Transforming Leadership: Exploring Courage, Psychological Safety, and Authenticity with Ana Reed

Before we go into any intervention, we work a lot with the leader who's looking for that change. And so I think the how very much comes down to how willing and how prepared that leader is to go on this journey themselves. Right? And so if you can unlock that leader that whether it's the CEO, whether it's the head of department, if you can start to get them committed to that change, then you're going to start to see that permeate throughout that entire team. And so the how is all about how do I change my mindset?

Hey there friends. Welcome to Happiness Squad. This is the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art and science of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than a star combo of Ashish Kothari and Anil Ramjiani who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the Squad.

Hey Happiness Squad, it is great to have you with Ashish and I as we continue to discuss with our guests who are industry leaders helping individuals and organizations unlock their inner happiness and flourishing, courageous leadership, psychological safety and authentic self. What do these three concepts share within organizations? The application of each can be incredibly powerful unlock for human flourishing and capital across all levels to deliver thriving cultures. We are excited to share how Meet our next guest, Anna Reid. Anna is the founder of Newmanity and hails from Australia. Growing up in a multicultural Australian community and sporting family. Her success as a top CEO and Executive advisor extends over a decade where she has lived across six continents and worked with some of the world's top CEOs and leaders from successful global companies. The journey started for Anna as a professional athlete where she developed an early fascination for human performance and how it translates into leadership. She has provided novel transformation across multiple industries including E commerce, retail, mining, consumer healthcare, CPG publishing and sports since its creation in 2020. Her company, Neumannity, serves CEOs and leaders globally as they navigate new and complex challenges. Anna is incredibly passionate about unlocking human capital and is on a mission with humanity to enable her clients to shift to more balanced ethical leadership. We discussed multiple principles including the importance of business, social and human values and how Anna has worked with leadership at the C level and teams on the front lines to Unlock business performance by ensuring a focus on human issues and the importance of heart centered leadership in bringing in a company strategy and purpose to life. As a result, employees go home knowing that their work is tough, but it's a great community to be part of. As we rounded out the podcast, stay tuned till the end as we had an open conversation how Anna is working to empower women as they step into leadership roles and the importance of both men and women to recode this future. Let's rewire for Happiness together. Please join me as Ashish and I welcome Anna to the Happiness Squad. Hey Ashish. Hey Anna. How are you both doing today?

I'm doing great. Great to be here.

I am amazing.

It's a pleasure to meet you.

So nice to see you and so nice to see my dear friend Anna.

Love it. You know, we were chatting as we were getting ready about just how amazing people cut from the same cloth, just come together and create magic. And so I'm really excited, Anna, to hear more about you as we go through today. You've got such a rich and amazing background. Our listeners are keen to hear about it. So let's just jump straight in. You know, Anna, it's a favorite question we have for all of our guests and we love out with it. And that is what does happiness mean to you and how has it changed from your younger years until now?

Yeah, I love this question. For me, I think happiness is, is more about acquiring meaning in one's life. I think that's really important because without meaning, we don't engage in life, you know, we don't experience the full spectrum of what life has to offer. And so I actually see happiness in the context of joy. And so for me, we can't experience joy until we actually experience suffering. It's a paradox. And what I've been able to sort of get from my own life is that, you know, how do I acquire meaning from the suffering that I've had? Because I'll be honest, you know, life for me, growing up wasn't easy. It was tough. I had a tough, more sort of tough experience than I did happy experiences. But it was my curiosity around that, I think that led me to then move into more of a joyful place. And I was curious about, you know, what does all this mean? You know, what, what's the meaning of life? What can I learn from all these experiences that are essentially painful? And that's where I think I was able to jump on more of a spiritual path. You know, shish, I've seen from one of your LinkedIn posts, you mentioned Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, one of the most incredible books ever. And you know, it's those types of teachers and leaders that really help me see, okay, there's something greater here. There's something way bigger than my own suffering. There's something way bigger than me. And so it just allowed me to realize that I was not here for me, I was here for something greater. And so I was able to acquire meaning. And then from that, now I'm in a more continuous place of joy. It's never perfect, but it's that meaning and joy, meaning and joy that you just fluctuate between and realize that, you know, this, this is life.

