[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to Leading with Grace, Grit, and Greatness. Don't miss a second of this show or any other now media television favorite becoming the coach you didn't have. Let's kind of talk about that. You know, leadership begins with self awareness.
So welcome to Grace, Grit and Greatness. I am Vakita Poindexter, your host. And today I want to begin with a simple but powerful leadership question.
The leader you are, the leader you need to be, and the leader that's still trying to find their way.
So much is shaped into leadership of what we do, what we've experienced, what we lack, what we decided to become, what someone else told us we needed to be, blah, blah, blah. Real leadership is not only for strategy, but it's about influence. It's about awareness, reflection, compassion, and really the courage to look deep inside yourself to see who are you trying to shape yourself to become.
Now, y' all brace yourself because we're up for a good time with this particular conversation. My guest today is Carlos Martin, co founder of Continuing Leadership. I am not getting ready to go through all of this because I really want to jump into the conversation with Carlos, but he is going to describe his purpose in a deeply personal way. What it meant to be a coach. Why did he become the coach where his work centers around and this, that, and the other? He's going to help you become the best individual that you need to be. Getting past imposter syndrome. Your own personal narrative, you know, the philosophy that others have put on to you. Who is your true identity? He really helps people find themselves, and he does it with honesty, with kindness, with grace, and with grit and with greatness. Carlos, welcome.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Wow, that was an intro.
I love that. I feel pretty darn good after that. It's like, I want to hire me after that.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Listen, you know, I'm just going to tell our audience right now. We have this whole script that we're supposed to follow, but that's really not about to happen. We want you to understand that this is really going to be a safe place for us to have a real authentic conversation. But, Carlos, tell our viewers a little bit more about yourself. What made you decide to get into this coaching?
And how are you really helping leaders become the best versions of themselves that they can possibly be?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Okay, that's a loaded question right off the top. There are so many, so many things coming here at a young age to the country, to the US at the age of 11, not speaking the language, you know, not having the culture. There's so Many things that I came almost from a place of lack, if you will. I was lacking the money, the. The attire, the culture, the language.
And you don't, you know, as you start to grow up, you don't realize how much your life affected my childhood, affected me.
So I realized as I was going up the corporate ladder, there was a lot of insecurity, a lot of doubt. So I'm like, I need to work on that. And, you know, I went to corporate, I did all that. And I remember getting a coach for the first time, and I remember telling him, oh, my God, this is better than therapy. And he's like, whoa, hold on. I'm not a therapist. But I'm like, yeah, this is better. I'm like, oh, it felt therapeutic. And once I really saw that, I'm like, I want that for others.
And for me is like, how can I do that? Coach myself, coach others through that shifting of mindset? And not that I had to erase my past, but I gave it a different version. And then from there it's like, voila, that this is what I want to do.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Right. Well, number one, you had to do the work.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: And then number two, you had to change your mindset.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: And then number three, you had to get to a point where you didn't allow your past to impact the present, which could ultimately destroy the future.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: So how did you shift your mindset to say, I got to do things differently?
[00:03:42] Speaker B: You know, there wasn't really. There is one story that I'm going to talk about, but also it's all been a lot of little things, you know, but there is one story I remember.
Excuse me. I was sitting around with my now ex wife, and we're sitting down in Beverly Hills at P F Chang's, and I remember getting together and this was probably like five, six couples. And we're going around introducing ourselves because it's kind of fairly new group. And I kid you not, one person. Hi, my name is so and so, and I'm a surgeon. Hi, my name is so and so. I'm an attorney. Hi, my name. It was all surgeons, doctors, lawyers, lawyers. My ex wife was an attorney. And then it comes to me. Hi, my name is Carlos and I'm a technician. At that time, I was a guy that geeked out on repairing electronic boards. And I felt this small.
And it was them, they made me feel that way. How could they? They were putting themselves up there and they made me feel this small.
And I was so wrong because it was me that told me But I didn't have the capacity back then. And it was just. And I think that was a huge tipping point in my life that I felt so small, but I thought they made me feel. But it was me, my story. I said, I never want to feel that way again. And I realized that I needed to do a lot of inward work for myself.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: That's good. I have to tell people you cannot heal what you refuse to reveal.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: I love that.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: And so you. It took you to be in that position to sit around a table of influential people, even though you were influential at the time, you just didn't realize it had manifested itself yet.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Right. Yeah.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: And so that was the shift for you. Walk me through what happened next.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Well, again, it's not. It wasn't a switch. There was a lot of.
What I realized that there was a lot of individuals that believed in me before I believed in myself. From my. My brother to best friends, you name it.
They.
