Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
💥 Ignite your company culture with the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast!
We bring together incredible leaders, trailblazing entrepreneurs, and expert visionaries to share the secrets to their success, explore real-world challenges, and reveal what it truly takes to lead with energy, passion, and purpose as a 🌟VIBRANT🌟 Leader.
🎧 Tune in every week as Nicole Greer dives deep with a new inspiring guest, delivering fresh insights and actionable wisdom to elevate your leadership game!
💥 Subscribe now and leave a review to help drive the future of creating vibrant workplaces!
💥 Need a speaker, trainer, or coach? Visit our website today: www.vibrantculture.com
💥 Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/build-a-vibrant-culture-nicole-greer/
💥 Want to be a guest on the show? Email Nicole@vibrantculture.com
[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the Build A Vibrant Culture Podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and smarts you need to turn possibility into purpose. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations as our host, Nicole Greer, interviews leadership and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development. Now, here's your host, a professional speaker, coach and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:31] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me the Vibrant Coach, and I have an amazing, vibrant guest on today who I met at the Inspire Conference that we both were keynote speakers at in Charlotte, North Carolina. We had a room full of 220 women dressed in pink. It was such a girl party. It was crazy. I've got Nanci Wilson here today. Let me tell you all about her. Over a decade ago, Nanci found herself in a financial bind until a credit union saved the day for her. That movement of Credit Union Magic changed everything, launching her career from teller to EVP (Executive Vice President) at Luminate, the Louisiana Credit Union League. A 2015 CUDE graduate, Nanci didn't just embrace the moment, she became its loudest champion: mentoring, speaking, and even co-facilitating the program in 2023.
[00:01:35] Then listen to this. She was named the Credit Union Rockstar of 2017, and she's now an award-winning innovator and international speaker, inspiring audiences on empathy, leadership, and the power of credit unions. From teller to trailblazer, Nanci proves that unexpected turns lead to incredible destinations. She says, "You are responsible for the energy that you bring to the room." She is my person because she understands what it means to be vibrant. It's all about the vibe you're giving off. And she also has this other great quote I love, which is, "Write your purpose in pen. Write your path in pencil." 'Cause you never know where that lifeline's going to take you. Welcome to the show, Nanci. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:02:20] Nanci Wilson: Oh, thank you so much. I was so excited that you asked me to do this. Even more excited to actually meet you in person at the Inspire Conference. How cool was that?
[00:02:29] Nicole Greer: It was very cool. Yeah, those ladies blew my mind.
[00:02:32] Nanci Wilson: Oh my gosh. I know. And I had no idea there were so many shades of pink out there.
[00:02:37] Nicole Greer: Oh my God. And, and if you go to either one of our LinkedIns and you just type in "Inspire Conference, you'll just see seriously a sea of pink. And when I gave my keynote, I had pink bandanas for everybody, and then Nanci had pink balloons and did this whole breathing exercise. It was just pink on pink, on pink, on pink. So I had a blast.
[00:02:58] Nanci Wilson: I did too. It's always a good time. That was my second Inspire and I've always, I've always left inspired not to be cliche or cheesy, but I always have left inspired from the Inspire conference, so, and I was super glad to be able to meet you there. That was fantastic and fantastic session that you had as well.
[00:03:15] Nicole Greer: Oh, thank you. And a shout out to Brooke Rouse, who like masterminded the whole thing with the Carolina Credit Union League. She is just a mastermind and she toes the line too. She's like, get here, let's go. Let's make it happen. Let's make it beautiful. And it was absolutely a beautiful event.
[00:03:33] Yeah. And so when I heard your keynote, I'm like, ah, she's got to be on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast because we all know that the culture is the people, not the organization. And there is this thing running around out there, the imposter syndrome.
[00:03:49] Nanci Wilson: Oh, yes. Yes.
[00:03:51] Nicole Greer: And your program was called _Imposter Monsters: Slaying the Beasts Within_ and your PowerPoint deck the way you delivered it. So gorgeous. So I thought, let's talk about this crazy imposter syndrome and talk about the different monsters that live within. So you want to do that?
[00:04:12] Nanci Wilson: Absolutely. I would love to do that. I would love to do that.
[00:04:15] Nicole Greer: Well, you started out your keynote talking a little bit about your background and you actually talked about a bad boss that you had.
[00:04:25] Nanci Wilson: I did. Yeah. I think sometimes we forget that when we're thinking about the folks that have paved our future and paved our way to where we are now, we learned from the good and the bad.
[00:04:36] Nicole Greer: Oh yeah.
