Being a Human Leader, Being Your Authentic Self

Yasi: Welcome to Fast Track podcast. Alexis so honored to have you here. 

Alexis Zahner: Yeah, I’m really excited to be catching out with you. It’s a delight. Thank you. 

Yasi: All the way from Australia and now hear me, Switzerland is really like a super long distance between us, but thanks to technology. Now we can have this opportunity to have this great conversation about human leadership, which is your area of expertise.

So let’s start with the first question for our audience. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, why you’re interested in this domain? 

Alexis Zahner: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I guess to understand why I’m interested in human leadership is to probably understand a little bit more of my career history.

Um, I actually started by studying a bachelor of business back when I was, I guess, 17 years old. I started university, um, and, um, I studied management and marketing within that. So my first real graduate jobs in the first, probably five or six years of my career. Spend in the corporate marketing industry.

Um, and to be honest, I really felt like. This industry in a lot of ways, commoditizes people, um, not to demonize all companies in this space, but it was all about billable hours and your ability to generate revenue, et cetera. Um, it was really, really exhausting. Um, and I found that some of the companies I would working for would offer.

Sort of we’ll pay lip service rather to wellbeing initiatives, like offering gym memberships and these sorts of things, and ultimately through a number of different, um, experiences in my career, really young working in, again, corporate marketing for different companies working for one of Australia’s leading, uh, news and advertising companies.

By the time I was 25, I actually significant, uh, suffered from a pretty significant burnout sort of episode. Um, And I guess it led me to more of like an existential questioning of like, why am I doing what I’m doing? If I’m so unhappy and everything is just around a paycheck and the companies I’m working for really have no interest in my wellbeing or even in my.

As a human. So I took some time out and traveled for a few years. Um, found myself in Europe, in Asia, um, and then ended up in Canada, which I was extremely fortunate to land and manage the job for the company. Patagonia and Patagonia is one of, I guess, the world’s leading. Uh, sustainably producing government brands.

Um, and it was the first time in my career that I’d ever felt like I was working for a company that truly walks the walk when it came to the east burst and truly understood the importance of prioritizing human beings and the environment in the triple bottom line, not just profit. Um, and it was also my first time managing a team of about 26.

So, I guess this culmination was realizing how difficult it was to lead people, truly lead human beings. Um, and identifying that I needed to really work on myself to be a better leader, to be capable of doing that. But then also feeling held and supported by a company that really did value me and journey.

I was. As a leader. So that was kind of my first experience in being led differently and really feeling like we could do business differently. And it led me down a path of studying mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, and then later on my masters in organizational psychology. And so for the past few years now, I’ve been using that experience in those skills.

To consult with businesses and also run micro-learning courses for other leaders around the world. So that’s, what’s really brought me to here to human leaders and I’d say it’s really a culmination of my personal experience, both the good, the bad, and the really ugly of leadership and seeing that we can lead differently.

That has. Really set the wheels in motion for me and wanting to do something bigger and mobilize more latest to stop prioritizing humans first. 

Yasi: Well, I like this story a lot because only when you start to experience something yourself, and then you find out what you truly believe in. So now you are doing something that actually you are truly passionate about and you experienced personally and you want to help the others. I want to start with a sensitive question about human leadership.

You talk about, you went through the good, the bad, the ugly, what are some of the bad examples of leadership? 

Alexis Zahner: Yeah. You know, I guess to not highlight any one human being, a lot of the things that I find typically. Um, for employees, um, in their experience with leaders, uh, leaders that have low self-awareness and low IQ for me, there are two critical things.

When we are to lead others, we must first become really aware of ourselves and ourselves in many avenues, aware of our values, where of our personal vision, aware of our behavior patterns, how they affect how we lead and affect those around us. You know, aware of our communication skills, aware again, of EEQ how our emotions affect our ability to lead and our ability to manage, particularly in distress, et cetera, and how all of these things play an impact in the cohesion that we can drive as a leader, or that we can completely destroy.

If we allow poor behavior, um, to kind of run rampant in ourselves and in our organizations. I mean, take those examples of leaders where they, for instance, might say things with absolutely. No. Um, you know, prior thinking around how that might affect another person, there’s none of that, like perceptual awareness, empathy, um, and perhaps being really results, orientated.

So not viewing the whole human being for me is something that we know that. Is a massive area where leaders fall down is not providing recognition and acknowledgement to staff. Um, so I’ve worked for leaders as well as part of a team that loves to take the credit for the achievement of the team and those sorts of things.

