Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

• What’s the Point? Why Your Leadership Needs Purpose with Ryan Gottfredson
• Reinvent, Collaborate, Succeed: A CEO’s Winning Leadership Formula with Susan Howe
• How Great Leaders Are Made: Insights from The Economist’s “Boss Class” with Andrew Palmer

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Tonjia Coverdale, PhD, is a three-time CXO and seasoned technology executive with 28 years of experience leading enterprise data strategy, architecture, and AI-driven transformation across Fortune 100 financial services, higher education, government, and consulting. As Principal & CEO of Lambiante, she helps organizations harness technology — with architecture, data, and AI at the core — to align business, people, and purpose for transformational outcomes. A 500-hour certified yoga teacher, Tonjia brings a wellness-informed approach to leadership, known for her high energy, bold presence, and visionary leadership.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Welcome to Innovating Leadership Co-Creating our Future where Leadership meets Innovation. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf, CEO, and founder of the Innovative Leadership Institute. Today we are diving into a powerful conversation about. Fearless leadership. Our guest, Dr. Tanja Coverdale, brings a unique and deeply personal perspective on what it means to lead with courage, clarity, and purpose.

She walks us through a conceptual framework that aligns personal growth with leadership effectiveness, drawing from rich traditions in a fresh and practical way. If you’re ready to explore how inner alignment can fuel outer impact, this episode is for you. So Tanja, welcome to the show. I’m thrilled that you’re here to talk about fearless leadership, a topic that is [00:01:00] especially timely and practical.

Tonjia: Maureen, thank you so much for having me. I am so

Maureen: I.

Tonjia: to be here and just loving seeing how leadership is evolving to even allow for a space where we can have this conversation. So thank you.

Maureen: So let’s jump in. You’ve developed a conceptual framework that helps leaders become more fearless and effective, and it’s rooted in personal alignment and energy. Can you walk us through the essence of this framework?

Tonjia: Yes. Firstly, I wanna reemphasize the meaning of the word fearless. I think a lot of times people get confused with fearless meaning. No fear. And those are two totally different concepts. So when we’re saying to be fearless, we’re not saying you’re never going to have fear because [00:02:00]that’s unrealistic. If you don’t have fear, then you’re not alive and you don’t care. But what we’re saying is to fear less. So fearless is to fear less, and so what I’m going to share really helps leaders in their moments of fear we know that they’re going to encounter fear. But the goal is to take that fear and fear it less in the moment. So I really just wanted to, to calibrate on that. Also, just adding a little bit to sort of the origin of, of where I came up with this. I am, am a practicing, uh, yogi, so I’ve been practicing yoga for over 20 years, probably closer to 25. And an avid student of all things wellness. So you wanna bring in nature, Ayurveda, just everything. And in my own leadership, before I came up with this as a construct too, that I [00:03:00] codified, I used some of of these sort of modalities in my own leadership I developed my leadership style.

And it’s twofold. Right. How do you embed and be a wellness informed leader so that it impacts your own performance? And subsequently, how do you embed wellness informed leadership modalities to elevate the performance of your team? it’s bidirectional in that it’s not just making me more productive, it’s actually elevating everyone around me.

And so this team, this wheat is collective that we have elevates higher because we’re focusing on who we are. So I’ll pause there to see if you have any, any questions because I’m ready to jump into the framework, but I said a lot.

Maureen: So I love that it is based in wellness. I said in the intro, it’s really [00:04:00] timely. We are facing such significant issues with workplace wellness, whether it’s lack of civility or anxiety or. Uh, feeling unsupported in any number of ways, and so helping leaders one, have less fear themselves because I think all of us have a higher level of anxiety.

I, uh, was talking to someone the other day who said that average CEO term, see level term, is approximately three years, give or take. The job search time is 12 to 18 months, so you’re gonna have a job and then half of the time you spent in that job, you’re gonna spend finding your next job. And so how can we possibly expect our senior execs to not have some anxiety about will this action that I take be the one that gets me exited

Tonjia: Mm-hmm.

Maureen: that fear can permeate an [00:05:00] organization and, and so helping us.

Be more grounded, more healthy as we are making these business shaping decisions and impacting ourselves, our lives, and the lives of all of the people who are counting on us. Whether that’s stockholders or employee stakeholders, vendor stakeholders. The, the range of people impacted by us is significant, so.

