Angie Noel: Leadership: Love it or Leave it

Transcript

[0:00:26] CH: Hey, everybody. You are listening to Author Hour, the show where we interview authors about their new books. Today’s episode is with Angie Noel. She’s the author of Leadership: Love it or Leave it. If you want to achieve ultimate career success, you need to become a great leader, right? Wrong. Angie says that the truth is that leadership is really hard and it’s not for everyone, even though our society glorifies leadership at all cost, this episode will give you permission to define success for yourself. And Angie is going to be your guide through the realities of leadership and deciding whether it’s right for you or not. Angie really knows this stuff. She spent the last 20 years supporting hundreds of leaders as an HR executive. From front line to CEO and many of them were struggling with stress, frustration, self-doubt and burnout. Angie’s also a coach and a speaker and she helps her clients and audiences take control of their leadership journey so that they can achieve both professional success and personal fulfillment. If your company is telling you to climb the ladder, this is the episode for you. Now, here is the conversation with Angie Noel.

[0:01:59] Angie Noel: One day, when I called a friend of mine from my car and I told her, I said, “I understand the term, you know, walking off the reservation.” And just being in from Texas, that’s kind of something you hear about people who kind of lose it and just decide to pack up their stuff and go away and go in a completely opposite direction that seems irrational to everybody else in their community or in their immediate tribe. I called her, tears flowing uncontrollably and told her I understand how people can do that, can just pack up their car and drive away one day with not necessarily a destination in mind, but just to get away. And this was one of many phone calls that I had had with this dear friend in particular. And I think it was within probably a few days of that last phone call that I recognize that I had reached a level of just absolute complete burn out. I was completely disengaged from work. I was doing everything I could to avoid going into work. I would sit in my car in the parking lot, in the parking lot, in the parking garage. I would take the long way to work, I started showing up later and later and I was – I used the term suffering which we don’t’ like to use at work a lot but I was for a lack of better terms, suffering. Could not find my mojo. I could not find the motivation to show up and do this thing that I had done for so long. And I knew then that something was wrong, something was not right, thank goodness I had a supportive friend who kind of pointed me toward a mirror more than to anything else and started diving deeper and asking what’s going on here? And that was when I realized I was now what we had categorized in the workplace disengaged. I was completely disconnected from work. I was starting to pull away from my family, I had a child at the time so lots of folks like to tell me that I was just stressed out and you know, from parenting, parenting fatigue and I knew it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t put my finger on it but I knew that something was wrong and it was really showing up in every area of my life, including work, but I hit a wall, I hit an absolute wall and I couldn’t figure out how to get around it at that time. So, that was not a very happy place to be but that was really kind of my wakeup call when I was on the phone with her that day and I thought I can’t do it anymore. I do not want to go into this place, you know? I do not want to go to work, I just don’t. That was kind of the wakeup call for me that something wasn’t right.

[0:04:47] CH: Yeah, I’m so glad you wrote a book on this topic because this I’ve read the statistics, but at least 70% of the workforce that self-identifies as disengaged with their work. And burnout has become such a common term, a lot of people really struggle with it and I’m curious what your definition is of burnout because my understanding is also interchangeable with moral injury, which is basically what you are doing is no longer aligned with your beliefs or your values. You know you are fundamentally going against what resides in your heart and your soul. People use the term soul crushing to describe their jobs and that can be a signal that, “hey, you’re on the path to burnout.” My first question is, how do you define burnout?

