People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's episode of People First, and I am excited to welcome back to the podcast my friend and colleague, Heather Younger. Heather, as you will recall, because I know you're all avid listeners and watchers of the podcast, is the CEO of a leadership and executive development firm, Employee Fanatics, here in Colorado. She is also, though, a prolific writer. The Art of Caring Leadership is here. I would show you The Art of Active Listening, but that's in digital format on my Kindle. And we are going to be talking today about her new book, The Art of Self-Leadership. There is a theme in the nomenclature there, Heather, that I will be asking you about. However, Heather is an award-winning leader in the area of employee engagement, recognized by inspiring workplaces and is a LinkedIn learning course partner and three times best-selling author and TEDx speaker. She has bells and whistles galore, and I am so excited for this conversation. Heather, welcome back to People First. Thank you so much for having me. You are amazing. What a gem. It's going to be fun. But so much has happened. I'm in good grief. Not only are we about to talk about your third book, third, fourth book, but you've got another one in the works coming behind that. They're like buses. Wait a minute. And four are going to come along at once. So what is this passion about writing? Yeah. I think a big part of it, when I think about like even just going to the very first book, the first book was kind of born out of I was I was just going through a layoff at that time. And I was trying to find my voice because I felt a little voiceless in that process. And I wanted to I could see by just writing on LinkedIn and things like that, that people were intrigued by how I talked about leadership and leadership. And I just thought, well, you know, I should just maybe I'll just write this first thing. And it was just kind of a big kind of a higher end calling card. And then all the other ones after that, like the Art of Caring Leadership that came after that a few years later. Actually, to be honest, it was more than a few years later. It was like five or six, something like that. Four years later, that one came out of the podcast. My podcast is called Leadership with Heart. And it came out of that podcast because I've been I was getting me to episode twenty five. Now I've done like three hundred and fifty episodes and I got to the episode and I remember thinking to myself, holy smokes, these people that I'm talking to are it's like mind-blowing how much I am learning in this and then I started to think wait a second not everybody listened to podcasts how could other people learn from this too and so that's where I just decided to start doing create that uh art of caring leadership where inside of it there's like eighty eighty other people's voices that I just peeled away to um kind of come up with the nine behaviors of caring leadership so and then like I said after that I think the issue is more about how do I continue to um I call it evangelize, really all the messages that I think are so important in this world and do it in multiple ways where not everybody hears me on the stage. Not everybody will listen to podcasts. OK, a book. It's just all these different mediums for people to be able to access the content. OK, well, I am excited for this and I had the opportunity to dive into an early galley copy. See, that's what you have when you have friends in highfalutin places. You get advanced copies of books. And I loved every moment with The Art of Self-Leadership. But it starts in the introduction with you talking about unveiling your golden core, not a golden fleece, a golden core. So tell us more about the golden core that we all need to unveil. Well, one of the things I'm not going to do because I think I just that story, I cannot wait for you to actually read exactly how I came about it, because that to me is the most it is so interesting. And it makes you realize that nothing is an accident and that there is this kind of like this plan in front of us. Right. So. But I would say this, oftentimes what I have found as I speak to audience thousands of people every year, I will ask people in the audience, well, what is it that makes you like, what's the biggest barrier for you showing up as a leader I described? What are the things that are getting in your way of showing up as a caring leader, as a leader who listens, as one who makes people feel this particular way? And often what I found, which I found just so interesting, is many people not really owning their role in how they show up. They would say things like, oh, my manager, this, our leadership team, this, our budget, this. And I thought, wow. Well, okay. So my message has evolved in over time because I kept hearing those messages to say, wait a second, we have a choice in the seat that we sit in and the place that we stand and the body that we hold, right? to show up in the way that we know serves us best first and then other people second. And why are we continuing to give away our power? And why are we covering up our brilliance? And so this inner core idea is saying, pull back the curtain, rip off the thing that's covering the thing that's in you that's great, whether you know it or not, and we get about that in the book too, to show other people, to show the brilliance. So when you work on your internal shine, then the external shine comes through and now you have more influence and things like that at work and even your personal life. It's interesting that you talk about that because what appeals about the content