From Performance to Authentic Leadership Presence - Cheryl Martin

Meredith Bell: 00:00:04

Announcer, thank you for tuning in to The Ultimate Coach podcast, a companion to the transformative book The Ultimate Coach written by Amy Hardison and Alan D Thompson. Each conversation is designed to be a powerful wake up call, reminding us of what's possible for you and your life. So if you're on a journey to expand your state of being, this podcast is for you.

Meredith Bell: 00:00:37

Welcome to the ultimate coach Podcast. I'm Meredith Bell, one of your hosts for the show, and today I am delighted to welcome as my guest, Cheryl Martin. Cheryl, great to have you with me.

Cheryl Martin: 00:00:50

Yeah, I'm so happy to be here as well. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Meredith Bell: 00:00:55

You know, Cheryl, before we get started with our conversation, I want to let our listeners know a little bit more about you because you have such great experience that you're going to be bringing to our conversation today. Cheryl is a strategic change consultant, executive coach and facilitator. She has over 15 years of experience working at the intersection of business strategy and Human Development. She brings a rare blend of strategic intelligence, psychological depth and lived experience to her work with clients. Her present focus is working with leaders and implementing her signature program that's called emergence your leading edge. It's a group coaching experience that helps seasoned leaders reorient their leadership around who they've actually become, moving from performance driven patterns to a more aligned self trusting presence. At the heart of her work is a belief that real leadership isn't found in tools or titles. It's found in presence, identity and deep alignment. Her work is grounded in the idea that transformation isn't about pushing change, but making space for what's already present to surface. I love that, Cheryl. I just think that's such a great focus, and we'll dive into that. But first, I'd love to back up and have you share some of your own experiences in the corporate world where you are challenged in terms of being able to be yourself and feeling like you had to wear a mask.

Cheryl Martin: 00:02:40

Yeah. Well, I ended up, I started my career in the learning and development space and and landed about mid career in the large consulting space. So as a leader there, I think, you know, and when I look back on it, it I don't know that it's even that I did need to put on a mask every morning, but our learned experience of how we should lead tended me to feel that way. I mean, because there always is, especially in a huge corporation like that, you know, the expectations of any particular role are pretty stringent, and so, you know, I, I think it's, it's just hard to naturally show up, I guess which, which? It sounds silly to even say but, but it felt true at the time. Now, having said that that was a that was a time ago. I would say I left that consulting firm in 2014 so that was a bit, a bit ago. But, you know, and I like to, I would say that I like to tie the sense that I had to my experience of what how leaders feel about leading now, which is, you know, you're kind of stuck in performance, so you end up performing confidence and strength and clarity when, when it really isn't there, because you you feel that there's a particular way you should show up. So that is definitely what I find, because my focus has become leadership, and I think it's it's just harder and harder, especially now, because, let's face it, I mean, I'm not afraid to say that most corporations, it's pretty messy now, you know, for a whole lot of reasons, and so leaders are even more challenged, and then even when I was there, so yeah,

Meredith Bell: 00:04:47

What you were saying about performing confidence or performing something like that makes me think about the contrast we sometimes hear about in the well being community around. Doing versus being and so I'm curious what your take is on the distinction you're making there, on performing confidence as opposed to being confident.

Cheryl Martin: 00:05:16

Yeah, well, you know, that's where what I call identity work comes in. I mean, the work that I do is definitely identity work. And I think, I think there it is. What I believe is there's sort of a natural arc or evolution to identify our identity work. It's sort of like reflection, insight, alignment, embodiment and impact. And I feel like, you know, the program that I developed is based on those growth I call them growth areas, and I think until we complete that arc, unless we've come out of the womb, you know, this naturally consonant, or out of our family, I suppose, would be a better way to say it. But I think we all have, you know, some obstacles or whatever that we've we've gained insight about and maybe overcome. But I think until we go through that, that full arc, we don't show up authentically in a natural way. We can think about it like before coming on this interview, I can say to myself, I'm going to be really authentic, but it's all it's embodiment. So if I feel like right now, I feel very comfortable with you, so I feel like what I'm saying is embodied. But you know, that's not always true. So I don't know if that definitely answers your question, but I think, you know, we can't really, you know, and there's a lot of talk, I would say this too. There's a lot of talk about in the leadership realm, and probably in general, about leading from who you are. And I think what, what often happens with that phrase, that phraseology, is that, you know, really, I don't want a leader that I'm working with to lead from who they are, if to them, that means who they were, right? Because that's what it kind of it's more what I want it to mean. And what it means to me is leading from who you've evolved to be. That's the place you want to lead from. But, and I think that that that leads me into, you know, the whole being thing too. There's also a lot of talk about being and, you know, it's certainly a great way to be. But you know,

