2050 – Elevate Your Leadership through Music with Meritage Leadership Development’s Susan Drumm

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1:05With us right now, it's Susan Drum. Susan, you are the CEO of Meritage Leadership Development. Your website is MeritageLeadership.com. Your personal website, Susan, is Susandrum.com. That's drum with two Ms. Susan, you're also the author of the book, which I'm really excited to chat about. I'd love to learn more about this. It's called The Leader's Playlist. Unleash the Power of Music and Neuroscience to Transform Your Leadership and Your Life. I'm curious, Susan, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, great to be here with you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, your book, by the way, is a USA Today bestselling book.

1:44So obviously, you picked up on some folks that were kind of keen for this message. But Susan, do you mind just as we start here, just give us a quick overview of the work that you do, who you serve, and kind of your impact in the world? Yes, yes. So I help leaders build high performance teams and they tell me my superpower is pattern recognition and disruption. So a lot of that, and you'll see it in my book, that's using music to do that, but I use many different modalities to do that. And I've been doing leadership development for over 20 years now. So yes, I started when I was five now, but you know I've seen a lot of leaders.

2:23I've seen incredible growth that leaders who started their company became billionaires, incredible trajectories. I've seen incredible failures as well. But I use the term failure more learning lesson, right? Because then usually the true entrepreneur has that fire in them and they take that lesson and they wrap it into the next endeavor that they push forward on. So, you know, all enterprise leaders at Fortune 100 and above, usually senior executives, as well as emerging businesses, well-funded, private equity-backed companies, all of those places are where we play, my firm plays. And I have about 20 coaches in the cadre that we use in our programs.

3:12That's great. I should also point out, Susan, that you are an accomplished podcaster. your podcast, which our friend can search for right now in your podcast app. It's called The Enlightened Executive. What do you talk about on The Enlightened Executive? Well, the tagline is your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. And so what we do is bring groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. It's for people who are really on a personal growth journey, and they want to hear from other leaders who have had a transformation, walked the talk to become a more conscious leader, and as well as practitioners and thought leaders who bring techniques and strategies to help leaders do that.

3:57Yeah. 103 five-star ratings for your podcast, by the way, and Apple Podcasts. So congratulations on that. You've certainly, again, struck a nerve. Okay. Well, Susan, listen, I'm going to take the bait here. I want to talk about your book, The Leader's Playlist. Share with us what we should know about the power of music and why a leader who's listening right now might want to incorporate some of your findings into their life. Yes, yes. Well, I think as a leader, we're all facing the daunting challenge of producing next level results in a time of accelerating change and complexity. While the environment is changing so fast, unfortunately, we are, as human beings, get stuck in ruts that no longer serve us in this ever-evolving environment.

4:49But the key question is, how do you recognize when you're in a rut or a pattern and change it to produce a better outcome? The reality is you have a secret weapon in this war that's been under your nose all the time. And what I found, I started using it for myself and others, and this is music. So there is a way to use music to disrupt old patterns and accelerate the creation of new neural pathways by understanding music's impact on our brain. And so in the book, I help people understand how to break free of destructive patterns in their leadership. And I give nine vignettes of stories of these leaders who had a destructive pattern and used music to be able to recognize the pattern and accelerate building a new, more empowered pattern to be able to lead more effectively.

5:41Okay, so how can we do this? So here's the key. And I think it's best told in a quick story. There was a chief marketing officer that I was working with, and she got some feedback that the rest of her colleagues were frustrated by her always wanting to be included in everything. Like she was like always needed to know and was upset if she wasn't copied on an email or invited to a team meeting. And from her perspective, she said, look, I'm the marketing officer. I need to know what's going on in the company. But what I was interested in is why was this showing up? And so I talked to her about what did she feel when this was occurring?

6:24And she felt anger, like when she got that, like, I wasn't included in this and I needed to know, right? I felt anger. She felt frustration. And we kind of looked a little bit more. I said, well, where else does that pattern show up in your life where you're feeling anger and frustration? And she said, I just felt like I was being excluded. I'm like, where else are you being excluded in your life? And that's where we helped her piece together that this was a pattern that dates way back into childhood, right? And all the different circumstances in her life where this playlist keeps getting played.

7:01And so I use the term playlist both figuratively and literally. The figurative part is her playlist is I'm being excluded. the literal part is then what we looked at is what is a song that could be that sort of pattern recognition that best represents this feeling of being excluded for you she chose the song Adele's hello so you know that song's like hello can you hear me I've been calling a thousand times you won't pick up the phone right and so when she caught herself getting that same old anger trigger I'm left. She's like, oh, there's Adele again. Do I want to be Adele in this circumstance?

