RealTalk Podcast with Maureen Borzacchiello

In this show, serial entrepreneur Maureen Borzacchiello and her experts and guests, are helping growth-minded women entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses by providing insights and actionable strategies to tackle some of the biggest challenges business owners face and create more ease, success, confidence and joy in business and in life. You will hear from women sharing their biggest challenges and how they overcame them, for a little extra inspiration and insight. RealTalk is our speak – we are keeping it 100% - no sugar coating here. We acknowledge the trials and celebrate the triumphs to facilitate progress in each woman’s success path. We’re not just focused on the highlight reel. We will be shining a light on the messiness while getting strategic about success.

Leadership, Emotional Intelligence and Resilience with guest, Alicia Marie 02/24/2022

Leadership, Emotional Intelligence and Resilience with guest, Alicia Marie RealTalk Podcast: Episode 17 Guest: Alicia Marie Personal growth and development is critical to effective leadership. There is a huge misconception…Leaders are NOT born, they are trained, coached and developed to become great leaders. Leadership is relational, not transactional and has nothing to do with big personalities, charm or being persuasive. Those attributes are useful in interpersonal relationships, in sales but have nothing to do with what determines a great leader. Maureen’s guest is Alicia Marie, an expert in the field of leadership development. She has expertise and education and psycholinguistics, humanities, marketing leadership and management. Listen and Subscribe on: Introduction: Alicia Marie is a national leader in the field of leadership development. She founded . in 2000 with the intention of providing TOTAL personal and professional development solutions for individuals, teams, and organizations. She specializes in creating customized Leadership and Management programs based on desired outcomes. She has been a professional trainer for more than twenty years AND a professional coach with more than 20,000 paid coaching hours over the last 21 years. She possesses a UNIQUE education in Psycho-Linguistics, Humanities, Business, and Marketing. Key Takeaways: In this episode, you’re going to gain valuable insights and learn about: Emotional intelligence and its correlation to leadership. Transactional management vs developmental leadership. The power in developing language around emotion and how we live life from experience to experience. Executive Function and engagement. Stages of creation. The power of words (neurolinguistics). Energy for engagement and courageous action. Resilience and how it is a function of ego!! (ego drive and ego resilience…this was fascinating!) Imposter Syndrome and perfectionism. Best advice Alicia Marie ever received: Be yourself. Always. REALTALK: The best leaders are the ones who work on themselves all the time - they are the people who invest in learning, growing and self-discovery. Resources: Guest: Alicia Marie Company: People Biz, Inc. Social: - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter - Youtube - LinkedIn Listen and Subscribe on: | | | We'd love to hear from you! If there are topics or burning issues that you'd love to hear about, or if you would like to be considered as a guest on the RealTalk Podcast with Maureen Borzacchiello, just shoot us a note: or complete this short questionnaire: Want to learn more and connect with like-minded women? SEE TRANSCRIPTION BELOW Maureen Borzacchiello: () Alicia Marie is a national leader in the field of leadership development. She founded people biz Inc in 2000 with the intention of providing total personal and professional development solutions for individuals, teams, and organizations, she specializes in creating customized leadership and management programs based on desired outcomes. She has been a professional trainer for more than 20 years and a professional coach with more than 20,000 paid coaching hours. Over the last 21 years, she possesses a unique education in psycholinguistics, humanities business, and marketing. Alicia is a mother of three adult children and a grandmother of two. She is a yoga enthusiast and runner and the newlyweds, her sweet and adoring soulmate. Having spent most of her life in Texas. She currently resides in the Austin Metro area and works with clients globally. I am not only blessed to have worked with Alicia Marie in a variety of capacities over the last 15 years but most importantly to call her a dear friend. So welcome. Alicia Marie this will be epic for sure there is no doubt. Welcome. Welcome. Alicia Marie: () Thank you. I'm so present to how much I love you when you were talking Maureen Borzacchiello: () Ditto. I got a little verklempt when I wrote that intro. Well, Alicia, why don't you give people just a little bit of your background so that we can level set up a conversation. Alicia Marie: () A little bit in my background? Well, I've always been interested in personal growth and development before I knew that's what it was called well in my early teens. And even when I was nine years old, they were calling me a philosopher. And so I've always been really interested in why I'm here. What makes me tick is what's really possible for me to create or have, and I was a big reader as a child. I really have been a big reader. Most of my life, not as much as I did even 10 years ago. I think that that was really the linchpin of my imagination. And you know, almost like magical thinking, like what can I create or what can you know? And that really led me into training and coaching for myself. And eventually, I started doing it for others. Well, before, I started my company. Alicia Marie: () Sometimes people talk about like, they don't understand what do you mean you do leadership development. And I think that that's really sad. Okay. There's still that old idea that leaders are born and that it's not something you have to train and coach for and develop yourself around. There are at least 70 leadership competencies that I could knit and we have to train for that. We have to develop that and we have to create awareness around that and we have to make mistakes around that and we have to practice that. And I think that part of it is that people think that it has something to do with personality. And it has nothing to do with personality. Leadership is relational, not transactional. And as long as people think it's about them and their big personality or being charming enough or being persuasive enough or like that's all just control ground. They don't know what I'm talking about. When I say they should develop. Interesting. Maureen Borzacchiello: () Tell us more, because really a lot of what I've learned from you is like the basis of a lot of this is emotional intelligence. So why don't you talk to us a little bit about that because you have such expertise in that space as well. Alicia Marie: () Okay. So you wanted me to make the connection between leadership and emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence is the willingness to have the emotion, experience the emotion, and yet still act from what you're committed to, who you want to be, what your goals are, it's being able to feel the anger at your husband and still be loving. And most of us don't give ourselves that much space. There really is a difference between a manager and a leader. And I know sometimes we have to fill both positions, but I'm not really talking about positions, talking about manager, controlling everything, really focused on transaction and do me and leaders give that up and step back and recognize that their attention needs to be on the people, developing, growing them and leveraging them to get the results that they want. Instead of controlling. When we don't give ourselves the specs, we inadvertently start to relate to ourselves as an object and others as an object. Alicia Marie: () In other words, we objectify people. I pushing them around the chessboard. So if you think about the way most people relate to emotion, they either disassociate or they suppress intense around emotion, right? So if you're disassociating from emotion, you're not even feeling it. If you're not feeling it and emotion is low I'm talking about is it's just information that the body is giving you. If you're not feeling it, how do you think you're doing with others? What about all that information that's happening with others emotionally that you could receive? If you were connected to your own emotional guidance, if you're suppressing and you can't be with something and you tense around you, can't be with anger. You can't be with dissent. You can't be with frustration. You can't be with overwhelm. You can't be with fear, all that uncomfortable stuff. If you can't be with it here and you are tensing around it, I promise you're almost blind and deaf to what's happening when someone is experiencing that. And you're missing a whole lot. That's going on in your business. Maureen Borzacchiello: () As I listened to you say that, of course my mind is thinking in the context of our personal life outside of business and work, but then I'm thinking in the sense of the business world, right? And I would guess that a lot of people think or some have along the way, we're taught to believe that we can't be emotional. We can't have emotional intelligence or feelings, unless it's just good old gut instinct in the business place. I feel like it's such a misnomer. And I'll also say like, I've taken your courses leading change as well as leading change mastery over the years. And I always tell the story. When I talk about the program to people, how I thought, oh, I'm going to take this leadership course. And it's going to help me be a better leader, which is true. But what I thought was it was just going to be another curriculum, like driven team chat me as opposed to the Pandora's box of emotions and ideas that you present. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that. A how we compartmentalize in the scope of real life. And I'm using air quotes for those of you listening versus professional life, but also how it all plays together. It feels like there's five questions there. That's probably our Alicia Marie: () Compartmentalization was a really bad idea. Kind of like local tech multitasking life is holographic. And if it's exists here, it's over there. Somehow it just is. And if you can have a breakthrough in this area of your life, you'd probably have a breakthrough in that area of your life. And it's interesting that we like to try to separate. Um, so let me go back to what goddess there. Oh yeah. So what a lot of people hear when they hear emotional intelligence, developingemotional intelligence, they think they're going to become more stoic. They think that they're going to be like Mr. Spock, does that still relate? I know so many people don't know star Trek, gen Z. Alicia Marie: () And, um, we are emotional beings that think sometimes that emotion is at the center of our experience. It is our experience and we're always experiencing something. We're experiencing something now and now, and now, and now what people are often describing the describing emotional is what happens when you suppress it's like shaken up a bottle, it's gonna come out sometime, right? So it turns into tears or blow up in some way. And then they call that emotional. Well, that was actually just someone suppressing for a really long time. And also over emoting is the same as expressing it's your inability to be with the experience. And so you're trying to get it out, which was a big misinterpretation of Ford, by the way. So if we are, if you can accept that we are all emotional, there is no such thing. As someone as being emotional, someone is having an experience that we're judging. And when we judge that, I promise you, you can point the feedback on yourself because one of the biggest inhibitors to developing yourself emotionally is that you judge that emotion bad and it inhibits our joy and our peace and our satisfaction and the ability to love and ability to relate to other people, right? Because you can't feel the uncomfortable stuff. You start to nest inside yourself and you can't feel the good stuff either. Right? Maureen Borzacchiello: () You get to a point of apathy where you're just numb. Alicia Marie: () Yeah. And a lot of area, interesting Maureen Borzacchiello: () People are saying, what is this leading change? Let's take a minute to step back and talk about the programs because you have leading change. And then once you graduate from leading change, you're eligible to participate in leading change mastery. So why don't you talk to us about those? Alicia Marie: () Okay. So you've really been hearing about leading change already. You know, people apply, you have to apply. I'm really looking to see, is this a tire kicker? Is this someone who's going to do? The work? Is that some big application for that reason, I'm coaching clients get the course for free, but they still have to do the application. And this is a course that a lot of employers sponsor their employees in. And so I want to make sure that they're really in, and they're not doing it because their employer wants them to there's even a little box. They check saying, they're not doing it because their employer wants them to. So they're not being forced to do it, right? So it's based in the tenants of emotional intelligence, but I don't talk about it as much as you would think I do, because what I want to do is develop them emotional, right? Alicia Marie: () So to develop someone emotionally first, they