Inspiral Consulting

SUMMARY:

In this special episode of the Biz Bites Podcast, hosted by CommTogether, guest speaker Claudia Navarro discusses the importance of self-leadership for business professionals. She goes over three key actions to cultivate self-leadership: self-awareness, self-regulation, and reflection. Claudia also mentions the relevance of self-leadership in the face of various challenges and uncertainties, and the opportunity for this approach to align individuals more with their own life objectives. She advocates for treating life scientifically, testing out different things to see what works for oneself. The podcast ends with a Q&A session where Claudia discusses her personal journey and her work with clients.

00:00 Introduction to Biz Bites Podcast

00:32 Special Presentation by Claudia Navarro

02:18 Understanding Self Leadership

03:11 Assessing Your Self Leadership

03:52 Three Actions to Cultivate Self Leadership

09:33 Podcast Done for You Service

10:37 Reflection: A Key to Learning

13:53 Q&A with Claudia Navarro

18:10 Conclusion and Invitation to Networking Group

18:50 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

commtogether.com.au

TRANSCRIPT:

Anthony Perl: Welcome to Biz Bites brought to you by CommTogether, helping businesses like yours build their brand through telling amazing stories to engage and grow audiences on multiple platforms. Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of the Biz Bites podcast. We’ll fill you in on why it’s so special in just a moment.

But if you want to learn about leadership and Have some practical information about how you can make a real difference to your career, then this is an episode. You don’t want to miss Claudia Navarro was asked to be a special presenter at a networking event that I attend regularly We are going to feature that guest speaker And her presentation as part of the Biz Bites recording this month.

And indeed we’re going to do that every month. So I hope you enjoy this special presentation. There are a few questions that I do host at the end of the recording. So stick around and listen to them all because there’s some fantastic insights. You’ll want to have pen and paper at hand. It’s over to the episode with Claudia Navarro.

Claudia Navarro: Well, thank you so much. I’m very excited to be here with you today and share some of the insights on how to boost your self leadership. And I know it’s only like 12 minutes, so my aim and my goal is to make sure that you get the most practical and useful information so you can get the most value out of it.

I would like to start and let me ask you a question. Would it be fair to say that you are in business because you want to take control of your own professional life? Maybe you started your business because you were something like you were really good at something and then you realise that this is a really good way to really take control of that career, not only your professional, but also your personal life.

And I know because business is really hard. It’s not for the faint hearted, and it really requires a lot of you, but perhaps what you have overlooked is how much self leadership has helped you in the journey. So, I would like to start with what is actually self leadership. So, self leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your own self image.

Thinking, feeling, and actions towards achieving a personal and professional goals and objectives. So this is a definition that is provided by Bryant and Kazan. And really what this is telling us is that self leadership is like being the CEO. Of your own life, and it’s the thing that puts you in the driver’s seat and take control of, of that.

So, I would like to ask you a question, and, um, you don’t need to answer it publicly. It’s something that you just need to keep in your mind. How strong do you think is your self leadership? So, from a scale of 1 to 7, 1 being like, um, it’s really poor, I think I need to work on that, to 7, it’s like, it’s great, I feel like I’m really strong in my self leadership, how would you rate it?

And as I said, you don’t need to show it. Just keep it that on your mind because, um, the purpose of this presentation is to really to help you. Maybe doesn’t matter of where you are in that scale. There’s always something that you can do to improve yourself leaderships that will help you. So what are the three actions?

What I want to share with you is the three actions that you can do to cultivate yourself leadership. And the importance of why you want to do that, it’s because there’s in the world, so much uncertainty, so many things going on unpredictability, and you have to deal with maybe sometimes difficult clients, or if you have team members, there’s always something going on.

So the purpose of this is really to Align and just to be more in control of what we, how we respond and also to, to make sure that those, um, what our values and what we want aligned to our outer world. So these three actions that I’m going to share with you is something that everybody can practice, but just because it’s something that everybody can practice, it doesn’t mean that everybody.

Actually does it so probably you have heard some of what I’m going to share with you, but really knowledge is not going to change anything, but really going to change something is when you put the things into practice. So what’s the first element or the first action of cultivating yourself leadership?

The first one is self awareness. Now, there is a very interesting research done by a psychology, an organisational psychologist. Her name is Tasha Urich, and she’s done a lot of work and research around self awareness. And what she discovered in her team, her team and her discovery is that 95 percent of people think that they are self aware, but in fact, only 10 to 15 percent truly are.

