Heather Hanson: The Evolved Executive

Transcript

[0:00:11] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I am Charlie Hoehn. Author Hour is about answering one question, “How can you get the best ideas from great books without spending so much time reading?” Every week, we take you behind the scenes with a new author, about the most important points in their book. So, if you love to learn while you're on the go, you’re in the right place. All of our book summaries are 100% free and we do more than a hundred episodes every year. So please subscribe to and review Author Hour on iTunes. Today’s episode is with Heather Hanson, author of The Evolved Executive. Today’s forward-thinking leaders know that the future of work is human. It’s about catalyzing people in pursuit of a meaningful mission. By leading organizations with soul, purpose and love, Heather believes that conscious leaders can heal the crisis of suffering that’s present in so many organizations and revitalize the workforce through innovative practices and deep self-awareness. Heather is a former healthcare executive, and in this episode she offers insights, practical advice and invaluable strategies that allow leaders to reenergize your organization’s purpose, enhance employee engagement and experience, develop a purpose-centered strategy in culture and lead from love instead of fear. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to shatter the taboo of bringing love into business and liberate the soul of your organization. Now, here is our conversation with Heather Hanson.

[0:02:26] Heather Hanson: Love it or not, I’m kind of that classic type A person, that achiever, that analytic individual, the person that loves a plan and a to-do list and checks it off, and I do it really well and I’ve it really well pretty much my entire life until life decided it had a different plan for me as it likes to do. So proceeded to my undergrad, went straight onto my master’s degree, took a couple of years off, did my Ph.D. program all pretty rapidly. I was on this kind of path and on this plan and I wanted to climb the corporate ladder in the way that I thought success looked like. So by the time I was 32, I had gotten through that phase of my life. School was done. I had a great job in a highly reputable healthcare organization and working with the senior executive team on the things that I loved, so leadership and culture initiatives. Everything was like, from the outside looking in, this was fantastic, and there was this kind of sagging, sinking, feeling that was growing inside of me. For quite a few years, I just kind of, in typical Heather fashion, put my head down. I was like, “I got this. I can do this.” A part of every job has that component that you just don't like. So I just figured this is how it is. So, like I said, I continued on and continued to proceed in my career taking on a couple of new roles, and by this time my soul was actually kind of aching and I felt this disconnect between what I thought was this perfect path that I had created for myself and what my heart and soul seemed to be telling me that I was not doing what I should be doing. Over the course of that year, things started to fall apart. So my marriage fell apart. I continued to get burnt out at work and kind of depressed and just withdrawn, and kind of in this last ditch effort, a colleague, a dear colleague of mine offered me a position, same organization but in a different city and it was like right on, this is the role that will help me get out of this funk. It’s exactly what I needed. It was kind of a higher level as well. So I’m like, “Okay. My career path is back on track.” As you might expect, I lasted about a year and a half before I utterly cracked, like all out crack, which is probably the best way to put it. So I remember we are moving out to California and I was laying in a hotel room in the bed and I’m like, “Oh my God! There's just got to be a better way of work.” I'm witnessing intense suffering not only in myself, but in my colleagues and in my bosses, in my teammates and there was really no exception, folks who were at the very front line of the organization to the very highest level. I saw this workplace kind of suck the soul and suck the energy out of all of us. I picked up the phone and called my husband Colby who was kind of on his way, because we were moving out to California. I’m like, “Babe, I'm going to resign today.” And there was just a dead silence on the other end of the phone for what felt like – I don’t know, 5 minutes, probably 20 seconds and he's like, “Are you sure, babe?” I’m like, “Yeah. So I’m going to quite today.” So that's what I did. I resigned that day. I worked for another month at the organization as I kind of tied everything up and set kind of a cascade effect for him as well. He resigned out of his corporate gig. We literally sold everything that we owned, our home in Denver, both of our pets passed away the previous year. So we were kind of this untethered thing. So we left the country for two months and really set out to find ourselves again and create a new path. What I realized in that time away, which really took months of kind of healing to figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing is that however sad or disappointed or frustrated I was with work, everyone was doing the best they can with what we have. The way that we work is so ingrained in us based on just decades and decades of, I would say, outdated management philosophy. What I know today is that organizations of the future are going to be built on a different paradigm. That is really what spurred not only my work and my purpose, but this book as well. So this idea of to create a different place of work, to create different organizations, we need to start by creating a different way of leading, and that way of leading is pulling away from the fear-based belief that we have ingrained in us and feeling that void with love-based practices. So the beliefs that foster love, the practices that embody love and the words that really share love. I think this is really the magic that resides in building organizations of the future. So that’s kind of my beautiful, broken story and it was so painful in the process, but kind of sitting on the other side, it makes perfect sense as to what happened.

