2369 - Practical Steps for Leaders to Foster Engagement and Connection with HEARTnomics' Hanna Bauer

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now is Hannah Bauer. Hannah, you are a keynote speaker, you're an executive coach, and you are the founder and CEO of Heartnomics. You are found on the web at heartnomics.com. Hannah, it's so great to have you. Oh, thank you for having me, Josh. A true pleasure to be here today. Yeah. Before we get going talking about the work that you do, I understand that you love to dance. Tell me more. Oh, my goodness. Well, any music, any rhythm, pretty much. If you find the person in the corner, that's probably me.

1:27If I'm in the room, I'll be like moving until I get pulled up. I know I love dancing from seeing it, tango to hip hop to. And then, of course, Zumba. You got to do Zumba. I mean, I know some people do the dancing, but my goodness, all the line dances that we get to do with Zumba is super fun. I love doing it with people. So it's, I'm a geek at it. I watch it. I love it. I encourage everybody to do it. It just makes life fun. Yeah. What, what, what have you been doing? Like, like what, so do you do, do you, do you go to classes or where, where, where do you just go out to the club? Well, you know, club finds me.

2:05I know Zumba, honestly, we have like five classes a night. And so we do that. And then we also have a lot of get togethers afterwards and restaurants. So basically we take over restaurants and we just start dancing there when they have a live band. So it's something that is absolutely fine. I firmly believe. So my wife and I go see a lot of live music and we like to see music that we can, you know, that we can dance to and kind of rock to or whatever. And I swear that that that keeps you young. You know, it's like and there's just, you know, it's like that energy of of celebrating with everybody else, too.

2:41It just makes you feel so good about the world, in my opinion. Oh, 100%. I mean, it's a bachata, merengue, salsa. You know, like I said, the line dances are getting very popular nowadays, even to like, you know, modern music. So it gets very intricate. But when you do it together, and again, I'm all about rhythms. So it is beautiful to get in the rhythm, not only with the music, but get in the rhythm with everybody. For me, it was a pure, beautiful picture of leadership and organizations working together. The rhythm that comes together and the fun that we can have. And really, it makes you feel good.

3:14It makes you feel good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you are highly sought after as a speaker. I mean, you've spoken for some really big organizations. Hannah, tell us about your work and what Heartnomics is. Well, Heartnomics is transformation through love and excellence. This came rooted back from having to go through, well, really surviving a terminal diagnosis of heart disease when I was young, being a pioneer in an innovative surgery. and really my lessons that came at a very young age, learning from that what love and excellence were because I'm really the result of innovation. And then transferring that over later on in life as I was doing my service and becoming a leader, going into really what the doors that service opens, which is working with great people and great leaders, to becoming an entrepreneur and being able to lead a company, educational company publishing for about 18 years and open the doors to serve some more.

4:10That's what I get to serve leaders and businesses, entrepreneurs, nonprofits. So it's been really a history of service. And that was actually my first aha moment when I came from after that innovative surgery was that service is leadership. And my goodness, it has proven time and time again, really being true in service opens doors and allows you to meet amazing people and do great things together. So let's let's kind of pick that apart a little bit when you say, you know, you know, again, I think we've all heard of like servant leadership. And again, it sounds like a really nice kind of leadership platitude.

4:47But what I'd like to do is now kind of maybe put some meat on the bones and talk about what does that look like in our day to day roles? Well, sure thing. So let me tell you, like a lot of my lessons came from the hospital, right, as a kid growing, growing up. And there were a lot of failure points. I was in a very critical condition. And the failure points also, not only were they devastating emotionally, but they also were the time to come, reassess, regroup, and let's try again. So that's where I started learning about the processes, the systems, and even the communication that happened from team to team.

5:22So when I saw it as a servant leadership, I saw the passion of really the professionals at that point because there was no cure for what I had. There was no research and it was uncertain. There was no clear cause of what, how did it happen? So they were really going in blind. As a matter of fact, when they did a 20 year anniversary of my, the innovative surgery, my doctor said they were just trying to keep me alive long enough for technology to catch up. And really that's where it came together. Servant leadership for me, when I saw that, I saw the love because someone said trying to keep me alive long enough.

5:58And the love that sustained was the community, the volunteers, my family, the service people, all the people that came in that really were serving, but also in the technology, in the processes and the systems was the commitment to excellence, that even in light of failure, they're still being passionate because they were purposeful in what they were doing. Essentially, this surgery and them doing this, me actually living out this example, opened the door at that time on the 20-year anniversary for 3 ,000 other kids to also be saved later on through the same procedure. So servant leadership is not just doing things, but it's the passion, the purpose, the people, the performance that come together, that align for us to be able to be not only integrous in service, but be fulfilled in that service.

