Episode 67: What’s the Point? Finding Your Purpose with Alan Mikolaj, Part 2

00;00;08;22 – 00;01;00;08
Kelly Parbs
Welcome to OnTopic with Empathia – I’m your host, Kelly Parbs. Today we’re continuing our conversation with Alan Mikolaj, leadership consultant, executive coach, and author. In part one, we explored the connection between self-awareness and personal growth and how identifying your core values can help you discover a deeper sense of purpose. Alan also talked about how working with a certified coach or consultant can help clarify what truly matters, especially when you’re seeking direction or looking to grow. Let’s welcome back Alan Mikolaj. The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) 360? I’d like to hear a little bit more about that tool and have you explain a little bit more about why that so powerful.

00;01;00;10 – 00;01;12;09
Alan Mikolaj
Well, that (LPI) 360 is connected to Kouzes and Posner’s research. That’s the 30 behaviors that we were just talking about. So good- good segue, Kelly! -laughs-

00;01;12;11 – 00;01;16;02
Kelly Parbs
-laughs- I didn’t know I was doing that!

00;01;16;04 – 00;02;56;29
Alan Mikolaj
And that’s the bulk of what their research landed on. And so separate from Kouzes and Posner, though, to kind of set the stage for feedback and especially 360 degree feedback. And we can talk a little bit about what that is for people who don’t know in a moment. But two researchers, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. They- they study feedback and leadership, and they were given access to a database that went back for more than a decade. And it was something like 50,000 plus executives that they had been following for, you know, ten plus years. And they were given access to this data to then tease things out. So they had been asking these executives lots of things over the years and mapping it and tracking it, and they were zeroed in on the feedback and leadership. And so what they were able to do with from this data set was identify those leaders who sought feedback the most frequently and consistently versus those that hardly ever did. And so then they were able to break those out into percentiles. But then they were also able to map that onto their effectiveness. So because they were also tracking effectiveness. And what they found is that the leaders who ranked at the bottom 10% in frequency and consistency of seeking feedback were at the 15th percentile. So the least effective leaders. Flip to the far end of that spectrum, those leaders in the top ten percentile of seeking feedback consistently were at the 86th percentile in terms of leadership effectiveness ratings.

00;02;57;02 – 00;02;58;28
Kelly Parbs
It pays to ask for feedback.

00;02;59;01 – 00;03;46;15
Alan Mikolaj
So bottom line, if you can’t follow that without a visual, which I could understand is that the most effective leaders seek consistent feedback just in general. It doesn’t have to be from a 360, and you can get feedback in a lot of different ways. But leaders find themselves kind of in a conundrum with seeking feedback. They’re afraid people don’t want to hurt their feelings and may not give them honest feedback. And there’s some truth to that. There’s actually research that backs that up, too, especially the higher up the the hierarchy you go, the higher up the hierarchy you go, the less honest and real feedback leaders get. Think about trying to go. Go to your executive vice president or a CEO and say, hey, I didn’t really like the way you did that, but whatever.

00;03;46;15 – 00;03;47;29
Kelly Parbs
That’s not easy to do!

00;03;48;01 – 00;03;53;03
Alan Mikolaj
Or when you tell them, I really did like the way you did that, they’re like, oh, you’re just, you know, you’re just trying to-

00;03;53;09 – 00;03;53;23
Kelly Parbs
Trying to get a promotion!

00;03;53;23 – 00;05;09;16
Alan Mikolaj
-rub up to the elite, right? A lot of leaders don’t know what to ask or may not trust the feedback or not even sure how to use it once they get the feedback. And that’s where something like a proven empirically valid instrument like the (LPI) 360 is so helpful because it answers all of those, all of the observers that give you feedback on these behaviors remain anonymous. With the exception of your boss, it’s hard to keep your boss anonymous about what to ask. Well, they’ve teased these 30 behaviors out of, you know, 30 plus years of research. And so we know they are drivers. So, how frequent you’re displaying these behaviors in the perception or eyes of your, of the people that follow you and around you is really important to know. And, one of the great things about that being behaviorally based is it’s actionable. You can you they will rank order from the most frequently observed behaviors to the least frequently observed behaviors. And you can say, okay, what am I? What are my strengths? Where am I really, what what behaviors am I displaying on a regular and consistent basis that most people are saying, yeah, you’re doing that, and where am I not? But what do I need to take action on?

