118 | Unleashing the Power of Courageous Leadership: A Pathway to Success | Joanna Howes

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

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Hello there and welcome to this episode of Building Better Cultures with me, Scott McInnes. Lovely to have you back again. Or if this is your first time listening to the podcast, shame on you, but you are very, very welcome. Thanks for listening in. A couple of quick wee things, housekeeping, you might say, because I just always forget to mention them later. If you are listening on Apple, please do give us a little 5-star rating and a comment because it really, really helps just get the podcast out there a little bit more widely. And then secondly, always my big thanks to Workvivo, our friend and supporter, for continuing to support this podcast. I think they're into 20 or 25 episodes now, and it's been amazing the support they provide. You'll hear a little bit more from them later on. So, today's guest is a leadership coach. In fact, not just any leadership coach, International Coach of the Year in 2020, if you look up her LinkedIn. And she's also the founder of the Change Creators. Now, I came across Joanna Howes a few months back when I think I was probably contacted via LinkedIn about an online workshop around difficult conversations, part of a series of leadership sessions that Joanna runs that I can highly recommend. So go and have a look on the website. We'll get to more of that later. And I just thought, gosh, she's really good. That's somebody we should have on the podcast. So we had a little chat and we said, well, let's get Joanna on. And here she is. So Joanna, you're very welcome.

Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for such a lovely introduction.

You're right, not everyone gets that, you know, not everyone gets, not everyone gets such a nice introduction. And actually, I always find that the best person to give an introduction about you is actually you rather than me. So why don't you spend a minute or two telling us a little bit about you, and maybe a little bit about the Change Creators as well?

Cool, thank you. Well, I spent 20 years working in advertising agencies, predominantly in leadership roles. And then 5 years ago, I just got such a passion for leadership and I was like, right, how can I now make a difference for leaders and help them? Because I could see a lot of leaders were struggling. So I went and did my coaching training in Australia, came back and set up my own company, The Change Creators, 5 years ago. Still pinching myself that that was 5 years gone, which is quite incredible. Um, but we absolutely love what we do. We're all about creating change, creating change in the person, the individual, in terms of who they want to be as a leader, helping them change their teams to the performance where they want to go. Ultimately changing the company's results in terms of taking them to the future success that they need sustainably. So we're all about creating that change that's needed to unlock potential and create really high performance. And as something you know, I'm all about a fan of courage. We also do a lot of this about helping leaders step into their courageous zone. How do you, you know, step into that new leadership role, transitioning to elevate yourself up and really access that courage you need to, you know, feel empowered as a leader.

And is it much— is much of the work that you do, is it one-to-one or is it groups, or what do you find is, is most effective in terms of starting to help people live that really high-performance culture?

Yeah, we do a combination. So if a leader's got quite a lot of, I don't know, internal personal development issues, it's quite personal to them, I do a thing called a transformation day where you get 4 hours in a room with me face to face. And it's mad because when you get 4 hours just to talk about yourself, it's like, whoa, hang on a minute. And you, you really unlock kind of what's going on in your mind to kind of see where you can go. So We do the one-to-one, we do the collective, so we do a lot of group coaching, 'cause I think community is so important, and hearing from, getting external perspective, and hearing what's going on for other leaders. And then we have an online membership as well. So we're just trying to reach as many people as possible to kind of just help create the impact that we wanna do.

Okay, fabulous. And actually, it's interesting you touched on the courageousness piece there, 'cause that's actually what I'd really like to get into today. And, you know, I suppose from your perspective, I think there's a lot of words being, you know, we want leaders to be more empathetic, we want them to be more vulnerable, we now want you to be more courageous. You know, there's a lot of asks of leaders at the moment. And these are people that we both know through the experience of working with them are really, really squeezed from the top and the bottom. So, let me start here. We might delve into this a little bit more. What is a courageous leader?