in The Art of Self-Leadership is it applies to anyone, irrespective of your title or where you are in your career, because we are all leaders. To your point, we're showing up to be the best we can be, but are we actually sharing what that means for us? And listening to you there just made me think about the coaching call I had this morning with a leader in Ireland who And we were talking about how do you live your values and understanding what is it that makes you special and how do you step into that truth versus, oh, well, the corporate values say, or this is the role models that I've had and it being a juxtaposition. So how do we go about that first step? In the first part of your book, you talk about self understanding. Give us a couple of nuggets as to what can folks listening to this conversation do to understand their self leadership? I think the very first thing with self-understanding is, you know, I feel like we I have this book. You could look at it as self-help. You could look at a personal professional development kind of thing. You could look at a leadership development. It's all of those things. And embedded in that often happens in our culture is that this message of that we're not good enough. and what I try to kind of hit on right in the beginning of the book is that we are good just because we are we are good enough because we are and that is it in fact we can be just exactly who we are every day don't have to do one more thing and we're still good and we're still good enough and that understanding our intrinsic worth is such a huge part of that because again our culture is like fix you fix you fix you fix you and what I'm trying to do is saying like not fix you because you're good enough in and of yourself, but boy, how much more brilliant could you shine to those externally to you if you could just polish a little bit more, if you could just peel back a little bit more? So I think that's kind of the first thing I like to talk about is to be thinking about what is that worth that you have? What are the things, the barriers that are getting in your way of understanding how how worthy you are as a human on planet irrespective of any title you could hold anything that you could have as far as something that's physical um you just are that good and once we gather that understanding and I do like I in there I do some exercises about you know what are the things I value how do I represent those values um what how you know how do I feel in the current environment in my own skin and there are issues like you know imposter syndrome in there and what are my strengths and what are my limitations it's really about digging deep into What is inside of you that makes you unique, that makes you a gift to the world? Because we all are gifts to the world. And how do we how do we now elevate that? So polish it up, polish it up, which is the next step in that book. And then how do we show that after polishing and polishing it? How does that then show itself to the external world? And how does that help us with our relationships in and outside of work? But we do have more control. I think what I want people to understand is they have more power than they think. to be the people they want to be, to be in the roles they want to be, to show up before others in the way that they want, and even just understand who they are as humans. I love that because it's coming from a foundation of strength. I agree and applaud that whole point that we all bring something to the table, and yet it is the self-dimming of our light that holds us back. And I know even after eighteen years of leading SkyTeam, a successful business by any measure, that moment of self-doubt and trash talk still will climb into my head and at two a.m. cause me to lie awake. And you have a chapter on understanding fear. So I'm curious, as an eight, eighteen year old entrepreneur, my business is now old enough to drink alongside me. You know, my fears are triggered when I feel like I'm letting other people down, yet my bar and threshold for good and good enough is still head and shoulders above many others. It is the fear of being found wanting, and that can cause me to hesitate. I'm curious, what are your fears, Heather, that can occasionally either slow you down or dim your light a little bit until you catch yourself wanting? and change the narrative um I think I think one of the things I do talk about in the book is imposter syndrome and I think that element is one element that will I could be standing on a stage and usually when I'm on it and I'm on it for like laughter at the first five minutes I took that goes away but when I first before I get there and sometimes when I first step on there depending on who's in the audience who am I talking to occasionally I'll have a little bit of that and then I do smack myself or like for example I'm part of an agency that has uh some very like well-known names in it and I and for that first year of that I felt like what am I doing here like I don't think I'm supposed to be here so that idea of like worthiness and is something that it rears its head and that idea of like do I belong here I'm not sure I'm really as good as these people it rears its head and I just I just politely slap myself and say I go back to heather you are good just because you are and you bring unique value based upon your lived experience that not one other human can bring. And once I come to that realization, that I am that person that I can bring that value, I live I kind of loosen up and I relax into my skin and I say okay, I'm here for these people they need something for me they selected me to be in front