00;05;09;19 – 00;05;21;28
Kelly Parbs
How do leaders have access to this inventory? Does a specific certified provider have to apply it, or how does it work?

00;05;22;00 – 00;06;30;09
Alan Mikolaj
Wylie bought the copyright to it from Kouzes and Posner. They’re still intimately involved. So first the answer is yes, but you can also buy it directly for them and have it self-administered, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it that way. Your best to find an expert consultant that’s been handling this instrument for years. And there’s a there’s a bunch of us that have done it. I’ve, I’ve administered probably close to 300 plus and coached dozens and dozens of leaders and debriefed them, on it. So, you know, there are nuances to an empirical instrument like that, that being trained on and having used it and having worked with leaders around it is really, really important. So I would recommend that if you’re interested in that, to either contact me or just like I said, you don’t have to contact me. There are a lot of, of certified LPI coaches and certified workshop facilitators that that can bring that either in workshop format or just you can just take the LPI and get some consulting feedback and analysis from that.

00;06;30;12 – 00;06;58;28
Kelly Parbs
You know, it’s interesting. I had not heard about this inventory until you and I spoke prior to this podcast, and you told me about it. And just three days later, my son is in grad school right now for an MBA. And three days later my son said, you know what? We we all took this LPI 360 test. And, he shared his results with me! And I thought, how funny is that? That within one week I talked to two different people about this.

00;06;59;00 – 00;07;41;05
Alan Mikolaj
The the universe or God, whatever you want to call that just has, a surprising way of of making connections for us if we’re open to it. And I get I giggle at that because those sort of things happen. It seems like all that, even between you and I, when we have our conversations, you but I think I think there’s there’s something, you know, with that, when you prime your brain, you know, for that sort of thing or your soul, whatever you want to call it, that when you tell the universe, you know, I’m open for you to guide me. Here’s my why, here’s how I’m interpreting it. And now I’m going to open myself for you to, show me the next step.

00;07;41;07 – 00;07;56;28
Kelly Parbs
Right. Well, I and I was just thinking how great for an MBA program to teach students about that, to set them up, to really be aware of, of their own characteristics heading into the world as leaders.

00;07;57;00 – 00;08;08;12
Alan Mikolaj
Yeah, it’s it didn’t surprise me because I’ve had other leaders that have gone through MBA programs, and there are apparently several, leadership schools that use the LPI.

00;08;08;15 – 00;08;25;19
Kelly Parbs
So I read that the center for Creative Leadership says that self-awareness is the number one predictor of leadership effectiveness. How do you help leaders grow in self-awareness? And and why do you think that is so often overlooked?

00;08;25;22 – 00;11;52;20
Alan Mikolaj
While self-awareness is so connected to finding your purpose and your meaning and your leadership philosophy and core values, I had another colleague ask me about that at some point, and I thought, you know, well, I’ve been working with leaders, doing this for so long and I’ve been, you know, I’ve done yoga and meditation and contemplation exercises. But when I stopped to kind of start and think about it, I was like, wow, it’s that’s really hard to define what it, what self-awareness is. And so I thought, you know, I wonder if I turn to the research to help me kind of organize my thoughts around it and see what the academic world has discovered around it. And so I the discoveries, Kelly, were profound for me as a leadership development and personal development consultant. I- so the first I narrowed it down to two really strong studies. The first one was by, a leader by the name of Tasha Eurich and her colleagues. And they did a really imaginative and extensive, study because they wanted to be able to verify and have replicable that a person they identified as being self-aware, that others would see that same thing, right? If they repeated the study that their methods so that so that they were truly measuring and identifying people who were self-aware so they could speak to it more clearly. And so they did like ten separate investigations, like 5000 people. They reviewed, you know, hundreds and hundreds of literature. And then they narrowed down to, some specialized, focused interviews with 50 people. One of the things that they discovered in terms of helping them identify who was truly self-aware was that not just the person had to identify that they were self-aware, and they were that this was a leadership, this was a leadership study. They were focused on managers and and leaders. But not only did that manager or leader, you know, self report that they were, self-aware, but then they had to have in a separate survey, at least one other significant other in their life that also said, yeah, that, you know, Kelly really is self-aware. And so they had to meet that, that dual criteria in addition to some other measures. And so but the final the final measure was you had to have that second person. Well, one of the things that they realized was because, you know, they’re they’re you know, they’re measuring hundreds and hundreds of thousands of leaders. And what they realized was that there’s this bias that most people think they’re self-aware, but only somewhere around like 5 to 10% of the people in their population were. And it made me think of, if people remember Lake Wobegon from public radio, you know, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average. And, and and that effect actually wasn’t known in psychology up until that point is the better than average effect. You know, if you ask the person you know, are you a better than average driver? Well, you know, 99% of the population thinks they are, but that can’t be possible. And, you know.

