April 2, 2024 • 33 mins
Unlock your story and become the leader you were meant to be by absorbing the insights offered in this On Leadership interview with Hortense le Gentil. Hortense shares lessons from her book, The Unlocked Leader, including the concept of mindsets becoming mind traps and how to recognize and change them. She also explores the role of trauma in shaping our leadership styles and the power of telling our own stories to define our identities.
- 6 Shifts to Develop a Leader's Mindset: Organizations have felt the effects of rapid changes like structure, schedules, and the broad adoption of remote or hybrid environments. This disruption has pushed organizations to adopt new mindsets and policies to set their people up for success. Leaders are no exception when it comes to these changes. To be successful today, leaders need to shift their mindsets and innovate their styles of leadership.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller,
the world's largest weekly leadershippodcast that after six years and nearly
400 episodes taped and 350released every Tuesday and
Friday, we take FranklinCovey,
the world's most trustedleadership company's megawatt spotlight and shine it on
(00:31):
thought leaders from alldifferent walks of life.
Sometimes we interview peoplefrom inside of our global firm,
people like Steven M. R. Covey, whoauthored the book, The Speed of Trust,
Chris McChesney, the lead authorof The 4 Disciplines of Execution,
and any number of peopleinside our company,
including our partnership with LizWiseman, who wrote, as you know,
one of my favorite leadership booksof all time, Multipliers. Multipliers.
(00:54):
We like to also interviewpeople from outside of the firm,
people that have done remarkablethings, they've conducted research,
they've led themselves. Not everyconversation is about leadership.
We've interviewed NBAplayers, NFL players,
people that have suffered tragedybut have been bold enough,
courageous enough to come onand talk and teach through it.
(01:15):
We've interviewedbusiness titans, authors,
experts of every walk of life.
And then occasionally we love to swingthat pendulum back to the theme of this
podcast, which is the coretopic of leadership. And today,
I'm delighted to interview oneof my colleagues and friends,
a member of the MG 100, 100 coaches, ofcourse, a group that Marshall Goldsmith,
(01:36):
the iconic leadership mind,
put together some of the greatestminds in the world. And today,
I'm delighted on. Now, this womanis both a genius and she is French,
and I want to make sure I do justiceto her name and she'll forgive me and
correct me when I pronounce her namein my version I would say her name is
Hortense le Gentil,
(01:58):
but I'm sure I have slaughteredthat, welcome to On Leadership today.
Please correct the pronunciationof your name for me.
Scott. I'm delighted to be here.Thank you so much. My name is, no,
you did great. So it's in France,
you say Hortense le Gentil, in America,
(02:20):
you can say Hortense le Gentil, and youdid much better than that. Thank you.
You are very gracious.
We have you on today becauseyou are one of the world's most
in demand coaches, consultants, speakers.
You have three decades of experiencebehind the topic of leadership.
You have co-authored as the lead authorof this book, The Unlocked Leader.
(02:44):
The tagline is, Dareto Free Your Own Voice,
Lead with Empathy, and ShineYour Light in the World.
For those that are listening andwatching around the world today,
we're going to talk about some differentnuances and facets of leadership and
what it means to be an engaging leaderin 2024, which is different, perhaps,
than even five or six years ago.
(03:06):
Will you take a few minutes and reorientall of our listeners and viewers to
your own leadership journey?
We'll dive into some of the conceptsin this book that you've masterfully
co-wrote.
Yeah, so it's a journey like you said. So
I've been an entrepreneur myself. Iworked for a larger corporations also,
(03:29):
and I became a coach a decade ago.
So I had a lot of experience and one day
I found my calling and mycalling was to be a coach
and to guide people to freethemselves from their mind trap
(03:50):
that hold them back,
that holds us back from being whowe should be and especially the
leader we should be, the humanleader that we need today.
Let's talk about this conceptof sort of finding your calling.
I mean that's a smallphrase you put into that,
(04:11):
but I think everyone in life issort of looking for that moment,
that sign,
that validation of what's their purpose,
what's their calling and meaning?Can you dive a bit deeper on that?
This didn't happen earlier in your career.Will you kind of unfold and rewind?
What were the signs thatled you to understand you should be a leadership coach?
(04:33):
Because everybody that I know islooking for that pivot, that moment,
that validation.
What can people take out of your ownmoment that will help them uncover
theirs?
So maybe I should go back 15 years ago.
So 15 years ago I was stuck. I was
(04:55):
stuck in my personal lifeand my professional life,
and so I was lost. Ididn't know what to do.
And then of course everything wentsouth and I got sick and I was stuck in
bed for four months. So Ihad time to think, right?
And then I had a dream. Andin that dream, my grandmother,
(05:18):
the grandmother that I just loved, you,you would love, absolutely loved her.
And she came to me in mydream and she told me,
you have to find the path of roses.
I absolutely didn'tunderstand what she meant.
What are you saying and where is it?I ask her in the dream and she said,
(05:41):
just look at me. And she just smiledand she said, you know where it is.
And then I woke up. Iwas absolutely furious.
So she didn't give me the answer,where is the path of roses?
Where is the road?
And then that would be later in my lifewhen I will understand that what she
meant was very, very important.
(06:02):
What she meant was that I hadto listen to my inner voice
and not the outside voice.
So be courageous enough tofollow what I felt was good,
but right for me. And then this is whatI did. And when I began to do that,
I really began my journeyto know myself and
(06:24):
to become the person I should be.
And then this is how I found my calling.
It was not in one day because it'sa journey. It's really a journey.
It's not a destination.
And then it would besomething like, let me think,
something maybe a small decade after that
(06:46):
dream, maybe less that wecame to that moment that,
yeah, it was my conningbecause just right after this
dream, I left my marriage
and I became an entrepreneur
and then I will become and Iwill find really my conning.