7:40Like, please pick up the phone. No. What do I want to create in the future? So for her, she wanted to create a new playlist that she titled, I bring peace and appreciation. That was her title. And so what we did was look for music that best represented that emotional feeling for her, that it actually had this impact on her that moved her emotionally to a more sort of peaceful and appreciative state. And we build an actual playlist of at least 10 songs that she used and practice being in that vibrational state. Because what we know is that we're vibrational beings, everything vibrates. And the way we're feeling emotionally gets projected out and can actually be measured through these techniques that look at three feet off your body.

8:34What is the energetic signature of that emotional resonance that you're showing. And it can be, they can actually see, they see lower vibrational or anger, frustration, and they see higher for joy and gratitude. So with doing that, the more she practiced it, the more she started to relax and started to not see the world so much as excluding her and started to look at the places where she was indeed included. And they were small things like the neighbor invites you over for a glass of wine, right? Wait, little ways. But the more she built that muscle, the more she trained herself to actually look for places in which she was included, she wouldn't feel like she had a fight to be included.

9:15And as she did that, her whole energy shifted. She built a whole new relationship with her colleagues. And now the person that's her nemesis that never wanted her around, they actually have coffee every other week just to catch up. She gets what she needs and she doesn't feel like she needs anything more. So that's usually a best representation of what I'm talking about in the use of music. And in the book, I tell nine sorts of stories to give people an idea of, hmm, what is the playlist that might be going on for me? And let me look at what an example would be. And then we even provide their actual playlist to give you ideas for your own.

9:52Yeah. Well, this is really interesting. I'm just thinking, I hope you don't mind, while we're chatting, I don't know what those songs are, but I know how to use ChatGPT. At least that'll kind of get me started with some ideas around that. But here's the, like, here's, I think, what most of us can agree on. Music can absolutely change our state. And I think a lot of times, this is interesting. I'm just thinking about this. I feel like a lot of times when we're going to listen to music, sometimes it's kind of like how we pick clothes, right? So it's like, I'm feeling this way. This is the state I'm in.

10:35So I want to be able to find music that matches that mood that I'm in right now. And I wonder if we do that. My suspicion is that we do that a lot more than we say, I'm feeling down. Well, I guess I shouldn't say this. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself. But it's like, you know, if I am feeling like I need a bit of a recharge, why not? You know, put, I think I just saw like an article not too long ago, but Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. Yeah. Voted as like the most like psych you up kind of song I've ever written. That's great. I love it. I mean, I definitely, athletes know this, right? Yes, exactly.

11:16When I was doing long distance running and I would have music that would be suited for that stage in the run, you know, kind of like just getting started. I need to kick off. So I need a couple of things to get me motivated. Then I can kind of get into the stretch. Right. And then I want to, you know, go with just stuff that I'm going to not be thinking so much. I just want to pass the time. Right. So I'm going to be looking for stuff that's going to just kind of carry me. But then the vinyl, you know, when you're approaching like, okay, last mile, you know, you really, that's where you really want to kick in your, your supercharged songs to kind of fire you up and get you motivated.

11:57We saw some athletes doing this quite well in the Olympics this summer as well. So powerful tool for state change. It is, it is. And here's the thing. What I'm suggesting is we know music can change our state. That's why we work out to music. What I'm suggesting is that music can actually go even further and help you identify patterns that hold you back and help you accelerate transformation and shifting those patterns. And it's because of music's impact on the brain. So there's a whole chapter in how music impacts our brain. It lights up all four regions of the brain. It's incredibly powerful.

12:31You can think of it as like a fertilizer performing new neural pathways more quickly. Everything gets accelerated if you pair it with music. So if I'm looking to make a change in my behavior or patterning, if I pair it with music, I'm going to be more successful and it's going to be quicker. Absolutely. Well, just out of curiosity, if someone's wondering what's on my playlist, it's Foo Fighters. I asked for 90s rock. I got Foo Fighters, Green Day, White Stripes, Rage Against the Machine, Audio Slave Nirvana, Link in Park, Blink-182, The Offspring, and Queens of the Stone Age. I'm going to get fired up.

