Carol Cox: How can you turn your expertise into a
compelling narrative?
Listen in. As three of our recent graduates
of our Thought Leader Academy deliver their
signature talks for the very first time on
this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast.
Diane Diaz: Hi everyone, and welcome to our LinkedIn live
with our Thought Leader Academy graduates.
I am Diane Diaz and I am the lead speaking
coach at Speaking Your Brand.
I'm excited that we are bringing today three
of our graduates from the Thought Leader
Academy. Now, if you watched the last
LinkedIn live, you saw two graduates from our
Thought Leader Academy. These are our other
three graduates. I'm very excited for you to
hear their talks today.
Um, one thing that I have noticed in working
with clients, and actually the women that I
speak with on a daily basis,
is that we often are waiting for getting that
other credential or waiting for someone to
give us permission to let us know that we can
go ahead and start speaking.
But really, the the bridge between our story
and our expertise.
That is where the gap is.
And so story is what's going to fill that
gap. Story humanizes your expertise and it
builds trust quickly with your audience.
And that actually helps your ideas to stick
and land with the audience and really
resonate and move them to action.
So that is why I am so excited today,
because you won't just hear about this from
our speakers today.
You're actually going to see it in action.
So I'm joined today by three recent thought
Leader Academy graduates and they are Allison
Greco, Brittany Sadlouskos,
and Dr Cam Dunson.
Welcome to all of you.
Um, and each of them are going to deliver a
ten minute version of the signature talk that
they worked on during their time in the
Thought Leader Academy. This was over an
eight week program.
They worked on these talks along with a lot
of other things that they worked on
storytelling, connecting all the dots and all
of that. And these talks are actually
designed to turn their expertise into
meaningful connection through purposeful
storytelling. And you're going to see that as
each of them speak, so as they speak.
I encourage you to look for those
storytelling moments that are connecting the
dots of the message and building that that
bridge between their expertise and the
message. So, uh, in just a moment,
we'll hear these three talks back to back and
then stick around for the end.
Don't leave after the last speaker,
because after the last speaker,
we are going to do a little round table
discussion where I'm going to ask them to
share some some information and insight about
their experience in the Thought Leader
Academy, working on their talks together,
what that was like, what they learned,
um, insights they have.
And, and I think you'll get a lot of value
out of that as well. All right.
So let's jump in.
Please welcome to our stage as our first
speaker, Allison Greco.
Allison Greco: Hello. Good afternoon,
I'm Allison Greco.
I'm a continuous improvement and business
expert. And this is Leadership in motion
continuous improvement at the speed of
change. So who here has ever ridden a train?
Maybe Amtrak, your rail,
or, uh, maybe one of those quaint little
steam trains. Maybe you've ridden a train
before, but have you ridden a freight train?
That's me. Fresh out of college,
I went to work for the railroad.
I spent the entirety of my first summer
learning the rules and the processes and all
the systems that govern the rails.
That summer was a crash course in railroading
that was preparing me for an epic capstone
experience.
I was going to literally hop freight trains
from Kansas City to LA.
Now, when you've ridden a train,
your experience probably looked something
like this. But when I learned I was going to
hop freight trains, I envisioned something
that looks more like this.
But actually it looks like this.
And they let me ride inside the locomotive.
But I spent an entire week hopping freight
trains from Kansas City to LA.
And when I was dropped off in Kansas City,
I had nothing but a small duffel bag.
It was a bit intimidating,
but absolutely thrilling.
I thought that I was there to test the
process, to put my skills to an ultimate
test, to see how well I had really paid
attention that summer.
But I was actually going to learn something
really different and unexpected.
And I'll tell you a little bit later what I
actually learned. But of course,
I'm a continuous improvement expert.
So I want to know how do you feel about
continuous improvement and be really honest.
So think about on a scale of 1 to 5,
maybe one is I don't have a lot of experience
with continuous improvement.
Or maybe I had a bad experience with
continuous improvement all the way up to a
four or a five, where continuous improvement
is my superpower.
So for my my co-panelists,
where are you on a scale of 1 to 5?
Yeah. So so a little bit of a variety.
And if you're watching the LinkedIn live,
feel free to to add in the comments.
Where are you on a scale of 1 to 5?
And when I'm speaking in front of a room,
I typically see that full range of 1 to 5.
So my goal is if you're a one or a two is to
give you some new exposure into continuous
improvement and maybe get you to a two or a
three. And if you're a 4 or 5,
I just want to give you a fresh perspective
and new motivation to go out and continue
improving. Um, but me,
I am a solid five.
If you invite me to a potluck dinner,
be prepared because I am going to rearrange
the entire buffet to optimize that plate
loading performance.
That's me. So it's really no surprise that I
earned a degree in industrial engineering.