of these thousands of people whatever it is right hundreds of people twenty people one hundred people they selected me because they saw the message and they wanted the thing they saw and it is good enough and you are great and that what those kinds of realities I had to do and I it's just a constant thing I'm fifty three years old and I'm telling you I've been doing it my entire life and I don't think it's ever no way but it is showing up less and less and My self-worth has absolutely increased. My self-confidence in those environments increases with proper preparation. Things like that have really helped a lot. I love the synergies, both in terms of our life journeys, but also the philosophy. And I'm reminded of a conversation I had with one of my sons and he was at university at the time or just headed off. And he was saying to me, I hope I don't mess it up. And I remember saying, mess what up? And he said, life. And I had that like heartbreak moment as a mother of like, you can't mess it up. It's the, you just iterate. Every day is a role play. We're all making it up. And the irony was, I remember leaving that conversation where his imposter syndrome, his moment of, am I choosing the right course and career path? And I was heading to fly to meet my colleague, Dr. Linda Sharkey, to co-author The Future-Proof Workplace, my second book. And I remember sitting at DIA going, I'm meeting Dr. Linda Sharkey. She's got a PhD. She worked with Jack Welsh at GE. I mean, she's like a big deal. Like, how can I do it? And I remember in my doom scrolling, like one does, and this meme came up that said, don't believe everything that you think. And here's the punchline by Morag Barrett, because it was one of the social media things. And so the universe was giving me the slap. Well, anyway, I go and spend the day with Linda. We outline the future proof workplace. It was a best selling book. It still is very relevant today. And at the end of that day, there's Linda, who's twenty years further ahead in her career than me. going, do you think it will be a good book? Do you think we can do this? And so within that week, I had Matthew starting out on his life and career, me mid-career, Linda later career, all with those moments of are we enough? And so to your point, I think it doesn't actually go away. But I think the time between that first niggly thought and being able to go, oh, for heaven's sake, of course, you've got this, gets shorter. And we have more of a sense of humor around. Yeah, OK. You know, can I do more? Can I polish myself? Yes. Am I going to choose to do it? That's the choice we all get to make every day. It's so true. I was listening to an audio book as I was working out at the gym today, both two really big behaviors for self-leadership. But I'm in there, and I think it's called The Slight Edge. I think that's the name of the book. And I love it because it's a super simple concept, which is it's just as easy to do the thing as it is to not do the thing. And the thing is consistency, and the thing is not some big, huge jump forward. um it is literally the thing that you do every day right whatever those things are you do multiple the things or you choose not to and so this is I think almost all the things we do in life as we think about you know weight gain we think about job promotions we think about spouse we think about children all the things it's like every day we either do the thing or we don't and it's our choice and we either benefit or pay the price either way. And sometimes there's a gray and we don't feel either one and we don't feel it immediately. It happens over time. And I think that like almost all the things we talk about boil down to that concept of, are you going to do those things that are consistent every day? That in this case for self-leadership, are you doing the things every day to help you grow as a person, as a professional, as a leader in your home and at work? And are you being intentional about the movements and the things that you need to do? And while I'm doing in this particular book. is giving you a framework, a model to be thinking about what are the things to touch on as you're thinking about what should be my daily activities or what should I be staying away from? That's really what I set out to do. Everything I do is pretty simple. It's extremely kind of organic, intuitive. Yes. And even your gym example there leads nice into the middle section of the book, which is all about personal growth and sustainability. And it starts with self-care. And I know to my own cost, I have focused on the busy, the hustle. That's what we're raised to believe versus the need for me to go to the gym. And it was only eighteen months ago that I started getting back into a regular routine. gym workout and I found that my energy and my focus and my inspiration has increased along with it as I both detach from the desk and the endless zooms but also have space for my brain just to make connections when I'm on that dratted treadmill I hate the treadmill I like the rower hate the treadmill Oh, you like the rower. That's impressive. You like the rower. Yes, I can. Oh, yes. Trying to get my split time down. So prioritizing self-care. This comes out of our book, You, Me, We, Why We All Need a Friend of Work and How to Show Up as One, that we need to be an ally and a friend to ourselves. So in what ways do you prioritize self-care for yourself? Well, here's one like super simple way for those who can see the video, but I'm holding up a water bottle and I'm paper intentional. I mean, every day, if it's the one thing I do and I do consistently is drinking four of these. So