250 – Modern Day Leadership with Lisa Pachence

John Over the last two decades, I’ve been in an insatiable quest to learn everything I can about leadership, what makes the best leaders so good after running companies small and large over the last 20 years. Today, I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name’s John Laurito. I’m your host, and I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this very topic and what makes the best leader so good. 

John Welcome to tomorrow’s leader! Hey, there tomorrow’s leaders, so Lisa Perkins is the guest today, she is a master certified coach. She’s a women’s leadership expert, really an expert in leadership overall. We talked a lot about trends in leadership. What really sets great leaders apart? We talked about self leadership. So really a fun conversation. We got into a lot of stuff. This was one of those that I planned on a certain amount of time and we just got into so much stuff and ended up going longer than planned because it was such a great conversation. That’s always a great sign. So I think you’re going to enjoy this. Here is Lisa. All right. Welcome to today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader, where we dove deep on all things leader-related, related to leaving yourself and leading others. I am John Laurito your host. I’ve got a great guest for you today. I’m thrilled to have Lisa, perchance, who is a master certified coach and a women’s leadership expert. Lisa, welcome to the show. 

Lisa Thanks for having me, John. I’m so excited. 

John Absolutely. Well, we had such a great conversation last month. They said, Wow, I just want to bring this to my audience because we were talking about some really, really cool stuff as it relates to leadership. And there’s a lot that I want to talk about with you. But let me ask you a question that you’re working with so many leaders out there and individuals who are either looking to lead themselves or lead other people. What do you see as people? What do you see as people struggling with most right now and trying to, you know, either overcome or get better at what’s their big issue that they’re dealing with? 

Lisa Oh, there’s a lot of juicy things in that dove right into it, diving right into it at the deep end. One of the things that I talk about most with my clients and specifically the clients who are leaders is this problem of perfectionism and overwhelm perfectionism and overwhelm are among the two biggest factors that lead to burnout and burnout is sure as heck prevalent in our society today. I think it attributes to fifty-two percent of turnover. And with the pandemic, it’s only increased. I think it’s something to the 60 or 70 percent attribution to turnover in companies. And so leaders are really struggling with this idea of how do we how do we nurture our employees to perform highly, to be productive without reaching that level of burnout? And if you look at the science behind it, there is this very thin strip of supporting and pushing people outside their comfort zone into right outside their comfort zone of the sweet spot, a happy medium, so to speak. And then the burnout zone, which is right beyond that. 

Lisa And so leaders are really struggling with not only burnout themselves because leaders are three times more likely to be burnt out than employees who aren’t managing others. But also, how do they keep their employees motivated, passionate, and in that sweet spot of working hard getting the rewards but not reaching the burnout zone? Now, the other thing that comes into play is that emotional fatigue is a huge part of burnout, and there’s a dichotomy in the modern-day workforce, which is you only work at work and then emotions and life happens outside of work. But as a human being, you cannot separate the human being from the being that works at work. And so there’s so much emotional fatigue from the pandemic, from people being kids, being out of school, from increased pressure at home. And what do you do with the pandemic and the things at work? So there’s a huge amount of emotional fatigue that’s happening. That’s also attributed to burnout. And most companies are not addressing that. And so that’s part of what I bring into my work, both emotional support and emotional intelligence for the human being I’m coaching. But also, how do you carry that into your management and support your employees to emotionally regulate and balance themselves on top of their performance? 

John OK, so you said a lot there, which is great and you brought up now in my head about 10 different questions. So let’s start with. So you’ve got a lot of leaders that are listening that might be leading a team of people or a very large organization. How? Two-part question How do you recognize when somebody is starting to get burned out and that you’re leading? And when you do recognize it and you figure it out, what do you do about it? How how do you address that? How do you recognize then that? How do you address it? 