[0:07:50] Charlie Hoehn: Wow! That is so much to unpack. There's so much goodness. Thank you for sharing. Man! I personally relate to that. I'm sure many people listening to this have gone through a similar experience of – would you call it burnout? How do you refer to it?

[0:08:10] Heather Hanson: It feels more than – burnout is – I think there's an epidemic of burnout going out and –

[0:08:17] Charlie Hoehn: It's really a professional way of saying depression.

[0:08:22] Heather Hanson: It is.

[0:08:23] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah.

[0:08:23] Heather Hanson: Yeah. For me, this was a little bit more. Brene Brown, who is one of my favorite author, speaks to it as like her breakdown. She says her therapist refers to it as a spiritual awakening. In some ways it feels like that for me. It was just like this massive crack. I didn’t see it coming. It was not anything I could've ever predicted, and it was something I could barely handle because it was so outside of my achiever type A plan that I was just like, “Okay. I have to let go of complete control here because obviously life is doing something that I cannot control.” It feels a little bit more than burnout. It felt like just this – like a crack. Like something in me literally cracked.

[0:09:05] Charlie Hoehn: So glad it did. Because of where you are now even though the journey was painful, but those cracks led in room for light and growth. So I want to talk about how did we, as a corporate society, get here. How did we arrive at this problem that you're speaking about, which I'm pretty sure everybody's familiar with, but it just kind of resigned to deal with. How did we arrive here in the first place?

[0:09:39] Heather Hanson: Yeah. It makes perfect sense when you go back into history and llok kind of at the stages that we've gone through as organizations. So the Industrial Revolution was based on this idea of kind of we have widgets and we’ve cogs in the wheel and we’re going to work towards efficiencies. So everything in the workplace as it relates to processes, practices as well as management was oriented in that way. So how can we get this individual to crank out as many widgets as possible in as short amount of times possible? There really wasn't a conversation about humanness at work. It was, you are a doer, and those and management were the thinkers, and there was really no blending between those. Well, I think today we sit at a point in time where there's just massive sweeping changes across business and in its entirety in the U.S., and we haven’t kept up. So if you look at org charts in the early 1900s and org charts that we have today. They basically look the same, which if you look at anything else in our life, nothing really looks the same as it did back in the 1920s. So my theory or hypothesis is that we just haven't kept up with the changes, and so we’re still stuck in a lot of those belief systems and practices that were built for a different way of working.

[0:11:06] Charlie Hoehn: Can I share with you something that I recently learned?

[0:11:10] Heather Hanson: Please.

[0:11:10] Charlie Hoehn: I'm with you on the Industrial Revolution. From what I understand though, it goes back even further to slaveholding plantations. Some of the management techniques that they use, like where the term human resources actually came from is very chilling. It's actually from that era. So the roots are deep in how harsh the management techniques and where the corporate DNA really comes from and why we’re so harsh to our people.

[0:11:43] Heather Hanson: Yeah. I actually didn't realize that, but it doesn't surprise me.

[0:11:47] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. There's a Harvard Business Review article called Plantations Practiced Modern Management. That’s pretty wild, this topic. So I’m on board. So you have in your book these stories of suffering, of talking about secrecy, toxic competition, just fire em’, golden handcuffs, fake feedback. Which of those stories is the one that you think most people can relate to?

