1772 – The Power of Authenticity in Leadership with Josefine Campbell

0:28Hey there, thoughtful listener. million in revenue. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you.

0:59with us right now it's executive coach author and inspirational speaker josephine campbell josephine your new book is power barometer how to manage personal energy for business success and your website is josephinecampbell.com josephine thank you so much for joining us i'm so happy to be here josh thank you for having me you know i was i just have to point this out for, you know, for people who look at a lot of websites like I do. So most, you know, most personally branded websites are going to start with a hero shot, right, of our hero. And that's you, Josephine. But you have a hero video. Like it's, if nothing else, just go to josephinecampbell.com.

1:46So you can see what Josephine's doing. I love it because we were talking about like what that evokes and I'm inspired. Like I'd love to do this. I'd love to do this exact same thing. Anyway, we're not here to necessarily talk about your web design, but let's definitely talk about the work that you do and who you work with. Well, actually the web design, I do it in the honor of the people I work with. And what I do is I'm an executive coach. I'm also a leadership development consultant, but I coach individuals and groups. Sometimes I speak to large audiences up to, I think I've been speaking up to like 600 people, but you know, in the smaller groups, it's personal conversations because leadership is personal.

2:29So I put some thoughts into if people are going to approach me and they want to feel like speaking to me and also speaking about what is difficult as a leader. Some of the leaders I work with are very experienced and sometimes it can feel very vulnerable to share what is difficult for you or what your fears are. And of course, we need to address that sometimes. So I have to show myself as someone that you feel comfortable talking to about things which are easy and things which are difficult. So that's why I chose to do something which is authentic and where I'm real, because the conversations we are having are real.

3:09And I truly believe that as leaders, we come across much stronger and we are much better at dealing with whatever we got to deal with if we are being true to who we are. And on top of that, not being authentic costs a lot of personal energy. Yes, it does. Yeah. I completely agree. What's going on there? Like, so let's say, for example, let me give you an illustration. So I had read a book. It was a sales book. And then I started implementing something. I'm like, well, it's a little outside of how I normally would communicate, but I'm going to give it a shot. And because I trust, I trust that this works because the book was very emphatic.

3:56And so I tried it for about three weeks and it ended up being an abysmal failure. And I, for me, I would say abysmal, but it was a fail. And most importantly, is I felt just a lot of tension. And like my energy, I started just really not looking forward to going to work, where then went back, I said, listen, I'm going to not do that anymore. I'm going to go back to just doing what I'm used to, you know, even if it's slightly less effective in theory, I need to be in integrity with my personality and, you know, my, who I am. And sure enough, I mean, just, you know, going back and being in integrity with who I am made a huge difference energy-wise.

4:45Can you kind of explain what's going on there in that example? Well, first of all, Josh, I have to make sure that I understand the example you're giving in depth. So as I understand it, is it correct that you read a book with some leadership communication approach and you tried using that approach? In this case, yeah, it was, I mean, it was kind of a sales leadership, you know, concept more about, you know, again, mostly engaging with potential clients and that sort of thing. And basically the recommendation was to kind of go a little bit stronger, you know, in framing and that sort of thing. And that ended up being uncomfortable for me.

5:26I like just being nice, Josh, I'll be frank with you. Yes, yes. And when you talk about sales, people tend to also like to buy from people who they like. Yes, right, right. And you could probably sense that when you overstep some boundaries. So I have three potential explanations. Maybe one of them is true. Maybe three of them are true. You let me know. That's also the core of coaching is that the truth, it lies with you. So at the end of the day, what brings value from these conversations is what you take with you from the conversation, what you act on. So the first one is that, you know, doing new things, it takes energy, changing your behavior.

6:10It costs a bit of energy. You will actually use different areas of your brain when you do new types of behavior than when you're doing what you usually do. So that's the first one. The second one is that there was something in this approach which was not completely aligned with who you are. There was something that if maybe that author had designed that approach to you and not to everybody and putting it in a book, then maybe the author would have adjusted that approach slightly to fit to your personality better. And that's where we move into that it cost energy not being authentic. And the third one is that if that approach made you overstep other people's boundaries, and you could sense that, which I believe you probably can because you're a brilliant communicator.

7:06So I believe you can probably sense the responses you get from people. Then that doesn't sit right with you. And that costs energy. When things doesn't sit right with us, we tend to start thinking about it and worrying about it and being bothered about it. And we will allocate energy to solving it unconsciously or consciously. Yeah. So Josephine, you work with some pretty big organizations, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Deloitte, McDonald's, KPMG. But talk about what your work typically involves. Are you working with individual leaders? Are you working within the organization? What does that engagement typically look like?

7:50Yeah, always work within the organization in the sense that whenever I'm trying to help a leader or a group of leaders, it has to work in their organization. Like if I try to help them in a way where it doesn't fit their organization, it's not going to help them. It tends to be the leaders who find me and who picks me. Most of them come through recommendations. Some of them find me online and then they will engage me through their organization. And it can be an individual leader who would like an external coach, you know, not someone from people in culture department, but someone who is not within the organization who can discuss different challenges with them, help them grow either as a leader or in their career.

8:37And I also have a couple of leaders that I regularly coach just because they're so smart that they know that having an executive coach that matches them, it's going to improve their performance drastically. So some of these people, they are the best performing leaders in the organization. And so it's not because they have an issue. It's just because they know it's going to make them better. Your new book, Josephine, is called Power Barometer. How to Manage Personal Energy for Business Success. All right, give us the mini TED Talk version of this book. Okay, so in my practice as a coach working with individuals and leaders, I found that some of the most effective techniques often are some of the techniques that I learned as a martial art champion.

