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Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]: Whether it's painting a vision of the future or giving feedback on the thing that didn't work yesterday, courage is a necessity for leaders. In this episode, the way towards just a bit more of it. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 720.Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Dave Stachowiak [00:00:27]: Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show will help you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Oh, how we all wish to be just a little bit more brave in our work every day, in our lives of moving forward on the things that are so important to us, to our teams, and to our organizations. And yet, of course, we are all stopped by fear in one way or another. Today, a bit of a nudge for us all. A little bit more toward the side of bravery and how we can start taking some of those first steps to show up in the way we want to. Dave Stachowiak [00:01:11]: I am so pleased to welcome Margie Warrell to the show. She is a best selling author, keynote speaker, leadership coach, and Forbes columnist. With twenty five years of experience living and working around the world, she has dedicated her life to helping others overcome fear and unlock their potential. She is the author of The Courage Gap: Five Steps to Braver Action. Margie, so good to see you. Welcome to the show. Margie Warrell [00:01:37]: Dave, great to be with you too. Dave Stachowiak [00:01:39]: I was struck by a story you tell in the book about a nightmare you had before your first book came out. Would you share that story? Margie Warrell [00:01:51]: Yeah. I would say it's probably what I'm having as this book comes out too. So, yes, in a different version. Yeah. It was my very first book coming out, 2009, so a few years back now. And I well, as you can probably tell from my accent, I didn't grow up here in The United States. I actually grew up in rural Australia on a little dairy farm. I went to a school was had one room for the whole school. Margie Warrell [00:02:18]: I was the only kid in my grade. If there were lessons on grammar and syntax, I missed them. So I was always very mindful of of what I didn't know as a writer, you know, in terms of just the English language. But I was very passionate about writing this book, which was called Find Your Courage. Clearly, I'm still on the same theme in many ways. And I remember in the lead up to it coming out, it was coming out around the world through an international publishing house, and waking up in the middle of the night, Dave, with in my mind's eye, emblazoned in my mind's eye was this image. It was the front page of The New York Times. It was just my photo. Margie Warrell [00:03:02]: That was all on the entire front page of The New York Times. And it had one headline. It just said world's worst author. And, of course, you and I know that if I had have been the world's worst author, the New York Times would not have given me front page billing. But such is what our fear can do, particularly when we find ourselves in situations where we're feeling exposed to judgement. We're feeling vulnerable. The fact that it's completely illogical, irrational, and would literally never happen is beside the point. My fear of this being exposed as the world's worst awe that making a fool of myself in front of the world, certainly in my sleep, my imagination went off the reservation. Margie Warrell [00:03:51]: And so, yeah, I share that story in my new book, The Courage Gap, because often our fear of what we don't want, our deepest fears can keep us from doing the very things that would improve our future and add more value and help us lead others better too. Dave Stachowiak [00:04:09]: Thanks for sharing that edit. Ironically, the book was titled Find Your Courage. Right? Like, how funny. Margie Warrell [00:04:15]: No. No. No. Irony lost. I can assure you. Dave Stachowiak [00:04:17]: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's so funny because as you were as you're sharing that story, I was thinking back to, like, so many times where I've had something similar happen. And, like, it's it's really fascinating what our brains do to us. Like, logically, we know that that is not gonna happen. And yet the emotion is so real. It captivates us. We worry about it. Dave Stachowiak [00:04:37]: It wakes us up in the middle of the night, and it is so human, isn't it? Margie Warrell [00:04:42]: Oh, it is so human. And we humans are wired to feel fear. I mean, we wouldn't be here as a species if our brains weren't exquisitely wired to be on on alert for any potential threats to our sense of safety, but also to our sense of status and standing. And so often, our fear is telling us, be careful. Don't put yourself out there. Don't do the very things that maybe would actually add a lot of value, would be hugely, obviously, rational things for us to do. But our fear would much rather we stay safe, play it small, avoid the limelight, and and so we we humans are just always gonna have a tendency to, well, I say, catastrophize or fear cast what the future may hold. And and, you know, there's a lot of science that backs up that our brains are wired to do just that. Dave Stachowiak [00:05:39]: You write in the book, "through my work with insecure overachievers, I've repeatedly witnessed how people rise in the ranks because of what they do, but cap themselves because of who they are." What does that look like? Margie Warrell [00:05:56]: Well, what does it look like? It looks like people who are incredibly intelligent, capable, have immense expertise, who are very driven to achieve. They have achieved a lot. That's why they rise in the ranks. They absolutely are outstanding and excel and distinguish themselves in terms of their ability to achieve results. And so they find themselves in these very senior positions. And yet, often there is a deep, often unfaced, certainly not resolved fear of being inadequate in some way that drives them. And that fear has has driven them to work so hard to outwork others to to do the things that they've done. And yet that insecurity, that vulnerability that hasn't been fully explored and dealt with can actually undermine the decisions they make, how they engage with other people. Margie Warrell [00:07:03]: They can be operating and leading from fear of what could be lost. And let's face it, the higher you climb, the more there is to lose. Dave Stachowiak [00:07:12]: Yeah. Margie Warrell [00:07:12]: And so instead of operating from what I would call a play to win courage mindset, they're much more likely in in subtle ways to be operating from a play not to lose protective mindset. That doesn't mean that they're not willing to take business risks, but in those sometimes in very critical moments when stepping up, speaking up, leaning forward, maybe pushing back on something, saying a hard truth, going against the grain and what's popular, would actually be the game changer for transforming their businesses, for opening up new opportunities, etcetera. They lean back because of fear of being exposed. And so I think this this phrase, insecure overachievers, there's a lot of people. I've worked with many of them. And, you know, they they're not they're great people. They're awesome people, but sometimes they've been so busy in the process of doing and doing and doing. They haven't stopped for very long at all to look within themselves and go, who is it that I wanna be? And what's getting in the way of that? And I think any area of our life, anything that we feel that makes us feel vulnerable, that we haven't explored, if we haven't really made peace with that and done our work on that, then it's gonna drive us avoiding that exposure and what makes us feel vulnerable. Dave Stachowiak [00:08:39]: You have a paragraph in the book that I circled and highlighted more than any other because perhaps it perhaps because it speaks to me a bit, but also because I think it speaks a lot to our listening community and the folks you and I work with every day. And, you're right. The smarter we think we are, the more cunningly our fears work in the background. Working with insecure overachievers has taught me that fear has many faces and only occasionally expresses itself in overt knee shaking trepidation. More often, it hides behind intellectualized emotions, a false sense of urgency, being hyper controlling, or constant posturing and name dropping. And I read that and I thought, wow. Like, I see some of that in myself. I see some of that in the people I work with every day. Dave Stachowiak [00:09:28]: And, like, how often we don't even consciously recognize or make peace with the fear that we have, do we? Margie Warrell [00:09:36]: No. Well, because it's uncomfortable work. Right? And if we can avoid it, we often do until things start falling apart. And we got, like, what's getting in the way? You know, sometimes we plateau. It's like, what got you here isn't gonna get you to that next level. And it's not about working harder. And if that's what, you know, that has been our success formulas. Like, I've worked really hard. Margie Warrell [00:10:01]: I've done all these things, and now I seem to have hit a wall. Or sometimes people actually reach a position of incredible power. But instead of being able to scale the impact that they could make with their expertise, their knowledge, they know how all the things that they have at their disposal, they there's leakages of value around them. They foster fear and insecurity in others instead of emboldening others and empowering others around them to be leading change. They make other people feel insecure and unsafe. And so everyone starts operating from this place of self protection versus from purpose and growing value. And it's easy as humans as we go through life, Dave, to feel like, you know, I feel like I've I've done the work on myself. When I say the work on myself, oh, you know, I've done a lot of self reflection. Margie Warrell [00:10:53]: I've done my development, etcetera. But I've also found, and I'm curious about whether you have too, that there's a truth to the saying, another level, another devil. Dave Stachowiak [00:11:05]: Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I have had so many points in my career where I had the thought, especially early on, like, oh, when I hit this title or this experience level or this number of clients or these many followers, whatever the metric was at whatever point in my career, like, boy, I'll