Identifying Leaders

Episode 896: Identifying Leaders, with Sharon Spano

Identifying leaders, a podcast episode with Sharon Spano. Learn about leadership DNA and how you can start identifying leaders.

Sharon Spano, Ph.D., is an expert in identifying leaders and she helps them transform how they think, adapt, and respond in complex business environments. As a business strategist, author, and Professional Integral Coach, she leads her clients through specific research-based practices that empower them to realign their business strategy with a life of meaning, accelerated performance, and increased profitability.

Sharon is also the author of The Pursuit of Time and Money: Step Into Radical Abundance and Discover the Secret to a Meaningful Prosperous Life.

She is also a scholar-practitioner who enjoys researching and understanding some of the hard stuff of life so you don’t have to. There’s nothing like helping people move through challenges such that they come out more passionate and fulfilled on the other side.

Whether you’re a person in the midst of change, an entrepreneur, or an organizational leader, Sharon would love to help you discover a more meaningful and prosperous life.

What you will learn in this episode about identifying leaders:

• How you can start identifying leaders, where it comes from, the benefits, and the drawbacks
• Why the systemic mapping process allows us to see hidden patterns and subconscious dynamics in a concrete way
• How to look at systems from a quantum physics perspective
• How the aforementioned systems transcend generations and affect the unconscious minds of business leaders
• Why bringing the unconscious to the conscious mind allows leaders to make better decisions with more efficiency and less stress
• How to recognize hidden loyalties and use them as an agent for positive change
• What inspires Sharon Spano to bring this methodology to her clients
• How genetics play a prominent role in who you are as a leader

Resources:

• Website: sharonspano.com
• Book: thetimemoneybook.com
• Events: sharonspano.com/workshops
• Contact: [email protected]
• Twitter: @SharonSpano
• Enhance your ability of identifying leaders by learning this method from John Murphy

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to this related podcast about identifying leaders with our guest, Ken Pasch

 

 

Identifying Leaders: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning, Onward Nation. I’m Stephen Woessner. And before I introduce our very special encore guests today, let me share some additional context around why, when Doctor Sharon Spano, when she said yes, why I was super, super excited that she said yes to come back for this encore conversation. So let me first give you some context. So Sharon works with business leaders and nonprofit organizations and helps them adapt, helps them respond, helps them prosper by realigning their strategies in order to create this culture performance that is dedicated to excellence.

 

And yes, as the doctor indicates, she is a scholar. But as you will hear, she’s also a practitioner through and through. And so when I invite her to come back for this encore, today’s encore, I asked her to put her teaching hat on so we could dig into several of the areas that she sees Onward Nation business owners just like you and me, business owners in their teams, struggling with over and over and over again.

 

We all do it. So that’s why I know that this conversation with Sharon is going to be super, super insightful for all of us. So, for example, I know that she’s going to dig into and share her insights around how to uncover what she calls leadership DNA. Then what is that where it comes from? How it impacts you and your team.

 

You as the business owner, and how that also impacts your team because of it? Well, but also how it benefits you, and then also how it sabotages you because it does that as well. Then I know that we’re going to have a lot of conversations around how to apply the process of what she calls systemic mapping, which is this really interesting process of uncovering all of the obstacles in your path.

 

And I don’t mean necessarily constraints in your business, although there are some of those that fit into that category. But sometimes those obstacles lie within us and we don’t even know it. And then how to navigate them. Once you uncover what they are, then we’re also going to chat about how successful business owners know what they know. They know what works.

 

I mean, you’ve achieved a level of success, but we sometimes don’t know what we don’t know. So how do we figure that out? And that’s one of the gifts that Sharon has. And that’s what I know that she’s going to share some insights around today. So to help us look and help us see beyond what we consider to be kind of more traditional systems so we can make better decisions from a far greater understanding.

 

So this is going to be one of those full on teaching conversations Onward Nation. So buckle in. It is going to be awesome and super insightful. So without further ado, welcome back to Onward Nation, Sharon. 

 

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Identifying Leaders: Sharon Spano’s Introduction

 

Thank you so much, Steve. And then good morning. And hello again to Onward Nation. I’m just so excited to be here.