Okay, well, I'll actually start with sharing some data because, as you know, I run my own podcast. And it's the first question I ask all the leaders I we've interviewed about 60 now, is what does courageous leadership mean to you? So we looked at all the answers and the most popular answer that came out from them was empowering others and actually being able to let go and trust your team, allow them to do what they need to do to grow. The second one that came out was vulnerability, being vulnerable. And the third one was being able to make decisions. So, and I agree with all of those, but it's just very interesting because a lot of people talked about being your authentic self, but it was that empowering people that came out strongest. When I look at it about what does courageous leadership mean to me, I really look at in terms of my own journey, one of the most courageous things that I needed to do was look inside me and get to know who I am and actually have the courage to lead as me and not feel that I should do this, should do that, have to be like them. It's like, who am I and how can I bring me to my leadership and be, you know, very true to what I believe, what I stand for, and how I want to help people. So, I think courageous leadership is, first of all, being able to look inside and get to know yourself, because when you can unlock that, that's when the impact can be huge. And when you have the courage to actually know how to manage your mind and understand how your mind works, it's incredibly powerful.

I think there's a couple of points that spring to mind immediately. That whole piece about the number one, I suppose, attribute of a courageous leader being one that empowers, because, and that can talk very much to psychological safety. In organizations because if I'm empowering my team, if I'm letting go of that decision, of letting go of that action or letting go of that piece of work and empowering somebody else to do it, then of course that still through the chain of command could come back on me. So if I work in a culture which is very fearful or where there's a high or a low degree of psychological safety, then that's gonna be a real, real challenge. Vulnerability we talked of already in decision-making, I think is that piece as well. Is there the safety to make a decision and probably moreover, what happens when it goes wrong. So yeah, the three really, really interesting areas. I think the one thing that always springs to mind for me, and it's something we've talked about on this podcast often, is that whole idea of looking inside first, is that whole idea of self-awareness, which I think, I don't know what you think, but I think it's quite sorely lacking in the business world, isn't it?

Very much so. I think we go into our work environment and it's like, I've got my job title, that's given me some sort of identity. And I've got all my tasks, so I know externally what I need to do. But very rarely do we actually go, who am I? And even more, we don't actually know who we want to be. So we're then not sure where we're going towards. And I recently ran an event, and one of the key areas was building your relationship with you and how we kind of know the kind of external, how we're projecting ourselves, but we actually don't really know what's going on inside, like what's our purpose, what's our values, what are our beliefs, our standards, our expectations. And taking the idea to know what that is for you rather than allowing it to be influenced— someone else's to be influenced on you. Um, and it just— some people find it quite complicated, but it's actually just giving yourself that time to give yourself permission to know yourself.

I love that. There's a line that we used to use back when I was in AIB, and, and one of the team there that I worked with said, awareness precedes action. And they're just 3 words. But as I say, anytime I ever use those in a leadership setting, I always say, if you take nothing else away from today, which you might not, by the way, just please take these 3 words: awareness precedes action. Until you know, to your point, until you know yourself, until you know what it is needs to get done, until you know what the blockers are, until you know what's getting in the way of you being amazing, it's very hard to make any change happen.

Exactly. And it's a really good clue for you to know that maybe something's awry is if you look at your team, and if your team are very overwhelmed, they're very stressed, or they're not performing, or they're anxious. This can be quite confronting for some people to hear, but first person you need to look at is you, because your team are a reflection of your leadership. So if they're in that place, look at you and what's going on. And I've needed to do that with my own team when I've seen they're stressed. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's because I'm stressed and it's coming through. So having that away, you know, they can be your mirror to go, actually, where is some work that I need to do on myself?

I love that idea. I love that idea because it can be hard, I think, that whole self-awareness piece and I think holding up that mirror, actually using that as a traffic light. Is it red, amber, or green? How are the team today? Are they red, are they amber, are they green? And what do I then need to do in order to help to address that? Or what do I need to do to change myself to address that? Is wonderful.

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Let's think a little, a little bit more then about courageousness and Why is that? Because of course, people are looking at this from a business perspective, and they're looking at it from a success perspective and a building high-performing teams perspective. Why is courageousness so important in business when it comes to driving change in the organization?