They're like, carlos, like, you should do more. And I'm like, no, it's not me. So it's so even after that point of where I feel so small, it still took a lot of people. So I realized my surroundings also the people that I hang out with, what are they telling me? Because I did have those friends that want to bring you down. I'm like, no. So I realize the kind of. The atmosphere that I was around. So again, it was so many little things that got me to where. Where I am.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: So what would be the couple things that you would tell an individual that has been in that particular situation or is in that situation today? They're sitting at this table, they have all of these influential people. Then they take a look at themselves and either say, I'm not good enough. I'm not qualified. They have this narrative of themselves. How would you help them switch that particular mindset?
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Well, it's. It's going to be hard, right? It's not. Again, it's not a switch. But I think what I recommend is have someone have that emot ally that you could have that conversation with to be able to open up and say, I'm going through a hard time.
Even if you're in the blame game, it's okay. Like the blame game, you point one finger and there's three pointed at you. But that's time for us to dig in. So what I recommend is not, I want to say, not to be afraid, but, you know, Brene Brown tells us the most courageous thing we, you know, we could do is vulnerability.
We're all there.
You know, I have. I always say the story.
As an executive coach, I coach people from, you know, in their 20s all the way to the C suite, and they all have imposter syndrome. It might look a little different. So I think that the biggest thing that we can do is talk to someone, a therapist or a coach, and start to get that skill set, that practice of letting things out, letting the insecurities, letting the fears and processing. Because once we start to do that now, we started going down that beautiful rabbit hole. Right. It's not a vicious cycle, but a virtuous cycle. Things start to reveal themselves, but it takes a little work and just know that. Get the right people surrounded you and then start digging in little by little.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you create an environment of trust, though? You know, people, you know, they're at their most vulnerable when they're dealing with their own challenges. I don't like to say problems or issues. I call them challenges as challenges you can overcome. Yeah, but how do you create that safe place for them? So when they are dealing with this, it's like, okay, I can be completely vulnerable where there's, you know, no judgment.
How do you create that space for individuals to actually show up?
[00:08:26] Speaker B: I mean, that's probably the number one thing as a coach that we can do, bar none. You know, bigger than anything is creating that space for someone to be seen and to be heard and just come in as neutral as possible and start to. At least for me, what I do is what we call level two, listening. I'm listening on everything. Their body language or their lean in back, their words.
And when we come from a place of neutrality from a coach and then just ask questions and be.
As coaches now, we are comfortable, right? With the uncomfortable or the difficult situations.
And then little by little, they're like, oh, wow, there's no judgment here. And he keeps asking me questions. Oh. And sometimes they kind of. They're hesitant. And just that practice alone, they start to get more comfortable. And so many of my clients, I'm like, they say, like, wow, I can't believe I just told you that. A. I've never said that out loud. Or like, are you just very intimate? And they usually thank me. Like, at this point, I haven't done anything. So a lot of this, just letting that out, but it's creating that. That space.
Can I necessarily describe it?
I don't know. That's a great question. But it's just creating that space. Just there's nobody matters but you.
And that itself is very Powerful.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: That's so good. So, okay, initially you said, oh, I'm not a therapist.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: I'm a coach.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: And there's so much talk about coaches and therapists.
Tell me why you made that statement.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Well, first of all, it was my coach that said that. I'm the one that said, oh, my God, this is better than therapy. And he said, wait, I'm not a therapist. And fast forward many years. I get that a lot.
Because we don't have the credentials as a therapist, so we want to create those healthy boundaries about that. So if there's something that's a lot deeper, it's our ethical duty to say, okay, this is my boundary. And to be able to communicate that and get them the proper. The proper help.
But I think there is. If we're looking at a Venn diagram, there's a lot of overlap. That is the way. That's the reason why it feels therapeutic. But we are not, you know, and at the time, I had a therapist and I had a coach, and I have to say, it was like a one, two combo punch. I loved it.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Kind of like Muhammad Ali.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah. That's why he was so. He was so great.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: I was a huge sports person.
So we think of therapists. We know that's clearly that, you know, you have some issues that you're trying to work on. When we talk about coaches, that's more from a leadership perspective. But how does coaching and mentorships. What's the difference between those two?
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Well, in my personal experience, a mentor is more like an advisor. Right. And so he or she might tell you things like what to do. On the coaching world, we lead from behind. We're not necessarily telling people what to do. We're digging in to get the answers that they may need. Right. We're not fixing them. They're not something to fix. You know, and as. As a mentor, as a consultant, you're kind of leading from. From in front to say, bobby, this is what I think you should do. And from the coaching, we don't do that. So again, it's leading from in front as a mentor and leading from behind as a coach would probably be the best way to describe it.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Okay, where are you seeing the. The disconnect and. And leadership when it comes to, you know, where I'm going?