have made it. Right? Like, I'll have really gotten that point. And at some point, at least for me, like, you get you do that for a few years, and you come to the realization, like, there is no point. That point doesn't exist. Dave Stachowiak [00:11:41]: And I can say now, like, I'm glad it doesn't. Because part of this is getting comfortable with the discomfort of fear and learning and being nudged and pushed in new ways all the time, hopefully, in appropriate ways where it's not overwhelming. But, like, that's actually the fear that shows up is one of many for me healthy indicators of, like, okay. I'm learning. I'm growing. So yeah. Margie Warrell [00:12:08]: Oh, absolutely. And if you haven't spent time identifying what makes you feel vulnerable, what triggers your fear, then your decisions are gonna be governed by avoiding it. Dave Stachowiak [00:12:18]: Yeah. Margie Warrell [00:12:19]: And let's face it. Often, we're really busy. You know, if you're in a senior role, you've got a lot on your plate. You've got a lot to do. You've got a lot of pressures. There's often easy to rationalize why, you know, I haven't got time for this. And that self awareness- that's why I think self awareness is such a critical skill to develop. And it's not necessarily one we just develop because we're moving on and we're moving up. Margie Warrell [00:12:50]: We have to really be intentional about that and checking in on ourselves going, what's going on for me right now? How is it that I'm feeling? Where is my desire to prove myself or to please or to impress? Or on the flip side, to avoid not impressing people to avoid criticism or judgment. Where is that sitting in the driver's seat, pulling the strings on the decisions I'm making, and keeping me from making the highest point of impact and from forging the change that will ultimately add more value over time and allow my my team, my organization to be more secure over time versus just secure right now in the here and now. And I think that me here and now is always there's always a tension for we later. You know, just that that self interest. And, yes, I know we know we shouldn't have self interest be what's guiding us, but let's face it. We humans are are wired to be pretty self protective and that that securing our short term sense of security and status and certainty and control. Dave Stachowiak [00:14:02]: Yeah. Indeed. I I I can't remember if I said this word out loud, but I was certainly thinking it in the introduction of the word nudge. And I'm thinking about, like, so much of what you teach of, like, one minute of bravery, like, just small nudges of this direction. And there's a really beautiful part of the book of highlighting some of the common traps that we fall into when fear comes up for us, and also a a few nudges on how we can just get a little bit better at nudging a little bit more toward bravery. And Mhmm. One of the traps is discounting the future. And you say the trap of valuing the future more cheaply than the present. Dave Stachowiak [00:14:46]: Could you Mhmm. Say more about that? What does that mean? Margie Warrell [00:14:49]: Yeah. Well, for most of human history, I think it's like for 98% of human history, we didn't live much beyond 35. If you got into your thirties, you were doing well. I mean, very few people made it into their forties. And so I often laugh that it's why we said we did marriage vows were for life because that meant probably about fifteen years versus fifty years that we didn't live that long. And so there wasn't a reason to think about, what's my life gonna be like ten years from now? Because there wasn't a lot of runway ahead of us. Our brains have not moved as fast as the technology in the world that we live in. And so we tend to treat future time more cheaply than we do present time. Margie Warrell [00:15:42]: We discount the future. There's something called temporal bias that we have. And if you've ever agreed to do something at a distant point in the future as I have, Dave, where I've said, sure. I'll meet this person for lunch. Or I commit my time to something, and then that day rocks up or that week rocks up. And I look at my calendar, and I go, oh, why did I do that? Because back in January, may seem like a long way away, and, sure, I don't mind giving up the morning, etcetera. So just, you know, we can all fall into that trap. And and so it explains why we value the emotions that we'll feel five minutes from now, a lot more highly than the emotions we might feel in five weeks, much less in five years or ten years. Margie Warrell [00:16:28]: And so this kind of temporal bias drives us to sometimes procrastinate from doing the very things that would improve the quality of our future. We might put off making a change or taking a chance on something, because it's like, well, it opens up more insecurity and and uncertainty into our lives. It requires us doing things that are awkward or uncomfortable. Maybe it requires us disappointing someone in the near term because we're trying to open up space and bandwidth down the track. But I but I often say to people, you know, every time you stick with something that's not moving you toward what you most want at a distant point in time is is time that you're investing in something that is is not is not helping you. So just be really mindful about how you're treating time and that you don't discount future time for present day security. Dave Stachowiak [00:17:27]: Well, as you were saying that, I was thinking of, like, boy, all the situations I've fallen into that. And we had a conversation in one of our academy sessions a while back about this, and one of the folks in the conversation is a very senior executive and was running into the constant challenge of, like, never having enough time in schedules and overbooked and all those things. And one of the things that came up in the conversation and tactics that really helped him and a bunch of us also adopted was the practice of thinking about a request that you had to commit to three weeks from now or six months from now or whatever. And think about if I had to work this into my schedule today, would I still say yes? And would I still say yes joyfully? And and how interesting it is. Like, sometimes you still have to say yes to something depending on the request and all that. But how interesting it is, like, when you bring it in the there's just the thinking into the present moment, it has a way of, like, preventing the discounting of the future as much. And it's it's really it's a fun practice to try, and and it's helped me to make better decisions. Margie Warrell [00:18:33]: Oh, yeah. That's a great technique. I I I I think we should all practice that. I'm taking it myself, and I'm gonna run with it. Okay. Because let's face it. I think the answer to many things would be no, particularly when you add in the word joyfully. Would I and I get it. Margie Warrell [00:18:49]: Sometimes there's things we just need to do and they're not necessarily making us feel like clicking our heels in the air. But so often, we don't think through how will this impact the future ahead of me. And and, yeah, there's one part of it because we're not thinking about it, the future, the same way we do the present. But often there is a fear of short term uncomfortable emotions and a fear of disappointing people. And I know myself, I had a friend slash coach say to me a few years back. She said, Margie, how recently have you disappointed someone? And I had to think about it. I'm like, and I was kinda going through, when did I disappoint someone last. And what I realized and what she was getting at is, I haven't been disappointing people enough. Margie Warrell [00:19:35]: And when I say that, it's not that I wanna disappoint people, but if we are really prioritizing our times on the highest value activities, that means that we're taking charge of our calendar. That means that we are inevitably gonna prioritize what's important to us versus what's important to maybe some of the people around us, which will, in in turn, mean that some people feel disappointed. And so we need to manage that, and, obviously, we can say no to the request without having someone feel that we don't value them. But we have to be really thoughtful about that, and I I think that's a really important thing. I actually was just talking to a CEO client yesterday, and he said everyone wants some of his time, and he wants to give everyone his time. And as he's trying to scale his business to neck to the next level, he's really struggling with that. And it's because he hates disappointing people. And so for him, part of his work is to become more comfortable with disappointing people, but being being reconciled to why in time that actually serves sometimes the very people that may feel disappointed. Dave Stachowiak [00:20:44]: Yeah. Indeed. Well, speaking of disappointing people, one of the other traps and suggestions you have is to reel in what you call fear casting and the worst case scenarios. What is it that's problematic about that? Because, like, a lot of, like, the call of leadership for us is, of course, thinking through what could go wrong, like, guarding against that, just doing the due diligence of leading an organization well. Where does it become problematic? Margie Warrell [00:21:10]: Well, it's problematic because we humans are driven by emotion, much more so than logic. And every anxious fearful thought comes from us thinking about an unwanted future state where where our brains are going into a future point in time. We're going, I don't want that to happen. Oh, I don't want that to happen. And we are twice as sensitive to what could go wrong versus what we wanna make more right. And I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Daniel Cunningham that we we hate to lose more than we love to win. Dave Stachowiak [00:21:44]: Oh, yeah. Margie Warrell [00:21:45]: But potential losses potential losses, which, you know, when we're thinking about the unwanted future, it's often a loss of something, a loss of face, loss of money, loss of reputation, loss of business, loss of market share, etcetera. That that actually is just way looms much larger in our in our minds than well, if we gain market share, if we make money, it just takes up more mental and emotional real estate. And so that can have us living in this fearful state, which drives decisions, which are defensive decisions, which are risk averse, cautious decisions. And the more uncertainty there is in the future, and let's face it, we're dealing