I love that, Anna. You know, and just a couple of things that come to mind, I think as, as I reflect on it, you know, couldn't be more aligned with that definition of happiness and what brings you happiness. And it's, it's amazing that you mentioned Richt Frankl because for me, you know, it's, it's one of the big things. His sayings from the 50s explained why despite being so much more prosperous as a generation and having so much more at our disposal, we are suffering, we're struggling. Right. Which was, he said in the 50s that people today have more means to live, but less meaning to live for. And you know, that, that, that notion of lack of meaning is, I think, a big reason behind, you know, just people caught in this everyday treadmill of life. And so I love it. You know, the other thing you highlighted was beautiful that, you know, happiness doesn't mean that you don't have suffering. You can find happiness in suffering. In fact, by giving meaning to suffering, you make suffering meaningful again. Another one of the beautiful Viktor Frankl saying, and I love it because you described, you know, happiness where you are now and as a state of being versus an emotional state, because emotions rise and fall. You know, you're happy, you're not so happy, you're angry, you're not angry, but a state of being, you know, we always talk about it. Happiness Squad. How do you go from experiencing joy to being joyful, which is you can be joyful even in the face of hardships.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I love that.

Yeah. And it's a choice, isn't it? It's a choice and it, it requires action.

Yes.

It requires work. And people aren't always willing to do the work. And I think if you're willing to do the work, if you're willing to choose every day the path of joy, the path of happiness, then you will have a very fulfilled life and you will, you will achieve what it is that you set out to achieve. And I think people, you know, in this day and age tend to try and take shortcuts to getting what they want. It's, it's not easy, but if you do it through, through conscious choice, then you get there.

Exactly. And so I want to hear about this and I. You alluded to, you had a, you said you had a hard upbringing. Tell me a little bit about, you know, some pivotal moments in your life journey. Share it with us, share it with our listeners that really led to you finding your meaning in life and to doing this amazing work that you are doing in the world now.

Well, you know, it's been a long life so far and I hope that it extends for even longer. But I think, you know, from a younger perspective, the one thing that really shaped me as a leader, as the person that I am, is sport. So, so playing elite level basketball. I started at the age of six. My mum, she was a great athlete and she was Croatia, she's Croatian, born in Croatia, where basketball is the national sport alongside soccer or football. And so I grew up on a basketball court and you know, I had immigrant parents, they were struggling to settle into a new life in Australia. And so it was, it was tough, it was tough at home. And basketball was just that seam in my life that allowed me to just express myself, allowed me to be me. I was a very tall child, yeah, taller than my teachers when I was 10 years old. And it just gave me the confidence to really, you know, put all, everything, it was an outlet for me to really just be my best and achieve, achieve my best in perhaps situations at home that didn't allow me to do that. So I think sport is just an incredible vehicle for women especially. You know, it cultivated my sense of purpose, it taught me about passion, it taught me about being able to express your emotions freely, to learn from your hardship, to serve others. You know, everything that I sort of get as and teach within organizations is, comes from that history, that seam of sport. And I think naively, when I went into the corporate world after playing at a very high level, I thought, great, I'm going to see all these principles of teamwork and high performance and you know, all these well paid professionals, they're going to work well as a team. And I was shocked. And I, that's where I became very curious about why were people in privileged positions of leadership not actually being their best and not being high performers. And that's where my mission started. It really started at age 2021 when I sort of stepped into the corporate world.

Wow.

It's just such a diverse background. And Anna, as someone who's an athlete himself and working for Nike, I have to commend you. I think it is incredible to come from the background you have playing basketball. I can only imagine, like you said, the shock that you felt. You'd expect that teamwork in corporate, but you didn't. Something we were chatting about before we started recording was around how as an athlete you love overcoming insurmountable challenges and you started Newmanity in 2020. And I mean, as soon as I saw that, I was like, wow, that's a crazy year to start something like this. Can you maybe just tell our listeners a little bit about Newmanity? Kind of what helped you decide that you wanted to tee up and you know, we, we. Let's take it from there.