I went on to earn an MBA and was ultimately
senior vice president of Continuous
improvement at a trucking company,
and along the way I was crowned Miss
Oklahoma. And to be honest,
I was probably always a five.
I was probably a five since high school.
In high school, I was involved in everything.
I was performing in local community theater.
I was in competitive speech and debate.
I was hostessing at a burger joint,
and I was picking up babysitting jobs
whenever I had a free moment,
which wasn't very often because I was
carrying a very heavy course load even in
high school. And I was starting to believe
something really dangerous,
that the more I achieved,
the greater my self-worth.
And I thought I could continuous improvement
my way through Anything,
but the reality is that I really wasn't doing
well. I was stressed.
I was overwhelmed, and I was anxious.
And I remember this distinct moment in high
school when my dad sat me down at the kitchen
table and gave me a blank sheet of paper,
said, Allison, you're going to do a time
study. I want you to write down all of your
activities, and I want you to write down how
much time you're spending in each one,
and then how much time you should be spending
in each activity.
And then my dad came back and he said
something unexpected.
Allison. What are you going to stop doing?
Stop doing.
Wow. My dad didn't try to help me manage my
calendar. He didn't try to help me optimize
my time. He was teaching me a critical
leadership skill.
And those were the leadership skills that I
think I underappreciated then.
But now I'm really starting to see the value.
One of the big challenges with leadership
today is that we were trained as leaders to
operate in a system that's very consistent,
that has a lot of clarity.
And that's not the world that we work in
today. And it actually makes me think of
Stranger Things and the Upside Down where we
are trained in this world.
That is clear.
We have great decision making.
We have time to make that decision.
But the reality is we're operating in
something that looks more like the scary
underbelly, upside down environment with all
these scary monsters.
And I think the scary monsters in our world
are things like artificial intelligence and
big data, and markets that are changing
faster than the wind in Oklahoma.
And meanwhile, we were trained to gather all
the data, analyze all the risks,
and wait for this perfect moment to be able
to make our decisions.
And meanwhile, while we're gathering all this
data, our train has actually already left the
station. So when I was working on the
railroad, I learned something incredibly
valuable. And it's continuous Improvement.
It's not about perfecting the system.
It's about leading inside motion.
So when I was writing the freight trains from
Kansas City to LA that summer,
this is what I learned.
It wasn't a test of the processes.
It was about leadership.
And that's where I learned that we need to
flip the script on continuous improvement and
leadership. It's about leadership and not
management.
Management is managing the day to day and
sustaining the status quo.
But leadership is about clearing a path for
your teams to be successful.
Just like my dad did in my time studying.
It's about action over analysis.
It's about taking steps that we can do to
make changes today, instead of waiting for
perfection and waiting for the perfect data
to be available.
And it's about people,
those railroad processes.
It's not really about the process.
It's about how the people experience the
process. And it's about how I,
as a leader, make decisions that impact the
people and how my decisions can either make
their life really difficult or my decisions
could actually improve their lives.
So this is what I learned.
It's really about leadership and motion.
And you can think of this in terms of taking
laps. Our world is always moving,
and I feel like we're constantly running laps
and the laps are leadership,
action and people.
So these are the lessons that I learned
working for the railroad.
So I asked you next time you hear the whistle
of a freight train.
No, please don't hop on the freight train
because you probably will be arrested.
But instead, think about how there might be a
young new employee writing that train who is
learning lessons in leadership and learning
how to lead in motion.
Thank you.
Diane Diaz: Well, Allison.
Fantastic job.
What what did that feel like for you
delivering that.
Allison Greco: Oh, it's it's it's almost cathartic.
Diane Diaz: Oh, nice.
Allison Greco: To be able to share experiences in,
in a different way than I have before.
A lot of my speaking in the past has been
about safety in trucking or specific
expertise in continuous improvement,
and this is the first time that I've shared a
lot of my personal stories with a much
greater audience.
Diane Diaz: I love that.
Good. I'm so glad.
Now, one other thing.
I know that in the Thought Leader Academy.
So for everybody watching in the Thought
Leader Academy graduation call yesterday,
Allison's graduation speech involved props.
So tell us a little bit about why you chose
to use props. And what did it feel like to do
that? Because I know a lot of people, you
know, understandably are nervous about doing
something like that. How did that feel for
you?
Allison Greco: Yeah. Oh, using props was so much fun.
It brings me back to my theater days,
when we were given a prompt for our
graduation speech to talk about graduation, I
immediately thought about a hat.
And to. To be able to play dress up and tell
a story with with hats was really fun and I
would love to do it again.
And I would love to be on stage and and bring
out a table full of, of hats.
And we can all play dress up together.
Diane Diaz: Oh yes, please.
And everyone.
One of her hats was actually a tiara,
which I am here for.
I'm okay with that.
Allison Greco: Aren't we all?