 

And thank you for that amazing introduction. You captured so much of what the work is about. I can’t thank you enough. Well, you’re very welcome, but thank you for saying yes. To come back for this encore so that we can get into the trenches and you can share your insights with Onward Nation business owners, help them understand leadership DNA and get past some of those obstacles.

 

This is really going to be super helpful before we do that. So I can’t believe it’s been almost a couple of years since we’ve had an opportunity to have this conversation in front of Onward, and I know that a lot has happened in your business. And so give us some highlights. You know, what’s new in your business.

 

What are you excited about the road ahead? And then we’ll dive in. Well, there’s a lot of things going on at Spanish and Company, and I’m just so excited because I’ve spent the last six years studying this very specific work that you’ve alluded to in the opening. And I’ve been to many places in Europe because the work is grounded and originated there.

 

It’s based on 70 years of research. So it’s taken me about six years to feel fully, ready and as though I embody the work well enough, to bring it to my own clients. So I was in Croatia. I was in London, of course, you know, doing the work that I do around integral coaching and then the actual, you know, going into companies at a strategic level.

 

But this work has shown me and my clients the biggest transformational effort, if you will, in the least amount of time such that Steve and I’ve now pivoted my focus in this direction, it doesn’t mean that I’m not still going in and doing the strategic work, and I do a lot around vision and values, as you know.

 

And of course, the work that’s grounded in my book, that pursuit of Time and money and adult development and consciousness. But this work I think, again, is just a whole different level. And with that, where we are now, over the last several years, we’ve been rolling out these DNA opportunities around the systemic mapping that you alluded to.

 

And what I’m really excited about is we’ve been doing them in Florida, and now we’re getting ready to do one in Chicago, which we can talk about and that’s bringing it into a different level, and that we’re inviting leaders from around the country to experience this work over a two day event. So that is just me really recognizing that this is the work I’m called to do, and I want to get it to as many leaders as I can because I know they impact a lot of lives.

 

And I believe that this work has the potential to really take us to another level of not only performance, but at a personal level of expanding, our awareness and our consciousness and even our developmental stance in the world. Yeah. That’s exciting. And even just hearing you talk about the event in Chicago that you’re going to be doing and I think you said October, right, October 9th and 10th, and it’s at the Chicago Universal Center.

 

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Identifying Leaders: How Sharon Adapts With Her Work

 

Okay. And just even hearing you describe that just briefly, I can hear the excitement in your voice just ratcheted up even further because I know personally, you know, when you and I have spent time outside of Onward Nation how much you love the work, like how much you really love being in the trenches. And this is a good opportunity for you to do this with leaders, like you said, around the country and really get in to help fix and help, prescribe and just put better systems into place.

 

Right? Yes. Because part of my passion around this, I think, you know, is from traveling around the country and North America in general for so many years, you know, in my 30 year career and seeing leaders who are doing amazing things and working really hard but often, you know, really struggling with how to keep all those balls in the air and so this process allows them, to do more with less energy.

 

And I mean, that’s a cliché. It’s a simple way to say it, but we can dive in deeper on what that really means, because in my career, I’ve seen so many crashes and burns. And so I have a great passion, you know, to really alleviate that, you know, from happening with leaders who are just, it’s such an exciting time in business, as you know.

 

But we’re also being really challenged by the complexity and the rapid changes. So, I just really want to be a part of an interruption to that, if I can, in terms of saving leaders a lot of heartache and suffering on one end when they don’t need it because even the most successful I know ran up against those kinds of challenges.

 

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Identifying Leaders: The Definition of Leadership DNA

 

Amen. So Onward Nation, taking you behind the curtain here. When Sharon and I met for the first time in person, I was in Disney and we’re doing my team and I were doing some, attending some workshops for the Agency Management Institute. And Sharon being in Orlando was like, what a cool opportunity. And so we’ve found some time one morning to get together to meet in person.

 

And in that conversation, she mentioned leadership DNA and I’m like, what’s that? And so she shares with me and I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding. And I had one of those using Sharon’s words, transformational kind of things, like these light bulbs started to go off for me. And, okay, this is a really, really important conversation.