(07:09):
But I had to go through everything,
this journey to learn andto learn how to be a leader,
to learn about me. So Iwalked a lot, I walked a lot
with me on me. So whatmy grandmother meant,
how can we listen betterto our inner voice?
(07:31):
And this is how I led to who I am today.
A beautiful story, trulyas you were talking,
I was thinking about my own grandmother.
I was thinking about my fatherwho passed a year ago, and
I,
what they might say to me as I dolike everyone just trying to figure
(07:53):
out where should I spend mytime? What are my top priorities?
What do I want my meaningand calling in life to be?
Thank you for sharingthat very tender story.
A key part of your book,The Unlocked Leader,
is this concept of when amindset becomes a mind trap. And
(08:15):
I found that invigorating.
I've spent my 30-year careerwith the FranklinCovey Company.
Dr. Covey did not inventthe idea of a paradigm,
but he certainly popularized itnearly 35, 40 years ago with his book,
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Will you talk about what is a mindset?
Remind everybody why that's so important,
(08:36):
how they become inculcatedin us and when they become a
mind trap.
Okay, so a mindset is,
let's crack the brain for onesecond. So our brain is amazing.
(08:58):
It's a machine. It's a machine,
and our brain is alwaystrying to find meanings
and is cooking a lot of stories for us.
So the mindset,
our mindset is I would sayis our brain are connected
and
(09:21):
with habits or with other voices.
So you were told for example,to be that kind of leader,
you need to be a hero, youneed to have the audience.
And so you grew up like that and it workedfor a while and you were successful.
And then this is a mindset. So mymindset is what I used to think and
(09:43):
what I do, and it becomes a mind trap.
So let me take an example. For example,
you want to be perfect,perfection. Perfection is something
very useful, not useful, butI mean it comes very often.
So you want to be perfect.
So for a while it was a driver becauseyou were young, because you said,
(10:07):
okay, I have to be perfect and moreand more, and you pass your exam,
you are graduate from verygood school, whatever it is,
and then it pushed you. But at one point,
when you change and you evolve in life,
this mindset of I need to beperfect becomes a mind trap.
(10:28):
And what is a mind trap is this obstacle,
what is on your way tobecome who you really are.
And then, so you aren't perfect.You think you need to be perfect,
but first you realize thatit's absolutely not possible.
You cannot have all the answers.
You cannot always begoal-oriented because this is not
(10:50):
what the world needs today. Andalso if you try to be perfect,
it's hard because it's not possible.Who can have all the answer today?
So the world, there is no playbook inthis world today. The world is crazy.
Every day something newhappen. And moreover,
when you become aleader, what is a leader?
(11:11):
You want to inspire peopleand people, what they want,
they want to connect withyou, they want to know you.
So you need to learn how to challenge.
You move from a player to aculture, to a quarterback,
from being quarterback to being a coach.
(11:32):
And then this is your mindset atthat moment is your mind trap.
You are trapped. You cannot move forward.
Hortense, take that one step further.
How does someone know whena mindset has become a mind
trap and how do they change their mindset?
(11:52):
How do they move out of it? As I waslistening to you again, I was thinking,
what mindsets do I have aboutme, my marriage, my competency,
my children, the world,
and which of those are mind traps andhow would I know and how would I change
it?
Yeah, so it's a belief.So you believe that,
(12:16):
well, for example,
let's continue with thisexample of being perfect.
And then you believe that youneed to be perfect or you believe,
if I go back to my story, youbelieve that or you were told that
no, you cannot divorce and no,
you cannot become an entrepreneurat the age of 40 or something.
(12:40):
And then you feel that inyourself. You feel that something,
this mindset, this habits,
this voice is hold you back andthen you know that you want to do
something differently.
You know that you want to trysomething differently or maybe
whatever it is, whatever the areais, you know it because we feel it.
(13:03):
We feel like I wish I could coulddo that. I wish I could move there,
I could, whatever it is.
And then you are trappedthen to change your mindset
first, of course you have tobe aware of it, like we said.
And also to face it,face first your fears.
(13:24):
Because we are animals of habit, we,
we want to keep it likeit is, but think about
the price you're going to pay to notchange this status quo or change with
a change. You can be better,you can find your own way,
you can be a great leader and
(13:46):
not changing,
nothing's going to change and you'regoing to stay maybe stuck with your ideas
and maybe frustrated then,okay, be aware of that.
Be face your fear and then ask you this
question where, why I am trapped.
So for example, if it's his voice
(14:09):
who tells you that you shouldbe perfect? Who said that?
So track the source. And from myexperience, it could come from trauma
that are not vocal or that could come from
other voices.
Hortense,
(14:30):
you mentioned the word trauma and Iwant to build on that if you will,
because it's actually a part of yourbook as well. I enjoyed this section.
About a year ago I had theprivilege of interviewing Dr. Bessel
van der Kolk. He wrote thebook, The Body Keeps the Score.
And I made a mistake during thatinterview and I want to debrief it right
(14:51):
now because I really couldn't relateto his book very much because I felt
like I've lived a lifegenerally trauma-free. And I think there's truth to that.
When I think of the definition of trauma,I think what is happening in Gaza,
what's happening in Africa,what's happening in Ukraine,
what's happening in parts of Americathat I don't even know about?
(15:11):
I have a definition of trauma thatI feel like my life is so far from.
It would be arrogant tosay I have lived trauma.
And in the interview with thisauthor, I said to him, gosh,
I don't even know whattrauma is. Since then,
I've had several people try to pull mytrauma out to convince me of all of my
traumas. And maybe that'sgood or maybe that's bad.
I still think I put trauma on adifferent level of what's happening in
(15:35):
Gaza and what happened in Israelon October 7th than what my life
has been like. Your book istitled The Unlocked Leader. Well,
I know you're not apsychotherapist, I don't think.