have to start to understand how human beings work and how we operate. And so I start to build the foundational pieces for that integrity, which is like, think about your whole complete and sound in their various to your expression of that. Or there are things you're doing that are not aligned with that. But if you start off with the whole idea that you are integrous, not moral thing, but that you are, then there are just times when you're out of alignment. And I have people start to look at that because that's where power that's where you experience real power, right. Is when you can relate to yourself as sound and whole and complete. I distinguish what it feels like to be in a powerful place. And I distinguish what it feels like to feel powerless, which we've all been in both places. Alicia Marie: () And then I'm normalized both because it is all part of the human experience. And then we start to talk about when we're in one place or the other throughout the entire course, and I break it down. But if you think about also what's necessary, as people need to start to have some language around emotion. And most of us have a very small vocabulary. We say things like stress, which is absolutely non-descriptive and does not say anything. It could be unwell, frustration, anger, fear. I mean, there's all kinds of things that, that could really be happening there. So when we develop the language for emotion, and by the way, the language of emotional intelligence, I'm doing a workshop on September 17th, but you have to done leading change to do it. Okay. Yeah. I wrote it down. So I wanted to make sure I mentioned that because most of us don't have in the more you have to understand the dimensions of emotion, for example, sadness, disappointment, grief, resentment, all kind of live in the same space, but understanding the nuances around that and being able to identify that for yourself is a game changer. Alicia Marie: () The other thing that's happening, if you think about we disassociate, we suppress and we tell big stories about everything. We'll say that person did this to me. Instead of saying, I'm feeling betrayed. We say, right. So we talk about the circumstance or situation instead of really exploring what we're experiencing and they'll live as if that story is true. And so I go do exercises with people to distinguish that. And the other thing that happens in the course is people really recognize this. Isn't an intellectual thing. I would have to train for this. I'm going to have to train my body to relax. When I test, I'm going to have to train myself to breathe when I'm experiencing uncomfortable stuff and on the mindset, I'm going to have to learn how to recognize it's thinking and be curious and flexible and develop the muscle of the inquiry. And when you have those two things, you can shift pretty quickly from fear to courage or from apathy to, to willingness, right? So emotional agility starts to happen. Now, I haven't talked about the brain at all around this, but there's a lot that goes. And then I, what I do is I flip this. So I have you worked on themselves for 10 sessions. And I said, okay, we're done with that. Now I'm going to go work on what's happening in your world for prep session course, 15 sessions, three sessions a month for five months, total investment about 25 hours. Maureen Borzacchiello: () And I'll tell you, you gave a great overview of it because I think when I think of leading change, you absolutely helped me become more curious. You helped me look at what are the real feelings of in regard to a situation? Is it good or bad, or could I just be neutral about it? You know, can I explore? And I think it's so fascinating because I think a lot of people have the notion that it has to be good or something has to be bad. And then it can't be both or it could be neither. And I think that it helps you explore that and understanding how we amplify things. And like you said, make these huge stories about something that isn't really true. And then how that ripple effects in our personal life, in our business life Alicia Marie: () Leading change about this was just probably from when you did it. There's a lot of things in the news since you did it, but that anytime you catch yourself in judgment in anything, and I know your mind is always, but anytime you catch yourself in an attached way, judging something, you taking yourself out of the game of life. You're no longer participating. It's a way to not be engaged in way is it's a way to not be engaged in what's happening right now. We step back. We judge, right? There are a lot of certain situations where that has to be a good thing, but if you're stuck there, you've taken yourself out of the game, you're no longer even participating. He's a jerk. Now you're out. That's what it is. Now. I no longer have to engage. This is a bust or that situation will never work. Like when you get into that type of fixed thinking, you're no longer in participation. Maureen Borzacchiello: () Hmm. So people go through the course, tell our listeners more about what happens as they start to get to the other side of this awareness and this emotional agility and how it really impacts them as a leader. Alicia Marie: () Well, executive function is a big word right now. It has been for the last few years. And what scientists are talking about is they're talking about brain activity. And when we're in fear, we're hanging out back here on more critical thinking, rubber here a lot. This is all simplified. And we're more frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex. When we are engaged, this is where emotional agility happens when we're participating, when we're experiencing those beautiful hormones, like oxytocin and serotonin opens up vision and strategy and the ability to relate to others and empathy and compassion. So think about whole front part of the brain is that how, think about how important that is for leadership, right? Then you can be strategic that you can envision that you can be curious that you can be emotionally agile and classical and being with whatever's happening in the room. And what happens when we hang out and fear and control. Maureen Borzacchiello: () And that's in the back for those that are listening, Alicia Marie: () Okay. People who run on and travel. And of course, or in other words, we're not stressed about the big drivers, you know, and they don't know how to get to the front, right? They're wearing their bodies down. So a couple of things that happen, people report more energy. And here's why self-conscious monitoring goes down. Self-conscious monitoring is where you are behaving or saying something to get an effect. So the more we become internally directed, focused on our goals, commitments, experiences, and less in reaction to... /episode/index/show/realtalkforbusiness/id/22246019