Lead the People

Shannon DelVecchio has always been drawn to many things—running, hiking, gardening, photography, writing, reading, travel, and most recently—beekeeping. She’s at her happiest and most fulfilled not by mastering a specific hobby/topic/task that she loves, but LEARNING about it. Beekeeping hit Shannon’s radar in December 2019 when her husband registered for "Bee School" that Winter. The pair became the proud keepers of 10,000 bees on April 18th, 2020.  Top 3 Takeaways Embrace the learning curve—Like beekeeping, leadership is a deep subject; commit to making the investment of time and energy required to excel in the craft. Seek to create optimal conditions—As a leader, you can’t directly control the outcome, but you can take steps to create an optimal environment that will increase your team’s likelihood of success. Excitement is contagious—Teams can become abuzz (sorry about that) with energy and enthusiasm if you let them; stoke the flames of excitement about your mission and your team achievements whenever you can. From the Source  “The running joke with beekeepers is if you ask 10 beekeepers one question you'll get 11 answers.“  “I am literally blind to the colony's behavior as they go about their work inside in complete darkness.”  “The more excited a scout bee appears, the more likely other bees will go out and check out this new location. And when they come back, if they're excited, they start dancing as well.”  “The queen is not the dictator, and your colony actually can get to a point where they've decided the queen is failing us and we are actually going to prepare to replace her.”  Connect with Shannon  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shannon.w.delvecchio  Links  “Hive Help Wanted” trivia source: ​​https://www.hobbyfarms.com/9-hive-jobs-of-honey-bees-2/

Kim Ades is the Founder of Frame of Mind Coaching™ and The Journal That Talks Back™. Recognized as a pioneer in the field of leadership coaching and thought mastery, Kim uses her unique philosophy and quirky coaching style to help leaders identify their blind spots and learn to direct their thinking to achieve extraordinary results. Author, speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and mom of five, Kim’s claim to fame is teaching her powerful coaching process to leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs worldwide. Top 3 Takeaways Feeling Good is Fundamental—If you want to perform at your best, you’ve got to feel good about what you’re pursuing. Life’s too short to chase goals that don’t resonate with your deepest sense of purpose. Write it Out—Journaling allows you to slow things down and capture your thoughts in an unobstructed flow. Then you can step back and see them in a more open way to broaden your perspective. Dig Deep—Go beyond the surface level to examine the emotions tangled up in your experiences. Don’t just dwell on decisions and actions, but get down to the emotional why behind them. From the Source “When people aren't reaching the goals they want to reach, it simply means they're not lined up with the goal or the desire.“ “Journaling allows us to deposit our thoughts, step back, and look at them from a greater vantage point.“ “it's really very useful for leaders to understand that in order to truly maximize the potential of your people, you absolutely need to look at the beliefs they have around everything they're doing.” “Our fingers can't write or type as fast as our brains go. They just can't. It's physically not possible. And so what happens when you're journaling is you're actually slowing down your mind.” “Now you're really digging in. You're really going beneath the surface of your original journal and you're examining, how do I really think or feel about that? Why did that happen? What is the pattern that's going on? Why did I respond that way? What's actually happening?“ Connect with Kim Website: frameofmindcoaching.com Website: thejournalthattalksback.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimades/

Jeff Leisawitz burns with a mission to inspire songwriters, authors and screenwriters to amp up their creativity and shine in the world. As an award winning musician/ producer, college songwriting prof, critically acclaimed author, distributed filmmaker and internationally in-demand coach for creatives, Jeff has devoted his life to creativity.  At its best, creativity is a way for us to be seen, expressed and connected.  With this philosophy as a guiding principle, Jeff has helped empower countless people to tap deeply into their creative hearts to live richer, more fulfilling lives. “Not F*ing Around: The No Bullsh*t Guide for Getting Your Creative Dreams Off the Ground” is Jeff’s first book. Top 3 Takeaways Leadership is personal—Like any creative act, you pour yourself into your leadership and you open yourself to both positive and not-so-positive reactions from others. Creativity is a choice—a series of choices actually; while many leaders draw upon similar tools and techniques, their stylistic choices can produce dramatically different results. Creativity is energy—being true to yourself and finding harmony in your leadership allows that energy to flow smoothly. From the Source “Unlike a lot of other endeavors in the world—if you do it well—you're really putting yourself into your creation whether it's a painting or a poem or a song or whatever you're into.” “When you’re creating anything, it is essentially choice after choice after choice after choice.“ “The truth is there’s a much bigger intelligence going on out there.” “Fascination is essentially a sense of being sort of enthralled by what the world is or could be. This is a sense of curiosity, a sense of possibility.” “You need to be true to yourself and what you're doing, because that's where the energy really comes in.” “By loving what you're doing, it will fuel you, focus you, and motivate you.” Connect with Jeff Website: https://jeffleisawitz.com/ Twitter: @nfajeff LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffleisawitz/