6:46And I think what a beautiful message for today. I think that there, Hannah, of my experiences, there have been far too many leaders that I think have maybe presented themselves in a way that seems a little bit just too interested in profits. You know what I mean? And I think there have been a lot of bad examples out there. So I think that, you know, our heart-centered leaders, the ones certainly listening to this show, this episode right now, know that they don't want to be numbered in that, just because they're the CEO, just because they're overseeing a large organization. And again, I'm being unfair because, again, I think it's a few bad apples that might kind of spoil a reputation.

7:34But I think it's a great opportunity for those of us to double down in our values and what that looks like. Why do you think that this is all so critical today? And what are some things that someone, a leader who's listening to us right now, could do, not just say, but do, you know, in the week ahead? Well, Josh, you're not wrong at all. I mean, honestly, it's not, unfortunately, it's not a few bad apples. But I don't know if you've heard of the Edelman barometer that measures trust. Because really what you're talking about is the trust, it's the integrity part, where it says that over 70 % of the current people, the team members in organizations, do not trust the organizations that they're in.

8:13So we are truly in a trust crisis. We're not only in a trust crisis, but that does reflect in leadership. My mentor, John Maxwell, does say everything rises and falls on leadership. So we're talking about trust. It very much has to do with the leaders. So can we have an opportunity for growth there as leaders to increase trust? Absolutely. I mean, it's the basic of business for people that want to have those thriving businesses, right? I mean, we talk about who do we do business with? People we know, we like, we trust. So if they're not trusting us, they're not buying our services, our goods. But think about it.

8:53Who's our first customer? It's our employees, our teammates, our team members. So if they themselves already, this is what the data is showing. And we see that it shows up in disengagement. It shows up in morale issues. It shows up in people not being loyal to the organizations that they're in, leaving, not being able to keep talent. It's showing up. It's showing up in burnout. And with the burnout, a lot of times it's a frustration because, hey, you're telling me one thing and I'm not seeing the thing that you're saying. You're doing is not matching your words. So yes, what can leaders do is be intentional about building that trust on a daily basis because it is that trust that we're using.

9:32Really, that's the number one currency for the leader to be able to navigate change in times of where we don't know what's what is happening, what's going on. And absolutely, there's a lot of things that are changing really fast. Uncertainty is through the roof in every area of our lives, environment, leadership, economics, just places. We're seeing a lot of different moves, even natural disasters. So things are completely out of control. So there is a high level of uncertainty. And the only way the best service right now that our leaders can do is really being intentional about building that trust, which equates to the psychological safety that they bring to their organizations so that we can navigate the changes in a uncertainty that is right here, is in the present.

10:18Well, Hannah, share a little bit more about your specific work. Like when you engage with your clients, you consult. as well as speak? Oh, yeah. Actually, well, because that's my experience. I've served as a CEO. I've served as executive director. So I've been on both sides, right? I've been under great leadership. I also had to be that leader. And I've also made a lot of mistakes being that leader. So another one I speak about, too, is because I left that behind. And basically, I broke the system trying to do a whole lot of things that did not have the culture to support it. So one of the first things I do, I mean, usually people don't come to me, oh, hey, we have a culture problem, Hannah.

10:57No, they don't come to me like that. It's usually they have people leaving, income dwindling, or even opportunities, even just like, oh my goodness, we have this great opportunity and we don't know that we're ready to do it. So how do I help people at that time? Well, we started doing with an audit. We look at the communication systems, right? My background is also as a bondage systematic view. So I like to look at things in systems and I really do encourage the leaders to start looking at what they have as systems, because understanding that one solution is not going to only affect that one part.

11:28Every solution is going to impact or bring a problem and affect in other areas. So we can't be so focused on the one solution for one place without also being systematic and looking at what does this mean for the overall experience. So that is something that I do bring to the table is being into take a look at the systems, looking at the processes and looking at the people. Now, as I mentioned, I got I did do a lot of work and change with processes and system. I'm a black belt in Six Sigma. That's what we do. We get to the root cause analysis. We go to the most minimum data, everything to get to the what the problem, the root cause analysis, the root problem can be.

12:09But one thing that I, as I did that, right, started leading by processes, systems, and even finding like, hey, we're going to prevent every single way that we, this problem comes and we had it down is that I started thinking too linear. basically input output input output and i see that mistake continues to be with leaders today where it's like if i put this in i should get this out put this in i get this out except that we forget that we're working with humans humans are very complex anytime that you put a human to place which is what we do all work is by humans for humans and it's human centric it's going to be complex so that's the other part that i help bring to the companies and so you know how are we taking care of the human, how is this working for the people, the internal customer, the internal alignment so that we can do external execution that is not only high performing, but it's also fulfilling in the work that we do.

13:03Well, Hannah, your website is heartnomics.com and I'm on it right now. And it looks as though you've got some really great resources here. and how do you, I guess, you know, for someone that's listening to us and they want more of you, what would you recommend they dig into? Well, first is the assessment. I have a free assessment there. It's if you go under resources, you'll see their assessments and I have one for the individuals and one for organizations. And in there, it really helps you. I use the method beat core and heart so it will give you your heart score for your alignment and then as you are looking at what is the next step it's going to walk you through the beat and the core methods and that's the way that i actually help the organizations when we go in there uh beat us for believe engage act and transform it does an internal alignment because that's one of the other things it's not a lack of knowledge many times with with leaders so we're a lack of like hey one more thing to do we're doing a lot we know a lot but is it purposeful is it aligning one of the things that I realized again growing up from going to back to the cure for my heart was that they had to create pathways and in order to create a pathways what they really had to do with my heart was burn away the extra things and I find that that it takes as much skill if not more many times to let go to burn away those things that are no longer working for you in your organization or for you as a leader so that you can then be purposeful in what you do and be fulfilled in what you do.

14:38So that is what alignment is for. And you'll find those assessments there that will help with the alignment and using beat and core to align for core for corporations. What I do is they cultivate, optimize, reach and elevate and cultivate goes back to like the foundational things. Yes, we may have vision statements. We have mission statements, values, but where are they? but you know them i've served thousands of leaders and i can tell you less less than five percent probably can tell me by heart what their mission statement is what their values are they know they have them they know there's still in the world but they're not living by them and let me tell you this is the filter that's the that's why you exist so we go to cultivate and core and when we optimize through processes and systems and then we reach because we're reaching our internal customer and our external customers.

15:26So we go through that process and then we go to elevate to become not only the thought leader, but also innovation, because I'm a result of innovation. I'm a advocate for innovation. And we need not only innovative solutions, but we really need that creativity and innovative environments for the people to be able to flourish and really live up to their fullness of their human potential. Well, I know, and I actually saw this statistic on your website as well. And I've heard this before that about three out of five leaders report feeling some level of burnout. And I would imagine, you know, getting alignment here, finding, discovering our blind spots probably is going to reduce in just a lot more satisfaction and maybe burnout resistance and, you know, just enjoying that day to day a little bit more.

16:15And I'm sure that's your experience. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Again, we live in such a fast world and there's always a lot of information that we're getting of the things that we're not doing right or here's the new solution or the new hack for this a new hack for that we're hacking everything but every time it requires this learning curve um and i do find very well intentioned leaders that are amazing that are even leaving leadership like hey i'm done with that i'm just you know i'm gonna do my own thing or uh redirect or which is you know i this is too much um the burnout is there the in that really comes a lot from the lack of confidence too um the lack of confidence in technology um you can have a great strategy for software technologies but if you don't have the people readiness there for the technology transformations the digital transformations that you're going to add to um you will definitely burn out your team um that's another statistic actually this over um say i believe from mckenzie uh the over 71 percent of the digital transformations that happen fail not because there's not the the apps and the tools and all that but because there's not the leadership in place to be able to roll it out and execute and it's because our leaders already they're they're burned out they already tapped out yeah so um i can't even to realize even with speaking right it is a lot easier to prepare for a one hour talk than it this for a three minute thing.

17:42I mean, and you think like, how nowhere can that be because in three minutes, every single little thing counts, you have to be very strategic with every word you do. And we think that sometimes like, oh, we need to add more no actually having that less, it's going to cost a lot. So that is one of the things for the leaders, they are ready. We just need to be open and embrace the fact that we can get rid of those things and be more strategic, more specific, more effective and be able to really be fulfilled because if we're not guess what our teams are not either we can't expect to have a highly engaged organization if we're disengaged we can't expect for people to come in and be all for the customer service for the great customer experience if they're not having a great experience as an employee if they're not creating having a great experience as a customer again we cannot give what we don't have and that That is something that the leader is in a very unique position to be able to be the solution for that.

18:42And that is where the servanthood comes in. But it does take work. It takes intentionality. It takes the ability to let go, to empower, to trust, to build that trust. And it is something that we can build. And that's what I love to help people with. Awesome. Awesome. Your website, heartnomics.com, Hannah Bauer. I also see that you've got an ebook here called Hustle with Heart, which we have more time. We could talk all about that, but this looks so cute. 52 mini shifts to impact, to maximize your impact. Of course, you've got some great resources, including those assessments as well. Hannah Bauer, founder and CEO of Hustle with Heart.

19:23Thank you so much of Heartnomics. Thank you so much, Hannah, for joining us. Thank you for having me. A true pleasure.

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