Your Inner Revolution: Becoming the Leader Only You Can Be

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortes.

1:04 Welcome back to a Working on Purpose program which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortes. If we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, logo therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto now help companies enliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture, inspirational leadership and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose. And many many people don't recognize this how critical inspiration is. And did you know that satisfy or inspired employees outperform their satisfied peers by a factor of two point twenty five to one. In other words, inspiration is good for the bottom line. You can learn Madison how we can work together at gustodshnow dot com or my personal site at Leiscortes dot com. Getting into today's program, we have Dana Williams, who is an executive coach, speaker, author and founder of Dana Williams Consulting. Twenty five years in leadership at Southwest Airlines, she now helps leaders move from performing to thriving by lining their strengths, core values and purpose.

2:07 As a Gallup certified Clifton Strengths Coach, she is the creator of the Strengths Journal and Your Authentic Imprint Framework. She is a Forbes Coaches Council member and contributor, host of the Dominate Your Day podcast, and author of The Internal Revolution, Lead Authentically and Build your Personal Brand from Within, which we'll be talking about today. If she joined you today from Dallas like me, Dana, welcome to working on Purpose. Welcome. So fun to be on your show on the other side of the mic, right, It was so good to be on your podcast. And now I get to have you one mind. Thank you, and let. Us celebrate this beautiful thing you brought into the world. Look at this. It's just gorgeous. And I loved being at your book launch here in Dallas. That was fantastic. And I know what it feels like, you know, to have this plan, this dream of having a book, and then you hold it in your hands and when people are reading it and learning from but it's so amazing.

3:01 It is. I get goosebumps every time I think about that. Isn't it wonderful? Yeah? I really get it. I remember when my first book came out, and I just it had been author had been on my resolution list for probably more than a decade before it actually happened. And now like one book a year or something. That's what we're going for. So we're going for I'm like, oh, I got to rest from this first one. Yeah, you do, you do, and it's just like childbirth and then you're fine, that's all right, Well, let's open with the gift and the promise of doing the work that you espouse in the book. I think that it's just so beautiful what you put forth you say in your book. The refreshing truth is that when you're living your entire life from a place of authenticity, you recover a lot of lost energy spent filtering or masking what others can see. No longer suffer from an imposter syndrome, that gut feeling that your persona doesn't feel authentic to you or to others. Instead, you enjoy a special kind of freedom. The result is that you embrace exactly who you are and the world finally gets to see the real you.

4:04 Yes, this is. It's a seventeen year project of a journey for myself of working with or just growing up with a very busy mom who was working back in the medmen era. And I was a latchkey kid, you know, and my sisters and I would just do life. But I always wondered what she was doing. She was just so busy, but she was so happy, and she was literally producing films and video and doing that medmen era thing back in the sixties. And so I grew up with her being very busy and being very productive, but it was a limited time we got together.

4:46 And then I got in the workforce and I did the same. Thing with my daughter, and I got busy and I got and then I thought. I took a break for about nine years and did some nonprofit work and some other things. And it was at that moment at least, that our marriage kind of went just in the basement. Everything was just horrible, and I was sitting there going what am I doing with my life? And who am I? And who have I been saying I am? And I just went on a deep journey and what I really learned is that you don't need to be more productive to be more you. And authenticity is easy. It's hard when we're trying to be something we're not and it was just a journey, but it was a lot of deep work and a lot of counseling. And then then I became got into recovery work with other people, you know that are working on their marriages and working on really and then working on themselves. And then I started as a leader at Southwest, went back to Southwest and when I was you know, literally, we were acquiring air Tran this company, and we're thought, how can we bring these people in and be a part of this culture.

5:58 And one of my friends, I said, you know, there's this tool called strengths spinder. Let's try that. And so we. Did that and it was amazing. In marketing, I was a marketing leader. I did not realize how impactful that one tool was going to be on my life, and it really helped me identify and. Unlock my unique talents. And then I put a coach while I was. There, and so I was doing my day job in marketing, but then I was helping other leaders across the company integrate this in Then finally our present said, let's become a strength based organization. So five years ago I started my business as a consultant and I got to really help Gallop work on the strategy of what Southwest needed to become with strengths based airlines. And it was during that that I saw the things I was looking at working on my recovery work and the things I was working on in leadership were the same, and I was like, Wow, why don't we talk about this at work? Why don't we talk about how to be authentic and how to be yourself and talk about your feelings and all the things that was happening. So that became my life work was to say it's okay to be authentic at work and to be yourself and it's not one day that passes.

