself. You know, you give a presentation,
you realize you went long, youtalk too fast, maybe you missed a
couple of your data points,you stumbled on your words, nothing
(31:04):
broke, nothing bad happened.But you know that it wasn't exactly
how you wanted it. And youstart ruminating and playing it over
in your head, what would youdo differently? And, oh, I wish this
would have happened, or I wishthat would have happened. And our
brain is not kind to us inthat moment, and we actually start
thinking, oh, everybodynoticed. Now they think, I'm an idiot.
(31:24):
You know, I'm going to getremoved out of this job. I mean,
the thoughts that can pop intoour head, it is truly an awfulization
of a situation. We always.People laugh when I say that, but
it's. It's so true. Right? Ifwe Leave our brain on its own. I
mean, it is not always kind.And so you have to stop it and say,
okay, I'm getting off thiswheel of awfulization. I'm going
(31:46):
to stop on this. My favoritequestion to interrupt the thought
is to say, what if that's nottrue? What if it's not true that
everyone noticed? What'sanother possibility? Maybe no one
noticed. Maybe they were allinto their own thoughts. Right. You
know, maybe so. So the pointisn't to be Pollyanna or ignore our
(32:09):
areas for improvement. It isto say, if you're on one end of the
spectrum and you're in thespiral of awfulizing, it's to force
yourself all the way to theother end of the spectrum for just
a moment. And what's going tohappen is you're going to end up
somewhere in the middle, whichis much more accurate. It's a much
clearer picture of yourself,and we can actually do something
with that. Right. So that's abig part of it. In terms of momentum.
(32:33):
I mean, this would probably beanother podcast if you ever wanted
to talk about.
I was just. I was just sayingwe're going to have to. We're going
to have to dedicate a wholeother podcast.
Exactly. But, you know, theMomentum section is the deeper work.
This is where you're doingthings like really understanding
your strengths, understandingyour value, knowing what your brand
is as a leader and what youaspire to be, and then tuning into
(32:58):
it and structuring your time,structuring your mindset around that
model and achieving thesuccess. And that's setting yourself
up with things like a personalboard of directors. Right. Mentors,
sponsors, which is thedifference between mentors, sponsors.
Right. And so just. Just sortof surrounding yourself with. With
(33:18):
the people and the resourcesthat will set yourself up for success.
So the Mom Momentum section ofthe book, I had someone say, I was
reading the book. It's areally fast read. It was, you know,
really fun. There's 40different exercises you can do if
you want to try differentthings. And they got to the Momentum
section, and they said, Ithought I was just gonna rock it
right through. And they said,I just completely slowed down. Like,
(33:40):
each of the exercises wasreally deep. And it's taking me a
long time to get throughsection three of the book. And I'm
like, that's how we buildmomentum. Right? How we build it.
We do the deep work workbecause it's a. It's an investment
in yourself that you need todo, not just for Imposter Syndrome,
but For so many other things,which, you know, on point number
five of the most successfulleaders, they're doing the deep work
(34:03):
on themselves. Right. Andthey're. They're seeing. That is
the part of work of leadershipis to work on ourselves, to be our
best version of ourselves.
So that's.
That's kind of my. My top five.
I like it.
Most successful leaders do.
That's great. And thanks fordiving into imposter syndrome a little
bit. I think I kind of forcedus sort of neatly into the next section
(34:26):
with that one, which is ouradvice section of the podcast. I
had a thought before I wentthere, though, which is, I think,
another thing, especially. Idon't know how deeply this ties into
imposter syndrome, but I dofind that leaders and teams don't
spend nearly as much timecelebrating successes and things
(34:49):
that went well and aninordinate amount of time dwelling
on what. What didn't go well.Like the. The amount of time, like
wins don't buoy people nearlyas long or for nearly as much time
as, like, something thatdidn't go as well will. Will take
them down a notch. Right. Fora longer amount of time. So that's
(35:12):
another thing I know I. I tryto be better at personally is, you
know, hanging on to beingintentional about celebrating things
that went well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so true. And it. It isthe. That's the tapping into our
superpowers. Right. And. Andactually pausing and noticing, which
ties into one of the pointsthat I made. Right. Is. Is be super
(35:34):
aware and notice that. Thatwe're actually good at a lot of things.
Our teams are good at things,and it's okay to celebrate other
people who are good at thingsthat you're not good at. And that
doesn't make you less than. Itmeans you're a strong team. Right.
You can complement each other,but we have to be really aware and
notice if things aretriggering us or notice if, you know,
(35:54):
it's forcing us to show up acertain way. So. Yeah, yeah, that's.
It's really key. Yeah.
Well, so as if you haven'tgiven us all kinds of advice already,
let me dive into our advicesection, which is, first, some advice
for leaders out there who arelistening. Something, you know, what
can they take from this andput into practice right away?
(36:16):
Yeah. I think the. Thisprinciple of nothing changes if nothing
changes. And this isn't tosay, like, if you're listening and
you're a leader, everythingneeds to change, but it is saying,
if we want different outcomes,we have to do different things. And
a lot of times, you know, wesay we want a different outcome,
(36:36):
but we're not actuallyprepared to change. And the thing
about leadership is no one cando it for you. It's not, you know,
you can't outsource it tosomeone. Your teams will know, your
organization will know, right?They'll know if you're phoning it
in. There just isn't. Thereisn't a way to fake leadership. And
so I think it really is aboutgiving yourself the gift of time.
(36:57):
One exercise that I do with,with a lot of my coaching clients
is we do this figurativeclearing the calendar. Because time
is always the excuse, right?Like we're busy, we don't have time.
So what we do is we literallylook at your calendar and we go,
okay, let's just pretend itwas all in a bucket. We're going
to dump it out on the table.Now I want you to look at things
(37:19):
and say, what are the absolutenon negotiables that are core and
primary to your role? Youknow, like the. Is it covey that
does the big rocks, mediumrocks, and the sand? You know, when
you feel.
I don't remember.
Yeah, it's. It's like highlyeffective. Habits of highly effective.
Okay, but it's a similarconcept, but we do it with the calendar.
(37:41):
And I say pretend that, youknow, don't actually go cancel all
your meetings, but justpretend for a moment you're going
to clear your calendar. Andnow I want you to think about your
role, the impact you need tohave your stakeholders, right? Get
really clear on all of thosethings. What do you need to go do?