 

So let’s start there. Sharon, with respect to leadership DNA, I know there’s a bunch of different layers to it. And this is going to be a meaty conversation even just around this one topic. But first, define what leadership DNA is. Well, there’s a lot of language out there right now around DNA as we hear it, you know, because we’re interested in it.

 

But I think, again, the work is rooted in three levels of research, if you will, without going too deep into any one of them. But it’s human development, certainly consciousness. And then we talk about, epigenetic and you’re hearing a lot more about that, because what we know is that, you know, we don’t just inherit our parents eye and hair color.

 

We’re starting to understand more and more about things like trauma, for instance, that can literally move through generations and then land up on a third or fourth generation, you know, some in someone’s lap, if you will, with them not even having awareness of it. So what it is, is who you are, a leader with an understanding that it’s rooted in the family history, both negative and positive.

 

So, for instance, one of the things that I’m seeing is that, someone might have something happen in the family system and it might catapult them to be someone who really wants to be successful and achieve a lot, therefore maybe becoming an overachiever or it might even push them in the other direction where they self-sabotage. So in the work that I’m about, we’re not judging the system or what’s going on.

 

We’re just really trying to look at what’s happening. For that leader and what is their DNA and how is it working for or against them. Well, so going back to that conversation that you and I had that one morning and as you were describing leadership DNA. Like you opened my eyes to so many things about, oh, wait a minute is, you know, my grandfather Peter Marinus, who immigrated here from Istanbul, Turkey and I pay so much homage to like, his legacy and so forth that really opened my eyes are like, oh, that makes so much sense as to why I see some of his characteristics in me, some of his, the way that he behaved, the way that he managed his business. 

 

Why? I see that with me, like, yes, mentorship and so forth, but things I just kind of took for granted. And then also on the flip side of that, some things maybe that I didn’t want to recognize in me, I’m like, oh, wait a minute, then maybe I’m seeing that too is a way of self-sabotaging.

 

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Identifying Leaders: Getting To the Truth of The System

 

So some of this is really going on at both a conscious and unconscious level for a business owner, too. Right, exactly. And I made a lot of leaders who will talk about trauma in their system, capital T or you know, lowercase. It doesn’t really matter. It’s relevant to the person. And so when we’re looking at things in this way, in the process that we’re talking about in the leadership DNA sessions, we’re not making anything wrong.

 

We’re not getting into the psychodrama. It’s not therapy. We’re really honoring what’s in the system so that we can see with clear eyes what may need to be put to rest so that something new can emerge. Because if we’re caring and what you’ll see in Europe, for instance, Stephen, is generations who are caring, trauma from the war.

 

And it sounds kind of silly to those of us in the United States when we think, oh my gosh, that was, you know, 75 years ago. But you know, it’s not that far away for them because it was on their land. And you know, many leaders today grew up hearing from grandmothers or great grandmothers these stories, and they’ve impacted their ability to be successful leaders, both negative and positive.

 

Again. So it’s very interesting work. And what I love about the work is that the system will speak for itself in the process that we do. We get to the truth of the system so that the leader can really step into their DNA at the highest level without all the psychodrama. So then let’s say, going back to your example of, you know, World War Two in Europe and how generations later, that is still impacting leaders today.

 

And so once they recognize that that’s part of the leadership DNA, if I’m saying that correctly, then if there is a way to do it I don’t want to say deal with it. 

 

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Identifying Leaders: Systematic Mapping

 

That doesn’t sound right. I’m sure that’s not the right word, but it is a way to navigate that better to get past the self-sabotage if there is any.

 

Like is there a process of doing that? Yes, there is. And that process is the systematic mapping. And that’s what the leadership DNA retreat is all about in Chicago. And what I’ve been doing over the last several years is, again, that’s what I was trained in Europe for. So what you do is you look at the dynamics of the system, whatever the issue is for the individual, and then you define the elements in the system.

 

And then there’s a very specific way, using what we call systemic language, where you honor what is in the system, so that again, we can put something to rest if we need to without making anyone or anything. Because sometimes what’s in the system, Stephen, is not necessarily about people. Sometimes it’s an abstract. So for instance, I worked with an organization where grief was in the system and the leaders would not acknowledge that there was grief in the system.

 

Well, then that grief starts to impact the players in the system because they’re grieving and they don’t know where to put that grief. So then it affects performance, then it affects the bottom line. Now it’s affecting leadership because they’re at cross-purposes with one another. And it just kind of can start to dismantle from there where this work allows just again, to come together and honor everything that’s in the system.

 

And then through this systemic language, we can release whatever negative energy is in the system. Because what’s so fascinating about leaders today is their brilliant ability to see systems in the traditional sense and do what they need to do to, you know, change or make adaptations. Sometimes it just gets to be about more and more and more and more systems.

 

And again, if there’s some underlying subconscious issue that’s going on, we’re just creating more of the same. Think of a family system, you know, that’s often the easiest way. If we can go back to a family system, if there’s something going on and an underlying level, it doesn’t matter how many goals you set or how many efforts you put in to keep your kids in check, you know, to do the right things, do their homework and, you know, get up at the right time, go to bed at the right time.

 

If mom and dad aren’t speaking, does that help a little bit to see that? It does. Because it’s kind of like setting these major goals, you know, for a business but yet, you know, trying to move the boat across the water with a big anchor tied to it doesn’t matter how big the engine is exactly.

 

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Identifying Leaders: Does Everything Revolve Around A System?

 

So this was helpful at the close of that you mentioned family system. And then that started to kind of lock in for me. I’m like, oh, okay, that’s what she’s talking about. So when you do, let’s go back through it. I just want to make sure we have a good foundation here of definition for onboard business owners.

 

So when you say system, to take that definition deeper so that we have a really deep like am I as a business owner and leader, am I a system? Is the business a system to help us style that in? Well, that’s perfect because I think traditionally we think of systems and processes as they’re very concrete.

 

You know, we have a sales system. We do these ten things in order to, you know, create a new client. And that’s what most leaders are very, very successful at. But if you recognize that we live in a variety of, I mean, a barrage, if you will, of multiple ecosystems each and every day, everything at the basic level of, of life and existence is energy.

 

And so very few leaders really have the capacity and my experience of being able to tap into the energy of the system. We only see it like when conflict arises at the highest level, right? So what this work is really looking at the system from a quantum physics level, if you will.

 

We’re going again beneath the system to the underlying dynamics and the system. That’s what I mean when I say it will speak for itself through the process, because the energy in what we call the knowing field, like you have gravitational fields, like you have, you know, all these different fields and science. And I’m certainly not a scientist, so I don’t know all of them.

 

But we speak about this as the knowing field so that when I’m engaging a client in the process, we literally again define the elements in the system. And let’s say it’s your system that we’re working on. When I step into it on your behalf as a representative, I literally pick that up. And that’s part of the job of the facilitator is to help people relax into what’s going on to the system, because this is not a cognitive process, necessarily.

 

It’s more about us learning to tap into the somatic mind, of our own developmental stance, our who we are as a human being in terms of consciousness and all that. And this can sound very hooey if we’re not careful, but what I want to say is that that’s where the dimensionalization comes in because you’re literally taking that energy and you’re dimensionalizing it.

 

You’re bringing the unconscious to the conscious. So that the leader can literally see what is going on in his or her own system. And it is that seeing that concrete visualization that allows them to then make better choices faster with less stress. 

 

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Identifying Leaders: Balance of Exchange Between Teammates

 

Okay, so you would giggle if you saw my notes right now because it’s so rudimentary.

 

But let me just kind of give this to you, see if I’m tracking with you. Okay. So, like, if the system is with respect to a business, okay, if the business as a system, if that was sort of like the center, sort of like the nucleus, if you will, and then there are a bunch of different inputs into it, the leader’s DNA.

 

And maybe there’s a leadership team like here at Predictive. We have three different leaders on our leadership team. So myself and Catherine Besler and Eric Jensen. And Eric happens to also be my business partner. So all three of us have our own leadership DNA. And that’s contributing to the system. And then, you know, each of our teammates, you know, we have a team of 20.

 

So each of our teammates are contributing their particular behavioral leadership DNA into that system. And so but without understanding that all of those different contributions, all where we’re coming from and so forth, that’s where all of that different energy, good or bad, can create either conflict or momentum in a positive way. And so is really being able to better understand all those contributions, the backgrounds, purposes and all of that.