So I think again, to not highlight anyone individual as being, you know, the archetype of a poor leader, but leaders who lack self-awareness lack. I’m emotional intelligence tend to be those who show up in ways that are self-validating egotistical and quite often really destroy the relationships and the trust that they have with their teams.

So if you’re being led by a leader like that, there’s a really good chance that they haven’t done that work on themselves to really understand themselves first so that they can then understand their shortcomings and their strengths of the leader and how they need to be showing up to get the best from the people around them.

Yasi: Right. So what you meant is that the leader is not just the, someone in the position in a management position, but also need to show that they care about their team members, uh, care about the team members feeling cared about the team members, achievement, and also they themselves are aware of how their own behaviors can impact on their team members positively on activity.

Alexis Zahner: Yeah, that is absolutely spot on. Leadership has nothing to do with a title and everything to do with the behaviors that we choose to exhibit in that role and how we choose to show up. And as you said, it’s really about caring for the whole human that’s. What human leadership is about. It’s about acknowledging that first we have human second real leaders and prioritizing that in how we conduct ourselves in business.

For sure. 

Yasi: Um, now you mentioned about like first humans, second, leaders. Can you explain to us what exactly is human leadership? How is it different from. I said the leadership, what we usually understand as it is, you know, w what is leadership?

I think when I was in corporate leadership is your ability to influence people. They want to follow you willingly. Um, but now it’s like a human leadership. I think it’s something that. 

Alexis Zahner: Absolutely. And I guess the latest iteration of leadership that many people prescribe to is transactional leadership.

And that is really this idea of fostering people to be the best versions of themselves. So they can be future leaders as well. But human leadership is really. Leading us out authentic selves. So it’s, again, this first piece of understanding ourselves. We must have the vulnerability to understand ourselves the good, the bad, and the areas for work.

Human leadership is also having the empathy to understand. And the courage to take radical responsibility for how we show up both in life and leadership. And I think that’s something really critical that I’d like to bring through. When we talk about human leadership is it’s not just about what we do in the office or what we do at work.

Uh, life and our work, uh, inextricably linked, and we really need to, as human leaders start understanding how the two interact and affect one another. And so I think this is a really critical component to understand as a human leader and take radical responsibility for how we spend our lives is how we will show up at work, um, et cetera.

So for me, that’s how we define human leadership at Schuman latest. And that’s really. The leadership style that we’re trying to cultivate.

Yasi: I really like the first point where you mentioned about first being authentic self. I oftentimes talk to some friends or some even other people who, um, experienced burnout is that at workplace they can not be who they are because they try to fit in there’s a corporate culture or there’s a, um, onset.

Like code of conduct that they have to behave accordingly, but they cannot be themselves. So every single day they have to put on a mask, go to the office and over long run, it’s kind of depressing. It’s like, it’s like a battle inside who you are versus who you need to be during the day. Uh, and then, because that’s why people cannot be authentic self.

If you’re authentic. Being you who you are. And even at workplace, it’s just feels so natural, right? You don’t need to make expert extra efforts or putting extra energy, try to behave differently. So I really like the point number one, where you’re talking about. 

Alexis Zahner: Yeah, you’re so right. And imagine if we were able to divert that energy and that anxiety that people suffer from having to put on a charade to go to work every day and would channel that through, into how they work.

And imagine if people were allowed to just show up as their authentic selves, how much more productive, how much more enjoyable, how much more creative would people be if that energy that is being wasted? Is managing themselves at work to meet an expectation was saved somewhere else. And I think it’s this concept of integration, right?

And human beings need to feel integrated. We don’t want to feel like we have to leave parts of ourselves at home at work. And for me, as you mentioned, your friends suffering burnout. Exactly my experience in that corporate environment, I felt like when I walked into the office, there was a standard of myself that needed to show up.

And that meant hiding and shaming, almost parts of myself because they weren’t appropriate for the office or they weren’t worthy of being at the office or, um, ha. They wouldn’t be palatable for my colleagues and full my, um, manages. So, I mean, it’s, it’s like, we’re just basic format. It’s quite an awful feeling.

And it’s my hope that people don’t feel this way at work. Um, quite simply. So I think this ability to, to recognize the human being in ourselves as li. And cultivate that authenticity through self compassion towards ourselves makes us far more capable of creating a safe space for other people to do the same.