Now it’s a massive difference in a big gap. And this might be because we have blind spots and also because we sometimes run our life in autopilot. And it could be also because we are not really aware and sure of how we are behaving and why. So what can you do to, to increase your self awareness? So one of the things is asking these questions and really, um, pay attention to what are my strengths?

What are the things that I’m really good at that I bring to the table? What are my development areas? What is something that it doesn’t come very natural to me? And that’s where I need support. What are my core values? Because we know that decisions are mainly based or made based on, on what people value.

So do you actually know what your core values are? And they might also change over time as you grow as well. When, how, when am I, I’m at my best and what drains my energy, but what also, what increases my energy. That’s some of the questions that you can reflect upon. And the other thing is also get feedback from other people.

Now, feedback from other people, it might be interesting because if you don’t have a close team member, it might be difficult to get that feedback that is from someone that works really close with you. But you can ask maybe clients or people that are very close, uh, to you and interact. Constantly, um, about what your strengths and all these questions are, um, are.

And the second one is self regulation. And by self regulation, I mean, is controlling, well, this is a definition by Andrea Bell, which is, which says, it’s control of oneself by oneself. So, you know, sometimes when some things happen and things are not going according to plan, and you tend to be more in the, Reactive mode.

Self regulation helps us to really think before we act. So to really assess, um, if this is happening in this, in this situation, what are the things that I need to monitor in how I can, I regulate my emotions to get the best out of this situation. So, um, in this part, it’s very important to understand your triggers.

So we all have something. That maybe it’s really annoying to us that we know that when that situation happens and we see a particular person or we hear something, we are going to react in a very helpful way. So do you actually know what your triggers are? And that’s, that’s very important in this self regulation step.

And some of the things that can help you with the self regulation are meditation. Mindfulness, it’s another practice, uh, doing exercise. This is something that probably Caroline is very aware of on how this, like, this helps to, with the self regulation. Even like breathing, it really calms you down and acknowledge your emotions.

So that’s the other, um, that’s the other action.

Anthony Perl: Hey, just wanted to interrupt for a moment, and I hope you’re enjoying Claudia’s presentation. And we’ve got some fantastic questions and things to come up that have been brought. By some of the people attending the network event as well as myself, but I just wanted to draw your attention to podcast done for you because if you are out there listening and thinking, I’d really love a podcast, but it’s so much effort to be able to do it, or I don’t know how to do it.

Don’t worry. We take all the pain away from all of that. We’ll make it possible for you. We’ll get a podcast up and running in no time at all. So you are the expert. We’ll even host it for you. So all you have to do is show up, but podcasts vary from person to person. We’ll tailor it to suit your needs. So come and talk to us at com together and the ask about the podcast done for you service.

There’ll be some links in the, uh. In the show notes below. So please click on them. And in the meantime, a reminder, if you’re enjoying biz bites and I know you are, please don’t forget to subscribe and share it with your friends. Now back to the presentation from Claudia.

Claudia Navarro: And the last one is reflection.

And I really liked this quote from John Dewey. He was a philosopher and he says, we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. And I’m not sure about you, but I’m definitely being guilty of this when just the days happen and I really don’t take the time to go back and reflect even on my day.

And sometimes we do that very often towards December, the end of the year, but that’s, that’s about it. Or maybe mid year or something. But, um, I’ve been doing this myself as well and just every day. Asking these three questions, which is one what went well, and it gives us an opportunity to review and scan your day and just notice what are the things that, um, that yeah, that, that, that, that were very good and, and made you happy even, or fulfilled what could have done better.

Was there anything situation that if happens again, you would approach it in a different way? And the other one is, what did I learn today? And if it’s a bonus point, if you also share it with someone, what did you learn on that particular day? So those are the three actions that really help you to boost your self leadership.

And the more you master your own behavior and your own emotions, the less reactive you are going to be to the outer world and the more aligned you are going to be with what you really want in life and achieve your goals and, um, advance your, your, your, your professional and personal life. So just to recap, It’s really about being self leadership, it’s about being in control, being the CEO of your own life.

It puts you on the driver’s seat and it doesn’t mean that, um, challenges won’t happen or you’re going to face a difficult situation. It’s really about how you manage those, um, instances. Now, what’s next? I mean, as I said at the beginning, nothing changes, only with the knowledge. So, if you think, depends on the scale when I ask you the question where you are, if you feel like, yeah, I can definitely use some of these tips to increase my self leadership, my invite to you is to focus on one area.

So, one thing that you want to improve, and commit to that one thing. The other one is being more like a scientist, and we don’t treat our lives as a scientist anymore. We see what works for this person and for this person, but that might not necessarily work for me. So it might be meditation, it might be mindfulness, exercise, and really take one thing and assess and review what works and what doesn’t, and start making those changes in your life.

Thank you.

Anthony Perl: Claudia, thank you for that. Um, really interesting assessment that you’ve given us there of, of that. And I’m really fascinated to, I guess, ask you if there’s some common theme that you’re seeing at the moment and what most leaders are struggling with.

Claudia Navarro: Just as in general, like about business owners, you mean?

Yes.

Anthony Perl: When it comes to this sort of self leadership, um, there are a particular angle, a particular thing that you’re seeing more people struggling with today.

Claudia Navarro: Yeah. What I find is a really All the uncertainty that is going on and with the people that I work with is how being like that in being in that reactive mode.

So sometimes people react to other people’s emotions and that’s very common. So what I see, it’s like there’s a lot of emotions going at work and people or leaders reacting into that instead of just taking a step back and assessing more of the situation from like as a third party. So it’s really easy to get involved into that emotional state.

Anthony Perl: It’s look, there’s so much that we could unpack here, and we’ve obviously got limited time, but I wanted to understand a little bit of your story as well, if you could just quickly give us a little bit, what’s inspired you to get to this point and how do you inspire other leaders along as part of that, uh, with part of that journey?

Yeah.

Claudia Navarro: Um, yeah, probably we’ll need more time, but just to, to give you an overall, uh, view is. When I’m a migrant and also when I started my journey here in in Australia, and I saw in the workplace how much it didn’t really matter how much policies, how much, um, frameworks the leaders have, it was that when they were not sure about who they were and what they value.

It was really difficult to manage any kind of difficult situation. So I was really intrigued into how can you start being more aware of you, of you and your own emotions, how you manage difficult situations. And that’s what really led me to all these, um, years of doing, um, leadership, self leadership, team management, and all that.

And the things that I do particularly, it’s. I look two things specifically, I’m more mindful of my communication. So every time I’m going to communicate something, I start to think like, is this going to be relevant to this person or the conversation that I’m having? So I’m very aware of that. And I think that’s really helpful and inspire others.

And the other one is. I try to go back again to my own behavior and how my behavior impacts, um, others. So that’s two specific things that I do.

Anthony Perl: I’m going to wrap up with one final question, if that’s okay, is just to ask you as well. What’s that kind of a hot moment that people have when they start working with you that you’d love more people to know in advance?

Claudia Navarro: Yeah, sure. I think one of the, it’s quite simple. Um, but when they start working with me, one of the biggest things that they say is, um, just go back to the basic and the fundamentals. And what I mean by that is when something is not working in the business. It’s mostly a reflection. I put something actually today on LinkedIn.

It’s mostly a reflection of their own standards and their own, whether they willing or not willing to tolerate. So when they see something externally that it’s not working, it’s kind of like they have to look inward as why is this happening that I’m contributing to. And I think, um, I explained it in a bigger conversation, but I think that’s one of the things that it’s the biggest aha moment for some of my clients.

Anthony Perl: Fantastic. Thank you so much for that. Uh, I really appreciate the insights. I’m sure everyone else listening in did as well. Um, it’s such a interesting area around self leadership and, uh, and that premise of why we go into business in the first place. And I’m sure I saw a few people sort of nodding their heads as they went through that part as well.

So, uh, so thank you for that. Really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for joining us on this very special episode of Biz Bites. I hope you enjoyed the presentation from Claudia Navarro. And if you want more information about the networking group that I attend every week, and which you can be a presenter on, if you would like, then please speak to me directly.

You know how to reach me. LinkedIn is the best possible way. Send me a message. We’d love to have a chat about opportunities for you to guest speak to a large group and you get the bonus of also appearing on the Biz Bites podcast. In the meantime, please don’t forget to subscribe and we look forward to having your company in the next episode of Biz Bites.

Biz Bites is brought to you by CommTogether. For all your marketing needs, so you can build your brand, engage audiences on multiple platforms, go to commtogether.com.au, follow the links to book an appointment for a free consultation.