As a busy wife, mom of three, and business owner, Sara knows how stressful life can be. After battling anxiety and losing her dad, Sara reevaluated everything so she could maximize her life. She discovered that we can turn things around! We can have more energy and a life full of all the "extra" we were made for. As a Doctor of Chiropractic and wellness advocate, Sara has helped thousands of others get back on their feet the same way she did—through better nutrition, cleaner products, and a mastered mindset. Top 3 Takeaways Look for the signs—Sara’s panic attack was a clear signal that she needed to make some BIG life changes. Yours may be more subtle, but be on the lookout for clues that you’re not at your best. Battle the busy-ness—Sometimes we give ourselves too much credit for being so busy. Being constantly in motion doesn’t make you a great leader. Stay focused on making an impact. Choose wisely—If you want to improve the quality of your life or your leadership, improve the quality of your choices. If you can call timeout and make a better choice in the moment, you’ll be much more satisfied with your long term performance. From the Source “I am a huge advocate on what works best for you, and that's when I started to dig in and decide that I needed to make some changes in my life.“ ”It starts out with, ‘Oh, I can't sleep’ or ‘Oh, I just can't focus’. And you always just kind of brush it off. You brush it off, you brush it off until all of a sudden it's just so much. Your body can only really take so much.” “Some people are wearing busy-ness as a badge of honor.” “We get complacent because we're so busy that maybe we just stopped caring about trying to do our best in certain situations.” “The busy-ness can be a blessing. I have three little boys and we’re busy, but this is a stage in life. This is a different busy than what it's going to be like in 10, 15 years.” “ If your only option is fast food, at least you could make a better fast food choice.” Connect with Sara Website: https://www.purelysarajayne.com/ Links “Back on Track” trivia game sources: Anatomy of the Spine: https://www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/a/anatomy-of-the-spine.html Chiropractic Statistics: https://www.thegoodbody.com/chiropractic-statistics-facts/

Tommy Breedlove is a Wall Street Journal & USA Today bestselling author of the book, Legendary, and Atlanta-based business, relationship, and mindset coach who is a regular featured keynote speaker at global events. Tommy started his 20-year corporate career at one of the largest financial consulting firms in the world, and eventually became a shareholder, the International Practice Leader, and a member of the board of directors for one of the largest public accounting and financial firms in the southeast U.S. At the top of his career, Tommy experienced a transformational moment inspiring him to walk away from the corporate world to change his life and follow his true calling. Tommy now serves clients and audiences everywhere by empowering them to build and live Legendary Lives. He guides people to discover a life of significance while building a lasting legacy. The simple tools he shares shows them how to work in their zone of brilliance, obtain financial freedom, and live with meaning and balance. Tommy’s goal is to help everybody to become the person they've always wanted to be. Top 3 Takeaways Lead thyself—Put yourself under the microscope, and figure out what you’re all about; resolve to convert self-awareness into intentional action. Put in the reps—Be prepared to put in the hard work. Success won’t come easily, but it will show up if YOU show up. Be Legendary—Don’t fixate on money, power, and prestige; make yours a life of giving, gratitude, and service. From the Source “I decided to lead myself and participate in my own rescue.“ “My network started reaching out to me saying, ‘Hey man, you've transformed a whole lot, brother. How did you do it? I want some of that in my life.’” “That's how I did it, and I still do it to this day. I work on myself. I lead myself, which is the most selfless thing we can do.” “When we feel closed or we get scared or insecure or things aren't going away or we make a mistake, or whatever, we start isolating and we start numbing ourselves. That could be in a hundred different ways. It could be isolating, could be TV, it could be food, it could be booze. There's a thousand ways that we can numb ourselves.”​​ “We all have mistakes, things that were done to us, things we've done. We regret things we don't want people to know. And we all have these feelings of insecurity, worry, fear. We're not alone in that.“ “When we know we're not alone, we can lean into that and use it—not as an anchor that holds us down—but use it as a floor to stand on with gratitude and use it to compel us forward.” “What we've all got to realize is we're on this journey of life and we make it super, super hard with social media and that comparison bug, that envy bug. Nobody posts their crap. They're either posting their political opinions or they're posting their best selves, and that promotes envy, that promotes jealousy, that promotes judgment.” “If we do the work—the internal work leading ourselves—we can rewrite that story and the ending can be a whole lot better.” “if you're not getting promoted or you're not being as successful as you want, here's the truth: Go find the nearest mirror and look at it. That is both the problem and the solution.“ “You have to lead yourself first. You have to be respected by others. You've got to respect yourself to be loved by others. You've got to love yourself. So you've got to lean in and lead yourself first.” “We can be horrible legends or great legends, and it has nothing to do with money, power, and success. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with net giving. It has to do with serving.” Connect with Tommy Website: http://tommybreedlove.com Legendary (book): https://www.amazon.com/Legendary-Tommy-Breedlove/dp/1642795534 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tommybreedlove LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/legendarybook Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/public/Tommy-Breedlove