Cheryl Martin: 00:07:44

again, I don't think, I mean, we can tell ourselves today, I'm going to be this, but if it's not embodied, it's not authentic. But there's nothing we're almost practicing that either. I mean, we can, we can then call it practice, right? Which is great. So maybe the better way to think of it for me would be, today, I'm going to practice being kind. I don't know if I'll end up being kind, but I'm certainly going to practice it. But I do. I do think we want to be careful, and as I So, believe in the power of words. So I think it's important that we come from a place where we're really sure that we understand what the word means that we're using, or what it means to us. And I guess others get to, you know, there's always going to be other perceptions, but, yeah, so, I mean, these are such deep topics, I could, you know, I think, like, I could go on and on, on any one of them, but I do, you know the way that this program emerged. I will say something I'm I really feel good about, is that it did just emerge. And that's where the word emergence came from, because it was almost it was so natural for me, because it came out of working with leaders for so long and and then coming out of the, you know, psychology space, and understanding that there really are certain growth areas that all of us at some point in our lives go through. And, you know, we might do it in a piecemeal way, like when I here's an interesting thing. So if I normally, if I ask a leader in one way or another, I'll say, Well, how, what are the ways that you've grown into the leader that you are today? And normally, and my answer would have been similar when I was back at Deloitte, but normally they'll say, Well, you know, I, did a retreat, and there was a book I read, and I had a coach who was, you know, which is all good stuff. Nothing wrong with any of that. But I kind of like to refer to it myself as kind of a piecemeal way of growing, which is a natural way that we grow right over the course

Cheryl Martin: 00:09:57

of our lives. The. Difference that I I make in the way that I coach in the program is that it's intentional transformation. So if a person hires me as a coach, that's intentional. It's like I want to grow an area of myself or whatever. But this program has a curated sequence of these growth areas, this growth arc. And so even if, at the end of it, you know, they they come out a little bit more evolved, or maybe a lot more evolved, that may not stick with them. But the key thing is that now they're going to understand how the pieces fit together, like, Why? Why did that belief matter in how I lead today and what that pattern tell me so now I can continue through life and understand how those pieces work together.

Meredith Bell: 00:10:57

For you, when you think about a participant going through the steps you laid out. How does that fit into the word emergence? Like, where are they coming, starting from, and what are they emerging into?

Cheryl Martin: 00:11:15

Yeah, great question. Well, and I don't I would dare say that any one of the leaders that did the program wouldn't have a clear answer to that themselves, like I don't know that they would say what I want to be is this, but they just know something's off, or there's a better way, or maybe things are okay, but they just want to be more effective. But what I would and how I would best, I think answer that question is, I like to come from, where they are and where they are, is they have challenges. So, you know, I always start there. And maybe, you know, if, for instance, I had a leader identify their two primary challenges, then what's really powerful is to look at those challenges through the through the lens of each of the growth areas. So as they go through, you know, we're going to look at it from the standpoint of the roles that they are playing as a leader, then we're going to look at it from the standpoint of, how did those roles originate? And that gets down to the beliefs. So that's how I like to see it. But I think it always starts with, I mean, there's a challenge of some kind. Usually, does that answer your question, or did I come veer off? Yeah,

Meredith Bell: 00:12:42

well, that's a, you know, an important piece of it, because I think that's true for all of us. When we look to have a coach or a friend to talk to, or anyone, we have a challenge, a problem that we're faced with, that we're focused on, and we tend to look at it as the thing. If we can fix this thing, then I'll be okay. But of course, where we're coming from in approaching that has everything to do with what you've been talking about. You know, our history, our beliefs and and there's always so much more depth to what's behind the issue that we're facing. And so when you have someone come to you, and I think this is really helpful for our listeners, as we think about what is a specific challenge that I've been dealing with or been faced with, and what is Cheryl saying that could help me look at it perhaps from a different perspective, or approach it from a different place. So let's just imagine for a minute, and maybe you have a real client in mind, not necessarily someone in this program, but someone maybe you've coached one on one. Coached one on one, where they have presented you with a specific problem, and how have you helped them shift from that focus on that one thing to the larger aspect of who they are being and who they are and want to become in that moment.