I have to, this is the twenty four ounces. I'm just drinking like I can drink four. Sometimes I'll try to get five, but it's a rarity unless I've had like a lot of sweating going on that I may get to the fifth one. But the drinking of water is huge. It helps with it helps with the whole vascular system, helps with kidney function and helps with memory and centered. I mean, it's so many things that it does. So just this one thing I do get to the gym. I try to move four to five days a week. I call it moving because it could be anything. It could be walking. It could be something walking around a track, walking outside, walking with my husband, walk my dog, but could also be like lifting weights. So I think those are some things. prayer is a part of my life and making sure that I have those times of that. Being with my kids, believe it or not, is self-care for me. It really does fill me up. There are some times when it's too busy and then I have to kind of back away and do the thing that is filling me up at a higher level, but cuddling with them, for example, or doing like crossword puzzles or things like that to me is self-care. It fills me up. I just tell people to focus on what it is that fills them up. You know, there's emotional wellbeing, there's going to be therapy and things like that. There's that The part that's like, you know, financial well-being. I think it's a holistic approach. It's not just the physical. It's all the things. But whatever it is, it's the thing that says, right? It's that thing that just lets you take the breath, feel more you, feel more human, feel more connected and not as stressed to try to always be proving worth and always be reaching a goal and things like that. The fight doesn't have to always be there. It's being centered and ground. And I love the phrase that you use there, which is filling us up. And it's a trite meme that you can't pour from an empty cup. But I know from my own cost that when I focus outwards, because abundance and generosity is my de facto operating system for the world. And it's the foundation of our ally mindset and ally mindset profile. But what I've learned, my cost is if I'm always saying yes and giving, but without guardrails or prioritizing the me and what do I need? then at some point either I or that relationship suffers. So I'm glad that that's an explicit part of the art of self-leadership and a whole chapter in the book with some great recommendations and ideas that your readers are going to be able to implement. But that relationship with self and relationship with others brings us to that third section, which is all about social interaction and influence. So what role have relationships played in your success? It's interesting. I think early on, probably the first thirty years or so, I didn't have like a lot of mentors. I can think of my grandmother who would this is early on where she'd kind of say, you're going to be a little lawyer. And she pushed me to be a lawyer. And she was someone who kind of like was a mentor to that extent because no one else is really pulling me up or pushing me out to think bigger than where my current circumstances were. But I really hadn't had any formal mentorship and I still haven't had a formal mentor. I've hired coaches where I was paying them to kind of give me advice, but the mentorship wasn't as much there. I would have to say that I'm the only child. My parents are really big impacts in my life. And so was my grandmother. And then I've been married. Now I have four kids. And so those relationships are absolutely key. I said before, they help me towards self-care. They peel me away from the thing that keeps me head down and sometimes hyper-focused and stressed and tense to the thing that relaxes me, that calms me, that makes me feel a sense of love and care. So I know what those things are there. And those relationships, I try to focus on them and I try not to give them my worst but my best, but it doesn't always happen. And then I have, I just, I would say in the last maybe ten years, gotten better at building relationships with females. Up until that point, I would say I didn't have great relationships with females and it would be mostly men that I'd have relationships with. And I don't know if it was because of me and that I really had no clue why that was. All I know is that now I have these more safe spaces with a handful or so of women where I can just, I feel like I can be them, be myself and that we can kind of cuddle and we can talk and we can laugh and giggle and say whatever it is they want to. And no one's, you know, right. No one's going to be, make us feel silly or less than. And so I'm just trying to, I'm being very intentional about it, but there are certain people that are, I'm called to, they're called to me and I'm just trying to, do better now at leaning into that and saying you know heather you've gotten this far I really did get quite far with this whole like self-reliance bootstrap idea which is why I'm the one writing about self-leadership it makes a lot of sense and at the same time when I talk about relationships I'm saying all the time in the audiences and books that we have to have people with us on this journey because it's just too tough to do it alone I know it because I did it the first thirty something forty something years and it's way better to do it with other people now so Absolutely. I mean, that's the heart of our research, the importance of our professional relationships. And earlier, you just said that you hadn't had mentors, but you've hired coaches. So I'm just curious, how do you differentiate between those two roles? What does