with a lot of uncertainty, the more prone we are to turn our forecasts into fear costs. And so those fear costs instead of, like, what the market might look like. Yes. We do need to absolutely be looking at what are the potential scenarios, what's the risk factor on this. But if we're only ever looking at everything that can go wrong, it can actually keep us from taking proactive, constructive action and smart bets, risking intelligent failures to grow share, to forge new ground, to make things more right, to forge the change that's gonna transform our business to be thriving five and ten years from now. Margie Warrell [00:23:05]: And so there's always gonna be this tension between delivering results right now and transforming for the future, but it ultimately undermines the quality of our decisions. And so we have to be really, really deliberate and careful to be reeling in that fear and going, okay. Sure. These are scenarios. But what is it I'm most committed to here? What is it that aligns with our values and where we wanna land ourselves into three, five, ten years from now? Dave Stachowiak [00:23:34]: You invite us also to stop rationalizing inaction and excess caution. Boy, that one speaks to me because we get so we can get so caught up in that. I know I can of, like, okay, here's the reason I'm not quite doing this yet. Haven't moved on it, and it gets back to that intellectual thing I think you were saying earlier of, like, we can rationalize things and we don't even see it as fear, do we? Margie Warrell [00:23:58]: No. No. Well, you know, it is midwinter or it is midsummer or I am 50 years old, whatever that may we can always find if you're looking for an excuse, or a really elaborate, well thought out, put together rationalization for why this isn't the right time, you are 150% gonna find it. Right? We are our brains are little Einsteins at this. Quickly able to reel off all of the reasons to run for the hills or tow the line or whatever whatever that safer option might be. So that's what we've got to be so careful. Go, you know, what is it that it could cost me if I don't do this? What if this was actually the perfect moment to speak up, step forward, you know, make this bet? And often when we look and think about opportunities, they really come wrapped perfectly wrapped with a big pink bow on top. Often they're a little messy. Margie Warrell [00:24:59]: You know, the timing's not perfect. We're not quite sure what we're doing. We may blunder a little bit as we go forward, but that's okay. Giving yourself permission to go, it's okay that we might be blundering as we go forward, but at least we're moving forward. Because the very process of moving forward into the unknowns, onto the new ground, means that you're getting feedback. You're getting information whether or not everything every step's landing perfectly or not is beside the point. You're getting feedback and you can be taken that on and go, okay. Let's iterate. Margie Warrell [00:25:31]: Let's adjust course. Let's let's adjust this. Let's tweak that. Whereas if you're not doing anything, you're just you're missing out on all of that valuable information. And so there is there's often we really do discount, and often we're blind to how it can be costing us when we are operating from a mode of rationalizing our inaction and being excessively cautious. And, of course, sometimes being cautious is a prudent thing to do, but we've gotta be careful that we don't get fall into the trap of just constantly doing that. Dave Stachowiak [00:26:03]: Yeah. And especially if we tend to be the kind of person that sometimes moves too slowly on something. I certainly fall into that category. I have a lot in my career. In fact, as you were saying that I was thinking back to when I started the podcast back in 2011, I actually bought all the equipment in 2010 at the end of the year, and I didn't start the podcast until August of twenty eleven. So the equipment sat for, like, I think, nine or ten months before I actually started. And I could have at the time, if we had talked, I had all kinds of good reasons why it took me ten months between buying the equipment and starting. But the real reason was fear, and and it wasn't even, like, back to your New York Times example, like, no one even knew what a podcast was back then. Dave Stachowiak [00:26:51]: No one was even gonna find it and listen. And in fact, that's exactly what happened early on. It was just a side project. But there were some really good reasons for me to start it just for my own personal, like, things I wanted to do in my own career journey. And yet all of that got crowded out by fear, and I had a perfectly good story for why it took ten months to do it. Margie Warrell [00:27:09]: Of course, you had a good story. I don't doubt it. I bet it was a beautiful story. And you know what? I'm sure when you've been working with leaders as I have, they often have great stories for why they're not doing the very things they know. If you really were really, really honest, you know that there would be value when you're taking that action. And so but it's like, oh, well, I got a lot on. There's a lot of uncertainty. I don't have the right team in place. Margie Warrell [00:27:37]: You know, there's a lot the market's pretty