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, there's so much there. Just disconnect, period. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: That's it. That you answered. That's my question.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think I do this on a daily basis, so I. You start to gain data, gather a lot, and it becomes very clear to you after a while and it's almost laughable. There's a huge disconnect because we're disconnected as human beings.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: We don't take the time to ask, tell me more. Right. Because we're so focused on the roi, on the numbers. Don't get me wrong, those are really important, of course, but always when I talk to my clients or any individuals when I'm doing a talk, I say, look, the ROI that's up here, the humanity is here.
So I'm not saying to only live up here, only live up here.
So when I work with leadership, say, for example, I'm doing like a 360 interview, we want to have a good balance, to be really not only a good leader, but to be an effective leader. And it's having both to be able to say what's going on, not what your numbers are, what's going on with you. So my big thing that I'm trying to every time I have a podcast or a show or a talk is how do we bring the humanity back into to the workplace? Because that is for me one of the biggest. That's kind of the umbrella issue. But there's so many under that.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: All right, perfect. Well, listen, don't go anywhere because if you're enjoying this, we have got so much more coming up. Stay tuned to Leading With Grace, Grit and Greatness with my special guest, Carlos Martin.
Welcome back to Leading with Grace, Grit and Greatness. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media television favorite, live or on demand, anytime, anywhere you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and in Spanish. Or if you're on the move, don't let that stop you. You can catch the podcast version at NowMedia TV. From business to news to lifestyle to culture and so much more, now, media is streaming around the clock, ready wherever you are at any time. So again, I'm here with Carlos Martin, co founder of Continuum Leaders and the host of Leadership Evolution. Now, Carlos, I want to talk about stories. Leaders carry the stories about who they are, what they deserve, what they fear, why do they belong. This is where leadership is deeply personal.
Many, many, many leaders, I can't say many enough, feel that they're accessible, but they're struggling on the inside. How do you help them navigate through that?
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Well, there's, there's mainly having conversations and asking a lot of questions to kind of unravel their mind, their Personal narrative, their identity, their philosophy. There's so much there like we were talking about earlier. It's. There are personal stories are. When we were kids, again, not that we're a therapist, but it's like we start to kind of peel the onion. What's. What's going on? What's holding them back? What story are they telling others about themselves? Or more importantly, what story are they telling themselves about themselves? And you start to dig in, and it's just really. Again, it's probably easier from an outsider perspective to say, oh, wait a minute, you know, and it's not that we're saying you're your worst enemy kind of thing, but you start seeing patterns, and you start to ask more questions, and then they make their own reflections, and they start to catch themselves opposed to us telling them, maybe you should work on this.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So oftentimes, you know, people will.
I know in my HR business, right. I'm talking to leaders and some of the challenges that they're trying to deal with, and they create this facade, which now we know it's called imposter syndrome. But here's the thing I like to say. I tell people all the time, you got to stop lying to yourself. Like, you can lie to everybody else, but you got to stop lying to yourself. You got to be true and honest with yourself, and you got to do the work within yourself.
How do you help leaders understand that that key is extremely important because it is impacting not just them, but their families, how they show up for their teams and everything like that. Because we always talk about broken people, create broken people. So how do we deal with that and stop that cycle?
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's an important one.
And people don't realize that it starts to affect them in their totality, in their life, not just at work. That's the whole thing. When I coach individuals, I coach all of them, not just at work. Right. And because they kind of. The person on the work, they kind of bleed onto each other. So I remember one of my clients one time, he called me. Well, he texted me, can we talk? Can we talk? I'm like, yeah, sure. What's going on? He just said, thank you.
Sure. Thank you for what? Like, you just made my relationship with my wife a lot better. And we hadn't even talked about his wife. 1. But if he was leading more with empathy, but having the conversation, be more empathetic with himself, with him at work, automatically went into the home.
And she. I remember him telling me, he's like, what. What's going on? Here, what are you doing? He's like, what do you mean? Like, you seem more at ease. You seem softer. You're asking more questions. Like, I love that. Thank you. And again, she had no idea that he was getting coached. And. And that's what he called me. Like that. For me, that was very fulfilling.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's celebrating those small wins.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: And how have you seen, you know, the people that you coach, you know, the, you know, the leaders that you've coached? How have you seen the changes from a business perspective?
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Well, it's how they lead because, you know, the perception becomes our reality. For example, I was mentioning that I do 360 interviews. So we do a set of questions for the leader and the stakeholders. And so not only the people that they're. They're. They're leading, but also maybe their significant other, their best friend. I like to get the whole thing.
And, and on top of that, they get questions that they.
Statements from. They don't know who it's coming from. But then they read these things. They're like, wow, Bob or Susie. Like, they start to look at maybe some comments that are. Can be uncomfortable. And. And then all of a sudden a little light bulb comes on. It's like, oh, wow. All this time I thought it was this kind of leader.
And. But the reality, it's different. So that's why I love the word perception, because whatever we perceive is kind of correct to us, but if it's different from the. Our stakeholders. So once we start to bridge that gap a little bit and start bringing some. Some awareness, if you will, then I start to see the shift. So. So obviously now we have the awareness from my client, and then they start to make changes. And now kind of like the same other store that I was telling you about, the wife, now it's the stakeholders saying, wait, what's going on here? And that kind of throws them off, like you're a different person.
And so I always ask, I always tell them, just keep doing what you're doing. Build that trust. At first it might be a little off, and you start to align. And now all of a sudden, the individual still feels seen and heard, like they matter.
So again, you go from a number to a person, and that's when I start seeing a huge shift. Another. Yet another shift.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: I think that's so good because oftentimes we hear people say, and I'm one to say, it's all the time. Perception is not always reality, but it is the reality that people live in.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Have to deal with People and their reality.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Not just your world and you just living in it.
And so really trying to help individuals understand that you got to be able to operate in other people's reality, even if you don't agree with it.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Because sometimes they feel like it's either right or wrong. Right. So if I'm right, then by definition they're wrong. So it's not about being right or wrong. It's just being different. Either a communication style, they're different, or, you know, we haven't really seek to understand, opposed to. I'm the manager, I'm the leader. I'm just going to go with it. Oh, wait a minute. You're like, there's something there.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Seeking to.
This is one of my biggest things. We listen to respond.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: We do not listen to understand.
And this is just not within the workplace. This is just in general, people will take just a snippet and like, okay, I got it. It's like, I didn't finish what I was going to say yet.
Kind of like, I just did what you want to cut you off when I'm super excited because I knew where you were going. Seeking to understand. How do you, as a coach, get leaders to understand?
You have got to listen to understand, not to respond and not be defensive.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Okay, now we're unraveling this here.
It takes practice to seek to understand and to bring their awareness to the individual.
But also, as we're coaching and my coaching world, I like to challenge when appropriate. So it almost becomes a bit of a dance. I'll let them talk and unravel. But then I start to challenge. But if I see them kind of back off, okay, I'll back off a little bit.
But I start to see what their internal triggers are and then how they're showing up. So if I say something, I could, I. There's a trigger there. Not that it was me. I'm the blame, but there's something behind that. And how does it come out? How does it show up? Now we're getting into emotional intelligence. How is that? What emotion is coming out When I did that trigger?
Frustration, anger, defensiveness.
Right. And if those are coming in, coming out, they're coming out probably at home and in the workspace. And we start to dig in a little bit more into that. And then it's like, wait, what happened? Then I. I let them know. I was like, I don't know if you noticed, but this is what's going on. It's like, wait, wait. So you start working on it little by little.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Well, this is so good. Internal triggers. You guys better write that down.
Write that down. Take. So I hope you are taking some copious notes.
So let me ask another question. So when we're talking about emotional intelligence, right. That's a term now that we are hearing a lot, a lot about for our audience that really may not really understand that and how that ties into leadership and how that ties into imposter syndrome and everything else. Break that down for us.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's different layers, but one of the simplest one is just we heard the word. You know, first of all, you'll hear EQ emotional intelligence. It's mainly empathetic. Understanding others and not only that, but understanding ourselves and be empathetic to ourselves. You know, sometimes we are our worst enemies or we always hear the term. If I were to talk to friends the way that I talk to myself, I wouldn't have any friends. So now we're starting going to have the awareness, but also the hyper awareness to start to dig in a little bit more. And the words that I use, how, you know, the, the empathy or the lack of empathy with others and ourselves and also the now and then a step further is the emotions that we're feeling or maybe the emotions of others and being able to say, I noticed when I said something that other person got upset or standoffish. That's emotional intelligence. To have kind of like those soft skills because we're really good at having the hard skills. Let's go, go, go. We got the numbers and we forget about the individual. Now we're going into the emotional intelligence.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: That's so good. That's so good. I think oftentimes people don't give themselves grace.
Right. And they are their hardest critic by nature.
I think that's really good.
Let me jump back into this.
I love the fact that we're talking about emotional intelligence. I love the fact that we're talking about empathy. I love internal triggers. I may just keep replaying that. I'm going to take my own copious notes when we get done with this interview.
From the coach's perspective, how does the coach make sure that you're taking in everything? Right. Kind of like you're dumping all the trash in to your own personal trash
[00:24:14] Speaker B: can like it's full.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Right. You're talking people off the cliff, so to speak. You're not therapists talking them off the cliff, having them to come to terms with who they are, accepting the good, bad. Right. And I don't think there's Any bad. I just think you're redefining who they are. How do you dump out your trash can?
[00:24:35] Speaker B: I don't think anybody has asked me that question outside of the.
The coaching world, but it sounds like you're a coach as well.
It is very difficult. I found it very difficult at the beginning. I remember crying a couple of times because sometimes you talk about some really heavy stuff and.
And not only that, but they were triggering some of my personal triggers.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: And it's like, whoa. And that is heavy.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Right?
[00:25:01] Speaker B: And.
And it's a process.
So what I love about the coaching in my coaching, coaching evolution is I learn as much as they have because they might not know it, but they, you know, at the beginning and now I've worked on it, so I'm good now. Now I come in neutral. But at the beginning, it was very hard because it would trigger something. And whatever that emotion, I'm like, I had to stay calm.
And again, I would just let everything out afterwards. And you start to say, what happened there?
What was that trigger? And why that emotion? And then I would have to go to my coach the same way. The same way that a therapist has a therapist. And the same thing with us coaches. We go to a coach as well.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Listen, don't you leave because we're going to finish this. What stands out here is that we're talking about perspective, not just being passive. It's about leadership choices.
So stay tuned as we come back. Carlos, this is great. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to leading with Grace, Grit, and Greatness. I'm Vaquita Poindexter, and let me tell you, I've got the honor of sitting here with Carlos Martin. If you have missed any of this, you need to rewind it and play it again and again and again and again. Make sure you stay connected to every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download this free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and make sure that you understand you can unlock nonstop bilingual programming just like this in English and in Spanish. And listen, if you're moving like Carlos and I, catch it on our podcast at NowMedia TV. From business to news to lifestyle to culture and beyond, we have something for everybody. So I want to jump back into this particular conversation that we were having, Carlos. We were talking about the coach, right? The coach sometimes needs to dump out their own trash can. And you had started with this, but I wanted to finish with. With. How is it, you know, you. You. You realize that my tank is Full. Right. I need to either empty out the trash can or I need to get refueled. What does the coach do to get refueled?
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Back up, talk to other coaches. And not only that, but I do. I walk in nature a lot to do a reset and you start to doing. You start to do like temper checks on your own. It's kind of like the burnout.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Right?
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Right. It's like, okay, when I, If I go back to corporate when I was starting to burn out, now I have the skill set to do that back. Back the days I. I didn't. But you start to realize what's going on. If I start to come to one of my client and I'm a little too riled up or down or up, like, okay, I need to come neutral. So I know that's a good way for me to talk to another coach and then just kind of go through the process and just sometimes just talking it out loud, that kind of puts me at ease. Because now I was. Like I was saying at the beginning, you know, sometimes there were some personal triggers. I've worked through those. So I don't get those anymore. But sometimes they can be heavy or they might throw me a curveball and I'll talk to another coach. We all kind of help each other.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: But yeah, it's. There's. There's times that. But now I'm. I have that awareness or that hyper awareness that I don't let that. That. I think you said the cup or the, The. The. The dumpster where the trash, I think you called it. Now it, it starts to pile up, but I'll make sure to throw it out before it goes because I felt it up here and it's very difficult to get out of that. So as soon as I start to feel it, I empty it out through walking in nature exercise, bringing awareness or talking to other coaches about it.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: That's so good. Because here's the reason why I asked that question is people have a tendency not to want to hear from somebody that hasn't been through anything. Right. And so I know for me personally, don't tell me how to do X, Y and Z if you haven't done it. So to have a coach that's authentic, right. That has walked through the fire, walked through the storm and come out unscathed, got some bumps and bruises, you got some cuts. Right. But you're unscathed. Now you're in a position where you want to be a blessing to help other people navigate through the complexities that you have and so I think that's extremely important. So before we jump into my next question, tell people how they can find you.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yes, you can find me on LinkedIn or on YouTube or Instagram
[email protected] or you can email direct.
Email me directly, excuse me, @carlosontiniumleaders.com and if you find me on LinkedIn, send me a DM.
Let's chat.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. One of the most authentic individuals that you'll meet. So let's talk a little bit more about giving people a level of comfort. Right.
How do you do you share your personal story with individuals that you were coaching?
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Well, I was talking to another coach about this.
And so in the coaching world that I come from, in the methodology, like I was mentioning earlier, we coach from behind.
And I noticed that it wasn't really speaking to me.
And I got coached by another coach that she would coach what I like to call alongside.
So she would share a little bit of her personal. She wouldn't tell me. She wouldn't go all the way to the front and tell me as a consultant, but she would help me through stories, the power of storytelling of her personal story.
And that helped me personally a lot. So now I use that approach, the methodology, if you will, where I'm from behind. And then I go in from the coaching alongside through a personal story. But I have to still be careful because I'll tell you, I'll tell you this, I made a mistake long time ago. I went through divorce many years ago. And early on in my coaching career, this guy came in and he was going through divorce.
I got you. I know exactly what you're going through because I went through that.