7:14 I'm sure in the work you do as well, where somebody's in a role that's not right, or they're trying to lead people based on a persona they've created that's not right and it's causing a lot of friction on the team, and so being able to unlock all that and part of the book is really having people take this assessment called that I created called the Authentic Imprint Assessment, and it's where they unlock and figure out where they are as a leader in their journey and. What they need to work on. Whether it might be the core values, the mission strengths, and then what is the emotional intelligence around that. That's the multiplier for the formula, And so people can take the assessment and then read the book and see where they are are, then go back and take it and see improvement.

8:04 I have to say a couple of things to what you've shared so far. First, I have to imagine listeners and viewers are leaning in and really relating to that idea of you know, not being able to be themselves in their lives are certainly at work, and I can imagine some people might even be touched to tears here and move to tears by getting present to what that feels like. So I want to first start there. Then, when you talk about authenticity, one of the things that I have been really working on as well and centering in my work too, is helping organizations and leaders to be able to create an environ more people feel like they really matter and they belong. It's very hard to be your authentic self if you don't feel like you belong someplace, and so belonging. When it first started being talked about, it was discussed as you know, we accept you here. Who wants to be accepted or tolerated.

8:58 I don't want to be accepted or toted. I want to be welcomed. I want to be celebrated. I want other people to as well. And when you do feel celebrated and welcome, you can be much more authentic. So there's so much that we can do as leaders to be able to create an environment for people to step into the space that you're inviting us into as well. Yeah, and I think and I think that's it. It's coming in and really saying we care about you and you're valued, and we know that from Gallup. They exactly. It's the research shows that when employees feel valued, they're more engaged, that their work is meaningful, and people are watching and connecting their meaningful work with the mission of the company.

9:40 That way's pretty powerful. It is. And as you know, I'm also a fellow Gallop Certified Strengths Coach and have been for more than ten years. Really important work and. It's amazing how much people can learn about themselves when they do that. Now, if you would next, you've mentioned your authentic Imprint framework, But let's just talk more deeply about that what is and bring it to life for our listeners. And viewers. Wow. So when you think about it, I was like, Okay, you learn your strengths. And I've been a strengths coach for about twelve thirteen years now have to count up. And one of the things that I realized is people like, Okay, now what and you've probably seen this in your work as you come in and they oh, yeah, we did that strengths, but it's in the door somewhere and I don't know who I am. So I was like, yes, And that's why I think one of the successes we had at Southwest is we kept it in a drip drip drip mode and we had a strategy. It wasn't just oh, come and do this and you're done. And I think it's like working out at the gym. You have to practice using your unique talents and a lot of it, as you know, Elise, is going back to the past and getting rid of old patterns and things that haven't served you. So today I was with a group online and we were talking about the drama triangle and how we're either you know that from the sixties where you're either you know, you're either blaming somebody else for something they've done. At work, or you're fixing something or you're avoiding. And so what we did is we

11:10 flipped the triangle and said, look at the authentic imprint. And this authentic imprint is a formula. It's your strengths plus your core values plus your mission times your emotional recognition. And the emotional recognition piece is something we see all the time in the workplace, right it might be aware of themselves but not self aware of how they're coming across. And so the authentic imprint is a formula that you can do in your mind very quickly when you see yourself going in an emotional state, or you're feeling inferior, or things aren't feeling you're off, It's like, wait, let me get back to my center of who I am and then let me approach my day intentionally instead of letting me reacting to everything happening in the day. I'm going to design my day and I'm not going to live in default. And I was doing a lot of that, living in default and just who.