[0:12:16] Heather Hanson: I will pick one, and I think that as folks read this they’re going to be like, “On my God! That happens every day at my work.” So I don't think these stories are all that hidden. The one that really gets me, and I think that we see really pervasive in organizations is this idea of fake feedback. So we see a lot of articles even in popular Harvard, or MIT, or whatever it might be around how do you create feedback rich cultures? A lot of organizations that I work with really like to paint this picture that, “We’re so feedback rich. We really encourage employees not only provide feedback up, but also provide feedback down and across.” Whatever. When you get into that organization, you realize that that's fantastic marketing, but at the end of the day it’s just complete BS. So when you begin to provide even light feedback back up the chain, oftentimes you were responded to with humiliation, oftentimes, public humiliation in front of your colleagues, people yelling at you or what I think is also this idea of like you’re in the in-crowd or you’re not in the in-crowd. So you get removed from that kind of inclusive club that you thought you were a part of because you began to kind of go against the cultural numbers. So it's kind of this painful process of, yeah, you say one thing, but what happens day-to-day is so perpendicular to what you believe it just creates massive amounts of distrust, lack of credibility and just this kind of toxicity that we see pervasive.

[0:13:54] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. It is such a gargantuan problem that seeps through pretty much every major organization and it's so frustrating that everywhere is so heavily feared-based. But, I mean, the reason you wrote this book is about the evolution. So people are ready for change and there seem to be some signs that things are getting better. What are some things that you're seeing now that shows that the world might be ready for this change?

[0:14:28] Heather Hanson: So I am with you. I think the world is ready, and I think it's some of those fringy leaders who have taken a step out and have already decided to do things differently and are seeing pretty amazing results not only in business outcomes, but also just in terms of the health and well-being and engagement within the teams. So what I am seeing is people choosing to focus more on purpose. So instead of being kind of that MBA type that says, “All organizations exist to maximize profit.” They’re saying, “Well, actually that's probably not true. We can be much more than just profit maximizing entities. We’re going to focus on a shared mission that makes us all feel bigger than ourselves.” And organizations that are doing that and practicing that day-in and day-out and orienting their organization and their leadership around purpose versus only profit are seeing pretty massive results. I do have a quote here in my book and I am just pulling up. It’s from Firms of Endearment, which is a book that everyone should check out if they’re interested in this. So it is Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit From Passion and Purpose, and they're showing that purpose-driven organizations significantly outperform profit only focused organizations. The statistics here that I find is just kind of mind-blowing, but also makes intuitive perfect sense is, “Purpose-driven public firms returned 1,026% for investors over 10 years ending on June 30th of 2006 compared to 122% for the S&P 500. So if you do the math, that’s an 8 to 1 ratio. So that’s pretty huge in terms of some indicators of, “All right. Shifting the way that we work really does make business sense.”

[0:16:19] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Even from an investor standpoint. I mean, all you choose is purpose-driven firms. You're in good shape.

[0:16:27] Heather Hanson: Yeah, no joke.

[0:16:29] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. So what are some of the characteristics of an evolved executive though? We know there are companies that are doing these things focused on purpose that they are making strides to eliminate some of these toxic elements of fear-based workplaces. But what is an evolved executive really look like?