Would you talk about the role thattrauma plays in everybody's life,
including people like me thathave had a fairly successful life?
(15:56):
We've not had any majorviolations to our mind,
our body, but everybody has somelevel of trauma and it impacts,
it instructs, it informsthe way they lead,
the way they connect orcan't lead or can't connect.
Take that everywhereyou'd like to take that.
Not so that everybody knowsthey have massive trauma,
(16:19):
but all of us have some trauma andit does instruct the way we lead.
So I think the best is toshare a story. So I had
a few years ago the rare leader,
he was considered to be the next CEOof his company. He was very smart,
(16:40):
doing very well, verysuccessful of course,
because he was consideredto be the next CEO.
And so in order to do that,
he has to be in front ofa panel of other leaders
who was responsible forthis process. And Scott,
out of nowhere,
(17:03):
he changed his behavior.He became very talkative.
He talked a lot. He didn'tlisten. He was another person.
And of course, he didn't get the job.
So we had this conversation and hetold me, I don't know what happened.
I don't know. And then we said, okay,
(17:25):
so let's figure out where it's comingfrom because it's coming from somewhere
and revisiting his life. Heremembered that when he was a student,
so it was years, years and yearsago when he was a student, he,
in order to pass an exam,
he also had to be in front ofa panel of different teacher.
(17:46):
And one of the teacherdidn't let him talk.
So imagine this young guy who prepared
and he couldn't talk, hecouldn't express himself.
So he completely lost his cool.
And also it became a traumabecause it was a trauma.
I'm going to go back to thedefinition of trauma in five minutes.
(18:09):
And it's not enough.
It was not enough thatthe teacher told him.
So he lost his cool and theteacher told him, young guy,
I don't know what you're goingto do, but I can promise you,
you will never be a CEObecause I can see all your
emotion on your face.
(18:31):
So that young guy leftthe room with a trauma
and thinking that it doesn't,
leadership is not aboutshowing your emotions.
So it was not true. And so
when the time came your first timehe was considered to be a CEO,
(18:55):
everything was in his unconscious.It was not conscious of that.
He didn't remember that time, buthe is unconscious. Understood.
Remember that time I said, okay, sonow you know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to talk and talk and talkand not let anybody interrupt myself,
cut myself. I need to talkand that this is what he did,
(19:16):
but it was not relevantin that case. Not at all.
And then this trauma, so if I goback to your question of your trauma,
the trauma is my definitioof truama, not my definition,
but definition of trauma is it's a moment
or a series of momentsthat triggers very strong
(19:38):
emotion and that triggeralso your sense of
safety. So that could be, in this case,
this young guy felt this traumaand also student maybe would
not feel that, but he feltshocked, he felt in shock.
And then a trauma,
(19:58):
I like this metaphor ofour brain is like a house.
So you have different room in the house.
So you have your bedroomand you have the kitchen,
and in each room you put the right thing.
So you put your bed in the bedroom andin the kitchen, the fridge or whatever.
(20:18):
And now imagine that in the middleof your living room you have a car.
So it's a bit complicated becausehaving your car in your living room,
imagine that you want to watch TV,
you cannot watch TV or not reallygood because you have to put yourself
that way or whatever.
(20:38):
And then imagine you wantto talk with someone that is
sitting in the sofa behindthe car. You cannot.
So trauma
is something that it's an emotion thatis not at the right place in our brain.
So our work is to take back the car
(21:01):
and park the car in the garage becausethe place of the car is in the garage,
is not in the living room. Sothis is what the trauma is.
And each of us, we have small trauma,
doesn't have to be big likeof course Gaza and war and
Israel,
and unfortunately everything we can name,
(21:27):
but each of us at one point wefeel, and it arrived to me too,
I was attacked. I was attacked inmy car, and then it was the same.
I was not aware that it was a trauma.
But I will be aware later when I
surprise myself by beingalways overreacted when I saw a
(21:51):
light at night, because in my memory,
my sense of safety wastriggered at that moment,
and it was a very strong emotion.
So I had to work on thatto let go and to go back
to my sense of safety,
to put the car in the garage toall of us at one point we have it.
(22:14):
Sometimes we're absolutelynot conscious of it.
Hortense, you have a gift. Idon't know what to name it,
but whenever you arespeaking, I find myself
visually seeing it in myhead and seeing my life.
You have a gift of speaking verbally
(22:35):
and having it come tolife visually in my head.
It's something that I've not experiencedwith anybody on this podcast in six
years. Everything you say,
I'm playing a movie in my mind and I needto revisit that after this interview.
I'm going to move on.Thank you, by the way,
for taking the time to address trauma,
including in your own lifeand how each of us have that,
(22:58):
need to name it, need to quote,
park the car in the right part of thehome or the apartment, the garage,
not the living room.
And then also do the self-reflectionon how that inhibits perhaps our
ability to build connection with people,
which is of course crucialto being an unlocked leader.
I think my favorite part of yourbook is chapter five, you title it,
(23:21):
See Yourself Differently,A View from the Outside.
And you quote Bill George, of course,
the famous author of True North and theformer Medtronic CEO as what he calls
it, a crucible.
But you pepper some stories throughoutthe chapter in the book about Doug
Conant,
the former iconic CEO of CampbellSoup that has gone on to be one of the
(23:44):
most influential minds of our generation,coaching, speaking, and writing.
Will you talk about and tellthe story of Doug Conant,
and not just whathappened to him initially,
but then how it maybe took a mindtrap and turned it into a mindset
or such? Talk about that.
(24:09):
I think it was, so let me rememberbecause I have so many stories,
but yes, I remember there was this one. So
he was fired,
he was fired at the timewhen he thought that
everything went very good and very well.