volatile at the moment. Yada yada yada. Absolutely. And you know what? Twelve months from now, that's still gonna be true. So I think waiting for perfect conditions is is always gonna have a hidden tax that we pay, which is why I often say just you don't have to jump test what is it? Don't test the the depth of a a puddle with two feet. But, you know, wait. Step on in anyway and give yourself permission to be figuring it out as you go along. You know, a a distinction that I I like to share is we can never control the quality of the output from what we're doing. Margie Warrell [00:28:18]: I mean, there's always gonna be factors we may not see. We saw back several years ago, suddenly, like, a pandemic happened or something shifts in the market, a new technology. Things there's always gonna be things that can come along that we could probably never predict. There will also be things that maybe we just didn't give enough thought to or we under indexed on, etcetera. So we can never fully control the quality of the output of our actions. We can only ever control the input. But if we're not taking action, doing the input, then we're not gonna get the output that we can then learn from and go, okay. Well, this worked. Margie Warrell [00:28:53]: This didn't work. And so there is just immense value in by actually moving forward even though we're not a % sure what we're doing. And the key for leaders is to make sure you're shortening those learning cycles, that you're fostering a culture of learning where failure isn't brushed under the cover, where people can talk about what worked, what didn't work, where that learning can be shared across teams, across, you know, divisions, and everyone can be a little bit wiser in in terms of how they can apply that learning. And so I always think just approach things with curiosity, with purpose, knowing that there is often a much bigger price to doing nothing than your brain wants you to think. Yeah. Dave Stachowiak [00:29:38]: There's a beautiful couple of sentences near the end of the book where you write, if your courage helped the paintbrush, what picture would it paint on the canvas of your life? What vision for your future ignites purpose and passion and excitement within you? It doesn't have to raise eyebrows or win accolades. You don't have to aspire to climb the mountain or into the c suite. What does matter is that it inspires you even if it scares you. The best visions always will. I read that, and I was thinking about it. And, like, how true? Like, so often, it's the both end. Right? It's the inspiration and the fear. They go hand in hand. Dave Stachowiak [00:30:16]: And if you're inspired, but a little fearful, that's a good indicator that you're betting in the right direction. Margie Warrell [00:30:24]: Oh, absolutely. As I as I've written in the book, you know, interpret your discomfort as a cue to move forward and as a sign that you're on the playing field of your life versus, to quote Brene Brown, sitting in the cheap seats. I I really believe that if you're not regularly feeling a little, I'm not quite sure how this is gonna go, a little afraid, a little vulnerable, a little uncomfortable, then you're playing it too safe. And any worthwhile endeavor is always gonna require you to be breaking ranks with what feels comfortable and fuels a sense of security in the present moment. And so, yes, I I I I encourage everybody who's listening this to just be asking yourself, where do I need to step it up in pursuing the highest uncomfortable good? Dave Stachowiak [00:31:16]: You are coaching lots of leaders, doing keynote speaking, consulting, working with organizations, helping them through this. And you have studied courage and bravery so extensively over the years. And I'm curious as you put together this this new book and have, of course, reflect on lessons of the prior books. What if anything, have you changed your mind on on this? Margie Warrell [00:31:39]: A key thing I've changed my mind on is that there's ever an end point, that when it comes to the courage gap, that any of us ever get to the other side and stay there permanently. And I somehow I used to think that at at some point, we arrive. And I believe that actually if we're living meaningful lives, we will there will always be some other gap ahead of us that that will always be being maybe a silent invitation in our lives, in different aspects of our lives, to be leaning in, to be practicing courage, you know, risking vulnerability in new ways. And that it doesn't matter how smart you are or how accomplished you are, how many feathers in your cap, how high you've climbed, there will always be opportunities for you to be practicing courage in some way in your life. Dave Stachowiak [00:32:39]: Margie Warrell is the author of The Courage Gap: Five Steps to Braver Action. Margie, thank you so much for your work and for nudging us all. Margie Warrell [00:32:48]: Thanks for having me on, Dave. Dave Stachowiak [00:32:56]: If this conversation was helpful to you, three other episodes I'd recommend. One of them is episode 573, how to protect your confidence. West Point's Nate Zinsser was my guest on that episode. We talked about the trap a lot of us tend to fall into when we think about confidence of thinking of ourselves as either confident or not confident. And, of course, the reality is confidence is dynamic, not only in different areas of our life and work, but also over time. We don't just become confident and then stay confident. It is something we continually need to work on. In that episode, Nate discussed some of the research and practice behind how to actually protect our confidence well. Dave Stachowiak [00:33:37]: Of course, so key of being able to do things with more courage and bravery. Again, that's episode five seventy three. Also recommended episode five seventy six, how to help people engage in growth. Whitney Johnson was my guest on that episode. We talked about the s curve that she teaches and the growth stages and learning. And, of course, the challenges is that the early stages are often some of the hardest. It takes a bit of confidence and courage and bravery. Yes. Dave Stachowiak [00:34:06]: All of those in different forms to be able to take those steps forward. We talked about how to do that. What are some of the tactics to keep in mind? And also the big picture, how to think about growth. Episode five seventy six for that. And then finally, I'd recommend the recent episode with Jennifer Garvey Berger, episode seven thirteen, how to grow from feedback. She reminded us in that conversation that feedback should not just be a one way conversation, a leader or manager giving feedback to someone else, but it is a dialogue. The opportunity for us all to learn together and learn from each other and seek and solicit feedback. And the reason many of us don't is because it's scary. Dave Stachowiak [00:34:45]: It's fearful. What are people gonna say? What happens when I find out the thing that I'm not good at? That oftentimes affects our confidence and, of course, our courage and our bravery to be able to step into those conversations. We talked about how to do that, and I think it pairs so beautifully with this conversation. Episode seven thirteen for that. All of those episodes, of course, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And I'm inviting you to set up your free membership so you can access a whole bunch more. One of the things we've done in the episode library is provide the resources to be able to search by topic for the entire library since 02/2011. And one of the topic areas is personal leadership where this episode is going to be filed under. Dave Stachowiak [00:35:30]: Personal leadership is so key because leadership is not about us, and yet it does start with us taking the first step. Leaders do have the responsibility to move first. And what that means at the start is looking inward of challenging ourselves, of nudging ourselves forward to have a little bit more courage and bravery on all kinds of aspects of our skills and also working with others to ask for help. It's one of the reasons that the personal leadership area is inside of the free membership. It's one of the many subject areas inside. Set up your free membership to get full access. Just go over to coachingforleaders.com. Once you set up your free membership, one of the other resources you'll get each week is my weekly guide. Dave Stachowiak [00:36:13]: It comes to you on email. I always highlight the key points from every episode, the related episode links that I just mentioned a moment ago, plus a bunch more. Oftentimes, resources I found online that I think are relevant for you to know about that will help you to continue to lead well, and some of the wisdom from our past guests always featured there too. It's one of the many benefits inside of the free membership. For details, just go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership, and you'll have full access to everything. And speaking of having more courage, one of the reasons that we don't have courage is because we don't wanna make mistakes. We wanna don't wanna do stuff that, you know, we make a big mistake, and we find it embarrassing or it challenges our identity. That's happened to me many times as I know it's happened to you. Dave Stachowiak [00:36:59]: And I talked about one of those mistakes in one of my recent journal entries, a big mistake I made, and more importantly, how did I recover from it? Because that's the real question. It's not if we're gonna make a mistake. Of course, we all do. But once we make a mistake, how do we actually recover and what are some ways to do that? Well, I expanded on that on a recent journal entry. It's one of the many benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus. To find out more, just go over to coachingforleaders.plus, and you can get my weekly journal entries every week delivered to your inbox, plus several of the other benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Dave Stachowiak [00:37:41]: This coming weekend on our Saturday cast, I'm glad to welcome Jess Britt, who's one of our fellows. We are gonna be having a discussion about how to lead engaging meetings. It'll be a fun conversation. And then next Monday, Rebecca Hompkis and I explore where to start when your organization is in survival mode. I hope that's not the case for you, but if it is, an important conversation next Monday. Thanks as always for joining in, and I look forward to seeing you for both those conversations in the next week.