[00:04:36] Nanci Wilson: There are lessons to be learned from the good and the bad. I had a boss that was not the nicest. It was zero stars on Yelp, I would say. Um, he made some comments to me that were unsavory about my future and what I needed to do in order to be a successful person within the industry or in any industry. And I don't know, inside of me at the time, that's when an imposter monster started to brew. He allowed me to tap into that inner bully that started to say, Hmm, maybe you're not good enough. Maybe you shouldn't be here. And the most unfortunate part is I almost listened. And so,
[00:05:15] Nicole Greer: Don't miss that.
[00:05:16] Nanci Wilson: Yeah, I almost listened, but there's that little bit of, of cantankerous spirit in me that said, Ooh, watch me, watch me prove you wrong. But I had to slay the monsters as I did that.
[00:05:29] Nicole Greer: Yeah. That's so good. That's so good. So, everybody listening, if you've got the bad boss, both Nanci and I can relate 'cause we've had 'em and the reason they're in your life is to show you what not to do.
[00:05:41] Nanci Wilson: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:41] Nicole Greer: Right? Okay. All right. So this inner monster started to brew, but don't miss, she's a little spicy, and she was like, mm-mm. I won't have it.
[00:05:49] Nanci Wilson: Right.
[00:05:50] Nicole Greer: So she overcame it. But in your talk you talked about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 different monsters. And so, there's this first monster that is the perfectionist that comes up that tells you you can't do it because you're not perfect enough. Will you talk a little bit about that?
[00:06:06] Nanci Wilson: Absolutely. So the Perfectionist Monster, if they had a catchphrase, it would be, "If it's not flawless, it's a failure." If it's not perfect, it's a failure. I think what this monster tells you is that if you have to go back, if you have to delete, if you have to use an eraser, if you have to ctrl, alt, delete, if you have to do any of those things, you're not worthy of the product that you were going to hand in anyway. And that's a lie. That's a lie because I think what this imposter monster wants to try to teach you is that if it's not perfect and polished, it's not acceptable. And I will tell you, the most wonderful connections and maybe even successes that I've had in my career come from the unpolished moments in my life.
[00:06:50] And so, if you fail, I want people to understand, with this monster, failing means you tried. If you didn't try it, I would see that as more of a failure. But you trying is an active moment in which you're saying, I'm going to give this a shot, and that perfection monster wants you to think that just because you're giving it a shot and you don't really know what you're doing, that's already a fail and he's lying to you. It's a lying monster.
[00:07:15] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's right. And I love what you just said about if you're not trying, that's the failure. Because like, one of the things that I talked about in my keynote was going through the learning curve. I mean, like, you're going to gag, you got to mess up to, to learn how to do it right. That's just how it works. Right? Okay. So that's the first one. And I think this might be a good point to bring up this whole thing about you going to Heart and Hustle University.
[00:07:41] Nanci Wilson: Oh yeah!
[00:07:41] Nicole Greer: Because you know, a lot of times too, people won't try 'cause they're like, oh, I don't know if I have the credentials or the authority or the stuff for the letters after my name and all this stuff. And so talk a little bit about Heart and Hustle University. That's the first university I went to, too. I didn't end up getting my, my degree done until I was like 42 years old. So,
[00:08:03] Nanci Wilson: Absolutely. And I can kind of intertwine this with the next monster, honestly, because the next monster is the Expert Monster. And that monster tells you that "If I don't know everything, I know nothing." And for me, what I held for the longest time is that belly ache when I would see on an application. Where did you go to college? When did you graduate from college? What was your diploma? For me, I did go to college. I finished one whole year and I realized it was not for me. I am in awe of people where a university is for them. It just wasn't for me. I'm more of a hands-on, show me how to do it, get my hands dirty, let me figure this out, type of person. And I realized I was getting looked over for a lot of jobs because I was not able to click that diploma in higher education. So I decided as I got older-- I'd like to say wiser, I think my husband and probably son would disagree, but they're not here--
[00:08:59] Nicole Greer: Leave them out of it.
[00:09:00] Nanci Wilson: Just, yeah. They I m ade... a diploma for myself and it was from Heart and Hustle University. And it says that the dean is life and that the graduate was me. And I started to upload that with my job applications. I started to add Heart and Hustle University to. Sometimes I would add H&H University. They would ask about that sometimes, and sometimes they wouldn't. They just were looking for the university. They didn't even ask if it was an official diploma. But I knew that I needed a way for them to see me without only seeing what I didn't have. And so that expert, monster in me was trying to tell me that because I did not have that piece of paper framed on my wall that I was not worthy to get the job that I was applying for.