So he felt insecurity at that timeand then he didn't understand,
(24:32):
and the company
give him the possibilityto talk with someone.
I think it was a coach.But his first reaction was,
no, I'm not going to talk to this person.
And this coach asked himto and it changed his mind.
In fact, I think it was in themorning and at the end of the day,
(24:55):
he just called back. The coachhas said, okay, I want to see you.
And the coach was great, and it toldhim, okay, come anytime, come now.
And then the coach madehim write. He told him,
okay, now you'll write your story fromthe beginning. This is your homework.
(25:16):
And then he came back home and said,you know, what is this homework?
Write my story. So what should I do that?
And in writing his story,
he understood that
he never listened to his voice. Henever did the thing that he felt.
(25:37):
He never did the thing,
he didn't write his own story. Hewas writing a story of somebody else.
And then he realized that it was a gift,
this trauma of being fired,
he didn't understand why became agift, and it changed completely.
And he changed the path of his life andhe changed his leadership also because
(26:04):
it will become a very good,an advocate of listening
to your own voice.
Or your book is full ofriveting stories like this.
This is my favorite story inthe whole book is you uncovering
with Doug that his story wasactually someone else's story.
(26:27):
And I want to take just amoment and reiterate this,
and I think this is a profound lessonthat readers of your book and people you
coach pull out. Because to some extent,
all of us are living someone else's story.
All of us have an identity that someoneelse placed upon us, our parents,
our guardians, our caregivers, ourteachers, our headmaster, our rabbi,
(26:51):
our priest.
And I don't know that most of us knowthat or admit that it's not wrong,
it's not shameful. Butwhen I was interviewing,
preparing for a interview once withthe famous actress, Viola Davis,
I read in her book with Brené Brown,
she talked about the powerof knowing your story.
And then the next day I wasinterviewing Eric Barker,
(27:12):
he wrote a famous book calledBarking Up the Wrong Tree,
and a couple of other books. He'skind of a social psychologist.
And the next day he talked aboutthe power of knowing your story.
I went home that night and asked my wife,
had she ever told herselfher story? She said,
no and fell asleep because we have threeyoung boys that have my energy so she
(27:33):
was exhausted. So at the age of about50, I got out of bed at midnight,
10 o'clock at night,
and I walked around my living roomwith a wire whisk in my hand like a
microphone. And at the age of 50,
I told myself my story forthe first time in my life out
loud.
And then I literally walked around ourliving room in the dark for an hour.
(27:56):
And out loud I told myself mystory, all the truths, all the lies,
all the things that people hadsaid about me that were hurtful,
that were true or not true,
the things that I liked aboutmyself, the things I didn't like,
the mind traps to quoteyou that I had built around
myself. And at the age of 50,
(28:18):
I told myself my own story and thendecided what did I want my story to be?
What did I want to accomplish?
What inhibitions, what
challenges did I think I hadthat I wanted to overcome?
And I'd like you just to finishoff this conversation today,
reminding people thepower of deciding their
(28:42):
identity,
of telling themselves their story andwhat that can do for them in the future,
to unlock them as better parents,as better friends, as better lovers,
as better spouses, as better leaders.
Make that connection between definingyour identity and telling yourself your
story. How do people do that?And what will the outcome be?
(29:05):
Thank you for your patiencelistening to my long setup.
No, I love it. Thank you forsharing that. It's so important.
Let me just redefinesomething, The Unlocked Leader,
and if I go back to mystory and my inner voice,
this is exactly what we're talking about.
(29:25):
Why should we free ourourself from our mind traps
that we talked about before?And how do you do it?
So the book is aboutthat. How do you do it?
Because it's not easy
and by challenging, finding the source,so I repeat, but finding your mind trap,
(29:47):
tracking the source and challengingthe beliefs. So is it true?
Is it's relevant, isit helpful? And let go.
So this is a process of unlockingyourself and why it is important.
Because then exactly like in my story,
then you begin to write your own story.
You don't write the story ofothers. And that's a problem.
(30:09):
That's why we are trapped,
because I believe thateveryone has a special
talent, each of us. And then one day
we need to meet thisspecial talent. You need
to grow this special talent,
(30:31):
and you need this courage toface that, to unlock yourself.
And then you are free. And thenyou begin to write your own story.
And you think about, okay, howdo I want to show up as a leader,
as a person? What are my values?
What is my why, what drives me?
(30:52):
And then you walk on it every daybecause it's a new connection,
a new mindset that you're walking outand you write your own story every day
and every day. You have this daily,
what I call daily raw withyourself and thinking about,
okay, where I am
in my journey of writing my own story,
(31:16):
what do you want to achieve?
What do you want others to thinkabout you or to remember about you?
What is your special talent? Andagain, it's a journey. It's a journey.
It's not the destination.Every day we learn,
and this is beautiful becauseevery day you learn and
when you're going to write your own story,
(31:38):
when you will give yourselfthe authorization to
write this own story, your own story,
you will see how much joy, happiness,
That will come with that.
And you would be even more successfulas a leader because people are going to
(31:58):
connect with you. It's all about empathyand empathy. Start with yourself.
So start with yourself. What storydo you want to write? Think about it.
For those listeners that can't see me,
it's a good interview when the hostis taking copious notes with a pen.
I'm writing down all these insightsthat I'm learning. I love this concept.
(32:18):
Give yourself theauthorization to write your own
story and also have adaily round table with
yourself. Hortense leGentil, how did I do there?
Perfectly. Thank you, Scott.
You are a highly in-demandkeynote speaker, coach,
(32:39):
counselor, consultant, andco-author, lead, author of the book,
The Unlocked Leader (32:43):
Dare to Free Your Own Voice, Lead with Empathy,
and Shine Your Light in the World.