Leveraging. And, and bringing together wellness ideas with leadership ideas. I is something I’ve also been passionate about as not have, having studied yoga as long as you have, but just passing my thousandth yoga session at my local studio. So it is absolutely something [00:06:00] that I require to stay. Balanced and centered as not everyone would think I’m balanced and centered, but in my definition of balanced and centered,

Tonjia: Absolutely. And then you brought up a really good point that I wanna layer on, and then we’ll go into the framework

Maureen: I.

Tonjia: we had the first dimension, which was the wellness or informed leadership that impacts your own performance and then the wellness informed leadership that impacts your team’s performance. But when you aggregate those two performances, that is actually impacting. Your company’s performance. So this is not all fluffy clouds and fufu. It’s really another leadership modality that can lead to bottom line impact through and fusing wellness in the people behind the tasks [00:07:00] that lead to the bottom line impact. So I, I, again, this is how I wanna frame it for leaders. This isn’t a feel good moment. It’s right. Yeah, sure. But that’s not really the relevance of the wellness informed leadership. It is a way to impact the performance of your institution, your firm, your company, the bottom line. So thanks for bringing that in.

Okay. So how do, how do we get into, into the, the framework? So there’s seven levels to the framework. And they all build on each other, right? So you can’t skip to the fifth level without doing the work from the first through fourth levels. They’re, they’re, they’re, they’re cumulative as well as their iterative meaning you can go back to a level to continue to work on an fortify, but you can’t go forward until you master your previous level, if that makes sense. And so the first one is, I think it’s the hardest one. And you’re like, oh my [00:08:00] gosh, Tanja, what do you mean? The first one’s supposed to be the easiest one, but I think the first one is the hardest one because it’s rooted in one simple question, who are you? Who are you? And that question isn’t as easy as you think.

Because if I, I want everybody who’s listening to this to ask people around them, it’s just a simple question, who are you? And this is what you’re going to get. Something like. Well, I’m a CIO at X company, I’m such and such mom or dad, have a, a married to, you know, whoever. But what that’s saying is if none of that existed, you wouldn’t exist.

So that’s not who you are. That is not who you are. That is what you do. That is who you’re affiliated with. But who are you? And I’m challenging everyone to define themselves in their own terms and who they want to be and who they are is, is, is [00:09:00] not something that changes in the moment. So it takes a lot of thought. There are few ways you can go about this. I’ve coached some people to go through this in terms of adjective. I am luminous. I am energetic. I am driven. I am focused. I, because it doesn’t matter where I am and who I’m with. That is, that’s me, right? So you can step one, maybe use a list of adjectives that you want to define yourself and go from there.

Maureen: When we do it with our clients, we often look at values as one of the

Tonjia: That was.

Maureen: avenues to define who you are.

Tonjia: Yes. That was my next one. I love that. We’re, we’re mind readers. Now, Maureen.

Maureen: Hmm.

Tonjia: The next one is that to come up, uh, with your own personal mission, vision, and core values, just like a company would, that generally doesn’t change. It takes a lot for a company to say, we’re gonna change our mission, we’re gonna change our vision, we’re gonna change our core values. So that might look [00:10:00] like, and, and I’m using me as an example. My core values are integrity, empathy, positivity, authenticity, so on and so forth. This is who I am all the time. When you can sit down and ground yourself in the youness that you are, that takes away or at least minimizes some of the fear because of a lot of the fear that we have in ourselves as leaders is that fear of being accepted. the fear that we’ll never live up to what whoever wants us to be. This definition that keeps shifting because depending on who we’re talking to, we’re trying to be that person because we haven’t defined an anchor in who we are. When you do that and you’re unwavering, there’s less fear. ’cause this is me.

This is how I’m showing up in every meeting. This is how I’m showing up in, in every client instruction. This is how I’m showing up in my one-on-ones because I decided this is how I’m going to show up. And I’m not [00:11:00] afraid of how I’m gonna show up. ’cause I love the way I’m showing up. ’cause I define it. So that’s step number one. Who are you? I am be the who you are that you are. And so now you’re you and you’re, you’re rooted in. This is me. I’m proud. There’s a pride that comes with that self de definition right now. You’re gonna go to my feelings, because I know who I am. How do I feel my feelings are valid? How I view a situation, how I communicate in a, in a meeting, in a situation that is rooted in who you are, but also now you have given validity to your thoughts and your feelings. A lot of times we have fear because we are afraid of what people might think about how we feel. But now I’ve got this anchor and I’m no longer afraid of. [00:12:00] Creating whatever I’m creating, bringing something forth because I know I’m bringing it forth with integrity, empathy, authenticity, whatever I said my core values are, or whoever I am, luminous, energetic, everything I bring forth as an idea is going to be a direct reflection of the who that I am. And so I’m not gonna be afraid because I’m proud of that. So C, you have to do the work first and find who you are before you can bring forth that. How do you feel and that creativity in the moment?

Maureen: So Tanja, this is a tough process for

Tonjia: Oh

Maureen: everyone.

Tonjia: Oh

Maureen: Can you share a little bit about what you went through to define your own mission, vision, values, and the iterativeness? I’m guessing you didn’t pop into your head in the shower one day.

Tonjia: No, and I, I anchor back to the framework anytime. I feel a little bit of fear as well, [00:13:00]so it’s something you could keep going to. You know, Maureen, I’ve been very fortunate to have a career that spanned of different places, different industries, lots of different levels, and so I’m often faced with shifts and changes and. At one point earlier in my career, just like a lot of early career people, I’m trying to be what my leader wants me to be or be, who my manager wants to be or be who I think I should be because my friend is this way or whatever. And what I found was clearly, I was just not happy with that because there was a workman, there was a home me, and I don’t wanna have to sit and reconcile who I’m gonna be today.

That takes too much time, too much energy. And I just really was like, you know what? I am going to decide today that this is the Tanja that I’m going to be in any situation. And here’s the [00:14:00]fearlessness part of it, Maureen. And if this doesn’t work for the situation that I’m in, I am confident enough in myself and my abilities that I’m with walking away find the context that supports me.

Maureen: Well, and my.

Tonjia: the hard part.

Maureen: My assumption is also as you’re getting hired into a role, they know who you are. So it’s, as you talk about the give and take between you and the organization, both your, the people hiring you and also peers and colleagues through a rigorous interview process, you, there’s not a surprise.

Tonjia: And it’s very clear, and I, here’s the thing. I want you to hire me as I am because I don’t wanna get into the context because I’ve pretended to be whoever I was pretending to be throughout this interview process. And I get [00:15:00] there and I’m unsuccessful because I’m not who you expected me to. And so when you’re thinking about leadership as well, another sort of to put it on is, I think it, it amplifies your success because you already are going in with a clear expectation of who you are, what you bring forth, and you’re, you’re confident in that, which is sort of the third one.

The, the third level to it all is have defined yourself. You’re creating and you’re bringing forth your work based on who you are, how you’re feeling about who you are, and now you have this confidence level, this is your third dimension. You know that you can do anything, fear less. It’s going down, down, down, down, down. Because. You are doing what you were made and built to do and that feels comfortable or resonates with the who you are. So your confidence level grows. A lot of [00:16:00]times people see me and they’re saying, you are one of the most confident people I know. I’ve been told that I walk into a room and everybody automatically knows that I’m there and and who I am. it’s just because that light that I have in me, I’m allowing it to shine. Because I’m confident. I’m not dimming it. I’m not afraid of what people think about me. I’m amplifying, I’m turning it up because I, I, I love the me that I am. This is your fourth, next level, right? I love the me that I am, I’m amplifying this light and, and turning it up so that everyone can, can experience the me that I am and what that does, Maureen. This is where you start unlocking others. It gives other people permission be who they are because you’re celebrating. You’re welcoming it. No [00:17:00] more they pretending. So you’re starting to see the light illuminates spaces that were previously dark. I like to use this analogy all the time. Oh, go ahead.

Maureen: Uh, so can you give an example of it? It seems like such a wonderful idea to love who I am, and yet many of us really struggle with, I’ve got good days and bad days, and boy, on the bad days I struggle to love. Much. Right? I’m, I’m running through the day. I’m exhausted. Um, something’s gone wrong. How do you stay grounded in I love who I am.

Tonjia: You go back to number one, who are you? So this is where the process is iterative because I think when we get to the part we don’t really love or like who we are, it’s because we forget [00:18:00]how amazing we are. We’re looking at that moment

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: on that one moment of deficiency, not remembering that who we are are luminous, energetic, authentic, whatever.