Diane Diaz: Yes, totally. We all should be.
Right. Well, thank you so much,
Allison. So we'll we'll come back to you
during the round table discussion.
Now we're going to hear from Brittany
Sadlouskos.
So, Brittany, take it away.
I will bring your slides up and the stage is
yours.
Brittany Sadlouskos: Awesome. Thanks, Diane.
Hi everyone. I'm Brittany Sadlouskos.
I am an operations leader,
currently working as a chief operating
officer at an advertising agency.
Before we get going today,
I want to start with a question.
Who here would consider themselves an
overachiever? Definitely.
What about a perfectionist?
Anybody have trouble saying no?
Yeah, I see you.
Me too. Hi, I'm Brittany.
I'm an overachieving perfectionist who would
rather work herself into misery than say no
or feel like I've let somebody down.
But I'm in recovery.
And what I have learned is this.
This room of people is not full of people who
cannot handle leadership.
It's full of people the system has learned it
can lean on. I didn't wake up burned out one
day. I trained for it my entire life.
Perfectionism was my superpower,
and if something didn't work,
I couldn't let it go.
I fixated on it.
I took responsibility for it even when it
wasn't mine to take.
And that pattern followed me straight from
childhood into my career.
If something was broken,
I fixed it. If someone dropped a ball,
I picked it up. If a decision needed to be
made, guess who made it?
And that's a really, really good way to get
yourself promoted.
But it's also a really great way to get
yourself burnt out.
So like many of you, the year 2020 hit me
really hard. I was pregnant and in the middle
of a pandemic.
This is me at my drive by baby shower.
If you guys remember these,
these were real things.
Um, I had essential clients on my client
roster who had essential businesses at
hospitals. Um, and I had an exploding
workload, and I came back from maternity
leave after three months,
and I had a three month old baby.
I had terrible postpartum depression.
I was working on no sleep.
Because who gets sleep with a three month
old? And I had a job that just wouldn't quit.
And I started to ask myself,
why can't the team survive without me?
Why does everything feel so broken?
And I thought that I was failing as a leader.
But eventually, this is what I realized.
I was not failing, but I was leading inside a
system that was not designed to scale in my
perfectionism had been hiding that truth from
me. I'm going to zoom out for a minute.
Why is it that the most capable people in
organizations are also the most exhausted?
Not the least confident people?
Definitely not the least competent people.
The most capable people.
Maybe your experience doesn't look exactly
like mine, and many of you have probably not
been pregnant in a pandemic,
or experienced having to lead a company while
battling postpartum depression.
But if you have ever considered walking away
from a job that you once really loved,
not because you stopped caring,
but because you couldn't carry it anymore,
I want you to hear this.
You are not failing.
You are out trying to out care a broken
system. Has anybody seen the show severance?
It's a great show. It's on Apple.
The idea is very simple in the show,
but it's the premise that you surgically
separate your work self from your real self.
Your innie only knows work and your outie
never has to think about it.
Sounds pretty great, right?
No emotional carryover,
no stress bleeding into home.
But here's the thing. We don't get severed.
We get to bring our whole selves to work.
And that means our leadership systems have to
work for humans, not against them.
And when I realized that,
that's when I stopped trying to fix myself,
and I started to redesign how I was showing
up to lead. And I call this the true
framework. I won't go too deep into it today.
That's the full keynote.
But here's the high level tea.
I'm having formatting issues.
But please excuse those,
uh, teas. Tell the truth.
One of my first managers was incredibly nice.
No coaching, no real feedback.
I was working constantly,
asking to be better, but I never actually
knew what was expected of me.
What to change, what to stop,
what to improve.
I just wanted her to say the thing.
And over time, that relationship stopped
feeling safe. It became really transactional,
unclear. And I just stopped trusting her to
tell me the truth. And now what I know now,
looking back on that, is that she wasn't
trying to hurt me. She was just
uncomfortable. She had no idea how to be able
to give feedback. I think she wanted to be
kind or be to be nice.
Many leaders are taught tools like the
compliment sandwich, as if that's kindness.
But when you sandwich the truth,
the truth gets lost in unclear.
Expectations are not kind.
Telling the truth isn't harsh.
Avoiding the truth is.
Clarity creates safety and ambiguity creates
anxiety. So when I say say the thing,
I don't mean be brutal.
I mean be clear name.
What's working name, what's not name.
What needs to change because you cannot fix
what you refuse to name.
Ah, I want you to ruthlessly prioritize.
Not everything you do deserves your
excellence. There is a season of my life
where I had two kids under two.
Postpartum anxiety, a VP job in a very
chaotic career.
And I drew a very dangerous conclusion.
I decided that the problem was definitely me.
Not strong enough, not organized enough,
not cut out for this season of life.
It's impossible to do both.
And I convinced myself the only answer was to
leave my job. And one night at my breaking
point, my husband said,
what are your glass balls?
And he explained this concept to me that some
things, when you drop them,
they shatter and others are rubber and they
bounce. And I realized that I had been
treating everything like glass,
and that was the shift.
Motherhood in my career were breaking me.
My lack of boundaries was.
And when I started to ruthlessly prioritize
the few true glass balls and let the rest be
rubber, I stopped trying to touch everything
and I finally created space to breathe.
You upgrade your systems.
My team gave me a nickname.
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
My name is Brittany. Remember,
it sounds like a compliment.
Wow, she's so smart.
She knows everything.
Guys, this was not a compliment.
And what this really meant was that
everything about how we operated lived in my
head. Decisions.
Context. Processes.
History. If something broke,
I was the source to fix it.
If a decision needed to be made,
I was the one found to make the decision.
And I wasn't a great leader.
I became a single point of failure.
I was the linchpin.
And then we scaled really fast.
Company grew over 300%,
went from ten people to 35 people.
And suddenly the cracks turned into chasms.
Processes lived in slack knowledge with just
a few people, and everyone was just trying to
keep up. You cannot scale chaos,
and you cannot risk your high performers to
hold everything together.
Organizations love to reward the hero,
the person who knows everything and saves the
day. But superheroes don't scale.
Only systems do.
Leadership isn't about what you personally
do. It's about how the work gets done without
you. Lastly, empower with empathy.
This is the last part of the framework, and I
think it's the hardest because it asks us to
hold two things at once high standards and
deep humanity.
Somewhere along the way,
empathy started to sound like lowering the
bar. But the best leaders I know hold the bar
high because they've been clear about
expectations, and they truly care about the
people who are doing the work. I recently had
a high performing team member who had a
really hard season in their personal life,
and it was beginning to affect how they
showed up and the easy moves were to lower
expectations. Hope it got better,
push harder, or say, oh,
this is the role, figure it out.
But instead we told the truth.
We named the thing, we said it out loud,
and we honored what was happening in their
life and were clear about the role and what
the team needed.
And together, we decided to temporarily
downshift that role without shame.
That conversation wasn't easy,
but it was kind.
It protected their dignity.
It protected the team.
It protected the work,
and it protected the trust of our
relationship. Empathy doesn't mean avoiding
accountability. Empathy without standards
creates chaos.
Standards without empathy creates fear.
Empathy with standards creates trust.
Leadership requires both.
And sometimes empowering someone means giving
them permission to step sideways without
losing their sense of self-worth.
So let's bring it all the way back to the
beginning. I'm looking at all of you
perfectionists overachievers.
If you are exhausted, it's not because you're
weak. It might just be because you're capable
and the system has learned it can lean on
you. Here's your one question to sit with.
Where are you holding something that should
be redesigned instead?
Leadership isn't about being the glue.
It's about building something that does not
require you to sacrifice yourself to keep it
running. So if this resonates the truth,
the true framework goes much deeper.
But for now, stop trying to be the superhero
and build something that doesn't need one.
Thank you.
Diane Diaz: Well done. Great job Brittany.
Let's see. Let me remove your slides.
Well, how do you feel like that went?
I think it went great.
Brittany Sadlouskos: That was great. I love being able to
storytell and how all life's experiences,
personal life, work life,
you know, my knee and my Audi experience has
kind of contributed to kind of how I show up
today as a leader. And it's been really great
to be able to put that to words.
Something funky happened with my slide
formatting there, but we'll work on that.
Diane Diaz: Don't even worry about it,
because we were listening to you and you did
a great job. So speaking of of your message
during the graduation call yesterday and the
Thought Leader Academy, you had talked a
little bit about going from questioning that
everything you wanted to say had already been
said. And so why would someone listen to you?
And so but you've made a shift to you.
You, Brittany, are the messenger that your
audience needs to hear from. So can you just
talk a little bit about that shift that you
made?
Brittany Sadlouskos: Yeah, it was a massive mindset shift for me
when I first came into TLA.
Um, I feel like I am just a constant,
like sponge of information.
I love reading, I love self-help,
I love leadership books,
business books, like so I'm constantly
reading. So I have a lot of these leadership
principles that live in my head,
or business principles that live in my head.
And I kept thinking like,
how can I come up with something unique and
how do I reinvent?
I feel like I'm just saying the same thing as
everyone. And Diane and Carol really worked
with me to show me that,
yeah, you will, but it's you and it's my
stories, and it's my personal experience that
will make me the messenger and hopefully be
able to resonate with somebody because they
can see themselves in me and my experiences.
And so that just gave me such a big mindset
shift and really kind of helped quash some of
that imposter syndrome that I think a lot of
us get.
Diane Diaz: Yay! I'm so happy to hear that.
I'm so happy to hear that, because I think
that's probably one one thing that is a kind
of a common thread among women is thinking
like, well, what do I have to say here?
Everybody's already saying it. And then we
keep ourselves. We sort of self-limit, right?
So I love hearing that you had that mindset
shift, and now you realize, like, your
audience needs to hear from you and not just
your stories, but your unique speaking style,
too, because that's that's something
important as well. And people resonate with
that. So well done.
All right, all right.
Well sit tight. And so last but not least,
we are going to bring to the stage doctor Cam
Dunson. Cam, take it away.
Cam Dunson: My name is Cam Dunson.
I completed my PhD back in May on belonging.
And when I realized how important belonging
is to not only human outcomes,
not only team outcomes,
but organizational outcomes and the bottom
line profit outcomes.
I decided that I really needed to take this
message to the world.
So if I can figure out how to advance the
slides. Aha!
Have you ever walked into a room and just
felt like off?
Like somehow everyone else got a memo and you
missed it? Maybe you were at a new school,
a new team, a new company.
How many of you have felt that way?
Well, I have spent a lot of my life with
that. Missed a memo feeling.
You see, I was an awkward kid.
In fact, I was so awkward as a child that my
teacher sent me to camp for awkward kids for
four weeks every single summer.
Now, when people look at me now,
they see a wife, a Mom,
a consultant, a researcher,
a kayaking enthusiast.
And they don't see that awkward kid.
But I know what it's like to still be that
awkward kid inside.
I know what it's like to play dumb,
to kiss up, to not feel safe.
To try to hide and be invisible.
Now make some big promises.
When people book my keynote,
I promise to deliver insights that impact
engagement, productivity,
innovation, job performance,
team performances.
And then I start talking about belonging. And
I can tell some people are thinking,
yeah. Belonging is nice,
but I've got deadlines,
I've got quarterly targets,
I've got a boss asking questions.
I'm just trying to get the capable adults in
these jobs to take ownership and execute
without so much follow up,
without so much handholding,
and try to tamp down all this drama.
And yeah, those problems are tough.
Now, as a consultant, I do a lot of employee
listening studies.
Sometimes their exit interviews,
so frequently the person I'm talking to has
already left their place of work there.
I'm there talking to a third party.
I'm not their boss.
I'm not the HR department of their company.
They don't have any reason to fear me.
And I've talked to a lot of people across
many industries, incomes and education
levels. I've talked to C-suite execs,
I've talked to vice presidents,
I've talked to senior accountants,
I've talked to factory line workers,
appliance repair people.
And for the first time,
they're talking to someone who feels safe.
They're not worried about retaliation.
They're not worried about.
A performance rating or their manager.
They're telling the truth.
And usually we uncover the normal drivers of
turnover, you know, workload recognition,
supervisor, manager, salary,
stuff like that. But we also uncover supply
chain breakdowns that cost money.
We uncover CRM systems that are slowing down
sales. We we uncover operational
inefficiencies hiding in plain sight.
The people didn't feel safe,
didn't feel like they fit in enough to speak
up. And the organization pays for it.
And my slide is not advancing.
Are you may be surprised when I say belonging
is a performance driver,
profit maker indicator.
Well, I don't say these things because I'm
the belonging lady registered trademark.
I say I'm the belonging lady registered
trademark because these things are true.
These discoveries are how I became the
belonging lady. High levels of belonging are
linked to a 56% increase in job performance,
a 50% drop in turnover risk,
a 75% reduction in sick leave,
and in a 10,000 person company.
This amounts to an estimated $52 million.
So this data is clear.
When people feel belonging,
when they feel known, safe and valued.
Profit follows.
And when they don't, losses follow.
So let's dig into how to optimize your
corporate culture to meet these deadlines,
deliver these quarterly targets,
and have your boss ask for your questions.
Now, I have five components of belonging in
my keynote.
Or actually I have five components of
belonging in my work.
I stress these three in my keynote,
but there's one that I'm going to talk about
today. And that's the the one foundation of
all the others, the the most important for
changing the trajectory if you only have to
do one. We're going to talk about
psychological safety.
A lady named Amy Edmondson was doing her work
in the 90s, her research,
and she was looking at hospitals and patient
outcomes, a hospital teams.
And what she found surprised her.
The teams with the most mistakes had the best
patient outcomes, and the teams with the
least mistakes had the worst patient
outcomes. Well, what was happening there?
What was happening was that teams that felt
safe to report mistakes,
learn from their mistakes,
and had better patient outcomes.
Now, when you hear the term psychological
safety is kind of a buzzword right now,
but a lot of people misunderstand what it
means. So I want to make sure that we're
really clear on what psychological safety is.
It's a term of art in my field of
organizational psychology,
and it is having no fear of consequences for
being candid, for asking for help,
for admitting mistakes,
questioning the status quo,
or proposing new ideas.
So you're in a space that is safe to take
risks. A space where if you need to blow the
whistle about something,
if you need to raise a concern,
even if it stops the factory line and costs
thousands or maybe tens of thousands of
dollars in lost labor and lost production,
you can address that mistake.
We'll get to that in a minute.
Psychological safety is not low performance
standards. It is not a guarantee of never
being offended by someone.
In fact, when you have a candid team,
sometimes you have more discussion.
And it is not a guarantee of every idea being
accepted. Google took this work a little bit
further and found in their project Aristotle,
they were trying to find all the makers of
the optimal team, and what they discovered
was that the number one predictor of a high
performing team was psychological safety.
Now I fly a lot on airplanes.
I have rituals when I fly.
I never listen to the safety briefing because
I've already memorized it.
But I do. I get on a plane,
I check for the nearest exit.
I'm keeping in mind it may be behind me.
And what I used to do.
My next ritual was I used to check under the
seat and make sure that that life jacket was
really there. Well, I don't do that anymore
because I'm busy looking at the safety card
and I notice who manufactured the aircraft.
How many of you get on a plane now?
And think about, I wonder who manufactured
this aircraft? Well, I have been thinking a
lot about that when as I get on a plane every
time since 2024.
And that's because of Boeing.
I'm relieved when I don't see Boeing on the
manufacture card. In 2020,
in excuse me, in 2018 and 19,
Boeing had two crashes which led to a global
grounding. And you can see that at the first
little box. This graph is a graph of Boeing
market share, market cap cost,
and not their market share.
Excuse me, their stock price in comparison to
the S&P 500 index.
So the pink is Boeing's values and the S&P
500, which you would think naturally that
Boeing would follow.
And it does for the first part of the graph.
But what happened was they had a crash which
led to a grounding, a good long grounding.
The world thought that they had gotten their
act together. And in January of 2024,
they had a door plug blowout.
No lives lost. Not really a crash,
but an incident. Federal investigations both
times did not did not deliver.
You will not see the word psychological
safety in those reports.
But what you will hear are things like.
It was not considered okay to raise problems
on the factory floor.
You will hear that they were under tremendous
pressure to deliver a certain number of
aircraft in a certain amount of time.
In fact, a Boeing engineer,
Sam Saliba, said, I've raised these issues
over three years.
I was ignored. I was told not to create
delays. I was told frankly to shut up.
I was silenced, I was told to shut up.
I received physical threats.
And then in December 2024,
they had another crash.
So let's look at what those groundings did to
Boeing's stock. The line coming down is the
Covid 19 pandemic.
So everything went down then.
But Boeing did not have the public's trust to
recover from it.
And they're still struggling. Now what that
tells me is they were told To get their act
together and make us make a system for
reporting alerts and and raising concerns.
And they didn't. They continued on business
as usual after the first grounding came off.
Since then, apparently they've seen a lot of
traffic in their reporting system,
but we'll see over time.
It's hard to increase psychological safety.
It's hard to overwrite a company culture that
has gone for years, and it's hard even to
bring psychological safety to a team member.
You know, when you have a team member,
you want to get the most out of that person.
You want them free to speak up in meetings.
You want to them to share their expertise.
You want them to alert you and not just wait
for the exit interviewer to come in,
but you're having to overcome all the bad
bosses in their past, all the abusive
managers. And so you have to really be
proactive to model psychological safety,
to model candor.
And to be bring.
It's more than just being a nice guy.
You have to bring and overcome whatever
they're bringing in the door that you're not
even aware of. Now, safety and trust is just
one of the five components of my belonging
framework. To hear more.
Let's connect. Um, we can have a keynote
overview. We can have an in-depth workshop
for a few hours, or we can really dig deep
into a full organizational,
diagnostic and employee listening story.
Now remember that missed a memo feeling that
we all remembered at the beginning when I
talked about my life.
Let's make sure that no one experiences that
on your watch. Thank you.
Diane Diaz: Oh great job.
What a great closing I love that.
Well done cam.
Let's see. Let me, um,
take your slides off of the stage.
There we go. And how did that feel for you to
deliver that?
Cam Dunson: Thinking through and crafting.
It was was fun.
Yeah. Good.
I really enjoyed it.
Diane Diaz: Good. Well. Well done.
Well done to all of you.
So now we want to take some time and just do
a short little round table discussion.
So I kind of want to get your insight from
each of you on some specific questions.
Um, I think I want to start with what it was
like to work in your VIP day.
So maybe let's start with you,
Allison, I know Alison,
you worked with Carol in your VIP day,
so maybe if you can share,
like what were your expectations going into
that? How did it actually go compared to your
expectations and what did it feel like,
like to get that talk done?