 

So that I know harmony is not the right word, but how everyone can be moving forward together. Am I tracking with you or am I completely off base actually stating it better than I ever could? So you have been tracking Steve, and I appreciate your articulation. Because the principles around this are time, place and balance of exchange and that there’s a lot of dynamics that are wrapped around those three principles.

 

So you’re absolutely right, because, what we’re not trying to do is make everybody the same one. That’s impossible because you’re all at different levels of not only skill and attitude, but also, again, developmentally, as we know things, you’re at different developmental levels. But to kind of take what you said and, and maybe give your listeners a visual.

 

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Identifying Leaders: The Systematic Mapping Process Without the Psychodrama

 

John Whittington, who was, you know, my mentor in Europe, has a visual that really helped me and that is of a peacock with its feathers open. Oh, okay. And if you imagine every little circle that we know lies in the feathers of a peacock as a system. And if you imagine that every time we walk into a meeting or an environment, we are bringing all those multiple systems with us into that meeting, all our past experiences and many of them coming back through generations that we carry with us.

 

And we come into a meeting and we all have these multiple systems with us. What’s amazing is that we get along at all, when you think of it that way. Right. And so it is really helping people then see those patterns and honoring and appreciating within the context of the principles that you have different systems that you came from into this one and that it’s all good because we can work together in more collaborative ways based on that, that respect and understanding.

 

So an example I can give you, going back to my Europe experience that really struck me was an attorney that I worked with over there. He and I shared some commonalities. And he was one that really made me see the trauma because he was from Belgium, but he was, his family came from Germany and had been through the whole Nazi situation.

 

And his grandmother, a great grandmother, I can’t remember, was actually, raped by the Russians when they came in as the war was ending. Oh, my gosh. So she had real strong issues, obviously, with that population. I remember my own grandmother was having issues, you know, with the Japanese because my uncle was killed over there. And so you hear these things as a child and you grow up hearing those things and you don’t really realize that they’re impacting you.

 

We now know that there’s post-traumatic secondary post-traumatic stress for children who have grown up hearing and that it actually can come through the genes if parents have experienced that. So here’s a young man that is in business with a partner who is Russian, you know, how does he reconcile that his best friend is that. And so what we saw when we looked at the system was a lot of guilt and shame was in the system, and it was impacting his ability to be in a full partnership with this man, because without even realizing it, he was carrying this family history into this partnership.

 

Does that help? Maybe crystallize it a little bit? Wow. Okay. Because really, what that did is it helped him just kind of, in layman’s terms, really square with the fear. And it may be a belief system that he had around Russians, for example. And it had absolutely nothing to do with his business partner at all.

 

And I see simpler examples of this every time we do the work. And the thing that continues to amaze me and why I’ve kind of pivoted them, I would say 85% of my work in this direction is that the system is never, ever inaccurate. It honestly will show what is going on in the system.

 

And again, this all occurs within this systematic mapping process without the psychodrama. 

 

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Identifying Leaders: Releasing Tension in The System

 

Okay. So then how, okay, let’s go back to this example of the business partners there. How do they resolve that, which has been at least for one of them going on for generations? So how does he get that out of the system?

 

As if that’s the correct way to say it. Well, what the systemic mapping process allows, as I said earlier, is that allows us to see the hidden patterns and the subconscious dynamics in a concrete way, because the process is we’re mapping it out, okay. And then once you see it that awareness in and of itself helps release the system, you know, having a saying what you resist will persist.

 

So once I see it and I acknowledge it through the process, we use systemic language, very, very concrete language to help release that tension in the system. Then things start to settle and then usually the participant will start to see new things, you know, they’ll start to see different things emerge like, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize that.

 

Now I’m going to just make something up. Here’s an example. I didn’t realize that every time I get upset with my partner about this, it’s really because I feel guilty for having this partner on behalf of my grandmother, because part of the loyalty of the system that are underlying, you know, and I won’t go into them because they’re many and it’s complex, but they are based on hidden loyalties that we have no awareness up.