Brandon Harding is a military chaplain and relationship coach with two decades of experience. His passion is assisting people and organizations in their pursuit of purpose and meaning, leading to greater productivity, healthier work cultures, and deeply satisfying relationships. He also has a coaching business, Reset Coaching, where he fuses experiences in the wild with the Immunity to Change process in order to facilitate personal and organizational development. Top 3 Takeaways Don’t fear vulnerability—Just because you’re acting in a leadership role doesn’t mean that you have to be perfect or impenetrable. Make yourself human in order to connect with your team members in a deep and meaningful way. Develop resiliency—Things aren’t always going to go your way. What’s most important is how you bounce back from work and life’s inevitable challenges. Put people before performance—It takes a bit of trust, but your people will perform for you if they know you’re developing them. If you focus on performance at the expense of people, you’ll get neither. From the Source “Within the Marine Corps, there's this culture where you can't be vulnerable, you can't express any kind of weakness, and that infuses up and down the chain of command. The irony is that the best leaders that I've experienced go against that. They do have vulnerability“ “The focus question is ‘What's the one thing that you need to change about yourself as a leader?’ The takeaway they were going to take back to their command was ‘To be the most effective leader, I've got to be human. I can't just be this automaton robot. That's harsh and demanding. I have to be a human to be really effective.’”​​ “Personal resiliency is the ability to bounce back in a healthy way from challenges. We all have challenges. So if I have resiliency, I can have setbacks at work—I can have personal setbacks—but if I'm resilient, I'm able to kind of stay calm in the moment.” “When you shift away from outcome-focused versus people-centric leadership, the outcomes happen. The outcomes just sort of naturally come along, because people will perform the best for you when they know that you're interested in developing them rather than just you're fixed on the outcome, whatever that might be.” “On a retreat, we share meals, we share hardship, there's no digital distractions. Just being in nature without any other responsibilities out there just creates an environment where people can really connect. The outcome is a deep sense of connection.” Connect with Brandon Website: http://www.resetcoaching.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-harding-a6aab858/

Michelle Clarke is obsessed with helping soul-led entrepreneurs achieve transformational success by up-leveling their energy, mindset, and habits and by helping them step into their power and speak to their authentic message. She encourages women to be unapologetically brave AF, tap back into their inner knowing and unleash their magic so they can become magnetic to their soulmate clients and bring their purpose into the world - because the world needs what they have! Top 3 Takeaways Conditioning runs deep—From the time we’re born, subtle social norms and influences shape our perspectives about ourselves and others. Make space for self discovery—You have to create opportunities to develop the self awareness that will be critical to your leadership effectiveness. Follow the energy—Pay careful attention to those activities and experiences that fire you up. These provide clues as to where you should be investing your time and effort. From the Source “We think that we've moved so far—like at least we're allowed to show our ankles now and talk at the dinner table, but we really actually haven't moved that far.“ “We're taught that good girls don't talk back or that good girls let others take the leading role. No one likes a bossy woman. We still get those subliminal messages that hold us back. Boys just don't get those messages when they're growing up.“ “When you do anything that forces yourself to move away from who you truly are, you get miserable.” “The way that you'll find out who you are is by taking time and space, like walking around in nature or doing something that makes you feel completely lit up. Then you'll be vibrating at the right frequency. You'll be free thinking.“ “Whenever you're doing something that you're really happy about, your fears get out of the way. It's impossible to feel fear and love at the same time. So if you're doing something really awesome, fear steps out of the way and then your real feelings and thoughts can step forward.” “Watch the people that have energy. They're all happy because they're doing what they want to do.”​​ Connect with Michelle Website: http://www.empowermentempires.com Michelle’s book “Woo Woo for Women in Business”: https://www.amazon.com/Woo-Women-Business-empowered-business/dp/B09G9NCV7B/