Yasi: I can also imagine that as a leader, if you are being yourself, if you’re being authentic, your team member can feel that. So that will make them feel safe. That will make them feel comforted. Say whatever they want to say or behaving a way that being themselves. And then, like you said, channel the energy into the work rather than spending time and energy on figuring out, should I say that?

Should I do that? Should I, did I do something wrong? 

Alexis Zahner: Totally totally. And it’s just a fundamental interest, right? Like we can’t really fully feel like we can trust people until we’d seen them seeing the whole them. And you know, many of us have probably experienced this in our personal lives. When we have close friends that, or over time as we build trust now, relationship, we learn more and more about them.

And we learn things about them that maybe they feel shame about, uh, bringing up to people that they haven’t got that trust with. It. I mean, it’s, it’s the same where human beings, right? And this is the thing, this, how we, what we need, our innate human needs still translate to what we need in the workplace.

We need to feel integrated and whole in the workplace and we need to feel safe enough to show up as I will. . No, that there’s no interpersonal risk. When we, um, share ideas or say something that might be viewed as silly. We need to know that there’s a safe space there for us. And so, um, your survey and it’s so critical and we could save so much energy, um, in ourselves and now employees by creating that safe space for.

Yasi: And in my other area of work, I often work in this tech startup space. Um, and what I have observed that many people, they come from, um, a background that they are specialized in either software development, Meditech or. Um, expertise, right? And then they come in to start this company and being a leadership position.

What kind of advice would you give it to them for someone who did not study management, who did not learn this business management skills and now in a position to lead a team of people and they need to grow the company, where can they start. 

Alexis Zahner: Really really good question question and why I like this question is because we find ourselves so often in this position, right?

People with technical expertise ending up in management positions because they’re the best technically qualified person at their job. But the problem with that transition as you’ve already highlighted is we may or may not lack a lot of the interpersonal skills required. To actually step from a technical role into a leadership role.

So I think the first key thing for any leader to do, whether they’re a young leader, a new leader, a really technically qualified leader that is only leading people for the first time, is to understand yourself so really understand what you value. And your vision for self, because this becomes how you lead authentically.

Again, it comes back to this idea of knowing ourselves well enough to understand how it is we show up in our full power. So if there is, and again, in my personal experience, stepping into a leadership role. For the first time I feel, oh, well, a leader has to act like this early to has to behave like this.

Or these are, these are the archetypes of influential leaders and that didn’t feel natural for me. And so I wasn’t actually able to lead to my full capacity because again, I was wasting time and energy trying to be something that wasn’t authentic to myself. So I would say for any leader that is the first place to start.

What do you value and how do you want to lead? What feels authentic for you? Something else that I would say is really critical for all leaders is to just admit what you don’t know. That is fine. And as we step into a leadership role from things like technical experience, or, you know, in fintechs, where, as you said, these guys have amazing software development skills, but perhaps have never had the opportunity to develop their interpersonal skills.

Know that, that’s okay. That is a huge opportunity for growth for you. And. Admitting that and allowing the capacity for yourself to grow in that space. Is it actually a huge opportunity. Um, I think too many people with technical expertise sometimes like to try and hide things close to their chest yet to, I guess it’s an egoic thing to not show weakness or not show there, maybe.

Um, You know, not yet, well, honed interpersonal skills, but that’s okay. Everyone has to start somewhere. And I think entering that domain from a place of curiosity and growth will be way more powerful for you to actually develop yourself than it will be to try and pretend you already know everything. Um, and as such sort of go about it as a bit of a bull in a China shop.

So I’d say that’s probably the two key things to do. That is your first leadership role, understand your special sauce. What makes you a great leader and what feels authentic to you and approach the things that you don’t know or the things that are uncomfortable with curiosity and see where there’s room for you to grow there and ask for help, you know, find a mentor, um, a senior leader who.

Done, you know, it has been in this role for a lot longer, perhaps some training on interpersonal skills. All these things are really critical to your growth. And I think the more you approach that with curiosity, the more it becomes an opportunity I noticed threat to your leadership. 

Yasi: Right. So it’s to actually, um, where you talk about is to have the right mindset, to be open, to learn and explore what you don’t know yet, rather than saying, or rather than not admitting that you don’t know.

Right. Um, totally, totally. And this point it’s so funny because I thought when people ask me, if there’s a book that you can give it to anybody, which book you would give it to, which book would you choose? I’ll say ego is the enemy by Ryan. Holiday’s. Oftentimes the ego, like our ego, right. Is preventing us from growing, preventing us from knowing more preventing us, seeing our blind spot.