12:09 Can I help? Who can I fix? Who can I you know, and then it was like I'd be drained and so and I think that's a typical leader today. They are there's just so much chaos and they're having trouble keeping up with the chaos and clarity. So it's really an internal work, this authentic imprint. That's why it's called the book is called the internal Revolution, because we can't get it from external. It's got to start here in the work that we're doing here. And it's hard. That's why a lot of people don't want to do the internal work, because they have to go work. On themselves and and do that sometimes. Oh. I mean, I was just delivering a two and a half day workshop for a client last week and high level people, and I think by the beginning of the second day, somebody said, you know, this is so great, but I'm worried that if I want to go back to work, this is all going to go away. And you know, we're taking time that we don't usually take to step into this kind of self awareness, probing sort of place that you're teaching us. And so the thought was that this was going to be a one and done thing. And then they were aware of that and they were afraid of it. And I suggested just even just if you just check in with yourself, like start the day with the savers program, you know, the silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, describing, et cetera. Just even five ten minutes can make a big difference to check in with yourself and to center yourself.

13:35 So making it really more of a discipline, right, a part of your day, not just something you do occasionally. Absolutely, and I think that the word is intentional. Instead of being worried about the world and what's going to happen and who's going to do what, it's like, no, what do I have and what do I need? And what is my intention today? And so that's why five six years ago I created the Strengths Journal and launched that way my Business, which is the only daily planner to go along a companion guide to the Strengths. Yes, so now I combine. You know, if you want to get the book and get the Strengths Journal, if you've got your strengths, that's great. If you don't, you can still use the book and you don't have to know your strength. But it's how do you discover you know that power, you're just God given power that you have, and then how do you align that with your unique contribution that you've made to the world. And so many people don't. They say they don't talk nice to themselves, right, right?

14:31 That right? This kind of helps transform that mm hm. You know, and part of what I really appreciated about what Gallop has done. I've been a Gallop van for years, but I remember I think it was during the pandemic when they started really talking about their work on well being and well being is such a beautiful compliment in what we're talking about here, cultivating your own sense of well being. And I know that there are five essential dimensions of well being that Gallop covers. Do you want to situate those real quick force? Yes? So, and they're in order of importance. Okay, So the. First one, which blows everybody away is number one is social. We need six hours of social interaction with the human being every day.

15:13 So I was blown away by that figure. Yes, yes, and especially during COVID. But that doesn't mean yes, we're getting social on a recording like this, or we're getting social. And when we're talking it's when those people when people would just go and isolate and not have any human to human contact. So number one is social, and then I'm sorry, And number one is career real being, which is purpose and then number two is social. Career well being is what you talk about all the time with living, you know, working on purpose. So I like what I do every day and I feel like I can use my talents to do good and I have a purpose. I was at the doctor this morning and she said she was she works with a lot of people that are in different ages, but she said, my retirees, I see their health go down right away. They lose purpose.

16:04 Yeah. And then the third one, so, so career is social, and then the third is financial. I mean sorry, physical. Physical is what I put in my body, in what I do with my body. So it's not just people to think, oh, you know, I went and walked, but yeah, what are you eating, what are you putting in your head? What is your mindset around all this? And then the next one is financial. I know where my money is and I have a good handle on my money. The last is community well being. So community is I feel safe where I live and I am a part of my community. I get to volunteer, I get to go do something. I was doing a group of Southwest employees last year in marketing and they were evaluating their core values as a team and they all realized that they hadn't been and their well being, and they realized that they hadn't done any kind of giving back as a group, and they'd had a lot of change. And so after that they said, we're going to go do one of our you know, pull up one of our old opportunities to go, whether it be you know, Habitat for Humanity or Ronald McDonald House as a group, and that kind of met that community need, but also for them to bond as a team.

17:22 So it's kind of two wellbeing things at once. Awesome so much that we can work on there, and let's let our listeners and viewers think about those five essential areas as we grab our first break. I'm your host, doctor Relice Cortez. We've go on there with Dana Williams. She's an author, coach, speaker, and founder of Dana Williams Consulting. We've been talking a bit about where her book came from and why she's out to help the people the way that she is, and also her formula. After the break, we're going to talk about how to put in place some of the strutges that she lays out in her book. We'll be right back, doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise alisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working

18:55 on purpose. Thanks for chaining with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elist Cortes, as I am dedicated to helping create a world where our organizations thrive because their people thrive, are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business at better in the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. As Daniel was mentioning, one of my latest is called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically and live in your business. And I wrote that to help readers understand the lay of today's workforce. What do they want and need to give their best for you and want to stay? And then I provide you twenty two best practices to equip you to provide that in your leadership and your culture.