And for those who aren't watching thisinterview, but you're listening to it,
the book has a very simple birdcageon the cover with the door open.
It's such a great metaphor for thisbook. Thank you for joining us today.
You are a class act. You are a sage,
(33:06):
and I've thoroughly enjoyed listeningand learning from you today.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Scott, for havingme. It was such a pleasure.
And we'll see you backhere next week for a new
conversation
On Leadership.
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller,
the world's largest weekly leadershippodcast that after six years and nearly
400 episodes taped and 350released every Tuesday and
Friday, we take FranklinCovey,
the world's most trustedleadership company's megawatt spotlight and shine it on
(00:31):
thought leaders from alldifferent walks of life.
Sometimes we interview peoplefrom inside of our global firm,
people like Steven M. R. Covey, whoauthored the book, The Speed of Trust,
Chris McChesney, the lead authorof The 4 Disciplines of Execution,
and any number of peopleinside our company,
including our partnership with LizWiseman, who wrote, as you know,
one of my favorite leadership booksof all time, Multipliers. Multipliers.
(00:54):
We like to also interviewpeople from outside of the firm,
people that have done remarkablethings, they've conducted research,
they've led themselves. Not everyconversation is about leadership.
We've interviewed NBAplayers, NFL players,
people that have suffered tragedybut have been bold enough,
courageous enough to come onand talk and teach through it.
(01:15):
We've interviewedbusiness titans, authors,
experts of every walk of life.
And then occasionally we love to swingthat pendulum back to the theme of this
podcast, which is the coretopic of leadership. And today,
I'm delighted to interview oneof my colleagues and friends,
a member of the MG 100, 100 coaches, ofcourse, a group that Marshall Goldsmith,
(01:36):
the iconic leadership mind,
put together some of the greatestminds in the world. And today,
I'm delighted on. Now, this womanis both a genius and she is French,
and I want to make sure I do justiceto her name and she'll forgive me and
correct me when I pronounce her namein my version I would say her name is
Hortense le Gentil,
(01:58):
but I'm sure I have slaughteredthat, welcome to On Leadership today.
Please correct the pronunciationof your name for me.
Scott. I'm delighted to be here.Thank you so much. My name is, no,
you did great. So it's in France,
you say Hortense le Gentil, in America,
(02:20):
you can say Hortense le Gentil, and youdid much better than that. Thank you.
You are very gracious.
We have you on today becauseyou are one of the world's most
in demand coaches, consultants, speakers.
You have three decades of experiencebehind the topic of leadership.
You have co-authored as the lead authorof this book, The Unlocked Leader.
(02:44):
The tagline is, Dareto Free Your Own Voice,
Lead with Empathy, and ShineYour Light in the World.
For those that are listening andwatching around the world today,
we're going to talk about some differentnuances and facets of leadership and
what it means to be an engaging leaderin 2024, which is different, perhaps,
than even five or six years ago.
(03:06):
Will you take a few minutes and reorientall of our listeners and viewers to
your own leadership journey?
We'll dive into some of the conceptsin this book that you've masterfully
co-wrote.
Yeah, so it's a journey like you said. So
I've been an entrepreneur myself. Iworked for a larger corporations also,
(03:29):
and I became a coach a decade ago.
So I had a lot of experience and one day
I found my calling and mycalling was to be a coach
and to guide people to freethemselves from their mind trap
(03:50):
that hold them back,
that holds us back from being whowe should be and especially the
leader we should be, the humanleader that we need today.
Let's talk about this conceptof sort of finding your calling.
I mean that's a smallphrase you put into that,
(04:11):
but I think everyone in life issort of looking for that moment,
that sign,
that validation of what's their purpose,
what's their calling and meaning?Can you dive a bit deeper on that?
This didn't happen earlier in your career.Will you kind of unfold and rewind?
What were the signs thatled you to understand you should be a leadership coach?
(04:33):
Because everybody that I know islooking for that pivot, that moment,
that validation.
What can people take out of your ownmoment that will help them uncover
theirs?
So maybe I should go back 15 years ago.
So 15 years ago I was stuck. I was
(04:55):
stuck in my personal lifeand my professional life,
and so I was lost. Ididn't know what to do.
And then of course everything wentsouth and I got sick and I was stuck in
bed for four months. So Ihad time to think, right?
And then I had a dream. Andin that dream, my grandmother,
(05:18):
the grandmother that I just loved, you,you would love, absolutely loved her.
And she came to me in mydream and she told me,
you have to find the path of roses.
I absolutely didn'tunderstand what she meant.
What are you saying and where is it?I ask her in the dream and she said,
(05:41):
just look at me. And she just smiledand she said, you know where it is.
And then I woke up. Iwas absolutely furious.
So she didn't give me the answer,where is the path of roses?
Where is the road?
And then that would be later in my lifewhen I will understand that what she
meant was very, very important.
(06:02):
What she meant was that I hadto listen to my inner voice
and not the outside voice.
So be courageous enough tofollow what I felt was good,
but right for me. And then this is whatI did. And when I began to do that,
I really began my journeyto know myself and
(06:24):
to become the person I should be.
And then this is how I found my calling.
It was not in one day because it'sa journey. It's really a journey.
It's not a destination.
And then it would besomething like, let me think,
something maybe a small decade after that
(06:46):
dream, maybe less that wecame to that moment that,
yeah, it was my conningbecause just right after this
dream, I left my marriage
and I became an entrepreneur
and then I will become and Iwill find really my conning.
(07:09):
But I had to go through everything,
this journey to learn andto learn how to be a leader,
to learn about me. So Iwalked a lot, I walked a lot
with me on me. So whatmy grandmother meant,
how can we listen betterto our inner voice?
(07:31):
And this is how I led to who I am today.
A beautiful story, trulyas you were talking,
I was thinking about my own grandmother.