[00:09:51] And in order to slay that monster, I had to write my own diploma, and I had to join my own school. And one of the first job interviews that I had when I started doing that, she said, oh, I've never heard of Heart and Hustle University. And I said, really? Because I'm top of my class. I was valedictorian there. That's strange. And we had a good laugh over it and also really bonded over the fact that she too had had that expert monster that made her believe that she had to do the four years in order to be of any value. And so that, that's where that started and that's really where the expert monster started within me. And that's how I slayed him.
[00:10:29] Nicole Greer: That's so good. And, don't miss this, everybody who's listening, prior to the podcast that we're recording right now, we had a whole 25 minute talk and after the Inspire Conference, so many of the gals resonated with that and reached out to you, they're like, oh my gosh. I went to Heart and Hustle University too. We need to start a sorority or have, you know, an alumni group or something. Because I think you know, it really impacts people that they don't have this official thing that costs a lot of money and time and energy when you could just get your hands dirty, like you said.
[00:11:03] Nanci Wilson: There is and there's a lot of shame with that, unfortunately. I think there's a lot of shame that comes with that. I do have a lot of people that come up to me after the Imposter Monster presentation with full on tears saying, oh my gosh. I, I didn't graduate from anywhere and I felt so ashamed by that. And I just was telling you before we started recording, one of my greatest joys is mailing out heart and hustle diplomas. And I do it all the time, because I want people to understand that at the end of the day, that piece of paper is what they make it, it's what they make it. So, yeah. I love it.
[00:11:35] Nicole Greer: That's so good. Okay. All right, so two Imposter monsters under our belt. Perfection and Expert. Okay. Then we have the Natural Genius. Talk about that one.
[00:11:47] Nanci Wilson: The Natural Genius is "If it's hard, I must not be good enough." That's the catchphrase for a natural genius. So if it's hard and it doesn't come easy, if they can't read 50 more white papers on it and get it under control, they are not good enough and they should just trash it. And that Natural Genius Monster, boy, that's a big liar. He's a big, big liar.
[00:12:09] Nicole Greer: Oh, and a bully
[00:12:10] Nanci Wilson: Oh, such a bully. He's the type that would make a female cut bangs out of anxiousness, right? I feel like you would cut bangs from the expert monster. We put too much pressure on ourselves to know everything about everything, and that's not possible. Perfectionist the perfectionist person within you doesn't exist. I hate to tell people that, but it's the truth. There's nothing that we are ever going to do as human beings that's going to be perfect and polished and wonderful all the time. It's embracing that and knowing that you still are worthy to be at the table. That's how you slay that monster. The natural genius doesn't exist. The natural genius takes work and that's okay. And sometimes ChatGPT, and that's okay too.
[00:12:51] Nicole Greer: Oh my gosh. I love ChatGPT.
[00:12:52] Nanci Wilson: Oh my gosh. I think I'm
[00:12:54] Nicole Greer: My boyfriend.
[00:12:55] Nanci Wilson: I think ChatGPT's dating a lot of us!
[00:12:58] Nicole Greer: I, I don't care. I don't care if he dates around. I'm good. As long as when I log in, he's there. I'm good.
[00:13:05] Nanci Wilson: That's right.
[00:13:05] Nicole Greer: If I've got a question, I need help. He is at my beck and call.
[00:13:10] Nanci Wilson: Exactly right. That's exactly right.
[00:13:12] Nicole Greer: And so that natural genius, I just want to give an example of that real quickly. For example, introversion and extroversion, like, you know, I'm just not good at meeting people. I'm not good at talking in front of groups. I'm not good at math, I'm not good at whatever. Like, that's what Nanci's talking about right now. It's like, well, nobody's good at everything and if you just sit your butt in a chair and look at these things, it'll come. You can go through the learning curve.
[00:13:36] Nanci Wilson: It will! I mean, I think I said this on stage too. If you asked any of my past professors or past math teachers and said, do you think Nanci Wilson is working in a financial area of her career? They would probably wet their pants in laughter, and I probably would have, too, at the time, because I think I said this too, once Alphabet joined the party with math, I was like, what is happening? Why is there an A or a Z or parentheses, or what is that?
[00:14:05] Nicole Greer: Who mixed this up with English class.
[00:14:07] Nanci Wilson: Yeah. Yet another day I did not use trigonometry. Thank you. I, I think it, it's just one of those things that you tell yourself if you can't do it, then obviously I can't do X, Y, Z because I don't have this mastered. Little did I know that even though I work in the financial industry, I didn't have to be a perfectionist or an expert or natural genius at numbers. I could just connect with people and still be successful.
[00:14:34] Nicole Greer: That's right. And I bet you you're surrounded by all sorts of nerdy number of people that could just help you, right? And see Nanci, if you haven't noticed, has some social skills, so there you go. Alright. And so you use what you got people. That's the whole thing about heart and hustle. Use what you got, use it the best you can. That's the whole deal.
[00:14:51] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results. Your organization will get lit from within! Email her at nicole@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole's TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com.
[00:15:20] Nicole Greer: All right, so the next imposter monster that we want to slay is the Soloist. The Soloist. Will you talk about that one?
[00:15:29] Nanci Wilson: So the Soloist, their catchphrase is, "If I have to ask for help, I'm a fraud." And you know, I go to.
[00:15:36] Nicole Greer: There you go.
[00:15:37] Nanci Wilson: Yeah, like I do this in my daily life. Even my son would say this too, please clean your room. Okay, he's going to clean his room, but he is not going to do it right. He's not going to do it like I would like to do it, you know? If I do it, I know it's correct. And that really is how the soloist monster shows up even in everyday life. I can ask somebody else to do it, but they're not going to do it how I would do it. So I'm going to take it upon myself to redo it. We really create this monster inside of us, and that's really the point of all of these monsters, is they are, you know, when you visualize an angel and a devil on your shoulder, these all live within us. They're always there ready to whisper in our ear. And that Solo Monster is telling you that if you ask for help, your boss, your leader, whoever your direct report is, is going to see you ask for help and go, whoa. Why did we hire that person? They need help. Rude. You know, I mean, and it is rude.
[00:16:32] Why do we do that to ourselves? It's super, super mean. I work on a team at Luminate, at the Louisiana Credit Union League, formerly the Louisiana Credit Union League. And we have such a, I call it a conveyor belt of skill, and I am so blessed to know that if I don't know something, someone down this conveyor belt knows it a to z.
[00:16:52] Nicole Greer: Right inside and out.
[00:16:53] Nanci Wilson: And I think it's so wonderful to be able to recognize people for their talents. Nobody's going to come to me to balance their checkbook, and please don't. Please don't do that. And also don't come to me for Excel spreadsheets because I will erase it, change it to German. I will add things that I don't mean to add. It'll be awful by the time I'm done. But I know that about myself, and I think to slay this monster, you have to know what your skills are. Be strong with your skills, be proud of your skills, but also be proud of other people for their skills too.
[00:17:23] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's right. And you know, that dovetails so beautifully. One of the things I have in my toolbox is this thing called the Strengths Finder. I bet you know about it. And one of the things that it says is you know, there's 30 of these things on here that you can be great at. You can't be great at all of them. You know, and I had a client and you would love her, Nanci. Her name is Jennifer. And she took the strengths finders and like number 34 was discipline. And she was so upset. She's like, how can I have thir discipline at number 34? And I'm like, well, Jennifer. You are all over the place. You've got all this energy. You're in here, you're in there. You change your mind. You do this you, but she does beautiful organizational development work and is great with people. I'm like, let somebody else be disciplined. You.
[00:18:04] Nanci Wilson: Right. Right. Don't add that. You don't have to add that to your repertoire.
[00:18:09] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's right. And this is called The Strengths Finder so why don't we look at the top five things on here that are so fantastic about you? So sometimes we just forget we've got the little fingerprints like snowflakes and your yours are what yours are. And love them and use them. Okay, good. All right, so we're at the last one, the Overachiever.
[00:18:29] Nanci Wilson: Mm.
[00:18:30] Nicole Greer: Talk about that imposter monster.
[00:18:33] Nanci Wilson: This one is a doozy. This one says "If I stop anything at any time, if I take a break, if I take a breath, if I blink, I'm a fraud. And I shouldn't be here because someone's going to see that I'm not working." These are the folks that come in early, leave late, work weekends, check their teams on Sundays, check their teams meetings on Saturdays, and oh my gosh, if I don't reply to this text in 30 seconds, it's going to self-destruct. And I am so guilty of this. I'm such a terrible person of the overachiever monster. And it was so rude to find out you don't get warm cookies for being an overachiever. You don't get candy, you don't get ribbons,
[00:19:15] Nicole Greer: No, they just expect more!
[00:19:18] Nanci Wilson: I know! How rude! How rude, and it's even ruder to find out that we do it to ourselves. I don't know that I've ever had a leader that has expected of me what I have expected of myself, and I think the part of this Overachiever Monster is learning that even though folks have expectations of you, we tend to take it the extra mile because we need to prove ourselves at every moment. You're already at the table. Continue, just continue. But also knowing that success is taking mental health breaks, success is taking a walk outside. Success sometimes is just putting pants on.