Yeah, sure. Well, I was always taught where, where I learned this particular perspective was in West Africa where, where I worked for two years, where I got a lot of incredible and valuable experience. But it was chaos. It was a very difficult place to work. But where there's chaos, there's opportunity. And that's what happened in 2020. There was so much chaos. And for me, I just knew that there was a future of work that was evolving. And this was thinking that I'd been working through prior to Covid. And so I knew that there was a new frontier of leadership that was needed. And I think Covid in 2020 was the tipping point. We actually reached the tipping point and now we're past the tipping point where if you're not willing to change as a leader, if you're not willing to build an organization that has a human centered approach that puts people first, that you're simply not going to survive in the long term or you're going to have continuous issues with talent, with culture, with all of those things that a lot of big companies and any company really struggling with today. So I think humanity for me was born from that mission, that there's a new frontier for leadership, leadership that's people focused, planet saving and profit making, you know, and we can achieve those three Ps through a more human centered approach. And that's really what, what I've been doing. And so prior to 2020, I had access to so many of the world's top CEOs through work that I was doing, obviously, and the BBC program that I was part of. And you know, we met some big CEOs, Richard Branson, Meg Whitman, the Airbnb founders. But not only that, we were able to go into countries where we met top CEOs. So Australia, Thailand, China. You know, we went to Thailand because we wanted to explore why there were so many female CEOs. Thailand has the biggest quota of female CEOs than anywhere else in the world. So that was super interesting. But I think what I learned was meeting all these great CEOs and leaders was the ones that did really well, balanced three areas really well within the organization. That was the business, the social, and the human. And so we've developed an approach around, you know, the business, social and human aspects of leading and transforming a company. And I won't go into that in too much detail, but what we, what I found was that those that sort of had the ambition, had the really clear strategy, had an absolute ability to execute on that strategy and not just talk about it, you know, that that was really good business. And on the social, it was all about, you know, the values, the emotional connection is, is ESG and corporate social responsibility and de and I more than just tokenism. Does it actually, you know, is it actually pervasive in the culture in a good way? And then the most important was the human. So that's all about, you know, how do we create these cultures that are human centered, where everyone has a sense of belonging, a sense of safety, there's high trust, where people can be, show up and be themselves. And you know, it's, it's from that human approach that we start all of our interventions. And I found that the CEOs that weren't successful were the ones that wanted transformation and had these really incredible transformation programs and could talk about them really well, but they weren't willing to do the hard work of transforming themselves first. And so that's where, you know, we really work at the humanity of leadership. And we really focus on bringing in, you know, practitioners from psychology, from the humanities, from, well, being and being a team, being part of team sport. You know, I can't do any of it on my own. I have a really good team around me that works with these companies.

So, Anna, you know, you and I, I'm trying to remember how we got connected actually in the first place. I don't remember. I think I might have reached out to you, but I remember what made me like literally lit me up. Right. Was your, the, even the name of the company New Manity, right? I'm sure it's New Humanity, right? This notion of, you know, workplaces have become places where humanity goes to die. Right. Like it's, you know, people spend so much of time at work with no sense of meaning. They're there just to earn a paycheck. And the company cultures and the way people talk about it often, you know, further amplifies it because what runs rampant in so many companies is we're here, shareholder value creation. It's all about profits. And then implicitly with that logic becomes, yeah, and so I'm here for the salary. Right. And that's what work is meant to be. And we forget the human side of things. Right. By the way, don't show up if you have something going on. But these are all the old ways, but they're still so pervasive. And even with so many companies who have now kind of embraced and moved away from the kind of old Friedman shareholder value creation is the role, you know, is the reason why we need to kind of exist as companies to we really need for all stakeholders. Unfortunately, it hasn't pervaded in the way companies are actually operating right over, I think like 190 people signed the Business Roundtable thing. But is it really showing up in the day to day? I think there is a big disconnect there. And so what I'm curious about, Anna, is in your work, you know, I mean, amazing set of CEOs you worked with and you've kind of had a chance to learn from. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, you already talked about the three attributes, business, social and human. But talk to us about how. I want to know about. That's the what. Right. They care about these three things. Tell me about how they are actually living into them. How are they driving this transformation at scale so that it is not just the senior leaders who are saying, well, I think we should care about all these things. But when it comes to day to day decisions, it's still about the profit, it's still about the quarter, it's still about me, not everybody else. So what are they doing? What are they doing? How are they making it happen?

How are the good leaders making it happen in their organizations? Yeah, yeah.

How are the good leaders truly living and making their organizations live into those three elements of business, social and human?

Well, I think, you know, we do a lot of before we go into any intervention or any assignment, we work a lot with, with the leader who's looking for that change. And so I think the how very much comes down to how willing and how prepared that leader is to go on this journey themselves. Right. So much of change in organization is about role modeling and copying behaviors. Right. And so if you can unlock that leader that, whether it's the CEO, whether it's the head of department, or whether it's the manager of a team, if you can start to get them committed to that change, then you're going to start to see that permeate throughout that entire team. And so the how is all about how do I change my mindset? How do I change my own personal behaviors? How do I create a vision here that's compelling that people really want to be part of? And so then we actually unlock, and I think a big part of the how as well is just going to the truth. You know, we're so afraid of the truth and, and you walk in and you can see clearly what's going on and what's going wrong. But this whole idea of courage and courageous leadership, leadership, people aren't courageous enough to talk about it. And so our work is very much about establishing a baseline of truth. Not just on the business performance. Yes, we do sort of go into that, but on how are we relating to each other, as in this team, like what are the real sort of human issues and emotional issues that people are carrying in this group? You know, and so I think, you know, going in with a real, real conviction around establishing the baseline of reality, the baseline of truth. When you can get that, then you start to open up potential, then you start to open up possibility. And there's a whole range of things that you can do to really make that shift. So we go into, to some organizations and we see that, you know, they haven't established a level of truth. Okay. You know, we don't actually know what we're, what we're solving for. We don't actually know what we want to build here. Okay, well, what, what do we want to build? What is this, what is this organization? What is the ambition? What is the purpose? So much of ambition and purpose in companies is a lot of yes, token statements. You know, they go as they go as far as the PowerPoint. Right. And that's one of the questions I ask in my reviews is where is your purpose on the scale of. It's in PowerPoint and it's not going anywhere from there or it's actually showing up in our behaviors. And again, that being able to get people to talk about that honestly and authentically and you get different answers. Right. And so I think, you know, the how in summary is very much about establishing truth, making sure that that leader that's Leading that team, leading that organization is willing to go through the hard work of change, real change, deep change.