a mentor or a coach, what does that mean for you? I think a mentor, in my mind, is someone who is willing to spend time. You're not necessarily paying them. I do know there are people who have mentorship programs that you pay for. But in my mind, a mentor is in the traditional sense, someone who will spend time and be willing to kind of look at ways that I could get better. Maybe introduce me to people or concepts, maybe recommend a book or a friend, things like that. They're just, they're on my side. They're there to, they could be there to uplift, to advise, to give some constructive feedback. with the coach, it depends on what it is. Like I've had, I had one, gosh, much earlier on where it really was about growing in my leadership. I had one, a business coach I hired that was literally more about focused on the business and my role in it and how we could kind of grow revenue and things like that. I think one thing that I've learned is I have to trust my gut and I know in most cases, where my gaps are, because I have a high level of emotional self-awareness. So because I know where the gaps are, I go to people very specifically who I know can fill that specific gap. So I'm not trying to have them solve for something that's already my strength. I'm having them solve the thing that's my biggest gap, the thing that's just gaping. And so I'm pretty proud of myself to just be aware enough to know, okay, this is really the area that's staring back at you and who is it that you know, or that you could find someone else who can show you who knows how to help you fill that gap. So yeah, that's what I think. And I've paid those people. So yeah, I do see coaches as most of the people I'm paying, although there's informal coaches in life too. I really think that that's kind of the difference. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting how you're only one conversation and one relationship away from realizing your dream, whatever that might be. But it goes back to the very start, which is if we don't have the courage to ask, then we may never know that we were that close to getting that next step in whatever it is that fills us up. And so relationships, they're everything, at least from my perspective. It's so true. I talk about even like in that last section, I talk about feedback and I think feedback has been kind of the impetus for all my growth. And I think like the person I am today is absolutely because I have a receptivity to feedback more than most people. And I mean, it's hard sometimes. I remember my very first three sixty feedback report. It was just awful. It was awful for everybody who got it from this one manager. Mine was the best of the worst. And that's not saying much. And I remember it being so painful. And I took months to kind of sift through it because my brain just couldn't handle it. And over time, I've just been that person who was able to just take it in. And I ask I'm always asking and I'm I'm I'm. desensitized sometimes to it, but at the same time, I'm not trying to change every little bit because, because that foundational belief that I am good enough because of who I am, I am good enough just because of right. I am who I am. It helps me. It helps me to know that, that I can just, I can get better, but I'm looking at the trends. I'm looking at the, the, the big picture versus all the little things. Okay. So as we think about the impact for your new book, The Art of Self-Leadership, what are you most excited for? I'm hoping that people will see the... Hold on just a second. What I'm hoping is that people will understand the power they have, really understand it. Because I think what happens is we give it away way too much. And so I'm hoping that people will start to, maybe folks that are struggling with, it's not necessarily, I mean, it could be issues of self-doubt and self-confidence, things like that. And oftentimes I think that is there when they are hearing that, or when I'm hearing the blaming, when I'm hearing the waiting, people are waiting for green lights, they're waiting for somebody to give them access. And so my goal is to say, You see now that you are your own green light. You see now that you don't need to wait for the people. And by the way, you have no one else to blame, but that it's you who has to take responsibility for the journey that you're on. And that's the exciting part is that you don't need to be waiting anymore. Just take it by the reins and let's get to it. Powerful words. You don't have to be waiting anymore. Just get on and do it. So, Heather, how can people who are listening and watching this episode learn more about you and your work and, more importantly, get their hands on or their ears in or their eyes on a copy of The Art of Self-Leadership? I would say the best place to go for the book would be Amazon right now. We're doing a big push on Amazon. So the art of self-leadership, discover the power within you and learn to lead yourself is on Amazon. So I'd go there to learn more about me. I'd say heatheryounger.com is probably the easiest. So that's heatheryounger.com. That would be the easiest. And then if you're someone who's on LinkedIn, I'm there quite a bit. So if you follow me there, you'll also see a lot of good stuff there too. Wonderful. Well, Heather, thank you for returning to People First. I'll make sure all of that information is included in the show notes below, but wishing you all the ongoing success with this book and the next one. And I look forward to the conversation that we have when that one hits the shelves too. Thank you so much. Thanks for being a huge gem with a huge heart. I appreciate you.