So important, because change can be hard, as we know. I'm sure there's sometimes it can flow, but change as a rule can be hard, because there's a lot of people don't like to change. As human beings, we have a very strong need for certainty, security, to know where we're at, to know what we're walking into. So when someone come suddenly tells you something's going to change, your instinct is sometimes to fight or flight. You know, my gosh, there's a risk, I could be in danger here. So you get a lot of resistance in leadership. So having the courage to, number one, go very clearly, what's your purpose? Why are you changing? And what's the outcome you're trying to achieve? So you can bring people on the journey with you. The courage to actually really know the people you're working with, because they're all going to respond to change very differently. So not thinking they're just going to accept it because you've accepted it, and to be able to communicate differently to different people and enter their world so they can come with you. And the courage to know you're gonna have a setback is inevitable. There will be— things won't go exactly as you want to plan. And it's the courage to keep going, the courage to keep momentum and not get distracted and start off another project because that's not going so well now, and, and the courage to be able to— this is why I say you've got to know your purpose. When you know your purpose, you can overcome obstacles easier. So you've got to know the purpose of why you're changing so you can keep overcoming these setbacks. And then the courage for it not to work, and the courage to own it, take responsibility, learn from it, and carry on, and not let it define you and think that, oh my God, I'm a failure, I can't do this. It's like, no, growth mindset. I've learned from this, I can move on. And the courage to then keep showing up to your team It's showing them how you can then overcome when something doesn't go so well. So it gives them permission to lean into the uncertain world.

And how does that balance then with the vulnerability? You know, I think about, you know, if I'm having a tough day and we're all having a tough day and working really hard on a project, for a leader to be able to say, "You know what? I'm just finding it so hard today. This is so far outside my comfort zone. I'm sitting here, I'm writing words. I don't even know if they're the right words. I'm going to a presentation. I don't know if I'm gonna say the right thing." things. I'm just finding it really tough. How does that then sit maybe with the whole idea of being courageous and being the one that's leading out the conversation and trying to be the captain of the ship?

Yeah, and I have this huge belief is that we all need to find strength through vulnerability. Because when you, as a leader— and I've done it with my team— so I'm actually finding this quite tough right now, you just see their shoulders go, oh, I'm actually finding it quite tough as well. Actually, let's now have a conversation and how can it help. And I recently ran an event and we did an exercise, and Laurie Meakin helped me run this exercise. It was incredible, where she asked leaders to share a very vulnerable moment with the person next to them. And a lot of these people didn't know these people as well. And, you know, we had some leaders share, like, about what it was like to lose their, you know, a parent, what's going on, losing their jobs, being made redundant. The energy in the room was incredible. And then the feedback from the leaders were like, oh my word, by being vulnerable I now feel so connected to this person next to me. Some trust has actually built up with this person that I didn't even know. And seeing how vulnerability equals trust and connection, and then actually realizing the level you're willing to go as—

at—

as a leader to be vulnerable is going to be the level your team will be able to go to. So taking that responsibility— if I'm not going to be vulnerable as a leader, my team can't be, and they're going to probably hold and absorb a lot of stuff in, and I won't know what's going on for them. But actually, if I'm willing to share, I'm creating trust, I'm creating connection, and you actually can move forward as a team, and so much better, 'cause everyone's got the courage to share.

Love that.

But it's not sharing your dirty laundry. It's not that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's sharing and being open about the fact that you're having a tough time, which gives permission, as you say, for others to be able to do that too.

Yeah, and it just, it gives a calmness, and as you say, it goes back to psychological safety. That there's strength in vulnerability. And it's quite interesting, 'cause leaders at a certain age today, well, a lot of them, we spoke about this a bit, were brought up seeing it as a weakness. So they've really had to kind of work to change their beliefs, to see what a strength it is in terms of connection and trust.

So I think that some organizations, and I think the idea of, I love the idea of courageousness, and I think that some organizations would look at that. And actually, we have a client we work with who works in the medical space, and we talked about courageousness. As being one of their values. And they said, well, it's fine about making courageous decisions, but do I really want somebody standing over me with a surgical mask on, a knife in hand in theater? Do I really want them to be courageous? Do I cut the blue one or the red one? I don't really know if that's a value that I want in the organization. So, I think we both believe that courageousness is a good thing. A good thing in organizations, but are there risks to courageousness? And how might organizations perhaps mitigate some of those?

So, one of the risks that I see, so I agree, yes, there are. And what I say, I go, this is not being courageous, this is being foolhardy. It's being a bit naive. And I see it a lot when leaders join a new team or join a new organization, and they wanna prove themselves. Their ego's like, I believe I need to do something really quick to show you my worth. And they go full pelt with some change or with a decision without doing any consequential thinking, without getting to know the environment, without getting to know their team, because they're making it all about them and what they— how they need to prove themselves and their egos driving. That is foolhardiness. That's not courageous. That is believing you're being brave and courageous, but you're not. And I think it's— for me, when you're being a courageous leader, there's got to be an element of some consequential thinking applied. There's got to be, as everything, some boundaries around it. And courage, you know, as you, you'll be aware, as humans we're meaning-making machines. Every single word will all create a different meaning. So how I, you know, say 60 leaders I've done, what does courageous leadership mean to you? I get pretty much a slightly different answer every single time. So it's got to be very clear that if an organization wants the value of courage, defining what courage means to them and then defining what it isn't. So, everyone can then be very clear with the expectations of the behaviors.

I love that idea. I love, you know, and because we spend, and you know, we work with clients helping them define their culture and their values. And often, we actually go down that route of, because they're like, well, we need behaviors so that people know what it is. And we'll often say, actually, what you need exactly, to your point, is you need behaviors to explain what it isn't, so that people get that very, very clearly. And without that very clear understanding, It's hard for people to know where the line is.

Completely. And when I do a lot of my review work to find out in a company where a company is, so much of the feedback I get from team members is like, we just need clarity. Give me some clarity. And I think sometimes you get, you're in a leadership team, you're talking all the time, you think you know what's going on, you spent loads of time talking about it, but that conversation hasn't translated to the team enough. So you launch it, you tell them all the values and the behaviors and things. They might hear it once or twice and they're expected just to change only because you've heard it for probably about 3 months as you've all been working through it. So giving that clarity for people and helping people manage expectations, because the only time we really get pissed off as human beings is when our expectations aren't being met. And people can only meet your expectations if they're clear on what they are.

Yeah, for sure. And when I think about that, so something you mentioned there was around the idea of kind of having guardrails or what isn't acceptable when it comes to values and behaviors. Does that mean that we need to have some kind of freedom and framework, guardrails, lines within which you can play? Do we have to define that as organizations? When we talk about courageousness, it's about playing within these within these parameters. Is that something that's helpful? Have you seen that?

I wouldn't wanna make it too restrictive, I think, because as we started with what does courageous leaders mean, it's about empowering others, hearing people's voices. And, you know, I work a lot in the creative industry. We wanna drive innovation. So I think too many guardrails could actually become too, we could actually encourage restrictive thinking and restrictive play. But I think setting, just setting expectations And having a psychologically safe environment, if someone says, I've actually got a really great idea, I want to share it and I want to go and take this action and put it on the table, then as a collective you can go, actually, we're really supportive in you going there. We're really supporting you challenging this. And also we want people to challenge the status quo at times, resourcefully, not maverickly, but resourcefully challenged to go, actually, can we push our boundaries here as a company? Can we suddenly venture off and, I know, get another company on board or hire these new skills? Can we do that? So I think, yeah, you don't want to create restriction, but you at least need to set some expectations to start.

Okay, interesting. And I think that when— interesting you're touching on that term there, pushing against the status quo, because the status quo is often the culture of the organization, isn't it? The culture exists there. What do leaders do? Because there are plenty of organizational cultures that would look at courageousness and go, hmm, No, that's not part of our culture. That's not what we want. If a leader's coming up against that, what's your advice to them in terms of how do they push that courageousness agenda? How do they themselves be courageous within that cultural environment that maybe isn't accepting of that as a norm?

One thing I would do is I would want to first off try and get myself in the shoes of the other person or the shoes of the 3 or 4 leaders that aren't on board with this change. And trying. And this is why I do— I have strong belief that leaders need to have coaching skills. They don't need to be a qualified coach, but they need to have some coaching skills and have a curious mindset to be like, let me understand, let me understand the fears that are going on. Let me let this team or this individual express their fears of why they don't want to go here, so I can at least document what are those fears. Okay, so if these are the fears and we're very clear they're what they are, let's actually look at addressing those concerns and let's look at some truths. Because a lot of times fears can get catastrophized, and actually you look at a truth and go, it's not actually that bad. What's the worst that could happen? What if we give it a go and we test it here? And through some truths and objectively, rationally looking at something, you can start to calm down some fears. And then once you've recognized that as a team, you can start going, okay, so what would be the plan? What could be one thing we could change first or do first? And then, and then looking at, well, if we're going to make this commitment, what would you need? Is something essential to you to be able to make this commitment? And what could stop us achieving this? Let's address that now. What could stop us? But I think what we've got to be careful of is if you push yourself against someone or you just keep banging the same drum and it's just your opinion, your opinion, you're not going to get anywhere. You've got to step into their shoes. You've got to enter their world and see, try and see it from their eyes. The big thing— I'm not sure if you've done NLP, but you know, the big thing is the map is not the territory. None of us can see the world in the same way. It's completely impossible. It's like we all have different fingerprints and DNA. Yet so many leaders think everyone can read their mind and see the world. So why aren't they seeing it like me? Because this is how I see it. When you just accept they can't, and then it's your responsibility as a leader to paint the picture for them, understand them so they can move forward with you. It takes more time, but it does mean you'll get the result. So short-term, it could feel a bit frustrating, but you'll get the long-term end goal that you want. And hopefully then with everyone on board with you.

Love that. So then we're getting into the realms of empathy. Yeah, completely. Absolutely, as you say, stepping into the shoes of the person that's perhaps pushing back against you. So then where do, where does communications and skills of a leader as a communicator, where does that start to play in then? Because from what you've been describing there, it sounds like I think that's quite a significant need in the leadership toolkit.

It's huge. And you will struggle to be an effective leader if you don't understand communication. And it is like the communication skills of even listening, being able to listen. Because so many times, like we just said, if someone's trying to make change happen, they just talk and talk and talk until they feel like, if I just keep talking, they'll finally agree with me at one point. It's more powerful to be quiet and listen to what's going on in the other person so you can truly understand what's happening. So listening skills are massive. In The Art of Communication, I do, um, EDIS profiling, and it's just one tool. It's not every— it's one tool to actually help you understand how do other people like to hear information. How do, how do I just not always communicate in my style, but I can be adaptable so everyone can hear the same thing I'm saying, but I can say it differently to different types of people, and I'm willing to be that behaviorally flexible because I take that responsibility as a leader. And then on that responsibility as a leader, I always say it's your responsibility in how you choose to respond to something. So your communication back to someone as well, without reacting or getting annoyed, and you can pause and take responsibility for your response. That's a huge communication skill. So it is a massive subject, communication. And I think we take it for granted that we think we know how to communicate, but it's actually not something that's trained in schools at all. I didn't have any listening lessons. It's just assumed you've got two ears, you can listen. And there's not enough focus on the art of communication. And it's something I love, is just even understanding the power of the words you use. You know, a choice of word can totally change the dynamic of a conversation. It can totally kill a conversation using one word. And I actually recently interviewed someone who said to me, every single word needs to earn their keep. Mm. And I just love that. And actually really consciously thinking of the power of your language and the outcome you're trying to achieve.

Yeah, I love that. Every single word has to earn the— what was it? What was it? Every single word.

Every single word needs to earn its keep. Love that.