And then the challenge issomething has to earn its spot back
(38:01):
on your calendar. So if, ifthere's meetings that you're being
invited to that you're like, Idon't even know why I'm there. I
don't. I don't know what roleI need to play. Sounds like it hasn't
earned a spot on the calendaryet. Now, if it's the CEO asking
you to come to a meeting, justgo, don't question it. But, you know,
I mean, it's. As a leader, wehave to be diligent with that. It's
our time. And that is the mostprecious commodity that we have.
(38:26):
Because if we want more timeto be thoughtful, to think and reflect
and be purposeful, then yougotta make time. Because we don't
get any more minutes in theday. No matter how, no matter what
title you have, we all get thesame 24 hours in a Day. So it's giving
yourself the gift of timebecause nothing will change if nothing
changes.
I love that.
The other thing I would sayfor leaders, and this is not a sales
(38:49):
pitch for me per se, it's tosay if you can and your organization
will support you, I highlyrecommend getting a coach. Yeah,
I, I'm a coach. I have acoach. The reason is because I'm
too close to my own stuff. Weall are too close to our own stuff.
So find someone that you clickwith that will help you with accountability
(39:10):
and that'll help you hold upthe mirror and see where your strengths
are and see where you haveopportunities. I mean, that's one
of the biggest things youcould do for yourself.
Yeah. I also find thatcoaching is one of very few things
that. Where leaders givethemselves permission to pause the
daily grind and attend tothemselves. Right. There's very few
(39:32):
things where they are like,oh, I like, this is not work. I'm
going to stop and think I'mgiving myself permission to do so.
So just looking at the time, Iwant to move us to. So another big
part of our, my listener base,our listener base here is I just
say supporters of leaders.Right. So that's HR talent, lead
leadership development, headsof hr, maybe even senior leaders.
(39:52):
Right. But the focus is onfolks who are supporting other leaders.
So what's your advice for them?
Yeah, I mean, I would say it'sprobably two things, right? One,
play the role that you'rethere to play. And what I mean by
that is let's take HR leaders.The work of leadership can't be outsourced
to hr. So HR can supportleaders, they can be a sounding board,
(40:19):
they can be a strategicpartner, but they can't do it for
the leader. And I think that'sa trap that a lot of HR leaders can
find themselves in or kind of,you know, fall into a little bit
like, I want to help and Imean, I'll just pick on myself for
a moment. When I was incorporate, I had this thing called
helium hand. If someone wasstruggling, I would raise my hand.
(40:39):
I can help. I can help. I canhelp, help. And you know, it's like
a strength overused. I alwayswanted to be helpful, but actually
staying in my lane and being apartner and bringing my expertise
but not crossing the line ofdoing it for them. That's the key,
right? For the most successfulsupport, quote, unquote, support
people who are playing a partof leaders is allow them to do their
(41:03):
role and you play your role.So I think that's a really, really
important part of it. Theother thing that I would just say
is enabling leaders is aninteresting balance because we want
to remove any roadblocks thatare in the way. Like a system is,
you know, cumbersome or aprocess doesn't work. Like let's
fix that and let's educateleaders and help them to be more
(41:27):
successful in using thesystems and the tools, but again,
stopping short of doing it forthem. So one of the principles that
I tend to aspire to is thatthis type of work should be leader
led, but HR enabled. Sowhether it's leadership development,
whether it's, you know, yourtalent strategy, it doesn't matter
(41:47):
if you're the chro and yousort of own the people strategy.
You might own the strategy,but you don't own the people. And
so how do we make sure thatwe're setting ourselves up to be
that strong partner andallowing it to be leader led? Right.
And.
Interestingly, I think there'sa parallel to something we were talking
about earlier here. Right.Which is what is the value that you
(42:09):
uniquely add? Right. So we'resaying that to leaders. Maybe we
need to say that to, you know,ourselves, those of us who are, you
know, in hr. Is, is thissomething where I'm uniquely adding
value that the leader can't door am I attempting to make myself
indispensable through justticking more boxes too?
Absolutely.
(42:30):
I think it's the same, sametrap as a leader's falling into.
Right. With, with their own,their own people. Awesome. Well,
let me land this plane here,which is, I think the third piece
is how to, you know, how canpeople get a hold of you if they
want more Teresa Sandy intheir lives? Where can they find
you? Where can they find your book?
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So youcan go to my website, teresasandy.com
(42:53):
and that's probably your firststop. You can find all kinds of things
there, including, you know,more about consulting services, coaching
services. You can order thebook there. My book is also on Amazon,
it's on Audible. You know,there's, there's all kinds of different
things that you can, you canfind the resource on all of the major
book retailers and then, yeah,LinkedIn is probably my jam right
(43:15):
now. I'm, I'm kind of out onLinkedIn and I share a lot of insights
there. I post several times aweek. So if some of the stuff that
we talked about here today wasuseful, I try to break it down into
little bite sized nuggets, youknow, throughout, throughout the
week. And so you can alwaysfollow me there. Yeah. Love to grow
my. Grow my network that way.
(43:35):
Great. Well, I'll make sure Iput all those links in the show notes.
That brings us to the end ofour show today. Teresa, thank you
for being here. This was avery fun conversation, and I'm glad
I got to know you a little bitbetter today as well. So thank you
so much, so much. I reallyappreciate you coming on the show.
Thanks. It was great to behere, Kent.
All right, that brings us tothe end of our episode. Thanks for
(43:57):
listening. I'd encourage youto head on over to my website, Kent
Coach, and start aconversation with me there or check
out my promotion playbook atKent Coates Playbook. Before you
go on with your day, I askthat you please take a moment to
leave a rating and a reviewwherever you listen to podcasts.
Five stars. That helps putthis podcast in front of more eyes
and years. Until next time,take it easy.
Leadership starts with leadingyourself. And this is why we say
that you can lead at anylevel, from any chair in the organization,
whether you have a team ofjust yourself or a team of a thousand
people globally. Right? And soit really is about those leaders
that develop self awareness.Those are the leaders that are most
(00:24):
successful. They're the onesthat are are in tune with their growth
spots, right? Their blindspots, their growth edges.