Allison Greco: Uh, honestly, VIP day,
I was very skeptical that in half of a day,
Carol was going to interview me and then
craft this magical keynote speech.
I was quite delighted when she brought out
this board with all these sticky notes.
I mean, I dream in sticky notes.
So when she brings out sticky notes,
I'm like, well, my people.
But she was able to ask me the right
questions, to pull the right stories,
the right perspectives.
And I was. I surprised pleasantly when at the
end it came together into this really
beautiful speech with,
with great content and,
and really thoughtful,
uh, ideas that I think she made my it's like
she can take my scrambled egg brain and,
and helped me get it into a really nice,
cohesive message.
Diane Diaz: Yes. You know, the comment of I'm glad that's
that's how you felt the outcome was because
the comment of I was skeptical is not
uncommon because, you know,
it is only a a 3 hour session.
And so it's like, well,
how is that going to work?
Like how how are you going to take all of
these ideas up here and turn it into a talk
in three hours? And I often tell my clients
at the beginning of the session,
don't worry, it's going to seem like a mess
in the middle. That's normal.
It's exactly how it's supposed to feel,
but it will come together.
It always does so.
I'm glad that you had that experience. And so
maybe along those same lines,
Brittany, let me ask you,
because we talked a little bit about this
idea that you are the messenger,
right? You have a message to share and you
are the messenger for that, for your
audience. But what was the moment either in
creating your talk in the VIP day or in your
time in the Thought Leader Academy? What was
the moment where you realized, like, this is
the story that unlocks this message,
or this is the story that I have to tell?
Brittany Sadlouskos: I think, I think it was when you asked me
basically, like, tell me about your life,
tell me your stories. And and my response
was, where do you want me to start?
And she's like, wherever you want to start.
And I like went back and I'm like,
okay. So like, let me start with my it felt
like the this therapeutic session for me.
And then as I'm talking and really like kind
of verbally storytelling my life to Diane,
I'm like, oh my God, this is it.
Like, I've always had this,
like, very high performer,
perfectionist brain.
And it's created so much success in my life,
honestly, which I'm very proud of.
But it's like there's a,
there's a, there's a dark side to that.
The shadow self of all of that.
And I feel like that was the moment when I
realized, like, I have a lot to be proud of
and I've accomplished a lot.
And I think on paper there are a lot of
people who are like me who everyone's like,
wow, they may have it all together.
They've done all these things.
They're young, they're in leadership
positions, they're doing great.
But then, like on the underside of it,
it's like you don't know their struggle. And
I think for me, like that was a moment for me
to be like, I know there are so many more
people in women specifically as well who,
who, who deal with this and it's not talked
about enough. And even if it is talked about,
I don't think that we give people a playbook
that says, like, you got to start somewhere.
And for me, it was, here are four things that
I've begun practicing that maybe helped 75%.
They're right. Like, do we still have those
days that are horrible?
Absolutely. Um, but it's like the principles
and getting buy in on like on the,
on that true framework for me,
um, it was like, I feel like it's something I
can't not share now that I've identified it,
but, um, but it was it was a fun journey to
get there. Um, I loved the sticky notes as
well, Alison. I was like,
oh, write that down. Write this down.
I say this thing sometimes,
Diane, I don't know where it's going to fit
in, but just just write it down.
Diane Diaz: That's the great thing about the sticky notes
is that we're, you know,
just for anybody watching this,
if you have not experienced a VIP day with
us, please do. But we have all these sticky
notes, and sometimes I have a pile of sticky
notes on my desk that aren't even on the
board yet. It's just things that Brittany,
for example, had said,
look, I got to capture that. I got to capture
that. I got to capture that, right. And so
I'm writing these things down and they might
find their way in, or they might go into a
different talk later. But we do capture them.
But then it's the arranging of them in a way
that lets you be the messenger,
right? Uses your unique style,
your specific story that is specific to you,
but universal to the audience.
Because like you said,
many, many women in particular have struggled
with this. And it's you're going to be
sharing that message with them. And then,
yeah, you found this, this method,
the true framework. You found this, that
helps. And then you delivering that is going
to inspire someone else to look at this
differently and hopefully get some relief
from what they might be struggling with.
So yeah. Yeah.
So, um, cam, let me ask you,
so in your time in the Thought Leader
Academy, of course, we cam and I worked for
everybody watching. Cam and I worked together
on her talk. And also cam attended our in
person workshop recently,
so sort of like a dual experience here.
But cam, for you, what was your biggest
mindset shift about speaking or thought
leadership during your time in TLA?
Cam Dunson: Well, I had already sort of begun to make the
shift of, you know, you're when you're
reporting research in an academic setting,
which is what I had been doing.
Not only are you really boring about it,
but you're taking yourself totally out of it.