I love that. And that's the same in written as it is in the spoken word. If it's not earning its keep, it shouldn't be there. So what have we come back to again is empathy, is understanding. Not it is what I'm trying to say, but how will the other person hear it? And if I'm saying it to 10 people who are going to hear it in 10 different ways, I need to say it in 10 different ways. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website site at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. What I love trying to get into on this podcast is, is trying to get really practical around the types of things that people can change. And I suppose from your perspective, what are some of the types of things that when it comes to running your Courageous Leaders program, what kinds of skills are giving people, or are you allowing them to explore? And what are some of the things that perhaps listeners could take away from this, some of those skills to be able to start applying at a very high level themselves? What are some of the things you're focusing on?

We do a huge focus on self-awareness. So building that relationship with you, and we go really deep into understanding who you are, who you want to be, your beliefs, how your mind works, and your values, any conflicts within your values. So you— this self-awareness is absolutely huge. And I was actually just with the group this morning when we went really deep into mind management using some of Stephen Peters' work, which is incredible. We then, you know, do the toolkit on resilience, understanding the 7 parts that make up resilience. But what we're very careful of is making sure that the leader can do it for themselves, but they know exactly then how to take this back to their team and do all the exercises. Like, specifically, a tool I use is being able to manage your energy, you know, imagining yourself as a battery And if your battery's really full, what is it you're doing when your battery's full? So then you can learn from that and keep those behaviors consistent. And then when your battery's really empty, what's happening? What have you— what are you not doing now and what's going on? So you can actually consciously manage your energy in your levels in terms of, you know, if I don't do my yoga in the morning, my battery goes down. So that's something I need to protect and make a non-negotiable for me. So resilience is really big. I say communication is absolutely huge. We go very, very deep on communication. We look at how to build a high-performing team. A big thing that I love is really understanding the difference between high performance and high achievers. And an area that we really— we're getting a lot of traction with now, and I don't know if you're coming across this, is we're seeing that a lot of people are becoming Reliant Leaders. And what I mean by that is that you've maybe been in a role, but you're in a leadership role, but that role maybe still requires you to be quite in the day-to-day. And now you've been elevated up, you've gone into a head of department role, or you've gone into a managing director role. It's a very different job to running a client account or something, or a customer account. So what we're doing is we're helping people make that transition and really go, right, this is, this is how you can elevate, this is how you can stop being a Reliant leader. Because people in that elevation, they don't let go, they stay in the day-to-day, they stay in their comfort zone. They're so used to being needed and validated, they don't want to suddenly let go of that. And then what is this new role if I'm hands-on in the weeds, then what is this new role? So we really do that transition to get the thinking, the strategy, the positioning, and the identity of this new role, so they can be the leader the team needs, and be the leader they wanna be, and definitely let go of being a reliant leader, because the team stops growing. If you are a reliant leader, the team can't grow.

Yeah, I love that idea, because it does, and you see it happening all the time, that somebody goes from being, you know, senior head of IT to being IT director or chief information officer, or actually, as happened recently in, you know, in my kids' primary school that, you know, one of the teachers became head principal. And I was like, being a principal is not being a more senior teacher. Being a principal is like being a CEO. It is a completely different job. So I think, yeah, I completely, that whole Reliant leader thing really, really resonates with me, really resonates.

Yeah. And it's been amazing. Like whenever I talk to people about it, everyone goes, oh my God, that's me. And there's no shame in saying that's you. It's like, oh my God, I can just see how that's happened. Now how do I make that transition and start actually stepping into identity and having the courage to step into that new identity.

Interesting. One thing that struck me as you were talking there was the whole idea of skills and playing to our strengths. And I love— so I remember being introduced to Gallup StrengthsFinder maybe 10 years ago. And if any of you haven't done it, it's worth jumping onto Amazon, buying the book, and then in the back of the book, there's a code. You can do their online diagnostic and then it tells you what your top 30 strengths are and what your top 5 are. And their whole thinking is Focus on the stuff that you are really good at. And actually, if you're not really good at stuff, bring somebody in who is really good at that stuff. And it comes back to that energy piece that you spoke earlier. Why do things that sap your energy when you can be doing things that actually give you energy in the workplace? I suppose since I've done it, I've struggled a little bit with it because I've kind of been going, well, how does that— back to your point about growth mindsets, how does that instill a growth mindset if I'm saying, well, I'm really good at these 3 things, so that's all I'm ever going to do? I can see the pros and cons. I can see both sides of the coin. I wonder what your take on it is.

Yeah, it's something I've been looking into a lot lately, actually, because I, I read a lot of Brendon Burchard's work, and he studies and works with high performers. So he's done a big study of what makes a high performer, and a lot of it is— and he said, you know, we've had for years, play to your strengths, play to your strengths. But actually, if you want to go to that next level, you've got to be willing to expand on what doesn't come so naturally to you. It doesn't have to be everything,. But for me, it's like I wanted to reach a lot of leaders. One of those ways to do that is to run an event. I wasn't a natural person to stand on stage and host a whole day event. I needed to expand that. I went off and did training. I did the most intensive training in Melbourne for a week to do it. So I expanded my skills. Now I love it. I can't get me off the stage. I'm dancing on the stage. I'm happy on the stage. It's my happy place now. But it was— it would never— it would definitely not come up in Strength Finders as something that would be my strength. So I really believe it's finding those gaps that can help you become the person you wanna be and achieve the person and mission of what you're trying to do, because you can grow your strengths. If you really wanna be a high performer, you can, and you can commit to growing your strengths. It's completely possible.

Yeah, and I think as well, you know, that's, I think if you do StrengthsFinder or you do Insights or you do DiSC or you do any of them, what is it? It's a data point. It's not a whole truth. It's not, we're not saying that this is all you, it's another data point for consideration. And I love the idea that yes, have the strengths, but see what else it is you need to grow into in order to be the full you. Yeah, I can, I completely agree with that. Just conscious of time. And I guess to probably start to wrap up, we covered off a lot there in terms of self-awareness, resilience, how you manage energy, being a better communicator, how to manage high-performing teams. So there's a huge amount in the program that you run, but I wonder from an impact perspective, perspective and from the perspective of immediacy. If somebody was going off having listened to this podcast, what would you suggest is the first thing that they should do? What's the real key that opens the door when it comes to being a little bit more courageous? What's that one thing?

Courage is taking action. So the one thing, if you're listening to this now, once this is finished, I would go, what's one thing you've maybe been putting off? Is it a difficult conversation? Is it a decision? Is it— I don't know, maybe you're interviewing for roles, you can't decide which one should go to. Even deciding to get a dog, it could just be making a decision. But one of my great mentors said to me, sometimes you just got to jump in the pool and then learn to swim. And it's all in that action. And I also have a thing of say yes and work out how. It's like, I was invited to write a book. I'm not a writer. I said yes. I figured out how to do it. Do it. Because if I— if otherwise you never think you're ready— I'm never going to be— you're never going to be ready. So you just gotta have a standard of putting yourself forward. So I would say just pick one thing at the moment you're putting off and choose to take some action on it, because then you start the momentum. You realize it wasn't as scary or as hard as you thought it was going to be. So then you do the next one, and before you know it, the actions get a bit more courageous, a bit more courageous, and you build that muscle, and it's not as scary. I would also say, you know, leaders are readers. You need to be leading, you need to be listening to a podcast, you need to be feeding your mind and setting your morning up for success so you can start your day ready to be courageous, have momentum to show up for your team. You've got to feed yourself so then you can go out there and feed and look after your team.

Superb. What a great way to finish. Uh, Joanna, thanks so much for joining us today. If people want to find more about you and, and the work that you do in the Change Creators, what's the best place for them to go to?

Um, I'm very active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. It's my best friend LinkedIn. So Joanna Howells, look me up on LinkedIn, it'd be great to connect. And also website, thechangecreators.com. It'd be lovely to connect with your listeners.

Brilliant stuff. Thank you. And I can't recommend enough some of the masterclasses that Joanna and her team run. So pop along to the website, have a look and see if there are any there that suit you. Joanna, for now, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much for your time. I've loved the conversation.

Brilliant. Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders on our podcast, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.