[0:05:50] Angie Noel: Absolutely, you’re so on track, I will tell you that the World Health Organization has just come out with a diagnosis and I could not quote that to your right now to save my life. They have actually made it a clinical diagnosis and it’s specific to work because burnout itself has become such an issue. The challenge is that when it comes to defining it for ourselves, our society puts such a value on the person that’s extremely busy. The person who has the highest job title, you know, the most responsibilities and so sometimes I think what I’ve seen over my career is that people can hit that burnout or be in that place of just a complete disconnection or discontentment. Dissatisfaction and not quite be able to pinpoint what it is. And I think from a clinical diagnosis of burnout. I think that’s the challenge that we will have in the workplace because there’s still a bit of a stigma around it. For me personally and the people that I have had the opportunity to coach or work with over the years, burnout kind of sneaks up on them. And because of our societal conditioning that you know, work is very tied to our identities, it’s tied to our paychecks, which is tied to our lifestyle. It’s sometimes is the last thing that we look to. We assume that you know, “I’m just stressed, I’m just busy.” But the way it happens I think is that discontentment that you were referring to and how you define it. It really does start to just kind of something’s quite not right and then it will graduate to physical symptoms. I personally was experiencing heart palpitations, I had lost a ton of weight which normally would be a great thing but, in this case, it was an unhealthy amount of weight. I was having heart palpitations, I was not sleeping and you know. I went to the doctor and the doctor would, it was constantly help your stress or you need to relax or you need – but there was not connection really to what was actually happening for me. For me, it was – to this day, I can look back and see it clearly, but for me, it was burnout with work and where I was and there was significant misalignment for me because I was doing some things that in my career, I had reached a place that was outwardly wonderful. I mean, had the six-figure paycheck. I had the full team around me, the office with the window and so I was where I was supposed to be. And so outwardly, it looked wonderful but inwardly, I was really suffering and struggling. I’ve seen that with my clients over the years or with people who would even come in my office, you know, as an HR director if that was often kind of the chapel so to speak, you know, where people would come in and share some of their issues and their concerns. So, I think you know, when you ask me what’s my definition or how I define it of burnout, I think it shows up differently for everyone and I think that’s important for people to know as well because while the World Health Organization has done a great job of really bringing this to the forefront, it’s one of those things that I’ve – It’s one of the reasons I wrote the book is I want to open the dialog; I want to have the conversation to say that this can show up in many different ways. Organizationally, we like to call it disengagement, you know. Every company wants more engagement and we forget sometimes that the disengagement is not just an issue for the bottom line, it’s not just a productivity issue or a profit issue. There’s a suffering person, there’s a human being that is experiencing that disengagement. We know it exist and we call it different things so sometimes it’s burnout, sometimes it’s disengagement if you're looking at it from an organizational perspective. And on that side, we’re able to define it as clearly, especially by companies who have the solution to that. They’ll tell you that disengaged people are destructive, they’re trying to bring down your engaged people, they will, you know, if you listen to some of those stories or read those articles, they’re just completely destructive to the organization. We forget, this was the precipice for the book really, for me and I know it’s a long answer to your question, but there’s a human being in there and that, I don’t think I fully appreciated it, Charlie, until it happened to me. Until I experienced that and so when you ask me the definition, I would love to tell you, it is this and this or A, B and C. I do believe it shows up differently for every person, but it could be that discontentment, that disconnection.

[0:10:35] CH: Yeah, the reason I ask about the definition is, but so much to get technical but more for the listener who is thinking, “is this me?” So, for people who are listening, who are like, “maybe I’m going through this or I’m not sure or am I in danger of going to this?” Can you kind of break that down a little bit, I know you said heart palpitations, you lost a ton of weight which both of those things I went through exactly as well. I lost 30 pounds, which is insane! But yeah, this can be one of these things that’s absolutely devastating to your health and so I want listeners to really be able to identify, “okay, is this me, could this be me and what are the stakes?”