Cheryl Martin: 00:14:23

Yeah, I have what I think of as a perfect example, and yet it's complex. But I had a client, and I can, I can talk about this, because it was long enough ago that if he heard, you know, I'm really always aware of confidentiality, but sure, a CEO who and this still is so amazing to me, his whole thing was legacy. So at the time, I met him at an event, and he asked me what I did, and at the time, I was delivering a program for Federal Express executives called the next challenge. Chapter. So these were guys who had left corporate America and they wanted to do something else, but they weren't sure what it was. So they were exploring. And in that conversation, I used the word legacy. In that moment, he literally pulled a card out of his pocket, put it in my hand and said, Call me tomorrow. And walked away. And I was kind of startled, of course, but so that, I mean, that told me everything right there, that that was really important for him. He was an older man. He had been CEO of the northern region of a huge company for quite some number of years, and why he wanted to talk to me is that he had, he had had a firm do a 360 on his leadership team, and he got scathing reviews. And so the first thing he did was the first time we met, as he threw this thing across the table and he said, Well, I think you're going to look at this So, long story short, you know, this was a guy who, I mean, you want to talk about performing confidence. I mean, he was brilliant, a brilliant man. And in his heart of hearts, he was a good, kind man. But you, you didn't really see that on the surface and in the in the very beginning, it felt to me like it was relational work, it was emotional intelligence, kind of work that I would have wanted to take him toward, but he was so left brained that my challenge became anything. We would literally meet in person, and we would meet in a conference room that had a whiteboard. And I always started the sessions by putting up some kind of

Cheryl Martin: 00:16:48

a graph or chart or something, because I knew that's how he would relate to it. And so I coached him for an entire year. And you know, the thing that we're talking about is was so far from his reach him understanding that he could just be who he was, like if he went in, if he went and met with that leadership team and just showed up in something Other than this very stoic stance that he had that was the hugest challenge to help him live, because he just couldn't imagine it. And, I mean, at the time, he was in his mid 50s, so he had been leading this way for a long time, which leads me to, you know, a really important piece, I think, because when I when we're talking to a leader about and, you know, as we all know, there are, there's a plethora of lists of roles and leadership models out there, but regardless of the words, usually, any leader is leading based on one or two or three roles. And you know, they've either, like some of the leaders I've coached, have learned how they lead from when they were a manager, let's say, and that's just, that's what they've hung on to. And you know, they don't, they're busy leading, and so they don't stop and ask themselves, gee, should I be leading this way? And it works in their organization. Here's the linchpin. It works in their organization, because maybe they've evolved, but their organization hasn't. Now this is a key thing I'd like to bring up, because at the end of coaching, or mid coaching, or at the end of this program, chances are a leader, and I'm going to just make this up, even though I know it's true, a leader in about session four or five will already be having the question. They won't know how to articulate it yet, but the question will become, okay, this is great. This feels great. This embodiment stuff. But I don't know how I'm going to go back into my organization with this, because the most of the leaders I coach are internal, and that that's the thing that I love helping them with. That's the

Cheryl Martin: 00:19:13

piece right there. Because, because here, I mean if, if you ask me what the answer was in one word, you know what I would say, style, what they get to hold on to. That's theirs, regardless of what their organization what definition their organization has on their role, or what the expectations are, their style is theirs. That's who they are. That's how they get to go back and lead, and they can do that within their organization's expectations. And then the question becomes, you know, a lot of times the second question will become, well, what if it doesn't work? That's when maybe you think about not staying, because a lot of times the. First question is, Should I leave? Does this mean I have to leave the No, it doesn't. You can take yourself, your style, your lead, because your leadership style basically is who you are. I mean, how you show up, how you lead, your manner, you know, how people trust you, all of those things. Yeah. I mean, I could go on and on about that, and I know that was an awfully long answer, but you know that particular example, you know, I still to this day, find it sad, because what I would say is I ended up helping him leave the organization, because there was not going to be a way that he could reconcile his relationship with his leadership team, and the chairman didn't like him, and so it really was just best for him to leave. And the sad part of that is that he didn't get to he didn't get to be it. He didn't get to be that in his organization, but I don't know, does that well

