Embracing Awkwardness (ft Henna Pryor)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation challenges and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now your host, Ed Marx.

Hey, it's Ed. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices, and I have a great guest with us again this week, Henna Prior. Henna, welcome to Digital Voices.

Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

I'm super excited because we first met at HIMSS 25 at the Executive Summit. I was fortunate to be the MC and you were a keynote of ours and you just had the audience like totally engaged and I was listening. So I snuck out from the green room and went out front to see a little bit about what's going down. And it was so fascinating. I thought to myself, I have to have you as a guest. So again, thanks for being my guest. But Hannah, the most important question we ask on Digital Voices is what songs are on your playlist? What kind of music do you like to listen to?

I like to listen to everything. I'm a big music person. The thing that you'll find me listening to most consistently is '90s and early 2000s hip-hop. That is like my comfort genre. But generally speaking, I have very diverse musical tastes, so Broadway musicals, Hard rock, alternative, the new stuff. I have teenagers, so the new stuff is in our house. But if, if you want, want me to be in a good mood instantly, throw on some '90s and 2000s hip-hop and I'll be good.

All right. Yeah. Love that. What about life message or mantra? Are there words that sort of guide you how you live?

Yeah, I think it's honestly a phrase that is in my book, which is do it awkward, but do it anyway. The world is swirling far too quickly for any of us to aim for grace, precision, perfection. And I think the more comfortable we can get with our personal levels of awkwardness, especially amidst uncertainty, challenge, and change, the better off we'll all be.

Yeah. And I jumped right to it. And I love that, by the way. I jumped right in, but you are also a workplace performance expert. You're a global keynote speaker, which is how we met already. We talked about that. But yeah, you're also an author, executive coach, The list goes on and on. So tell us a little bit about who you are.

Yeah.

And we'll start unpacking that a little bit, but what's your story? Tell us about your life growing up.

Yeah, so firstborn of immigrant parents. My dad's from India, my mom's from Pakistan, and I was the first one to be born here in the United States. I will say that that really did inform a lot of my early decisions. I very much wanted to make my parents proud. They were immigrants to the US. They worked very hard to have a good life for my sister and I here. And so my first career out of college was Big 4 public accounting. I worked for Ernst& Young and That was a very safe, stable, reputable job. Uh, I was good at it. I did not enjoy it.

Yeah.

Not one bit. So I was in audit for about 2 and a half, 3 years until I realized this was just not the job for me. I needed to work more with people in a job that allowed me to do more talking. And so I made pivot number one, which was to executive search and staffing. So I worked for a $2 billion publicly traded search and staffing firm for 14 years, where I became a leader and director in my Philadelphia region. And that job was amazing. It was really, really good to me. But after, you know, about 14 years of doing that, I sort of hit this crossroads of I really believe that I can offer more to leaders, to professionals, to ambitious professionals like myself than what I'm able to do within the confines of a staffing and search career. And so after about 2 years of a voice.

Yeah.

Kind of nagging me to play a bigger game. I finally listened and I became an entrepreneur in late 2019, early 2020.

Very cool. And you formed the Priority Group based off of your name, a play off of your name. Yeah. And got into coaching. Yeah. So tell us all about that.

Yeah. So first of all, I, I never share this story much, but I feel like I wanna tell you that Priority Group, I, it was a really fun, besides it being, it's P-R-Y-O-R-I-T-Y. So my last name is Pryor, but something interesting I learned about that word is that The word priority was never meant to be plural. So by definition, you can only have one priority.

Yeah.

And somehow in the United States, we're always talking about our priorities. It's actually not the correct use of the term. And I just think it's such an interesting angle on this problem that we as ambitious professionals and leaders have, which is we're constantly trying to juggle our priorities.

Yeah.

We were really never, as humans, meant to live in an era where we're doing everything at once with equal levels of urgency. And that's what it feels like all the time. And so there were just all these little, you know, problems or, or lacks of strategy and tool that I identified in my staffing career when working with leaders that I thought, okay, the problem isn't more tools and more action. I have a bias for action. I think a lot of the people who work with me do as well. There's some blocks, there's obstacles underlying it. And so my angle as a coach and frankly, as a keynote speaker became very centered on not what are we doing or what can we be doing more of, but what are we not doing? Where are there, you know, where's there mud in the gears and how can we start to address that? So that's, that's been a lot of fun to explore.

Yeah, I love that. Can you share like one or two examples for a client? Probably can't name the client, but in terms of, sure, you know, your typical client, like success stories.

Yeah, I think, so again, a lot of my clients are attracted to me because they share a bit of my wiring, which is bias for action.

Yeah.

They are action takers. They are fast movers. They are fast thinkers. They are fast processors, right? We are not doing anything at a turtle's pace. We're just go, go, go. And honestly, we live in a system that rewards that. The person that is first to action, that is first to decision. We live in a system that generally admires those types of people. But there is a shadow side to constantly being in action and not spending more time in—

Mm-hmm.

Building self-awareness.

Yeah.

Deep understanding of what triggers us, deep understanding of what it takes for someone to communicate with us in a way that it's received and for us to do the same with other people. And so I think a lot of the people who I work with are finding themselves at some sort of crossroads of all these things I've done that have made me successful to here are no longer working as well as they used to. Hena, did something break? Like there's something wrong with the machine. And I'm like, there's nothing wrong with the machine. What got you here won't get you there, as Marshall Goldsmith said. And now the times have changed. You have changed. The people you report to have changed. Things have changed, and now we need to make adjustments. So we start to do some, frankly, unsticking. What is now getting in the way? What are we not telling ourselves? What do we not know? And how do we start to ask the right questions that help us unlock that next level of performance?

Yeah, that, as you described that, that sounds like it would fit me and fit everyone. Most people. Yeah. Everyone I've ever known is high performing, you know? Yeah. What is one thing that you might be able to share that most execs have not mastered? And you've alluded to them already, I believe. Mm-hmm. But should work on.

Okay. So I'm gonna, I'm not gonna say deep self-awareness, cuz I think that's baked into what we just talked about. What I would say is most executives have not yet mastered the correct techniques that create modern influence.

Hmm.

So here's what I mean by that. The old paradigm of influence. So if you're an executive, you're trying to influence your teams, you're trying to influence stakeholders, you're trying to influence your clients, you know, pick your, pick your poison of who you are trying to influence at any given moment. Most people are still operating by the old playbook. Listen, nothing wrong with the Robert Cialdinis of the world. That, that's, that's all valid and it still stands, but it's half the equation. So the old equation was, if they're not saying yes, we need more case studies, testimonial data, proof points. We need to create more reciprocity. We need to create more, You know, all of that is still correct, but it's only half of the equation. So one of the first questions I will often ask in a keynote is, especially my influence keynote, is, you know, raise your hands if you're the exact same person you were 5+ years ago. And of course no one raises their hand.

Yeah.

And then I say, raise your hand if you're not. And then of course everyone raises their hand. Well, this little thing that happened, and if I can be a little crass, one of the byproducts of that huge thing that happened to us globally was that our tolerance for BS went way down.

Yeah.

And our ability to sniff out BS in other people— this person doesn't have my best interests at heart, they don't get me, they don't understand me— that's gone way up. So we are living through something that is often referred to as kind of a modern believability crisis or a modern trust crisis. And our tolerance for this stuff is way down. So when it comes to influence, one thing that we're getting wrong is when somebody's not doing what we want them to do, or they're not buying in, or they're not engaging, Actually, one of the worst things we can do is give them more social proof, more case studies, another demo. That's not what it's about today. Influence is about identifying and having an action plan for those frictions, for those headwinds that are standing in the way. And most executives still don't even know what they are. So we spend a lot of time working on identification. We have to lower the wall before we're gonna get anything through. And so that's, that's been a big shift.

Yeah, I love that. That's great. Let's talk about speaking now because that's another thing that executives need to master. And as we know, there's different levels of that mastery. But first, how did you pivot to speaking? So you started the prior group and doing the coaching, but also you have this passion for speaking.