[0:16:50] Heather Hanson: It's a great question, and a question that I'm sure is going to morph over time. I will share with you kind of what I see today, and the biggest attribute or characteristic I would say is self-awareness. A great author, Tasha Eurich, who wrote a book called the Insight here recently said it's basically the biggest skill for leaders in the 21st century. So there's a couple of nuances that I would say. So as one rises to the ranks of an organization, the less feedback they get, and that's just due to a lot of the fear-based elements that we just talked about. So as you rise, you have less access to getting real-time feedback in terms of how you're showing up, how you’re performing, and so that part of self-awareness is lacking. Then, also, you have less time to really focus on yourself, which I think is possibly a limiting belief or an excuse. But self-awareness and what I would say is deep self-awareness. So not only really diving deeply into how others perceive you in the workplace, but also how you show up, so the you that you now know. Are you really clear about what your purpose is and the values that you hold dear and how you want to show up? And are you sure that as you operate in an organization on a daily basis, you're making actions to reinforce that versus the opposite, which is what we see more often? So folks describing who they are, but then acting in much different ways. So I would say this idea of really deep self-awareness and this evolving consciousness, and I know that word in itself can be a little bit of a landmine, but this idea that we need to be able to grow our awareness, grow our consciousness to be able to operate in a new paradigm. In the book, I dive into that much more deeply. But a few of the other elements that I see for the evolved executive is leading from a place of authenticity, and authenticity is another word that's a little bit hard to grasp because there’s a lot of different definitions. But the thing that I would say is the ability to show your true identity and your willingness to accept yourself for exactly who you are. Again, I kind of refer to that as that beautiful brokenness. I recognize myself and my stories are beautiful because they are broken and because they have some faults and they have some not really beautiful parts. So being able to really grasp and own those parts for ourselves because it is the wholeness of who we are. One other thing that I would say is humility, and this showed up also in my doctoral research, and it's not surprising, but it's interesting how strongly it shows up. So it’s being able to have that really honest understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. Being able to talk about it and being okay for others to see is it is something that I think is specifically – We see more with those evolved executives than you do with folks who are really struggling. So, as like a flip side, the lack of humility would be the ones – The individuals that really have a hard time talking about their weaknesses and are always going to speak to their strengths. They’re the smartest person in the room kind of a thing. And instead of asking really good questions to hear other’s perspectives, they’re really going to be talking more or talking first and not really having the appreciation for the collective wisdom in the room.

[0:20:15] Charlie Hoehn: So as you’re describing this, Heather, I’m thinking there have been so many cycles of toxic, abusive management, that this is not an easy ship to turn around. So how do we start to develop these beliefs and behaviors?

[0:20:37] Heather Hanson: Yeah. It's absolutely true, and I think the really beautiful part of it is our very nature, is more often leaning towards leading from love than it is kind of the abusive, abrasive type of leadership. When I work with clients, the hat majority of our work is unlearning. So unlearning the management beliefs and assumptions and practices that have just been kind of socialized and programmed into how we show up that work. So it’s human connection, for example. We have this crazy beliefs that don't get too close to employees. Don't know your employees, because somewhere down the road you may have to discipline them, or it might become an HR issue, or something along those lines. When at the end of the day, all of us strive for yearn for human connection, meaning in contribution network. So just a brief example, it's unlearning this idea that we need to create disconnection from those around us because of some litigation risk, and instead saying, “Well, what would happen if you checked in with that person and said, “Hey, how are you doing? What can I help you with? How can I support you? How's your family?” Those tiny little experiments actually have huge ripples not only in the leaders that I work with, because they enjoy getting to know people and having that sense of cohesion, but also on the flip side for that employee and that team, it creates much different levels of connection not only to that leader, but to that organization because they feel cared for and they feel valued, which unfortunately most bureaucratic traditional organizations, that’s the thing that is most lacking.

[0:22:16] Charlie Hoehn: Feel valued and eventually understood in the workplace. Yeah.

[0:22:21] Heather Hanson: Absolutely, and can contribute in a way that people want to.

[0:22:26] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. How long does that process tend to take with your clients?

[0:22:32] Heather Hanson: It’s a great question. I think there's a readiness factor. Has I’ve worked with a ton of different leaders, some leaders –

[0:22:39] Charlie Hoehn: It’s like when the student is ready, the teacher appears type thing.

[0:22:44] Heather Hanson: Yes, exactly. Some folks it’s like, “Oh my God! This is exactly how I want to lead. I just didn’t have the language or the skill or the practice to figure out how,” and for others, it takes more time to be able to have them do small experiments and say, “Okay. Does this belief that you're holding around –” example again, like disconnection. Does this serve you, and do you want to continue on that path to your leadership career, or do you want to try something different? So it just takes everyone’s unique, and our own desires are different and being able to kind of dive a little bit deeper into what it is you want to create and what you want to be a part of takes some individuals a little bit more time.