Lisa Yeah, these are great questions. So a lot of my recent information about burnout. Comes from the book called Burnt Out by the Nagorski Twins. It’s called burnout unlocking the stress cycle, and they speak about burnout having multiple different factors. I think there’s about five different factors to burnout, and it can be physical burnout. So you’re you’re physically fatigued or physically tired. It’s really hard to to wake up in the morning. You’re not getting sleep. And so there’s a biological there’s that there’s a biological problem there. The second is emotional fatigue, and I don’t have the book in front of me, so I’m butchering the the philosophy, the probably turning over wherever they are the basket was. So there’s a point that you reach an emotional burnout and past that point, you stop being able to assess empathy and compassion properly. So you’re just you’re unable to normalize, to relate and your body almost shuts down almost like the emotional radar blacks out. Mm-hmm. So that’s the that’s the emotional part. And then the third piece, and I think there’s two more that I’m forgetting, but the third piece that really stuck with me is this idea of not being able to find meaning in what you’re doing. So just doing it to do it now that that can be just a regular human being problem that happens to me like I’m living the dream. And sometimes I forget, why am I doing this? Well, oh, it’s because I forgot this is my mission in life is my purpose on the planet. It’s a human phenomenon to get in the weeds and automatically do what you’re doing and forget the meaning. But for those experiencing burnout, it is inaccessible. Meaning in what you’re doing is inaccessible. 

John Mm-hmm. And as a leader and I’ve always been, I’ve always been focused on trying to see patterns and understand when they change. There’s something going on and it might be burnout. It might be something else, but it could be anything from somebody starting to communicate differently or their their energy level is different or their, you know, late for meetings. And they’re not been previously late for the start to just show a different level of commitment. Whatever might be any kind of change is usually triggered by something. So if I’m if I am leading an organization, then I start to see some of these changes in patterns. Is it fair to say burnout is definitely a possibility? In which case what do I do then? What’s the leadership next step if I’m sensing something’s wrong or something? You know, at least not where it was. What should I do? Yeah. 

Lisa It’s a it’s a great question, and I actually created a a free a free workbook. It’s not up on my website yet. It’s still in process, but a free workbook that helps you to identify which piece of burnout you’re in. And then what to do about it. So I’m going to I’m going to talk about that a little bit, but people who want to get that get that handout can just visit my website in the next couple of weeks and it’ll be up great. 

John And we’ll put all that in the show notes for exactly. 

Lisa Yeah, yeah. So there’s there’s five five pieces of of burnout that I take a look at in my coaching that I found are the sources of burnout. So we talked about purpose, we talked about self-care, and we talked about empathy and compassion. There’s two other pieces to this, so there’s connection connection to others. And there’s also self-awareness now I think that human beings are actually extremely intuitive, but through conditioning, we’ve turned off our intuition. So as a leader, the first thing you want to do is bring empathy and compassion. Because empathy and compassion are huge factors in creating trust. Trust allows you to go from your survival mechanism brain to your cognitive brain and allows you to access your intuition. It’s almost like your defenses relax and then the employee’s ability to say, OK, well, what’s actually going on is this thing? And so as a leader, I think the very first thing you want to do when you’re when you’re seeing low productivity or problems happening is bringing your empathy and your compassion. There’s actually a Forbes article that talks about this. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. There’s an article that came out September 20. Twenty one that says empathy is the new leadership superpower. It’s the most important thing in leadership. You know what article I’m talking about? 

John I’ve heard it. I’m not sure if I have read it, but yes, I’m pretty familiar. I think I know what you’re talking about. 