Hi there and welcome to theStep Up Expert Voices for Leadership
Growth. I'm your host, KentKnievel. Every week I talk to experts
who focus on helping leadersstep up their leadership game. If
(00:45):
you're new to the show, thenon whatever platform you're using,
I encourage you to subscribeso you never miss an episode. One
last thing. As a leadershipdevelopment consultant and executive
coach, I have a particularinterest in supporting, supporting
recent internally promotedleaders. If that's you, or if you
support a leader who has beenrecently promoted, I encourage you
to visit my website at KentCoach Playbook and download a free
(01:06):
copy of my 90 day blueprintfilled with practical advice for
you or the leader you supportin hitting the ground running and
truly stepping up to their newleadership level. Without further
ado, on with the show. Welcomeeveryone. We are talking about some
tips to unlock leadershipsuccess today. And with me for this
conversation is Teresa Sandy,CEO and founder of Mirror Mirror
(01:32):
Strategies. Teresa is anexecutive coach, talent and leadership
consultant, author and keynotespeaker. I've known her for a short
time through Shout Out SciTrain, a company we both have done
some work with. Super happy tohave you here today, Teresa. Welcome
to the podcast.
Thanks so much, Kent. It'sgreat to be here.
Thank you. Well, you know, I'dlove to give each guest the opportunity
(01:56):
to tell their own story. So Iwould love for you to give us, you
know, your career journey,your career arc. What led you eventually
into what you're doing today.
Yeah, definitely. So I wouldsay my career was a pretty traditional
one from the standpoint of,you know, an HR career as far as
that goes. I spent most of mytime in pretty large organizations,
(02:18):
Fortune 100 size global. Weworked together at the same, not
at the same time, but togetherat Cargill. That was one of the companies
that, that I had the goodfortune of working for. But I also
worked for intel and CapitalOne, and then I ended my corporate
career after about 26 years atUnitedHealth Group. So Fortune 4
(02:41):
at that time. So like I said,mostly larger organizations, Complicated,
Complex, Matrix Global, etcetera. And sometimes people say,
well, what was the tie rightyou know, you spent your career in
all these differentindustries. Agriculture, high tech,
manufacturing, insurance.Right. Financial services. And, and
(03:01):
I always say it's. It'speople. Right? People. And we're
all being asked to rise to theoccasion and lots of things are changing.
We're all living it. And whatI see and what I always say is leaders
have to lead. They have to begood at leading. And that's agnostic
of industry or what levelyou're at, you know, in leadership
(03:22):
or maybe even if you're anindividual contributor. Right. We're
still leading ourselves,leading projects. So, yeah, I spent,
like I said, about 26 yearsin, in that corporate setting. And
two things started to coincideabout five years ago. One is we were
making all kinds of changes atthe organization that I was at. And
(03:42):
the role that I was beingmoved into was okay. I mean, it was,
you know, would have been agreat role, would have been interesting.
But it was also kind of feltlike more of the same, you know,
kind of wanted a newchallenge, wanted to do something
different. And then the otherthing that was happening was that
I had a book that I hadwritten that was about to come out
(04:03):
called Find your Fierce. We'regoing to talk a little bit about
that. And it just felt likesuch a good intersection. And I had
always wanted to take a bet onmyself and go out into the consulting
and executive coaching world.And so I did it. So at the end of
2020, I founded Mirror MirrorStrategies and left corporate America
after just a great career. Andthe last five years have been, you
(04:27):
know, just a ton of fun. So,you know, there's definitely things
that I've seen that come upagain, like I said, agnostic of industry,
agnostic of level that makeleaders successful. So for today,
I kind of did a top fivethings that most successful leaders
are focusing on that I thoughtwould be helpful to share with your
audience.
Nice. Yeah. Well, and beforewe get into that, your variety in
(04:51):
your background from your timein HR is super interesting. Most
of the variety that I had inmy background was from my early consulting
days because like nobody, Istarted in consulting and then somehow
all of my HR experience fellsomewhere on the food supply chain
in some way, shape or form byjust happenstance. So I love all
(05:14):
the variety, you know, thatyou bring to the table because I
think that variety, you get tosee the different challenges. Well,
the similar challenges,frankly, that people are experiencing
at different places. Right.And I think leaders, we all kind
of suffer from terminaluniqueness. Right. And it's when
you get to kind of hop fromplace to place. You get to see. Well,
(05:35):
yeah, there's some uniqueness,but there's a lot of commonality,
especially when you look atsomething as maybe esoteric as. And
important as leadership. True.
It's so true. And the trap, Ithink, that people fall into is.
Is believing that I'm specialor this circumstance is special,
and it's, you know, just extrahard. It is hard. I mean, that's
(05:57):
an acknowledgement, but it'snot often that unique. And if we
get into that mindset, we cankind of get stuck into, like a victim
mentality instead of a growthmindset, a problem solving, you know,
fresh ideas, freshperspective. And so that's something
else I should probably saymaybe just a fun fact about me or
a little bit insight me in theway that I like to work. I named
(06:19):
my company Mirror MirrorStrategies because I believe that
one of the things mysuperpower is to hold up the mirror
with the clients that I'mworking with and not to hold up the
mirror and say, oh, look atall these things you're doing wrong.
A lot of times it's to helpthem see what they're doing. Right.
To help them see what theirsuperpowers are and tap into that.
Right. You know, during COVIDespecially, so many leaders said,
(06:42):
I don't know what to do inthese unprecedented times. And the
majority of the work that Idid with leaders was to actually
say, we do know what to do.People need clear communications.
They need connection. Theyneed to know that someone cares.
We always needed that. It justgot, you know, the need for it got
really elevated and reallyheightened during COVID but it was
(07:02):
helping leaders know thatthey're naturally creative, resourceful,
and whole, which is a coachingprinciple. Pull. And the more that
we can help leaders do thatand tap into their greatness, the
stronger they are as leaders.So that's big passion.
Well, and I know you. Youthought through five sort of big
themes that you've sort ofseen in your career in terms of sort
(07:24):
of tips for unlocking thatgreatness. So let's. Let's dive in.
Let's. What's the first oneyou wanted to talk about?
Yeah, so one of the firstones. This is maybe relevant especially
for leaders that are on thatarc of their career, and maybe they're
moving into some of theirfirst kind of bigger leadership roles
or bigger challenges thatmaybe they haven't seen before. And
this is what I always call it.The assignment has changed. So it's
(07:48):
classic, you know, what gotyou Here won't get you there. And
noticing the fact that thereason you were selected, the reason
you stood out, the reason yougot noticed and, you know, tapped
on the shoulder for thisbigger role, is that you had a high
capacity for work, you gotresults, great outputs, and now that
you're in these more seniorleadership positions, the work of
(08:10):
leadership is different. It'snot just, you know, how many tasks
can I get off my checklist forthe day? You know, how hard can I
work? How many hours can I putin? Leaders put a lot of time and
energy and hours in, don't getme wrong. But this is about understanding
that fundamentally theassignment has changed and now you're
(08:32):
required to be strategic, tobe thoughtful. The work of leadership
is to pause and say, let methink about that. You know, what
is it that I want to respondto this, this difference of responding
versus reacting. And if wewant to be a thoughtful, responding
leader, then we need time andwe need focus on being thoughtful.