But everyone, at least in my field,
everyone that's doing research is trying to
figure out why their life went the way it
did. And so there's always me search in
there. But talking about it in connection
with the findings was really powerful.
Now, I had kind of begun to make that shift
when I was preparing for my Ted talk,
and I had battled that out a lot.
And so Carol and Diane did not have the hard
work that that poor coach had.
But, um, it was it has been beneficial.
And it sure does make it a lot more fun to
deliver a talk.
Yeah. Well, and I think you did a really good
job incorporating personal stories,
even if they weren't about you personally,
but stories that you had sort of collected
right, in your personal work.
So it doesn't necessarily have to be a story
about you, although you did share at the
beginning how awkward you were, right. And
that humanized your message.
But then the stories that you collected in
your research or in your work that relate to
your topic, and then they those stories bring
that idea to life. So it it bridges,
as we talked about in the beginning, it
bridges the gap between the expertise and
your message that stories like the little
connector that helps the audience.
It helps the message stick and helps the
audience see like, oh, I get why this matters
because it matters to human people.
Right. Right.
And in the full, there's a lot more
vulnerability.
So much so that I really thought I was going
to have to, like, lie down and cry for a
while. But that passes quickly,
and any embarrassment passes quickly because
it means so much to people.
Yes, that's what people remember.
Diane Diaz: Yes, that's such a great point.
So for everyone watching,
keep that in mind, because I think that might
be one that might be one of the biggest,
um, resistance points when people,
women in particular, but anybody going on a
speaking journey or trying to use their voice
in some way is the vulnerability.
And it can be it can be scary.
But as cam said, it does.
That feeling does pass.
And then you start to realize how important
your message is and what it means to the
audience and what it can change in them.
And that's true for each of our speakers here
today. Yeah.
Okay, so now I want to know what is next for
each of you. So I'll start with you,
Brittany. What's next for you?
Brittany Sadlouskos: Hopefully. Vacation.
Um, I do not have any immediate next steps
from a speaking engagement perspective, but
actively searching.
Um, I had a recent podcast that was a blast,
so hoping to find a find an opportunity there
sometime soon.
Diane Diaz: So fantastic.
Brittany Sadlouskos: Send anything my way if you hear this.
Diane Diaz: Yes. Great.
Okay. And, Allison, what about you? What's
next?
Allison Greco: I have a lot coming up now.
And it was made me think about my my favorite
quote since I'm a continuous improver,
Jess Sims is my favorite peloton instructor,
and she loves to say that you are a work in
progress and a masterpiece at the same time.
So I'm going to continue to work on telling
my stories not just in the keynote setting,
but in daily settings too.
I think there's a lot of skills that I
learned that can apply to my daily
interactions. So I'm working on continuing to
help businesses transform,
but then also booking keynotes on larger
stages so I can share my message with even
more people.
Diane Diaz: Fantastic. Thank you Allison.
Well, I'm sure you're going to knock your
socks off in all of your talk,
so I can't wait to see where you take your
your talk that you worked on.
And cam, what is next for you?
Cam Dunson: Well, what's next for me is I,
I did the thought leader Academy to develop
future keynote. And now that I have it,
um, I need to take it on the road.
Some practice it some see what lands.
Well, see what doesn't. And then,
um, I also need to get my act together in
terms of having a A website and having a
speaker sheet and getting a speaker reel
together and that kind of thing.
So it's marketing bits.
Yes, yes.
Diane Diaz: Yeah, yeah. And those are things that I'm
glad you mentioned that, because that's
probably another thing that people worry
about is like, oh, I don't have all these
things. But that as cam is showing everyone
you can still be speaking as you're working
on those things, you don't have to have
everything perfect before you can go do the
thing. So that's what I kind of mentioned at
the beginning is like, we we wait,
we think I have to have this, I have to have
that credential and I have to know this, and
I have to get that piece of equipment. You
don't you can just start speaking and you can
be working on those things as you go. So just
keep working on them and they will come
together in time.
So all right everyone.
Well thank you so much to our speakers.
Thank you, cam, Brittany and Allison for
sharing your talks with everyone today.
To everyone listening,
be sure to connect with our speakers,
Allison, Brittany, and Cam on LinkedIn.
We will share all of those links in the show
notes. So if you're listening to this on the
podcast, you can check out the show notes
there for all the contact information and
links, so you can make sure to check in on
these speakers, see what they're up to, and
and connect with them in any way that makes
sense. And if you want to work on combining
your expertise with stories so that you can
build deeper connections with your audiences,
move them to action.
Join us in the Thought Leader Academy.
You can develop your thought leadership
message, work on your signature talk.
Build expertise.
Also, build confidence and learn the business
of speaking. To get more information,
you can visit speaking Brand.com.
Again that is speaking your brand.
Until next time, thanks for listening.