ο»ΏThe Conscious Leader's Path: Navigating Disruption Through Self-Awareness
Kumar Dattatreyan: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Kumar Dattatreyan with the Meridian Point, and we are live today. We're joined by Diane Taylor, who is the founder and principal consultant of Glow Leadership. As a speaker, author, and leadership coach, she brings over thirty years of experience helping high achievers optimize their performance and wellbeing. Her new book, "Elevate Potential," explores how increasing our consciousness can unlock greater success. Diane is passionate about helping others discover their highest potential in their careers and personal lives through a conscious approach to leadership. I am eager to find out more about this conscious approach because sometimes I do feel a little unconscious in my work, in my life, just sort of going through the motions, if you will. So without further ado, let's get Diane here on stage. Hi, Diane. It's great to have you on the show. Welcome.
Diane Taylor: Thank you for having me, and good morning to everyone on the West coast.
Kumar: Yes, it's sometime somewhere in the world. And for me, it's the afternoon. And of course for you, it's morning. So let me start with your book. What inspired you to write "Elevate Potential" and this focus on conscious leadership?
Diane: A couple of things. One of the things that I do is leadership development. I have a hybrid program called Glow Online Elevate Leadership Potential, and I work with leaders or emerging leaders over a period of six weeks and walk them through different lessons and see a lot of growth in them. I have a great opportunity to journey with them for a period of four months where there can actually be meaningful change. That creates so much joy for me when we come to the culmination and they're sharing their takeaways that I thought I want to help more people.
And then the other thing is, because my corporate career was in human resources and I help now that I'm self-employed, I help senior leaders build winning teams. There's a lot of myths out there, things that people believe that are holding them back from either getting promoted or feeling happy with their life. And we don't learn that anywhere. And it's sort of a path that I've gone on myself from a very early age to create the success that I have in my life and the happiness that I have in my life. And I thought I'd like to share that because I sure wish my twenty-year-old self had a book like the one I wrote that outlines sort of a path to happiness.
Kumar: I'll have to read your book. I'm curious also about your course, this experience over sixteen weeks. Do you see sort of a transition from unconscious leadership to conscious leadership? And what does that even look like in the work that you do with your clients?
Diane: I guess we should start with what I would define the difference between conscious and unconscious. So unconscious is when someone says life is happening to me and gives all the power away to those things that are around them, the circumstances, the challenging things that each and every one of us deals with in our lives. Where a conscious human being says life is happening for me. Wow. What I'm experiencing right now is really difficult, and it is really challenging me. But I must be learning something here that's going to make me a better human, that's going to help me be more successful in the future. So that would be the difference.
And I would say definitely my students... Oftentimes, when we get to the end of the program, people will say, "I've taken a lot of leadership development programs in my life, but I've never taken one like this, where I was also a topic of learning." Me, myself, not just this model. We're going to learn this topic or this theory and this model. I combine that with a lot of self-learning, reflection, and understanding ourselves throughout the program which makes more self-aware, more conscious, more efficient, effective, successful leaders.
Kumar: So if I'm understanding correctly, conscious leadership is your way of describing a more self-aware leader, would you say that's true?
Diane: Yes.
Kumar: And so self-awareness, sort of building the emotional intelligence within an individual to be more self-aware, to be less reactive, to sort of live in the moment, if you will, rather than be affected by the things that are, the noise that's happening around them.
Diane: Yes. And the thing is, when we understand ourselves, it's easier to therefore understand those that we lead. And my basic definition of leadership is to influence the people around you to align with your objectives, to create wins for everybody. So when we understand how we function as a human, and we understand that these principles are not just about me, but apply to how humans think and behave and feel. So now I know how I am. I can take that knowledge and apply it forward.
So my program starts with the fundamentals of who are you as a leader? And then we move to, OK, now, based on what you've learned, how do we take that to develop a winning team and that outside of ourselves now to create a great influence?
Kumar: I love that. I love also what you said about leadership being about influence. That's one of the things that I feel as well. And certainly John Maxwell feels the same way. I'm a John Maxwell coach. And one of the things he says is that leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. And I find that to be true. It's your ability to influence the situation, influence your own thinking in a way and influence others along the way.
So in your experience coaching leaders, what are some common unconscious triggers that cause people to show up poorly maybe in certain situations?
Diane: So my philosophy is, it's not just mine, great other thought leaders have the same philosophy. But we have things that happen to us either in our formative years or as we grow along the way that cause usually subconscious triggers. Oftentimes the way we're showing up, we don't have awareness of why am I being controlling? Why am I needing to act this way? And people say, do people not know when they're doing that? I think we sort of know when we're not showing up well, but we just don't know how to prevent ourselves from doing that. You know, why don't I trust others? Why can't I delegate?
In my mind, that makes a lot of sense. Delegate. That will make the people feel trusted, that will engage them, that will make my workload lighter. And that is one of the biggest things that we see in leaders is "I need to do it all to prove that I'm worthy. If I don't do everything myself, I will not be viewed as competent" where the reverse actually happens.
We all have different experiences that happen that create impacts that typically go unhealed. So we just think we just soldier on. We don't look at those. We don't process those things that happen. And they show up in undesirable behaviors, like that inability to delegate or being a control freak or different things.
Kumar: I'm curious though, how much of that is within the control of individuals? So organizations, when you work in a structure, corporate structure, which you did in the past, I did in the past, a lot of your compensation, the way you're evaluated, rewarded, and all that is based on your individual contributions. And so isn't there a sort of a disconnect then between how people are expected to behave as leaders in a corporate world where you're expected to do these things, you're expected to be the hero in moments of strife. And of course, that runs counter to what true leadership really is. It's about influence. It's about bringing up others and so on and so forth. What would you say to that?
Diane: So I would answer with the answer to everything, and that's balance. So in "The Extraordinary Leader" by Zenger and Folkman, they talk about leadership having two "ors." You have an A or and a B or. You should be using your A or, which is about gaining buy-in and creating influence and focusing on the team 80% of the time. Twenty percent of the time, you said a key thing - in a crisis, we need to step up and act and take care of things ourselves. But those situations are only twenty percent of the time.
However, if you have some kind of unhealed emotions that make you believe that you feel safe in crisis mode, you will actually create that. And I've seen that with different leaders where everything is "the sky is falling" all the time and "I'm doing this and I'm doing this." And it creates this "look how significant I am that I'm just managing through all this crisis." Well, stop creating the crisis.
Kumar: Makes sense. I work a lot with leaders and certainly coaching them in large transformation efforts. Which brings me to my next question. You mentioned in our prior conversation that change is fundamentally an emotional process. It's not just a mental thing. How does this insight impact the way organizations approach transformation?
Diane: I think, first of all, when I teach change leadership to my students, it is one of the sixteen modules in my program. It is one of the modules that people will take away and keep forever. It's such a light-turning-on moment to understand that as humans, we go through different emotions as we go through changes, just like we do when we go through a process of grief.
So I teach leaders about how that works and I also teach them, okay, so how do we more effectively knowing this now about the way humans behave, how do we as leaders move them through that change curve more quickly, more effectively, and feeling more supported? Because we can lead them through faster, we can achieve our outcomes faster and measured for what, like you said previously, corporates want to see us perform. Well, that is as a leader, one of your metrics is to have your team achieve this goal.
Kumar: That makes sense. Of course, office politics are very complicated. There are alliances and sort of informal networks, if you will. And in an environment like that, change can be difficult. And it's almost like it can't be just regarded as one big transformation effort. It's sort of lots of little, small changes that need to take place with leadership aligned on what the ultimate goal is. What would you say is the most important thing to gain that alignment between the leadership?
Diane: So I think having the organizations that I really respect that I work with, they have put their entire leadership team starting from the C-suite down through my program. And what that creates is a standard in leadership, philosophy, culture, and language. Everybody is therefore aligned.
I've seen it so many times where senior leaders will say, "Oh, my people need to go into this course" and I'm not going to turn away their business. But if there's a gap upwards, okay, so you have this great middle management team and they have the language and they have the culture and they're all aligned and they are then not able to influence upwards or have the respect or understanding upwards, that can create a gap. So I would say having your leadership team aligned in terms of their language, culture and philosophy is important.
Kumar: I love that. And I totally agree. I think it needs to be sort of, I liken it to a steel thread that connects the decision makers at the top of the organization, if you will, to the doers that are actually executing on the vision mission. They're leaders in their own right. They lead themselves to do the right things at the right time and create value. If you can create that steel thread throughout the organization where there's alignment, you have a much better chance for change to take root and take hold.
It's hard to see. I have seen many examples of that. Of course, I've seen lots more examples where that doesn't happen, to your point, where you're coaching a layer within the organization and they're like, "Yeah, this is awesome." And then they got to coach up and they got to coach down and they're not getting the support they need. So it can be hard. Anything you want to add?
Diane: The other thing I think that is important and that I work with organizations on is to have clear values within the organization and then to bring those values off the wall. So what tends to happen is oftentimes you'll walk into a company and you'll talk to people and you could say, what are your values? And most people don't even know. And they're like, "Oh, I think they're in the foyer where the receptionist sits and they're in pretty framed pictures."
That doesn't support an organizational culture, just defining them. Culture exists, whether we're living the values we posted on the wall, or sometimes there's different values on the wall than the actual culture because culture is created by the decisions, the behaviors and what we do every day.
So if we figure out what are our values and then we bring those values into the hearts and souls of our people and make them part of our decision making, make them part of our process, layer them throughout the organization from hiring to new hire orientation to performance assessment, that can really help align, like you say, this steel thread from the top down, because we have some pillars that guide us on how to behave and what is appropriate.
Kumar: I like that. It reminds me of an experience I had with a company where we did a values exercise where each leader sort of had to whittle down what their values are for themselves. And we ended up putting these values on a word cloud document. And it was amazing because a lot of them shared the same core values for themselves. But not only that, they also aligned very well with the company values.