[00:19:58] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's right.
[00:19:59] Nanci Wilson: That's the truth. It's the truth. Success isn't always when you hand something in that you're proud of. Success is sometimes just showing up. So I think rewiring our brain to understand that that Overachiever Monster, nobody's asking that of us, but ourselves. And sometimes we need to slap that monster by saying, I'm doing enough and I need a break. And that's success too.
[00:20:22] Nicole Greer: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Oh, I love that so much. So we have gone through the five imposter monsters that Nanci Wilson shared at the Inspire Conference, and will come to your conference and share by the way so that all of your employees can slay the beast within. So let's just kind of look at this through a culture lens for a moment. Imagine if you had an entire organization full of Perfectionists, Experts, Natural Genius, Soloists and Overachievers.
[00:20:52] Nanci Wilson: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:53] Nicole Greer: I'm not really sure how much culture you would have. It would be super, super competitive.
[00:20:58] Nanci Wilson: It would be,
[00:20:59] Nicole Greer: No collaboration.
[00:21:01] Nanci Wilson: No collaboration. No cooperation. And I think that, I said this before, one of the most powerful ways to continue your culture and to make sure that you are doing yourself justice and the folks around you justice is to A) be responsible for the energy that you bring to the room at all times. And B) understand that you aren't perfect and neither are the people that work with you. So leaning in on the folks for their talents. And appreciating them for those talents. "Thank you" is a lost art, and I'm bringing that back.
[00:21:32] Nicole Greer: Bring it back, Nanci.
[00:21:34] Nanci Wilson: I love the good old note cards and like an actual stamp and you have to go to the mailbox and put it in. I love those kind of actions. And even just a text sometimes of thank you for what you do or what you bring to the table. I don't know what age it is, Nicole, where we thought we didn't need kudos anymore. Like in kindergarten when you got those scratch and stiff stickers, that was the best!
[00:21:58] Nicole Greer: Oh, I forgot about the scratch and sniff stickers.
[00:22:02] Nanci Wilson: Golly, goodness gracious. The grape one was my chef's kiss for me. I loved it. But there we reach an age where we feel like we don't need that anymore. And that's another lie that we tell ourselves. And so just know that the folks around you, they need to be appreciated too. They need to be honest with themselves too, but it comes from the top down. It takes a leader to
[00:22:23] Nicole Greer: don't miss this.
[00:22:24] Nanci Wilson: I am not good at this and you are, teach me. Teach me how to do that. Because once you're a leader and you show somebody that you are okay saying I'm not good at something, then you are opening the door for people to be vulnerable, honest, and authentic.
[00:22:41] Nicole Greer: Hmm. So good. So good. Okay, everybody, we have been talking to Nanci Wilson about the imposter monster, slaying the beast within. Tell us, Nanci, if we wanted to get ahold of you, how would we get ahold of you and find you and put you in our lives?
[00:22:56] Nanci Wilson: I'm super active on LinkedIn. You can find me under Nanci Wilson, and it's Nanci with an i. I'm Nanc-i not Nanc-y and or you email me. I am very good at returning emails at nanci@luminate.coop and that is my official work email. But I answer those emails all of the time. I love to connect and I love to meet people and I love to help people understand their worth.
[00:23:23] Nicole Greer: That's so good. That's so good. All right. I know everybody is absolutely screaming at their podcast device right now, going, wait, don't let her go. Is there one more nugget? One more nugget that Nanci Wilson will lay down as her parting words for us. Do you have one more little nugget? One thing you would share?
[00:23:40] Nanci Wilson: I do. Never define your worth based on the words underneath your job description. You are so much more and you are here for so much more. Those are just words. You get to do the journey.
[00:23:55] Nicole Greer: Hmm. So good. All right, everybody, right now, while you're feeling the love, go down below on your screen, click the like button, and then maybe leave a three word comment. I love Nanci. Perfect. And then you know, you can move on with your life, but if you would do that for us, we'd really appreciate it at the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast.
[00:24:15] My name is Nicole Greer. It's been my distinct pleasure to be with you. And Nanci, I'm just grateful. I'm so glad you're in my life.
[00:24:22] Nanci Wilson: Oh, I am so glad. Thank you, Inspire, for bringing us together.
[00:24:26] Nicole Greer: That's right. All right, everybody, have a great day.
[00:24:28] Announcer: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast. If you found value in today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more like-minded listeners. Remember, the journey to building a vibrant culture never stops. Stay inspired, keep nurturing your vibrant culture, and we can't wait to reconnect with you on the next exciting episode of the Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast.