IDL77 Season 2: Leading With Grace with Heather Fortner

How is finance changing the world at the moment? How does what happens in the home impact what happens in the business? What does it mean to lead with grace, vulnerability, and authenticity?

I look forward to sharing today’s absorbing conversation with Heather Fortner. She is the CEO of SignatureFD, a financial investment advising group. Heather is tremendous leader and together we dig into the idea of grace in leadership and what diversity and acceptance entail for the modern organization. We also consider how one’s home life affects one’s work, and how to create a holistic vision of work-life balance.

Meet Heather Fortner

As CEO of SignatureFD, Heather leans into her passion for listening – to the SignatureFD team, their clients, and the industry – to create and implement the organization’s vision and mission to impact the lives of 10,000 families.

Practicing a “coach with empathy” leadership style, Heather leverages her unique ability to harmonize people’s passions and talents to build teams and lead organizations that deliver excellent and inspiring client experiences.

A highly-sought-after leader in the industry, Fortner is regularly asked to speak on the ever-changing landscape of wealth management. Additionally, in 2021, Heather was awarded CEO of the Year by WealthManagement.com for the category Individual RIA Firm Leaders.

Prior to joining SignatureFD in February of 2003, Heather was senior operations supervisor at a trust company, managing all portfolio and security operations. She also worked for an investment management firm in Marietta, Georgia, as a financial associate.

Visit SignatureFD and connect with Heather on Twitter and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Evaluate risk - 07:20

• Appreciate the mess to trust the process - 11:24

• You cannot separate life from business - 23:25

• Leading with grace - 31:29

Evaluate risk

You can learn how to evaluate risk because it is a versatile skill that you can deploy across any aspect or sector within a business and personal life.

Learn how to evaluate risk. It helps you to understand how you can then best approach the situation, and to come up with the best recommendation moving forward.

Appreciate the mess to trust the process

Life can be messy. Business can be messy, and things can go very wrong.

What you may not notice is that often the mistakes are as important as the failures, because they push you in new directions that you would never have considered had you not failed.

Take each step in business at a time while staying true to your values and aligned with your purpose, and whatever happens – messy or otherwise – you will reach the other side with grace and appreciation.

Every experience in your life adds value to where you are. Draw knowledge and skill from each experience.

You cannot separate life from business

You cannot separate the person from the job as much as you cannot separate life from business, and good leaders know this.

How can you be empathetic? What do you have to ask and what do you have to share to create an environment that is both successfully sustainable and humane?

This is where values become vital.

Leading with grace

To lead with grace is challenging because it requires you to take a step back – especially in difficult situations – and give someone the benefit of the doubt.

Leading with grace is a commitment because it requires empathy from both sides and staying true to the values that you share with the person sitting across from you.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Gary Vaynerchuk – Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success

BOOK | Tony Dungy – Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life

Visit SignatureFD and connect with Heather on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Check out Heather’s other podcast appearances.

Join the Impact Driven Leader Community

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Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

The point of value, I believe, for leaders is in the decision-making.

Heather Fortner

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader Podcast. If it's your first time, welcome. If you've listened to several episodes, welcome again. So excited to be here with you today. Man, it is hard to believe that we have had, I believe this is episode 77, 78, no, I'm not sure if I got my math right, but either way, tremendous conversation I've had and really today's conversation, whether you're watching on YouTube, you're listening to wherever you listen to podcasts, you're going to thoroughly enjoy it. I enjoyed it. I've mentioned this, times before, and it's worth noting again, one of the great experiences I've had in my leadership journey and the journey of this podcast is hearing from you listeners part of the community, but also developing relationships with really cool people, such as today's guest, Heather Fortner. Heather is the CEO of SignatureFD. SignatureFD is a financial investment advising group. They are based in Atlanta and Charlotte. She is a tremendous leader who won, who was a noted CEO of the year last year in 2021, after only being CEO for a few months. She's a mother of two young girls. We have an amazing conversation and really dig into this, ideas of grace and leadership and what diversity and encouraging diversity and acceptance in organizations today and really how, obviously she has a background in finance. She works in finance. She came to her role as actually the compliance officer. We talk about that uniqueness and how much value that brings to her position from my point of view. But then back to the circle of finance and how whatever's happening at home is going to show up at work and whatever we're doing at work is going to show up at home. Those organizations that really holistically look at it all, especially from finance, because it matters so much, we're into this world where financially things are changing. We have inflation, we have interest rates higher, we have higher food costs. We have higher fuel costs. We now have a lot of different circling waves, up and down waves, circling waves, these circling winds, that what is going to look like in this environment of leadership over the next several months. We dip into that conversation. I hope you enjoy this, and I really enjoyed getting to know Heather more, and hope you do too. [TYLER] All right, Heather, good afternoon. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. I really enjoyed, we're actually about 10 minutes into this conversation. We had it beforehand and so glad to go through some of those things. But I am so happy to have you as a guest on the Impact Driven Leader podcast, and just really can't wait for you to share your heart of your leadership ethos with the Impact Driven Leader community. Thank you again for being here. [HEATHER FORTNER] Yes, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. [TYLER] So as a quick aside I've done your intro bio. I told the, I would say the surface level. To me that never really gets to a person. That's why I love these conversations. As the CEO of SignatureFD, this financial firm that represent 6 billion in assets, you guys represent a lot of different areas as far as investors, which I think is really cool, the community of investors. But I want to dip into a piece of your history that I think is amazing, and that's one, your personal experiences, but I love this diversity of experience, meaning that you did not go into finance thinking, oh, I'm going to be this finance person, and you didn't end up in your role as CEO and maybe the traditional pathway. So I'd love to focus on that diverse experience that if you look back now, what have those, your graduate degree in psychology or experiences, family, those things, how has that given you a lens to be able to appreciate the role and leadership you have today? [HEATHER] I think that's a great question. I love the fact that I can just sit here and openly say, I really didn't know what I was doing. I didn't go into this with this vision that one day I would be the CEO of a company. I think if I look back over all of the choices and all of the opportunities, I really do think that it was a recognition that I had early on of just my core self, that I was my worst self when I was bored. That was it. So, I wanted and needed, I recognized that I needed to be able to constantly be challenging myself, or I just became the worst version of myself. So it was never really about this calculated step to the next thing. It was just, there's something new I can learn, and I know that I can add value here just by getting in there and learning it and being my best self. That in and of itself, what it did over the course of 20 years was allow me from the ground up, the educational awareness to be able to pull threads from every section of the organization together to be able to make better decisions, to be able to lead better, to be able to sit in multiple different chairs at a table and say, I understand where you're coming from. What you're saying is valid. I have some experience in this area. I understand you're the expert, but I can come alongside you because I've had some experience in this area. It has been the most beneficial thing to me. You can go get your MBA, you can go do all of the education, but there really is no substitute for just the boots on the ground experience. [TYLER] There's a facet to your career. So before you got to the CEO role, and you were identified as a CEO of the year last year, an d congratulations on that, you were COO, but you were a compliance officer. As I was preparing, and I was thinking about that, I thought, man, what a brilliant seat to sit in? From an experience that you don't have a legal background, a lot of times, compliance officers, if I think about the show Billions, which I'm a fan of, the compliance officer, legal, and it's everything about being legal. You didn't have that, you have a psychology background, and so you're thinking through it. To me, if I were to pick an organization today and I'm looking for the next CEO, I want somebody that's actually sat in that seat. Because to me, it gave you a perspective that you're going to see the big picture constantly. [HEATHER] I actually, it's funny you bring that up, I was talking to somebody yesterday, and I think the most valuable lesson I learned, so I held the compliance officer role for 15 years and started in the role just really by default, because we had to have one and nobody else wanted the job. I was like, "I'll just go do it. I'm just going to do it for a little bit and whatever." Then 15 years later you're like, okay, that was a little longer than I thought. But what it did was it taught me to evaluate risk. That is a skill that I can deploy across any part of my life that is, what is this risk? Let's peel this onion and get down to the core issue, the core risk here. Then let's determine what type of risk is it, like, is it, is this a true business risk? Is this a regulatory risk? Is this a reputational risk? Is this a financial risk? Then on what scale? o when you can determine that, then you can actually come to the table from the other side and say, well, here's my tolerance for that. Here is the organization's tolerance for that. Here is my leadership's team's tolerance for that. Here's my board's tolerance for that. So being able to evaluate all of that quickly and then make a recommendation. The point of value I really believe for leaders is in the decision making. It is in the ability to sit in that gray area, to have all of the information, to do the due diligence, to evaluate it all, but to actually make a decision and move forward. [TYLER] Again, dipping back into this, and you mentioned something there that your role as a compliance officer was to evaluate risk. I think again about the CEO role, you're doing a lot of the same things. You're taking this, we have this vision of the organization. I'm trying to evaluate our risks. I read this, I forget it, which book it was, but it's irrelevant right now that a lot of people that end up in the chief executive officer role come from a finance background. That puts their lens, everything, dollars and cents. It only works if the dollars and cents. Well, unfortunately, that isn't always, every business decision, doesn't always make initial dollars and cents. Sometimes we have to be willing to take that risk. That can create a lot of tension in organizations where you have essentially two CFOs, a CEO and a Chief Financial Officer. That to me is what's so powerful about your experience as compliance. Because what's the biggest thing that usually hurts organizations today? It's how they're dealing with regulatory, it's how they're dealing with HR, those compliance things like what are we doing from a training, from a DE and I, all those things in our world today that a leader must know? Again, I think it's amazing that your background prepared you for it. [HEATHER] I truly, the moment that I became CEO, I've told people this many times, I remember I was sitting there, and I don't know if anybody, if you do needle point, if you know about needle point or cross stitch or anything like that, but if you turn over the canvas, it is ugly. It is all kinds of different threads. They make no sense, they have knots, they're afraid, they're different colors. There's no pattern. It is just an ugly piece of poo. Then you turn it over and there's this beautiful piece of artwork. I remember I was sitting in my office upstairs and I remember vividly thinking, Oh my gosh, every thread, every knot, every mess, every experience, every lesson learned, every failure that the world that I felt was ugly and no purpose, and would never result for anything, in that moment when you are named CEO of an organization, you flip it over and you're like, "Oh my God. Oh, I see now." All of these came together in this moment where you are the right person to sit in the seat just because of the experiences that you've had. It's an undergrad in finance. It's a graduate degree in psychology. It's 15 years in compliance. It's building the infrastructure of a firm from ground up. It's all of those things coming together to create this space where your unique value is needed in order to help move an organization forward. That, I think, sometimes we're so hard on ourselves that we don't ever take the time to flip it over and to see the beautiful work of art that's being created and just the experiences and the mess of our daily lives. [TYLER] To me, there's two angles to that. One, it's accepting everything you are. That blend is what puts you in the right seat, the right time. There's also that acceptance too, that by diversity, meaning I have a lot of different experiences. It's not just, oh, where's the fastest path up the ladder? That's the one I'm going to take. I think what you said there is maybe that looks real pretty on both sides, but it's not going to allow you to have the scope and the ability of viewpoint to really take it all in it. It's that messiness underneath that you embrace and say, it is what it is. It's the process. But that's what makes the other side of that needlepoint so beautiful is the messiness. I think as someone speaking to leaders and trying to help other leaders, if we allow that to happen on our organizations, if we allow people to move around to get a different feel for things, if we allow them to have their different experiences and fail, man, we're going to benefit as a whole community more than maybe what we think we're going to lose. [HEATHER] Or, if you create spaces for people to sit in seats and try, sometimes you uncover secret like unlocked potential and talent that you didn't know they had, they didn't know they had and you would've never uncovered that unless you intentionally created the spaces. I think sometimes as organizations, it's hard. It is hard. You are driving towards certain goals, you're driving towards certain results. It is hard to make space in time for your people to be able to sit in different seats and try different things to find the right thing. However, I personally have found that my personal, we call it net worthwhile, but saying that at the end of the day matters most to me is that these quality humans, these quality leaders that have enormous value to add, that they have the space to get into the right seat. Because ultimately that makes the best organization, [TYLER] Taking a couple different paths, potential paths here, I think that last point, as I've experienced, and I've talked to people and my own experience and try to, I recognize diverse organizations. I'll say diverse and across all platforms. The best way to create diverse organizations is almost by embracing it rather than with intentionality. Because sometimes the intentionality doesn't create true diversity. It means, hey, how do we allow this thing to just fatter out? Let's focus on, you mentioned you're branded my net worthwhile, net worthwhile as part of SignatureFD. But that idea of what our values are, what comes first, and if we focus on that, man, we're going to end up coming across people that for example, yourself, yes, you got a finance degree, but that isn't what you started into as I learned. Then you go get a graduate degree in psychology because you're thinking, hey, I need to learn this stuff, is what I, which I tremendously appreciate. But yet if again, someone's looking at I want to go find a financial advisor. If those credentials are probably not what people would look at, they'd like, have you had a background in banking? Have you had an experience at a top financial firm? Have you had all of these things? It's like, no, but yet I look at it's like, I want someone who understands my ethos. Why do I view money the way I view it to really advise me? Because that's probably going to be better than someone who just wants to focus on the numbers. [HEATHER] Well, I think there's two things there. One, is around really having the technical expertise and building the team to be able to uncover. I mean, there is, there is a real gift and a real art to be able to sit in a room with you, Mr. Client, and uncover those latent needs around these are the things that are important to you. It is our job with our technical expertise to be able to help you create a plan that is aligned to that ethos and those values. The second thing though, is it's one thing to create a plan. It is a whole other thing to understand someone's behaviors around money and beliefs around money to help them craft a plan that they can actually execute. How many of us have crafted fitness plans, rating plans, "I'm going to, I'm going to be this, I'm going to do that. I'm going to set the New Year's resolutions. I'm going to do all these things." Then you never do them because you can't execute on the plan. It's like, the real value in having an advisor who understands not only who you are and what you're driving towards and what matters most, but also here's what I believe about money, and here's some of the experiences, my life experiences around money, and here are some of my habits around money. Now help me combine those two things into a plan that's actually going over the long-term to play out into what I needed to play out into. That's a partnership. [TYLER] So as I look at your role as CEO, but also SignatureFD in this topic of finance and leadership and I think as I view it, some of the greatest decisions a leader can make is when they're financially focused, but yet not encumbered by it. I think that's personal too. It's like you have to have the ability to understand the finance, but if we're so encumbered by that, we end up not taking risk when we need to. So it’s I put that in the background. What are you seeing now with people that you're working with and their leadership position, how they're making financial decisions and how this generational change, we mentioned that before, how is that really, as you're seeing working with clients, but also in your own seat, how is that affecting you in the decisions you're making going forward? [HEATHER] That's a very great question and actually could go multiple different ways. So I think within the organization, obviously a board sets forth, here's what we're doing. Here's what we're driving towards. Here are our margin needs. Here are all these things these financial results that we want at the end of the day. As a CEO, you always have those in the back of your brain. Then your job on a day-to-day basis is to understand the opportunity cost of the tradeoffs. So my job is to say, okay, well we have these needs within the organization, but I also need to hit these targets. What are my tradeoffs? How can I get more revenue? How can I decrease cost? How do I think about all of this within the organization? I don't think our clients are any different. They're just running their household. They are the CEOs of their homes. They are the CEOs of their businesses. What they're coming to us for, quite frankly, is the same thing that I go to my leadership team for, which is what are the decisions that have to be made? What are the levers that I have to pull within the organization? Do I understand the intended consequences and the unintended consequences of pulling those levers? What risks am I willing to take? Really if you, I mean, it's really simple, if you can get to the core of those things, then you clearly understand, okay, the opportunity cost is, if I hire these extra two people, my margin in the two outer years is not where I need to be, which is better? Do I need those two people? Now we've got a talent shortage. How am I thinking about talent? Is it going to take, how long is it going to take me to get that talent in the door versus is it more important that I'm focused on two years from now the margin that I need to hit? So really, I think clients think about the same things. They're thinking about, do I have enough money to get my kids to college? What is the trade off on that? Is there a trade off? Do I have enough money to go buy that second home to retire early? Do I have enough income? Can I take that trip? More times than not, I actually think that people are so afraid. Because they're unaware and because they've not had good counsel that they choose to live in fear versus living. So part of what we do, not only, I mean quite honestly, not only as a leader of an organization, but as a financial advisor focused on people's net worthwhile, It's just helping to strategy, fill a strategy, create a strategy that's going to give people confidence so that they don't have to live in fear and they don't have to wait until they retire. I've seen more people that say, I'm going to do all of that when I retire, and then they retire and they get sick, or something happens and they're never able to go live and do the things that they wanted to do because they're so busy living in fear. That is our job. That's our job as leaders, and it's our job as advisors. [TYLER] I think as we look at it as, I know we're both in our early mid-forties and looking at that from a generation point of view, it's been the, hey this work for 40, 45, 50 years, whatever it may be, have that amount of money, go do those things. We're seeing a generation that's going through that process. Some it's fine, others, it's not, what you just mentioned. Then we're trying to rectify that in ourselves, in our own children's lives, our own lives, and like, how do we manage through this? But then I take that and then I go into our workplace and I want to, you can't separate the person from the job. If I look at that, if I'm struggling with that at home, if I'm encouraged to be able to say, hey, let's grow, let's learn, let's challenge, let's experience something new and different, if I'm doing that in the workplace, I'm creating a person who probably feels more empowered, who has more courage to do that. I would imagine that's going to translate over into their home. I believe if that happens in the internal business culture, that's going to happen at their home, and if that happens at their home, then it's all of a sudden going to be more comfortable to happen in the business environment. Is that what you're finding as well? [HEATHER] I've always believed, it is the whole reason that I have an undergrad in finance and a graduate degree in counseling. I've always believed that the way that you make generational impact, that you break cycles and you have generational impact, is that there are two things that every human has to deal with. Every human has to deal with money and every human has to deal with other humans. They have to communicate. What I grew up with in our home was that money was scarce and there wasn't a whole lot of financial literacy and communication around money was always attention. It was just always a thread that ran through our home. So I just believed that if you could better educate people about money earlier, and you could make them more confident and more empowered in making wise financial decisions, and you could help them communicate better about it, because in every partnership, in every relationship, both of you come to the relationship with your own things, your own bags packed with all of your life's experiences and all of your beliefs about money and all of your fears and all those things; if you can't communicate about them, how are you supposed to move forward together? A business is no different. A business is absolutely no different. But the way that you get past that is that you educate people with the skills in both of those areas, and then you just put it on the table and you're able to have quality communication. You empower and you educate, and then you give people the skills to communicate better. It is what partnership, it is what community it is, what generational impact is all about. Because if it's happening in your homes, it's happening with your children, it's happening in your workplace, it's happening in your community, and it happens in our nation. Quite frankly, that's what our nation needs right now. [TYLER] Well, to me, that begs of the values conversation, it begs of what values do we have? How do we establish that foundation and then we can grow from that. We can learn, we can extend, we can go down different pathways. I think that to me is a great, I don't want to say chasm, but it is this great, unknown in our world today, is where are our values going to be centered around? We have that in our society where we're unknown. We have that in our workplaces. We're afraid to maybe ask the questions of, I don't understand for fear that someone's going to take it the wrong way and all of a sudden, we create this polarized situation. That's been dealt with in our society over the last couple years between Covid, between the racial tensions that we have. Now it's happening in a lot of, I would say, disparity become from a finance point of view, the people that are more greatly affected by the inflationary metrics that have occurred compared to others. This whole mixing pot creates this tension in a workplace. You're like, what do I say and how do I say it? How do I really, in my opinion, how do I be empathetic? How do I put my arm around someone and walk with them? What do I have to ask or what do I have to share? There's a piece that you shared there when you came from, you talk about your parents not being financial illiterate. I get that. I don't believe my parents were either, they had a very, I would say, tenuous with money and running their business. I remember my mom to this day, every single time asked something, "We're broke, we're broke, we're broke." It was always, if I ever win the lottery. It's just like, that's a mindset that perpetuates, and I know that also is a mindset that perpetuates in however you're leading others. If you have that mindset, you're going to lead others with that mindset. [HEATHER] That's right. I think you're absolutely, 100% right. The only thing, we all have those mindsets. We all have that baggage. We all have those life experiences, but the reality is that we as an organization, as a partnership, as a marriage, as whatever it is, we're all trying to move forward towards something. But the only way that we can do that aligned is if we have similar core values that we both or all hold sacred. So our organization, we have the six Gs; growth, generosity, greatness, gratitude, grit, and grace. Everybody can say what they are, but at the end of the day, those aren't dependent on where you grew up, how much money you have, what color you are, what gender you are, what religion you are. They are based on, we have decided as an organization that these are the values that we uphold in everything that we do. So we built the space around these core value, our rooms are named around these core values. We reward, we reprimand. If there's ever a situation where someone's not upholding the core values, it's immediately called out. Every performance evaluation is based on these core values. We give massive prizes at the end of the year of who most exhibited these core values. Every decision the senior leadership team makes is through the lens of these core values, are our decisions in line with these core values? So over time, everything that you do is based around holding these values sacred. So it isn't about what you look like or what you believe or where you come from. It's about are you choosing through your actions in your words, to make our organization a better place in light of these six values? We have found that that is a binding thing. That is what community is built on. Because if you believe in those six things, you want to be a part of SignatureFD. If you want to be a part of SignatureFD, then you want everyone to uphold those values because that's what's created the specialness of who we are. So, my job as a leader, it's not top down. I'm not forcing this down people's throat. This is the community, is surrounding and saying, these matter to us. These are core and if you are not in alignment or your behaviors don't matter, you probably don't belong. [TYLER] So which one of the six has been the most upholding or the most challenging? [HEATHER] Grace. I'll say that. It's fast as possible. It is hard. It's hard. [TYLER] I mean, you didn't even have to stop and think about that one Heather, that was like right there. [HEATHER] Not even have to like the, it is hard in situations where you completely disagree with someone or someone has potentially offended you or said something or their actions were not nice or whatever, to stop and pause and say, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I'm going to assume that your intentions here are good and I'm going to extend grace to you, even though I may not understand. I may not agree, I may be hurt, I may be angry, whatever those things are, I'm going to extend grace to you because I know that at your core, you believe in these same six values. So I believe that we can work through this together. I think that is that commitment. Like I will work through the hardest of hard with anybody who sits at the table with me and has that same commitment [TYLER] To me that's describing empathy lived out. To me is the great answer going forward in leadership. It's my personal opinion. It's how I've gotten past my insecurities is like displaying empathy. As you describe that to me, it's like that's real empathy. That's what empathy looks like, is sending in that situation saying, all right, we're in this together. I'm going to have grace that maybe you didn't intend that and we're going to work through this together, but that's being empathetic together. [HEATHER] Or here's the better one. Will you please extend grace to me? I screwed up. Like, I didn't mean it that can you please find it in your trust of me, in your trust of who I am, in your trust of our relationship to extend me the grace to meet me at the table? Sometimes that's hard. [TYLER] So would you say grace is what, as a word really encompasses it, part of your bio as part of your, what's been shared is this coach with empathy leadership style, which I'd love for you to dig into. Empathy is something near and dear and important to me but I want you to describe that more in your own words and how that lives out. Because to me, what it sounds like you're saying is that coach with empathy style is just have a lot of grace and be willing to be vulnerable enough to ask for grace. [HEATHER] I think that word is absolutely critical, that vulnerable word, is I think coach with empathy, for me, I think first it's the coach part, which is, I, as a coach, I invested in your success. I personally invested in who you are in you getting to where you want to get to. That's the first thing. It matters to me. That's what a good coach is. You matter and we're going to go to the hard places to help you get where you want to go. [TYLER] As opposed to the consultant style, which is more of the pigeon I was described to me --- [HEATHER] Or the boss. I'll tell you where to go. [TYLER] Yes, but I mean, to me that's, I don't really care. I'm going to come in, I'm going to crap all over everything and I'm going to fly away. That's not a coach. That's like I need you to succeed in order that I can meet my own goals. We're in this together. That to me is a big difference. It's probably a big difference in like, I would say generationally, that's what we're seeing. [HEATHER] I think, so I have two coaches that I pay. I pay good money to two different coaches to literally speak truth to me, the hardest truth, to roll up their sleeves, get in the mud with me, speak the truth to me, and then pick me up, dust me off and send me back out there. That is someone who's willing to go there with you, not just to tell you here's what you need to do, or you just be this way. It's like, well, no, most people, I believe that most people, if they could, they'd be wildly successful on their own every single time. There's literally, I think everybody wants to be successful. They need help. They need help and so a coach is genuinely, personally invested in that person, not doing it for them but getting in there with them and helping them overcome the obstacles that they need to overcome. The empathy piece to me is I think that people can overuse that term to me, and this is just me, I think it's a genuine love for people. Like recognizing that every human is valid, is of worth, has beauty within them and that regardless of what they may be facing at the moment, they deserve your time and attention. And sometimes we, leaders so much coming at us all the time, that you can forget that simply being with someone, that finding their person and their experiences and their feelings and their emotions, whether you agree with them or not as valid and as important and as of deserving of space in time, that anything else is like, that's empathy. That is empathy. It is but I think that that keyword of vulnerability, which is, can you speak truth in love and not truth and hate? There are a lot of people who want to be able to speak truth to people, but they do it in hope and they don't do it in love. [TYLER] I think the wonder that I would, and I'd love for you to take on, I think a lot of that comes from, I want to speak truth about what I see in you, but I don't want to share my ugly truth. I don't want to pull back the curtains. I don't want to take off my armor. I'll unfasten your armor so we can get to the root up so we can actually fix it but I don't want to unbuckle my armor. To me that's the big changing tide, is the leaders that are able to do that, the leaders that are able to do that, not dumping on people, not creating a vulnerability bomb that just takes everyone down, but it's like, no, all right, this is what I'm wrestling with too because I'm a human and I'm a real person. I'm not this façade that is un cracked. I'm dealing with my own, but in my brokenness, I'm complete by what you bring and what the rest of the team brings. To me that's coming back to that coach, because that's bringing together a team to succeed. [HEATHER] I'll give you a real-life example. So I'm 46 and I have a six month old baby. I got pregnant at the beginning of 2021. Here's what I was thinking, holy mother, I am 45 years old. I have been in the CEO seat of this organization for all of a hot minute. We are going through some massive transitions of our organization, but the reality was that this had been a 15-year journey for us. There had been so much hurt and so much loss and so much in this journey that I was unapologetic about the fact that this is my net worthwhile. This is the most important thing to me and my family, and I have no idea how this is going to work, but we're going to do this. Sitting in that vulnerability, I remember when I sent the email out to the firm, because I was literally 20 weeks pregnant before I sent an email to the firm because I had had too many losses and too many and it was just a deal. The anxiety of what was happening. I remember saying to the firm here's why. Here's the journey we have been on. Some of you have experienced, I've been here 20 years, some of you have experienced and been on this journey with us but here's what it looks like. We have a leadership team in place, we're excited, everything's going to be fine. But what it opened up for, the responses that I got back from not only women but men in our organization to say, "Us too, our family's been through this journey as well. We are so excited for you." "I didn't know, Heather, that women could have babies and have careers and do this. I'm 30 and single and still want to have kids. Thank you for giving me hope." The ability to just create the space for these beautiful people, not only to come alongside in support of me, but to bring their stories and their experiences and their whole selves to this space that is community. But it starts with me as the leader being able to say, "Hey guys, here's the deal. I'm scared. I really hope this works. It may not. I know I'm super old and I know I've got this role. I'm really hoping we can all come together to make this work." It was beautiful. It was just, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. [TYLER] Well, to me, it's, what you did is you asked for grace and in turn people gave you grace. What I wrote down here as you were saying that is when you invite people in, you give them a reason to believe. You give them a reason to believe in you as the leader, you give them a reason to believe in the organization that the vision and the mission is worthwhile and I think that's what people want today; is we can go back to all these values being different and we're trying to rectify that but the end of the day, I truly believe everyone wants others to believe in and they want others to believe in them. As a leader, I think the more that we can encourage that belief and speak belief and speak courage to believe in ourselves and others, man, that's your greatest power. That's your greatest ability to see organizations do well. I think that is this great opportunity I see as our generation and leadership is how do we do that authentically? Not just from, okay, we're up here and oh, we have the greatest rah rah rah. It's no, I believe in you, Heather. You have something that is so magical that this is how I see it fitting in. When we can do that as leaders, one, people light up and two, they believe and when they believe we can accomplish anything. [HEATHER] And it is because you as a leader at your core that they are deserving of that just because they exist. Just because they're humans. They look different, they believe different, they say different, they act different but at their core, humans are valuable. They are worthwhile. As a leader, if you can find within yourself the space to be relentlessly curious about people and who they are and their unique ability and their unique value, and then use your skill to put them in the right seat in your organization, that is what is going the difference maker in your organization. [TYLER] I think there's a word there that I love that you used, the curiosity, but relentlessly curious because if we choose to do that, we're willing to dig deeper and find out stories that we wouldn't know, that we wouldn't otherwise know. To me, that's what creates this puzzle. I wanted to bring up my notes, this was something I read from Tony Dungy, one of Tony Dundee's book, the Hall of Fame. I don't know, obvious Hall of Fame, but accomplished football coach. He said, and this is a paraphrase in my notes, you stand in a place no one else does for those around you, only you there. Make interaction with you a positive one. I think when you come back to that value piece and our opportunity to lead and our bits and pieces in that big puzzle, we're a puzzle piece that no one else can look like, no one else does look like, but guess what? There's 7 billion other puzzle pieces and they're going to fit into this puzzle some way. Sometimes those puzzles fit, sometimes they don't, doesn't mean it's not a good puzzle piece, just not for this one right now. I think that is, when you keep those things in mind, it makes extending Grace a little bit easier. I would hope, as people are listening in and as you've modeled here, when you ask for grace, there's nothing wrong with that. That's just being a human. [HEATHER] Not at all. [TYLER] Heather, I absolutely have loved this conversation. I thank you for sharing. [HEATHER] Fantastic. Absolutely. I appreciate, well, same to you. I believe, and I look at models like what SignatureFD is doing, and I shared this beforehand. I'll tap into it now. I mean, I believe we're in a place of a lot of financial uncertainty. I have certain beliefs, it is what it is, but I also know this is that through any great difficulty, there's tremendous opportunity. And I believe as you're sharing that and as we look at these things all holistically, it doesn't have to be one over the other. It's like, how can we help holistically and be more galvanizing rather than polarizing? We're going to accomplish way more. I think you're an example of doing that. Go ahead. [HEATHER] Thank you. One of my favorite sentences exactly to that point is it's an and conversation, not an or conversation. I think so many times, exactly to your point where it's like it doesn't always have to be or. Most of the time it should be an and, and if we as leaders can pull that back together, which is your perspective matters and your perspective matters, and, it is the math equation of the ands, the additions, the positives that creates the real value at the end of the day [TYLER] I think there's a last thought that I had there. When you go with that approach, diversity happens organically. All of that in inclusion happens organically as opposed to, oh, we need to create this or situation and think we're going to create it. I think you create more tension and we've seen that in a lot of organizations where people feel like, oh, well, there's something wrong with me now. As opposed to, oh, you're good and so are they, and everything coming together is going to be better as opposed to this, or, well, we have to create diversity as opposed to embracing diversity. You have a a background, your background, I'm having this leadership conversation. I grew up on a dairy farm. I was nutritionist for dairy cows. That's my background and yet what I've learned through all those processes and bring all of that perspective is that it doesn't matter where you're at. It's still people and everything happens with people. [HEATHER] That's it exactly. [TYLER] Heather, again, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing with the audience and have a great rest of your day. [HEATHER] You as well. [TYLER] One of the topics that we discussed a lot is this signature, my net worthwhile that SignatureFD has net worthwhile trademarked in this idea that your wealth is only valuable to the extent that it helps you live the life you want to live. Well, I believe this from a leadership perspective, our ability and impact as a leader has only worthwhile. It's only valuable to the extent of the impact that we want to make in others' lives. Like why else would you do it? Heather mentioned several times, and to me it got to this point of almost stressing this idea of grace, this idea of through vulnerability, asking for Grace, but it gave people the opportunity to extend Grace. As I mentioned, and I'm going to mention again, when we invite people in, you give them an opportunity to believe. You give them a reason to believe in you, in whatever you're doing. I ask you this in your organization, in your leadership position, or as you're looking around other leaders in your organization, are they giving people a reason to believe? Are they asking for Grace? Are they extending Grace? I loved when Heather shared that and I truly appreciated it. I hope you got value out of this episode. Thank you for being a part of the Impact Driven Leader community. If you're part of our book Club, man, glad you enjoy it. This month we are going through Twelve and a Half by Gary Vaynerchuk, truly a great book that goes through some of these topics that we had today, Heather and I had today. If you'd love to learn more, go to my website, tylerdickerhoof.com or theimpactdrivenleader.com. You can learn more about the impact Driven Leader community there. Thanks again for listening. If you're a subscriber, thank you. If not, subscribe, watch this video on YouTube or wherever you're listening to podcasts. If you've got value out of it, I'd love for you to share, I'd love for you to share about Heather and love for you to share about this mission that I'm on, to help other leaders get healthy too. As I had to get healthy, my passion and desire is to help other leaders get healthy too. Thanks for listening in. Until next time, have a good one.