In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews Lou Diamond, a connector‑coach and author of Master the Art of Connection. Lou introduces the concept of a "connecting core" – a set of four inter‑related "muscles" that leaders must develop to move beyond superficial networking and create genuine, trusted relationships. He distinguishes networking (exchanging names, cards) from true connection (deep understanding and mutual benefit). The four muscles are: (1) Empathy – the ability to step into another’s shoes, supported by multi‑level listening (self‑focused, focused, and global listening); (2) Fearless Mindset – recognizing personal fears, writing them down, and reframing nervous energy as excitement; (3) Authenticity – being open, honest, and free of disingenuous behavior; (4) Super Why – a daily, lived purpose that fuels the other muscles. Lou explains how each muscle can slip out of shape if not practiced, likening them to physical core training. He offers concrete tips: adopt a coach‑like questioning style for empathy, list and reframe fears for a fearless mindset, practice radical honesty for authenticity, and clarify and live your personal "super why". Obstacles include self‑centered listening, fear‑driven hesitation, inauthentic presentation, and misalignment between personal purpose and current work, illustrated with the United Airlines CEO’s inauthentic response to a crisis. Lou argues that when all four muscles are strong, a leader exudes an attractive “aura” that draws people in, benefiting both individuals and organizations. The episode closes with a call to explore Lou’s book and ProteusLeader.com for deeper tools on listening and connection.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you will get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Lou Diamond. Lou is a master connector. He's a coach, consultant, best-selling author, speaker, and motivator who, after years as a top producer for companies like Accenture, Deloitte, and Bank of America, founded Thrive, his consulting and coaching company that's focused on making great leaders even more amazing. Welcome, Lou. I'm really pleased you could be with us.
I am so glad to be here today. Very excited to chat with you and share with your listening audience.
Lou, you shared with me recently your focus on helping leaders strengthen their connecting core. I love that phrase, and I think it's something my listeners would really find valuable. So let's jump into that topic. Talk to us, if you would, about the connecting core. What is that and why do you think it's critical for success?
It actually has been the key to my success and what's been great is that I've been helping others tap into that core as well on how they can really grow their business, their connections, in many cases their brand. The simplest way to think about it, Erika, is if we all want to get in shape and we're recording this during summertime, everyone wants to get their beach bod on, right? Every personal trainer tells you you need to strengthen your physical core. And as it relates to going out and connecting with people, and I've come up with something that's actually called strengthening your connecting core, the muscles that you have to work on and who you need to be and how you need to be to best connect with others. And it's important to understand that I have a big distinguishing relationship between the word networking and connecting. You know, networking— What is it? You and I recently were at a conference and there were lots of different And in many of those cases, you meet someone, you see their name tag or their name, or they're at a panel, you shake their hand, exchange a business card. This is networking, and this is an essential part of growing your network and increasing your business, but it isn't necessarily a true connection.
Right.
A true connection is when you establish this trusted relationship with another that enables you to really understand what that person is all about, how you can help them and actually help them grow their businesses in ways that they never even thought about. And that's how I've done it from my side of the coin. And there's muscles within that connecting core.
I love that. So as I'm listening to you, what I'm taking away is that network is really just a gathering of information that could possibly be useful, but it's really one-dimensional. And that as you're defining this connecting core, it's creating a basis for a real relationship.
Yeah, it seems It's so simple. When you think about— and I have a way of viewing the world that's a little different, and I'll use you as an example. I've met you a couple of times through our connection through the C-Suite Network Advisors.
Yes.
And I know what you look like, and I know your book, and we both had a book signing at a similar event at the same time. And when I see you, I see all of these assets around you, your business, the show that we're on right now, Proteus, all the different things that are about you, and all the things that you help all these great companies and businesses succeed. I see those things with them, and when I look at someone, and when you want to strengthen your connecting core, one of the most important muscles in there, and I'll name each one of them in a minute, one of them is empathy. I have to sit into your shoes and understand what your world is about, and not because I'm interested in doing it personally. I'm doing it because I actually genuinely want to help you. Oh, someone needs to be on Erika's show. She's got great content. Let's try and understand what are the needs that she has. And I literally see those orbs of bubbles around you and try and connect you to different people. And the only way I could do that is to really understand things from your perspective. So the 4 muscles of the Connecting Core, and I'll work backwards here, one is the power of empathy. The other one is to have a fearless mindset. The fearless mindset is to basically move through your fears and step into courage. And that's where we need to be, and that's what we love. We love people who are confident and are fearless. And actually— and I'm not saying that they don't have any fears. They actually know what their fears are. They just know how to attack them, whether it's speaking in public, going up to somebody in a networking environment and having a conversation with someone, or just being able to be forward enough to say the things that are really important. Those are the fearless mindset muscles. The other 2 are really the linchpins of the connecting core, and that's authenticity. Everybody knows when you're, you know, full of BS, if you would.
Right.
You could smell that a mile away when someone's being disingenuous or not honest.
Yeah.
Someone's authentic, that's what's drawn to you. In fact, you can have other muscles really strong in your connecting core when you go to connect with someone, but if authenticity falls apart, Forget about it. The whole thing is going to drop. And the last muscle, which is, I guess, really the superpower that everybody has but not everyone has uncovered, is what I like to call your super why. And you've heard different people talk about what is your why, or what's your business's why, and websites and marketing messages and personal leaders and motivational speakers have all talked about their their why and understanding what that is. The super why is living and breathing your why every single day. So as an example, I was put on this planet to work with the most amazing people and make them more amazing. And that's what I do every day at Thrive. That's what I do when I speak with people at keynote presentations. And that's what I do on my podcast show, even bringing people onto the show that are going to help people really understand how they can make their lives better.
All of those resonate for me. I love all of them and I certainly try to focus on the super why. I loved how you described your super why. Mine is to try to help people become who they want to become. I really can't tell you how much I agree with you about this because I feel like if— and I think I understand, so correct me if this isn't what you're saying. So if you're coming from your super why in every interaction, then that really helps to drive authenticity empathy and fearless mindset. It's kind of foundational to those things.
It is true. They're all related to one another. Think of it in this sense. It's all those muscles. It's no different than if you're going to go work out, right? If you just work your upper body and you don't work your legs, you're never actually going to get any stronger, right? So these connecting core muscles, and they are muscles because these are things that even if you are the most natural, authentic person, totally fearless, and you have great empathy, We can slip out of shape, so to speak. I'm putting that in quotes.
Uh-huh.
By not actually practicing them too much. Case in point, I'm marketing my book and obviously my business and even now my Thrive Loud podcast show. And by doing that, there's a lot of me talking. It's a lot about me and I'm in all these different places. And you have to recognize that part of the core of who I am is helping somebody else. And that's always been the thing in making my— whether it's my guests be there, the focus, my clients, the people that I coach, the people that I lead, CEOs around there. It's very important that, you know, you could slip out of not being focused on my super why every day. So you do have to work on it. It's one of those things like anything else. You always have to try to work on being in shape.
Yeah.
And here's the magic of this whole connecting core. When your connecting core muscles are flexing and you're fit and you've been working on all 4 of them, People actually, it's not so much that you need to go out and people, you'll have an easier ability to connect with people. People want to connect with you. There's almost, and I don't want to get too woo-woo-y here, Erika, but there's almost like an aura or an eminence that comes off of somebody when they walk into a room. They feel larger than life when you see them on a stage.
Wow.
Or when you hear them on a show. They are the people that you actually want to listen to, talk to, and connect with. It is attractive. And many people have told me I should have been a dating coach a long time ago because if the people that came in had all these skills, it would work. But that is because it's human interaction. And it doesn't only relate to the individuals meeting one-on-one, like you and me having this conversation, or our listeners connecting with us. The other part of it is this same messaging I've carried over to a lot of companies and helping them have their brands tell that story.
Mm-hmm.
Just a side note story, I wrote a blog about this a few months ago. The whole incident that happened with United Airlines, when the CEO got up there the day after that terrible incident of dragging that guy off the plane, he sounded so disingenuous about caring about any of the potential customers, which is, by the way, everybody on the planet because we all might fly that airline someday. And he was more concerned about the stockholders, the employees, and all the different stuff, and he really didn't come forward in a way that made it feel like, oh my God, this is, this is an airline that cares about you.
It was inauthentic, and who knows what his why was other than protecting himself. That's a great example. So that kind of leads us into the next question I want to ask, which is What gets in the way of this? In your experience, what have you seen to be the obstacles that make it hard for people to connect in this deep way?