[0:23:25] Charlie Hoehn: Absolutely. So what are some of the practices that you encourage leaders to move toward a place of love?

[0:23:35] Heather Hanson: Yeah. Everywhere we start is this idea to begin from within, and so all of our practices as I start with any client are around self-awareness. So whether it's simple questions around what it is that gets you excited, or what do you like doing, or more intense – It’s not Intense, but more in-depth experiences maybe around like a values audit. So let's figure out what values are really important for you at work and which ones are not and how does that show up in your current role. More often than not, we find that there's a pretty decent values conflict that's going on for folks if I tend to be working with them because something's not going right and they’re like, “Okay. I really value –” maybe it’s coaching and developing my team, and the organization that I'm a part of really values command-and-control. So we begin at that place of self-awareness to say, “Okay. What is going on? What is it you want to create and where's the conflict?” From there we tend to diving into purpose activities. So Simon Sinek has done just a fantastic job in this space, and based on his book, Starts From Why as well as Bill George's True North book and my own experiences, I walk individuals through kind of a lengthy exercise of trying to figure out what it is your purpose is. For myself, like I said, when I took does two months off and then the subsequent six months, that’s the place where I was like, “What the heck is my purpose?” When I was actually able to call it into a very succinct statement, everything began to fall together in terms of my path forward. So my purpose is to awaken the souls of leaders to create soulful organizations. So getting a leader to the place of where they can articulate what's most meaningful for them, they can make much better decisions around how they want to proceed in their career. Then we do things around kind of a deep-dive into growth edge. So where is the one thing that we really need to work on to get you to progress where you want to be? Then I tend to sprinkle in quite a bit of mindfulness just because it's something that I’ve found really remarkable in my own practice. So whether it’d be just time and nature to quiet your mind, or meditation, or running, whatever it might be. Just finding some time and spaces for silence, because in that silence you find more of your authenticity.

[0:26:02] Charlie Hoehn: I love it, and I love your purpose. How long did it take you to arrive at that?

[0:26:10] Heather Hanson: You probably don’t want to know. So it probably took me three months, and like my caveat there was I was just in this crazy mixed of emotions. I just felt like completely violated myself because I jumped off of my plan into this really nebulous space of, “What the hell am I trying to create?” It was re-learning for me a bunch of new skills around, “Okay. I’m creating a different life for myself and what is that going to look like?” It took me a while, and thank goodness I had amazing resources and people around me to help me through that process, but it’s been really transformational for my life.

[0:26:48] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Love it. So when your clients start incorporating these leadership practices, some of them take to it like a fish to water. They’re like, “Oh! This is what's been missing.” While others, they're not quite ready for it. What percentage would you say of the people that you've worked with are able to take to it quickly?

[0:27:11] Heather Hanson: That’s a great question. So if you believe that like attracts like, I would say the percentage is 60% to 70%. For some reason, there is some kind of attraction that folks find me at a time when they feel pretty ready to change. Whether it's a random bump into each other at a networking event or a conference, or whether it's, “Hey, this person gave me your name.” The vast majority of people I would say are ready, and the folks that aren't figure out pretty quickly for both of us that, “Hey, this isn’t a great, but I may be able to provide you a recommendation for someone who might be able to help you where you’re at.”

[0:27:53] Charlie Hoehn: That's great. So let's talk about the organization itself, because you start with the leaders. You can help the leaders and they can help the people that they work with, but you're going up against a culture that has faced consequences, fear-driven practices. How long do you have to instill these practices? I mean, how do you even rewrite a culture? Are they screwed from that regard?

[0:28:21] Heather Hanson: Yeah. There’s actually a lot of debate in this space, and I now I’ll probably get some interesting emails based on this comment. But my belief is that when you’re trying to shift an organization, a culture or its structure, you really need to have your leadership team on board, and primarily your most senior leaders. So I have a quote in the book that says, “The culture is a window into the executive soul.” So if you feel honestly like you need to shift the culture, okay, then we got to work with the senior leaders to begin to model and reinforce and express a different way of being.

