In this heart-centered episode, Deb Crowe, CEO of Davwill Consulting Inc., shares how she helps heart-centered leaders and their teams thrive and contribute their best.
You will discover:
– What the call to leadership is and how to embrace it.
– Why you shouldn’t use the words strength and weakness
– What Heart-Centered Leadership is and the one step you can take to get started
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach. That is the one the only Deb Crowe. Now Deb is an executive and business coach with over 30 years of global experience in top Fortune 500 companies spanning four continents. She has also been coaching C suite leaders, executive professionals, teams and businesses to success. Now Deborah has a heart centered entrepreneurial leadership approach and with a deep passion for making a positive impact, she has dedicated her career to creating ventures that prioritize people and the planet. She draws from a diverse background combining business acumen with a compassionate approach to create a harmonious balance between profitability and social responsibility. And I’m very excited that Deb has actually published her first solo book is called the heart centered leadership playbook. And we’ll dive into that here in just a moment. But before all that, first of all, I say welcome to the show. So excited to have you here. I’m wondering if we could just rewind a little bit and go to your time before you started coaching, what were you doing before coaching and why did you ultimately make the leap?
Deb Crowe
Yeah, Scott, thanks so much for having me on your podcast. So before coaching, I was in the medical rehabilitation world. And I was a neuro trauma case manager. So I would look after people who had serious injuries, whether that would be in the workplace, or an automobile accident, things like brain injury, spinal cord injury, catastrophic, orthopedic injury, and sometimes all three, and I would get them back to life or a little bit of autonomy. Sometimes I had the pleasure and privilege of returning them to work. But I would manage big, big teams with all the different modalities of therapy. And yeah, I did that for 23 years.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Wow. And so when did coaching become something that I’m sure you know, when you look at most coaches, they’ve been coaching all their career. But when was it hey, it’s wanting to make the leap, Do this, do this formally and really changes to your primary occupation.
Deb Crowe
It wasn’t my choice. I think it was that gentle tap that we get from the universe. Sometimes it says, hey, I want you over here. I had a phone call from an adjudicator from a disability insurance company. And she started the phone call like this. She said, Deb, I heard you’re really great at getting people back to work. And I was like, I am I enjoy that. She said, I have five executives on stress claims, and you take them on. And I was testifying in court to convince a jury that the patients that I had, were significantly catastrophically injured. And I remember coming home and saying to my husband, I hate this, I’m not enjoying this. It’s ridiculous that I have to go to bat for these people, when you can clearly see that they’re catastrophically injured, and then I get that phone call. So I said to her, I’ll take them on. And I’m thinking in my mind, here’s a reprieve from the hard work. Little did I know my life was going to take a wanting D in 10 months. So from the date of that phone call to 10 months later, I had three VPS, and two CEOs, they all went on long term disability, they all were diagnosed palliative, I lost them all to cancer, Scott. And then here’s the goose bumpy. They landed up in our local hospice where I was volunteering. And I just had this intersection of, you know, we talk about three degrees of separation, there wasn’t even half a degree. And so I talk about them every day, because I want to keep their legacy alive. But I held their hand at the end of life. And I heard her story. And I heard what they didn’t get to say. And I heard the regret. And I knew the story that they were dying with inside of them. And they opened my eyes that I had been coaching all along with these patients and their families and with lawyers and all the people. And I promised them I would do something about it. But I didn’t know in the moment what that was going to be. Because I needed to grieve these people. This was a trigger memory for me because I had lost so much of my family to cancer. Volunteering at hospice was part of my grief journey to heal because I was just a little further down the road in my grief journey than the families and people that I had the pleasure to sit with at the end of life. So I took about 18 months I looked at all the coaching programs decided what I was going to do who I want to just certify with all the all the extrinsic, logistical things. And then my coach had said to me, what are you going to do with this gift? And which I you know, in the moment thought What a ridiculous question because I wasn’t in that frame of mind. And then 18 months later, I I lost my medical practice helped all my staff find new jobs. Wow. And and I and I laterally moved into coaching and that was 15 years ago.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. So tell us a little bit Who do you tend to work with? Who’s a typical client that you work with? And what would you say is some of the most important work you do for them?
Deb Crowe
Though a typical client for me is, again, it comes back to those extrinsic labels that we have to use, because I’m, I’m global, and I’m in different sectors, I always say I’m in the people business, when people ask me what sector I work in, manage your level all the way up to C suite is my, my main executive, if you will, that I’ve worked with. And my favorite question that I get from them, when we start coaching is, Deb, can we do some life coaching too. And I always say, I’m going to coach the whole person. And I talked about this in my book, our life shows up in our work, and our work shows up in our life. So it’s very important that that sounding board part is there, not just for them as a leader, but also for their life, because people think people at high levels have it all. And they don’t realize how lonely they are, and how much responsibility is coming up and then nanoseconds all day long. So that’s primarily who I work with. But I also work with three large organizations, I do a lot of team coaching team facilitation. And since my books come out, we’ve used it as a tool to have informal fireside chat so we can get to some of the real meaty, scary topics that people don’t like talking about, especially introverts on a team or accidental leaders. And and the books just really opened up the bandwidth to have even more meaningful aligned conversations with heart centered leadership languaging.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so good. So the name if I’m correct, is The Heart Centered Leadership Playbook? Is that right? That’s correct. Excellent. So there’s a lot in just the title that I kind of want to unpack. But why did you write the book? What’s the big idea?
Deb Crowe
I wrote the book, because I wanted to write it for 30 years. And it was that COVID repetitive. What do I tell my people, visceral level of fear from all levels of leadership, and having them take, take take their stand and vulnerability, while being the leader? Executing humility, and letting them know that they don’t know what the next step is? Because none of us knew when we didn’t have a file folder to go to. So some of the strategies is languaging. I’m a big proponent of not using strength and weakness, I think both can carry heavy negative connotation. I like to talk about it from a behavioral perspective, because that’s my background in neuroscience I love you know, digging into deductive reasoning, why do we think like this? What is our habit of thinking? And when we can keep extrinsic values in the forefront of our thoughts? It becomes our default for leadership. And I do believe that we need to invert the fraction of profit over people and it needs to be people over profit, especially for what we’ve gone through as a global society in the last four years.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So some may hear that, especially even as you’re setting it up there, they may hear this idea of heart centered leadership and think it’s soft. But from the research that I did, there are components of it that we might connect to being soft. But there’s There’s nothing easy about this, right? There’s nothing soft and kind of woolly about this. So why is it that heart centered leadership in your opinion is so important to business and future business success?
Deb Crowe
Well, if you look at traditional business acumen, it’s made up of three components, knowledge, skills, and abilities. The last sentence of my introduction of my book says, You do not need initials after your name to be kind. To be kind, what do we need knowledge, skills and abilities. So I am not sure why this isn’t an elective in education, post secondary education, graduate work, etc. To me, I think heart centered leadership belongs in the middle of that business acumen Venn diagram, because if you don’t lead with heart, you’re not going to have your metrics because your people aren’t going to stay. And if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, our talent pool is getting smaller. And we have an ageism problem because the baby boomers and my generation of Gen X, we are now the dominant population globally. So we have all these different kind of extrinsic and systemic values and thoughts going on. And to me when elite leader is heart centered. And my definition is honoring your connection with people. If I’m your leader, Scott, I want to I want to inspire you to be a better leader, is that going to come with some projects and tasks and an extrinsic and systemic things? Absolutely. But our conversations will be meaningful aligned, and always in the forefront of, of intrinsic value.
Scott Ritzheimer
One of the things that you’ve talked about a couple times through the conversation so far is this idea of kind of your accidental step into coaching. You know, sometimes the the accidental leader, right, someone who does a great job finds himself in a leader position is like, is going on, like, Oh, why am I here? So. And then in your book, he talks about this idea of embracing the call to leadership, what is the cause of leadership, and how do we embrace it.
Deb Crowe
The call to leadership is acknowledging your own level of self awareness, and not being afraid to say the wrong things fail forward, be able to become a master of the art of heart and life and leadership, which is failing forward and being able to convert all those failures into learning opportunities, and sharing those within your leadership. So people can see you as real and vulnerable. And that fosters trust and rapport. And those are the two main fundamental values of any culture of any leader to, you know, lead an organization that is healthy and vital within their organizational culture. There’s so many things that fall off of that, but being an accidental leader are those people who show such greatness. And a lot of times, at least in my coaching practice, they’re introverts. And they have so much to give, and they’re innovative and progressive. And they may just not be that gregarious person on the team that wants to present their ideas in front of the whole team, they like that one on one. And a lot of times when I have their conversations with them, their creativity, and visionary leadership is so open and wide. It’s at the level of a CEO in terms of visionary leadership, but they’re just independent and creative. So when they get these promotions, they see it as a negative because they say things like, I don’t want to look after a team of people, I just want to go back to my lab, or I just want to go back to my data, or I just want to go back to my spreadsheet, like, why is this happening to me. And it’s all in the way you frame the conversation to say, you know, Scott saw something in you, and this is a great thing. And then they say, but I don’t know how to lead people. And then when you’re able to walk them through that they already are. And no one has mentored them before because they are an introvert. I see this happen on a weekly basis. And it’s just like, it’s to me, it’s like a fresh new garden when you’re seeing things starting to bloom. And then they realize that their self awareness has already been there, but someone’s tapping into helping them foster it and grow it, and that it does have a foundational place in their leadership. And it’s just beautiful to witness as a coach.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Wow. So what advice would you give to maybe an executive or a senior leader who, who’s listening to and say, I wonder if we’re taking care of our introverts and those that are coming out? What are some steps that they can take to really help their introverts to shine in their way?
Deb Crowe
You know, I think at some of my heart centered leadership qualities, it’s attentively listening. And it’s watching who used to speak in meetings, and isn’t speaking now, who hasn’t come up with an idea for a while. And it’s watching all of the nonverbal communication, because that’s 85%. And then having a conversation to say, Scott, I noticed you didn’t say anything in the meeting today and doing those check ins, you know, how are things going? Is your workload, okay? Do you need some support? Is there anything you want to bounce off of me? And kind of reverse asking those questions to get to the outcome that you want as the leader, but doing it in a soft, gentle way, so that they don’t think like they’re being reprimanded? Because, again, that’s an HR value that I also see in a lot of companies and leaders, they don’t want to say something derogatory or negative, because they don’t want it to show up in across exchange on their next performance review. We have to have that psychologically safe space to be able to have this conversation. Because when we do, Scott, the richness that comes out of it, you may be taking that C suite, or that executive leadership member down a whole other level of thinking that they hadn’t even thought of. And that’s the beauty of that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah, it’s so true. And as you’re saying that I’m thinking or even a step ahead of this is so many leaders and I see this even more since COVID. They they’re going into these meetings, trying to answer all the questions, right. I don’t have time so I’m going to have a meeting. I’m going to get everyone in a room. We’re going to answer all their questions and Get them out, how could you possibly have the time to even pay attention to what you just talked about in picking up those nuances in meetings? If you’re in the mode of I’ve got to make all the decisions, I’ve got to figure it all out. So how do folks start to make that, that turn to where they can even show up in meetings with a capacity to do that?
Deb Crowe
They have to quiet their mind. That’s the number one thing that I I work on with them. I’m also a yoga teacher. So I bring a lot of that philosophy into my coaching. And the case manager shows up. Every day, when I’m coaching, those transferable skills that we talked about, you know, at the beginning of the call, a quiet mind can observe to their best capacity possible. And they also have to set intention, there’s no point in having a meeting to add it to the meeting bloat that they already have, if there’s no intention for the outcome. And sometimes it’s that juggling of the priorities of the priorities of the priorities. And knowing that you need not out of obligation but out of self directed leadership, you need to come out of the meeting, knowing X or Y. Yeah, and like I said, when you when you engage in those conversations, the x and y can take a 180 degree turn, and that might bring you on a better path than you even anticipated.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Wow. So I’ve got a question for you. I like to ask all my guests, and it’s this what’s the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? Well, what’s that one thing that you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Deb Crowe
A secret in general or a secret about me?
Scott Ritzheimer
A secret about heart centered leadership?
Deb Crowe
Oh, that’s easy. If people could realize that they can have a conversation in a coffee shop with a friend or in some in someone that they’re related to in their house. You can be that person while you’re in a business meeting. And that’s how you master the art of heart and life and leadership. We don’t have to be two different people, because we switch from our personal life, to our profession, to our professional life. We are that same person, we have to learn how to be and allowed heart centeredness to be with us at all times, regardless of where we are who we’re speaking to, then that’s the secret I wish would not be in secret.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s great. That is so good. So good. So there’s folks listening to this and they’re just resonating with every word. There’s challenge in it and there’s hope in it. They want to know how they can find out more work. We get a copy of your book and where can folks find more out about you and the work that you do.
Deb Crowe
So everything is on my website debcrowe.com Crowe has an E. I am not related to Russell Crowe. I do get asked that a lot, though. Wish I was. My book is available on all of the online bookstores. The biggest place people are getting it is on Amazon. And if you’re an e book person or a paperback person or an audiobook, I just finished my audio book last week. So everything everything’s there in the modality whether you like to read or listen. And yep, all my socials are there.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. So head on out if you’re listening to this, and anything that Deb has said as you go get a copy of her book, heart, The Heart Centered Leader Playbook. Got that right. It’s fantastic. Had a chance to look at it briefly here at leading up to this conversation. And I know I want to dig in more myself. So David, thanks so much for being here. What an honor and privilege to have you on the show so excited to have been able to have this conversation and for those of you watching and listening you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Deb Crowe
Deborah is an executive and business coach with 30+ years of global experience in top Fortune 500 companies spanning four continents. She has been coaching C-suite leaders, executive professionals, teams, and businesses to success. Deborah Crowe is a heart-centered entrepreneurial leader. With a deep passion for making a positive impact, she has dedicated her career to creating ventures that prioritize people and the planet. She draws from a diverse background, combining business acumen with a compassionate approach to create a harmonious balance between profitability and social responsibility.
Want to learn more about Deb Crowe’s work at Davwill Consulting Inc.? Check out her website at https://debcrowe.com or get a copy of her book on Amazon or wherever you get your favorite books.
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