(08:56):
It's no longer about just, youknow, having a huge work capacity
and being able to crank outsome results. It's also, you know,
I don't know if anyone pullsyou aside and says, hey, a big part
of your role now is managingall these different stakeholders.
Everybody wants a piece ofyou, right? Everybody has their thing
that they need from you. Andif leaders don't know how to manage
(09:18):
those stakeholders, you know,that's a big part of success. It's
a big part of assignment. It'stempting to get pulled into the squeakiest
wheel, right? Or, you know, asI say, you get picked off one by
one because you've got a lotof people that want a lot of your
time and, and feel like youare excess accessible. And so it's
finding that balance, but justknowing that the assignments changed.
(09:40):
So that's.
Yeah. There's three thingsI'll comment on from my own observation
too, that I think fit innicely here. One is, I don't think
that we often congratulatesomeone and tell them the story of.
Because I've seen this andheard this so many times when we're
talking about who to place inthis role, I hear them say, you know,
let's put Teresa in that role.And, and you hear this story kind
(10:03):
of in that back roomconversation of like, how quickly
Teresa adapted and changechanged in the previous assignment
they gave her. Right? And sowe don't remind people of that when
we promote them too, to say,hey, part of the reason we promoted
you is we've seen that agilitythat you had to adapt and learn the
new thing. We need you to dothat again. Right. Not necessarily
(10:24):
the new role. Right. Or the old.
The old role. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
It's so true. And, you know, Imean, this could be a whole nother
podcast. Right. But, but jobdescriptions are written on a list
of tasks. They're not writtenabout a list of outcomes. You know,
and, and, but, but really,that's what we' evaluated on, especially
at leadership levels. They'renot necessarily looking at what you
did on a Tuesday, on aWednesday, on a Thursday. They're
(10:46):
looking at the macro. How welldid you lead? How well did you create
followership? How well did youinspire and influence? And, you know,
there's maybe a bullet or twoon the job description about that
in leadership, but really theyardstick people are using is, you
know, while we're leading and,and, you know, behavioral things.
Yeah. So there's such amindset shift there, which is the
(11:09):
second thing I was going tosay, which is kind of recalibrating
from thinking about your ownproductivity to what is the team
producing. Right. It's notabout. I don't see senior leaders
patting junior leaders on theshoulder for the things that they
personally drove over thefinish line necessarily. Right. And
(11:31):
it's more about what is thatwhole team producing. You said one
other, one other thing, whichwas about peers. Right. And I see
a lot of leaders neglect thatwith great intention early on. Right.
It's like, let me hit. I'vebeen promoted because I, you know,
showed great skill. I know thepeople, I know the products or services.
(11:52):
Let me hit the ground runningand just try to keep the wheels on
this bus. And so they focus ontheir team. They focus on, you know,
those individuals, what theyneed to do and learn. And it's like,
I'll get to the peers later.
Yeah.
And it, it's you then, youknow, you're. You're sitting at month
three or month six, somewherein that range. You're trying to get
an idea accepted. And thesepeople are like, we. We don't even
(12:13):
know you yet. Right.
Like, yeah, it's so true.Right. And that's, that's why I mentioned
this kind of stakeholderingand just understanding that that
is also the work. Who are yourstakeholders? Who are you going to,
you know, work with? And itactually kind of brings me, I guess,
to my second of the top five,which is, you know, are you building
your team and leveraging yourresources? So as leaders, it's not
(12:36):
just about sheer, you know,Herculean strength and getting things
done. It is saying, I can't doeverything anymore and actually you
shouldn't. In my coaching, Iso often have leaders say to me,
oh, you know, I just, I can'tdo that. I don't have time. And we'll
talk about the fact that it'snot can't. It's not can or can't,
(12:56):
it's should you even be doingthat work? Right.
I love that.
You know, it's almost like ifit's not about saying, I'm a diva
and I'm not going to do a taskthat's below me, but it understanding
that you are a corporatecompany resource that is paid very
differently from some otherresources and there are certain things
(13:17):
that other resources can andshould pick up from your plate and
there are things that only youcan do. Now as the leader, you can't
outsource certain things. Sogetting those, if you want to call
it a task list correct in yourmind and then leveraging the people
around you to make sure thatyou're getting work done. And you
know, my background from acorporate perspective in HR is talent
(13:39):
management and successionplanning and having a really strong
people strategy. And, youknow, if we're not delegating tasks
as leaders, if we're notteaching people and helping them
get the experiences they need,you're never going to go anywhere.
You're not going to move onbecause you have gaps behind you,
right. In your successionplan. I see that all the time. Leaders
(14:01):
that are ready to go to thenext thing and the organization says,
we can't let you go. Right?There's nobody that can fill your
spot, that can feel good for amoment, but that is also not great.
The other thing I tell peopleis if you're a leader, listen, if
you feel like you're thesmartest person in the room or if
(14:21):
you're noticing that you arethe person in the room that is the
only one that has the answer,an alarm bell should be going off
in their mind, right? Becauseyou need to surround yourself with
people that are smarter thanyou, that have their areas of expertise.
You're not the smartestperson. You shouldn't be.
That's a really good point.And it, and this challenge in particular,
I feel, is level agnostic. Ifeel like every level of leader that
(14:44):
I've worked with has thisvery, the same, very, very same challenge,
right. Of having to regularlyscan what is on my plate and asking
the tough question of is thisa thing that I uniquely need to do
where I uniquely Add value.And what am I hanging on to that
(15:05):
somebody else shouldabsolutely do? And then I. How do
you then break some of the bigthings apart as well? Right? Because
you could, you can kind ofmake a mountain out of a molehill
at times, too, and say, well,that has to be me. And it's like
A to Z has to be you. Can youbreak that up some? So I, that's,
It's an interesting challengethat if you can. I, I want to say
(15:26):
if you can figure it outearly, yeah, you're going to be.
You're going to have itfigured out. But no, you have to
re. Figure that out. Everysort of level you, you go.