Yeah, I love that. You know Anna, so you mentioned a couple of things here which were, you know, one of the words is, you know, leader always been CEO. But I loved how you started by saying, you know, leader is anybody who wants to make a change. It can be and it's so coherent with how we at Happiness Squad think about, you know, human centric transformations, flourishing, creating cultures of flourishing. Any leader, it can be the CEO, it can be a head of a department, it can be a business unit. I mean it can be a project manager who's leading 12 people and just says, you know, let's, let's organize it so it's truly distributed leadership, not the old monolithic at the top. So I love that and I love this notion of establishing the baseline right and purpose. I'm working with a company right now, they're about a two and a half billion dollar company. They make, they're in packaging and we're running an effort around purpose, having them articulate and live into their why. Right. And we are engaging about 5,000 people in coming up with the purpose. But more importantly to your words, how do you activate it? And oh my God, I can tell you right as we are going through this, there's so many people going the energy through just that conversation right in the front line to say what drives you? What should we stand for beyond making money and how should we live into that purpose? That we should be in the, in the pursuit of the conversation is the intervention that unlocks, unleashes this energy allows people to shift and raise their head up from just the mundane. Just get stuff done and provides the North Star. So I love it.

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You know, you talked about establishing the baseline of truth. So say some more about how do you go about establishing the baseline of truth for people or even for them to actually recognize that, you know, hey, you have a story. But that's all it is. It's your story. It is not the story. So tell us about that.

Well, I think this is, this is, this is hard, this is hard work because it comes down to you and me and whoever's willing to sort of stand for that truth. Right. And sometimes you're willing to stand for a greater truth than your client is. And so you have to really try and gauge, you know, how far are they willing to go. And our job is to always really try and push and challenge them and get them to go deeper. But I think, you know, I'm in a position now where I really only take on clients that are willing to go there, that are willing to go to those harder places. And so I very much stand in support of them of being courageous enough to go into some of the more difficult conversations, the more difficult to issues. And that's, that's where we start. We, we often start with, with the business. And so we, we gauge a reality of how people see the businesses performing. Right. Because everyone's there for business. Everyone. That's the common speak. And, and so you, you know, you start with that and then as you start with that, you start to really unlock, okay, you know, what are some of the more deeper issues here? What are some of the more people issues, the emotional issues. And then we start to just open it up and seeing how willing the team or the people are willing to go. It's and, and I think often it's, it ends up being quite a magical process because you really see how willing a specific group is willing to go into establishing that truth. They talking about things that they've never talked about before.

Yes.

And I think that's some of the feedback we get as well is that, wow, you know, we've never actually had this level of conversation. And I think for me that's why, you know, heart centered leadership is so important because when we speak from the heart, we speak the truth. Right. And organizations in organizations, we're all speaking from our heads, we're speaking from the left brain, we're analyzing. We're, you know, logically coming up with the right answers or the right things to say. We're talking about the business. But when we can get people to sort of settle in to that, that place of passion, that place of truth from the heart, then that's when you start to see more dialogue happen. And so that we try and really set up the space where people can feel safe enough to go to their hearts and speak the truth. So, again, psychological safety, you know, and establishing that is so important when you go into. To wanting to get to that baseline of truth.

You know, Anna, just listening to you, I'm in awe because. And I'm scribbling notes right here because I've been in companies where I've been in conversations with leadership, and they say, well, the business is flourishing. We're hitting the numbers. And I say, well, yeah, but the employee sentiment may not be reflected. Yeah, but we're growing. We're hitting our targets. Yeah, but if the employees are feeling like they're not acknowledged, they're feeling betrayed, they're feeling like they're not able to progress the way they're hoping to, you know, and I'm told, well, what's the evidence? You know, engagement surveys indicate certain things. You know, business results indicate certain things, conversations with certain individuals relate certain things. So I think the way you've just delved into that and you've talked about how you are in that position to. To. To speak to leaders who are willing to listen, who are willing to dig deep, willing to see how far they're willing to go to test those truths. I'm just really glad that you actually tapped into that. I think one thing that comes to mind on the back of that is a lot of these organizations are probably just so used to doing things how they've been done in order to unlock results that they're used to. I think what would help me and maybe our listeners to build on what you and Ashish are talking about is how do you help organizations build psychological safety? Because that must be incredibly difficult if they're so used to operating how they are so used to hitting numbers the way they are, looking at results through surveys the way they are, how do you help them build that safety of, hey, think of it from another perspective, think of it from another direction and test the truth that you once held true.

And anil before, Anna, you even ask to our listeners, you know, psychological safety, a big word, but it truly is, you know, one of the most important elements around team Effectiveness. And the most landmark study is Project Aristotle, a study that Google took on analyzing thousands of teams looking for markers of what made that team effective. And when they cut through it, what they found, regardless of the composition of the team, regardless of the expertise of the team, regardless of the education level of the team, regardless of whether it was a team that was co located or not, what time pressure at the heart of it, the highest factor was actually psychological safety. And so Anna, as you answer the question that nilans both one, describe what that actually means to a listener who might not be familiar with it and also how you actually make it happen. Because that word, you know, even in all the work I do gets thrown around a lot. But actually creating that environment is incredibly hard. So how you help leaders do that I think will be very helpful. And as a listener, what they can do tomorrow to start to create that environment, right? What's the smallest step they can take to create and bring in more psychological safety into their workplaces?

Well, I love the passion around the topic. Quite a few questions, but let me, let me try and break it, break it down as best as I see it. I think psychological safety, you know, and again I get asked a lot about what makes a great team, what makes a high performing team, what makes a high performing leader. And, and everyone's looking for a silver bullet. Everyone wants that magic, you know, that magic answer. They go out and they spend hundreds and sometimes millions of dollars actually thinking that they're getting the answer for that. And it's not often the case. But what I think is cornerstone and this is key to your work at the Happiness Squad is, is awareness. The consistent factor in high performing leaders and high performing teams is awareness, self awareness and collective team awareness. And that's certainly, you know, my experience as well as a, as an athlete is the longer you spend time together, the more, you know, the more you go through the successes and the failures, the more awareness you build over time. So I think the key to psychological safety is about is awareness really. And how do we cultivate that awareness as a team? And again, it starts with the individual. And so how willing are you to reckon and admit to your failures or to your or to your truth? Right? So I think yeah, awareness is the key factor to psychological safety. And the more awareness you can cultivate, the more willing you are to express freely what it is that you think, feel and see My and that I think, you know, when you often see it takes one person, when I sit in rooms, you know, with, with teams, you can see from the corner of your eye, the person that's going to create that sense of safety in the group, they're holding on, they care so much. They don't want to say what they're going to say because it's a courageous thing that they need to say. But as soon as they say it, the whole energy of the team changes. And it's usually a feeling that they have or an insight that they have that no one, no one has seen or has understood. But they know that that's the truth of what, what's happening in the group. And when, when someone calls it, I call it a truth bomb. When someone drops in a truth bomb, that's when we start to see psychological safety deepen. It's when we start to see, okay, someone's willing to be courageous in this group. Okay, I'm going to start to share what I really think as well. So I think, you know, it's about the leaders. It's about realizing who in your team may not be. It's being able to read who in your team or who in your group has something to say that's going to really sort of open that group up. And I think that's a skill that's quite difficult because it means that you have to not just be focused on the performance, you have to be focused on people and you have to be able to read people well and you have to be able to ask the right questions as a leader to have people share their truth and share what it is that they really see. And so the more courage and the more openness that you can build as a leader, the more likely that you're going to build psychological safety.

Thank you.

I totally agree. And Anna, thank you for sharing that. This is something that I really encourage our listeners to think about. I've been part of engagement surveys where I know one of the toughest results has been, you know, people fear speaking up, they feel retaliation, whether it be by leadership, by peers, I won't be able to progress to add to that. People may even feel, well, this is an emotional response or is this a fact based response. So what level of comfort do they have to share with leadership? Especially the leadership level that you're talking about, the CEOs, the C suite, for folks to feel comfortable, to be able to air their thoughts. And you know, Ashish and I, we've talked about this in the past. Sometimes leaders are the least likely to seek feedback, least likely to hear the truth. They're almost, they want to shy away from it and just drive an agenda that it's, you know, the shareholders or the board really want to drive. So I think it's a real delicate balance. And I'm really appreciative, Anna, that you shared that. And for our listeners, if we really dig into that, it's a matter of, you know, it's heart centered leadership. It's really creating that psychological safety amongst your team at any level. I don't think this is C suite. This could be at middle mid management level or even a junior level. You want to nurture honesty, truth, fact based assertions rather than assessments. And that's something that Asha and I, we've discussed in the past. And so Anna, I think it's really important for us to challenge and ensure that folks feel comfortable to speak up and have the safety net in order to create the change that we all see. I want to now kind of maybe build on some of your work and if you could actually share a client story that might help this, what you just discussed resonate with our listeners. And ideally also what was the result of maybe that work that really demonstrates what your work unlocks within your clients.

Yeah.

And Anna, and if you can pick a story, I know you have so many of them, but if you can pick a story which is not the linear, classic linear story. Awaken leader meets Anna, falls in love with the work and embarks on a transformation and oh my God, Treasure, right?

Yes.

Instead, tell us a story about a leader who was question, you know, who was really a doubter, not necessarily a full advocate, a company. And how both in that transformation, the leader transformed and as the leader transformed, the organization transformed. Give me that, don't give me one of your easy cases because I know you have so many of them, the of these hard ones.

Well, well, I think, you know, the example that I can think of that just strikes me because it was. So we go in and do this work. It's just so powerful. Right. And this, there was a moment that was really powerful for me and, and it wasn't with a CEO, you know, it wasn't with a C suite member. We, we were working with them with a mining client. You know, and I love working with, with mining. Admittedly they've got a lot of work to do, you know, like any company does when it comes to their building and sustaining their ethical practices. But at a mining site are some of the most passionate people you'll ever meet. You know, and, and I, we went out to a mining site and these are people that they care, they care about their work. They're hard working, their results focused and they live in these communities and sometimes in very remote communities. So they, they care about each other, they keep each other safe and they're really, really passionate about the communities that they're part of and serving their communities. And so you really do see, you know, the potential of a mining company when you go out on these sites. And we, we ran a one week workshop and it was for almost 100 leaders, so 100 of their sort of management but and superintendent level leaders. And they were having some serious issues. It was, you know, performance that were, production was low, they were having ongoing safety issues and the morale and overall culture just wasn't great. And we ran this event where we really established the realities. We got them to develop a new North Star about what it is they really love to build and achieve at this moment mining site. And we, we got them to really focus. You know, we did some consciousness work with them as well. But I think what happened was on the last day, two stories from this. On the last day, everyone was so inspired about what was possible because of the transformation that we took them through and they could really see and believe that things were going to change for the first time, you know, in a long time. But there was one person in that group that just wasn't buying it. They just weren't buying it. They were, they weren't in it. And you could very easily look at that person and say this is a difficult person. They're actually not going with the group, they're not going with everything that's happened. But when we challenge them or try to understand, not challenge them, but try and understand where they were coming from, it was because they just cared so much. They were so scared. Scared of believing in something new. Right. And being, and being let down again. Right. And so I think it's really important to understand when you're going through these transformational changes that the people that sort of hold back aren't always the difficult people. They're people that actually care so much and they really, really, really want to believe. And so when we got that into the room and we got that into the space, it was just another moment that allowed us to see that there are people here that care so deeply that they're not willing to believe in something unless they can really get a sense from everyone that this is actually going to, going to be different or this is going to change. And so that was a really important moment for me to work with what someone that was perceivingly difficult but actually not Difficult at all. And then I think another thing from that experience was when someone came to me on their third day, after the third day and they, they said, you know, I went home to my wife and my family and I was sitting at the dinner table and I was able to just share with them what a great experience I had at work and how, how, how different it was and that I'd learned so much and that it was such an incredible, enriching day for, for them. And I think that's where it hits home for me. And that's what this work is about, is about employees, people being able to go home, sit at their dinner table with their families and say, works hard, but it's such a great, great community and a great company that I'm part of and that, that's what inspires me to do the work. It's what it's the kind of essence of humanity is that what are people saying when they go home to their families and how do we change that so that people can come home feeling like, yeah, work's hard, but it's a great company.