So it was an enlightening moment for them to realize that they had so much in common with each other. And also that the values that they shared are also the values the company espoused. So it was a really good moment for them. In fact, they had that picture framed and it's in their office in their building. So I think that's an example, a smaller midsize company that had really sort of embraced the values in the company and were living it. They weren't just talking about it as if it was this thing outside of them. It was what they were living every day in their work. And so if every company can get there, that would be amazing.
Diane: Exactly.
Kumar: I'm going to move to our disruption that we face every day globally through different administrations, through technology disruptions, you name it. Pandemic was five years ago now, but I'm sure it still lives in people's memories and the disruption that it caused. How can leaders build the emotional resilience needed to navigate this type of change? And it seems like change is getting more frequent now than before.
Diane: One of the things that Glow Leadership has always been committed to is leadership wellness. Within Glow Online there are several leadership wellness components. In Success Pillar Number One, Module Four is called "Be a Well Leader" and within that module I have each one of my students develop a unique individual wellness plan that will work for them.
So a lot of companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars buying their people gym memberships. And what seems to be missing is an understanding that we are whole beings and we function in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual realms. North America is uber focused on the physical and mental. One of the greatest things that you can be called is a thought leader. However, we're in a mental health crisis in North America. We didn't recover from COVID. And so we have people that are feeling beat down, exhausted, burnt out, overwhelmed, that don't really know what to do. You go to your doctor and you get a prescription and you keep going on. But no one is teaching us how to be healthy, vibrant, whole, proactive with our health and well-being.
So one of the things that I've always been committed to is including that within my programs. And that is also a part of my book, a big focus is always focusing on the different parts of us so that we can create wholeness.
Kumar: That's great. I'm going to share, of course, a link to your book in the show notes here after this call and in the podcast notes as well. What are some takeaways that people can expect from your book?
Diane: So my book is in about three different parts. The first is where I share my own story of my own childhood tragedy. And then I talk about the impacts of that and how that has impacted me and how I've shown up as a result of some of my negative behaviors and outcomes as a result of that. And then how I overcame that.
Then the second part, I go into what are some typical characteristics of a conscious leader? What are some typical characteristics of an unconscious leader? And in that section, everybody will be able to relate because they will know leaders that they've worked with that exhibit some of those things. And hopefully there'll be a "hmm, I sometimes do that. How can I get better from that?"
And then the third part, I actually walk through some exercises for people to do to get going on the path to increasing their consciousness. So it's almost like the third section, you want to have a journal and a pen and you go to it. So it's not just a read that you're going to put down. The reality is I've always been a teacher. I don't want to just share ideas that can float by, I want to help people make a meaningful change.
Kumar: I love it. I'm going to have to get a copy because I like books like that that are more interactive. I mean, I like my fiction that I can just read, but for these types of more professional books, nonfiction, I like it where there's things that you do and you can actually gain knowledge from it.
Diane: Right. So it takes it from me sharing vulnerably so that you know I'm a human being too. And then let's focus on you now.
Kumar: I love that. All right. We're gonna shift maybe to some fun questions here. If you can have dinner with any three leaders from history, who would they be?
Diane: Definitely Barack Obama. He is my number one top on my list of leaders. Number two would be Oprah Winfrey, an exceptional leader, a woman who really overcame her own childhood wounds, her own childhood tragedy to flip that not only to success and monetary success, but to helping so many people, becoming a true servant leader. Interestingly enough, those two and I have the same Myers-Briggs type. So very thrilled to hear that.
And then I guess I don't know who the third would be. Maybe, Kumar, we were speaking about the royal family. Maybe it would be Queen Elizabeth, a leader of sixty years that had been through so many different challenges in the monarchy, in the world, what she saw in her time, and just her ability to maintain that sovereign, calm state and respected level of leadership for sixty years.
Kumar: Love that. All right. One more question. What's your go-to self-care practice when life gets overwhelming?
Diane: Well, first of all, I don't wait till life gets overwhelming to do self-care practice. Self-care really needs to be a proactive thing because when life hits, we need to be resilient. So if we're proactive about our self-care, then we will overcome the challenges that life throws at us much more easily.
So my number one self-care practice is that I meditate every single morning. If I have early meetings, I'll wake up early. I always will wake up to provide myself that forty-five minutes where I get my one cup of hot water, my one cup of black coffee. It's sort of like a ritual. And I do my meditation. Some days my mind is in all different directions and it's not that effective. And some days I am completely in the zone, but I show up and I commit to me every single day.
Kumar: That's amazing. I love that. Anything that you'd like to share that I haven't asked you about?
Diane: I think we've covered it. I'd love to invite people watching, if what we're talking about resonates with you, to visit my website, glowleadership.com, to see more about what I do. I'd love to jump on a call to see if I can help your team. Again, my book is a great resource. You can grab that on Amazon.
Kumar: I'll be sure to include those links in the show notes for the podcast. And I'll update the notes here in the show notes for this video. This has been a real pleasure to speak with you, learn more about your book and your programs. I will be sure to check out your website and certainly your book. Thank you. It seems really intriguing. I could definitely benefit from it. So thank you so much for coming on.
Diane: Thank you, Kumar. The pleasure was mine.
Kumar: All right. Take care. Thanks, everyone, for watching.