[0:28:58] Charlie Hoehn: I just want to pause and repeat that, because it’s awesome. A culture is a window into the executive soul. Beautifully said. That's great.

[0:29:08] Heather Hanson: Yeah, it's not mine, and the credits are in the book, absolutely, but it’s something that find to be true over and over again.

[0:29:16] Charlie Hoehn: That’s wonderful. How about healing the organization itself? How do you know when it's starting to heal?

[0:29:22] Heather Hanson: Yeah. I think organizations are very akin to the human system or the human body, and when they go through trauma – So if an organization’s in the process of trauma or has been hurt, it needs to go through a healing process to be able to kind of get to other side or get different results. So the first step for me is always trying to diagnose. So I think of myself a little bit as a physician for an organization, or an organization’s culture. So I go in and try to identify, “Okay. What's working well? What's not? Where are signs of health? Where are signs of illness?” And how do we holistically create some interventions to shift those dynamics? So your question is, how do you know when it begins to heal? I think you see things shift in terms of feedback, which we talked about earlier, is a bit one that you begin to see differently. So people begin to talk more and talk across silos and talk up into the organization and also talk down into the organization. I don't really like down, but talk – What I would say is talk kind of 360 across the organization. Where, in a very fear-based organization, people put their heads down and talk to themselves and their bosses and maybe the direct teammates. So that would be one attribute that would say, “Okay. Things are shifting. People feel more open and safe to be able to share their ideas and express ideas, or maybe even say, “Hey, I’ve got a concern with how this is working.” The other thing, the indicator that I would see is transparency, so the opposite side. Secrecy is something that is assigned for me of toxicity and illness within an organization.

[0:30:58] Charlie Hoehn: That’s like gossip as well, right?

[0:31:01] Heather Hanson: Absolutely. Gossip is one of the worst elements within organizations in terms of just overall health and well-being. So when organizations begin to heal, the culture treats information and treats those conversations differently. So whether it’s like Book in the Box, they say, one of their core values is speak the truth to the tribe. So if you’ve got an issue with someone and you decide to triangulate and go around them and talk to someone else about that person. Their culture has these practices in place that says, “Actually, have you talked to so and so first?” “Well, no.” “So maybe you should talk to that person first before you come behind and talk to that individual.” Or even secrecy in terms of sharing data about the organization. So simple things about engagement data or client satisfaction data or data across departments, or even organizations are now sharing pay data. So what everyone makes across the organization. So those movements and strides for transparency really have huge indicators for bringing health back to an organization.

[0:32:08] Charlie Hoehn: That's excellent. So, in your book you talk about the insights into organizational structure. What is that about?

[0:32:19] Heather Hanson: Yeah. Org structure – I mentioned earlier. If you look at an org structure in the 1920s and one today, they basically look the same, which just boggles my mind. So the org structure obviously needs to change. In many ways structure creates behaviors within organizations. So if you want to shift behaviors, you need to shift structures. In the book I highlight kind of three difference structures that we see prevalent in organizations. One is the traditional hierarchy, where you see typical org charts with the CEO on top and it kind of cascading down from there. The area that’s probably growing the most is this area of networks of teams. So how do you create these pods of teams that are kind of just in time? So, say, we need to work on a new project. This team forms around that project, completes the project, brings in people across the organization. So multidisciplinary to work on that project, and then disbands when the work is done. So this kind of really adaptive, nimble structure. The third would be self-organized, and this is one that feels pretty radical for most, but one that I'm probably the most intrigued by, and it’s basically no bosses, no hierarchy, no titles, no job descriptions. People organize together based on the work and the purpose and create agreements with each other that says, “We're going to work together over the next six months to get this project done,” and then they disbanded when that’s done and kind of reinvent themselves in the next space that needs them. The book will absolutely do that a little bit more justice, but there is an incredible author, Frederic Laloux who wrote a book, Reinventing Organizations, that highlight self-organization really well and organizations that are operating in this way that are getting just stellar results as well.