You really do. And it's, it'sfunny, I swear, for anyone listening,
we did not practice this orprep like, you know, tip number three
or, you know, the third of thetop five list, which is, as a leader,
(15:48):
you need to get really focusedand expect results, but don't get
hung up on the process or howit's done. Right. Because you probably
did get promoted because ofhow good you were at doing something.
You know, a certain job, youbecame an expert in something. But
now we have to let otherpeople sort of run the process and
(16:08):
do the tasks. But as a leader,it's tremendously valuable to talk
the field and to say, this isthe result we're trying to get. This
is the outcome we need. Likeyou said, you're accountable for
A through Z, but I'm notaccountable for, you know, every
little task that gets done andexactly how it gets done. That's
actually how we're buildingthe strength of our teams around
us. So often when leaders willcome to me and say, you know, I'm
(16:32):
struggling, I'm, I'm, I'mburning out, or, gosh, I don't notice
my team elevating, I often askthem, you know, how are you setting
expectations? How are yousaying what the need is, what the
result is? Are you clear onthat? And are you consistently showing
up that way? Because it's verytempting, right? When push comes
(16:53):
to shove, it's like, I gavethis to Kent. I asked him to do this
thing. I wanted it byThursday. It's Wednesday. I'm nervous
it's not coming. You knowwhat? I'm just going to log on. I'm
going to do it myself. Andyou're inconsistent in terms of when
you're diving in the weeds andwhen you're pulling up and looking
out on the horizon, or as theysometimes say, you know, when are
you on the balcony. When areyou on the dance floor? And leader.
(17:14):
As a leader, we want to be upon the balcony as much as possible,
because that's our job, is toscan, to think about the whole system,
to think about the. The wayall the parts work. Right. And the
total outcome, not eachindividual task or outcome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My. My funanalogy I'll throw out there is,
(17:36):
you know, you can't conductthe orchestra, you know, while you're
sitting in one of the chairs. Right.
Oh, true.
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Andwe. We didn't rehearse this. This
is fun because it's like, oh,fun. We're dealing with the same.
We're seeing the same things.
Well, it's your point, right?It's to the earlier point that this
is agnostic of industry orlevel or, you know, these different
nuances. These are like theevergreen challenges of leadership
(17:58):
and the things that makeleaders successful.
Yeah, I think we're on thenumber four. Are we already on number
four?
Yeah, yeah, we are on tonumber four. So number four, I would
say, is to incorporatecompassion. So I often have leaders,
and you mentioned peers as a.As a interesting nuance that happens,
especially as people ascendleadership ranks is, you know, maybe
(18:22):
somebody that you used to workfor, it becomes your peer, and maybe
they work for you one day.Right. And that changes a whole dynamic.
And I often have leaders sayto me, you know, well, I don't. I
want to be understanding andflexible and compassionate. You know,
I don't want to be this, like,hard driver. I want to maintain my
relationships. And there is abalance. It's not always an easy
(18:45):
one to strike, to havecompassion while driving for results.
Because as a leader, that isyour role, right. Is. Is to make
sure that you are gettingresults, and you're getting results
through others. And so makingsure that you're in balance there,
that you're not overly. I'mgonna. I'm. I'm not gonna be clear.
I'm gonna dance around thehard topic. I'm not gonna, you know,
(19:07):
give feedback. I don't wantthis person to get upset with me.
That's. One end of thespectrum is just not caring and,
you know, sort of blazing atrail, and you've got, you know,
a bunch of carnage behind you,and you're not even turning around
to see if anyone's followingyou. So it is finding that balance
of how do I make myselfaccessible? Demonstrate compassion,
(19:29):
literally have compassion, andbe very clear and consistent in the
results that are needed. Imean, that's probably the most kind
thing you can do as a leaderis to be clear and to be consistent.
So, again, that's. That'sanother one of those things. But
knowing that it takes effortto balance that. Right. You have
to be really thoughtful andpurposeful about your leadership
(19:52):
brand. You know, if you wantto be compassionate, and I hope leaders
do, but you also want to beclear and drive results, then you
have to be really purposefulin striking that balance if you want
to be successful.
Yeah. Yeah. You're making methink of both Brene Brown Clear as
kind, as well as Kim Scott,who wrote Radical Candor because
she talked a little bit aboutthis too. Right. And I've seen it
(20:15):
firsthand as a leader myself,as well as with other leaders. Pulling
your punches and not givingthe hard message or feedback that's
needed, you're not actuallybeing that nice.
No.
Right. Like, if you reallythink about it. And I think the one
thing that. I don't know ifshe said it exactly this way, but
the one thing Kim Scott hadsaid, you know, essentially in the
(20:36):
story she tells is like, youmight be the first person to ever
tell someone this feedback,and what. What might you actually
be unlocking for them? Whatfavor might you be doing for them
by drilling in. But to yourpoint, you have to have that compassion.
Right. Which is also. WheneverI've taught feedback to folks, you
should start with why you careand why you care enough to be giving
(20:59):
this feedback. And if youdon't care, that might be another
conversation you need to haveprobably with yourself first in terms
of determining what theconversation you really need to have
with your team.
I mean, it's. It's the onlything that makes the cliche saying
feedback is a gift. Really, agift is if you thought about the
(21:19):
person that you're giving itto. It shouldn't be, oh, Kent made
me really mad. I'm gonna givehim this feedback. It's like, I want
Ken to be successful. Was Iupset in the situation? Maybe. But
I'm watching Kent do somethings that is maybe not gonna set
him up for success. So if Icare enough about Kent, then I'm
gonna give this feedbackbecause I want to see him thrive
(21:41):
and be successful. Right. Notkeep. I just don't believe, fundamentally,
people show up at work andsay, how can I be ineffective today?
Right? I mean, we all go towork and say, I want to. I want to
knock it out of the park. Iwant to be successful. And so, you
know, if we can hold thatmindset, I think that then you know,
you're able to becompassionate and being clear and
(22:01):
consistent. When, when ouremployees or our team have an inconsistent
experience with us, we'reineffective because they're like,
oh, which version of Teresa amI going to get today? It's like that
recipe for disaster, right? Imean, so you want to make sure that
you're compassionate and, youknow, a human being, but that you're
very clear, you know, on theresults and, and that you are invested
(22:24):
in helping someone get thoseresults. Right. And them being successful.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. All right.
On the number five.
Okay. So number five is thatleadership starts with leading yourself.
And this is why that, youknow, you can lead at any level from
any chair in the organization,whether you have, you know, a team
of just yourself or a team ofa thousand people globally. Right.
(22:49):
And so it really is aboutthose leaders that develop self awareness
and they address theirinternal barriers. Those are the
leaders that are mostsuccessful. They're the ones that
are in tune with their growthspots. Right? They're blind spots.
They're growth edges. They'rethe ones that are humble enough to
(23:10):
say, I need some help. I needsome support. I don't know how to
do this yet. I'm, I'mlearning. And this, this kind of
comes full circle to why Iwrote the book that I wrote. So I
wrote a book, it's called Findyou'd Fierce. And it's all about
combating imposter syndrome.And the reason that I was so passionate
(23:31):
about writing this book isthat I had been coaching leaders
internally for years. And asthey were getting into these bigger,
broader roles, you know, youbuild up this trust and in those
quiet moments, they would sortof confide in you. Like Teresa, I
honestly think they might havemade a mistake. I don't think I'm
the right person for thisrole. I think people are going to
(23:54):
find out, like, I don't knoweverything that I'm doing. You know,
I'm kind of faking it till Imake it. And it's really giving me
a lot of anxiety. And what Iwas so surprised by was these were
the high flyers, these werethe top talents. They were the people
that absolutely should be inthese roles. And I started getting
curious. Actually, this waslike probably 12 or 13 years ago.
(24:17):
I started doing research like,can. Can really successful people
suddenly forget everythingthey've known? Can. You know, like
I was. It was just felt likesuch a phenomenon of what was happening.
Like these were such talentedpeople, but they were really second
guessing themselves. And theironic thing is they were starting
to sabotage themselves. Sothey would, you know, to combat these
(24:39):
feelings that they had, theywould start overworking and overanalyzing
and micromanaging their teams.And, you know, and then lo and behold,
the organization wouldquestion, like, wait a minute, maybe
we made a mistake. You know,this person was fantastic last year,
and now we put them into thisbigger role and they're exhibiting
some strange behaviors. Right?And I found that there was this term.
(25:01):
I mean, we're very familiarwith the term imposter syndrome now,
but 10, 15 years ago, it wasreally not that common. We weren't
talking about it a lot. And astheory, imposter syndrome has only
been around since like thelate 70s. And so as it gained more
awareness and more, you know,acceptance that it's a real thing,
it's not just something thatlike weak people feel, I would share
(25:25):
this with the people I wascoaching. You know, I'd say, well,
there's this thing, it'scalled imposter syndrome. And I'm
wondering, you know, I'm justcurious, does any of this resonate?
And I would share with people,you know, how it shows up and what
it looks like. And there'dusually be this long pause, and then
they'd say, oh, my gosh, okay,I'm not the only one that feels this
way. I didn't want to tellanyone, like, okay, it's normal to
(25:47):
feel this way. And thenimmediately they would say, what
do I do about it, Teresa? Andthat's where it got dicey. Right?
You know, because 10, 15 yearsago, there wasn't much out there.
The advice was, fake it tillyou make it.
Right?
That is horrible advice fromimposter syndrome standpoint. I mean,
you can fake it till you makeit and get through a meeting, you
know, maybe get through aquick presentation, but if you really
(26:11):
want to fight impostersyndrome, you have to do the work
on yourself, right? The. Sothat's point number five. Whether
it's imposter syndrome or justdeveloping your own self awareness
of any internal limitingbeliefs that you might have is to
do the work on yourself andmake sure that you're setting yourself
up for success and you're notjust sort of fumbling through it.
(26:32):
Right. And just making it upas you go.
Yeah. One thing I'm verycurious about is, is part of it,
because I have just had KevinWieldy on, and we were talking, we
were talking aboutcoachability, right? You know, the
higher you go on anorganization, the lonelier it gets.
And that the typical Approachis, you know, for leaders, if you're
(26:56):
not sort of given thisencouragement or you don't have the
self awareness or the drive,you know, for learning, the tendency
is to stop seeking feedback.Right. And to, you know, stop, I
should know. I should, Ishould have it together. Which I
imagine is a big part of, orat least a part of imposter syndrome.
(27:18):
But yeah, I'd love to. Youknow, what are some of the other
things people can be on thelookout for or do to combat this?
Yeah, so just to kind of helpbreak this down a little bit in the
book, the way I arrange thecontent in the book is something
I call a framework, and it hasan acronym in the middle. It's F
R A I M. So AIM is awareness,interruption and momentum. So the
(27:41):
first thing is awareness. It'sself awareness, but it's also awareness
of what is imposter syndrome.Why do we experience it? How does
it show up for us? Because itcan be very subtle. It doesn't show
up with a big banner. That'slike imposter syndrome, right. It
shows up in these more sneakyways, like I get promoted and then
all of a sudden I believe thatI don't belong here, or I get a bigger
(28:05):
team and I start diving downin the weeds and overanalyzing their
work results, perfectionismtendencies start coming out. So it's
the awareness piece is justknowing what's happening and noticing
that it's happening. Once youknow something, you can't unknow
it. And so once once you seesomething, you can't unsee it. And
(28:26):
that's a big part of thisjourney with imposter syndrome is
just tapping into and saying,oh, okay, this is happening. It's
normal. This is what'striggering me. And now I can move
into some kind of action andsay, what do I want to do about it?
And then it's sort of twoprongs from there. Interruption are
quick things that you can doin the moment to kind of flip the
(28:48):
script, right? So if younotice yourself, the little voice,
a little devil on yourshoulder saying, you know, they're
gonna figure you out. They'regonna figure out that you're not
that smart and you don't knowwhat you're talking about. And so
then you start noticing thatyou don't speak up in meetings or
you're over preparing forthings, right? You're overanalyzing
and overthinking. We have tojust like stopping the flow of water,
(29:10):
we have to interrupt thosethoughts. So in the moment if you
hear a voice in your head thatsays, oh, gosh, I'm just really lucky,
you know, I got here. I don'teven know how I landed in this role.
It's like, pause. That wouldbe a negative belief or a limiting
belief. Instead, reframe thatthought and say, well, what else
might be possible? Maybe I waspromoted because I have a lot that
(29:35):
I can contribute, or maybe Ideserve to be here. It shows up in
other ways too, though. So,like, one common way that I'll see
it is you get a compliment ona presentation. Ken, nice job on
that presentation. Really likethe way you framed that up and you
go, oh, no, no, no, it was. Itwas nothing. And also, I kind of
blew it. And. Right. You know,we, like, do this negative self talk.
(29:57):
Notice that you're doing it,pause for a moment, say, thank you,
I appreciate that. Right. Andthen it's like in your brain, you
actually have to re flip thescript and say, well, what else is.
Maybe it was just easy for youbecause it's your superpower. I mean,
when someone compliments youand says, great job, you know, that
was masterful. Why do weminimize it? Why do we give our power
(30:21):
away? It might be easy foryou. Chances are it wasn't. Chances
are you worked really hard.But even if it did come natural to
you, it's a gift. It'ssomething that is valuable and so
owning that. So first you haveto notice that you're minimizing
it. Second, you have toreframe and kind of flip the script.
Those are quick in the momentthings. My favorite interruption
(30:43):
question, when we are onsomething that I call the rumination
wheel of awfulization, which is.
I like that.
Yeah, this is. I've done itmyself. You know, you give a presentation,
you realize you went long, youtalk too fast, maybe you missed a
couple of your data points,you stumbled on your words, nothing
(31:04):
broke, nothing bad happened.But you know that it wasn't exactly
how you wanted it. And youstart ruminating and playing it over
in your head, what would youdo differently? And, oh, I wish this
would have happened, or I wishthat would have happened. And our
brain is not kind to us inthat moment, and we actually start
thinking, oh, everybodynoticed. Now they think, I'm an idiot.
(31:24):
You know, I'm going to getremoved out of this job. I mean,
the thoughts that can pop intoour head, it is truly an awfulization
of a situation. We always.People laugh when I say that, but
it's. It's so true. Right? Ifwe Leave our brain on its own. I
mean, it is not always kind.And so you have to stop it and say,
okay, I'm getting off thiswheel of awfulization. I'm going
(31:46):
to stop on this. My favoritequestion to interrupt the thought
is to say, what if that's nottrue? What if it's not true that
everyone noticed? What'sanother possibility? Maybe no one
noticed. Maybe they were allinto their own thoughts. Right. You
know, maybe so. So the pointisn't to be Pollyanna or ignore our
(32:09):
areas for improvement. It isto say, if you're on one end of the
spectrum and you're in thespiral of awfulizing, it's to force
yourself all the way to theother end of the spectrum for just
a moment. And what's going tohappen is you're going to end up
somewhere in the middle, whichis much more accurate. It's a much
clearer picture of yourself,and we can actually do something
with that. Right. So that's abig part of it. In terms of momentum.
(32:33):
I mean, this would probably beanother podcast if you ever wanted
to talk about.
I was just. I was just sayingwe're going to have to. We're going
to have to dedicate a wholeother podcast.
Exactly. But, you know, theMomentum section is the deeper work.
This is where you're doingthings like really understanding
your strengths, understandingyour value, knowing what your brand
is as a leader and what youaspire to be, and then tuning into
(32:58):
it and structuring your time,structuring your mindset around that
model and achieving thesuccess. And that's setting yourself
up with things like a personalboard of directors. Right. Mentors,
sponsors, which is thedifference between mentors, sponsors.
Right. And so just. Just sortof surrounding yourself with. With
(33:18):
the people and the resourcesthat will set yourself up for success.
So the Mom Momentum section ofthe book, I had someone say, I was
reading the book. It's areally fast read. It was, you know,
really fun. There's 40different exercises you can do if
you want to try differentthings. And they got to the Momentum
section, and they said, Ithought I was just gonna rock it
right through. And they said,I just completely slowed down. Like,
(33:40):
each of the exercises wasreally deep. And it's taking me a
long time to get throughsection three of the book. And I'm
like, that's how we buildmomentum. Right? How we build it.
We do the deep work workbecause it's a. It's an investment
in yourself that you need todo, not just for Imposter Syndrome,
but For so many other things,which, you know, on point number
five of the most successfulleaders, they're doing the deep work
(34:03):
on themselves. Right. Andthey're. They're seeing. That is
the part of work of leadershipis to work on ourselves, to be our
best version of ourselves.
So that's.
That's kind of my. My top five.
I like it.
Most successful leaders do.
That's great. And thanks fordiving into imposter syndrome a little
bit. I think I kind of forcedus sort of neatly into the next section
(34:26):
with that one, which is ouradvice section of the podcast. I
had a thought before I wentthere, though, which is, I think,
another thing, especially. Idon't know how deeply this ties into
imposter syndrome, but I dofind that leaders and teams don't
spend nearly as much timecelebrating successes and things
(34:49):
that went well and aninordinate amount of time dwelling
on what. What didn't go well.Like the. The amount of time, like
wins don't buoy people nearlyas long or for nearly as much time
as, like, something thatdidn't go as well will. Will take
them down a notch. Right. Fora longer amount of time. So that's
(35:12):
another thing I know I. I tryto be better at personally is, you
know, hanging on to beingintentional about celebrating things
that went well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so true. And it. It isthe. That's the tapping into our
superpowers. Right. And. Andactually pausing and noticing, which
ties into one of the pointsthat I made. Right. Is. Is be super
(35:34):
aware and notice that. Thatwe're actually good at a lot of things.
Our teams are good at things,and it's okay to celebrate other
people who are good at thingsthat you're not good at. And that
doesn't make you less than. Itmeans you're a strong team. Right.
You can complement each other,but we have to be really aware and
notice if things aretriggering us or notice if, you know,
(35:54):
it's forcing us to show up acertain way. So. Yeah, yeah, that's.
It's really key. Yeah.
Well, so as if you haven'tgiven us all kinds of advice already,
let me dive into our advicesection, which is, first, some advice
for leaders out there who arelistening. Something, you know, what
can they take from this andput into practice right away?
(36:16):
Yeah. I think the. Thisprinciple of nothing changes if nothing
changes. And this isn't tosay, like, if you're listening and
you're a leader, everythingneeds to change, but it is saying,
if we want different outcomes,we have to do different things. And
a lot of times, you know, wesay we want a different outcome,
(36:36):
but we're not actuallyprepared to change. And the thing
about leadership is no one cando it for you. It's not, you know,
you can't outsource it tosomeone. Your teams will know, your
organization will know, right?They'll know if you're phoning it
in. There just isn't. Thereisn't a way to fake leadership. And
so I think it really is aboutgiving yourself the gift of time.
(36:57):
One exercise that I do with,with a lot of my coaching clients
is we do this figurativeclearing the calendar. Because time
is always the excuse, right?Like we're busy, we don't have time.
