0:00

(upbeat music) Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Leadership Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Stewart, along with my brother, Peter Stewart. And today, we have a fantastic guest. Angie, welcome to the Leadership Growth Podcast.-Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.-And Angie Wiley is, well, we're going to be talking about adversity and not only her story and her passion, but her insights. Tremendous, great ideas to help all of us as leaders manage through adversity. So, let me first read Angie's background so that we have a sense of who she is. Angie Wiley, she believes we don't become our strongest when life is easy. We become our strongest through the climb. Through her company, You Are Strong, she helps athletes, leaders, and teams develop the mindset to perform under pressure, navigate adversity and keep climbing. I love this climbing metaphor as well. I'm sure we'll weave in and out of that. So, this whole idea, we all have adversity, we all have challenges, and sometimes we have this automatic reaction of, ah, I don't like this, or I don't want it. And yet, even in the moment,(laughing) it can be a blessing in disguise. We can learn from this. We can become stronger. And so, Angie, as we're starting off, tell us a little bit about your story. What led you to have such a passion around helping leaders and professionals work through and leverage and see adversity in a different way, perhaps?-Okay. Well, I do, I want to start with the fact that I was a college athlete, and in that, I really took to the mindset, the power of the mind. Why do some people, you know, hit adversity, hit the wall, and they're able to keep going? And then other people hit it, and you just see them stop and struggle. And then it really translated into my professional world. And I was in medical device sales and sales management for 22 years, and I saw the same thing take place there. You know, we saw people, you know, excel and, you know, go up against some of those struggles and challenges and really flourish. But then you also saw how that mindset and adversity impacted others and they didn't succeed. And I have always just been very passionate around human psychology, success, high performance. And, you know, it was in 2010 was when I became a manager. So I had a team across multiple states and had done that for a few years. And then my husband was diagnosed with cancer. And so, you know, as a leader and as a team, and it's a high pressure industry where you're hitting numbers every quarter, you know, I was on the road at the time. I had... My kids were in competitive sports, and so the demand, you know, was high. And then that was another layer. And it wasn't a good diagnosis. We went through five and a half years of, you know, challenges and ultimately lost him in 2020. And, you know, through that time, of when you look at all the leaders that we have out there, none of us are going to escape adversity. You know, some of us hit it at different levels, but, you know, it's like I've coached people through it. But when I personally had to walk through it and for such an extended period of time, that was where I really took my work, and what I was doing with You Are Strong, which I had started part-time in 2013, which, you know, is a passion of mine, obviously. But with my late husband's diagnosis, it made me go deeper at another level where I really had to dive into the work that I was teaching. I had to live it at a whole nother level. And it allowed me, even at that time, to become a better manager and a better coach. I think as we see leaders, and most of most leaders, I would say we're high performers. We're drivers, right? And things that we come up against, we push. And we think we've just got to push harder. And you're going to hit a limit where that philosophy doesn't work. And so, for me, it was really to shift, and not just in this way, but when you start looking at adversity through who can I become through this and how can I grow and not just how can I grow, but where do I need to grow, to not just survive, but to get better along the way.-Yeah. Angie, thank you for sharing that backstory. Our sympathies for the journey you've had to go through, you know, with that, with that tremendous loss. But what, what a, I think a credit as you're trying to use that to then help others, to say, okay, what can we learn? Because it doesn't matter where you look, we're never that far from significant crises, trauma, trials, adversity in our own lives or in the lives of those that are close to us. So that's just very much a part of human existence. So I think we can dig into the individual response of how we respond to adversity as high performers, as leaders. But let's just take a real quick tangent because I'm working with so many leaders across organizations who struggle to know what to do with a team member who has a spouse who might have a terminal diagnosis or a kiddo who may be going through a significant trauma or trial, whatever. Like how can they best balance the need to keep an organization flowing with the empathy needed through those trying times?