And which is to your second point is, you know, stay curious. Don’t try to hide what you do know. Don’t try to hide your weakness. I think that’s ego. If you recognize your ego and just, no, don’t care about it. Be open show your weakness, show your vulnerability. People won’t think you’re a bad leader. They appreciate more, right.

You are being yourself. Everybody has his own way. 

Alexis Zahner: Absolutely. And you’re so right. Ego is an absolute killer here because it really does diminish our capacity to look for where we might be able to grow. And as you mentioned, we all have this and I guess the key thing, and one of the key messages that I so often remind leaders of is it is okay to feel uncomfortable.

We need to start getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and it can be painful. In the first instance to admit something that we don’t know or to admit weakness, because our ego is designed to protect us. It’s designed to keep us safe. And if this isn’t something that you’ve ever explored before your ego is going to.

Looking at you to not admit weakness or to not admit vulnerability of a say, I don’t know the answer to that. And to be curious to learning, um, it’s going to feel really, really uncomfortable, but that’s another key thing in leadership is to cultivate the capacity, to become comfortable with the uncomfortable.

It’s absolutely critical that we’re able to do that. 

Yasi: Yeah. And being uncomfortable means you are growing. You are not in your comfort zone and when you start to get comfortable with it, which means you already mastered and then to find somebody else that you feel comfortable with that’s again, it’s area for growth.

And so tell us a little bit about your coaching, how you. Let’s say those people will step up in a leadership position coming from a technical background. What is the process look like? How you’re going to help them to develop human leadership skills. 

Alexis Zahner: Yeah. So the human leaders platform in of itself, actually isn’t about myself and my coaching.

It’s actually a peer to peer learning platform, which is really, really exciting because the research published by Deloitte in 2021 actually tells us that leaders learn better. And through others inside their organization and outside and through the pandemic, we’ve really seen a reduction in funding, in organizations, getting their leaders, leadership development training.

And actually there’s only $1 in every 10 spend on management and frontline management versus C suite management. So it tells us as a real. Parity between the leaders who need this development, the mowers and their access to funding and getting that. So human leaders is a platform where leaders can actually access leadership development resources on a subscription-based.

So it makes it affordable to the individual. So whether or not they’re supported by their organization, they’re still able to access these leadership development. So, what we do in this platform is actually, again, it’s a peer to peer learning community, but every month we run monthly leadership challenges on a really incremental basis using behavioral science to help us drive change.

Now habits in a really bite-sized chunk. That’s one critical component of the platform. The other component of the platform, which is really exciting is out expert led weapons. So we every month bring various experts into the fold on the platform to deliver some of the latest evidence-based research around various leadership trends that we need to be firstly, cognitive enough, but how that affects our leadership and how we need to adapt.

So we’ve developed a nine dimension human leadership framework that looks at Alto. And how we show up and understand ourselves. It looks at how we interact. Um, and I guess out how others perceive us. And lastly, it looks at how we take responsibility for ourselves, both in life and leadership. So all of the components of the platform, the live sessions, the challenges will all fit and cater to one of these nine dimensions.

It’s actually a really exciting self-directed learning platform. So I lead as can come in and do an assessment, understand where their needs lie for development, and then they can access the resources directly based on what their needs are. So we’re really trying to push a different way of leadership development.

We know that traditionally. Management consultancy and organizational change initiatives fail at a rate of around 70%. And they’re also extremely costly to organizations. And as I mentioned earlier, quite often, they don’t involve the middle management and the frontline management who were the guys that needed the moist.

They’re the ones working with the frontline employees, who, as we know, are leaving out organizations. During the great resignation in droves. So what we’re really trying to do is reimagine how leadership development is delivered and make this accessible to every leader, whether they’re have a leadership title or not, but who want these resources and want to grow themselves in human leadership.

So that’s, um, yeah, that’s really how the platform functions and, uh, in January of 2020, We’ll be officially launching and we have the first quarter of incredible guest experts lined up, including Louise Evans, who has delivered fantastic Ted talks on nonviolent communication. And again, understanding yourself.

And she’s so fantastic at pointing out how the ego mind can really derail our communication and things like that. So that’s just a little bit about the platform and. Because, but that is really how we’re trying to change this paradigm of management consultancy to be more accessible and more. 

Yasi: I really see this as so valuable especially for small companies, startups, even SMEs. So also of course, big companies, because big corporates, they have so much budget, right. They dedicated to employee development dedicated to leadership program. But for companies, as you mentioned, like with less.

And this is a great platform for everybody to learn and develop their human leadership skills. Um, so in January is going to be launched. How can people register or how can they participate? Is it open to anyone around the world? 

Alexis Zahner: Yeah, great question. And I really liked when you mentioned this idea of SMEs and startups with perhaps less budget for training.

Um, and, and that, that was something that was really pertinent to me. Um, you know, having worked as a consultant for a while, um, you know, so being self-funded in my business, also working in SME organizations and seeing the kind of, uh, training budgets at SMEs have, it was really, really important to me that.

We make something accessible for them. So by delivering this in a platform format on a subscription basis, it really allows us to get that awesome scalability of, of being able to have this at an affordable price for so many SME organizations, individual leaders. So we’re not about again, bringing people into the fold that have a leadership title.

I could care less. And the professionals in this network could care less about your title. The community that we’re trying to cultivate here. Those of us who are conscious and keen and ready to start driving better business through being better humans and being better leaders as a result. So we’re really trying to cultivate and really conscious community of people that are committed to showing up and doing the work on themselves.

To be the change that they wish wish to see in business. So we were fully open, um, peer to peer learning community for anyone around the world. We have members currently from the USA, from Canada, from Saudi Arabia. We have a few members joining us from Egypt, which is really exciting. Um, Germany. Friends.

So we were so excited to connect with people all over the world, and I think what’s been so fantastic. And also, I guess, exciting, but also maybe saddening in a way is that this, these issues we’re having in leadership are obviously transcending geographical borders and cultural borders as well. Like I’m seeing the same issues in so many countries that have.

No experience with, and my experiences in Australia are resonating with people in the Egyptian banking sector and are resonating with fintechs in Canada. So there’s just something, this is a human human level need that we’re trying to cater to here. We’re really trying to bring humanness through in business.

And it’s beautiful that there’s a global community getting behind this. So. We’re really open to anyone from around the world to join the platform. Um, you just need to go to www dot. We are human latest.com and you can subscribe if you have an organization and you would like to subscribe multiple employees to the organization.

You can also just reach out to us by email, which is on the web page. And we can discuss that as well. 

Yasi: Ah, fantastic. And there’s a bonus point to that is that since you mentioned, there was so many different people coming from all around the world and nowadays, uh, you know, oftentimes people have deployed to another country to run the business, right.

And then of course there’s a culture issues. There’s a culture shock. And, uh, you can read all articles online about how to pay attention to this and that, but maybe this is also a great place for people to learn. Other leaders who are from that country and to learn in the business environment, you know, what are the things you can, um, pay attention to?

What are the, you know, behavior etiquette? I think it’s a great platform. Uh, people can learn from each other cross borders, cross different expertise of domain. And it’s it. To me, it sounds like a community of leaders with growth mindset and also like a bigger mastermind group. 

Alexis Zahner: Absolutely. And I appreciate you saying that, cause it feels idealistic at this point, but that’s really what we’re trying to build here is a global community of people who want to see this change and are willing to put their hand up and be a part of the change.

And sort of listening to you, then speak about, um, how this we’re able to learn from one another cross-culturally as well. I think what’s really, really cool is seeing how other cultures or companies across the world actually solve the same problems that we have. Um, That innovation process has really sped up because in many ways, you know, the issues we’re having here in Australia around the great resignation, very much of the issues are suffering from in the us and from Canada.

So we can actually see what other industries, what other leaders are doing and how they’re tackling these issues and kind of foster track our learning process and bring some. Back to how we’re conducting ourselves in our leadership and in our businesses as well. So there there’s, there’s no downside at this moment that I’ve so far experienced from this global think tank that we’re occurring.

Yasi: Yeah. Yeah, that’s good for them leaders. Good for the employee school for the business overall. I think I really like this idea. So thank you so much for being here, Alexis. Um, make sure that we leave the website in the show notes and also you left, uh, we are human leaders has an Instagram page. We also leave that in the show notes.

For the audience, if you are individual, if you’re running a small business, and if you’re interested in developing leadership skills, uh, be a human leader, check out their website, and I hope you can benefit a lot from it. Thank you so much for being here. 

Alexis Zahner: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure to chat.