Meredith Bell: 00:21:04

You know what you're talking about there to me, it strikes me as such a challenge that leaders have. We all have with feeling safe, yeah, about revealing our true as you call it, identities. And, you know, sometimes the word identity is construed negatively when we think, Oh, identify myself as this, then we use, you know, I'm a procrastinator, or I'm a this, or I'm a that, but you're talking about something much deeper when you're referring to identity, and it sounds like just thinking about that CEO and his real identity of caring and warmth and having a heart and being concerned about his legacy, and yet He didn't feel, for whatever reason, safe in displaying that truth, he wasn't the embodiment of it. It wasn't evident in who he was and who he felt safe showing others this person that he thought he should be. Is that sounding right? And that's where he had the struggle. Because I think all of us have, to some degree that struggle of how much of my real self can I bring

Cheryl Martin: 00:22:25

Yeah, you know, and I, and I think part of it with him was generational and and I will take it to the way he grew up. And what I would say to what I'll share is I was not ever able to really take him to a place of where he to that place. I hate to say he needed to go, but that would have helped him to really get down to gosh, you know. So, yeah, you know. And that, I mean, since I'm talking about identity, I think it's only fair to share a bit about, you know, kind of where, where I began, because this identity work of mine doesn't just come out of the sky. There's, you know, there's always a reason we do what we end up doing right? And so I would say that my early life, I guess, the best way to kind of couch it is that it was shaped by emotional absence, well, and really a deep sense of not belonging. So what that kind of morphed into, and, you know, I guess what I want to say with that is two wonderful parents, who I would say to this day had wonderful qualities, but inherited what they had grown up with, and were probably pretty misguided in the way that they parented. Bless their hearts, right? They intended, they intended to be loving, but it showed up more as dutiful parenting, which is, you know, the things were taken care of, right? So I think out of that, you know, and then I was a deeply sensitive kid, so I internalized that disconnection and really carried it around for quite a while, but I had this deep, intuitive knowing that started young, and it's like I could sense what wasn't being said. I could feel the tension beneath the surface, and I spoke up about it even as a kid. Now you can imagine how that went over, right? Like I just know stuff, and there was dysfunction around me, and I would speak up in some way or another, and so I learned to suppress it over time. And but why I share that is that a it ended up being one of the My greatest gifts, because one of the things I was. Known for as a consultant was, if there was an

Cheryl Martin: 00:24:55

elephant under the table, I had a keen way of bringing it out and putting it right on the table pretty tactfully. But, you know, I think as a result of all of that, I what I would say is I became very functional. I always had believed that you can be whatever you want to be. So I started my growth journey very, very young, and I'm very I feel very proud of that, and very fortunate that I had the wherewithal, you know, to get into therapy and to do co I did coaching when it was a brand new thing, and so I was always functional, but I don't know that I ever I was pretty known when I left home and went into my early adulthood. I think I was just numb because I had never really experienced all the grief. And so it was it when I think about it now, I really smile because I remember a time as an adult, and I don't know how relatable this will be to the audience, but I have a sense that it might be to quite a few, that moment when you it's almost as if you're saying, oh my god, I'm pretty cool. You know? I mean, what the hell, right? And it's just that's kind of a clumsy way of saying it, but we come to because, like for me, I just, I had got, and even as a consultant, I mean, I was a successful consultant, but again, I was performing confidence. I didn't really feel confident, and I was, you know, presenting to the higher executive teams and some of the largest organizations. In the world, and I was polished as hell, and that's what made me successful. So isn't it interesting? I always say it's very interesting that what what's promoted without Not intentionally, but what ends up being promoted is that you succeed when you're polished. You succeed when you know how to be, but it has nothing to do with who you are really. So I, yeah, I, but I it's amazing to me, how, how long, and I call it numb. And what I mean by that is I just wasn't embodied, and I even myself. I would imagine, I don't know how other people would describe me, but I would imagine that I