-Looking at that question when, you know, as a leader, if you are a leader for any extended period of time, you're going to have, you know, a teammate, an employee that is going through something hard. And how do you still maintain leadership and walk through, you know, someone, you know, through that? And for me, I really am highly personable with my team and connect. You know, we're, we're all humans. And so I had that connection with my team where I did have that empathy ear, where I was for, you know, there for them, and they knew that. And at the same time, you know, I probably put on my coach's hat, you know, in regard to holding that space for them, you know, and being there for them. But then also I think when we're going through something hard and we want to push, then we, it's easy for high performers to judge ourselves where, you know, it's like I'm not doing, you know, it's not, you only not only have the life, you know, adversity that's heavy and hard, but then we're going to be hard on ourselves. And I'm not living up to this, and I'm not able to you know, do the job that I was before. And, you know, so that layer of beating up on yourself only adds an additional layer of heaviness. And so it's trying to remove some of that from them. Like, let's lighten up on the expectations. Like, let's give yourself a chance to breathe. And let's not look at the whole picture right now. Let's just really focus on the day and who do you want to be today?-Mm hmm.-What are, you know, bringing it back to keeping them present, because I think any time, one, we're going through something hard, it's easy to try to jump to the future and figure it all out, and that just creates more stress. So pulling it back in, what do we need to do today, you know? And whether that's for their family, whether that's for their job, you know, what has to get done. But it's just looking at the next step. And what do you need to execute on just to get the next step? And really keeping them present, I think, helps to reduce the additional layers of stress. And when we remove that as much as we can, I think it helps with performance and it helps with how we show up.-It's a powerful reminder of being in the moment. And to be able to understand what we can do now instead of getting so confused and overwhelmed with the million possibilities in the future. And so it's a great thing for all of us as leaders when we are in periods of incredible uncertainty and stress and challenge. How do we remind ourselves to adjust our perspective, instead of looking so far out, let us focus right now and let us ask then, what can we control? What can we influence and what can we not control? And thus, where can we make that difference today for us, for our team, for our organization? And one of the key elements of this is this resilience idea. You know, we hear this term resilience. Angie, what have you learned? What have you noticed around the different conceptions that people can have around resilience? What have you learned as you've gone through so many different phases of adversity? Talk to us about that.-You know, one, just hearing you talk through some of that and ask the question,

one thing I would touch on is: 10:11

you know, what is success? And that can be a challenge as a leader because success for, you know, me as a leader from the standard that I had from, you know, my boss was a number, right? And so it was like hitting the number. But I think sometimes when we peel back those layers and we really look at what is success, it is being able to have that level of peace and happiness and joy with what we do, you know? And it's so it's even looking at how do you define success? Because when you're being resilient and you're push, push, push, a lot of times I think we're just focused on the number. What I have found in being a leader is when you build the people on your team, when you are there as an ear, you are building humans, you're challenging them to get stronger. Your success is going to come. But if your resilience, you know, that I think so many times corporate world or the push environment wants to define it, it is push, push, push, and eventually people are going to crumble. They're not going to be happy. They're going to fold. And ultimately, we do not as leaders get the highest level of performance out of our team when we're building that type of culture. And I'll just share, I experienced it firsthand with some of the things that you talked about. I... it was in the middle of whoo, I might get emotional, but I'll get through it if I do.(laughing) But it was, you know, in the middle of my husband's treatment. And hit a point where it was like I knew it wasn't going to go the way we wanted it to. And it was such a challenge to not look to the future, right? But I couldn't, I literally couldn't survive if I kept thinking about what was coming. And so I think that's, you know, it's where some of the greatest lessons that we can learn in life is when we are stuck in that struggle and we're stuck in the hard adversity. And it, you know, it actually sent me to the ER. And here I thought I was doing, you know, all the mindset work,(laughing) but not to the level that I needed in going through that. And I had all the tests. And of course, they came back. They wanted me to get stress tested. And, you know, it was like, I think I just went home and took a deep breath and was like no, like, I've got to do this work at a whole nother level. And so I did. And doing the work in the adversity, when you're trying to maintain all these expectations, for me it was creating time in the morning where I, number one, had to take time to connect. Very spiritual, God-led. So, and I wasn't giving myself that time, that moment. There is so much power in us as humans and being still.-Yup.-Giving ourselves that stillness in the morning before we start our day, and even sitting with who do I want to be today? Who am I becoming? Where do I need to grow through this? I journaled. I prayed. I meditated. I sat with it. And I did it daily. And I've had professionals along the way tell me, I don't have time for that. And my reply to that is, you don't have time not to. When we end up carrying some of the things that we carry and this load, you know, that we end up with us, whatever is that adversity that, you know, you may be going through, like that is the difference in the day. For me. And I have found that it is for a lot of other people too. And so, just to share that personal thing that I learned at a very deep level going through, you know, the biggest adversity I've ever had to go through. It was very impactful.-Oh, it's tremendously impactful. And you're sharing some really powerful insights and great advice. You're reminding me of just this notion of flexibility that's required as we're going through adversity, and not just flexibility in terms of being able to roll with what life is bringing, but flexibility in terms of the focus that we have. And so often, as leaders and people who've had success in life or, you know, achieved things, they've gotten into levels or titles or whatever it might be. We as leaders can be very focused on the future. You know, it's that destination, it's that objective, it's that goal. But what really you're advocating here is that ability to be flexible of where that focus is, long term versus near term. And so maybe I'll make an analogy to photography. How oftentimes we're able, when life is fairly steady, to go through with the autofocus feature on. You know, things will get focused on, we'll get through things. But when the real crises hit, we need to intentionally shut off that autofocus and pivot to manual. Do we need to focus near turmoil just right here and now, the next twenty four hours? Or do we need to focus on tomorrow or the end of the week? But we control that focus and that adjustment there. And you're giving us steps and reminders to do that, to be intentional. Because we can get in autopilot, that autofocus, but we have to be in control of where we are focusing that lens right now.-Right. Yeah, I love that analogy. It's so true.(laughing)-So, what can we do as we're looking at... Let's take a look at, we've talked about adversity, we've talked about pressure. We've talked about success. Let's bring in this other word that often comes with it. And it's this F word of failure. And what is the relationship between failure and pressure and success? And how can we view it in a lens that's more helpful?-Well, so failure is inevitable, right?(laughing) Everybody on here knows that. And when I think about pressure, it really is, one, I do want to pull in the analogy of the climb. You know, my fam... going through this life adversity, you know, I signed up and then my family was interested. So we all signed up to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest, so 29029. And we did that last fall. I signed up not knowing if I would be able to complete it or not. So I was risking failure, right? But I wanted the hard physical challenge because I think the, you know, you just shared the analogy with the, with the photography. And I think the climb analogy is also another analogy to going through something hard in life. I intentionally wanted to not know if I could do it. I didn't want it to be easy because I wanted to feel all of that. I also wanted to live in real time what I teach. And when I look at mistakes and failures, you know, whether I'm working with an athlete or a professional or teams, mistakes and failures, we have to look at them differently. So many times people, you know, experience a mistake and it doesn't feel good. And I tell them it's never going to feel good, right? Because we're human. So that's the natural human response is it doesn't feel good. But instead of looking at it through that lens of I'm not good enough, why did that just, you know, happen, and that dialogue that would, you know, take off in our head, it's really pulling it back, you know, and saying, okay, I made a mistake. Number one, good. That means I was pushing myself. That means I was trying something new. And I'm going to really look at it through that lens of how can I use it to get better and, you know, really look at it as a building block. And so it's our channel to growth. If we aren't pushing ourselves, experiencing mistakes and failures, we're not growing.

And, you know, I'll use, you know, an athlete analogy is: 19:03

you've got to get out there and give it 100%. And if you're not giving it 100% and making a mistake, you know, that's a mistake in and of itself because you're never going to reach your full potential if you aren't out there, you know, giving it everything you've got. So the analogy of 29029 was, you know, giving myself that opportunity to do something new, experience fresh mistakes, failures, and, you know, push myself to that next level.-So let's take this to the very practical level. As you're working with a leader or an athlete, a professional, where do you start to help them begin to shift some mindsets? What are some practical things that folks listening to this can kind of take and start working on their own perspective?-So, you know, I start really with the foundation, and to me, the foundation is what dialogue do you have going through your head? What thoughts do you have running through your head? Because our thoughts run continuously. You know, Google it. You might get different numbers of how many thoughts, but the point is, is that it goes constantly, and we've got to get really aware of the stories that we're telling ourselves. Because when I look take somebody, and typically if I start working with someone, they're not happy with where they are. Maybe they feel stuck. You know, their performance isn't at the highest level, or they feel like they've, you know, dipped down. And, you know, and so we really got to start looking at where those thoughts are, the stories that they're telling, and not just that, but those stories lead to beliefs, and the beliefs that you have about yourself. And the thing about performances is that you will never outperform the belief that you have in yourself. And so the baseline is what stories are you telling? And so many times the thoughts and the stories that we have running through our head, number one, they hold us back because a lot of times they're negative, right? Like, I'm not quite good enough, or you know, why can't I, you know, get this right or perform at this level? Like, we typically have, you know, one, it becomes a habit. Your thoughts, you know, those thoughts become beliefs. And that is what is holding somebody in that place that they're not happy with. And so we start peeling that back, and you've got to start shifting and changing the stories to start changing the beliefs, start changing that blueprint. And so, as we do that, we also look at the thoughts that you have lead to how you feel. And you're always going to perform your best and show up your best when you are in a high state. And we all have high states and we all have low states. Those are the emotions, right? So it's the whole, you know, the high emotions all the way down to the low emotions. And we... I start teaching, you gotta get conscious about that. That's gonna lead to how you feel. And then you've got to start paying attention to how do I feel right now. And if I'm in a low state, it's like pausing and reflecting on what story am I telling. And so many times the stories are not true, and we start shifting the stories. And so, as you can climb up that emotional scale and learn to get yourself to a higher state, that is where your performance is going to start improving. Your belief level is going to uplevel. And you are going to start hitting your next level in performance. So that's when you get the outcome that everybody's chasing.-That's true. You're giving a really good foundational overview of cognitive behavioral therapy(laughing) as you look at this foundation of this connection between how our thoughts lead to our feelings, which lead to the actions and behaviors we do.-Yeah.-And being very conscious of those automatic thoughts,-Yeah.-that we have. Because why do they exist? Because our brain is trying to be as lazy as it possibly can. We fall in these patterns, we fall in these routines, call them schemas, call them whatever you want. And when you change out of that routine, it takes more effort.-Yeah.-And our brain is somewhat resistant to that because we've evolved over time in situations where resources are scarce. So, our brain kind of fights against us in that way.-Yeah.-But as we're able to say, wait a minute, no, no, no. We're in charge of our own brain.(laughing)-Yes.-We can alter these thoughts. We can change them so that it leads to, oh, wait a minute, not I'm going to fail at that, to I can give it a try.-Yeah.-Or maybe even, I've done this before. Like, I've succeeded at stuff I haven't done before. And then, how does that transition, in your words, from that low state to that high state.-Yes.-It really is a powerful process, but it takes that practice over and over again. And failure while we practice.-Yes.-Because we don't always fix it right away.-Yeah, failure is definitely a big piece of that. You've got to reframe how you look at it.-Yeah, we fail fast.-What about this idea of doing it alone? You know, there's sometimes we can think, whether it's the Western mindset or our own ego or something, it's like I can tackle this. I can do this alone, so to speak. And yet, talk to us. How realistic is that? How do we involve others? How do we manage that reaction that we sometimes will go to when in fact, maybe that's actually not the best approach?-You know, going at it alone, I immediately just go back to think, you know, when you look at high professionals, high level professionals, whether it's professional athlete, right, or, you know, even your, I think it's getting more commonplace. People have coaches. We have coaches for a reason because I think so many times we can't see what's on the end of our nose.(laughing) So, you know, it's like, where's my blind spots? Where's... where do I have stories that I'm telling myself that I just think is reality and don't even believe that I have control over it? And so going at it alone, I know a lot of people, you know, may do that, but I think when you are able to bring in coaches, support, at a minimum, really learning, whether you're listening to podcasts like this, and then you're not just taking in information, but you're applying it and you're really letting that information become a part of who you are. It helps if you have a coach. If you do it on your own, you've got to be really conscious about, you know, really letting it become a part of who you are and changing, because, you know, like you said, it, I mean, it's a habit, right? We get on a hamster wheel, and so you've got to do something to interrupt the habits that we have, whether it's our thinking and our emotional responses, and then how we feel, like we have the ability to change that. And sometimes it can be really hard if you are trying to do it alone. So coaches, coaches do help in that process. They can speed it up.-Yeah, they sure can. And it's just frankly lonely going through those situations alone.(laughing) So, not only do you get the advice from others, but it's good to have, you know, potentially a cheerleader, you know, on your side helping to encourage you through those tough times. So, as you are helping coach leaders through this, observing individuals who've gone through rough times, what would you say is some of the biggest mistakes they make? What do you wish they would do instead?-I think sometimes, you know, and maybe I said a little bit of this in the beginning, I think as high performers, and maybe I'm speaking for myself, but we tend to push. And we just keep going and we drive harder, you know, and we go more, we try to do more. And I think there's, and I did more until I ended up in the ER. And there's so much power in pausing and reflecting and to really learning to do that daily And life is so much more than just pushing to hit a number, right? And I'll go back to the we've got to develop ourselves as people. We should always be growing. We can always get better. We all have another level. And but in order to do that, you've got to pause and you've got to do that self-reflection. And I just think that it shifts the way we show up. And I think it shifts who we are. How we lead. I think it shifts the impact that we make in the world. And I think I'll speak for myself, but as I get older, you know, the impact or what difference can I make in someone else's life has become a lot more important to me than just pushing someone to go achieve that next thing. I just don't think that's what it's about. I think it really truly is about who do we become in the process of still chasing. Trust me, like I still have goals. You know, chasing my next level, but it's really more about who am I becoming in the process of going after it.-It's fantastic. And so as we're kind of wrapping up this conversation around helping us all work through adversity, what would be some closing comments that you would share with us that would help us as leaders keep in mind key points around what we can do to lead through adversity, both leading ourselves and leading others through that. What would you kind of share as we wrap this up?-Wow. Okay. So I'm just going to share what popped up into my head because adversity that I've personally gone through and then led people through hard times, I think it is so important, you know, and I touched on your thoughts and the stories that we have. But any time an event happens, and I'm talking hard events, we have the opportunity to create the story that we want to give it. And I say that because I lost, you know, I lost my husband and then I transitioned out of the medical device world. I created my own business. When I lost my husband, I started a foundation. And I, you know, into even just, you know, you talk about the transitions and those hard things and the hard times. I think it's really important to pause and say, what story do I want to create around this hard situation? Because it can become doomsday, right? And our brains will pick up and it'll create momentum around all of the negative things. And before you know it, we'll have an unbelievable negative story. And you can even feel a physical response sometimes. And I think if we just pause and take that breath and get really conscious about what story do I want to give this, what story do I want to create? And granted, as humans, our first response is going to be hard and it's going to be negative. And give yourself grace around that. Give yourself a minute. And I'm not saying it's like not to feel all of the things when we go through tough times. You've got to feel them. But then over time, I would challenge someone to, it's kind of like, what can I do with this? Even though it's hard, maybe it feels like it's not what I asked for, it's not what I wanted, but what can I do with this and how can I grow through it?-Yeah. Angie Wiley, thank you for being part of the Leadership Growth Podcast today.-You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.-It's been a pleasure. And to all of our listeners, thank you for joining us. And we hope that the ideas and tools and concepts here today that we've talked through in terms of leading through adversity will help you, that you can take some, as you manage yourself and others to higher levels of performance, productivity, and overall happiness. Thank you so much for joining us. Like and subscribe, and we look forward to having you join us again in the future. All the best to everyone. Take care. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague, or better yet, leave a review to help other listeners find our show. And remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more great content or to learn more about how Stewart Leadership can help you grow your ability to lead effectively, please visit stewartleadership.com.