00:01 Hey, what is happening? Friends, I hope everybody is fantastic, making sure that we are live. Let me grab my phone here. I'm like, wait a minute. That's not what we want. Okay, there we go. Hey. Hi. Hope everybody's fantastic. It is 11 o'clock here in Austin. I am hoping everybody is doing okay considering the conflicts in the world. I hope everybody is taking good care of themselves because it is a critical moment, critical time. When I talk about leadership, I talk about humanity because this is the study of the leader, follower dyad. It is the art and the science of this relationship between a leader and a follower. It's very much like the relationships you have with your children, the ones you have with your extended family members. You are a catalyst for change. You influence behavior as a leader. You are privileged. Yes, I use the word privilege all the time when it comes to leadership because not everybody can call themselves a leader.
01:25 Not everyone who is a leader should be in a position of leadership. This is something I realized as I was going through my own personal journey of this role status, this position of leader. I didn't fully understand it until I went through my own personal failures, my own personal setbacks in leadership. I mean, I had departments and I had groups of employees wanting me fired at one point. This was in my early years of leadership where I didn't know what leadership was. I was using my position and my power to leverage authority to leverage my relationships with my employees. And I was doing it all wrong. I was doing it all wrong. It was very painful for me and for my employees during that time. And so I've spent a great deal of time in the field of leadership, coaching leaders, guiding leaders, helping leaders solve for problems. I mean, that's what leaders do. We become the best at solving for problems in our organizations. That's what I get to do every single day with you. I want to be the best I can be to help you solve those problems. But you do that in your organization. You do that in your communities, you do that in your families. This is what we do as
02:59 Leaders. It's a privilege. And people calling themselves, leaders out here have no business leading another soul. They have no idea what it means to have a servant leader heart, to have compassion, to be able to look at the person across the table from them with the eyes of humanity, not with the eyes of power, not with the eyes like this hierarchy of power. And that's one of the biggest challenges I have as a leader coaching leadership clients, is this hierarchy in society, in the organization. And just because you have a title, just because you have a position and have been bestowed authority does not mean you have right to treat your employees any other way, but humanely, that's what I'm struggling with is this whole idea of hierarchy and the structure in our organizations. And because of the nature of leadership and the distance between your position and those below you, there is not only this construct, right?
04:22 There's a gap, but also in psychology, it's in this competency. It's in the awareness that a leader has their competency, their skills, their abilities versus what their employees have. And so there's a gap. And so leaders who abuse their power tend to look at their employees as less competent, as less capable. And so it makes leading very interesting for both the leader and the follower. And so this is what I've spent my entire adult life trying to figure out because I too was just like you in the trenches molding the clay with my employees trying to figure out what leadership was about. I didn't go to school for it until I decided to get a PhD in the dang thing, because I thought, I'm going to learn on the job. I'm going to wing it. I'm going to fake it until I make it. I'm going to pretend like I am a leader.
05:23 But all the while my psychology was saying otherwise, it was saying, no, you're not. You're abusing your power. You have no business leading somebody else because you can't even lead yourself. So what gives here, Denise, and those were my early years, those were my early years, and that's what's happening to a lot of my clients out here to you may be out here, you're trying to figure out what leadership is really about, and you're winging it. You're faking it until you make it. This is why a lot of us have imposter syndrome. This is why so many of us feel like frauds out here. It's like, well, they promoted me. They had no business doing that, but now I'm going to show them that I am a failure. Self-sabotage occurs in the mind. So much is happening as we're trying to figure out our roles as leaders.
06:17 And so I just want to share with you that there is a proven path. There is a proven path that I created for us because I got tired of saying the same thing over and over again to every single person that was coming to me for leadership, mentorship, leadership guidance, leadership coaching. Everyone had the same foundations cracked. We all had our foundations cracked. So here we were trying to build success upon a very broken foundation. I mean, there was cracks everywhere. The integrity of the structure was being jeopardized because no one's taught how to lead. We go and wing it. We go and see our predecessors or we see our current leaders and we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do what he does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to do what she does. And so unconsciously and consciously, you are taking on these behaviors and then we make these behaviors and these beliefs our own, and then we show up like somebody else, and we don't know who we are.
07:23 We don't know what we stand for. We don't have convictions. We have our mindset unraveling every day as we're leading. We don't have solid footing. And it starts with the foundation. As a leader of the leader, no matter where you are on the pipeline of leadership, there's a foundation we all have to build the foundation. And it starts with mindset. It's the mindset work. Trust me, we're going to take a ton of action. Trust me, as a leader, you can't just sit and laissez-faire this. That's not going to happen. You're a leader. You're going to have to take some massive action. But why not us first build a strong foundation so that we can then take that proper action that's going to yield positive results in our departments, in our organizations, and in our teams. And so the proven path looks like building a strong foundation first, and then there are stages.
08:30 And I call these stages to mastery. This is leadership mastery. We start with the first foundation stage, and then we build upon that and we're building our capacities or we're expanding, I should say, our capacities. But before we do that, we have to know, well, what are our current abilities? Because I didn't go to school to be a leader. I go to these trainings and it's blanket generalized leadership trainings because they lump us all in one training room. And there's no room for authenticity. There's no room for exploring your own individual gifts and talents, your own strengths, your own weaknesses, right? Those corporate leadership trainings, listen, I'm guilty of designing those where I've lumped all kinds of leaders in one room with zero success at the end of that training because it was not individualized for these leaders. And what I have learned through all these years of helping others in the pipeline of leadership is that we're not the same.
09:43 We may have the same anatomy, and even then some of us are wired a little differently, but we may have in theory the same neuro anatomy, but we were socialized very differently. We were raised differently. We were programmed differently, we're conditioned differently. So you don't lead like I lead. I hope you don't because you have your own gifts, your own talents, your own strengths, your own capacity to meet. I don't want you to lead like me, and I sure the heck don't want to lead like him because I've got my own strengths, my own capacity, my own skills, my own gifts. And so what I designed for us, and it's not ready yet for the public, but we're putting on the final touches, is the proven path to leadership mastery so that you don't have to guess anymore. So you don't have to go through the pain and the struggle and the challenges of knowing how to lead yourself and others.
10:51 We start at the foundation and then we move up into mastery. These are the stages that I take and I will take you through. And at the end of that program, you will have a certification in it. You will have a certification because you will meet my requirements to go out there and to show your employer, I did it. I did it. And here's the capstone certification. Here's what I had to do to earn this certification because this isn't a Harvard Business School certification. It's better than my friends because here it's an intimate setting where I get to coach you and your beautiful brain and I get to mine the gold that's already within you. You understand? This is the kind of certification program that I designed because it was something that I was longing for when I first started my leadership career. I was thrusted into leadership.
11:50 Much like you, probably much like you, I don't think anyone sets out to say I'm a leader. I hear people out here saying, I'm a born leader. No, you're not. You're not a born leader. No. You have good programming. My friend. Someone in your youth said you can do it. But so many of us that are thrusted into leadership, we're never told these things. We were told to be quiet. We were told to stay in the corner. We were told to not speak until we were asked a question. Were trained, and we learned to not speak until someone allowed us to raise our hands and pick on us to ask that question. This is how a lot of us were programmed as little people. And so we then go into the workforce. We then start realizing, well, things could be different.
12:48 So the way he's doing it, it makes no sense to my brain. I bet it doesn't make sense to other brains. So maybe I could try something different. Maybe here's a different process that I can present. Maybe here's a different idea that we can try out. And so you then start looking at ways to fix procedures, policies, processes. You then start thinking like a leader, and this now sets you apart from the team. This now puts you in a different field of influence. You're now thinking differently. And so somebody recognizes that if it wasn't you, it could be someone, maybe a leader who recognized that in you and said, you've got potential. Have you considered going into leadership and your brain's like say, what? Leadership? Oh, no, I was just telling you what makes sense. This is just an idea I had. But leadership. No.
13:44 Then you start building the capacity for leadership, and then you are thrusted into leadership one way or another. You then find yourself in a leadership role and you go, wait, how did I get here? This is actually really difficult. How did I get to this spot? Because this is actually really uncomfortable. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm making their behavior mean something about me. I'm not in the group anymore. I have hierarchy. I have position, I have status. So I'm not part of the team anymore. This really feels uncomfortable. And then we try to make sense of it all, and we try to do the internal work ourselves without asking for help leader, ask for help. Your employees should be asking you for help because you are establishing a culture of psychological safety so that your team can ask you for help. So what I want to create for you today is psychological safety so that you can ask for help because I'm here to help you.
14:44 I'm here with a proven path that you don't have to think about. I've created the curriculum for you. I created a certification for you so that I can get you from wherever you are today to mastery where you belong, right? And let's talk about mastery. Mastery is not like a degree that you hang on the wall, okay? That's not mastery. There's constant iteration. Every time you face a challenge, every time you butt up against your comfort level, the edges of your comfort, you go back to the other stages. You go back to the initial stages and you go, oh, okay. Got to learn something new. Yes, I reached mastery in this certification program, but yikes, there's something that's come up that I need to learn and I got to go back. So mastery is constant iteration. It's not an end result. It's not the degree on the wall.
15:37 If you think mastery is the end all be all, and that's it, you don't have to do anything else ever again. You are mistaken. You are mistaken. It's about constant iteration. It's about constant evolving, and that's what we get to do in this certification program. And so this is important work that we get to do as leaders. We get to look at our mindset. We get to really, again, build a strong foundation mastery in our mindset so that when all of our actions, all of our behaviors result in negative, we yield negative results, or we fail at a campaign or fail at a project, we go back to our mindset always because your mind is going to make you believe that it was your fault, that you're no good, that you're not enough, that you shouldn't be in leadership. All of that mental rumination, all that self-talk, the negative, what we want to go back to and build upon a very strong foundation of positive reinforcing beliefs about you and about your employees and the impact that you have in the organization.
16:48 That's the foundation work that we are going to start off with. So that's mindset. The second thing is skills. What essential skills do you need in your current role? First of all, what skills do you have that we can capitalize on right now? What skills do you have a gap in, right? Because if you are unable to fulfill the results, you're unable to create solutions and to create high performing results, then you're lacking some skills in certain areas. And we want to identify those. So we get to build on skills. We get to hone the skills that have catapulted you into this leadership position, but we also identify the skills that you need to then move you into the next phase of your leadership. So that was the second variable. I call these variables. The third variable is strategy. And under strategy, every good leader listen, every good leader spends a great deal of time
17:48 Forming strategies because our strategies are going to direct our actions, our behaviors, our habits, so that we can fulfill high performing results with our teams. So those are three variables, mindset, skillset, and strategy. And these three variables I like to think correlate with the effectiveness of your leadership. These are the three strongest variables that we can measure, that we can control for, so that we can create the results that we were hired to create as leaders so that we can lead our team, so we can create psychologically safe environments so that our teams can thrive in. We want to create engaged, committed employees in our organizations. I always say, when you pour into your employees, they will move heaven and earth for a great leader, for a leader that cares about their wellbeing, that cares about their safety, that cares about their growth and expansion, these are the leaders that employees will move heaven and earth for.
19:04 I mean, I spent a great deal of time doing this research, especially in my dissertation journey. I focused primarily on the relationship between the follower and the leader, and we measured the leader's leadership style in relationship to the employee's commitment and their engagement. So much literature out there that says an employee is going to leave because of their first line manager or their first line director or whoever they report to in that immediately they're the reasons why they leave an organization or they quiet quit or they burn out. It's all because of the relationship between the follower and the person they report to. Plenty of research, plenty of literature out there. I wrote about it, I studied it, I've researched it so I know exactly what it means to look at these two entities, the follower and the leader, and the dyad between these two groups and what it takes.
20:09 What is the psychology between the two? What is it that's necessary to create strong environments in the organization where employees are fully committed and engaged to the leader, to the mission of the organization? And so that's my job, is to now help you build strong leadership skills, a strong leadership mindset, a strategy that you can implement and execute and then reiterate if necessary with strategy. I mean, we want to align our department goals with the organization's overall strategic plans. That's your role leader. And so we want to create our own strategies in correlation to the organization's overall strategic plan. And that's our job. And we get to do that in this certification program. And so I know I said it's not out yet. It's we're putting the final touches on this certification program. There'll be a capstone project at the end and a certification to show that you spent 12 weeks, 12 weeks, three months.
21:18 It'll go so fast with an expert in leadership, with someone who designs curriculum for leadership trainings and workshops. You're going to learn how to be a master in leadership so that when things don't go as planned, you're going to have all the resources. You'll be well-equipped, you will be well-resourced at the end of the certification program because I want more effective, impactful, compassionate servant leaders out here who aren't selfish. They are, yes, self-centered because we as leaders, we have to look within ourselves first before we can go and lead others. But know that this isn't for just any leader. This is for the person who deeply cares about the quality of their leadership. This is for the person who really caress about impacting their organization and impacting their teams. And that's what we're going to do together. I'm so excited about this. Like I said, we're working on the final touches and maybe within a week or two, you will be invited to mastery.
22:35 I will have an invitation to mastery for you. And so we're going to do something exciting. We're going to have some live opportunities like this. We're going to have a great program for you to share with you what to expect so that you can make an informed decision to join the certification program. So know that we will have an opportunity to learn more about what you're going to achieve in this certification program. And plus also gives you time to ask your employer for either tuition reimbursement, professional development, start asking your leader if there is professional development budget so that you can come and join us so that you don't have to pay for this, right? If we're doing this for you and the effectiveness and the impact in the organization, then you're going to want to go knock on your leader's door and ask if that's even a possibility. And so if they say, well, I don't have a budget, go to your HR director's office and ask them if there is some professional
23:45 And maybe even personal development funds that are available for the leaders in your organization. And they may have something that not everybody knows about. There may be a budget that not everyone knows about. And I know this because I have helped my clients do this, where they are looking for tuition reimbursement or professional development funds. And so know that that is a possibility in your organization. So I want for you to start preparing for this idea of mastery, going from status quo, going from average, going from someone who is complacent, someone with apathy, going from that mindset to wanting to be better, wanting to do better. And before you know it, you're going to be asking yourself, well, how do I become a master at this? Because I'm tired of struggling and I'm tired of suffering, and I'm tired of doing this like everyone else does it.24:39 And so how do I become a master in this? And my program is the solution and the answer to that question. All right, dear friends, I hope you all are fantastic. Have a wonderful afternoon. If you're watching the replay, I want for you to let me know you're watching it, type in replay. So I know that you came in after I got off our live stream here. Alrighty. I look forward to serving you very soon, and if you have questions, post them here in the comments and DM me if you have questions regarding the leadership certification program. Alrighty, wishing you all the best. Take care.