Cheryl Martin: 00:27:25

probably had a bit of a stoic error myself, you know, because I wasn't, but it was, it was so glorifying for me to do the identity work. So I know what it's all about firsthand, and it's, it's not an easy journey. It's painful, because you go back, and I'm not saying every leader goes back and feels all their grief, but you know, different people have different levels and different ways of dealing with it. But for me, there was a lot of sadness and grief. So I know all of that stuff well. And you know, I think what's just a last little thing there? I think I always get a note of sadness, because as a consultant, by the way, my my area of consulting was change consulting, which is kind of a tough road, a hole in and of itself, and and my task as a consultant was the coaching that I did, like when I wore my coach hat. It was helping the leaders become effective, change leaders, and that was more task oriented, targeted coaching than the kind of coaching I do know. And I bring that up for a very specific reason, because it's why, it's what prompted me to develop a coach practice, because I always wanted to work deeper with them, and I got to see so many leaders that I was helping become effective change leaders. And really what I was doing, none of us intended it, but we were, I was teaching them how to perform being an effective change leader, right? I was help giving them the tools to do that, which wasn't a bad thing, but it always felt there was always kind of a hole for me. That was it always felt kind of sad that I didn't get to work deeper with them, because some of them, I think, would have welcomed it, but yeah, so that was my driving, the driver really, for me, yeah,

Meredith Bell: 00:29:34

Yeah. And again, it kind of goes back to me as I'm listening to you describe this, helping them do the performing as effective later. So the doing of it, the taking of the actions, without getting behind the scenes, so to speak, to really get at the root of because I'm guessing, for some of. Them that had never really focused on the identity, The Who am. I really, you know deep inside that there's this inner conflict at times between who they know they really are, but who they're being asked to be or do, as you know, performing effectively. So there can be this reluctance, I would guess, or cognitive dissonance between acting on this superficial or surface level, I'll say, versus really digging deep, like you like to do now to help them truly uncover who's the real person here.

Cheryl Martin: 00:30:45

Yeah, you know, and I think that that's when I sometimes get a client when, you know, usually they can't necessarily articulate what's off, but something just feels off. It's not that they're not successful. They're successfully leading, but they're not leading the way they want to, or usually, their challenges have to do with complaints or lack of alignment with things that their organization is doing. They don't want to follow a particular way that they're asked to be. But I wanted to point to something you said at the beginning of that. It's kind of flown away for a moment, but yeah, I just, Oh, I know what it was. The sad thing about what you said in the beginning there is that you're talking about not just leading but leading change. And so what you said that's missing is even more important, because we we focus, the way that I do change work is we focus on the human element, which we're talking about. I work on the people side. There's somebody else over here implementing the technology and stuff, but I'm working with the people and, you know, they're going through their own personal version of having to adjust to change in a big part of their life, which is their work. And so it's even more important for these leaders to model authenticity and get real with their people so that they can get on board with the change, instead of telling them that they have to get on board. So it's a really important area. And, you know, I feel grateful, so grateful that, honestly, that that's the area that I worked in. Because, boy, you you just get, you get the best and the worst in everything in between of people in that space. And you just learn so much so, and I still do a bit of that more on an advisory level now, probably, but yeah, so it ended up that one day I'll say this, I was on LinkedIn, and I saw yet another leadership model, which wasn't bad, right? But I found myself judging, not the model, but judging the idea. Why are these people? We've

Cheryl Martin: 00:33:13

got enough leadership. We don't need another model, because I know how the leaders I coach respond to that they're like, really, you know, we just got taught a new model last year, or whatever. And so I start I felt really judgmental in the moment. And I remember thinking to myself, well, rather than judging this, maybe I should ask myself what I would do differently. And I literally then ended up asking myself, well, what would I build? I went to the drawing board, and, like, a month later, I had this whole program, but I just had the growth areas. And then I thought, gosh, you know, and at the time I built it, it was for anybody. But then I thought, wow. But I really want to, I really want this, so I worked it to be a leadership more, most often a leadership program. Anybody could actually go through this piece of work, though, in a row. Yeah. I mean, it's a really as we all know, it's a very challenging time for all of us. But if you imagine a leader in a large organization, let's say there she's a director or a VP. That's a really challenging place to be right now. And I remember so many of my colleagues, my women colleagues, were deciding that they wanted to coach people who wanted to leave corporate America. And I thought, great, because there were plenty of those, right but then I thought, but what about the ones in there? I know them so well, and I thought they really need help, and that's when I decided to work with internal leaders.

Meredith Bell: 00:34:50

Well, let's revisit what you were describing earlier in terms of those different elements that you built in because you. Saying this all just kind of emerged for you as you were open to considering what is really involved in doing this deep work and emerging somebody emerging as their true selves. So let's look more closely at those elements you were

Cheryl Martin: 00:35:20

Yeah, you know, I think what I want to say first about that Meredith is, I don't know that it's the kind of work that you want to just boom, you know, go right into. And so the way that it starts, whether I'm coaching someone or in the program, as I said, is we talk about their challenges, because now we have something to work off of, right? And even if it was a person, you could talk about their woman's challenge as a mother, same kind of thing, right? But you want, you have to have something, I think, to work off of, for there to be a willingness in the client to go there, because week three, by the way, is called origins. And so that kind of gives you a sense of, you know, going back and and I, we don't do it in a intrusive, you know, digging in way. I mean, I'm I, I guess I would call myself a pretty good facilitator, and so we have a pretty gentle way. And you know, in retreat, each of those growth areas is a full day. So on week three, day three, you've got a full day on origins, and it's a really gentle and it doesn't go to the deepest place of necessarily becoming who they are. It's more revisiting how they want to lead, like, Who do I want to be as a leader? And really, what that means, ultimately, is, I mean, because you want it to be an authentic place, you're coming from as a leader. But that's a different, a different come from, if you will, right then just digging in, and it would be like Freudian, someone laying on the couch, and, you know, do it? You know, it's not, it's so I like to use that word identity carefully, because, yeah, these, I mean, these are leaders that don't necessarily need to. This isn't therapy, right? But what they what we want to do is look at are the roles I'm playing as a leader, the best roles they could be for me to feel aligned. And you know, that's kind of where, where it lands. And then, if you think about it, those areas that I mentioned, I kind of call it the identity evolution, but always and

Cheryl Martin: 00:37:45

in this, this applies to all of us, whether we do it in my program or whether we do it over life, but we have we reflect, and then we gain insight, and then we we align, and then we embody it, and then we can have impact, because we can have impact without all of those steps. But guess what? Like, look at me, the impact I had at Deloitte wasn't bad, but it wasn't embodied. I mean, I helped clients, and I did well, and nothing was really terrible or off, but if I went back and and did the same, if I think of the projects that I did then and did them, no, I would do them differently.

Meredith Bell: 00:38:30

Yeah, I think, no, that's all. Each one of those, I think, is so valuable for us. And as I was listening to you, the one of the words that came to mind was this whole thing of being congruent, okay, we can have, you know, alignment, congruence, this whole idea of, I can reach that point of alignment and congruence. What the more I know myself, and the more I appreciate who I really am at my core. And it seems like that's part of the deep work that you're doing is really helping people get at that identity of who am I really so that then they have the opportunity to be that in the world.

Cheryl Martin: 00:39:16

And it takes a bit, it takes some practice, as you can well imagine, as they said, you know, at the end, because I've walked people through this individually and seriously, at about the fourth or fifth stage, it's, it's when they have that question of, gosh, you know, this is really great, because I do some embodiment work with them, and they're like, Wow, this feels great. And then it's like, Well, how am I going to be this in my organization? Because people know them in this other way, but if they just go in with this style, and it takes a bit, but people, you know, if you show up in a room different and the different is authentic, people are going to love it, right? So you. There's not a whole lot to worry about, but

Meredith Bell: 00:40:02

No, but you know what you're really talking about there too, is this whole idea of communicating to others and being willing to be open and vulnerable about you know, here is where I've been holding back, or here is where I've been performing in a way that I thought was expected. Here's what's real for me

Cheryl Martin: 00:40:23

I love that Meredith, because that that is that is such an important piece, to just have that conversation, you know, to just own it in a verbal way, even you could just show up in a different way, but even having the conversation with your team. I mean, if my client that I described would have been able to do that with his team. Oh my gosh, they might have even forgiven it.

Meredith Bell: 00:40:47

Well you know, I think to our work in my company, we work on 360 feedback. You alluded to that earlier in this whole idea of one of the most powerful things you can do with your feedback is share with others. Here's what I learned, and here's what I'm committed to do, to make changes so that I'm not creating problems for you and asking for their help. I think sometimes we forget that people inherently are cheering for us, but we don't appreciate that because, and we haven't mentioned the word judging, but I think a lot of times we are judging ourselves so harshly in so many ways that we are not allowing ourselves to be seen differently by others because we don't think it's possible. So I would think part of what you're doing is just helping people see possibilities.

Cheryl Martin: 00:41:44

Yeah, I love it. I really do love my work. Now, it took me a while to land where I'm at. I was, you know, I knew I wanted to coach. I loved coaching, and I've done it for many years, but, but this is feeling really, very, very, very aligned for me

Meredith Bell: 00:42:03

That's so cool, and I love that for you, Cheryl, because that means you will be more genuinely effective with others, because they will sense that, and I'm sure they are sensing that your current clients, since your passion and the depth that you've gone to with yourself in in your own work, that now you're able to extend to them.

Cheryl Martin: 00:42:29

Fortunately, I can give them plenty of examples of, you know, me being in that same having those similar challenges and things, yeah.

Meredith Bell: 00:42:38

Well, you know, it's that being relatable and not acting as if you have all it all together so they can't connect with you when they hear you share stories of your own challenges that makes you them able to connect with you, I would think more easily, and I think that's true for all of us. Whatever the relationship is, at work, at home, you know, whoever it is, if we're willing to just acknowledge and admit when we don't know the answer or we've made a mistake, instead of putting on circling back to performing as if you know we we do have it together, or we are confident when really it's it's more for performance instead of genuine.

Cheryl Martin: 00:43:29

Yes, I agree. And you know, I want to one last little note. You just talked about having that conversation. And when it comes to change that is so important, like, the difference between a leader going to a direct report and saying, Help me out. Help me understand what you need. You know, just I don't really understand, I want to help you, but I don't understand how. And then you get to learn what I do is I just get really, real interested in what they do, what what their role is like, what you know, and out of that, we build a relationship, yeah?

Meredith Bell: 00:44:13

Curiosity, right, yeah, such a key, key piece, instead of feeling threatened by somebody not embracing what you're trying to introduce in the way of change, to get curious about where the resistance is coming from.

Cheryl Martin: 00:44:28

Just as one example, rather than resisting the resistance, you listen,

Meredith Bell: 00:44:33

Which we often do, whether we're parents, grandparents, leaders, whatever our roles might be, we can have that internal reaction.

Cheryl Martin: 00:44:42

You know, it's interesting. Sometimes, when I'm talking to a potential organization about doing change work, they'll invariably ask me, so how do you handle resistance? And I don't care what they think, I always answer it the same way I say I listen to it. Mm. Yeah, and I think sometimes they're they kind of, it takes them a minute, and then they'll ask another question, but it's so true, because you'll want to understand what the resistance is.

Meredith Bell: 00:45:12

Cheryl, thank you so much for this conversation today. I so admire the work that you're doing with leaders and the impact you're having. And I want to encourage our listeners to learn more about this new program. You have emergence, your leading edge, and we'll have information in the show notes about that, and meanwhile, share how people can get in touch with you, connect with you, and learn more about you and the work you're doing,

Cheryl Martin: 00:45:40

Yeah, well, I think my all my links will be there, right? My main platform is LinkedIn. I'm also on Facebook, but you can always call me. I love that. I love getting a call or or an email.

Meredith Bell: 00:45:54

That's great. Thank you again, Cheryl, I appreciate your time and the work that you do, and the passion and love you bring to it yourself.

Cheryl Martin: 00:46:03

Thank you, Meredith, because I can see that you really get the work.

Meredith Bell: 00:46:07

Yes, I love what you're doing. I know what a difference it's making in the lives of the people who are fortunate enough to work with you. So thank you for sharing that with our listeners today.

Cheryl Martin: 00:46:18

You're welcome. I loved it. It was a great conversation.

Meredith Bell: 00:46:23

Thank you for joining us today. If there's someone you know who could benefit from this conversation, please share this episode with them. Also check out our website, being movement.com, you'll find valuable resources and links to connect to an engaging and wonderfully supportive community. Together, we can inspire and support each other on the path to a greater understanding of being until next time, take care and be kind to yourself. You.