I never set out to become a speaker, and I think a lot of speakers will tell you the same thing. That was never, you know, as kids, that was never on the list of options of professions. And when I left my cert staff and staffing and search career, a bunch of my leaders had said, gosh, Hana, you're our search partner, but we really should pay you for all the executive coaching you do for us. And I was like, I'm sorry, the what? To say more. So I actually started, I got my certification down at American University in DC. I got my start doing executive coaching. And honestly, the speaking happened very organically. I was working one-on-one with leaders, with clients who would say, this was really, you know, powerful for me. Can you come do this with my group? Can you come do this with my larger team? Can you come to my company retreat? And honestly, very slowly and steadily, the room got larger and larger. And the first few times I got to share a message or an idea from the stage, it was very clear to me that that was, that was where I lit up. Yeah. That was my zone of genius. And, and it's funny, I was the last to know. My mom and my sister and my dad are like, you were the MC of your prom fashion show in high school. You were the, commencement speaker at your grad school graduation. You've always loved being on a stage. And I'm like, okay, yeah, I, I never thought of it, but I think, I think there was always something in there that made me very comfortable in that space. So I'm just grateful that I get to do it.

Yeah. And so you've done quite a bit. You're a very tenured, very experienced speaker. Tell us about one gig in particular that was just fun. Maybe it was the location or, or the topic. Yeah.

Yeah. Honestly, the, the most fun gigs are when the audience is open and bought in, right? So the, the tough ones can sometimes be when the audience is skeptical or, you know, that they, they feel like they've heard, you know, speakers listen, there's a lot of speakers—

Yeah.

Say a lot of the same stuff, so they feel like they've heard it before. There's a level of skepticism. I feel like I'm gonna sound like such a suck-up, but, you know, HIMSS was a really fun one for me because I only had 30 minutes. So it was, you know, I'd rather have 60. I, to be honest, for speakers, it's harder to have less time. We have so much we wanna share and so much to say. And I know that healthcare and healthcare information management in particular, these are challenged industries right now. And that talk was about mindset. Now, if I'm a leader in that room, I'm gonna be like, oh, good grief. Like, give me something that's gonna solve my problem today. And I think one of the fun things was getting to start that conversation with, listen, I was a skeptic of mindset. When people said, hey, we're gonna do mindset training, I would've been like, I got things to do today. I got emails to answer, things, you know, my clients need me. I would've not been the first one to say, that sounds valuable. And so, you know, I kind of took the wall down, right? Is this gonna be something I need? Is this woo-woo? And for them to instantly open and become open to the idea, and I could see them nodding and engaging and like, yes, we need this. This is exactly like, how do we make this idea of mindset, which is very airy-fairy, actionable? And to see that mindset shift happen for them in real time, Anytime, honestly, any audience where I get to watch that mindset shift cross their faces in real time, that to me is always the most fun because that, that feels like real impact. I'm not just talking at them. Their worldview has changed when they left that room. And that's really satisfying as a speaker.

Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of, you know, I'll be your witness. You know, there was a lot of buzz. So you— I loved it. Thank you. So what about 1 or 2 pieces of advice or hacks for executives that, not, not that they're aspiring to be speakers, but by nature of their role, they have to speak.

Yes.

So there's probably one or two things that you might recommend.

Yes. Um, just simple two things that I would recommend are, no matter how long your talk is, whether you're talking at a group for 5 minutes or you're delivering a 60-minute presentation, I would encourage you to think of the, the framework in your mind as a why, what now, how. So why are we talking about this? Don't assume because this is important to you.

Yeah.

That the people you're talking to understand why this matters to them, especially if they're different levels. So, you know, in the mindset chat, I might say something like, you know, whether you're a leader leading teams who are really struggling or your boots on the ground and really trying to figure out how does this day feel less hard? How do I find myself less frustrated? Right? Make sure every sing— single person in the room understands why are we talking about this? A little bit of the, you know, what now? What are we doing? What's current state? And then of course the how. But when you think about it through that structure, it's gonna pretty much ensure that you hit the 3 main points. But a lot of people skip over the why.

Yeah.

They get right to the what now, how, and they assume people, they know why this is important. Well, maybe not the way you do, right? So make sure you hit all that. The second piece of advice I would give is today more than ever in the era of AI and, you know, robots, please don't sleep on the power of your physicality. So physicality can be, if you're in person with people, it can be the way you intentionally use your hands. Here's an example. You know, Ed, you and I currently are on a Zoom call and I, I might say, you know what? Point number 1 is this, point number 2 is this, and number 3 is this. Just by virtue of me using my hands.

Yeah.

And again, if someone's listening and they can't see me, I'm putting up fingers. 1, 2, 3. Just by virtue of using my hands, I'm reinforcing the message in a way that comes across as more, you know, executive presence laden, as a little bit more impactful. I can also use my body as a timeline, right? For American folks, the past, if I'm looking at them in an audience, the past is my right. Their left. The future is my left, their right, right? There's ways that you can use physicality. And if you're virtual, use your voice, use contrast. I'm a fast talker, I'm a fast speaker, and I'm also pretty loud in the way that I speak. And Ed, if I wanted to get your attention right now, you know what I might do? I might really take it down and start talking really softly because all of a sudden you're like, yeah, leaning in. Leaning in, right? Because it's, and it's not because soft is better than loud or loud is better than soft. It's because I put in some contrast. So if you're naturally a soft-spoken speaker, experiment with some pacing and dialing up the volume from time to time. If you're naturally more gregarious, experiment with longer pauses, slowing down. But those 2 things can really improve the impact of anything that is happening with speaking.

Yeah, that's gold right there. So thank you for dropping that on our audience.

Yeah.

Let's shift a little bit to leadership, cuz obviously through the speaking, all the engagements, obviously your earlier parts of your career in search and things, uh, you, you've got a lot going on in terms of leadership. Was there something early in your life, do you think, that prepared you to become a leader that you are today?

I, it's funny, I, my parents were really wonderful about home movies, and so we've got a lot of them. I, I'm currently having them converted to digital, but I, I have one younger sister. She's a little more than 4 years younger than me, and I think there's a little bit of it, and I'm sure anybody with kids can laugh that, that's in the blood. Right? Like my sister's trying to sing on the microphone. I'm like, move over, son. I, I have something to say. I think there was a little bit of that like bossiness, but more than that, I really liked it when something I did made someone's life easier or better or more efficient.

Yeah.

Or more productive. Like, I just, I think it's really amazing that humans have this ability to impact other people in a way that truly transforms how they walk through the world. And so. For me, leadership has never been about, you know, how many direct reports do I have? In fact, in my last job that I had before becoming a speaker, I worked again for an organization, publicly traded company, and they had numerous times asked me to move in, move into formal leadership roles. So I'm, I was in sales, I was commissions, and they said, will you be, you know, the director of the team? Which was a true formal leadership role with direct reports. And over and over I said no.

Yeah.

Over and over I said no. I said, I would like to be a leader. on my terms, meaning I would like to be— sorry about the dog. I would like to be able to coach them from the field, right? I'm in the job.

Yeah.

And I wanna be able to teach them the way that feels right to me. I don't wanna be one of the people that's just, you know, checking the boxes or doing the metrics. Nothing against that, but I think finding the style of leadership that best suits your strengths and personality has been, to me, one of the biggest gifts of understanding what kind of leader I wanted to be. And there was a certain kind that suited me and a certain kind that didn't.

Makes total sense. What's one thing that you learned the hard way? So, you know, we all go through peaks and valleys, but there's always a learning opportunity, right? So, what's one thing you learned sort of the hard way?

Can I tell you something I'm currently learning the hard way rather than— I haven't solved for it, but I think other leaders will relate to this. Something that I have struggled with, and to be honest, continue to struggle with to some degree in different parts of my life, are boundaries.

Yeah.

So one of the ones that I'm currently struggling with is as a speaker, as an author, I have an Inc. column. I, I have LinkedIn Learning courses. You know, I've got my hands in a lot of things and I'm very grateful for all of it. And because of that, I have a lot of people who come into my DMs and into my email who say, can I pick your brain? Because what has happened for me by a timeline looks like it happened very quickly. You know, within 4 or 5 years, a lot has happened. So they see it as Hena has some blueprint, Hena has some formula. Hannah has a lot of hard work, a lot of hard work, but they see that and they want access to my time. My internal struggle has always been, I am someone who deeply identifies as being generous. You know, people have been good to me. They've been generous with me as I've come up as a speaker, as a writer. They've given me advice. They've offered to have time with me on the phone. And I also identify as someone who it's really important to save time for her family and to, you know, be, be present to my kids.

Yeah.

And to have, time with my friends. And so this tension between my identity of generosity and my identity of protecting my family and friendship boundaries has constantly bumped up against one another. And so what I'm working on right now is, you know, I've developed some mechanisms. I have an FAQ library for frequently asked questions. I have a Calendly link that's called my brain pick link. Once it's full, it's full. And enforcing those boundaries over and over and over will continue to be the lesson I learn over and over again and will be the one I I think I will always find myself bumping up against, but that's the work. That's my leadership edge. And I will continue to explore ways to continue to grow that.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing. Appreciate that. And now you also had a, a solution, or at least a, a solution you're trying to, uh, to make it all work.

It's helping.

Yeah. Along those same lines, what, what do you do? 'Cause as a leader, yeah, you're a super busy person and you have family and friends. What do you do to sort of recharge? Right? 'Cause you have to go on stage and Be fresh. But so certainly there's some things that you probably do to, to—

I am an extrovert, so I am energized by being around other people, but that too runs out. And if I'm being very honest, it's been a long week and I have not had a lot of sleep. I was traveling earlier in the week. This is, for me, it's, uh, we're recording this in the afternoon on a Friday. I'm about at the end of my energy rope. I'm giving you what last bit remains in the tank. And I am someone who has had to do a lot of work around recognizing that rest is valuable.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I'm, I'm from an immigrant family. Achievement orientation is very deep in my blood. And so for a long time, I held some very wrong narratives. I wouldn't even say my parents ever said this to me, but some wrong narratives around rest being like lazy or not doing enough. And so today I am very, very good about when I need to recharge, just slow time. It doesn't have to be idle time, but slow time. Yeah. So for me, recharging looks like, you know, past 10 I would've been like, I'm gonna take a walk. But I'll be honest, Ed, it still would've been a speed walk because then I could've gotten my fitness in at the same time. Right now it's a slow, no-phone, meandering walk.

Yeah.

And that has been a huge shift and it recharges my batteries in ways that I don't even think I knew that I needed. For a long time.

Yeah. That's all. I'm laughing. I'm smiling for those just listening because I, everything you share resonates deeply with me. I'm wired very similarly. Wow. We covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time, given our personalities. Not surprising.

We're very efficient, Ed. We're very efficient.

But do it awkward, do it anyways. Brilliant. Love that. It was great to hear about you growing up and being first generation and And then your whole career journey from accounting and, and recognizing what you did like and making a change, right? People get stuck. They just, they would, they would still be an accountant today.

Yeah.

Uh, I think 90% of the people. And, uh, but you took action, you took change, and you created these companies. You created your, recreated yourself, uh, uh, multiple times. And then you gave us some great hacks, uh, golden nuggets on speaking and good coaching type things to improve ourselves as executives. Is there anything I missed or anything you wanna double down on? I'll give you the last word.

Yeah. As, uh, we're going into re-release of my book called Good Awkward, that's a word that a lot of leaders don't always jump to. Some do, but they think, oh, that was earlier in my career. You know, I'm a leader now. I really wanna encourage everyone who is listening to embrace the inevitable awkwardness that the next few years are going to bring. We are in a season of immense technological change. We've got 5 generations in the work— force, 6 if you include the upcoming summer intern class, right? We've got political change, we've got regulatory change. If you don't feel awkward right now about things as a leader, you are not awake.

Exactly.

You are not breathing. So, please prepare for that emotion and embrace it. It is not something we can outrun, and it does not mean that you are no better at your job. But I think the more we can all lean into that emotion and learn how to work with it rather than fighting it, the better off we'll be.

Henna, brilliantly shared, and thank you again for being guest on Digital Voices.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for listening to Digital Voices podcast with Ed Marx. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.