 

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Identifying Leaders: Systematic Mapping Is The “Change” Agent

 

Okay. So just touch on that a little bit. What do you mean by that? So if my mother never had a good marriage or my mother was never successful in business or she never fulfilled her dream, I might go that same route out of loyalty to my mother and not realize it. I might sabotage my own businesses.

 

So, for instance, I had a woman who was fourth generation Asian. They were all merchants and successful merchants. But every time one of them went to scale their business, they failed and lost the business. So now here she is, fourth generation. She’s also an entrepreneur. She knows how to do what she needs to do to scale the business.

 

But she couldn’t make that step. Every time she went to do it, she would find herself, pull back. She was terrified to do it. So once we identify it, then she can go, oh, wow. Okay, I see that this is in my history. I now have a choice. I can do it the way they did it. Or I can be the change agent.

 

And that’s what I love about systemic mapping, because we literally say it is the change agent. It will show you the things in the system that are screaming for systemic change that you wouldn’t see otherwise until you were probably, you know, they’re right on you and now you’re in a crisis kind of thing. Okay. So let me give that back to you because I literally just had a huge.

 

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Identifying Leaders: Figuring Out How to Scale and Grow the Business

 

And I’m, you know, I’m wondering if many Onward Nation business owners also had the same. So, are you saying that let’s say that as a business owner, we’re banging our head up against a wall. We want to grow in scale, but yet there’s a fear in our gut. We can’t put our finger on it.

 

And every time we try to do something, it doesn’t work. And we can’t figure out how to scale and grow the business. Yes, there might be something wrong with the business that needs to be dealt with, but it sounds like also that there’s something internally that needs to be dealt with as well, using or kind of, playing off of the example that you just shared with us.

 

Am I here again? Am I tracking with you? Yes you are. You’re absolutely right. And it’s not only that there may be something sabotaging you. It can also be. And I see this like, every, everywhere. For those of us that are overachievers, you know, we’ll just keep achieving, achieving, achieving. And there could be something in the dynamic of the system.

 

And it doesn’t always relate to the family. It could. There’s a lot of things that will show up, but, there could be something that just keeps catapulting us to do more and more and more and more. And as I alluded to at the top of the show, then we reach a wall, if you will, where we realize, gosh, you know, it’s never enough, no matter how much money I’m making, no matter how big the company is, no matter you know how many toys I buy, I still don’t have a sense of fulfillment, you know?

 

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Identifying Leaders: The Importance of Doing Transformational Work

 

And as one of the guys that I interviewed on my show a couple of weeks ago said, a young man, and I’ll offer this example because I thought it was right to the point. Young, in his 20s, built this multi-million dollar company. And he said, I realized that I was stressed out when I was meeting the goals, and I was stressed out when I was not meeting.

 

Yeah. Which is dizzying, right? I mean, it’s like, what’s the point? Yeah. What’s the point? And for him, he had done a lot of work, what I would call transformational work from a very early age because his mother was wise enough, when he was very young, to put him in therapy when they went through a divorce.

 

So he had a lot of self-awareness, but he and I don’t know many that his age that would have this level of self-awareness. But what he knew in that moment when he discovered that was, this isn’t the industry for me. I’m not fulfilled here. But he’s a rare example. Most of the people you know, that I’m working with, that I know you’re interfacing with in business.

 

You know, we’re chasing the brass ring, and we don’t always have that level of awareness. And that’s what this work allows leaders to step into. Okay, so in here again, if I’m tracking with you, is that so? We’re sure that we’re pursuing the right ring in the first place. Right. Exactly. And we have the courage to pivot if we need to, you know, because when I got into this type of work, Steve, years ago, it was born out of my traveling around the United States and Canada.

 

I was speaking in 150 cities a year, and my first year out, I was shocked at the amount of pain and suffering in corporate America. I mean, literally people at my desk, you know, at ten in the morning saying, I hate my job. And you know, I couldn’t believe how many people in this country were getting up every day and hating what they did.

 

And that’s what got me, you know, kind of catapulted into the interest of leadership development. And that’s why I’m so excited about this level of work, because it doesn’t have to take years to have this level of awareness. It’s literally transformational because again, it’s working at that quantum physics level where things just start to release without us even having to have big, heavy, you know, therapeutic conversations with the people in our lives.