13:09Susan, your book is, I just wanted for folks that have been listening to our conversation. So your book is called The Leader's Playlist. You can search for it. Certainly, you can go directly, Susan, to your website, susandrum.com. That's drum with two Ms. And you can just click on book and you'll see everything you want to learn about The Leader's Playlist. Again, Unleash the Power of Music and Neuroscience to Transform Your Leadership and Your Life. Susan, tell me more about when you're working with clients, you know, either through, I don't know if, again, that's directly or it's through your primary website, but do you want to maybe just share, by the way, your primary website, MeritageLeadership.com, and we've got the links to that in the show notes for the episode, but do you mind maybe sharing what leadership consulting with you and your team looks like?

14:03Absolutely. So it's this similar idea of helping leaders understand what is their superpower and what are the blind spots or things that hold them back. I think as human beings, we think we are chameleons and can see 360 degrees, but we can't. We actually have a central vision and a peripheral vision. And where we point our focus of attention, that's what we see. But there's something behind our head we can't see. So what we're really doing is for both leaders and teams is pointing out where your focus of attention tends to go and where you tend to dial up information, but also where there's information happening, but you're dialing it down or you don't see it because it's in your blind spot.

14:45And so what we're trying to do is build the awareness and also really have people take action based on that to grow their leadership capabilities. We use a tool called the Enneagram a lot in our work. We have incredible amounts of the so what behind it. Knowing your type is just one thing, but how do I actually apply it to? How do I delegate more effectively? How do I get feedback based on Enneagram type? How do I coach and inspire others? We have all this vast content. So working with us is either we've got one-on-one programs. We've got programs for teams that we take teams through. And then we also do cohort leadership development for larger companies that have, let's say, a group of VPs that they want to take through a program.

15:31We design those. Sometimes they get one-on-one coaching. Sometimes it's all group workshop. Susan, any advice for type sevens? Absolutely. Who are founders and visionaries for their company. That's right. I'd say they've got a team of about 20 or so. Someone I know, for example. Yeah. Well, as a fellow type seven, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are sevens. And why is that? Because we don't want to be boxed in. We want freedom and flexibility, and we don't like to be told what to do. So we become entrepreneurs so that we can be the boss. But there's other types that also want to be the boss, like type eight, the powerful challenger.

16:12But as sevens, the advice is to slow down. and that is hard sometimes but to go deep and really the growth path one of the growth paths for type one is to type five which is the quiet specialist and so I would say the my biggest advice for all my type sevens is to learn to meditate to find a way I was hoping you weren't going to say that I know but it's true we need it more than ever in fact what we start to learn is will be more powerful if we stop running for a moment. Okay. All right. All right. I'm hearing this from multiple people. I need to get serious about this. I mean, as you can imagine, I have a little ADHD floating around in here as well.

17:03So yeah, meditation is a stretch for me. But I can't deny that there's benefit to it. It's just, you know, it's, it's exercise and training like anything else is learning a new skill. Look, I'll tell you, I never thought I could meditate. Believe me, I was in the same boat. I was like, no way. My mind goes a million miles a minute. There is no way. But there are so many different modalities and types of meditation. Just keep trying something that starts to stick with you. Yeah, you could you could listen to more breath work and start there because that's giving your attention somewhere to go. But it has really transformed my life, I will tell you.

17:44And it is a muscle that you have to just, just all you got to do is sit and close your eyes and stop judging how well you're doing it. Susandrum.com. Susan is your personal website. Meritageleadership.com is the consultancy's website. For a friend that's been listening to our conversation, what would you recommend they do from here? Well, a simple thing to do if you're curious about this is to go to SusanJump.com and click on the quiz that we have there, which is called What's Your Path to Enlightened Leadership? And it's going to highlight for you, it's very quick, it's five minutes, what your potential superpower is and the potential blind spot that could get in your way.

18:26And once you do that, what you'll also get is we'll be following up with you and give you the link to the chapter in the book that best represents that superpower. And with that, you'll also be able to download the playlist if you're curious and building out your own. So it's a good place to start because it gives you some data that you can work with. I love it. All right. To my fellow sevens, oh, give me land, lots of land under the starry skies above. Don't fence me in. That's going on the playlist right now, Susan. And I I got to find some playlists, obviously, that's going to get me in a meditative state.

19:00So I appreciate your good nature. Susandrum.com. Again, that's two Ms. Your, again, MeritageLeadership.com. And then to our friend that's listening to a podcast right now, you can just do a quick search and look for the Enlightened Executive with Susan Drum. Susan, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you so much, Josh.

19:29Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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