[0:34:10] Charlie Hoehn: . So let's talk about your client transformations, the people that you’ve worked with. Tell me a story of a client you've worked with that you're particularly proud of, a big transformation you saw.

[0:34:23] Heather Hanson: Yeah. This is one of the quick ones, and it was an incredible opportunity to work with this individual, and she experienced really massive strides and massive changes in the course of a short amount of time, and she came to me when was ready, which, again, I think that helps. But this individual was in a really incredible position in an another reputable organization and was also feeling pretty stuck and pretty, “This doesn't feel right,” and was being told things like, “You’re caring too much about your employees,” or “You’re supporting too much,” these things that just, to me, seems so crazy. Working with this individual to really understand, “Okay. What it is that she wants to achieve? What is her leadership look like? What she want the leadership to look like? How's the organization supporting or hindering her own authentic leadership for showing up?” Long story short, over the course of several months, she made the decision to jump out of her own, realizing that the environment that she was in was not supportive of the growth that she wanted to achieve for herself, and really unraveled some beliefs that she’d been operating with for decades, and those aha's in those moments that says, “So you mean I can lead with love and I can support the people around me?” I’m like, “Absolutely. Yes.” She found herself a really great – She’s independent and she's got incredible clients that she's working with, and I think if you talk to her she would say her life is a different story today. So just being able to not only see those amazing aha's for people when they realize that, “Oh my God! I can let go of this limiting belief that is really caused conflict in my life,” and choose a different path is just really liberating to see.

[0:36:18] Charlie Hoehn: That’s wonderful. How might someone who wants to work with you approach you and get in touch with you? What's the name of your business?

[0:36:27] Heather Hanson: It's called Untethered Consulting, and that name is very on purpose. So we got to let go of a lot of our beliefs and assumptions, hence, untethered. But you can absolutely email me at heather@untetheredconsulting.com or find me on Twitter @untetheredco, or even on LinkedIn. I’m more than happy to have a conversation. If you’re getting anything out of this conversation, you’ve probably realized that human connection is a really big thing for me. So even a brief conversation to hear where you’re at and hear a little bit more about your story, I would feel very honored.

[0:37:00] Charlie Hoehn: Excellent. Heather, just to wrap up, could you give our listeners a challenge. What’s something they can do from your book today or this week that will have a positive impact on their life?

[0:37:14] Heather Hanson: Yeah. What I would challenge folks with is if they’re interested in, “Okay. Maybe I do need to lead differently,” or “I want to lead differently,” is try a simple experiment. So if you're leading the team, ask some of your teammates, “What’s your experience of love at work?” And if love feels like too provocative of a word, try care or try job, and hear what they have to say. Hear the stories that they tell you. On the flip side, ask what’s your experience of fear at work? Again, try to unearth what their experiences and what it leads to, and I think what you’re going to find is the stories around love speak not only to higher levels of engagement and commitment and joy at work, but also they’re really proud of the outcome that they’re achieving. When you hear the stories of fear, pay attention to what you're finding. My experience would say you’re going to find withdraw, disconnection and kind of this feeling of that soul sucking feelings. So that would be my challenge. Go out and start talking about it. Talk to colleagues. If your team doesn't feel safe, talk to your family about it. What does love feel like at work? What does fear feel like? And see for yourself what you find.

[0:38:25] Charlie Hoehn: The book is The Evolved Executive. Heather, thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:38:31] Heather Hanson: Thank you, Charlie. This is fun.

[0:38:35] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Heather Hanson for being on the show. You can buy her book, The Evolved Executive on amazon.com. Thanks for tuning in on today’s show. If you liked what you heard, here is what I want you to do next. Open up the podcast app on your phone or iTunes on your computer and search for “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn” and then click “ratings and reviews”. Take 10 seconds to rate this show or leave a review. It is a small favor but it’s really the best way to show your support and give me feedback and if you know someone else who’d love Author Hour, take another three seconds to text them a link to this episode. We’ll see you next time.