9:31I was quadruple national champion in jiu-jitsu when I was younger. Oh my gosh. And in Jiu-Jitsu, you have different types of championships. You have battles like in Karate Kid. Have you watched the movie Karate Kid? The old one from the 80s? Oh yeah, Miyagi-san. Miyagi and Wax On, Wax Off. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of the defining movies of my formative years. Yeah, it's a wonderful movie. And you remember at the end of the movie, they have this championship, there are these battles where they're fighting on green tatami mats. Absolutely. Sweet to late, Johnny. Okay. So we have that type of championships as well in jiu-jitsu.

10:17And I was also quadruple national champion in those kinds of championships. But the one that I use as an example in the book, it's a different kind of championship. It's what we call the reaction track. So reaction track, it has 10 to 12 posts. It takes somewhere in between one and two hours to walk the track. There's a day track and there's a night track. On each post, you will most likely get attacked. There are a few posts where you have to do first it, maybe. So, you know, you have to stay clear and calm and be agile to be able to give the required response to the situation. Just like in leadership and collaborations in modern work life.

11:03You know, sometimes there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of changes, a lot of hard times, a lot of pressure. We don't know exactly where we're going. Maybe we can't see much in front of us, just as when you're walking through a dark forest. It's so dark. There's no lightning. You can't see a hand in front of you. You can only see the flower that they put on the floor so you can follow the path. And you know at some point you're most likely going to get attacked. And I realized that sometimes, especially on the executive levels, especially if you're like a VP or an SVP, there's a lot of stake, a lot of stake.

11:43And also if you have your own business, oh my God, it can feel terrifying sometimes. I think entrepreneurs are brave people. And that's why we will react sometimes the same way when we are at work, as if we were walking through a dark forest, just like I was doing when I was a teenager. Then the first year I was competing, I was puzzled when they announced the winners. I actually thought they were wrong because I just practiced for one year. I told my sensei when they announced my name, they must be wrong. I just practiced for a year. The other girls, they practiced for five or seven years. They had better belts than I did.

12:28But you know what happened? One of them, she beat up the person she was supposed to help. Uh-oh. so if you're all fired up if you're all in what i call the red zone if you're super focused on like now i'm gonna get attacked now i'm gonna get attacked i better defend myself i better defend myself right just like when you say okay this is dangerous this is uncertain okay i gotta save i gotta save i better not spend anything maybe you don't invest in the right thing or maybe you spend too much because you think okay i'm gonna invest i'm gonna invest now but you you don't see what's coming, you don't pick up the signals.

13:02You don't hear what people are saying. You don't get the micro signals in the conversations. You don't pick up the signals from the market. But here, literally, when they arrived at the post where someone was pretending they were in pain and they needed first aid, a bandage or something else, they would kick them and beat them instead of helping them because they were fired up. They were in the fight flight response mode. And another thing that happened is, and some of the posts, there's not just one person attacking you, there can be more. But if you're just expecting one attack, if you become super focused, as we often do when we feel there's some pressure, you don't see what's coming from behind.

13:46So it could be at some of the posts, they would defend themselves very well with the first attack, but then on the second or the third, they wouldn't see what was coming. My sensei, he did a lot of mental training with us. And he taught us how to calm our mind and listen to our body using our body intelligence. And this is really interesting because back, you know, we're back in the 90s, right? So back then, we didn't know much about how the impact really was in the brain. But today, we have so much evidence on what is really going on when we breathe slowly, when we listen to our body signals this whole thing about listening to what your body is saying is not so woo-woo anymore all neuroscientists can explain to you very quickly exactly what's going on and why it is so smart and I put some of that knowledge in my book as well because the people I work with are very pragmatic they're very scientific they're very practical so we do things really down to earth and really practical.

14:52What my sensei taught me was to breathe slowly because when you breathe slowly, you send signals to the amygdala where the fight response is located that there's no danger. So the breath is the only of the vital responses you can control. You cannot control how fast your heart pumps, but you can control your breath. So you can actually tell your brain how to behave by controlling your breath. Another thing they taught me was to be aware of where I would have my awareness. So rather than letting other signals, things happening outside me dictate where I put my attention, I would control my attention myself.

15:41And sometimes I would put my attention outwards as you should do in an important meeting I would put my attention around myself I couldn't see a thing I could listen you know and sometimes you could hope for someone would give themselves away by speaking up while they should be quiet so they could surprise you but the people who are attacking us were jiu-jitsu fighters and they were people from military they're trained well you were in the military you know like if you're doing an exercise like that, you're not giving yourself away by chatting, right? So they would be quiet. I would have to use my senses.

16:19I would have to try to sense if I could feel someone was there approaching me. Do you know that feeling? You're trained as well. Do you know that feeling? If you're in a dark room, do you think you could feel if there was another person there, even though you couldn't see a thing? My brain thinks so, for sure. We all feel like we have that. You know, and I apologize. I know we're running at the very end of time here, Josephine. Your website is josephinecampbell.com. And we've got that linked in the show notes. So for someone listening, just click the information icon, click around, click the notes.

16:54You're going to see a direct link, Josephine, to your website, where again, you'll have as well your new book, Power Barometer, How to Manage Personal Energy for Business Success. What would you recommend people do after having listened to this podcast? And they want more Josephine. Yeah. On my website, there's a section called freebies. There you can go and get some of the tools from the book. If you sign up on my mail list, you get the first chapter for free. And you're always free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I also have a LinkedIn newsletter. Write me a personal message if you have any questions.

17:34I actually do care about people. I do like to hear from you. So feel free to send me a message and ask me the questions you have. Awesome. Josephine Campbell, again, your website, josephinecampbell.com, your new book, Power Barometer, How to Manage Personal Energy for Business Success. Josephine, it's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful being here. Thank you, Josh.

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