Liz Palmieri helps the C-Suite solve people problems with science and data. She’s a former member of The Predictive Index team and has been a proud steward of the Talent Optimization discipline since its inception. Throughout her career and varied experiences, Liz’s guiding light has been making an impact and being of service to others. Top 3 Takeaways Being a CEO is a big job—just like yours! It’s helpful to think about your responsibilities and opportunities inline with this lofty and well-recognized title. Go beyond the hard stuff—You’re likely to earn advancement based on your job performance, but it’s your people abilities that will determine your long-term success. Seek out support—Find a coach or a mentor and make it easy for them to help and support you by taking on as much of the heavy lifting as you can. From the Source “I think really excellent CEOs are storytellers who are able to share the story of that vision with internal stakeholders, employees, team members, leaders of the organization, and also publicly to really make the brand vision pretty clear.“ “When you think about your employees and team members, how much of the industry information do they need to understand? How can you speak in a way that's going to feel really relevant and accessible to them? And most importantly, how do you explain what's in it for them?“ “When we think about the up and coming workforce—Millennials and Gen Z—the culture piece, it's like: underline, bold, exclamation point, exclamation point!” “This person may really know a lot about the nature of our business or the industry or where we need to go and where we're headed, but if they can't make me feel really excited about all of that, then how are they going to lead me there?“ “Oftentimes we make our first foray into people management and leadership because we were high performers. And oftentimes there's a pretty significant gap there between being successful at the doing and then leading people.” “If someone is willing to share their expertise and advice and coaching, show that you're really engaged in that process and ready to take action on the things that they share. Take responsibility for the relationship by scheduling those meetups, creating an agenda of what it is that you would like to talk about, what you need help and support on, and making sure that you circle back on those items that you discussed last time. What action steps have you've taken since then? What went well? What didn't?“ Connect with Liz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizpalmiericoonley/

Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA left a successful career as a trial lawyer to become a peacemaker. His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels. He is an award-winning author, teacher, trainer, and a highly experienced mediator. Doug’s mission carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts to training life inmates to be peacemakers and mediators in maximum-security prisons. Top 3 Takeaways Conflict is brain science—our response to emotion has a biological basis, and understanding this is key to resolving conflict in the workplace. Stop shouting—We yell when we feel that we’re not being heard. We can de-escalate others and ourselves when we stop the yelling and start listening to and conveying emotions. Prioritize leadership development—learning “soft” skills like mediation will serve you well as you progress in your leadership journey and advance in your career. From the Source “When people get under stress—when they're in a situation they can't handle—there are emotional centers in the brain that activate. They're going to revert right back to the last stage of their emotional development.“ “Deescalation works because we start listening to emotions rather than words. It’s done in three steps: Ignore the words, read the emotions, reflect back the emotions with a simple statement.” “What I teach is to address the emotions before you address the words. Deescalate before you problem solve.” “We yell at each other and argue and fight because we're not being heard. So yelling is simply an indication of not being heard. And all you have to do is listen to the emotions and the yelling stops. Because now people feel heard, they feel validated.“ “The time that you invest in building your skills and becoming an effective leader is far more valuable than increasing your technical proficiency.” Connect with Doug Website: http://dougnoll.co/leadthepeople LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougnoll/

Angela Maiers is considered one of today’s most influential thought leaders in education and transformative thinking. It is fair to say when she speaks, she leaves no room unchanged. She has been praised by leaders in business, the military, and administrators of schools of every level from elementary to graduate, around the globe for the life-changing, world-changing impact she has had on the hundreds of thousands of lives with whom she has reached with her message of Mattering. Top 3 Takeaways Mattering is essential—More than a mere nice to have, mattering is a fundamental need that must be met for ourselves and for those we lead. Mattering makes business sense—even beyond the human interest aspects, making sure our people feel they matter boosts their productivity and performance. Priorities have shifted—the pandemic has sent millions of workers looking for greater meaning from new employers. Now’s a great time to make sure your team members know they matter. From the Source “When people don't feel like they matter, they become everything from apathetic to angry and everything in between.“ “Human beings as a species need to know they matter. They need to feel seen. They need to feel heard. They need to feel valued and of value, and they need to understand and be able to express their essential needs.” “When people don't bring their best self to the world or to the work, everyone suffers.” “If you want the best out of human beings, they need to know they matter. Period.” “You get to that place that you start thinking, what, what am I doing in my life? What is my life work? Am I making the impact that I can make that I should be making? Do people even recognize that I am valuable?“ “People want to belong to something. They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. If you can fulfill that as a company, then you have a workforce that will stay with you.” Connect with Angela Website: https://angelamaiers.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelamaiers/ Angela’s TED Talk, “You Matter”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHdHUzRnms