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This is the Executive Connect Podcast - a show for the new generation of leaders. Join us as we discover unconventional leadership strategies not traditionally associated with executive roles. Our guests include upper-level C-Suite executives charting new ways to grow their organizations, successful entrepreneurs changing the way the world does business, and experts and thought leaders from fields outside of Corporate America that can bring new insights into leadership, prosperity, and personal growth - all while connecting on a human level. No one has all the answers - but by building a community of open-minded and engaged leaders we hope to give you the tools you need to help you find your own path to success.
Melissa Aarskaug (00:00.526)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today we have Dr. Denise Patrick here to speak with us on transformative leadership through faith and resilience. Dr. Denise has a very interesting career spanning over three decades from a professor to a founder and CEO of D Patrick Consulting. A creative guide about Teach, Lead, Inspire. Thank you so much, Denise, for being
Dr. Denise Patrick (00:41.365)
Thank you so much, Melissa. It is my pleasure to be here. I'm excited to talk with you today about all of this and then some.
Melissa Aarskaug (00:50.36)
Right, I know we have a lot of questions for you, lots of cover. I always like to start just hearing a little bit about how you got where you are today and just sharing your journey with our listeners.
Dr. Denise Patrick (01:09.453)
like that question. It makes me feel like I'm in a job interview. Tell me about yourself, right? And where do you punctuate it? So for me, I think the easiest way to have people understand my journey is that it is not linear by any stretch of the imagination. It is twisty, turny, backing up, starting over again, all kinds of things. And the way that I think I'll punctuate it is I started my career,
first jobs were in investment banking. And I swore that I was going to be a managing director either in that investment banking firm or someplace else. I mean, that was my goal. And then I ended up going to graduate school and studying rhetoric and communication. And then my world sort of opened up. So I missed the finance world a bit and I missed corporate, but wow, this whole new world opened up for me.
And so I focused on that and ended up actually doing consulting because I was a hungry graduate student, but doing some consulting and then also teaching. And so I think from there, my world just really became academic and business. And I've always had one foot in both of those worlds. And so by the time I got to think about having my own consultancy,
was because I was doing internal consulting for a major bank. And I loved it. And I thought, wow, this is what you get to do. You get to talk to really senior people. You get to listen to them, learn from them. And then I just decided I'm going to start my business. So I actually started probably 30, a little over 30, almost 30 maybe years ago where it was called something else. And then I decided, no, I want it to be my particular brand, The Patrick Consulting.
And now I am happy to say that I am sunsetting D. Patrick Consulting as a predominant business and now I've turned to Teach, Lead, Inspire, which has really always been my passion because it embraces ministry, which is something I just have always loved. I thought I would go into full -time ministry and become ordained, tried, did not do it, decided that was not the ministry that I was called to do.
Dr. Denise Patrick (03:30.929)
The ministry that I'm called to do is actually the Teach, Lead, Inspire. So I get to consult. I get to talk with very senior executives or people who are in middle management or senior management. And I also get to talk about their faith walk or even just their values and how to help them figure out value system in the workplace, as well as doing some fun businessy kinds of things about helping people communicate, helping people lead.
Melissa Aarskaug (04:01.328)
I love it. I'm so excited to talk about faith -based leadership. I'm curious, Dr. Patrick, from your perspective, tell us a little bit about integrating faith and spirituality into leadership roles.
Dr. Denise Patrick (04:17.351)
Yeah, I like that question. I've been listening to some podcasts recently about that, just to hear how different people talk about leadership and faith and how you blend the two. I'll start by saying that I think because of the way that we work, at least in the US particularly, so I'm going to base it US and I could probably make an argument for some other countries that do this. Everything is very separate. So you can talk faith.
on the weekend, right? But Monday through Friday, none of that is involved. And so it becomes challenging, and it has even been for me really, to figure out how do you bring your full self into the workplace. For some, when they look at research, it has become, and I'm talking academic research and I'm talking just contemporary, right?
business research, right, or what we would call popular research. When we talk about it, it has become now businesses or organizations figuring out how to bring employee resource groups together or affinity groups. And so now we might have affinity groups. think, I'm trying to think, American Airlines might be one. There are a couple of others that do it and I'm blanking on them right now, but they now have
affinity groups for people in the organization to go and to collect together, whether they are interfaith or whether they are specific faith. Now that may have some challenges down the road because of some of the legalities that we have set up and what you can do and how you talk about these things and who gets included and who doesn't. But if you're just trying to bring your full self into the organization or into a company, what I have done that has been successful for
is to just be, right? So you bring yourself, you bring your moral compass, you bring your faith -based principles into the workplace. And that doesn't mean that you have to slam somebody over the head. I'm Christian, so that doesn't mean I, you know, slam the Bible over somebody's head. I'm very careful about that. But I live the principles. So marrying faith and leadership means that you are bringing your principled self.
Dr. Denise Patrick (06:42.989)
into the workplace and you are leading people by those principles.
Melissa Aarskaug (06:48.348)
I love that and I love what you said. You're spot on when you say, you know, your spiritual life doesn't just happen during the weekend or on Sundays when you go to church because I do find it's transaction. Okay, I went to church, I'm a good Christian or whatever your religion is and then I go back to work on Monday and I lead a very different life on Monday to Friday versus when I'm at church on Sunday.
So I'd like to lean into that in a little bit and ask you how faith has influenced your approach to leadership and decision -making outside of just like you mentioned, Sundays, Monday to Friday.
Dr. Denise Patrick (07:29.401)
So I have a couple of notes here that I'm going to probably peek off to because I really gave that some thought and I wanted to make sure that I could give some good, crystal ideas about how I really get to bring that into my life and how others can do that. I think that my faith walk has, like I said, I think alluded to a little earlier, has given me principles, right? So when we talk about morals, I always ask the question, where are you getting them from?
Right? How is that happening? And for me, it is a Christian background. That doesn't mean that I don't respect other faith walks, but for me, that's how I make it work. So when I make decisions, I am reminded about what I read in scripture. What do verses tell me about making decisions? It reminds me to practice the gift of grace very often, being compassionate as well.
and also upholding myself and others to accountability. There are proverbs that talk about how we want to mindfully make decisions, who we go to in terms of getting counsel for certain decisions that we make. There's a great book that delves into this a little bit more. It's called God is My CEO, and the author is Larry Julian. And in one of...
the narratives in that book. talks about, think it's the person, it's Coors is one of them, Jeffrey Coors. And then the other one's last name is Beck Bennett, I think. I have to look, let me peek because I don't want to misstate that. I believe it is, I was right. no, we're not using that one. Right, it's Marilyn, this is a good one, Marilyn Carlson Nelson. That's the person I'm thinking of. Who's the former chair and CEO of Carlson Travel.
And for both of those people, they struggled with how do we make decisions and bring our full selves into this and lead a whole company into do that. And so bringing your full self means how do I teach people the principles of making sure that they either pray about something before they go off and make a big decision? Or do I say, you know what, I want you to take some time and think through the decision that you're trying to make.
Dr. Denise Patrick (09:56.765)
There's the logic side of that, you know, come up with your evidence, right, and all the things that we need. But also instead of trying to jump with emotion first, which is where a lot of us tend to go, it's just take a moment and just think through it and kind of quiet your mind a little bit before you make those decisions. So those kinds of approaches, those are the things that work for me and I try to remember to do it. Do I always do it 100 % of the time? No, but when I don't do it, I also know
let me go back and revisit this and let me now think and pray about it for myself or let me just think and maybe meditate on this so that I make a better decision or can go back and revise
Melissa Aarskaug (10:38.384)
No, absolutely. And I think we're all a work in progress, right? We're all working on something and then we think we haven't figured out and life serves us a new experience. And then we, you know, we relearn and unlearn things. And so I want to talk a little bit about some examples on how faith based principles guide ethical decision -making and leadership from your perspective.
Dr. Denise Patrick (11:05.327)
Yeah. So I think maybe it helps to maybe define some of those terms a little bit. so that, so I know we're, all on the same page. So I'll start with, this is great. Cause I get to go down to like my academic side. love this. Right. So one thing is to look at faith and what that is. And then there's spirit and then there's spiritual. Okay. and then spirituality, right? So we can go down that whole rabbit hole, but I'll start with faith.
The word faith in Greek, which I love this, I love this word, is pisteis, right? And pisteis actually means it's a faith, it's belief, it's trust, it's confidence, it's fidelity, it's faithfulness. And it's also understanding that in that Greek context that it is faith is a gift from God, right? So this is what that word means. It means that faith is a persuasion from God that we receive.
So there's that first piece. The next piece then is the spiritual, right? So spiritual is an adjective, all right? In our common language in English, we talk about faith and spirituality and we tend to blend the two, but there is a little bit of a difference. So if we look at the word spirit, and this is where my Greek gets a little messy, right? It's actually pneumaticos, all right? So pneumaticos. So if you think of the main word
Pneuma, right? If you think of pneumonia, right? That's our breath, all right? Our spirit, okay? And so the spirit and our breath, right? That's a little bit different than the faith that we might think about, but they are connected. So I want to connect those two first before I can even get into the principles of how I make this work. So for me, if I pull all of these together and I think about faith and spirituality are spiritual.
For me, I lead with a gift from above, right? And I have faith that is given to me through my, not through my works, but sometimes a bit based on works. And I'm gonna have some theologians somewhere say, no, no, no, that is not correct, but I'm trying to get it so that people understand it. All right? This is not a theological argument right here. I can make that, but I don't wanna make it right here, right? So if I think about it, it really is belonging to the divine spirit.
Dr. Denise Patrick (13:33.457)
So for me as a leader, if I am a part of that tribe or a part of the discipleship, I'll use that term, that is of the divine spirit, then I need to lead from that. Okay, with me so far? All right. So if I lead from that perspective, then my principles are all gonna be based on what I'm learning through my scripture. So that means if I have an argument or if I have a problem with someone, I need to go to that person directly.
It also means I can't assume that what I say is going to be understood by that other person, that I need to always check in and make sure that we are on the same page. That's two. Third one is going to be, let me think about how I am compassionate with that individual or how I hold myself and that other person to accountability.
All of those things are the principles that help me guide faithfully and also spiritually.
Melissa Aarskaug (14:40.58)
I love it. That was fantastic. And I love the education side of you to pull things apart. You know, I was thinking, I travel lot and I see a new kind of trend happening in airports, meditation areas, yoga areas, prayer areas, all different types of faith -based, spiritual -based spots within
know, places for people to meditate or pray. Can you share a little bit about what you're seeing in the corporate world with faith and spirituality?
Dr. Denise Patrick (15:21.937)
Yes, so there are some businesses, I think I mentioned one, American Airlines, right? And some others that you could even think of Chick -fil -A, for example, right? Or Hobby Lobby, right? Those tend to be in the secular world, so to speak. They are faith -based. American Airlines is not. They are the secular organization. But in bringing some of these practices in, I think what organizations have realized
I believe this even gets supported by Pew studies, some of the Pew studies and some others, think Forbes did a study on this, that they're realizing that there's a part of diversity that organizations have not, and I'm saying tapped into, but I don't want to say it as it being something that is disingenuous. That I think companies realize that people have a whole side to themselves, right? We are holistic people. We are whole people.
And so I think what has happened over the years in my experience, particularly through consulting, so I realize this is anecdotal, but we've gotten treated almost like machinery, if you will. And I would bet that some people have felt that way, particularly during the great resignation, right? That you feel like you're some kind of a machine, that there's no human side to you. And so I think where organizations have started to...
move is to say, all right, we need to provide opportunities or experiences for people to bring their true whole selves to work. In a higher ed, I know in one of the organizations where I teach and one of the institutions where I teach, it's always been a practice to say, hey, you know, if it's Ramadan and people need to pray on or off of a fast, then as instructors, we need to provide that space and that flexibility for that student to do that.
Right? If it is Friday and there are classes and you have Jewish students who need to be home before sundown and that changes, right, given the season, then, you know, hey, let's not have classes, you know, that bump up against that time so that those students can get home. Same thing with having prayer space or yoga space. It's bringing someone's whole self in so that they can be more not
Dr. Denise Patrick (17:48.701)
productive, but so that they can become more comfortable, feel included, and feel valued in that workspace. And that's what I think we're starting to see in the corporate sector, is that we're trying to really find different ways to help people feel valued, respected, and also that they are a part of the organization and can bring their whole selves in.
Melissa Aarskaug (18:15.174)
That's great. It makes me think, I'm curious how companies are fostering that awareness throughout all their employees of different cultures, different background, different religions. Are there any practices that you're seeing companies put in place for, you know, maybe Christians that don't understand the Jewish religion or other religions or other, you know, practices? Are there
companies that you think are doing it successfully and basically raising awareness among their employees to respect the different religions.
Dr. Denise Patrick (18:53.415)
Yeah, it's so interesting. I had two or three and I so just blanked on and I'm like, I'm sitting here searching right on my computer right now. Like, where is it? I know I had these names on here. There, here we go. I knew I would find it. Okay. So there are a couple of companies that do this. It says here, and I'm going to quote this, that corporate America is at a tipping point toward giving religion
similar attention to some of the other diversity identities, given the other major diversity categories. And that's from Brian Grimm, who's the founder and president of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation. So I'm taking this quote directly from this person. Some of the companies are Apple, Dell, American Express, and I'm looking at this article right now where he's quoted, and Goldman Sachs, and Target.
Facebook believe it or not and then alphabet and Intel so some of those companies I Think what they have done is to provide Interfaith dialogue or you make it part of the diversity program that you may have and so interfaith dialogue comes becomes very interesting because you do get to have Space where I don't know you have food lunch, whatever it is. All right maybe some
intra -organizational documents or on the website where you just begin to say, hey, you know, it's Ramadan. If you don't know anything about it, maybe, you know, this is a great time. And if someone is comfortable with you to ask, well, you know, well, are you going to mosque? Okay, well, we go to church. And then you have this really great informal dialogue or, hey, I noticed that
gosh, what's my Purim for example, right? And I know Purim looks like Halloween. Okay, so is it Halloween? Like what is that? And why are you dressing up in the Jewish community for Purim and how do children become involved, right? And then you get to talk about very simple things about, you know, what's similar, what's different or, okay, if you can't work on this particular day, we understand why. Higher Ed is really good at that, at least where I am and where I was in New York because
Melissa Aarskaug (21:15.942)
because if it's a Jewish holiday, and it's a time for you to get...
Dr. Denise Patrick (21:16.559)
If it's a Jewish holiday and it's a high holy day, then there is no technology that gets used. And so if you are an instructor and you have an assignment, what you try to do is say, okay, I don't want it done over that weekend, right? Or I'm going to provide that student some extra time to do it. So it just helps. Those are some very simple practices. I think that can
Melissa Aarskaug (21:40.156)
So are you, you have any strategies that you can share about how leaders can transform their mindset? So I know in the world today we're like meeting and meeting and meeting and meeting and meeting and we're really all day, you know, attacking our day. Is there any strategies that you can share with our listeners on how to transform their mindset, whether you're a Christian or a yogi
you know, whatever their beliefs are.
Dr. Denise Patrick (22:10.973)
Okay, so one of the things that I love is talking about mental models. And Peter Senge talks about this in his book, The Fifth Discipline. And when we think about mental models, what we're talking about is the way that we think because of our life experiences and also what we've been taught, whether it's school or church, synagogue, mosque, et cetera, right? Or nothing, right? We don't have any of that, but whatever we've been taught.
And so there are three ways that I can think of explicitly that can help us begin to reshape our mental models. The first one is to be aware of our thinking, right? We want to be aware of how we're thinking and maybe even kind of delve into, well, where did I learn this from? Where did I get my mental mapping from? Where, not mapping, but my mental thinking from? How did this model come to be?
So I might want to ask myself, provoking questions and maybe even just kind of reason through my own assumptions. So I assume a person is going to feel or think a certain way because of how that person looks or how that person dresses or, know, it doesn't even have to be just faith based. It can be anything. I want to begin to challenge those assumptions. The second thing that I can do is to inquire into how others are thinking.
maybe engage in some kind of meaningful dialogue. And you realize that in these two things that I'm talking about, I'm talking about intrapersonal communication, which is how I'm communicating with myself, and then interpersonal communication. How am I communicating with someone else? What dialogue can I have? And it's really asking those questions that help me challenge my own thinking and maybe will challenge somebody else's thinking as well in a respectful way.
The third thing that I can think of is to showcase my own advocacy or our advocacy. So maybe I'll use examples or facts or information that I have that I can gather to show support for my viewpoints. Or if I'm speaking on behalf of someone else, I might show evidence or support or facts or even stories or narratives about how I can support someone else.
Dr. Denise Patrick (24:31.985)
But all of this happens really through this idea of dialogue and communication.
Melissa Aarskaug (24:38.15)
That's great. think about one of my favorite words, Dr. Denise is resilience. I love that word. think that life is going to happen to all of us. We're going to have challenges and struggles and tough times and good times. And one of the practices I practice is really having being resilient, having a growth mindset. And a lot of that comes from my faith and my belief system. As you were talking a little bit about
So I guess my question is, how can we teach that to leaders in the face of adversity? How to be resilient? How to have faith that the world's not happening at you. It's happening for you in some cases, right? I think a lot of times I hear from people and they've gotten fired from a job and they're like,
you know, they get angry and all the things that go unsaid and all the emotions that go into that. And I always look at it from a place of, well, gosh, think about how exciting this is now. You can pivot your life and pivot your career and pick up and move and recreate and recraft what you're going to do next. And so I want to talk a little bit about building resilience as it pertains to faith and spirituality.
Dr. Denise Patrick (25:58.701)
I love the way that you frame that, Melissa, because it's true. We can have these traumas that happen to us. We lose a job. Something happens if we're very, very senior in the organization where, ooh, something's happening with legislature and you've got to deal with that. If you're a CEO, right, particularly of a large organization, you've got to deal with that. And maybe you weren't anticipating this. So what do
do, how do you deal with this? Well, the first thing, I love how you alluded to some of the steps of grief, right? We get sad, we get angry, we might become a little frustrated, we might be in denial at some point, right? But we have to walk through some of those stages of grief, right? Particularly if we lose a job, right? Or something like that, or we're downsized out or right -sized out. The other things that we can do, I think I have about
four or five that I can share with y 'all. I'll see how I can get through these quickly is to one, be self -aware and also practice reflection. So if we're feeling angry or we're feeling upset or frustrated or scared, that's another one. We don't really talk about that, right? We might be scared about something. I want to be able to be aware of what I am feeling in that moment and to be able to reflect on
and make that time to be able to reflect. And so the more I'm in the practice of self -reflecting, right, the more it becomes a habit for me to do that, the more I will be able to understand my strengths, understand maybe where some of my trouble spots are. So journal, if you're in the middle of that, know, write down if you're a journaling kind of person, write down what you're thinking. It doesn't have to be grammatically correct. You don't have to have all the punctuation of it. Just jot it out just to get it out of your head.
The second thing is, and I've learned this not just from research or my own practice, but just also talking with C -suite executives, and that's to develop a support system. We've got to have a support system. For some of us, it can be my church family, for example, or my faith -based family. For others, it can be a combination. It could be my faith -based family, my own blood family.
Dr. Denise Patrick (28:24.901)
It can be friends. could be a trusted person in the workplace, but you want to have that network that's around you. So when you say, my gosh, I'll use your example. I've lost my job that you can go and then they can rally around you. And they might ask you some great questions and kind of say some of the things that you said as you were framing your question. Wait, I know this is troublesome or I know that this is frustrating or you're angry or upset, but maybe this is a great opportunity for you to try something different
to do that thing that you've always talked about doing for the past 20 years. That's what my friends did for me, which is why I can pivot into Teach, Lead, Inspire pretty comfortably. So the third one I would think is to manage stress. This is very challenging for a lot of us, right? I'm sure for yourself, right? As you're nodding along, you're thinking, yeah, manage stress. How do I do that? When do I do that? For some of us, it is exercise.
For some of us, think of exercising becomes stress inducing because we might not do it quite as often as we'd like. But it could be just, I'm going to go for a walk or if you're really into the gym, I'm going to the gym. I love doing it really early in the morning. just gets all the endorphins, it gets all that negative energy out of my system. Some other practices around mindfulness, prayer. If you are a praying person, that's a great time. If you are not a praying person,
meditating, right? Even if you are a praying person, right? Meditating, just finding that quiet time. I actually said this to someone a couple of weeks ago who was sharing a really stressful day. And I said, well, you know, don't you just go grab your partner and go stand outside on your porch for five minutes, maybe 10.
I know it's really hot outside, but just say, hey, you know what? I need to feel a connection right now. I've had a really stressful day and I haven't really had an opportunity to connect with you. And so I'm gonna stand outside with my partner and just look at the sun, right? Or, know, something simple. So I think those three, I know I had five, but I'll pause there with those three.
Melissa Aarskaug (30:39.578)
That's great. think resilience, I love that word. The other word that comes to mind when you were talking is positive mindset. You may wake up, get out of bed and stub your toe, walk to the coffee pot and spill coffee, start on your drive to work and you're stuck in traffic and your day's just, pam, pam, pam, not going as planned. And I think to what you were saying, to step back and what can we control?
Well, the only thing we can control is how we react to what's happening. So we can't move all the cars in Austin faster, but we can turn on music or a podcast or something that brings us joy and calms us down. And I think that's a practice. practice quite a bit. If something's happening to me, I don't take it personally. I stop and I try to control myself and bring my positive.
energy, my positive vibes. And sometimes like you mentioned, it's prayer, it's exercise, it's stepping outside, it's going to get my mail, it's calling a family member. But you nailed it too with community. Community is, I would say, one of the most important things if you're a leader and having a sounding board of people to say, hey, I've lost my job, can you put out your feelers of anybody that's X, Y, Z?
or I'll take a temp job or, you know, I have some friends of mine that were in the C -suite and are driving Uber to just communicate with people. And I think, like you said, stress is really hard and it's really hard to keep that positive, resilient mindset. And I think you hit so many of my points. I wanted to talk a little bit about,
those mindsets as your career evolves, right? So as you go from a manager to a director to a VP and however you want to go up the corporate food chain or owning your own business, how are those mindsets so important as you evolve your
Dr. Denise Patrick (32:53.979)
You read my mind because in as you were talking, I thought, but they're all such different mindsets. They're not even the same. I think each one can build off of a previous one, right? Certainly. And so there are certain things that get into our muscle memory, if you will, because as a pre -manager, right? You're just starting your career. You learn certain things, right? So the people, my students who are undergrads.
who are out there in the workplace, they are learning how to not take things so personally. Or, okay, I know you wanna say something about this right now, but maybe this isn't the time to say this in the workplace. And so they're learning those things at the beginning of their professional careers. As you move up, I'm gonna skip through some layers, but as you get to particularly executive level, you begin to get to the level where there are certain things you cannot talk about.
with your community. So you have to figure out ways to talk about maybe how you're feeling or how that day is going, but you can't talk about it. Now, for example, I sit on a board, right? So I sit on a board for a college. There are certain things I cannot talk about. I cannot, I cannot share. There are C -suite people who I know in my circle, there are certain things they cannot share.
but they do need to think about how do they take care of their whole selves, their mental health. So this is where a trusted partner comes in. This is where having a therapist comes in. For some, it might be a pastor, again, using a Christian background, right? So somebody who is a faith leader that you know that you can talk to in confidence, where you know that that is never going anywhere, right? And maybe that's where you begin to have those conversations.
So your mindset at a very high level is very, very different than it is, at the beginning of your career. It really takes practice in resilience. I would say by the time you get to owning your own business or being in that C -suite or being on a board, it is such practice. Some of the things that you do where you say,
Dr. Denise Patrick (35:17.499)
Okay, I I can't talk about it, so let me figure out a different way to relieve stress that I might be going through. I want to be able to do that and you can do that almost second nature. There are certain things that happen, I think, that you might not anticipate where you need that community to say, hey, listen, I'm going through some stuff. Could you please pray for me? Or, hey, I'm going through some stuff. And I just said this to a C -suite member the other day and I'm like, you know what? I'm thinking about you and praying about you, praying for you.
Thank you. Don't need to tell me anymore. I don't need to know all the details, right? But I think that kind of mindset, mindfulness is truly important and so significant, the way that you go through your trajectory in your work career.
Melissa Aarskaug (36:07.647)
yeah, absolutely. think I had an experience recently with a woman, like you said, I'm praying for you. Those little words are so powerful. I was recently with my kids somewhere and this woman was struggling with three kids, struggling, stressed out. The kids were yelling and screaming and she was borderline in tears. And I went over to entertain one of
her kids and I leaned to her and said, you're doing a really great job. And those words were free, so easy to say and so honest. And because on the exterior, we make an assumption that she's either not managing her children or not whatever people make the assumption, but really she's trying her best. And those three little words made and shifted that woman's
Dr. Denise Patrick (36:59.473)
Mm -hmm.
Melissa Aarskaug (37:05.688)
And she almost teared, she's tearing up like, you, nobody tells me that. You know, I feel like I'm doing, doing, for everyone. I never get to hear that. So I think to your point, telling people that you believe in them and that you're praying for them and they're doing a good job, they're your coworkers, your peers, your family, your friends, those mean so much to people.
and they don't cost anything. And I think one of my first and favorite mentors was my mom. And she always taught me, she always led by example. Like if she told me to make my bed, she made her bed. Whatever it was that she was coaching me on, she was doing and I was kind of, as a child, as we grow, we are like curious George, we replicate and copy what our parents do.
Kind of tying it back to what you were saying for leaders is, you know, being comfortable with being vulnerable with your people and telling them, like you were saying at the beginning, just being honest with them if they make a mistake, teach them how to do it right. Have their back and say, you're gonna do a great next time, we all make mistakes, you're learning. And that's...
is very different than saying, you messed up. Now we can't do the presentation. Great, we're going to be late because of you. And those kind of comments really affect people's day. And if you can be an inspiring and motivational leader, I think you'll get your people to do
Dr. Denise Patrick (38:50.885)
Yeah, I want to delve into that a little bit more because I like again, I like the way that you frame that. It's it's almost like how I think about communication, right? So you send the message and then there's the receiving side of it, right? It's the same thing with leadership. There's the leading side of it, but there's also the followership side of it. And we want to understand both sides of this. If we're poor listeners, we don't get a message, right? So if somebody's sending me a message,
Now, hey, could you do this presentation in this way? And I'm not listening fully, then I'm probably going to miss some key points and maybe I will mess it up. And I do need to take accountability for that. It's the same thing with following. To your point about what you did with that woman is a great way if you were following, but you also turned into a leader at the same time. So following and kind of watching, but then to be able to say something to her and then to step in and to maybe.
work with one of her kids, like, hey, we're gonna just redirect for a second over here. That moves into leadership. Followers get to do the same thing with their leaders. There are moments where we as followers have to step in, even if it's just for a moment, and become the leader. So when you see somebody, especially at the top of the organization, I have such a passion.
for C -suite executives. I always have, my entire life. I have just had a passion for those at the top of the organization because those of us who follow, and I've made this mistake myself, I am not immune to it. I look at a leader and I go, you don't know what you're doing. Like I could do better, right? We don't know what is going on in that leader's personal life, professional life, or what have you. And so while I may have the feeling of,
yeah, I don't really like that decision that you made. I have to respect the office, if you will. And so to be a great follower is to say, as you talked about, in a moment, it's free, it's simple, and you don't know how you can turn that leader's moment around. It's to say, I'm going to take a leadership moment and say, you know what? Not really thrilled with that decision, but man, that must have been very hard to come to that particular decision.
Melissa Aarskaug (40:48.764)
Great.
Dr. Denise Patrick (41:11.611)
And I respect you for doing that and putting in the work to do that. And I just wanted to say thank
Melissa Aarskaug (41:17.838)
Yeah, exactly. think, you know, I think in talking about trust and openness, I know Brene Brown talks a lot about being vulnerable and being vulnerable with, you know, all different people in your life. And as it pertains to faith, right, like, not everybody has integrity, not everybody was taught integrity, and not everybody knows how to be a, you know, a person with integrity. And I think as
It leads back to faith and leadership. And I know you touched a little bit in the beginning about talking to people, right? If somebody did something that was maybe not moral or they shouldn't have, talking to them and better understanding their side of what happened, because there are, as we know, two sides of one story, the other story, and it's probably somewhere in the middle, understanding
side of it, being transparent and open and vulnerable and hitting it direct with them. And maybe they didn't even realize they were doing something that wasn't, you know, that they shouldn't be doing. I wanted to just kind of get your thoughts on, you know, trust, openness, being vulnerable, and maybe tying it back to, you know, faith.
Dr. Denise Patrick (42:40.154)
Yeah, I think we can start with trust. I think that's such a
It's a beautiful word that can certainly get misused and abused. It's very easy to initially put our trust in people. And I'm about to preach, so pardon me for a second. It's very easy to put our trust in people. Tying it back to faith means that I can...
have confidence in people when I see integrity or that they're ethical or they're doing the right things, they're really trying, they're behaving the way that our moral society says that we need to behave. But my trust isn't necessarily in that person in the spiritual sense. Tying it back to faith, my trust is...
Dr. Denise Patrick (43:50.137)
in my higher being, which is in God.
If I always keep my trust in him, capital H, right? If I always put my trust in him, it's going to be easier for me to deal across with people. Because from me, then I have to build my integrity from the link of the trust that I have in my higher being, in God. Now, how does that work the other way? Because there were two other words you gave me and I wanted to do this and I just went down a rabble hole.
You said trust and what was the other?
Melissa Aarskaug (44:26.684)
Being open and maybe what it means, you being open is being vulnerable, right? It's kind of similar, similar words.
Dr. Denise Patrick (44:33.871)
Okay. So if I'm open or if I want to be open, I can be vulnerable. It's because my trust is somewhat in the human. It's the confidence, right? Almost going back to the piece that I talked about earlier, right? That faith. I have confidence in that person because of how that individual and I interact that I can be vulnerable and I can be open. That, but ultimately
my ultimate faith, trust, vulnerability is going to be with God. And that's going to give me a foundation. Now for me personally, if people don't believe this, when I tell them this, I'm not always so vulnerable, right? And sometimes that comes to us maybe because of trauma that's happened to us or some trigger, some experience that we may have had in our lives.
And so it takes us a little longer to be open or a little longer to be vulnerable. And we have to really learn through that. I Brene Brown talks about that a bit, right, in her books, I think, is it dare, right? How we have to really learn to become vulnerable and to trust a situation, a context, an individual in the confidence that we have in that person, that that person will not harm us, that person won't hurt us.
Because if that happens, openness, vulnerability, and trust in those individuals, guess what happens to that? Bye. And how long does it take to build that back? Forever? Sometimes never, right? Sometimes never. So I think if we can remember as leaders to realize that we are fallible beings, right? We mess
Melissa Aarskaug (46:14.018)
Long time. Yep. Or never. Correct. Yep.
Dr. Denise Patrick (46:32.381)
We make mistakes. We say the wrong things at the wrong time. Sometimes we say the wrong things at the right time. Right? But we're not perfect. We are all imperfect. And so the more that I can remember to bring my full divine spirit to a situation, the better I will be. Does that mean that I'm going to be 100 %? I said, no, I'm not going to be because I'm also fallible. Right?
But that means that if I make that mistake with an individual or with a group of individuals that I have to take accountability to say, you know what? Sorry, I messed up your trust or hey, I might have caused you to not be as open with me. This is how I think I did it. Let's have a conversation about that so we can, you know, reconcile.
Melissa Aarskaug (47:23.196)
That's great. In closing, I just wanted to get any final thoughts, perspectives, or anything maybe we missed that you want to share with our listeners.
Dr. Denise Patrick (47:35.466)
I think some final thoughts would be maybe a couple of my pillars that I operate under with Teach, Lead, Inspire. I've got seven. like it because seven is a perfect number, but I'm not going to share all seven. I'll share a couple. One is to think about transformative influence. And what I mean by that
empowering people to become catalysts for innovation and also transformation. One of the things that I like to do is to transform people by taking their life challenges and helping them turn them into leadership strengths. So as leaders, we want to remember to pull the terms transformative influence into our vocabulary.
I think the second that I think is fostering that resilience that we just talked about, right? Not just for yourselves, but how do we do that for others, the people that we lead? How do we encourage them and help them become more resilient at whatever level they may be in the learning process? And then I think the third one, which I really, really tried to do, and I just encourage, and I think you alluded to it earlier,
is one of the third pillars that I have is compassionate service. When we're in a leadership role, and there are so many people that talk about this now, right? You Simon Sinek, right? Talk about leaders eat last, right? Right? We are in a position to serve others. We are in a position to lead an organization, but we're also in a position to serve others. And so if we can remember that and remember that we want to do this with compassion.
with integrity, with ethics, with accountability, all of those terms that we like to throw into our corporate lingo. If we can remember to do that, I just think it's such a powerful thing that we can do as a leader. And it makes us feel better, it makes us lead better, and it makes other people follow better, and it makes other people step up to the plate to lead.
Melissa Aarskaug (49:48.388)
Absolutely, I agree with all of that. I look forward to reading more of your inspiring books, stories, and I'm looking forward to hearing what you're doing next that's not out yet. Thank you so much, Dr. Denise, for being on the podcast today and sharing all your insights with our listeners. We appreciate you being here today.
Dr. Denise Patrick (50:13.863)
Thank you. Thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation. So thank you for having me here. And I hope that this was helpful for someone out there.
Melissa Aarskaug (50:22.748)
That's the Executive Connect podcast.