[0:11:18] Angie Noel: My gosh, I’m going to tell you, if any listener right now is asking themselves that question, the answer is, “yes, it could be burnout, it could be you.” Because I think that feeling that even that questioning, that knowing that something is just not quite right, it could be anything in your life. I mean, you know how stress is, it’s just kind of the way of the world and the way of life right now. In the workplace especially though, I’ve seen it show up in kind of a disinterest, almost like depression, symptoms of depression even where someone will kind of – they just don’t find themselves as passionate or caring or there’s that struggle in the morning of you know, five days a week, it’s, “oh my gosh, I have to go to work today. “ And it’s just trying to get through to Saturday, you know, to get through 5:00 on Friday and like I said, I think we have such societal standards around work and it’s almost funny living for the weekend. But I think when you start to experience true disengagement and real burnout, you will be asking that question, “is this me or could that be what I’m going through?” Because there’s such a dissatisfied feeling and uneasiness, almost a feeling of loss, I can tell you from personal experience. I felt really lost because my identity had been so tied to my work and I was a little bit confused, honestly. And I just kind of didn’t know what it was but there was that feeling of disconnection from the work. I would sit in meetings and hear Charlie Brown talking, you know, where I used to engage and want to talk about it, I would just hear wa, wa, wa all around me. I just wasn’t there anymore. I was showing up but I wasn’t there. Exhaustion, that’s another symptom I think, we do work hard, you know, folks work hard and there’s a lot of expectation from us in the workplace. But there’s, you know, that exhausted feeling, that just trying to get through the day to get home and then all the physical symptoms that we’ve shared. I’ve seen people resort to alcoholism, drinking, food. For me, it was not eating. It sounds like for you it might have been not eating, but there are those signs and symptoms that creep up and we kind of can’t figure out where to pin it, the cause. I think those are signs. Now, there’s signs of other things, I can’t pin everything on work. But just recognizing where you are and how you feel and what’s not normal for you, that’s kind of the important piece of the conversation, you know? Is figuring out your norm and how it’s maybe things feel a little of for you.

[0:14:02] CH: The other thing that springs to mind is something I’ve seen in a lot of people who have experienced burnout the way you’re describing. A lot of them are type A and achievers and so they are great at their work, and they’re great at achieving and they become – like you said, their identity gets tied to their work because they’re so good at it, they get it reinforced. When burnout hits, it hits them like a tidal wave and they don’t even see it coming. They go from like having everything together to being completely disoriented and in a state of suffering for months on end, sometimes years. I’ve talked to people who have been hospitalized because of this. The stakes are very, very high. Now, what was your aha moment, when did you start to kind of see the light and work your way out of this?

[0:15:01] Angie Noel: Well, I think when I recognized, the day I sat on the car and this is actually – I write about this in the book, in the introduction, but the day that it occurred to me that I had become one of “those” people, that had come into my office all these years and just you know, sat in a chair in my office and talked about completely exasperation and being stressed out and tired and you know, all of those things and it just honestly I would like to tell you it was an epiphany, but it took me three years to get to that moment where I had the – This is what it feels like to be disengaged? Whenever I was able to make that connection that this is what’s happened to me. I am now one of those folks, I dove into the research. I started – I had been in human resource for 20 years as I mentioned. So, I had been involved in engagement studies and you know, we did all the exercises and all the things together to get people engaged, but we never talked about the disengaged people. They were always numbers that we needed to either convert to engaged or we needed to get them out of the organization. So, I started looking into it and the more I researched, the more I found around leadership in particular because that’s just kind of my lane and that as what I was interested in. But I started to discover that the people who have the most impact on, your work experience in general. The leaders were suffering with this engagement as much as the folks that we were dealing with, staff level. You know, everything beneath the leadership role. And I started to connect dots for myself and it went even one step farther but in society, we are taught, at least in this country, that to be successful, to be happy, leadership is the way and there is a story in the book about my daughter getting a leadership award in kindergarten. And I was so excited, I remember whenever I got that, the email that she was getting this award and I started a dialog and emailed me and track with the teacher, asking you know, “this is amazing, what are the things that she’s doing to demonstrate leadership?” And she tells me that she’s very compliant, she’s following the rules, she’s doing these things and so there’s – I panicked for a minute because as a mom I’m like, “that’s not leadership you know?” At least by my definition. There were a series of things in the universe is wonderful about putting all of these things in your space when you’re trying to connect dots. If you're looking for answers, if you’re looking for information, you know, I think it kind of comes toward you. I just had a series of events that started to happen as I was researching and looking into information and just piecing it all together, you know, that leaders themselves are suffering and experience a high rate of disengagement and burnout is not a secret. Looking at the societal value or the value that we place on leadership in general, starting at kindergarten, all the way through, look at college admissions. You can look at the word leadership is just so over used in our culture, but especially in our workplaces. There’s such a tremendous value there and so I just started kind of connecting the dots that you know where we kind of were encouraging people to move into positions or move in to these roles that maybe are – they’re just not even right for you, you know? And for me, even I had to decide, I really at that point, even being in human resources where we deal a lot with careers and career development and leadership development, I don’t think I had ever stopped to any point between college and my burnout to decide for myself what I wanted my life to look like and then how work served that purpose. And so, we climb, climb, climb and get to this place and you know, it just kind of occurred to me, it’s like, this really is a function, this is a responsibility, a role of career, however you want to label it. You kind of have to love if you’re going to do. That’s where the title Love it or Leave it came from. Because it’s very impactful and it’s not impactful just for the other people, it’s impactful for you and your wellbeing. Making that decision that you want to be in this role, that you want this level of responsibility and getting really grounded and why you want it. It’s so important and I think it probably just got lost in my own thought there because I get so excited about this topic. But having to decide for yourself that this is something you want because you're conditioned in my case, with my daughter, you’re told leadership is so valuable, we start awarding it and you know, it’s six years of age. And so, you know, I started to think about all these leaders who would come in my office that were so just stressed out and burned out and the people I’ve coached over the years, they will fight for a position that is literally and physically killing them with stress, with anxiety, with you know, all of the symptoms that we’ve talked about the disconnection from family, friends, I mean, isolation, pick a thing. They will fight tooth and nail to keep those positions, to keep that title. And you know, sometimes, we will talk through that and there’s really no understanding of why. Why am I doing this to myself? It’s what you're supposed to do. So that is kind of how I started with the book and the book idea that we need to have a more open conversation to tell – for me, it’s anybody who will listen to me. You know, you get to choose your path, you get to choose, especially, we live in a day and a time in this country where we have opportunity to select for yourself.

[0:20:59] CH: I want to reiterate something you said that is so important and so often completely overlooked that we think we’re doing it is defining your success, what is success to you and very often, we’re just blindly following other people’s templates that we see, okay on the surface that looks like success therefore I will go after that, with no real connection to your heart, how you actually feel. I mean there’s tons of books on this. I mean there is The Happiness Hypothesis, stumbling onto happiness that human beings are generally terrible at deciding on what will make them happy, what will really make them happy and so we chase after things that don’t give us happiness and like you said, being a leader is effectively we’re told that this is how to be a superhero in society without even really understanding what that would really mean to us or why it would even matter to us or if it plays a role in what we care about so.

[0:22:16] Angie Noel: We can’t define it. It is just something we are told from and I spend a lot of time in the book talking about this, we can’t define leadership necessarily and everybody has their own definition of it and so it starts in kindergarten for my daughter with compliance and then when you get into high school, it is being the head of the football captain. It is being head of the cheerleading squad, leading the Spanish club, the debate team. It is about taking on more responsibility. And then you get into college and everybody has a different idea of leadership in general and when it comes to leadership, talking about defining success for yourself, the reason I really honed in on leadership is because leaders are so impactful. There is not a study you’ll look at that says leadership doesn’t matter to employee productivity, success, connection, you know pick a thing and so we’ve drive simultaneously. We are doing a few things here. We are telling people leadership is extremely important. It is highly valued. It is the path to success. We can’t tell you exactly what it is, but we are going to dry to teach everybody you know the same way so leadership development is a whole other chapter because I really think we fail human beings in that regard. You know we think we can’t define it necessarily, but we have cookie cutter leadership training, which is amazing to me. But we are simultaneously telling people from very early on that leadership is the goal. But leadership is not something I think to just be taken mindlessly aspired to and unfortunately a lot of organizational structures, we are set up so that to earn more money, you have to go up the ladder and you know it is generally accepted that that’s the way it is. But on the other side of the coin, engagement and disengagement and those things that are associated with human beings doing well at work, which is what we need and organizations need. We need people to be connected to their work, we need them to care about what they do and how they do it because every metric you can imagine improves when people do. But we are pushing people onto this path. We are not able to define it clearly for them, we are giving them a ton of responsibility because that role is so impactful. It really matters that you decide for yourself that leadership will serve you in some ways so that you can then go on to serve others because at the end of the day, that is what leadership is about. It is about being able to influence others toward a common goal, whatever that maybe and wherever you may be serving in that capacity.

[0:24:59] CH: So, two things, your book really sounds perfect for somebody who is thinking about transitioning into leadership and having more responsibility. Is the coach within a book guiding them through that decision making process because the ramifications of that decision, the impact that it is going to have not just on their life, but on all the people’s lives that they are going to be “leading” it is huge. So, they need to be really thoughtful about it and you guide them through that decision-making process. And again, the book is Leadership: Love it or Leave it, it is on amazon now. The question, I want to take a few steps back actually Angie is personally, for you I would like to know what was your not just your aha moment in “oh I am going to make this book and go down this path” what was your aha moment to get yourself out of burnout? How long were you personally struggling with burnout, how did you get yourself back to a healthy weight? How did you get yourself out of having heart palpitations? How did you find meaning and purpose and have your heart back into your work? What did that journey looked like?

[0:26:19] Angie Noel: Well, I did something that I can’t recommend for everybody but I quit. I completely took a hard-right turn. Once I had that realization, I personally had to stop. I just had to stop and really do some self-reflection and when I started to look into resources, books and I read a lot of books about just burnout in general, disengagement. I spent a ton of time in reading about disengagement and that’s when my heart really just started to break for other people because it wasn’t just to – You know all of these books are about getting employees more engaged and leadership. It is just so much about self-sacrifice and it is not about you. It is about everybody else and I personally wasn’t finding the resources that I felt like were essential to help people make that decision for themselves. So again, I can’t recommend that for everybody. But I had to take a hard look at myself and started making some decisions for myself. And one of the things that I did when it really comes down to tools or exercises was, I started to write down first and foremost, what do I want in my life? And this is what I tell my coaching clients to do. They always want to jump into leadership tactics and strategies and tools first and I always have to bring them back to center, to you. What do you want your life to look like? And I am not talking about your job. I am not talking about your career. I want you to decide for yourself what is important to you and your life and for me, as a single parent at that time, one of my greatest focuses was on I wanted to be available to my child. She was starting school, so I wanted to be able to take her to school and I want to be able to pick her up. That automatically impacts the type of work or the positions that I would pursue because now my hours would look a little different and I had to decide would I be flexible in that. But the exercise itself is deciding what do I want my life to look like, “does time have more value than a six-bedroom home at this point in my life”, you know? Or that the latest model car? but deciding what you want your life to look like first and then deciding the role that were placed in helping you have those things or be that person that you visualize for yourself then you can start to make concessions around for me it was the hours. Am I willing to work until five? Yes. because if I do that then I have the means or the financial resources to provide for private school if that is what I want to do. But the real exercise here, the core is deciding for yourself for just a moment, just pause you know, we could jump off the ladder for just a second. Actually, you don’t even have to get off the ladder, just stop climbing for five minutes and decide for yourself what you want for your life and then let’s take a look at where we may have misalignment between what you are currently doing or pursuing. And what it is you actually want out of your life because in my opinion that’s where the suffering comes from. So, I did that, I started evaluating what do I really want. And then figuring out how that comes to life so to speak in through my work.