19:37 You can find my books on Amazon or my website at least core test dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest is Seana Williams. She's the author of The Internal Revolution. Lead authentically and build your personal brand from within. So one of the many things I enjoyed about your book is that it's chock full of all kinds of strategies and useful tools. And one of the things that you talk about really early on in your book is that you offer three fundamental transformations that that take place along the way as you your Internal Revolution journey continues. So let's talk about those three transformations. Yes, so really, and this is this is so wild Elias today. And this group that I was with, we did a poll and I said, what is the one thing that is the hardest for you at work? For you as a communicator, as a leader and for your team.

20:29 And it was clarity. And so if we're not clear on the inside. We're not going to be clear out here, right. And you kind of have that feeling and you know something's not clear, but you just keep going through and it comes out kind of discom you know it's just not right. So in this book, we really want to help you discover and own and live in your unique, unique strengths and then really identify and live in your values. Those are usually your strengths and your corvets are doorways to each other. They mit and match. So usually when you show me your core values, we can line up your strengths that match right with that, and it's just a doorway to your strengths. And I think that is it gives a lot of clarity and then mission being able to do.

21:19 I do this so that people. Can blah blah blah whatever you're solving. And for me, my mission is and I created this almost seven or eight years ago, but it's to help people birth their purpose and live in there and live in their strategies or their strengths every day. And I use the word I added the day every day about four years ago. And because I realize that we're a work in progress. You know, the leader we are right now is going to be the leader that we need to be six months twelve months from now. And with all the AI and all of the things happening, I'm looking strategies as a marketer for twenty twenty six differently than I looked at twenty twenty five and twenty twenty four. People are inundated with content and how do we be clear? But we got to be clear on the inside about who we are, what our strengths are, what our values and emission.

22:17 If we can't identify that, we're going to be kind of just living in default. That's number one. I will comment on the values piece in that I am surprised I do this a fair amount also as well, where I take people through a values identification process, and it's amazing to me how much clarity people get out of that exercise. Right, So, in my case, I just socialize a list of one hundred values and their definitions, and then they pick the ones that most resonate with them, get down to the list of ten, and then prioritize one to ten. And that clarity is. So such a such a clarifying compass for people. I'm amazed at that people that are well forties fifty sixty that are doing that exercise and gaining something out of it.

23:03 It's it's amazing, it really is. And I think I think core values really help when you're making decisions absolutely, and when you're saying not only decisions for your team, but for yourself. And I was just coaching a leader this afternoon on that and she was she had high responsibility with her strengths, but she had a very high core value of making sure that she served everybody. It's like, well, how are you managing that? You know with you know, because you people with high responsibility the basement or the when it gets in a blind spot is hard to say no, right, And so helping her realize she can't, you know, who are you serving as a leader?

23:49 What is your mission? And so once she identified her core values in her mission, then she got clarity, so that that really helps. And then the second one is just from lack purpose. We've been talking about this. I think it's the red thread of consistency throughout here is how do you. Go from lacking purpose to purposeful? What a lot of it is how you start your day. You can say the airline business, if we get those first planes out on time. The rest of the day, we're good. Right, Everything in the morning is off, it's going to be off all day. Same thing with us as human beings. And so I like to use the strength journal is intentionality and say, here's my purpose for my intention for today, and here's the three things I'm going to do, and let me apply my strengths to help me get energized to do those Because it's about not managing your time, it's managing your energy.

24:48 I really understand that, and I've been using that in my coaching as well. Yeah, and I think so many people think, oh, I have to back to my statement about you don't need to be more productive. It's about who are you and what are the strengths you're going to use every day to help you be energized because we have unlimited amount of energy there. And then the last thing is really going from isolated to connected. Right now, we're in a society where there's a lot of loneliness going on. There is a lot of people that aren't connected and they're isolating. They could be around a lot of people, but they're isolating and they're lonely, and so how do you transform your relationships? And you're just your off to be your authentic self and thinking about your relationships. One thing when I started this book book is I realized I wasn't spending time with my girlfriends because I was busy working, right, And so we now we intentionally play marsh On every week and that I try not to let anything get in the way of that. It also helps me with my social well being every every week. So it's kind of hitting several things. And that's what I like about thinking about yourself and managing your day intentionally. But the end of the day, I love this. My editor, her husband's from Norway, and he always said are you satisfied with today? And instead of saying how is your day?

26:16 Are you satisfied with it? Did you live out your purpose today? Your intention intentionally? Are you satisfied today? That's really powerful. I like that question so much better than how was your day? Yeah? Wow, so much? Yeah. Okay, Well, let's start a little bit more deeply into your formula. We've already talked more about the values. Of course we said something about that, but I do want to talk a bit more deeply about strengths. My experience is when people hear about this idea of you know, discovering your strengths, that sounds kind of wo wo or whatever. And then when they do get their strengths results back, they get their top five or if they unlock the whole thirty four. What I've discovered is a lot of people look at those and they're like, look, those are strengths.

26:58 Those are just me. So they don't recognize them as strengths. And so let's talk a little bit about the power of really discovering and leaning into our strengths. Yeah. I think the way I talk about it a lot. Is I think you have we kind of put labels on ourselves early on or somebody does, and you when you take this assessment, it's over six decades of research and doctor Clifton created it when he said back in the fifties, he said, what if we study what's right with people instead of what's wrong with them? So that's why it's positive psychology. So that's one thing. But I think the other thing is because it's he bought the Galup companies in the nineties and since has you know, create you know, taking the assessment further, now thirty five million people have taken it. You really see, like you said, people got this is me?

27:50 How did they know this is me? And when you start comparing your results with somebody else's that might have like you and I might have one of this same talents like strategic or idiation, our reports are going to be different because we're one in thirty five million people. So when you think about that, at least we're in Texas. There's twenty eight million people here. We have to outside of the state of Texas and find five more million people before we find somebody just like us. Yeah, you know, that's happened to me. In a workshop. I was doing a strengths finder for leadership women and I said that stat you know, it's the chances of somebody having the exact same one and thirty five five strengths issue in the exact order is one in thirty three million. And these two women stood up on their feet and they went, that's us.

28:36 It was pretty calm. It was amazing. I've been doing these workshops for years and that has never happened. Had to wow, that is I've never had that. Yeah, yeah, no, it's and and so The other thing that I want to situate about strengths is is the energizing aspect of living in them, right, the motivating aspect of living with the more that we get to live our strengths and more energy that we have, the more viteuta that we have, and the more we are are intrinsic motivation is that activated. And that's I think really important for people to associate when they're thinking about the importance in living and leaning into their strengths. Yeah, So today we were on this webinar and talking with We had about thirty five people on there, and they were talking about when they go into that default mode, that emotional piece of just reacting to things instead of reflecting.

29:27 And when you know your unique talents, it's like which one am I going to turn up and which one am I going to turn down? Because they can get in your way, right, And so I kind of think that like a superhero and you're just kind of pushing your buttons to depending on the situation, using your emotional recognition to figure that out. But I think that helps a lot, is identifying them and how to use and when. To use them, I think is important. I do too. We won't talk more about the mission and the emotional regulation because I think you recognition me, because I think you've handled that already. And there's more things I want to pull from your book. I would love for you to speak to the strategy that you encourage us to use, and. That's drawing your life now. Yeah, I really liked that.

30:09 Yeah have you ever done that? Not like you're teaching us. No, Yeah, I had a counselor have me do it when I was going through this deep dark time and. All of a sudden, what you do is you get a piece of paper and you draw. A line birth and now, and you look at you know, all the things have happened in your life, good and bad, and you put them on there. And then I have people put when they saw some you know, the ups and downs, and then what strengths they saw, because your strengths have kind of been with you your whole life. But all of a sudden, the big thing here is you start seeing a pattern. It could be a familiar pattern, it could be a pattern that you've just carried. For me, it was with being my mom being gone a lot and my dad being gone, I was I became like a kind of a person that was always like taking care of everybody, fixing things and being a little bit codependent.

31:04 And I was like, ooh, that's where that came from. How do I look at Do I want to bring that with me into the next thirty forty years? How do I how do I shift? And it's learning to say, oh, that is not met here's my strengths, here's what I'm going to use instead to manage me, instead of trying to help manage everything else. Because I think when you live in that kind of when any kind of environment, we all can go back to childhood and different things, but we pick up habits and we think that's just the way they are, and then I can be that way. But when you look at your map and think, no, I'm going to design it how I want to be in the next thirty years and you actually draw another line today and where you want to be and what is that You've heard this when you know where your eightieth My mom did this on her eighties. She said she was going to go back to college and she did and she graduated eighty six.

31:52 You got with your steed, which is just amazing. So it's like, yeah, where do I want to who's at that party, what they saying? How, what is my legacy? What? And so if I'm going to keep that some of those old patterns I don't want to keep. What does this look like? And what are the things I want to do in this next map? So you get to draw out your map, and it really really is powerful. And I've done it with millennials, gen X, I've done it with boot baby boomers, done it with everybody. The baby Boomers had a hard time getting their maps strong, and I think it's because the generation before was always don't talk about that, you know, be quiet, and this is no put it out there? What what happened? And how did you react? And what are those patterns? And why are you holding onto those? How can you when you go forward? What are some things that you can And I see it, and my kids and grand kids, I'm like, whoo, I've got to you know, I've got to stop that. So it's teaching it. That was another thing.

32:55 Is this legacy behind us that we're leaving? And what does that look like? So being able to draw your. Map, it's so powerful. And then that's the tools that you give in the book are just tremendous and so I got so much out of that from myself and the idea of legacy. I do want to talk more about that specifically with and through how you do You do have a very specific way of following your internal compass. I want to talk about that next after our break, let's grab Okay, I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes. We run the air with Dana Williams. She's an executive coach, speaker, author, and the founder of Dana Williams Consulting. We've been diving into some strategies that she has in her book about how we can really learn about our strengths or values, our mission, our internal or emotional regulation. After the break, we're going to take her through some more deeply in some of the ways that she helps people get acquainted to and connected to these areas.

33:44 Will be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise alisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

34:52 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. If you want to learn more about how we can work together and learn about the Gusto Now Academy for leaders and individuals on various journeys alike, make your way to Gusto dashnow dot com and then go to the training tap and you'll find the academy information there If you are just now joining us. My guest is Daniel Williams. She's the author of The Internal Revelation Revolution. Lead authentically and build your personal brand from within. So for this next thing that I want to cover, you kicked you, you situated this before. We what we're on break about the opportunity to really be mindful and intentional about our legacy.

35:33 So I love the tool and the steps that you provide in your book about following your internal compass and knowing your mission. So we talked about the idea of the importance omission before, but now I want to dig into the details. So you have a four step process? Can we walk through that? Yes? And I think. Most people when you ask, and I think coming from marketing, we always had a mission, right, We always had a key thing that kept us, you know, and so when you're working on your personal mission, people just haven't thought about that. And I was like, Okay, how can we help people really understand their mission and their internal compass?

36:13 And I think it's just four ways. So first off, who are you serving? You might be serving maybe you're a teacher and you're serving students, maybe you're an executive, maybe you're a board member, maybe you're running a nonprofit. But who do you most care about serving right now this time in your life? And then step two is find your positive impact? What changes for these people when you are at your best? So when you work with somebody you help them do something, and you help them, I think about the transformation that you're helping people do. For at least I hear you say, you know the gusto and working on purpose, and it's that is the transformation you're making. And the transformation I'm working on is birthing their purpose I first, and so as individuals, and so it's thinking about that.

37:06 And then step three is. If you know your strengths and your values, it helps energize and motivate you. So I'm always going to take you back to that because that's your uniqueness. And then includes how you create change, how you make things happen. And then I just have people write it and pencil. The marketing side of me says, do not make it very long, something you can remember. Many like sy this is and I said, that's beautiful, but we need to go a little shorter. Something you can remember and something that you can say. And then when you combine your audience and your impact into one fold sentence. So I changed mine evolved over the eight years, but it's you know, help now help leaders birth their purpose and live in their strengths every day.

37:55 And then I see transformation from the inside out. So it's been excited to work with companies and individuals. I work with a lot of leaders. And then teams, and it's been real exciting to see the transformation. But it doesn't happen overnight, and you know that at least it takes time. It does. You know, I want to echo a step too here to find your positive impact and you talk about what's situating the changes that that these people that you're serving get when you're when network you're helping get to their best I want to give a shout out to a previous guest, Wendy Lipten Dibner. She's created a formula and really a capture tool to help people really recognize the their impact. And so even if you don't use her tool, the notion of getting really clear about the impact that both that you intend for your people that are to have and then once you can actually capture what it is that is so important to keep you motivated connected When you really know your own impact and how much you really are mattering in the world. It's keeps you getting up every day no matter how tired you are, how little sleep you've had, too much you have on your plate, whatever it is. So I really want to emphasize that step two. I think that's a really critical piece that you're you're giving us.

39:11 And I think at least two. What when you were talking it just really keeps coming back to me, is it's not hard when you're being your unique self and you say it easily and you have a lot of fancy words and you don't have all this it's just being you. Yeah, it's just it's just like you know you're in your authentic self. There is there. It really isn't a better feeling to one really really stand completely in your authenticity and and and and be of service to your purpose and know that you're making a difference. There really isn't a better feeling than that, as far as I've discovered in my life. It's kind of like a little natural high. Yeah, I know, it's the best, the best drug you ever were in the morning, you know, the best drug ever. Yea, that's right.

39:56 I do want to touch a little bit more deeply on the idea of emotion recognition. And I loved what you said before data about you know, especially in organizations, emotions can be taboo or no, no, we don't talk about emotions. We don't do emotions here? What are emotions? But you have a stat in your book that Gallop study found that managers account for seventy percent of the variance in employee engagement. So leaders who can notice and name and respond to their emotional state before it shapes their actions create what you call emotional safety for their teams. Those who can't become unpredictable for us, draining energy from everyone around them. I think that's a really important thing because emotions get a bad rep right, So let's talk a little bit more more deeply about how you help people get more connected to their emotional recognition.

40:44 Yeah, I think And I you know, worked for a brand that was an emotional brand, Southwest Hard Yeah, right, right, So if somebody had a death in the family, or if somebody had a dog that died, or somebody, we did something for them and it. Was very what do they need? You know, a lot of caring nature. So it grew up building that culture and helping with that culture. So it's natural thing that I think about. But it's like, what would you do in your family if somebody lost a loved one. I had a recent situation where it's one of the employees died in the group, and so it was real and the leader was doing a fantastic job of giving everybody space and this is what we know, and this is what y'all need to go, you know, take time for yourself.

41:32 And so there's emotional recognition, and each person on the team needs something different depending on how they were associated with that person or what is going on. So and then what happens in our personal life shows up at work and can't help it right, and what happens at work shows up at home. So how do we as leaders managing ourselves and managing our families. And then how do we that have a. Purview of a few people that report to us, how do we make sure that when something's off, that we're helping them recognize it and get some help. I had a leader one time who was really just not doing well, and I knew something was off, and I just told him, I said, you are CEO of your life and your health right now, and I just need you to take some time off and figure out what's going on. And he so appreciated that, because I think it's harder for people.

42:30 It's like family members, they don't see it, but as leaders we're not trained how to you know, we're not trained in well being, We're not trained in some of these psychological things, and so people are scared sometimes of what to say. And I think if you just do the human caring thing when there is something wrong or there's something you can't miss again, it's going back to your authentic self. And there's not a blueprint for that. It's what works for you. You but in an emotional recognition way where you understand the different people in the room yea. And that you're attuned to them and connected to them, you know that you can expand your emotional vocabulary beyond mad, said, happy, glad, whatever, frustrated, always stressed, all those kind of things so so so important.

43:20 In fact, when I'm out speaking Dana so often, what I'm trying to do is help the audience feel connect to their feelings, connect to and of course what I really want, I want to inspire them to a place where they get moved to tears. That's what I really want. And if that happens, that I know I've done my job. If eyes are dry in the room, I didn't do it. But today what I find is that so many people are so divorced from their emotions, they don't understand those beautiful aspects of themselves, and they don't therefore derive the benefit of really knowing them and honoring them and working through them. Yeah. And I think I was talking to a leader that's a mom, and she's talking about raising her daughters, and she said, you know, if we can just raise them to be resilient and to learn how to deal with the good and the bad instead of trying to make everything just good for them, And I said, oh, my gosh, that is so. I think it's just each generation is different.

44:15 We've got five generations in the workplace right now, and they all need something different, and they've all been raised differently. So how do we recognize that and help guide them as they're managing that. Yeah. Yeah, so much opportunity to help people. It's such a beautiful thing to get to do. We're getting close to the end of the show, and I definitely wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to share a story or an example of somebody that maybe you've worked with, so we can understand a bit of how does this journey of an internal revolution work? Does what's the opportunity in it. Yeah, So I had a team leader that came to me almost two and a half years ago and said, you know, she wanted to see if we could work with her team. She wanted them to get more and gage aged and understanding kind of as they were growing and leading their teams. And so we started working with them, and it wasn't an overnight something, but all of a sudden this summer they got a huge, like sixteen percent increase in engagement. And she said it was after, you know, after we did the drip drip of everything, because it is a roadmap, but once they developed their mission and their core values and their strengths around that as a team, the clarity broke through. And I think it was such a great example because I think people just need to know the work I'm doing matters every day and I matter.

45:48 Like we started off the conversation talking about and it takes a while to get there to build the mission and all the stuff, but we want to make sure it takes a while because I want to build the map with them knowing who they are first, and then how they work with their team, and then now, how are we going to impact our others? Within the organization and the world with what we do that big impact. So I have to know because I've been with that's similar work that some of the things that happen is that you build trust and that help the team build trust with each other. They're like, oh, that's why you know. You have analytical in your top five strengths and I have achiever really top five. So when you ask me that barrage of questions, it's not that you're trying to stop me from doing what I really want to do and get this done. It's that you need that kind of detail in order to make sense of it and to be able to make a contribution. And I think that's really important when when we can help our teams understand those different dynamics and how we're coming at things differently because of our strengths, because of our values. And then I love the idea of that shared mission statement.

46:52 Beautiful. It's really been powerful. It's funny. It's just that intersection of when you're marketing a brand and you're creating and messaging for a group. It's a neat intersection because. They really get alignment and they and they were part of crafting it. Yeah, it wasn't that somebody came in and said, here's you are and here's your mission. It was like they got to develop it. Yeah, that's then we able to get out of that is ownership and we like that. Well this show, Dane's listened to white people around the world and they often tune in because they are trying to become better versions of themselves in some way, whether as individuals, as leaders. They're trying to elevate the culture of their organization. They're trying to be really cultivate who they are as humans in the world of work. What would you like to leave them with?

47:39 Oh gosh, there's so many things. I think. I think thinking about what is the impact you want to make in the world, and go do that. There's only one you to do it. And if something has been boiling up inside of you but you've been afraid to do it, use your unique talents, do it and you will make. What I call and I talk. I love to talk about this concept of you're lighting a little fire that you're building inside you. Like what you're doing a lease, but then you've got all these little campfires. If you would look at the United States and the world, I know you go all over the world at the campfires you've lit and the impact you're making.

48:19 You don't even get to see that, but I want to leave them with you know, be it's just do not be more productive, be more you and the way that happens if you just sharing the impact that you can bring to the world. And I love. Working with different difference makers who want to make an impact and they're wanting to work on themselves. And it's not easy work, right, You got to work hard on yourself, but it's so easy when you start doing it and realizing you're being yourself. What a beautiful way to Finishtana. I'm so happy to know you, grateful for our connection, for our friendship, and to be able to share you with my listeners and viewers around the world. Thank you for coming on working on purpose. Thank you, Elie.

49:00 My pleasure to be here today and be a part of your amazing show and get to connect with your listeners. So thank you. Most welcome. Listeners and viewers. You are going to want to learn more about Dani Williams her work as an executive coach and speaker at Dani Williams Consulting in her new book the Internal Revolution, so you can start by visiting her website. It's danawilliamsco dot com. Let me spell that for you. Dana is d A N A Williams w I L L I A M S Coco dot com. Dana williamsco dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it be your record a podcast. See you next week for another educational and nourishing conversation Together, Let's lean in and learn how to create destination workplaces that call forth the best from everyone, build our inspirational leadership capacity, and find ways you to business that betters the world.

49:48 Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on w fours see why. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires and passion performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.