00;11;52;22 – 00;11;54;06
Kelly Parbs
Yes!

00;11;54;09 – 00;12;23;25
Alan Mikolaj
The psychologist actually renamed it the Lake Wobegon effect. Right. And so that was one of the first things for us to to and that’s an important take, take away from that literature is because if you’re sitting here listening to our conversation and you think you’re self-aware, pause with that for just a minute. Because if that, that bias might be happening with you. And so it helps us to have a little humility as we approach this idea of self-awareness and meaning and purpose. And so that.

00;12;23;26 – 00;13;00;06
Kelly Parbs
Really and, and maybe even find that person that you feel that would truly be honest with you and ask them their assessment on your self-awareness, that everything you just said, Allen, was so validating to me because I come across people often who really, truly believe that they have a strong self-awareness, and it’s absolutely evident to me and people around them that they don’t. And we have to figure out how to help those people and those leaders.

00;13;00;08 – 00;15;17;19
Alan Mikolaj
I couldn’t agree more. But to to to put a bow on all this, that there were, there were two strong studies. I’ll just I’ll just do the summary version here. But basically what I walked away with, with was three different, types of self-awareness that came out of the, my research, of the research, and that there’s, there’s this the one that we probably, sort of intuitively think about. And that’s our internal or personal self-awareness. You know, the that we have an idea of our emotional regulation, our values, our behaviors. But then there’s an external self-awareness, that was identified that was in, in Tasha’s, of study that we first started talking about and that external self-awareness is am I aware of my impact on others and how they perceive me? So it has an element of emotional intelligence in there, right? And I think people kind of go, oh, I get that. That does kind of make sense. It’s not just about me being aware of myself, but within my environment. What what kind of impact am I making and how are others perceiving me? But the other interesting study, they also identified internal personal self-awareness, but they’re there. They also identified yet a third form of self-awareness that I thought was particularly interesting because it was important for leaders, and that was what they called collective self-awareness. For most of us, we might, rename that as sort of a organizational awareness or a team awareness. And what they what they discovered was for leaders, it’s not just enough that you understand yourself and have an awareness of yourself or your impact on others. But what’s the history of your team? What is your team’s values? What’s their culture? What’s so? What sort of makes your team and your organization tick? So there’s this idea of a collective self. And if you’re if you’re ambivalent to that and you don’t honor where people have been in an organization and or a team and what their sort of experience of that is like for them, then you’re missing a key part of of how you can lead them more effectively.

00;15;17;21 – 00;16;29;09
Kelly Parbs
Oh, I feel like we could do an entire podcast on, this idea of, of self-awareness. But thank you for the information that you did share. That’s so, so very interesting and important for, for I think everyone in general, again, not just leaders, it’s important for all of us to have some idea of of our, ourselves, our self-awareness. Another point I wanted to bring up, in this regard, as I was reading to prepare for our discussion, I read that a Gallup study found that only 10% of people have natural, innate talent to be leaders and that that was really surprising to me. I would have guessed a higher number. But many more can become great leaders with development. And that just got me thinking. You know, what are leadership skills that you know, are learnable? You know, they don’t have to just be natural. And again, we could spend a whole hour on that. But are there any that you could highlight, Alan, that, you know, maybe you’re not a natural leader, but in your experience, you know that there are certain skills that can absolutely be learned.

00;16;29;12 – 00;17;36;06
Alan Mikolaj
Well, the let’s let’s start with that, assumption that there’s such a thing as a natural leader and what that implies is that somehow through genetics or God’s grace or whatever that might be, that I was just born to be a leader and you’ve, you know, and we’ve all heard people say things like that. But let me be clear. The research on leadership, leadership development and organizational development has dispelled that myth. Okay. It is now within the circles of human resources, leadership development and organizational development. Academia to be a myth. There is an interplay of environment and genetics for a whole host of stuff. Of course, we all, we all kind of realize that now. And so there are some people who’s whose genetics and upbringing may have bestowed upon them the skill sets. But the research is really clear. And that’s why Kouzes and Posner’s 30 behaviors are so important. In, in that body of, of research is that their premise is just the opposite, that absolutely leadership can be learned.

00;17;36;08 – 00;17;37;26
Kelly Parbs
Excellent. That’s great news, right?

00;17;37;26 – 00;18;05;03
Alan Mikolaj
That’s absolutely, absolutely right. And so, but back to your question about that. So then what what are some of the, the most important things, you know, the list could be, endless, depending on who you ask. Kouzes and Posner have identified 30 particular behaviors, but I would I would say that the, the two starting points that that I would have the answer for you is what we’ve just been talking about.

00;18;05;06 – 00;18;06;00
Kelly Parbs
Okay.

00;18;06;03 – 00;19;56;24
Alan Mikolaj
I consider purpose driven leadership knowing your personal life mission, your leadership philosophy, the principles that drive you as a leader and your core values is the absolute foundation of great leadership. Without being that, having that inspiration in that forward looking that we were talking about from those four characteristics earlier, that is a foundational element connected to that is what what Kouzes and Posner found in terms of character characteristics. So what what behaviors feed things like honesty, competence, inspiration and being forward looking. And so you can use cookies and pastas behaviors, or you can just look at your behaviors yourself. But that’s that. It’s what we call in, in the literature necessary but not sufficient. Right. You know, so having a purpose and a leadership philosophy is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Absolutely. There’s so much more. They center around different models, but for me, they center around the model of leading self. So that’s where sort of the personal purpose comes in leading others or having team mission and organizational mission and lead and having vision for projects and your team. Leading change. So part of that is identifying and knowing the processes that your team engages with. And then how do we lead, you know, process improvement and that forward looking part of it. And then finally the back to your point about caring and and empathy is is relationships. It’s essential to leadership. And so, embedded within all of that is a growth mindset. So the, the willingness to, to know that I will never know all there is as a, as a person or as a leader and that I have to be on a, on a life quest journey of continual learning curiosity.

00;19;56;24 – 00;20;17;20
Kelly Parbs
I think that’s so important. And leaders, just to to show curiosity. I’m interested in growing and changing and learning. I’m interested in learning from the people who work for me, from these teams. It’s not just all about my thoughts about, but being a curious leader. And I appreciate you mentioning that too. I think that’s important.

00;20;17;23 – 00;20;33;04
Alan Mikolaj
That curiosity is at the core of great communication and empathic listening, coaching, counseling. You know, to, to have that natural curiosity of I want to know more about, what that’s like for you.

00;20;33;07 – 00;20;48;06
Kelly Parbs
Just in relationships in general. Right. Just exactly in relationship with our spouses or our families or our friends, our neighbors. Just being curious shows people that that you’re interested in them and you care to develop a relationship.

00;20;48;08 – 00;20;57;12
Alan Mikolaj
A mini course on empathy for anyone in a really, you know, whether it’s your your girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, significant other workmate is just be curious.

00;20;57;14 – 00;20;58;07
Kelly Parbs
Absolutely.

00;20;58;07 – 00;21;02;17
Alan Mikolaj
And it goes back to what is it, how to win friends and influence people, right.

00;21;02;18 – 00;21;23;24
Kelly Parbs
You know. Right. Yeah. Okay. So, Alan, I want to talk a little bit about your book, Stress Management for the Emergency Care Provider. For people who are in a high pressure world, what did your time in that field teach you about composure and stress and and resilience?

00;21;23;26 – 00;24;53;14
Alan Mikolaj
Well, just so the audience knows, the book is out of print right now. It was, a result of both practical experience and research I did at Sam Houston State University. Then, was I was originally gearing that to, to be part of, a thesis and, and an empirical study and long story short, ended up having to shelf that because of how long it would have taken. It didn’t fit well with a graduate program. But, I had been working in critical incident stress management for about 20 years at that point myself. And so if the listeners, weren’t aware of that, I think it’s important for them to know that I’ve walked in in the shoes of what Kelly and and empathy, does and and honor that work with just great reverence. But the idea of, of all of that, you know, it’s it’s connected. It’s a great question because it’s so connected to what we’re talking about. Right? I mean, as a, as a paramedic, I got my I got my first EMT in 1983 and became a paramedic in 1986. And so if you if people may not be aware of what a male dominated military leadership structure, all of the emergency services were back then and what a male dominated industry it was. And so I lived through the time of great change and growth, in terms of welcoming, women for the first time into the emergency services fields, to an awareness of the psychological impacts of the work we did and, and watching those dynamics play out. You know, for me, I was had I had already been in the seminary at that point. So I was a very thoughtful, you know, deeper person than probably most, you know, paramedics and cops and firefighters, you know, their way of dealing with it was, you know, just gallows humor and and the mindset of when I put on this blue shirt, you know, I’m Superman, which is, of course, not true. And, and so, it was a shock to me to see how men, you know, at that time were, were dealing with some of the, the tragedies that and trauma that we were witness to. And, so I became very interested in it early on. And so that’s what led me when critical incident stress management, you know, began to, to be a part of that industry, I was, you know, I jumped on board right away and was asked to be a founding president of either the first or one of the first CSM teams in Texas, in San Antonio. And so, but, you know, it’s back to what we were talking about. It starts with self-awareness. You know, how how can we pause first? You know, that’s the most important part of self-awareness is can we pause and ask, what impact is this making on me? And, and it’s funny that you talk about that because I don’t remember where I saw it. I’d have to go back and look for the source. But there’s, it’s intuitively true, but there’s apparently somebody who’s done some research around, stress and, and, and, goal attainment and purpose and, and, you know. Absolutely. When we can return to the purpose, you know, why do I do what I do? Sure.

00;24;53;16 – 00;25;43;19
Kelly Parbs
Well, and in our previous conversations, you had mentioned how emotional regulation was really something you learned about in, in that part of your career and how now we know that leaders who are able to regulate their emotions can really create a calmer work environment. And and we know that just as chaos is contagious, so calm is also contagious. And, it just struck me when you talked to me earlier about your work, that in that part of your career that you really did learn a lot about the importance of, of some of the characteristics of, of leadership, including the importance of just being able to regulate your emotions.

00;25;43;21 – 00;27;14;15
Alan Mikolaj
That’s an interesting because, there’s the term that is used in the, in the leadership fields is, a term called leadership presence. About 4 or 5 years ago, when I was working in leadership development in the corporate world, I had a, I was asked to lead a team, a small team, about 3 or 4 of us. And I think it was four of us at first that whittled that to three. But we were asked to develop a, an online on demand program with, virtual trainings mixed in around the term leadership presence and having my roots in academia. I had always kind of raised my eyebrows at that term. Right. What the heck does leadership presence really mean? And so I’m still I still have a healthy dose of skepticism around that term. But I think, I think that if there are leaders who are listening to us and, and heard you mentioning that, that, that, that what you’re talking about in the leadership, circles is this term called leadership presence. And and it encompasses everything from how a leadership dresses and walks in their body language all the way to this sort of presence that you’re talking about, that you know, they’re just leaders that can walk in a room and it just it gets calm. And, you know, people want to hear what they say. And, as opposed to those leaders that are like, oh, no, here they come, here.

00;27;14;17 – 00;27;48;17
Kelly Parbs
Thank you, Alan, for all of that, I, I would like to I’m noticing the time that we just have a few minutes left. And I’d like to end with some practical takeaways. So before we wrap it up, I want to turn to that listener who might be feeling off track right now. Maybe they’ve lost a sense of meaning in their work or in their life, or just aren’t sure what comes next. Maybe they just don’t really know their purpose. Well, where do you start on this journey? What would you say to them?