 

It’s happening within us as individuals because it’s our system. So when I shift, I have the potential to shift things outside of me, without me having to necessarily even get into, you know, big, heavy meetings about the why and where this is. This has been a transformational conversation. And now I feel like I’m kind of making it about me.

 

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Identifying Leaders: Always Be Grateful to Your Team and Customers

 

I don’t mean to make my guesses. Many onward business owners are having the same aha that I’m having right now. Going back to my grandfather Peter Maronites. And then I think about the core values here at Predictive ROI. Our number one core value is gratitude. When I think about my grandfather Peter, he was so very grateful for his customers.

 

He owned three different restaurants over a span of 42 years. And one of his, like, his entire business plan that he would share with us in the family was, if you take care of your customers, they will take care of you. He was so grateful for his customers. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his customers.

 

And that’s how you are. Well, and it’s interesting in this conversation I’m thinking, oh my gosh, how interesting that gratitude is. Our number one, you know, core value. Now I share that with Catherine. My team and Erik and my team and all of my other teammates. So it’s not like these are Stephen’s core values. We all share them.

 

But I’m like, how interesting that we have built a business around a word that has been so important to me for decades and just not really realizing the derivative of it. Well, Hallelujah for your grandfather because he put in you a very high level, leadership DNA that you’re living out now, not only in terms of how you’re growing and scaling your own business but the way that you’re helping other leaders do that, too.

 

It’s just awesome because it’s that rippling effect of goodness. And part of my passion around this work, Stephen, is I don’t think any of us would doubt the fact that the world is in a very chaotic place now. Right? And we have a real opportunity here because it’s an evolutionary period in time. So we have an opportunity to lift up leaders, and it’s happening.

 

I’m seeing it everywhere, with the people that I interview, as well as the people that I work with, where they’re going to another place where they’re living from values not only in terms of their work, but their families, and they’re changing the world. But we just need more of that. We need more of that to quiet the insanity that’s on the news every night at 6:00.

 

Absolutely. There’s been a brilliant, brilliant conversation, Sharon, and I’m so grateful for your generosity and really taking us behind the curtain and putting on your full teacher hat. And in sharing with us the insights and, and your wisdom around these important topics. So I know we covered a lot, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye and any final advice you’d like to share with us anything you think we might have missed?

 

And then please do tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you. 

 

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Identifying Leaders: Final Advice from Sharon

 

Well, I thank you so much, Stephen, for giving me the opportunity to talk about this work, because I know it’s complex and and sometimes difficult to to cover in such a short amount of time. I want to thank you for the way that you captured it so beautifully.

 

I would just say that if you’re in a place, whether you’re feeling stressed or like you want to take your business or life to the next level, you know, seek, seek some outside support around that. There’s so many ways to do it. What I’ve talked about is one way, but there’s also coaching opportunities that we all know are out there in mastermind groups.

 

And I just really would like your listeners to know that whatever you’re feeling is, you know, good, bad or indifferent, there’s an opportunity to move to yet another level because that’s what human development is about. We used to think that people stop developing, as ridiculous as it sounds at age 21. But now we know that it’s an ongoing, lifelong process, so you don’t have to be stuck or trying to figure it out on your own.

 

And then as to the event, oh my gosh, I’m so excited again on October 9th and 10th, in Chicago. And they can go to the website, and you’ll I know you have this in your show notes sharonspano.com/workshops. And then also in the show notes, we’re offering a free ebook, to anyone who comes into your podcast as well.

 

And the book is the pursuit of time and money, and it’s all about radical abundance and stewardship and some of the developmental work that I’m about. 

 

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Identifying Leaders: How to Connect with Sharon

 

So, again, would welcome anyone if they have any questions, they can also, you know, go on my website or contact me at sharonspano.com, if they want to know more about the upcoming leadership DNA retreat on October 9th and 10th, that is awesome.

 

Okay, Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Sharon’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is to take everything that she shared with you so generously, take it and apply it into your business and your life, and accelerate your results and share. We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, and I am grateful, my friend, that you said yes to come back for this encore, to be our mentor, our guide to help us move our businesses onward to that next level.

 

Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you, Stephen, for having me. This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Learn more about identifying leaders by listening to this podcast