I was thinking about my fatherwho passed a year ago, and
I,
what they might say to me as I dolike everyone just trying to figure
(07:53):
out where should I spend mytime? What are my top priorities?
What do I want my meaningand calling in life to be?
Thank you for sharingthat very tender story.
A key part of your book,The Unlocked Leader,
is this concept of when amindset becomes a mind trap. And
(08:15):
I found that invigorating.
I've spent my 30-year careerwith the FranklinCovey Company.
Dr. Covey did not inventthe idea of a paradigm,
but he certainly popularized itnearly 35, 40 years ago with his book,
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Will you talk about what is a mindset?
Remind everybody why that's so important,
(08:36):
how they become inculcatedin us and when they become a
mind trap.
Okay, so a mindset is,
let's crack the brain for onesecond. So our brain is amazing.
(08:58):
It's a machine. It's a machine,
and our brain is alwaystrying to find meanings
and is cooking a lot of stories for us.
So the mindset,
our mindset is I would sayis our brain are connected
and
(09:21):
with habits or with other voices.
So you were told for example,to be that kind of leader,
you need to be a hero, youneed to have the audience.
And so you grew up like that and it workedfor a while and you were successful.
And then this is a mindset. So mymindset is what I used to think and
(09:43):
what I do, and it becomes a mind trap.
So let me take an example. For example,
you want to be perfect,perfection. Perfection is something
very useful, not useful, butI mean it comes very often.
So you want to be perfect.
So for a while it was a driver becauseyou were young, because you said,
(10:07):
okay, I have to be perfect and moreand more, and you pass your exam,
you are graduate from verygood school, whatever it is,
and then it pushed you. But at one point,
when you change and you evolve in life,
this mindset of I need to beperfect becomes a mind trap.
(10:28):
And what is a mind trap is this obstacle,
what is on your way tobecome who you really are.
And then, so you aren't perfect.You think you need to be perfect,
but first you realize thatit's absolutely not possible.
You cannot have all the answers.
You cannot always begoal-oriented because this is not
(10:50):
what the world needs today. Andalso if you try to be perfect,
it's hard because it's not possible.Who can have all the answer today?
So the world, there is no playbook inthis world today. The world is crazy.
Every day something newhappen. And moreover,
when you become aleader, what is a leader?
(11:11):
You want to inspire peopleand people, what they want,
they want to connect withyou, they want to know you.
So you need to learn how to challenge.
You move from a player to aculture, to a quarterback,
from being quarterback to being a coach.
(11:32):
And then this is your mindset atthat moment is your mind trap.
You are trapped. You cannot move forward.
Hortense, take that one step further.
How does someone know whena mindset has become a mind
trap and how do they change their mindset?
(11:52):
How do they move out of it? As I waslistening to you again, I was thinking,
what mindsets do I have aboutme, my marriage, my competency,
my children, the world,
and which of those are mind traps andhow would I know and how would I change
it?
Yeah, so it's a belief.So you believe that,
(12:16):
well, for example,
let's continue with thisexample of being perfect.
And then you believe that youneed to be perfect or you believe,
if I go back to my story, youbelieve that or you were told that
no, you cannot divorce and no,
you cannot become an entrepreneurat the age of 40 or something.
(12:40):
And then you feel that inyourself. You feel that something,
this mindset, this habits,
this voice is hold you back andthen you know that you want to do
something differently.
You know that you want to trysomething differently or maybe
whatever it is, whatever the areais, you know it because we feel it.
(13:03):
We feel like I wish I could coulddo that. I wish I could move there,
I could, whatever it is.
And then you are trappedthen to change your mindset
first, of course you have tobe aware of it, like we said.
And also to face it,face first your fears.
(13:24):
Because we are animals of habit, we,
we want to keep it likeit is, but think about
the price you're going to pay to notchange this status quo or change with
a change. You can be better,you can find your own way,
you can be a great leader and
(13:46):
not changing,
nothing's going to change and you'regoing to stay maybe stuck with your ideas
and maybe frustrated then,okay, be aware of that.
Be face your fear and then ask you this
question where, why I am trapped.
So for example, if it's his voice
(14:09):
who tells you that you shouldbe perfect? Who said that?
So track the source. And from myexperience, it could come from trauma
that are not vocal or that could come from
other voices.
Hortense,
(14:30):
you mentioned the word trauma and Iwant to build on that if you will,
because it's actually a part of yourbook as well. I enjoyed this section.
About a year ago I had theprivilege of interviewing Dr. Bessel
van der Kolk. He wrote thebook, The Body Keeps the Score.
And I made a mistake during thatinterview and I want to debrief it right
(14:51):
now because I really couldn't relateto his book very much because I felt
like I've lived a lifegenerally trauma-free. And I think there's truth to that.
When I think of the definition of trauma,I think what is happening in Gaza,
what's happening in Africa,what's happening in Ukraine,
what's happening in parts of Americathat I don't even know about?
(15:11):
I have a definition of trauma thatI feel like my life is so far from.
It would be arrogant tosay I have lived trauma.
And in the interview with thisauthor, I said to him, gosh,
I don't even know whattrauma is. Since then,
I've had several people try to pull mytrauma out to convince me of all of my
traumas. And maybe that'sgood or maybe that's bad.
I still think I put trauma on adifferent level of what's happening in
(15:35):
Gaza and what happened in Israelon October 7th than what my life
has been like. Your book istitled The Unlocked Leader. Well,
I know you're not apsychotherapist, I don't think.
Would you talk about the role thattrauma plays in everybody's life,
including people like me thathave had a fairly successful life?
(15:56):
We've not had any majorviolations to our mind,
our body, but everybody has somelevel of trauma and it impacts,
it instructs, it informsthe way they lead,
the way they connect orcan't lead or can't connect.