So what we do is we literallylook at your calendar and we go,
okay, let's just pretend itwas all in a bucket. We're going
to dump it out on the table.Now I want you to look at things
(37:19):
and say, what are the absolutenon negotiables that are core and
primary to your role? Youknow, like the. Is it covey that
does the big rocks, mediumrocks, and the sand? You know, when
you feel.
I don't remember.
Yeah, it's. It's like highlyeffective. Habits of highly effective.
Okay, but it's a similarconcept, but we do it with the calendar.
(37:41):
And I say pretend that, youknow, don't actually go cancel all
your meetings, but justpretend for a moment you're going
to clear your calendar. Andnow I want you to think about your
role, the impact you need tohave your stakeholders, right? Get
really clear on all of thosethings. What do you need to go do?
And then the challenge issomething has to earn its spot back
(38:01):
on your calendar. So if, ifthere's meetings that you're being
invited to that you're like, Idon't even know why I'm there. I
don't. I don't know what roleI need to play. Sounds like it hasn't
earned a spot on the calendaryet. Now, if it's the CEO asking
you to come to a meeting, justgo, don't question it. But, you know,
I mean, it's. As a leader, wehave to be diligent with that. It's
our time. And that is the mostprecious commodity that we have.
(38:26):
Because if we want more timeto be thoughtful, to think and reflect
and be purposeful, then yougotta make time. Because we don't
get any more minutes in theday. No matter how, no matter what
title you have, we all get thesame 24 hours in a Day. So it's giving
yourself the gift of timebecause nothing will change if nothing
changes.
I love that.
The other thing I would sayfor leaders, and this is not a sales
(38:49):
pitch for me per se, it's tosay if you can and your organization
will support you, I highlyrecommend getting a coach. Yeah,
I, I'm a coach. I have acoach. The reason is because I'm
too close to my own stuff. Weall are too close to our own stuff.
So find someone that you clickwith that will help you with accountability
(39:10):
and that'll help you hold upthe mirror and see where your strengths
are and see where you haveopportunities. I mean, that's one
of the biggest things youcould do for yourself.
Yeah. I also find thatcoaching is one of very few things
that. Where leaders givethemselves permission to pause the
daily grind and attend tothemselves. Right. There's very few
(39:32):
things where they are like,oh, I like, this is not work. I'm
going to stop and think I'mgiving myself permission to do so.
So just looking at the time, Iwant to move us to. So another big
part of our, my listener base,our listener base here is I just
say supporters of leaders.Right. So that's HR talent, lead
leadership development, headsof hr, maybe even senior leaders.
(39:52):
Right. But the focus is onfolks who are supporting other leaders.
So what's your advice for them?
Yeah, I mean, I would say it'sprobably two things, right? One,
play the role that you'rethere to play. And what I mean by
that is let's take HR leaders.The work of leadership can't be outsourced
to hr. So HR can supportleaders, they can be a sounding board,
(40:19):
they can be a strategicpartner, but they can't do it for
the leader. And I think that'sa trap that a lot of HR leaders can
find themselves in or kind of,you know, fall into a little bit
like, I want to help and Imean, I'll just pick on myself for
a moment. When I was incorporate, I had this thing called
helium hand. If someone wasstruggling, I would raise my hand.
(40:39):
I can help. I can help. I canhelp, help. And you know, it's like
a strength overused. I alwayswanted to be helpful, but actually
staying in my lane and being apartner and bringing my expertise
but not crossing the line ofdoing it for them. That's the key,
right? For the most successfulsupport, quote, unquote, support
people who are playing a partof leaders is allow them to do their
(41:03):
role and you play your role.So I think that's a really, really
important part of it. Theother thing that I would just say
is enabling leaders is aninteresting balance because we want
to remove any roadblocks thatare in the way. Like a system is,
you know, cumbersome or aprocess doesn't work. Like let's
fix that and let's educateleaders and help them to be more
(41:27):
successful in using thesystems and the tools, but again,
stopping short of doing it forthem. So one of the principles that
I tend to aspire to is thatthis type of work should be leader
led, but HR enabled. Sowhether it's leadership development,
whether it's, you know, yourtalent strategy, it doesn't matter
(41:47):
if you're the chro and yousort of own the people strategy.
You might own the strategy,but you don't own the people. And
so how do we make sure thatwe're setting ourselves up to be
that strong partner andallowing it to be leader led? Right.
And.
Interestingly, I think there'sa parallel to something we were talking
about earlier here. Right.Which is what is the value that you
(42:09):
uniquely add? Right. So we'resaying that to leaders. Maybe we
need to say that to, you know,ourselves, those of us who are, you
know, in hr. Is, is thissomething where I'm uniquely adding
value that the leader can't door am I attempting to make myself
indispensable through justticking more boxes too?
Absolutely.
(42:30):
I think it's the same, sametrap as a leader's falling into.
Right. With, with their own,their own people. Awesome. Well,
let me land this plane here,which is, I think the third piece
is how to, you know, how canpeople get a hold of you if they
want more Teresa Sandy intheir lives? Where can they find
you? Where can they find your book?
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So youcan go to my website, teresasandy.com
(42:53):
and that's probably your firststop. You can find all kinds of things
there, including, you know,more about consulting services, coaching
services. You can order thebook there. My book is also on Amazon,
it's on Audible. You know,there's, there's all kinds of different
things that you can, you canfind the resource on all of the major
book retailers and then, yeah,LinkedIn is probably my jam right
(43:15):
now. I'm, I'm kind of out onLinkedIn and I share a lot of insights
there. I post several times aweek. So if some of the stuff that
we talked about here today wasuseful, I try to break it down into
little bite sized nuggets, youknow, throughout, throughout the
week. And so you can alwaysfollow me there. Yeah. Love to grow
my. Grow my network that way.
(43:35):
Great. Well, I'll make sure Iput all those links in the show notes.
That brings us to the end ofour show today. Teresa, thank you
for being here. This was avery fun conversation, and I'm glad
I got to know you a little bitbetter today as well. So thank you
so much, so much. I reallyappreciate you coming on the show.
Thanks. It was great to behere, Kent.
All right, that brings us tothe end of our episode. Thanks for
(43:57):
listening. I'd encourage youto head on over to my website, Kent
Coach, and start aconversation with me there or check
out my promotion playbook atKent Coates Playbook. Before you
go on with your day, I askthat you please take a moment to
leave a rating and a reviewwherever you listen to podcasts.
Five stars. That helps putthis podcast in front of more eyes
and years. Until next time,take it easy.
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