Well, boy, was I wrong. But that was also a lesson for me because we could go through a similar chapter, but it could be drastically different. I could be empathetic to it, but not. I realized that I don't know, I didn't know what he was going through. I could again have an idea so that, that taught me to like, okay, so again, it's coaching alongside not to tell someone what to do, but you could relate and say, this is what kind of helped me along and give them something to maybe, possibly to explore. And that I noticed that helps a lot of my clients.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Yeah, you can tell them. I kind of know. I've kind of been through a similar situation because oftentimes individuals, when they're going through challenges, they feel like theirs are the absolute worst. Nobody has ever been anything worse than theirs. Yes, right. Theirs is the tipping point. They are on the edge of the Empire State Building, and nobody understands. But then when you share a snippet of your story or your testimony, it's like, oh, yeah, it's not as bad as I thought.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. I never really thought about that way. It's just like, it builds a little rapport. It's like, oh, this person gets me.
This person's gone through that again. You're not telling, you're not fixing it. You're not doing anything. But it's just that alone that helps create that space to be seen and to be heard. It's like, oh, he gets me a little. Even if it's just a little bit.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: And that.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: That creates a little bit of like, okay, I'm in the right place.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it brings them all the way down to be completely open, honest, transparent. Right. It's building that trust. And now you can encourage and help them navigate through it. Now, your trash can is not as heavy. You know, you can refill your tank a little bit easier. So, I mean, that was good. So I think one of the things that I'm going to shift on narratives really quickly.
I think one of the things that leaders really struggled with, why they get extremely overwhelmed with some of these other challenges that we're talking about, is they never slow down.
Yes, there are 100 miles and running. I am guilty of that. Right.
So what do you do to say, hey, slow down there, buttercup?
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
A couple of months ago, I had a VP of a large company, and he saw me at the Delta Lounge because he was going from flight to flight, from meeting to meeting, and I said, okay. It was kind of a new client at the beginning.
And what we realized a big issue is that he never made time for him because he was on the go, go, go. And that was the big thing that we had to work on. It's like that was his aha moment. It's like, oh, my God, I never make time for me. Because as I started asking him questions, he was like, I never make time for me.
And I was there. Trust me. I was in corporate for a long time, and I think it's kind of instill in us. And again, it's okay, we got to work. But I think at some point, we are so laser focused that this is what we want to do, and I think it's important.
But we put our head down. We got to go, go, go. And my job is to try to slow them down and just put their head up and just look around.
Are you still going in the Right direction that you want to go, does this still serve you?
That's all we're doing. All we're doing is, you know, just coming up, breathing and just looking around and if that's okay, okay, then you can keep going. But most of us just go, go, go. So I'm like, yeah, keep going. And just so that's, I try to slow them down by my questions and you start to read and just by listening and let them talk, that in itself, they're like, okay. And then I could bring them back in and unravel that a little bit.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good because I think, you know, I want to get your take on this. Oftentimes as leaders, especially high achieving leaders, you know, we just keep going and we don't even stop to enjoy the successes that we've already done. Right. We just kind of keep going.
But we also sometimes are other leaders because I've learned better to do this, not think that if we slow down and we stop and smell the roses or we don't do something that we're being non productive.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very common, that's a very common one. I even, you know, struggle with that myself at times.
Especially when you're working with the, you know, in the C suite.
It's a very lonely world up there.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Extremely.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: And that's where it's, it's effective to have someone. Right. Because if you don't have all the answers, then you don't know what you're doing.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: That's weakness. You shouldn't be up there taking control of a company. Well, that's completely wrong. So that's why I try to create that space for them to kind of, kind of know. But it's the go, go, go again is just bringing that, that awareness because that is so instilled in us.
So again, I just, you know, say I have a client of mine. I encourage to see them every week, like for three to four weeks in a row because I want to stay with and I want to bring them down because they're up here so much that I just kind of bring them down little by little. And once they're here, then I can start working with them. Otherwise it's very difficult.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Perfect. Well, listen, I know that this has been really good for you because it's been really good for me. I know I'm learning something. I'm constantly in learning mode.
We're going to take a quick break and then we come back and we're going to talk a little bit more with With Carlos, about when do you need to reevaluate, you know, where you are currently as a leader and what you're doing? Cause you mentioned this. Is it still serving you at this point in time? And then the other thing, you know, quickly, just so that you can kind of be marinating on it, is how do we stop becoming so transactional.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: And be more relational? But we'll be right back.
Welcome back to Leading With Grace, Grit, and Greatness. I'm Vikita Poindexter, and again, I have the phenomenal Carlos Martin here, and we're going to continue this conversation about healthy relationships, healthy leadership, you know, switching the mindset, getting rid of imposter syndrome. But listen, I want to jump back into what we were just talking about.
When do you or how do you help leaders reassess that, where they are in the trajectory of their particular career path? Do they stay on that? Or when is there a time to reassessing if they're doing what they were called to do?