Take that everywhereyou'd like to take that.
Not so that everybody knowsthey have massive trauma,
(16:19):
but all of us have some trauma andit does instruct the way we lead.
So I think the best is toshare a story. So I had
a few years ago the rare leader,
he was considered to be the next CEOof his company. He was very smart,
(16:40):
doing very well, verysuccessful of course,
because he was consideredto be the next CEO.
And so in order to do that,
he has to be in front ofa panel of other leaders
who was responsible forthis process. And Scott,
out of nowhere,
(17:03):
he changed his behavior.He became very talkative.
He talked a lot. He didn'tlisten. He was another person.
And of course, he didn't get the job.
So we had this conversation and hetold me, I don't know what happened.
I don't know. And then we said, okay,
(17:25):
so let's figure out where it's comingfrom because it's coming from somewhere
and revisiting his life. Heremembered that when he was a student,
so it was years, years and yearsago when he was a student, he,
in order to pass an exam,
he also had to be in front ofa panel of different teacher.
(17:46):
And one of the teacherdidn't let him talk.
So imagine this young guy who prepared
and he couldn't talk, hecouldn't express himself.
So he completely lost his cool.
And also it became a traumabecause it was a trauma.
I'm going to go back to thedefinition of trauma in five minutes.
(18:09):
And it's not enough.
It was not enough thatthe teacher told him.
So he lost his cool and theteacher told him, young guy,
I don't know what you're goingto do, but I can promise you,
you will never be a CEObecause I can see all your
emotion on your face.
(18:31):
So that young guy leftthe room with a trauma
and thinking that it doesn't,
leadership is not aboutshowing your emotions.
So it was not true. And so
when the time came your first timehe was considered to be a CEO,
(18:55):
everything was in his unconscious.It was not conscious of that.
He didn't remember that time, buthe is unconscious. Understood.
Remember that time I said, okay, sonow you know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to talk and talk and talkand not let anybody interrupt myself,
cut myself. I need to talkand that this is what he did,
(19:16):
but it was not relevantin that case. Not at all.
And then this trauma, so if I goback to your question of your trauma,
the trauma is my definitioof truama, not my definition,
but definition of trauma is it's a moment
or a series of momentsthat triggers very strong
(19:38):
emotion and that triggeralso your sense of
safety. So that could be, in this case,
this young guy felt this traumaand also student maybe would
not feel that, but he feltshocked, he felt in shock.
And then a trauma,
(19:58):
I like this metaphor ofour brain is like a house.
So you have different room in the house.
So you have your bedroomand you have the kitchen,
and in each room you put the right thing.
So you put your bed in the bedroom andin the kitchen, the fridge or whatever.
(20:18):
And now imagine that in the middleof your living room you have a car.
So it's a bit complicated becausehaving your car in your living room,
imagine that you want to watch TV,
you cannot watch TV or not reallygood because you have to put yourself
that way or whatever.
(20:38):
And then imagine you wantto talk with someone that is
sitting in the sofa behindthe car. You cannot.
So trauma
is something that it's an emotion thatis not at the right place in our brain.
So our work is to take back the car
(21:01):
and park the car in the garage becausethe place of the car is in the garage,
is not in the living room. Sothis is what the trauma is.
And each of us, we have small trauma,
doesn't have to be big likeof course Gaza and war and
Israel,
and unfortunately everything we can name,
(21:27):
but each of us at one point wefeel, and it arrived to me too,
I was attacked. I was attacked inmy car, and then it was the same.
I was not aware that it was a trauma.
But I will be aware later when I
surprise myself by beingalways overreacted when I saw a
(21:51):
light at night, because in my memory,
my sense of safety wastriggered at that moment,
and it was a very strong emotion.
So I had to work on thatto let go and to go back
to my sense of safety,
to put the car in the garage toall of us at one point we have it.
(22:14):
Sometimes we're absolutelynot conscious of it.
Hortense, you have a gift. Idon't know what to name it,
but whenever you arespeaking, I find myself
visually seeing it in myhead and seeing my life.
You have a gift of speaking verbally
(22:35):
and having it come tolife visually in my head.
It's something that I've not experiencedwith anybody on this podcast in six
years. Everything you say,
I'm playing a movie in my mind and I needto revisit that after this interview.
I'm going to move on.Thank you, by the way,
for taking the time to address trauma,
including in your own lifeand how each of us have that,
(22:58):
need to name it, need to quote,
park the car in the right part of thehome or the apartment, the garage,
not the living room.
And then also do the self-reflectionon how that inhibits perhaps our
ability to build connection with people,
which is of course crucialto being an unlocked leader.
I think my favorite part of yourbook is chapter five, you title it,
(23:21):
See Yourself Differently,A View from the Outside.
And you quote Bill George, of course,
the famous author of True North and theformer Medtronic CEO as what he calls
it, a crucible.
But you pepper some stories throughoutthe chapter in the book about Doug
Conant,
the former iconic CEO of CampbellSoup that has gone on to be one of the
(23:44):
most influential minds of our generation,coaching, speaking, and writing.
Will you talk about and tellthe story of Doug Conant,
and not just whathappened to him initially,
but then how it maybe took a mindtrap and turned it into a mindset
or such? Talk about that.
(24:09):
I think it was, so let me rememberbecause I have so many stories,
but yes, I remember there was this one. So
he was fired,
he was fired at the timewhen he thought that
everything went very good and very well.
So he felt insecurity at that timeand then he didn't understand,
(24:32):
and the company
give him the possibilityto talk with someone.
I think it was a coach.But his first reaction was,
no, I'm not going to talk to this person.
And this coach asked himto and it changed his mind.
In fact, I think it was in themorning and at the end of the day,
(24:55):
he just called back. The coachhas said, okay, I want to see you.