[0:29:45] CH: I love that and this is not just – I mean it sounds like you are making leaders into conscious leaders who are intentional about everything they do and not just merely going with the winds of change. And this is something I have seen – I mean this is a science-based approach or a science backed approach. I have seen Jordan Peterson; these are one of the bestselling authors in the world and he is a clinical psychologist who has helped thousands of people regain control of their life. And get purpose using what you are talking about here and so this is a well-tested approach and there is so much other stuff in your book that we didn’t even get to. But I want to talk and again, for anybody who is considering making this transition or suffering with burnout or has already made the transition into leadership and they feel the potential of disengagement, definitely get a copy of Angie’s book, Leadership: Love it or Leave it. What I want to talk about now is you’ve done a lot of coaching. You have done a lot of consulting with leaders and you have been doing it for a long time. I’d love to hear a story about someone that you have worked with using the principles that you layout in the book in the transformation that they went through. What did their life look like before and what did it look like after?

[0:31:19] Angie Noel: That is an easy one. One of my favorite stories, I will call this young lady Stephanie. It is not her name absolutely. Her company had called me in to do some coaching with her and they were at a decision-making place with her about whether or not she was actually going to continue employment and that is a terrible time to have to bring in a coach, but I think both of us at looking back and say it was probably the perfect time for her. But I will never ever as long as I live forget the first meeting with this young lady. There were tears from the moment I sat down until an hour and a half later. This was supposed to be a 30 to 45-minute introduction session to see if we’d be a good fit for each other and over an hour and a half later, we are wrapping up. But she was exactly where we talked about, burnout and what disengagement can look like individually. Very disconnected from her work. Crying in meetings with no real – she wasn’t really sure where that was coming from. She had always been professional. She was at a director level with a lot of direct reports and could not put her finger on what was going on for her. Getting very confrontational with her, her next level leader who happen to be the chief operating officer of the organization and could not quite figure out what was happening or why she was so discontented. We spend a lot of time together talking and as most leadership coaching goes and I think coaching in general, we try to put everything in the context of work but it is almost always personal. It is always some misalignment going on within us that we have to reconcile before we can really begin to tackle the tools and the strategies and the things that you can do to be the exceptional leader you want to be and that is what it came down to with her. She had taken on a very big role with a lot of responsibility and quite honestly for her, there was a massive amount of insecurity that was creeping into everything that you know she was doing and the real benefit of coaching with Stephanie was helping her to gain that self-awareness, what was going on within her. You mentioned beliefs earlier and that’s absolutely what we do in a coaching session is to take a look at what beliefs were holding her back. What things she thought about herself or who she was supposed to be now that she was in this big leadership role. She had expectations for herself and for everybody around her that she couldn’t meet. She couldn’t even tell you where they are coming from or why that was what she believed leadership should look like because we started to peel back some of those ideas. We were able to help her realign with her true identity and who she is and what she had hoped to accomplish as a leader and align those with her actions. And once you take away that misalignment, the whole world changes. It really does and you are able to show up more authentically and more genuinely and much more intentionally, which I love that you used that word earlier in her leadership, which totally showed up with the way she interacted with her folks you know whether it is her next level reports of her senior level. So, I won’t ever forget the first meeting with Stephanie because she is the first person I ever sat with. That within five minutes just began crying uncontrollably and for me, I think that is a sign that when the spirit, when you won’t listen to your own soul, you won’t listen to your own spirit or the discontentment going on inside, the body will take over and sometimes it shows up in tears and you know Stephanie today is extremely successful at what she does and she still checks in with me occasionally. But sometimes it is just getting that misalignment in order and being able to move on.

[0:35:02] CH: I love it. It’s got to be so rewarding to work with people like Stephanie and see the impact that you make not just on their life, but their family’s lives, their friends and all the people that they touch in the workplace, which is a phrase that does not sound good.

[0:35:20] Angie Noel: NO, It is humbling. No, right but HR you can’t touch people but yeah, it is a humbling experience to be part of somebody’s journey like that. It really is and I think what the book has allowed me to do for people is to bottle up a little bit of that coaching and to start to dialogue to say that, “hey, this isn’t for everybody.” That’s the first thing we have to say I think is that this is not for everybody. You may have heard it from the time you were in kindergarten. But leadership is not for everybody and if it is for you, there are definitely some things that you can do early on and in the book, I really address senior leaders or tenured leaders as well as people thinking about this, but I think it will also serve anybody who is feeling a little disconnected or a little discontent with their leadership or feel like they are struggling in some way. But being able to have that conversation to say, look it needs to be about you first. You won’t hear that in any leadership training. You won’t hear that from any business school teacher but the reality of it is that it has to be about you before it can be about everybody else and so that really is what I’d hope to accomplish in the book is just to bottle up or package up a little bit of that advice. A little bit of that coaching to have a one on one dialogue with you to say, “you know what? It is not for everybody and if you decide it is not for you that is okay. You need to go rock it out in whatever you are really intended to do, whatever you really desire to do.” If however you have decide that serving others really serves you and you are being intentional about this decision and you accept the responsibility that comes with it, then here are a few tools, a few tricks, a few things that will help you going forward but I want to be able to confidently say that it starts with you first. It really does because once you take on the leadership role, the training, the things that you hear after that it ceases to be about you so it starts with you. It starts with you making the decision for yourself that you know what? I love this. I want to be part of this. I want to influence people in this way and then taking off and being really exceptional in a way that you want to be.

[0:37:42] CH: Angie, if somebody is listening and they want to work with you in a coach-client type of relationship or potentially hire you as a speaker, what is the best way for them to do that?

[0:37:55] Angie Noel: Absolutely. The best way to find me is angienoel.com that is where I have the book is out there. I am really proud to have that on the webpage and also contact information with some of the speaking topics and a little bit more about coaching because it is popular as it is becoming. I find especially in the leadership space, there is still a stigma around coaching and it being used as a disciplinary action. So, try to put a little bit of information out there to help folks see that really I think it is a really advanced person, it is the person who has that self-awareness and wants to really be successful at this that engages in coaching. So angienoel.com, you can find all of it.

[0:38:33] CH: Perfect and the final question I have is for you to give our listeners a challenge. What is the one thing that they can do today that is related to your book that will have a positive impact on their life?

[0:38:48] Angie Noel: Today, sit down with a pen and paper if you must type it out that’s okay but I am such a believer in having a pen in your hand and actually writing it out, there is such a connection to the brain there, what do you want your life to look like? What do you want for your life and what impact do you hope to have to somewhere in there decide what impact do I want to have in the workplace, on the planet, but decide for yourself and it doesn’t have to be this granular level of get as granular as you like. There is science behind that too to really visualize what you want but ask yourself the question, “why am I doing what I am doing, what do I want?” Well, there is two questions there so I guess we’ll start with what do I want my life to look like and that needs to be family time, where am I living, what do I want in my space the energy, the people? And then take a look at how work, what you’re doing now or what you want to be doing, how that serves you, how that helps you meet those goals or that idea that you have for what you really and truly want in your life. Decide for yourself.

[0:40:00] CH: The book is Leadership: Love it or Leave it. Angie Noel, thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:40:07] Angie Noel: Thank you Charlie, I appreciate you.

[0:40:09] CH: Thanks so much again to Angie Noel for being on the show. You can buy her book, Leadership: Love it or Leave it, on amazon.com. Be sure to check out authorhour.co for the show notes and a transcript of this episode and take a minute to review us or rate us on iTunes, it means a lot.