[00:37:32] Speaker B: I see that that is very common. You know, after they. They've done it, they made it, you know, maybe like director and, and. And above, that's when they start to question themselves.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: And for me is, again, that personal narrative that we've been carrying with us may no longer help us to go in the new direction.
And it's difficult to say, well, this is the way that I've been for years and I found success and I said, that's amazing, but now it might be expired.
So I do ask questions. To say, it's almost like when you go to work and you're looking at the process. Right. So for me, I come from a place of sales, and I'm always questioning the status quo. Why do we have this process?
And I remember my assistant at the time like, well, that's because we've been doing it for 10, 15 years. Like, no, no, I get it. But why do we have this? And I would get the same thing. Forget about it. And I will look into it. And every process I would question, does this still serve us?
Yes. No. Now, I might have served us when we had a thousand employees, but now that we have 450,000 employees, that's a whole different thing. Or it might be outdated. It's kind of the same thing for us.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: This. Does the way of thinking still apply and still work for me in the new direction that I want to go?
We're not questioning whether it worked for you.
So again, just bringing that awareness to say, does it work? Yes. No. Do we need to modify it, get rid of it, and then we go in a new direction? Because I just realized that people, they, again, it might be. That thought process might be expired, and that's kind of holding them back a bit.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: We're talking about change.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Yes. And sometimes that change is difficult. Right. Because we don't want to, or we don't know how, or we're on slow down enough to say, what is that change? Like, we, you know, it's very common. When I ask my clients, most of them know what they don't want.
And when I ask them, what do. What do you want? I don't know. That's what I have you here for. That's kind of thing. So it's just kind of. It's just kind of funny that they know what they don't want, but they don't know what they want. And that's when the. The work begins.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, change. You know, change sometimes is a very bad word to leaders. Right?
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: You have some that will embrace change. You have others that are saying, oh, if it's not broke, don't fix it. Some are like, okay, we need to move on with, you know, grow with the times, like with AI and everything like that. How do you get leaders to change from being transactional to relational?
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Ooh, that's. That's a big one. And that's one of my. That's one of my favorites. I know I keep bringing the word awareness, but it's also through storytelling and the 360 tools that you don't realize you're being so transactional.
You just don't realize it in everything. And I could tell it in their conversations.
Why? Because, like I mentioned earlier, because they're living up here, Right. And so my job is to bring them here little by little, and they start to ask different questions because now they have a different filter.
Filter here is like, yeah, I got to keep going. I got to keep working on the roi. You know, I got to go up. You know, are we trending in the right direction in regards to quarterly opposed to. Yeah, that's important. But again, I bring them here, and that little by little starts to make that shift to say, well, if I'm a leader and nobody's following me, am I truly a leader if I'm saying that I'm doing this, but I'm. I'm. My actions are doing something else.
So again, it's just bringing that hyper awareness. Bring it back to self.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. You talk about Fear.
And most people don't think that, you know, C suite leaders, CEO, high achievement individuals operate in fear.
How would you address that?
[00:41:27] Speaker B: In my data gathering. I know I keep saying data gathering. That sounds kind of cold. But when I talk to people, they have fears. We all have fears right now. They might look a little different, they might not be as powerful, but they still have. So for me, the fear comes out as doubt in or it comes out as, you know, an insecurity or as a frustration.
Fear is just, I want to say it's a facade because it is real.
But my, my job is to bring literacy to fear. What is the undercurrent of fear? Is it frustration? Is it guilt? Is it doubt? What is it? And then I'm able to better help them or they're able to better help themselves.
Once we kind of not necessarily label it, but I always talk about this brain. A. Brown is really good about saying, you know, we're pretty, you know, we're not that literate when it comes to emotions.
How do we really describe the emotions to kind of help us with that fear that we're dealing with? Especially in, I want to say especially in the C suite. But as we're going as leaders, we just not to become cold, but we're like, we gotta go, go, go. And then we forget about the emotions not only of others, but also ourselves.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Yeah. As leaders you gotta become from, you gotta go from being fearful to fearless.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. But again that's part of corporate and it's good to be fearless but at the same time let's not just go and be emotionless.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: That, that's the thing that okay, we can't just go too far and over index on the other side. We have to make sure that we're connected with ourselves and our, and our team.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: You still have to lead with humanity, you still have to lead with grace. Right. You can't, but you can't operate from a place of fearful. You can't operate from a place of insecurities. Right. Because that shows up in your, in your leadership style.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And look, once you conquer it, there's going to be a new insecurity, a new fear that's going to show up and that's the beauty of, of life and our journey. And you know, as we go we conquer something else. Now we got rid of that fear and then another one's going to show up. But again it's like how do we say, label it to. I'm not a big fan of labeling things but understand that emotion of what that fear, you know, is coming. Maybe again, it's doubt or insecurity or guilt or shame, whatever that might be.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: That sounds. That's good. So walk me through, Carlos. What are the three most challenging things that you see currently when you're dealing with your C suite leaders?
[00:44:08] Speaker B: Let me think about that, because there's so many.
One is they don't take the time for themselves to really understand themselves, because they're supposed to have all the answers.
And as you go up the corporate ladder, as you're dealing with more people, I'm not saying you start to get a little cold, but you're like, yeah, this is what got me here. We were just kind of talking about that. So that's a big one. Just to kind of slow them down.
Again, the awareness, the empathy, the emotional intelligence, concentrating on the soft skills. Especially now in the world of AI, things are moving so quickly, so fast.
How do we slow that down and almost go analog to. To kind of slow it down?
And probably the. The third one is, you know, again, connecting with our stakeholders.
Slowing down. Slowing down enough to connect with our stakeholders, connect with us.
And I'm giving you a lot here, but are we aligned? Is their vision align? Is their vision aligned, or is that trickling down to others? So, again, there's a lot of stuff to unravel.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things I found very interesting is, you know, one thing I try to talk to C suite leaders is making sure that your own personal mission and vision statement aligns with whoever you're working for or whatever you're doing, whether you are small business owner, entrepreneur, C suite CEO. Like, I don't care what your title is, but is your own personal mission and vision statement aligning with that?
[00:45:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a. That's a big one. And I see that. And a lot of times, let's go back to perception. Their perception might be very different. So whatever their vision is or their pillars, whatever they want, are they not necessarily alive? But does everybody know them? Are they aligned to you and your vision of what you want? And more often, they're not. You know, they're not in that. That could create a problem.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you touched on AI for a second.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: I know. Sorry, I went there.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: No, I was going there, but I was like, oh, good, he just opened up the door. So let me just knock it down.
There are so much conversations regarding AI, you know, especially from the C suite leaders perspective, and, you know, they're being inundated with questions from their team as far as, am I going to lose my job? Is AI going to take over? Which is now, excuse me, creating an additional level of uncertainty.
And so how are you coaching leaders to be able to say, to be able to deal with that? Because AI is an uncharted territory. You know, it's like the Jetsons we're watching in real life.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: In real life. Real, real time.
Obviously, it's, it's new to them, and it's also new to me as, as, as a coach. So we're still trying to kind of figure that one out.
And, and the reality is that things are moving so, so quickly.
So it's almost.
Look, I, I'm not an expert in AI, nor do I, nor am I a consultant to be telling C Suite how to deal with AI.
My job is about them.
So I try to bring a little bit of ease into that.
One of my really good friends, he's a, He's a director level. He took a whole course last year. It's obsolete already.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: Things are going so fast that we're putting so, so much pressure to be the best and to know everything. The new video, and it's almost impossible to get, get all that. So it's almost bringing a little bit of grace to themselves to say, okay, you're not going to figure everything out. And do you need to. So, again, we're still trying to figure that one out. It's just my job is to try to keep them as much as at
[00:47:44] Speaker A: ease as possible, regardless of what comes down the pipeline.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: So whether it's AI, whether it's bots, whether it's another pandemic, God help us.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: Edward, I know that's another one that I've been hearing about.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: But no matter what comes down the pipeline, you're still going to operate with the same, with the same grace and humility. You're going to, you know, if you got through one obstacle, you're going to get through another. You've been through one challenge, you'll get through another one. So how you handle it is the determinating factor.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So, for example, like I was telling you earlier, in my earlier days of coaching, when they were triggering me and I had a process now, like, okay, throw more things at me.
I'm neutral, I'm okay. And I think in the cc, we kind of have to be that way.
So if AI is a new thing, we can't just be overstimulated.
We have to kind of stay at ease and remain neutral as much as we possibly can.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Carlos, if the audience would like more information about you.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: Where can they find you again on LinkedIn? I have my YouTube, my Instagram, on my own show Leadership Evolving as well. And again, send me a DM on LinkedIn and I'll make sure to reply.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: Well, I've had a great time with you Carlos. We want to thank you. We want to thank the phenomenal Carlos Martin for joining us and sharing his insight on identity, perspective, coaching, connection and the deeper work of leadership. What this conversation reminds us is that leadership is not only what we do in front of people, it's also the inner work that we're willing to do within ourselves. And it is how we listen, how we see, how we create space, and how we help others become the best version of themselves that they possibly can be. To be more honest, to be more grounded, and to be fully transparent with themselves. And to everyone watching, we invite you to keep leading with courage, keep leading with compassion, keep leading with truth. Because when we lead with grace and greatness, we create a room for people not only to perform, but to grow. Stay connected to More on all of our NOW Media television programs.