And the coach was great, and it toldhim, okay, come anytime, come now.
And then the coach madehim write. He told him,
okay, now you'll write your story fromthe beginning. This is your homework.
(25:16):
And then he came back home and said,you know, what is this homework?
Write my story. So what should I do that?
And in writing his story,
he understood that
he never listened to his voice. Henever did the thing that he felt.
(25:37):
He never did the thing,
he didn't write his own story. Hewas writing a story of somebody else.
And then he realized that it was a gift,
this trauma of being fired,
he didn't understand why became agift, and it changed completely.
And he changed the path of his life andhe changed his leadership also because
(26:04):
it will become a very good,an advocate of listening
to your own voice.
Or your book is full ofriveting stories like this.
This is my favorite story inthe whole book is you uncovering
with Doug that his story wasactually someone else's story.
(26:27):
And I want to take just amoment and reiterate this,
and I think this is a profound lessonthat readers of your book and people you
coach pull out. Because to some extent,
all of us are living someone else's story.
All of us have an identity that someoneelse placed upon us, our parents,
our guardians, our caregivers, ourteachers, our headmaster, our rabbi,
(26:51):
our priest.
And I don't know that most of us knowthat or admit that it's not wrong,
it's not shameful. Butwhen I was interviewing,
preparing for a interview once withthe famous actress, Viola Davis,
I read in her book with Brené Brown,
she talked about the powerof knowing your story.
And then the next day I wasinterviewing Eric Barker,
(27:12):
he wrote a famous book calledBarking Up the Wrong Tree,
and a couple of other books. He'skind of a social psychologist.
And the next day he talked aboutthe power of knowing your story.
I went home that night and asked my wife,
had she ever told herselfher story? She said,
no and fell asleep because we have threeyoung boys that have my energy so she
(27:33):
was exhausted. So at the age of about50, I got out of bed at midnight,
10 o'clock at night,
and I walked around my living roomwith a wire whisk in my hand like a
microphone. And at the age of 50,
I told myself my story forthe first time in my life out
loud.
And then I literally walked around ourliving room in the dark for an hour.
(27:56):
And out loud I told myself mystory, all the truths, all the lies,
all the things that people hadsaid about me that were hurtful,
that were true or not true,
the things that I liked aboutmyself, the things I didn't like,
the mind traps to quoteyou that I had built around
myself. And at the age of 50,
(28:18):
I told myself my own story and thendecided what did I want my story to be?
What did I want to accomplish?
What inhibitions, what
challenges did I think I hadthat I wanted to overcome?
And I'd like you just to finishoff this conversation today,
reminding people thepower of deciding their
(28:42):
identity,
of telling themselves their story andwhat that can do for them in the future,
to unlock them as better parents,as better friends, as better lovers,
as better spouses, as better leaders.
Make that connection between definingyour identity and telling yourself your
story. How do people do that?And what will the outcome be?
(29:05):
Thank you for your patiencelistening to my long setup.
No, I love it. Thank you forsharing that. It's so important.
Let me just redefinesomething, The Unlocked Leader,
and if I go back to mystory and my inner voice,
this is exactly what we're talking about.
(29:25):
Why should we free ourourself from our mind traps
that we talked about before?And how do you do it?
So the book is aboutthat. How do you do it?
Because it's not easy
and by challenging, finding the source,so I repeat, but finding your mind trap,
(29:47):
tracking the source and challengingthe beliefs. So is it true?
Is it's relevant, isit helpful? And let go.
So this is a process of unlockingyourself and why it is important.
Because then exactly like in my story,
then you begin to write your own story.
You don't write the story ofothers. And that's a problem.
(30:09):
That's why we are trapped,
because I believe thateveryone has a special
talent, each of us. And then one day
we need to meet thisspecial talent. You need
to grow this special talent,
(30:31):
and you need this courage toface that, to unlock yourself.
And then you are free. And thenyou begin to write your own story.
And you think about, okay, howdo I want to show up as a leader,
as a person? What are my values?
What is my why, what drives me?
(30:52):
And then you walk on it every daybecause it's a new connection,
a new mindset that you're walking outand you write your own story every day
and every day. You have this daily,
what I call daily raw withyourself and thinking about,
okay, where I am
in my journey of writing my own story,
(31:16):
what do you want to achieve?
What do you want others to thinkabout you or to remember about you?
What is your special talent? Andagain, it's a journey. It's a journey.
It's not the destination.Every day we learn,
and this is beautiful becauseevery day you learn and
when you're going to write your own story,
(31:38):
when you will give yourselfthe authorization to
write this own story, your own story,
you will see how much joy, happiness,
That will come with that.
And you would be even more successfulas a leader because people are going to
(31:58):
connect with you. It's all about empathyand empathy. Start with yourself.
So start with yourself. What storydo you want to write? Think about it.
For those listeners that can't see me,
it's a good interview when the hostis taking copious notes with a pen.
I'm writing down all these insightsthat I'm learning. I love this concept.
(32:18):
Give yourself theauthorization to write your own
story and also have adaily round table with
yourself. Hortense leGentil, how did I do there?
Perfectly. Thank you, Scott.
You are a highly in-demandkeynote speaker, coach,
(32:39):
counselor, consultant, andco-author, lead, author of the book,
The Unlocked Leader (32:43):
Dare to Free Your Own Voice, Lead with Empathy,
and Shine Your Light in the World.
And for those who aren't watching thisinterview, but you're listening to it,
the book has a very simple birdcageon the cover with the door open.
It's such a great metaphor for thisbook. Thank you for joining us today.
You are a class act. You are a sage,
(33:06):
and I've thoroughly enjoyed listeningand learning from you today.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Scott, for havingme. It was such a pleasure.
And we'll see you backhere next week for a new
conversation
On Leadership.
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