00;27;48;19 – 00;32;20;03
Alan Mikolaj
You know, the idea of taking that time and trying to discover our purpose for so many people seems really challenging, almost kind of scary, right? And, so unlike, Simon Sinek, you know, he says start with y, you know, this is his bestselling book. And y y I, I do have agreement with that statement. For many of us, it’s it’s sometimes easier to ease into that process by starting with how. And so that’s that’s how I start my workshops with leaders in that process is rather than start right away with the y. And what that how is its values, core values particularly. And so there are a lot of different instruments, that I use three instruments, but one of them is a free instrument that I give away for free. And so if there’s a way to put a link, to, just a real simple way for anybody to, to, to help them in the process of discovering their core values, that’s a great place to start. I’ve got a tool called Alan’s Core Value List. It’s got a list of like 103 values. And you just simply, you know, look through this list and you start circling the ones that are, like, really important to you, you know, like a guide. Yeah. This is this is, an important value for me. And so you come up with, you know, anywhere from 10 to 12, you know, a lot of people will sort of say, well, I like all of them. Well, then what you try to do is whittle it down to, 3 to 5. And the reason we, we recommend especially early on, it’s having 3 to 5 personal core values, is that it it provides you the focus we were talking about before, but it also, helps you keep it in memory because remember, the point of having all this is to use it. And so you want to be able to recall it. And that’s in that perfect little sweet zone of working or semantic memory. And so having 3 to 5 core values, not only provides you the focus, but it, it makes it easier to recall. And so out of those, however many you circle, then we ask people to whittle it down to just 3 to 5 core values. And what that might mean is you may have to sort of umbrella or roll up several values under one. So for example, my core value is love. Love is at the core of who I do. It’s also core to my life mission and my ideas around leadership. For others, so under that umbrella, you know, there’s all kinds of things. It’s that relationship building that you and I were talking about. It’s a it’s about, you know, empathy and, care and respect and, helping others grow and discover for themselves. So there’s a whole umbrella under that, but all for for me to trigger all that. All I have to do is just say my core values love. Right? And so that’s that we do. So if there’s a way to I, there’s a link where I can just, they don’t even have to literally be on my website because it’s the link is embedded in my website. But just so they know they’ll be downloading it from my website, it’s a PDF and I can provide you that link. And, and if you’ve got a way of making that available along with the podcast and they’re happy, but, you know, I’m happy to share it with others and, and they and and that’s a great starting place. And then once you’ve identified your 3 to 5 core values, then you’ve got you’re kind of primed. You’re like, okay, this is how I believe I live my best life. These are the things that are most important to me. Then you’re primed to sit down and and block some time. It’s real simple. Just ask yourself two questions. The age old questions. Humans have been asking since before recorded history. Who am I and why am I here? That’s it. It’s for for a simple life mission. That’s all you have to ask. And to know that it’s an iterative process that we were talking about before. Whatever your answers come up with first, I don’t I don’t recommend you sit down with it once it’s one and done thing. Keep revisiting that for it, especially if you’re doing it early on. And, you know, you might add to that some of the things that you shared, Kelly, like what energizes me. You know what puts me in flow, you know, what gives me the greatest fulfillment in life? You know, there’s all versions of that, but they they basically boil down a life mission and core value statement. They boil down to those two age old questions, who am I and why am I here?

00;32;20;05 – 00;32;44;06
Kelly Parbs
I think those are great starting points, and I think we’ve given our listeners plenty of things to to think about, to get them started and really focus on this idea of what is their life purpose. And finally, Alan, can you share with us how people, if they want to, could reach out to you or read your books or connect with you?

00;32;44;08 – 00;33;28;19
Alan Mikolaj
Oh, absolutely. I’m very connected. I’m on both Facebook and LinkedIn. So my name, Alan, A-L-A-N, and my last name is an old Czech doozy. It’s it’s M as in Mary, I-K-O-L-A as in apple, J as in Jack. So you can find me on Facebook and LinkedIn. Connect with me. Let’s DM each other. You can call me. I’ve got a business line. It’s (346) 291-0216. If you want to look at my website before you contact me, just to learn a little bit more about me, that’s just www.AlanMikolaj.com. And then of course my my email is Alan at alanmikolaj.com.

00;33;28;21 – 00;33;35;24
Kelly Parbs
Thank you. And thank you so much for taking this time and having this discussion with me today, Alan.

00;33;35;24 – 00;33;53;23
Alan Mikolaj
Kelly, it has been such an honor. I am so grateful to you and empathy. It is my hope that the listeners have gained some value from our conversation. And, can move through their day with a little more grace and inspiration.

00;33;53;25 – 00;34;47;03
Kelly Parbs
Leading with intention doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means being present, curious, and willing to ask the deeper questions. Whether you’re supporting a team, navigating change, or simply trying to live with more clarity, leadership starts from within, and often it starts with identifying your core values and finding a sense of purpose that’s meaningful to you. As Alan reminded us, growth is possible at any stage of life, and sometimes working with a coach or consultant can help illuminate that path. To hear more episodes of OnTopic with Empathia, visit our website, www.Empathia.com. Follow us on social media @Empathia, and subscribe so you don’t miss a new conversation when it goes live. I’m Kelly Parbs – thank you for joining us on OnTopic with Empathia!