And then you go back to that definition of yourself and you’re like, you know what? This really isn’t me today. I’m just having a bad day. Who I really am is who I’ve defined myself to be. That’s how you get out of it.

Maureen: So, so let me put a real life spin on this. Then I am having to terminate an employee who I really cared about. So in this moment, it’s hard to feel good about. Myself, um, even if it’s the right decision, it supports the company’s success and it may move the employee to someplace that they are better aligned.

So I may think about what I [00:19:00] did to mentor them, what I’m going to do to help them find their new role. So more arc of time rather than moment in time

Tonjia: Absolutely.

Maureen: and still taking.

Tonjia: work through it.

Maureen: Okay. And still taking accountability for it feels really challenging in this moment, and part of being whole is owning the sadness or the anger, or whatever feelings associated with life is hard today.

Tonjia: Life is hard today, but you know who you are and the person that you defined yourself, although this is the moment you’ve handled it with grace. Empathy, whatever your core values were. If you are operating as yourself every single day, in every single moment, you know that you have operated in your best light. [00:20:00] So you have no regrets. have regrets. Now, let me flip that to a person who’s not defined themself, Maureen, because this is what it looks like. a person who says, we say, who are you? I’m a CXO at X company. That’s my whole identity. And you and I know that there are people that, that’s literally their whole identity. That’s the whole, okay. That’s my whole identity in this, in this hypothetical situation. So I have to terminate an employee. I’m taking on the psyche of the collective leaders that I’ve seen in this place that may be toxic, may be not empathic, that may be demeaning that, and this is how I’m gonna deliver the message because. I took on the collective personas of everybody else. Now, I’ve hurt

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: If I am, I have defined myself as I am a luminous, energetic being who seeks to elevate everyone around me. That’s who [00:21:00] I am. I don’t care who happens to be a CXO at X company. It’s what I do.

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: I am. When I’m forced with this conversation, I’m gonna sit my person down and I’m going to pour love and light into them ’cause that’s who I am.

And it doesn’t matter what room we’re in. So this is why it’s important for leaders to come up with who they are, because when you’re faced with negative challenges, you are pulling on you not you’re making up collective psyches based on your observations in the moment. So

Maureen: And,

Tonjia: through the love part?

Maureen: and so that also means I have the inner strength on a bad day. So I’ve back to the wellness and I’ve built a life that supports me drawing from my inner resources and most days. I show up somewhat rested, somewhat nourished. I mean better if [00:22:00] I’m well rested and well-nourished and all that stuff, but our reality is often somewhat there.

Tonjia: and it’s moment by moment and understanding that, remember the who that you are does not change moment by moment. That’s who you are. That is, that is permanent you until you decide. Now you can decide you wanna be somebody else, but until you decide, I am no longer luminous, energetic, and empathic, that’s just who you are, regardless of what’s happening to you. Now you can be less energetic. Less luminous, less empathic, whatever you define yourself as, but it doesn’t mean you’re a totally different person. So really that core that, that’s why I said the, in the beginning, the number one step is the hardest step because that’s your anchor. You’re gonna keep coming back to that.

Everything else, it’s like, um, like Jenga, any game, right? It, you can build on it, but if that foundation isn’t strong, it’s gonna fall down. But you’re still gonna start with that square one, that block one, and build again. So [00:23:00] you’ve gotta really spend a lot of time on who I am. So we worked our way up from who I am, this is who I am, so therefore, this is what I bring forth to the world.

This is how I create, this is how I show up. This is how I feel. Since that’s aligned with who I am, I feel powerful. You can’t tell me anything. I’m confident when I walk in a room, I’m shining and all of that. I am loving myself even more ’cause I’m proud of what I’m doing. And the impact of that is everybody else starts to sort of feel like, Hey, we wanna feel this confidence next. When you get to the point where you’re, you’re, you’re loving yourself and others around you start to speak. You start to speak with clarity. I find that this is a challenge in many leaders is speaking with clarity. of times, here’s what happens. We’re repeating what someone else said or repeating it in a way how they may [00:24:00] say it and not how we may say it in our own voice.

We tend to take the voice or persona of other people who we de to be more successful than us because we didn’t do the downstream work. We don’t love ourselves. We’re not confident. We don’t believe that what we’re creating is valuable and we don’t know who we are, so you can’t speak. With clarity and your authoritative leadership, authentic voice until you do the work.

Because until then you are taking on the persona of others and you don’t have it. You have no identity, nothing. And so the speaking with clarity, ever meet a leader. who fascinate me are not necessarily leaders who are verbose and just speak, just to be speaking. You ever met a leader that says like. Maybe very few things, but you’re captivated. You are like leaning in, like please say more. That’s a leader who has done the work to understand this is who I am. They show up [00:25:00] this presence and you are just like, that’s what we want as leaders and it’s not because we’re spending time putting people down and yelling at people.

That is not way to use your voice. That is. That’s actually a very. Inauthentic negative way to use your voice, and that’s not gonna inspire or empower anybody. But when you can use your voice succinctly, specifically your voice, because you know who you are and you know you know who you are, you know what you bring, you’re confident in what you bring, you love yourself and others now you find, only then do you find your leadership voice. I know you got something to say about that, Marie.

Maureen: Well, the thing that’s really striking me, and it’s, it’s in part a reflection of what I’ve been watching recently, is organizations that have a culture [00:26:00] of. Care for one another, uh, positive, optimistic, A a. And that’s not discounting things go wrong. We, you know, all the things that happen, but that we find a path to support one another, work our way through the challenges.

A and we do it with kind of the growth mindset and, uh, an attitude of abundance. And by that I mean. That we trust, we will be able to work through the issues. And then when I give voice to things, it can be an a, a constructive, uplifting, supportive voice. And again, I’m not saying I’m gonna be unicorns and fairy dust all day ’cause I am not.

Tonjia: Right.

Maureen: But we create the environment where people feel supported to work through whatever comes up. And [00:27:00] like they are a valued member of the team. A and for me, that sense of positive culture, uh. Because we’re seeing organizations really move toward incivility in some cases. It’s such a stark difference between the performance of the human beings who show up every day to do a good job versus the performance of people who show up to an environment that’s absolutely depleting.

Tonjia: And so let’s take it back to the premise of this topic, which was fearless leadership. I talked about fearless being not the absence of fear, but fearing less. Who do you think will fear less and be more

Maureen: Yeah.

Tonjia: in these two environments that you just described? Your toxic environment or your open environment? Obviously we all know the answer is the The fearless [00:28:00] people. Fearless people will be in the environment where their wellness is protected and celebrated. That fearlessness leads to more innovation because now their voices are being heard, and you might not have the right answer. We might not like your idea, but

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: celebrate the fact that you had an idea and we’re gonna take the best part of your idea and add it to the best part of Maureen’s idea and the best part of everybody’s idea, we’re gonna co-create this new reality. Versus on the other hand, and, and this, this shutdown, you know, shut down. We don’t, we don’t speak our authentic voice place. We’re just doing,

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: forward. We’re not, we’re afraid, afraid, fear. We are afraid to do anything but just they tell me to do, which is converse to who I am. I don’t even know who I am.

I’m just a cog in these people’s wheel because I’m afraid. I’m gonna lose something. And that’s a [00:29:00] fearful, fearless versus fearful. So really sort of reframing fearless leadership is not only somebody who’s doing the work that’s like, yes, we’re gonna move forward with but it’s also someone who provides of fearlessness for their teams and their culture.

Maureen: So as you’re speaking, I’m thinking of another framework that we use often that looks at three levels. It’s more of an organizational framework where the center is, I do what I’m told. I don’t share ideas, show up and do. Exactly as required. The next level as I’m continually developing and growing, and the third level is I live into my biggest potential and, and where you’re talking is I can only do that in an environment that is supportive on every level.

I know who I am. [00:30:00] I act with courage. I act with care. I speak with optimism and empathy as as a complete package.

Tonjia: That’s correct. That is your sort of influence

Maureen: I.

Tonjia: this environment. I mean, it’s a great theoretical to say these are the three levels, but how do you get there? For the environments that are saying we are operating in this core, we want to emerge on this outer shell. How this is, this sort of wellness informed leadership model is helping leaders know how to get there, what are the steps that they need to take to get to and transform their environments. So it’s, it’s work that you have to do firstly as your leader, but eventually as you see, it’ll free others to do the same work, but even just by residual, they will get the benefits. Even if nobody else does the work with you

Maureen: Hmm.

Tonjia: like the leader’s responsibility to do that because now [00:31:00] I’m a leader who maybe came from a different environment and had a different paradigm. I, because it’s never too late. I’m not saying you have to be born in your first leadership role. You need to do this. Maybe you’re a leader for 20 years. go to another context that that allows you. Or you saying I’m creating a context. I I’m not subscribing. We can unsubscribe at any time. I’m not subscribing to a former paradigm.

I wanna do the work. Your team will see the difference. Your team will notice the difference. They will start to what’s going on with her. Oh wow, this is great. And it changes. So even if, even if one person does it. It changed the environment. But imagine if this is the culture of all leaders from top down.

Imagine that environment and it would be, I work at my greatest potential. So that’s how you get there. So we did five. There are two more levels. So now we, we found our own leadership voice, [00:32:00]which I know a lot of people struggle with, especially I found in my work, especially women struggle with finding their own leadership voice.

So here’s a, a, a sort of a subset of people that can really lean into this. So now you’re speaking with, with clarity and with authority. And authority isn’t. Down. Putting authority means this is definitive, this is what we’re doing. ’cause you’re confident in who you are. Now you know what happens as a leader. You then reach the optimal clarity. now sort of, you’re almost done with the work because now you’ve done your inner work now it’s like the light being that the headlight turns on and you can see external. So you’ve gotta start internally. Then once you get to the point where you’re clear about where we’re going, you can speak it so the team can follow.

It’s like the headlight comes on and now you’re the guide. guiding everyone. You’re a true leader. People are following you now because you are illuminating the space that [00:33:00] we haven’t gotten to yet. You have the headlight, you have the, in the intuitiveness, you have the insight. You have the clarity of mind where now you can make good decisions. Not only on behalf of yourself, but for your team and then for the business. And so you start to see your followership grow. People trust you point. They see, they’ve seen you who you are in every space. You’re not. Flip-flopping in meetings. They’ve seen you be confident, they’ve seen you love yourself and love each other.

They see you speak with authority, kindness, and empathy, and now they’re ready to follow. This is where your team starts to become optimized. When you have that, I think of like a coal miner, like the light is like right here on their hat and they’re kind of walk because you are walking with your team, but they’re behind you, but you’re illuminating this dark space of whatever challenge that you have in front of you, and they wanna follow. Not, I guess we have to go do this. They’re [00:34:00] excited because they’ve, they’ve seen this transformation in you and in themselves, and they wanna go where you said, clearly we’re going here. This is with the path, and let me guide you. So I

Maureen: So, uh, no, I’m just, can you restate then. What the sixth one is. I keep touching my head because you’ve given the minor’s hat,

Tonjia: yes, yes, yes, yes. The sixth one is when you have the clarity of mind as a leader, and that intuition and that intuitiveness, you know where we’re going now

Maureen: so.

Tonjia: want to follow you.

Maureen: So as we think about one of the biggest roles leaders have is making decisions. So I set the vision and then I make the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual decisions that allow us to meet that strategy and vision. [00:35:00] Uh, and so clarity of thinking for me is an absolute must. If I’m working with someone who is a poor thinker, they’re not gonna be a good leader.

It

Tonjia: Exactly,

Maureen: what.

Tonjia: of times the poor, the poor thinking comes from a lot of the inner turmoil that’s happening.

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: I don’t know who I am. I’m shifting depending on what leader or what meeting I’m in. So you have no anchor, you have no grounding, you have no confidence. You’re speaking. Out of three sides of your, your mouth because you,

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: direction, right?

You didn’t do all the other work. But as you’re building on and you get to the point where you’re now, I’m focused, I’m

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: I know where we’re going. And because your followers, your team members, your teammates have been watching you in this transformation, they’re like, we wanna go too. We, because we, we love this direction [00:36:00] we’re going in,

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Tonjia: are we going, leader. But you have to have that clarity to be able to make definitive decisions that people trust. Plenty of people can make definitive decisions so people don’t trust them, and that’s

Maureen: What’s,

Tonjia: fails.

Maureen: so we talk about 360 degree thinking where I’m thinking. Short term, medium, long term, all at the same time, and first order, second order, third order impacts and it, and I think this is where your framework is so valuable. We’ve all worked with people who are good systems thinkers, but they haven’t built the other pieces.

So they may not communicate with clarity. They may be. Unkind and arrogant and demeaning. So, so the building, this of starting from the inside out, now I’m making decisions and I’m speaking them. And [00:37:00] because of who I am, people will follow me. Now I’ve gotta actually be a good thinker so that they should follow me.

Tonjia: You got it. That’s, that’s exactly what it is because again, this is a cu both a cumulative and an iterative model. You can’t be a great leader in this framework if you’re, if you’re skipping steps, maybe you’re able to make decisions, but you’re not a great communicator. Maybe you’re a great communicator or you, you are a prolific communicator, but what you’re communicating is not heart centered. It’s, it’s toxic, it’s, it’s very damaging. Or maybe you have confidence in yourself, but only because you are anchoring to a leader. I’m such and such as protege. I’m on such and such as team I’m, that’s not you. And so now you’re gonna try to follow and do what that person does and not do what you do, which may not resonate with [00:38:00] Yes, you’ve got it. So, just for the, the, the listeners here, I wanna make sure everybody are, you know, going up the, the cumulative work with us first. Most importantly, who are you? Once you define that, that sort of leads to everything else. Then once you define who you are, you’re more, you are more, um, sort of wrapped into what you’re bringing forth.

You’re more confident into what you’re bringing forth, what you’re creating, how you feel. You’re feelings are valid, so you’re not. Fearful, you’re fearless in that this is how I feel. That builds on more confidence because now you’re producing, you’re creating, you’re producing, you know you can do anything.

That’s that sort of that, that. do self-esteem builds your confidence. Now we’re moving on to you’re loving yourself because you’re, you’re producing, you are performing and people are starting to see this, this new glow that you have because you’re your being your best self and it permeates to [00:39:00] everybody else. you find your voice because you’re no longer afraid to speak your leadership voice, your authentic leadership voice. So you speak with clarity and confidence and care. And then we moved on up to now I have the clarity of mind. Because I’m, I’m, I’ve, I’m free from inner turmoil. Now I’m ready to be external.

Shine my light internal. Now I’m ready to shine my light external. You have that clarity of mind that’s moving not only you for, but your whole team, for and through the challenges. And then finally we get to that outer circle that you are talking about in terms of, I live my best potential. You are now your best leader. You are your optimized self. You are working not only in your potential, but in your purpose because you know who you are and you can now seek out roles and teams and organizations and peers and colleagues and friends that resonate with who you are and all the things that you wanna bring forth. [00:40:00] So it’s like everything starts to sort of converge on you because you are purposely being. What you’re optimized as being, this is your, like your optimized self. The whole goal. You can, anybody can lead. You know, if you have direct reports on Workday, you’re technically a leader, but this is your optimized leadership self. And, and, and after doing all the work, so, and at any point you feel like you’re not optimized, you just go back to a place that you’ve already worked on and you go from there.

So that’s how it works.

Maureen: So what I hear also on this seventh one is alignment with others. Alignment with the organization. This is where I’m able to bring. All of this forward, and you mentioned who’s on my team, that I start to select people of like mind and like orientation and we optimize. The organization selects.

Like-minded [00:41:00] people as business partners and colleagues as customers. There are customers who are better served by our approach and those who aren’t. So now we’ve really created a holistic system that’s optimized. And I realize not every leader is gonna change the whole company, especially if you’re in a company of a hundred thousand people.

But we can change our. Sphere.

Tonjia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so that goes back to an earlier comment that we talked about, which was the fearless leadership not only impacts you when you do the work, it also impacts. The people around you and the overall performance of the organization. It doesn’t have to be the global organization.

It could be your organization. However, you’re defining organization within your, within your realm of control and your sphere. But the organization is transformed performance [00:42:00] wise because you did the work.

Maureen: Beautiful. So

Tonjia: you.

Maureen: let’s go through, and I realize you’ve recapped several times. Let’s start with one. Know myself,

Tonjia: Yes. Yeah.

Maureen: two.

Tonjia: do it?

Maureen: Yes, it, it’s your framework. You’ll do it better than I do.

Tonjia: Okay. Yes. So number one, who am I? You’ve gotta know who you are, and that’s not tied to your current position. marital status, your family status, where you live, really dig deep and define who you are. That can be done through using adjectives, creating personal mission, personal vision, personal values, just like a company would do. Who are you first and most important. Number two, once you’ve defined that you’re more comfortable and confident in how you’re [00:43:00] feeling. You’re going to be more creative. You’re more confident in what you’re bringing forth because it’s anchored back to who you are. And so that is, is bringing that confidence in productivity. Number two is it helps your initial productivity, number three is your confidence. Now, since you’ve being, you’re, you’re producing, you’re being confident in. Knowing that you can do whatever you can do, like really anchoring into I am I said I am, this is what I do, and I am confident in what I bring to this world. Naturally. What happens after that? You start to feel a more affinity for yourself because you’re seeing output, you’re seeing performance. You are fearing less going back to fearlessness. You are fearless at this point. You’re fearless at number three. It just keeps optimizing. So you’re fearless at number [00:44:00] three, so you’re feeling less fearing less.

And so number four is you’re just showing lots of love to yourself and to others, and that’s even in the bad days. Understanding that every day is not going to be great and every moment is not going to be great. But that doesn’t change the who that you are ’cause you’ve already really defined yourself. Give yourself the grace to be less than optimal in the bad moments or the poorer moments because it doesn’t change who you are because you’ve always operated in that optimized state. This is just a moment. So that love is really love for yourself and grace in any space you can do that. Number five is now you’re fearless.

You’re not afraid to speak in your voice. You realize your, your words are valuable, your feelings are valuable, your thoughts are valuable. You find your authentic leadership voice, and people hear you, your mentor, not other leaders. They hear you, they hear you. So now they can see you. Number [00:45:00] six. They can see you as somebody who they wanna follow because you have clarity of mind, clarity, decision making.

You are definitive, you are actionable. And now the followership grows because now you’re being a sort of like, um, what’s the word? You’re, you’re being, um, not a mentor, but an aspirate. They aspire to be like you now because they’re seeing. This leader, leader’s so great. She, she just says what she’s going to do. We do it. She’s building us up. You know, it’s, it’s an environment that you’re creating. And then once you do all that, the final step is you’re aligned. You are aligned with the who that you are. You’re aligned with those that are around you. You are aligned with the organizational goals. You are aligned, but you’re aligned in a way that makes sense for you.

Maureen: [00:46:00] Beautiful Tanja, thank you so much. I, there there is so much more we could talk about, uh, in how do I build each one of these in more depth? It, so it feels like just we’ve gone to a tasting room and I’ve gotten to have fabulous wines and I. With chocolate, uh, but I want more, so I, I’m sure we will have additional conversations.

The framework is. Very helpful and insightful to bring together, you know, probably most of our listeners read the short blogs and articles regularly. Uh, and they, they are, it’s the one taste of one, one wine. It it, and so understanding how to curate. A self rather than [00:47:00] amplify parts at different points in time, to know how to bring it together and align it is crucial to being.

The kind of leader that we need right now. We call it future ready, but the leader who is able to navigate the level of complexity and stress that we’re, we are seeing every day or almost every day. Uh, and so I really appreciate you providing such a robust framework, and I know your work behind this helps leaders step into each of these.

Seven components. So where would listeners, uh, find you?

Tonjia: Yes, you can find me on LinkedIn, just Tanja coverdale or linkedin.com/in/tanja.

Maureen: I.

Tonjia: I am more than happy to, to walk through again, Maureen, if you [00:48:00] want to, um, through each one at some point, we can.

Maureen: Well, and we will take excerpts from what you’ve talked about and also release those as many YouTube videos so you will live on for a long time. This conversation.

Tonjia: Wow. Thank you so, so much. I am, I’m just so thankful to be able to, to bring this. Two leaders. Um, I’ve practiced it for many years and I’ve always had very high performing teams because I care for them, but more importantly, I care for myself, so thank you.

Maureen: Thank you.

Tonjia: you.

Maureen: And to our listeners, thank you for joining us on the Innovative Leadership Co-Creating Our Future podcast. If today’s conversation resonated with you, please share it with colleagues and leave us a review and follow us. Remember, fearless Leaders. Beep. Remember, [00:49:00] fearless leadership isn’t about being perfect or living without fear.

It is fearing less, aligning more, and living into our best, most authentic self. Thank you to each of you for what you contribute positively in our world today.

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