In this solo podcast episode, Dr. Shiny Unsal—ICF Master Certified Coach, UCLA Extension leadership communication instructor, author, and founder of the Academy of Neuroshine Technology—introduces and walks listeners through her signature leadership framework: the 7 C's (Consciousness, Confidence, Calling, Commitment, Control, Charisma, Contribution). She contextualizes the framework within her decade‑long UCLA Extension course, her book You Are a Star, Shine (which teaches a “galactic leader” model), and her broader Neuroshine Technology methodology that blends ten disciplines to develop emotional‑intelligence and communication skills. Throughout, she shares personal anecdotes (e.g., student evaluations, the evolution of her calling to teach at UCLA), explains each C in detail, and emphasizes how the C’s interrelate to produce effective, purpose‑driven leadership. The episode ends with a call‑to‑action directing listeners to her website for a free PDF and further coaching programs.
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Today we're talking about leadership, 7 C's of leadership, my content that I created as I was teaching leadership communication strategies at UCLA Extension. If you're ready, let's begin. Are you ready to shine? Come on, it's the shiny one. You got this. Welcome to the Shiny Minds Show with Dr Shiny Unsal. I am Dr Shiny Unsal, the leadership communication strategies and emotional intelligence course creator at UCLA Extension, mm-hmm, ICF Master Certified Coach, licensed trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming, author, speaker, and the founder of the Academy of Neuroshine Technology. My methodology is Neuroshine Technology, which combines 10 powerful disciplines, including leadership communication strategies. And I thought that would be an incredible way for me to share some leadership skills, some leadership content with you by breaking down the content that I created for UCLA. As I was teaching leadership communication strategies at UCLA Extension since 2012, I created this content that my students loved so much. And when I say students, I was not teaching college kids. I was a part of UCLA Extension where professionals, executives, they go further their education and receive continuing coaching, education, diplomas, and certifications. So when I created my Leadership Communication Strategies course, that was already for the professionals who wanted to further their education and get promoted to higher levels in their career. So the leadership skills that I wanted to pass on to everyone in my classes was all about consciousness again, as all my content is always about consciousness. So this book that you see, You Are a Star, Shine, and it is actually saying that become a galactic leader in 5 steps. This is my leadership book. This is the book that my students would read and do the assignments inside to pass my class. I'll show you. Here you go. So some of the pages in my book, they would be the weekly assignments that everybody would need to answer. And of course, most of the people, when they came to my classes, they're expecting this boring professor with glasses and the hair and all that. And then I show up and I'm like, This is my book, and then this is what we're going to do together in my leadership class. And then they're like, who is this woman and where is my leadership class? And then I used to tell them, don't judge the book by its cover. Don't judge my book by its cover. I know it is purple and it has stars on it. I'll tell you what, it's also going to make your inner light shine. Just give it a chance. This happened year after year after year, and I am proud to tell you that I received 9 9 evaluation scores from my students, including financial executives, C-level executives, marketing professionals, all kinds, business owners. They all loved it. Do you know why? Because my book is about getting to know yourself, is about sitting down with yourself and asking some questions about who you are, what makes you unique, what makes you shine, and how you can really become the galactic leader of your life as the sun. Look at the sun. Sun doesn't need permission to shine. It just does. It just is. And then there is an orbit around the sun that just attracts other planets because sun has its own galaxy. So when I wrote my book and when I say become a galactic leader in 5 steps, I was thinking about the whole concept of the sun shining. I'm gonna break down my 7 C's in my leadership communication strategies content that I also included as part of my Neuroshine Technology program, and we're gonna start by the very first one. So the first C of leadership is consciousness. The reason why I say it's consciousness is because without the awareness of who you are, what you are working on, who you are serving, why you are doing that, and how exactly you're doing that. Just like I talk about my 6W1H contextual intelligence. Without that clarity, without that knowledge, there is nothing to even start to talk about. So consciousness always comes first. That's also why I kept digging deep into the world of consciousness, and then I wrote 2 dissertation papers as part of my doctorate degree, and I wrote The science behind consciousness. Metaphysical science of consciousness. The second C of leadership is confidence. Why confidence? Confidence is this inner knowing that you bring the certainty and you bring the clarity and everybody around you feels it. You have this aura about you. You just say, I got this. And because you feel that I got this, everybody else feels like they got this. And this confidence becomes the contagious frequency around you, around your team, around your friends, around your kids, whoever you are. You can be a mother at home and then you can be the leader for your kids. You can be an incredible executive and then you can become the leader for your team, or you can be a business owner, an entrepreneur, and you can make a difference by creating your organizational culture, by embedding and embodying the values that you represent, the values that you believe in as the leader of your organization. Or you can just be a leader for your friends. Everybody looks up to, everybody wants to be around. Why? Because that confidence speaks before you begin to speak. The third C of a leader is calling. I call it #OnAMission because when I look at my life and the business that I built, it was not a journey of entrepreneurship at the beginning. It was a journey of wanting to know myself, wanting to understand who am I, what is my purpose, why am I even here on Earth. Nobody gave me any instructions. I didn't know how to navigate life. And I needed to have answers. And that big, deep journey started in 2010. And then I literally said it verbally. I said, I have a calling. This calling inside of me is calling me to move to Los Angeles, back to Los Angeles where it all began. I was the student at UCLA Extension back in 2005. So I wanted to go back and teach at that same institution to give back. And I didn't know I was going to teach at UCLA. I just followed the calling inside of me. This calling inside of me made me say, oh my gosh, I learned something. It changed my life. It transformed my life. I want to pass it on. I want to share it with the people. What can I do? I literally looked for platforms, looked for ways to share what I learned in a structured way because I love structure and I found myself knocking on the door of UCLA Extension. Ah, my goodness, shininess. Ah, it has been a fantastic journey of more than a decade, but about 1,000 people that I was able to touch and transform. The fourth C of a leader is commitment. A leader is somebody who's always going to take the lead, pioneer, go the extra mile, and then tell others, Come, come with me. Follow me. And that is commitment. That is another level of courage. I say commitment instead of courage because commitment has consistency in it. So you see, they are all C's. There is courage, there's consistency, there is commitment. There are so many C's. And even clarity itself, like when you go back to confidence, confidence comes from clarity. And that's another C. But let's come back. We are talking about the fourth C, the commitment. The commitment to make a difference. Commitment to show up, not only for yourself, but others as well. The commitment to make this world a better place than you found. Commitment to make others feel better about themselves than before. Wherever you go, you bring your magic with you, and that is the commitment that you have to yourself and to the world around you. That commitment is not something that you can study. You gotta have it. And that is the spark in you that you need to tap into. Fifth C of a leader is control. When I say control, I mean self-control. You may think about self-control as self-regulation. We are going with the Cs here. That's why control is a better word. And it also reminds you that you are in control. You are in charge. See, even C, charge, charge starts with C. So you're in charge, you're in control. Whatever happens in your life, you are in control. And when you are too much committed to something, when you are too much confident about something, when you are too much of the calling and then not looking at the other stuff like that, anything that is too much is not going to help you, but instead it's going to harm you. So that's why you also got to remind yourself that the control is not about what you are in control of, but you are in control of the balance of everything, the balance in life. And that is going to require you to work on your self-regulation and to have the clarity to say no when there is something too much. You gotta know the balance and you're gonna say no, right? So that is the control we're talking about here, not only the control of situations and tasks and projects and managing your everyday to-dos, but most importantly, controlling your inner world, controlling your— regulating your emotions and controlling how you react to things. You may not be in control of what happens, but you are certainly in control of what you do with what happens and then how you respond to it. Hello, Shiny Minds. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to tell you that this Shiny Minds show is sponsored by my Academy of Neuroshine Technology, where myself as the founder and my hand-selected amazing elite ICF accredited coach educators are here to support you, to make you feel safe, seen, heard, appreciated, free to become whoever you want to be, and also transformed forever inside out. We are here to hold your hands and to support your growth. If you feel it in your heart to become more and achieve more, then go to shinyunsal.com, grab that PDF, and we will see you inside. 6th C of a leader is charisma. Charisma is something that everybody can feel yet may not be able to articulate. You know what I'm talking about, right? You definitely understand if somebody has the charisma, has that charm, you know, charisma and charm, C's again. You see, leadership is all about these C's. And the charisma, the charm is what attracts people to follow this leader, to listen and learn and to co-create, to partner up with this leader because you believe in that magnetic field around them. Something about them, the frequency that you feel from their tonality, from their facial expressions, from the way that they move their hands, their body, from the way that they breathe, from the way that they look at you, they make you feel seen. That is the charisma that we're talking about. Those leaders that you like, those people that you want to talk to. Think about them. Take a, take a moment to just pause and think about all these people that you feel a certain charisma. What is it about them that you feel so attracted to? I bet you're gonna find something in common, and that common thing is going to be more of an invisible quality. That's charisma. And the last but not least, C of a leader is contribution. We are all here to make a difference. We are all here to make this world a better place, right? Hashtag #OnAMission comes back. First, #OnAMission was about calling. This one is about contribution. Now it is time to measure your contribution, the value that you are adding to people, to situations, to societies, to communities, to the world. What kind of contribution you're going to make as a leader and why? Because if you don't have the consciousness, you're not going to have the confidence. You're not going to act upon your calling. You're not going to feel a sense of commitment. And you're not going to have the control of external and internal resources. Even if you do, you're gonna now need to tap into your charisma. And that charisma is gonna remind you that all of these C's are gonna come together because it's all about the contribution that you want to make in this world. So those are the 7 C's of a leader in my Leadership Communication Strategies class that I have been teaching since 2012. And now it's a part of my Neuroshine Technology that I teach and my faculty teaches as a coaching education program. If you would like to learn more about the leadership skills, the communication skills, the mindset skills, and the coaching skills and emotional intelligence skills, all the soft skills that are backed by science, just go to shinyunsal.com, grab that PDF, and get in touch with us. We would love to help you. We would love to turn you into a galactic leader. Thank you for watching, and until next time, keep shining your light.