I'm so glad you chose this story, Anna, for a couple of reasons. I think the first one is it very much speaks to one of the questions that we often get right in the work I do. In the work you do, which is, yeah, all this psychological, safety, psychology, life purpose, meaning it's all for like white collar senior folks. But like, you know, this doesn't resonate with Frontline. They're trying to put food on the table. And I think your story about front mining, nothing gets more frontline than a mined environment. And it's a beautiful story. And that's been my. One of my most fun transformation was when I worked with a large plant, a thousand person plant in Deep South. Many people weren't even high school graduates. This work resonates at all levels. We all as humans aspire to actually work in places that inspire us. And it's in the purpose and something bigger than just earning a paycheck. Right. So it's a story, it's again a story that we say, oh, it'll not resonate with that, with that group. They don't care about it. But I think your story is beautiful because no, this work is most powerful actually when you work with that group. And then the second thing is, you know, people think about, and this is so much more than just how do we actually transform the work they do here. Right. The power of this work is you show up different at home, you show you Are changed. You, you know, it's the same when we do safety programs. You start living into safety. It's not like I don and become safe at work and now at home I do whatever. This is about new identities that you start to form and people start to form and those identities is what they walk into, whether they walk into home, whether they walk into their office, wherever we are. So I love both of those elements, Anna. And you know, the last one, which is powerful, was often, you know, it's easy to write off people who are hard because we assume again, a story that if they're pushing back, they're pushing back because they don't believe. But I love that example of what you just said. Actually, people who really believe can be some of the hardest ones to get on board because they have been so often disillusioned by people trying to greenwash, rubber stamp and they're really not in. So this notion of, no, I'm gonna hold out till I really know you mean it and you wanna do it and this one is gonna be different. So thank you for sharing that story. I think it was beautiful. And it both speaks to the power of the work and also how consciously we have to actually do it.

Absolutely, absolutely. No, you're absolutely right. Yeah.

I think, Anna, one thing that I found really interesting when I was actually exploring the work that humanity does is the stance in support, support that you give to women. And I think something that I feel our listeners would love to hear is if you could share some of those insights on how are you leading and supporting, empowering women as they step in to become great leaders at all levels.

Yeah, sure. I mean, women, I've been fortunate enough, obviously, as I've been meeting a lot of the CEOs that I've met, to meet some of the female CEOs as well. And, and I think what I've learned most about leadership, I've learned from them. And I think, you know, I firmly believe that we're going to really change the way we lead. We have to embrace more feminine qualities in leadership. And you don't have to be regardless of gender. Right. And I think, you know, when I work with women, I often see women having gotten to where they got to based on them embracing more of the masculine qualities. You know, being. Having an achievement, awareness, focus, being directional, being go oriented. And I think, you know, what's important today is that the whole world actually of leadership needs to be more intuitive. They need to be more feeling, more receiving, more allowing, and that's more of the feminine. And I think whether we like it or not or whether we agree or disagree, we're made up of both masculine and feminine qualities. It's the left brain and the right brain. Right.

And frankly, in Indian spiritual traditions, the perfect human being is actually depicted as a half man, half mutant, truly integrated.

Yeah.

You know, equal parts masculine and feminine. Right. So I mean, it's, I mean this is not, this is not just a new science. Like, it's odd. No, this is like if you go back to our kind of deepest levels, I think it is about integrating. And in fact, you know, I would almost even say today, even though most of the energy is male energy to female, you know, masculine to feminine energy. And to your point, you know, often female leaders feel like to fit in, they have to act and embody that masculine energy. The world we are living in right now needs so much more of the feminine because no longer are we using our physical labor and physical power to drive things. Is true. We are in a place where we need to actually unite. We need a place where we need to inspire, we need to nurture, we need to flourish. You know, it's. And those genuinely come from feminine energies. Right. That's. That is a feminine energy. So I'm so glad you talk about that.

Yeah. And this is it. This is what I try, we teach women in the work that we do is that just by you being you, you turning up in a space, space of masculine energy, being completely embracing those feminine qualities is going to create some sort of catalyst, is going to create some sort of change. And, and, and it takes a while for women to sort of unblock some of what they train themselves to be, to then actually fall in and, and surrender to their feminine. Right. And that's hard. I, I've been in that position. I've been, you know, an ambitious athlete that's had to embrace a lot of, a lot of masculine qualities and energy. But what I found is when I wasn't being true to my feminine, I burnt out. You know, I burnt out. I wasn't because I wasn't being me. And so I've spent a lot of time working on myself and working with some amazing people around the world around, you know, returning to that feminine and now teaching that. And, you know, one of the biggest pieces of feedback I get from the CEOs that I work with, this is a, you know, a straight testimonial from, from one of my clients is Avatar taught me how to be more, more connected to my feminine, to my more feminine qualities. And So I think that's what we try and help women do, is just realize that if they can unlock and be more integrated, as you say, and know when to call on their masculine and know when to call on their feminine, then they're actually inspiring a wave of leadership that's needed in the world today.

I'm going to echo that. And I, I almost think that this is the same thing that. With respect to, to your answer, I think we need to continue to coach men as well, to feel comfortable, to bring out their emotional, their quote unquote feminine side as well, to be respectful and open to hearing that emotional or feminine side from their peers. And I think that that's a block right now. We're expecting. We need to coach and empower women to do what they need to do and unblock and relearn. Hang on a second, guys out there. You need to do the same thing because it's not, it's a two way street.

Absolutely.

And it is so much reprogramming, you know, Anil, it's so much reprogramming, programming. Because, you know, unfortunately in our world, for women, it's actually lowering the armor. You don't need to fit in, just show up. I love what he does. Just show up. You don't need to learn to be a leader. Show up with, you know, you care. Like that notion. I think for men, I think it's actually. You're right. I think we need actually for men, because we are, we have to like, do a whole bunch of reprogramming for men. Right? Because for men, we are taught, hey, boys, don't cry. It's about being strong. It's about knowing the answer. It's about power. It's about drive. It's about being harder, stronger, bigger. So, you know, we pick up these fake, these things that don't serve us, but, you know, deep in our own heart. This is, you know, Dalai Lama's beautiful words, and it's so true. We all are wired for compassion. We are wired to nurture. So I think there is a part of us that is in us. So with men, I think it's equally important for us to truly harness the collective and create balance between the feminine and masculine in an organization is to actually awaken, reconnect with that part that lives in so many men too, that just got pushed at a much early age. It's to rediscover that.

No, I love that. And when people ask me about what, what is women's empowerment? What does it mean to you? I often Say, well, it's about bringing men on the journey. And then I think, you know, and even cleverly in our logo for the company logo, we have, we've got WM next to each other humanity and you can see there's a break. And it's about women, you know, standing side by side with men as they go through this transformation. And I think that's a really powerful thing. Absolutely. We need men. And again, it comes down to this heart centered approach. Like we all have this ability to be connected to our hearts. And so if we can just go to that place more often, we're going to embrace the characteristic or quality that's needed in the moment. Whether that's masculine, whether that's feminine, you know, when we're really true and heart centered, then we just end up coming up with what the right answer is in the moment.

Anna, you've just shared so many beautiful concepts with us today. I just want to say thank you. I mean, if I think about it from we started to courageous leadership, I always almost think of renaissance leadership leaders really looking for change, willing to challenge themselves, establishing, as you and Ashish discussed, psychological safety, really empowering both men and women in the workplace at all levels. As Ashish you brought up, whether it be the C suite, all the way down to the frontline, these are concepts that truly resonate. And I think something that I love as well is just showing up as your authentic self. And so I love what Newmanity is doing. I think this is just brilliant. I think what our listeners would maybe love to hear from you now, Anna, is what are the one to three tips that they can start practicing as of today to truly unlock their own flourishing from your experience, things you've seen and things you've shared.

Yeah, sure would love to. And this has been such an incredible conversation. My three tips, my first one, my first and foremost is so simple and it's just to breathe. I think we forget to breathe and our breath is our most powerful resource. It's so simple. But when we can get out of our head and into our breath, we really are able to connect to that present moment and figure out what that answer is that we need for whatever it is that we're trying to solve or whatever stress we're in. But yeah, I think breathing is just something that I try and practice every day with as much awareness as I possibly can. But I think the second tip is what you were saying before about courageous leadership is just be courageous. I think fear is so universal that we all experience fear. It's a common trait of humanity. It's a feeling. But courage is a choice. And so if we can sort of come out of fear and realize that we have a choice to be courageous all the time, then you will always stretch that comfort zone. You'll always be playing on the edge of yourself. And when you can build that muscle of courage, you'll achieve great things. You'll achieve great things in your life, you'll achieve great things in your leadership. And as a consequence, you'll build an organization that is long term and sustaining and gets the results you want.

Thank you, Anna. That was amazing. Breathe, One of my favorites. You know, we do it continuously and do it completely unaware and really the power of breath to come back to the present moment, to really bring our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in balance versus being constantly on overdrive. And also recognizing what you just said. Be courageous. Make that choice. And by the way, you can be courageous by integrating what Anna just said, which is fear is a universal emotion. Most people have fears of not being enough, not being worthy, not being smart enough, not knowing the answer. That's okay, you're not alone. Just speak into that. But then take the step. Be courageous. It's a choice. Just like happiness is a choice. This has been such an amazing conversation, Anna. I am so blessed to have you in our life and I'm so glad we got a chance to share your wisdom, the amazing work that you're doing with our listeners. So thank you for spending the time with us.

Thank you. Thank you, Ashish. It's been wonderful, you know, and I'm so glad we get to share these experiences with each other and I look forward to what's to come.

Thank you so much, Anna. Look forward to hearing more stories from you and again, wish you and humanity luck as you guys carry forward.

Forward.

Until then, wish you humanity and bringing a new human to the world, right?

Yes, that's right. Oh, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm almost there. Not quite, but almost. Seven and a half.

Amazing.

Yeah. Oh, great. And then Neil, really, really great to meet you as well for the first time. Great, great conversation.

Yeah, take care.

Pleasure, Anna. Likewise. Well, look forward to the next. Take care, Anna.

Take care. Bye bye.

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