Lisa OK. I loved that article because it pointed to what my intuition has been saying about leadership in recent years, which is hierarchy is over. Power dynamics and leadership are over. We don’t need that anymore. We don’t need to be forced to do what we have to do. We actually need more nurturing, more compassion, and more work coaching support in order for us to be able to connect to ourselves and what’s important. And the thing about empathy is that, as I said, when you bring empathy as a leader, the other person responds and they see you as a trusting individual. And when one gets access to the cognitive part of their brain, they can then access intuition, self-awareness, innovation, engagement, all those great things. So that’s the first thing, I think the second thing you want to do is create some sort of connection. With the other individual, funny enough, loneliness in the workforce is actually the number one factor to burnout, loneliness. Wow. It is. Yeah, this was from a Harvard Business Harvard Business Review report from two thousand eight. What could be different in the last four years, five years? But when they did this research, loneliness was the number one factor. You can’t get to that place of understanding if they’re lonely. Where the disconnect happens until you address it through empathy. Hmm. So that’s the second piece, and I’ll pause there. 

John Yeah. So great stuff and empathy. Let’s talk a little bit about that because I think you’ve got a lot of leaders that are listening right now and wondering if they’re not naturally empathetic people, how they become more empathetic. You know, it’s one thing to say that and for people to understand, OK, I need to be more empathetic. But what does that actually mean when it comes down to my day to day interactions with people? What advice would you give to somebody like that who who might not naturally have those skills or that tendency? How can they start to work on that? How can they start to be more empathetic? 

Lisa My short answer, hire a coach. 

John Good answer. 

Lisa And I actually have an interesting story. So mean you got connected through a kind of sideways through a northwestern mutual connection who then connected me to someone who was in Penn Mutual, who then connected me to you? So before I became a coach, I was directing recruiting department in Manhattan, and I had just been promoted to direct the interns and a couple of other recruiters. And that was the first time in leadership I’ve ever been in a leadership capacity. And I was a high performer when it came to recruiting. I was really, really good at talking to people and creating influence and impact in a conversation, which is why coach but I was not able to empathize with my coworkers. I didn’t know how to communicate with them. I was very directive and I was very, Hey, do these five things and this will make you successful. And I had no idea why there was such resistance. And there was there was a lot of unhappiness in the department that I was leading. And what I found is that I was I was completely skipping the step of curiosity and empathy. 

Lisa And so when I hired a coach to help support me around this, I practiced no one asking questions like, Hey, what have you done? What is it like for you to be a recruiter? What is it? How has this process been for you? So curiosity, I think, is is an underutilized tool period across the board in our society these days, we value knowledge and having the answer, but I think that’s that’s backwards. I think we need to start valuing curiosity, not knowing, and seeing other people as equals instead of us as experts in order to assert power and dominance. Mm-hmm. So empathy is a muscle just like anything else. And from curiosity, I was able to connect to my colleagues and my reports. Experiences like, Oh, I didn’t realize this was so hard for you. I’m so sorry. Thank you for telling me this. What would support look like here for you? And so I started to. Connect to the emotional experiences that underpinned the problem. And then again, used curiosity to take a look at what’s actually needed to overcome it.

John It’s interesting, I love that word curiosity, because if I’m hearing that it answers the question for me, it’s OK. If I’m curious, I’m asking questions and I’m a big believer. There’s really there’s no such thing as a bad question. I think if a leader is just asking questions. Ultimately, it may not even be the perfect question, or it might not be exactly worded the way. I think a lot of people don’t ask questions because they don’t know how to get to something or ask it in the perfect way. It’s funny I was watching a show with my son and it was a scene in a in an office setting, and it was about a three minute business meeting. And it was just every, you know, question and statement were perfect. It was impactful. It was powerful. It was the right question. It evoked the right answer and it was impressive and we got them watching the scene. I said, Nic, that’s not what real life is. You have to realize the business does not run that way. People don’t. That’s just that’s a scripted scene in a movie, in a show. So I think leaders also need to understand that you might not, you know, it might not be a perfect conversation. It might not be this perfect interaction. You might not leave saying, Boy, you know what? I don’t think I asked those questions the right way. But the fact that you’re asking questions shows a lot. And ultimately, you’re going to learn things that you would have never gotten before, and you’re going to build a level of relationship that you would not have before. And I think that’s sometimes forgotten by leaders. 