Yeah, everyone has different holdups in each of those muscles. I speak a lot about the different listening levels as it relates to empathy. There are 3 levels of listening, you learn this in coaching. Listening level 1 is pretty much all about yourself, everything you hear you relate to who you are and how it relates to me. So if we want to carry forward that United example, the minute that you heard that CEO speak, I'm like, my first reaction was I'm not flying United. I brought it all back.
Right.
I wasn't even thinking about the guy they dragged off the plane. But the way we need to be when we want to connect is not in there. We have to be in something either listening level 2 or 3, which is focused or global listening where you're really lasered in on the person that you're trying to connect with. You can't have empathy for a client if you're not listening and hearing what they have to say.
Yeah.
So that could be a weakness if you're making it about yourself. Obviously, we all slip into our fears, and if we are a little bit cautious or hesitant, we're not being the best that we can be from that mindset. Authenticity is, you know, as we mentioned, if you're disingenuous, that's literally going to repel people, let alone try to connect them to you. And if you're really not on your game and not truly embodying your purpose, your super why, it shows. And I've always joked about this. I've met people who are unhappy in their careers or in the companies that they're working with. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that at that particular point in time, their own personal why they're on this planet doesn't necessarily match with what they are doing or why they are doing it.
Mm-hmm.
And so all of those things are things that we all can slip into. It is really a matter of knowing what they are because they're unique to every single person.
Yes.
And you can slip into it very easily of not being the best to connect, a lot of times due to environment or circumstances. And sometimes we have to be desperate. We might need a sale that we really need to close, but by being that way, we might not be the best connector we can be.
I'd love to hear your best or favorite tip What can you tell my listeners about how to develop these muscles, how to get into their connective core and strengthen those 4 things?
Yeah, so we'll go through each one. So for empathy is to, I like to say, to be more coach-like. Coaches are great listeners and they come from a place of asking questions, not telling people how to do that. If you've ever been to a really good sales pitch, the best salespeople are the ones who step forward and ask tons of questions.
Yeah.
About the clients. So knowing that you can listen and ask. As it relates to your fearless mindset, this is going to be something you wouldn't think about. You need to know what your fears are.
Uh-huh.
And you actually have to write them down. And you have to know what it takes to turn that fear on its head and step through it. So I'll use one example. Interestingly, I speak a lot in front of audiences and obviously from a radio show. I get a little nervous a couple of seconds before I go to speak, and I love that nervous energy because it's kind of excitement more than nervousness. But people can interpret that as a fear.
Uh-huh.
And my most important thing there is maybe I'm afraid that I'm going to mess up, or I'm going to make a mistake, or I'm going to say the wrong thing, or speak too quickly, which I've been told I do every now and then, but I just had coffee. So what I will do, Erika, is to make sure I know what that fear is and say, okay, if I'm getting nervous, it's because I'm excited, and let's make this channel that energy to make this the best keynote speech I've given, make this the best presentation you can do. So those are the things that I do there. Authenticity is the most important thing to work on, and I love to say the lesson there and the things they could work on are be open, honest, and come from the heart with everything you do.
Mm-hmm.
And your last point about your super why, which is difficult because a lot of people don't clearly know their own why. I just like to say that you have to embrace it. You need to embrace your super why and really understand that that is why you're here and know that that's your purpose. And that is, I guess, the glue that brings the whole connecting cord together.
Yeah.
And if you forget that purpose or you forget why you're doing what you're doing, it's never going to enable people to want to really connect because that is what people connect to about you. That unique factor. So if you remember those, those 4 muscles and you remember some of the quick tips I just ran through, or otherwise you could read the book where we could walk through those examples, those would be the tips that I would recommend to strengthening the connecting core.
This is all really valuable, timeless advice, I think. Really timeless. It doesn't have to do with where you are, where you work, what year it is. Wonderful stuff. Lou, thank you so much. And listeners, if you're interested in finding out more about this topic, I'd recommend Lou's book, Master the Art of Connection. And for some added support for building that key skill of empathy through listening, you can go to ProteusLeader.com and explore the topic of listening. So it's ProteusLeader.com/topics/listening. Thank you so much, Lou. I really appreciate this. Thank you.
Truly my pleasure, Erika, and much success to you and Proteus and all the listeners out there. Don't network, try to connect.
That's great. Thanks for listening, and until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, join us at ProteusLeader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