Lisa Yeah. Well, I can imagine in your leadership experience, you probably. You probably used curiosity often when you were managing your relative branches, right? 

John Yeah, sure, absolutely. Sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know and you have to just rely on the fact that if I ask questions because I always thought, OK, when I ask somebody a question, it’s kind of like if somebody says, you know, Hey, how are you doing? And natural instinct is to say good, even though you might not be good. But if somebody kept talking with you and asking questions, eventually the truth might come out. Now you know what? Things are really not good. I’m not feeling good. It’s I have had this stuff going on, but their instinct is to not be that open with you right away. And leadership, I find, is the same way. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to drop that guard. And just if you ask questions and get somebody talk and ultimately, you know, it might not be in a perfect three questions sequence and whatnot. And this and that it might come after 20 minutes of talking that that you figure you finally ask a question that brings out the answer that, wow, okay, here’s the issue. Here’s the here’s the the problem or the opportunity or whatever it is. I don’t know. That’s what I’ve always found and that’s resonates with you and you’ve found the same thing as well. 

Lisa 100 percent. Do you follow Brené Brown’s work at all? I do. I’m vulnerable. Oh, I love her stuff. I actually have her book The Atlas. That’s on my reading list next. But she talks about vulnerability being a huge part of daring leadership and this new wave of leadership. And I think what you’re speaking to is the ability to elicit vulnerability and others, and curiosity can do that. I think when you are genuinely interested in other people’s experiences, it opens, it opens up the other person. And I also like to think that vulnerability begets vulnerability. So if you are also vulnerable, it allows and gives permission to others to be vulnerable. And I think their vulnerability and empathy are very close together because you’re giving people a peek behind the curtain instead of putting up a wall performance or perfection or looking good. And when you practice vulnerability, it allows you to empathize with your human experiences. You’re speaking about things that are hard and empathy is that you’re speaking. You’re speaking the language of life is life is challenging right now to the other person who is being been being challenged. But I want to hear your take on vulnerability and leadership. What are your thoughts on that? 

John I think it’s essential. It’s funny. And I learned that through my own personal experience that when I started in leadership, I just felt like I needed to present this image. And I think a lot of leaders, you know, fall into that present this image that is really strong and knows the answer and confidence all the time and otherwise, people wouldn’t follow me. And what I found is that that wasn’t the case when I finally started to be and show vulnerability and more authenticity than my credibility increased. My level of influence increased my relationships with people, increased the culture, increase the results increase at all. Everything got better and I felt more at peace because I was really, truly being who I am. I think leaders sometimes fall into that the whole, you know, social media veil where, you know, the life that you see somebody or the life of somebody that you see on social media is not truly their life. It’s what they want you to see their life as. And I think leaders sometimes fall into that same trap feeling like, OK, well, I want to present myself a certain way and be known. I think this whole pandemic has helped people because we’re now seen in each other’s homes and seeing, you know, the cat in the background and you’re seeing here and kids, you know, go crazy sometimes and everything in its life, right? But that’s helped us feel more related to and more feel like our leaders are more approachable and we actually see them as human beings, not just people in these high-powered roles or whatnot. So I am 100 percent in agreement with you. I think vulnerability is absolutely key. 

Lisa Yeah. So I’m laughing. I don’t have kids. I know you have kids, but my cats. Every once in a while, I have two cats that will assert themselves onto my Zoom screen in really ridiculous ways. I actually just saw a video on Instagram of a leatherman holding his cat while he was doing the weather. I think I think it’s just fabulous. Oh yeah, and well, it’s funny. There was, 

John Oh God, I’m sorry, I was going to tell a story. 

Lisa No, please, I want to hear the story. 

John I just realized that you know, you’ve made me realize there are so many times when I started podcasting where I would stop if Bodie, my dog started barking or something like that. And I got to a point where I’m like, You know what? I don’t really care. So there are probably 25 30 episodes where you hear body in the background. So, you know, at some point you just say, Hey, life is life, and I’m just going to roll with it. 

Lisa That’s amazing. I love that. I think human leadership is the key to the future. I think it’s the key to engagement. It’s the key to us finding a connection again. We’re a population, a global population of the most depressed, anxious, stressed human beings ever in our entire history. And I think that has to do with our disconnect from our humanity and ways to access that is what we’ve been talking about. It’s the empathy, the curiosity, the vulnerability, the relating to other human experiences. It’s just self-awareness and practicing emotional intelligence on yourself, which a great practice of emotional intelligence is actually taking a look at how you are feeling when someone says, How are you doing? Not amazing. It’s such a simple practice to pause and say, How am I doing? You know, I’m actually like, I’m tired. A little resigned today, but overall life is good. Actually, actually being honest, right? It’s a simple way. 

John It’s such a great point. And that is self-awareness, right? That’s really, truly being aware of how you’re thinking, what you’re how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking at that moment. And most people are not. It’s interesting if you ask them, OK, write down exactly what’s going through your mind right now and how you’re feeling right at this moment. It’s a struggle most people are not. It’s a skill that they have to develop that they have not developed. They don’t know, they’re not listening to what is going on in their head, and they’re not aware of what is the emotion that’s, you know, carrying them through the day or the moment. 

Lisa Amen. That is a really, really powerful statement. And I think it’s why ongoing development and ongoing practice are even more important than a one-and-done course master classwork. Shop whatever it is. YouTube video we need to practice, it’s like an athlete, you can’t just, you know, do something once and then you have it. You have to continue to exercise that muscle to get on the field to play. I think that’s why coaching has been so, so powerful for me. It forces me to practice consistently at self-awareness, empathy, vulnerability. I am leading by going first. I am doing my reps every day or once a week with my coach or whatever it is. And I think we forget that human ing properly is a practice. It’s not just some sort of knowledge bookmark. 

John Yeah, that’s a great point. You are not only your coach, but your coaches coach. So you have many, many coaches that you are working with and developing, which has got to make you feel good because you’re expanding your impact even more, not just to the individuals, but to the individuals that they’re coaching. What is what? Tell talk to me a little bit about some of the things. When you see somebody make a really big change or transformation, whether it is a coach or somebody, you’re an individual that’s looking to improve their life or their career in some way. What are what’s kind of the um, I’m going to say this right? But the trigger or the kind of the tipping point? What’s the one thing that kind of starts it that you feel makes it actually happen more than anything else? Is it something that somebody is saying in themselves? Is that a moment? What do you observe? 

Lisa Yeah. So in my coach training program, I don’t have time to draw this picture. But there’s a distinction that we talk about in the coach training program, and I went through accomplishment coaching. It’s one of the best coach training programs on the entire planet. It’s amazing. We talk about the impetus behind the change, why someone changes and there’s a picture, a very simple picture of a stick figure with a fire underneath their feet, a brick wall in front of them, and a flower on the other side of that brick wall. And there are really two reasons why someone would somehow overcome that wall or break down that wall. Either the fire underneath their feet has to get so hot that they have to move or that flour gets so luxurious. Huge, blossoming, wonderful, but they can’t help but break down that wall. So there are really two reasons for change, it’s the place that you’re in is way too uncomfortable and too painful to not change, or there’s something that’s so powerful that draws you forth. Mm-Hmm. Now, as a leader, you want to, of course, make the flower as alluring and attractive as possible because you never want to have to crank up the heat. 

Lisa Negative reinforcement is it’s a very short-term motivation. It’s not great motivation in general, and that’s also part of the old hierarchy of leadership is negative reinforcement. If you don’t do this, you’re going to get fired, basically. But I think that my job as a coach is to support my clients to look at, well, why would they break down that wall? Why would they remove brick by brick? Why would they go out and practice leaping over that wall every single day? Build up that that flower and that vision so large that you can’t help but not do it? And that was my business for me. That was coaching for me. I never thought it would be an entrepreneur. I took this program and I was like, What the heck? I’ll figure. I’ll see what happens. And I loved coaching others and supporting others so much that it was something that I would go out and I would. I would be happy to fail every day for a long time in order to be able to do this in the long term. That vision on the other side was so powerful. 

John And that motivated you through the down times that the tough, toughest times is that vision of. So one of the things that’s interesting and I love that analogy, the brick wall, and the flower and the fire. And it really does speak to the pain-pleasure balance of why we do the things that we, do or not do the things that we don’t do. And I think, is it fair to say that a lot of the leaders sometimes don’t? Paint the picture of the flower the right way, in other words, they’re assuming it’s one thing that’s going to motivate this person to go over the brick wall because it might be as the leader, something that he or she would be motivated by. But they’re really not hitting it. They’re really not identifying what’s important to this person and what truly needs to be the reward. And maybe it’s there, but the person just doesn’t see it. And that leader needs to paint the picture for them. A little bit better is that a lot of times the problem that you see. 

Lisa Yes. And I love how you asked that question because it sounds like you’ve had personal experience with that. I agree, I think it’s very easy for us to assume what someone else’s motivation is or what someone else’s influence point is, which is why curiosity and open-ended questions are so necessary as a leader, in fact, in emotional intelligence framework. Coaching and your ability to be curious, ask questions, nurture others to success. The actual coaching muscles are twenty-five percent of your leadership, your leadership skills, so being able to be curious, ask questions, support others is really, really important in leadership. It’s really easy to just assume someone’s there because they want a paycheck or they want promotions or something. But as you can see, from the boomers to the millennials to generation Generation Z, Gen Z, they do that right? Yeah. As you see the evolution, a paycheck is becoming less of motivation and other motivators are becoming clear. So what was attractive for one generation is not for for others, but I want to hear your experience. Did you have a do you have a particular story around that? 

John You know, it’s funny. I’m sure I do, and I’m sure I could think of one, but I just think it’s been one of those things. I’ve had the experience on both sides. I’ve had the experience as a leader where I realized that I did not. I was not pointing to the right motivators for this person. I was not. And it was simply because I did not understand what was really important to this person because I didn’t ask. I never had that conversation with them to understand enough about their goals and their vision and where they wanted to be and how this might connect them and put them on the right path or not. So I’ve caught myself and many times doing that, and I’ve also been on the other end. I’ve been in situations, others trying to lead me where they were totally tapping into the wrong motivator. You know, it wasn’t that I was trying to get a certain position or promotion, or it wasn’t that it was different. 

John My motivator to crawling over the over, over the brick wall, or breaking through it was something totally different. And I remember how that impacted me as well and how it did. Not that later I almost had to do it for myself. Nope, that’s not it. It’s this. And this is what’s going to motivate me. Kind of like what you did, you know when thinking about it. But that’s where I think a leader is so valuable because they can help tap into that. They can help somebody come to that conclusion of what is it that’s really going to motivate them to wake up early every morning and go to the gym when they’ve not been used to doing that? You know, what is it truly that they need to think about in the morning to get themselves out of bed? Or what do they need to do to make it easier and not as painful, you know, and all these things that help create behaviors or habits or help people take actions that they wouldn’t have taken before? I think that’s one of the most valuable things a leader can do. 

Lisa That’s so well said. And I don’t think that we focus on that, we don’t focus on inspiration and individual motivation nearly as often as we should, and it’s hard for leaders to do that. I know, I know that it is. We have a limited amount of time. So how do you go from person to person that you manage and ask them deep-diving questions? I think it’s also on us as individuals to develop the self-awareness of what one inspires and influences us. Yeah, it’s a yeah, it’s a both. And then actually it’s also on the organization. So it’s on the individual, the leader, and the organization to create a culture of self-awareness and inspiration. But I love to talk about the idea of self-enrollment or self-inspiration. Mm-Hmm. You know, I speak a lot to leaders about influencing others, but what about us influencing ourselves? How do we involve ourselves in something when we don’t want to? And that’s a huge factor of entrepreneurship? I’m sure you experience this too. How do we do things on a daily basis that freak out that scares us and that we don’t want to do self-enrollment is such a great practice as an entrepreneur and a leader? Mm-Hmm. 

John Absolutely. So what does that look like? I mean, what? Tell me a little bit more about that because I’m interested in what advice you would give to somebody to get better at that. 

Lisa Yeah. Well, it’s important to define what the fire is like, what’s painful about this experience for you? Like, let’s say, let’s say it is working out on a regular basis. What’s painful about staying in place? What’s painful about not doing the thing? Maybe you don’t have as much energy as you want to. It’s also a good practice for you to remember why you’re doing it. What are the benefits of going to the gym when you don’t want to? Even if you don’t do anything at the gym, let’s say you have the worst workout. What’s the benefit of just showing up? And I actually support that as a foundation. Don’t even worry about getting a good workout, it just shows up. Has that been the habit? Has that been the practice? Because once you start showing up and I think, gosh, I don’t know who said it first, but showing up is 80 percent of success. So if we can train ourselves to be self-inspired to remember why this is important and just to have a little bit of acceleration energy past our resistance just to show up like minimal effort once we get there, our natural momentum will carry us through a Mel Robbins actually talks about this. She’s a very simple practice of giving yourself five seconds count, down from five five four three two one blast off and on blast off. You go do the thing. Mm-hmm. 

John Yeah, I love that concept, and it’s interesting because I love breaking it down to this, to a small task, so I think for many people it is and you started talking about perfectionism and I’m feeling overwhelmed. I think a lot of times people feel overwhelmed when they think about everything involved in going to the gym and doing a workout. It’s, you know, I’ve got to get ready. I’ve got to wake up, get ready to give my clothes, I’ve got to drive, it’s going to be cold when it’s cold outside, I’m going to go there. It’s uncomfortable walking in and I got to figure out what I’m going to do and I get sweaty and be uncomfortable when in reality it’s just walking in the door. Maybe you can even talk about getting to the point where all you have to do is for me. I know I need to stand up and put my gym clothes on at 5:30 in the morning, and if I’ve done that, I know everything else will happen because I’m not going to go back in a bit. So part of it is thinking about, you know, if you want to write a book, I mean, that’s intimidating to want to write it. Two hundred and fifty-page book or whatever it’s going to be is a really daunting task. It’s a great vision, but it’s a really daunting task when you start to think about the mammoth amount of work and everything you have to go through. But if you said, Hey, I’m just going to write four sentences and that’s all I have to do, that’s my job today. That’s what I want to do. You can do that. And then if you write for and it spills into doing eight and overflows into doing, you know, 10, 15, 20, all of a sudden you know, you’re feeling good because you’re over a piece of what you’re what you were planned. So I think there’s a lot to that concept of starting with just a small little bite, so to speak. 

Lisa Absolutely. James clear, I think, is the leading authority on creating habits that last, yeah, Tom and I. Yeah. Have you read it? 

John Yes, I have a couple of times. Great book. 

Lisa He’s amazing and also extremely tall in person. I got a chance to shake his hand. He’s awesome. Wow, awesome. He calls it a keystone habit. That one thing that has other things line up afterwords like putting on your gym shoes or putting on your gym clothes. And he, he says, to find that one, that one thing that if you show up and do it. There will be a domino effect of other things in place. Meditation is that way for many people to exercise, making your bed journaling in the morning. So I always recommend those who are resisting to go back to your original question in order to create self-enrollment. Find the one keystone habit in that in doing that thing that has them show up like just writing four sentences if you’re planning to write a book. 

John Mm-Hmm. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, I know where we’re running a little short on time, but there are still so many things I want to ask you. But let me ask you for the benefit of all the listeners out there. We’ve had a lot of change. Obviously, we’ve seen a leader the definition of what a great leader is, is a change and evolve over the last decade and really over the last couple of years because it’s brought out, it’s tested people more than ever before. So the best leaders have really surfaced and people that have some weaknesses and gaps have been that’s been exposed even more. I think as you look forward and you said a couple of things, but I’m interested if there are other ingredients as you think about the future leader, the leaders that are really going to be rise to the top and be the most effective and impactful over the next number of years. What comes to mind anything you know, in addition to what we’ve talked about that you think are really core things you have to have or things that you need to get rid of? Yeah. 

Lisa As much as possible, get rid of the power dynamic of those who are in power and those who are under your power. I think equality. Collegiate relationships being really curious about other people, seeing others as experts as well as you is super important. Simon Sinek actually has a wonderful talk on empathy and leadership, and he speaks to this leadership isn’t about taking charge, it’s about taking care of those in your charge. Mm. And I love that line. So I think what we’ve been talking about, empathy, the vulnerability is really important, but also removing the power dynamics where possible. And I’m a little biased here. Having your own coach, it is so important to be doing your own work and not just the easy stuff like the master class or reading a book, but actually confronting the things that scare the crap out of you. Mm-Hmm. Absolutely. I think that that that is paramount. Leaders go first. If you’re not doing the work, how can you expect other people to do it as well? 

John I’m a big believer in that. I’ve always had a coach as much coaching as I have done and given I have always had a coach in my life, if not multiple because they always can see things you can’t. Everybody has blind spots and we have the right coach who will tell you honestly, honestly and give you good feedback. That’s unbelievably invaluable. So speaking of great coaches, how do people get a hold of you? What can they do to learn more? Find out more about what you do or even connect with you. 

Lisa You flatter me, John. So first and foremost, you can always go to my website: coachingwithlp.com. And you can sign up for a connection call there. You can grab my burnout to break through four levels of leadership resiliency. I also have my new workbook that’s coming out on time and energy management mastery, which is really about getting your foundations in place to overcome burnout. So I have a lot of things available on my website. First and foremost. Secondly, I also run a very lively Facebook community called Coaches Creating Community Capital. You end it. So if you are a coach, a leader, a self-development guru, this is available to you. And it is a no-pressure environment where you can gain collaboration, opportunity for resources and frankly, opportunities for clients as well since we share a lot of referrals inside that community. 

John Mm-Hmm. Excellent. Terrific. Well, we’ll put all that in the show notes. For those of your listening that would like to learn more and check out coaches, coaches, unity community, is that what it was?

Lisa Coaches Creating Community.

John Creating community. I’m glad I asked. OK. Creating community? Excellent. I love it. Well, Lisa, this has been great. I’ve loved our conversation, gained a lot of insight from you. I’m sure our listeners have to and congrats on all the impact you’re making. I know obviously, you’ve made a lot of impact with a lot of people in the years that you’ve been coaching. So keep up the great work and thank you for sharing your wisdom on today’s show. 

Lisa Thank you so much. This is wonderful. I felt like we were just in a coffee shop having a conversation. You have a wonderful presence. I love your philosophy on leadership. I’d love to do this again. Well, great talking to you. 

John I appreciate it. I would love that too. So maybe we will. And thanks to everybody for joining today. I’ve been here with Lisa, perchance, who is a master certified coach and women’s leadership expert. We’ll have all the info in the show notes for you to check her out and learn more about what she does and learn about coaching. 

John As always, share, subscribe, like all that kind of good stuff, I greatly appreciate your ideas and suggestions for future topics and guests and of course, go down below. Give a five-star review. And thanks for joining everybody. Take care. 

John Thanks for joining us and today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader for suggestions or inquiries about having me at your next event or personal coaching, reach me at John@johnlaurito.com. Thanks, lead on!