authentic

156: Kimberly Davis: I really melted down

Intro   Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who is going to really help with a couple things and one primary thing being a good sense of direction. Kimberly Davis’s life on stage has taken many forms. From small-town beginnings having grown up on a ranch in Northwestern Montana singing to the cows in below zero temperatures to the international stage. Guided by the whims of happenstance Kimberly found her way to the theatre acting on stage across the country and throughout Germany misplacing, testing and ultimately discovering her brave. Eventually she left the theater and after a very circuitous path found her way into the world of training and development where the hundreds of fortune 00 participants became her education. She’d secretly studied them and much to her surprise she discovered that the theater world and the business world aren’t that different at all.

For the past 1 years Kimberly has taken that discovery and helped thousands of leaders and emerging leaders from every different industry imaginable perform authentically and powerfully on the high stakes stage that is work. In her program on stage leadership in her TEDx talk through her work at Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business’s Executive Education Program and now in her new book, Brave Leadership. Kimberly has dedicated her life to cultivating, brave, authentic leaders who know how to connect powerfully and get results. Still a small-town girl at heart Kimberly has crafted a life for herself with her husband Tim and son Jeremy and feisty cat Sully McGee in the gorgeous hills surrounding Austin Texas where fights every day to bring her best most authentic and powerful self what she calls brave to every situation she faces sometimes she succeeds sometimes she does it but she’s committed to the 

Fight. Kimberly Davis are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

Kimberly Davis:   I so am ready to help people get over the hump, Jim. Thank you for having me here.

Jim Rembach:   I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better. 

Kimberly Davis:   Jim, right now what I’m really most passionate about is creating a brave movement. I really want to democratize what it means to be brave because so many people think that they can’t be brave and they don’t realize that we are all far braver than we know. So, I really want to help as many people as I possibly can really connect to the fact that every single one of us has an impact that we can make here in this world.

Jim Rembach:   It is true and I think through the course of our lives a lot of times that gets dampened. And so for me when I was actually looking through the book and just a just to kind

of give a little bit of insight about me, I’m left-handed so a lot of times I grab a book and I actually look at it from the back to the front and so for you looking at this book I came across immediately which is in the back of the book the leadership manifesto. And then as I started going towards the front of the book and then coming back from left to right like normal I started seeing all these things start fitting and coming together. But for you when you start thinking about the leadership manifesto, how did that come about? 

Kimberly Davis:   Well, I went the opposite direction, Jim, I’ve been teaching this content for probably a good 15 years some iteration of it. So, I been having these conversations with myself and with others for a really long time and what I realized is I need a way to crystallize what is it I stand for. Every day, and we’ll talk a little bit later about what is it I stand for as an individual and we’ll talk a little later about that, but every day I can hold myself up to my own standard, am I living this or am I not? Because if you can say this is what I’m aiming for then you’re more likely to hit it.

Jim Rembach:   That’s a really interesting point. When you started talking I started thinking about—even a conversation I had with my daughter the other day about compromising her principles, compromising what she believes is the right behavior and action. This weekend she’s getting ready to go on a trip away from mom and dad and going to a place where there’s going to be a lot of things that she’s going to get exposed to that’s going to potentially question her judgment. I said look, don’t bend and be part of something because you feel like you’re going to get cut out or they won’t ask you back. And I said, instead you need to influence them and say, you know what? I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. So, don’t compromise.

Kimberly Davis:   That’s right. I think so many organizations have their vision, mission, values—this is what we stand for but oftentimes they’re just lovely things that marketing has put together that lives on a mug or lives on a poster. And so if we can say, no these are the actions we’re seeing in the hallways in our conversations with each other in our meetings in our client in our client conversations that this is who we are then it changes everything.

Jim Rembach:   It does. Another thing that really stood out to me talking about that who we are thing as I was going through the book which to me I think I’m going to as soon as we get done here I might start working on my own because oftentimes if we don’t have it we’ll end up wandering in different places and get off-track and not even realize it you have is that you have something in here called uncover your super objective, tell us about that? 

Kimberly Davis:   A super—let me back up a little bit. I borrowed the super objective from the theater, I did theater for many, many, many years and there was a fantastic tool in the theater called the super objective that was clarified at the turn of the century by this guy named Konstantin Stanislavski.  What the super objective is essentially—if you can get crystal clear about what drives you from that internal space or from a purpose perspective and you could focus all of your attention to achieve that purpose in whatever situation it is you face to have an impact outside yourself then that essentially will allow you to be brave. So, your super objective is essentially your purpose in action. What is it you stand for? What is the impact that you want to have outside yourself?

Jim Rembach:   I would dare to say that when you start thinking about other than maybe the theater and maybe even so in the theater when you start thinking about the different qualities and capabilities of certain actors is that not a lot of people actually go through and find what that is. Do you find yourself oftentimes having to start with that or do you have to start somewhere else and then ultimately get to that for folks? 

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah, we’re all into it we all start at different places and we’ve all had different journeys and have learned different things. It all begins with some very, very basic questions. The first question is to really understand why you care for real. Now, why do you care not based on a paycheck not because your boss says you should care about this or your mom says you should care about this but why do you personally care about this. And then then as you build on that you start asking herself, what’s the impact I want to have? What’s the impact I want to have on my employees? What’s the impact I want to have on my clients? What’s the impact I want to have on my listeners? In your case. Or the community or the industry or the world or that my patients or students whatever it is for you specifically—in addition to that get really clear on who or what do you care about most, who and what do you want to impact the most.  

In your case Jim, you teach, you run a podcast and you write and you consult and you coach and you do all of these different things who or what do you care about most? Because if you can get really clear about that then the byproduct that is going to affect everything else. So for me personally—I’m a belly button to belly button kind of person I care about the individuals but I have specifically chosen to work with leaders because I know that leaders if I help them uncover their most authentic powerful sells then the byproduct of that is there’s going to have a tremendous ripple effect and it’s going to change the world. So, yes, it’s a big picture but the way I go about it is individual to individual. I care about making a difference in one individual’s life and then another individual’s life. Some people care about growing their team it’s all about the team. Some people it’s all about the culture, If you can get really clear on what it is that you care about and then what’s the impact you want to have on that person or that group of people then that will lead you down an active path to making the impact you want to have. 

Jim Rembach:   As you’re talking I started thinking too about the potential risks associated with that if I’m not aware. One of the risks being is that I start discovering these things for myself I get excited because I found that connection but then I start taking that same thing that I’ve identified myself and try to put it upon others. And so when you start talking about for example customer centricity and creating a customer centric organization while I may be totally customer centric and I do need other people within the organization and matter of fact the entire organization if I can accomplish it to be more customer centric as well because that’s how we all can benefit. But right do I run the risk of trying to do something on to others instead of helping them to learn and discover that within themselves? 

Kimberly Davis:   There’s such a huge insight. Here’s the deal we all as individuals have our super objective that’s unique to you so for you to impose your super objective on other people it’s not going to have the same impact. In order for people to experience you as authentic they need to experience use genuine worthy of trust, reliance, and belief from their perspective. You have to make sure you’re standing firmly in their shoes, what do they need from you to experience you as genuine, worthy of trust, reliance and belief? And then why do they personally care? I remember I was leading a program for a group of directors of operations for a large casual dining chain at one point and they were going through a tremendous amount of change and after the first day of the session, it’s a two-day program, after the first day I met with it the SVP who had hired me and I said, look, here’s the problem they don’t understand why they should care about this change. And he looks at me and he says, Kimberly I’ll tell him why they should care. I’m like, well, yeah, that’s the problem they’ve each got to understand from an individual perspective why do they personally care and that’s going to really help them harness their own values and their own strengths to do something about it. But if you’re imposing something on it you’re never going to get the buy in, you’re never going to get their emotional energy around the change or whatever needs to be done. 

Jim Rembach:   I’m glad you said that because often times I have to explain what the Fast Leader show really means. It’s not about shortcuts the shortcut would be let me tell you why you need to believe in this and why you need to engage in this and why we need to accomplish these goals. But the fact is that particular tactic may be easy to say it creates the most friction. 

Kimberly Davis:   Absolutely. It’ll get you a quick result it’s not going to get you a lasting a result and you’re going to have a by-product that it’s not going to be what you want.

Jim Rembach:   Absolutely. And I think that we often see that happening in a customer environment very much where we’ll create a process flow that we want them to go through but if we force it upon them that’s going to create a lot of friction.

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah, it’s never going to work, it’s never going to work. 

Jim Rembach:   It might accomplish your short-term goal, like you say, we get more transactions taken but now we’ve basically made everybody upset. 

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah. Well, and especially now because the workforce has changed so dramatically in the last 10 15 years, that we are asking exponentially more of the people that work for us. Ten years ago you ago you never expected someone to answer an email in their pajamas at 10 o’clock at night and now that’s a normal thing. You never expected people to jump on a conference call in the middle of the night or during the dinner hour but now that’s a normal thing. So if you’re going to ask people ask exponentially more people then you’re going to have to connect to their hearts instead of their heads because if they don’t want to do it you’re not going to get that extra energy. 

And the reality is those things take time and they take tactics and they take tools they take the manifesto to be to the forefront of your mind. And even when I was looking at Manifesto I started thinking, and I know you don’t necessarily mean it this way, but for me it’s kind of like a checklist saying that, okay, where can I focus? Or where should I focus? Where am I doing okay with? What am I not doing okay with? How can I use it as a way to get feedback from others to see where I need to focus? To me it could almost be used as a development tool in a lot of different ways. Well, it holds your feet to the fire. The manifesto is we as an organization this is what we believe. We believe these things and then you’ve got your super objective which is your individual, what do I stand for? For me personally my super objective is to connect people to the best of who they are. That’s what I stand for and sometimes I do that and sometimes I don’t but I gets a chance to hold my feet to the fire. Did I do that in this conversation? Did I do it in this meeting? Did I do it in this message that I just sent? Did I do it when I was frustrated and everything—I didn’t have time to deal with it? No, I didn’t so I have to clean it up. So if you’re really clear about what you stand for then you know where you hit the mark more and you didn’t so you can go back and clean up the mistakes. 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, so going through and thinking about this as far as a pathway is concerned I started thinking about those folks that are not like me, meaning that I’m always trying to seek out a different way. I may pivot because of a new piece of information meaning that I want to focus and help other people develop and for me really that’s one of my motivators behind why I develop myself so that I can help people be more successful. It isn’t about me grabbing and gaining the success it’s about—

Kimberly Davis:   So your model in development for other people and the way that you do that is you have to grow yourself because if you don’t grow yourself you can’t you can’t actually model.

Jim Rembach:      That’s right. 

Kimberly Davis:   Exactly.

Jim Rembach:   But not everybody’s like that I mean there’s some people who aren’t focused in on that and so they are the people when you start thinking about making a bigger impact for themselves in the business they’re maybe not proactive in seeking out those opportunities but yet we need them to grow and develop. How do you approach those people that just seem so difficult to be able to take to the next level?

Kimberly Davis:   Well, so many people haven’t even asked themselves the question why do I care? And so if they think they’re doing it for somebody else they think they’re doing it because of their boss if they think they’re doing it for all of these other reasons then they’re it’s going to be hard for them to take any initiative and to get on board and to really get behind it from an emotional perspective which is where you get that extra energy. So if you can get the people that work for you to really get clear, and this is the impact, I personally want to have then they will automatically drive themselves. I don’t know if you’ve read, Dan Pink’s book, Drive? You probably remember in his book he talks about three key things in order for motive motivation to happen in this new work environment that we face in the last 10 15 years. He talks about autonomy. Are you able to make choices about how you do what it is you do? Mastery, do you have a chance to experience yourself getting better and better and better and raising your own bar and purpose? Are you doing something for a purpose greater than yourself? Well essentially, if you can identify your super objective, this is what I stand for. And you take action consistently around your super objective in every situation you face you achieve all three things. You achieve autonomy because nobody’s going to tell you, this is how you need to achieve your super objective today. No, you get to choose that all day long. Mastery, it’s going to force mastery because every human being you come into contact with it’s going to have a different set of needs. And for you to have an impact that you want to have you have to pay attention to those unique needs in front of you in order for you to have the impact so it’s going to force you to get better and better and better and raise your own bar and purpose. So, you’re super objective is essentially is purpose and action. So, the key to getting those people that don’t seem to be engaged and don’t seem to be taking any initiative and doing it for themselves is to help them start to get clear on what’s the impact you want to have. Why do you care for real? You do what you do for the sake of what? Not a paycheck. Why do you care about it? And then they can emotionally drive themselves.

Jim Rembach:   I think what you’re really just talking about right there is why we have this significant emergence right now in coaching within organizations. Whether it’s them being able to do it internally, which is not quite possible for most organizations because they’re so thin, there are no internal coaches they’re very few and far between and so they’re seeking a lot of outside assistance for coaching. But I think that’s one reason why they’re focusing in on it in one way or another.

Kimberly Davis:   Yeah, coaching is so incredibly important because here’s the deal we came off of the—we used to scale everything we treated people like widgets and in this humanistic movement we’re moving into, you cannot scale how people behave you cannot scale these things. We talked earlier about the challenges in call centers how call centers say like their scripts and everybody should do it the same way, but you know what? If you want that person on the phone to bring their emotional energy and to really serve that customer and listen to them they have to understand why they personally care about listening to their customers. They have to have a coach that helps them get that clarity around what matters most to them. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a great point. Everything that we’re talking about here and you’ve even said the word several times and it’s all wrapped in all kinds of different emotions positive and negative. When we start thinking about that emotion on the show we love to look at quotes. Your book is full of different quotes and there’s some new ones I haven’t seen, so I’m looking forward to reading through the rest of the book. But is there a quote or two that you can share that you like?

Kimberly Davis:   Oh, my gosh, well okay so my book is right in front of me and the one that I just turned to, I love them all because I put them in my book, but the one I loved it’s at the very back of the book is Diane Nyad, she’s the woman that swam from Florida to Cuba, she’s an amazing woman, I think she was like 70 years old when she did this. Her quote is, “This journey has always been about reaching your own other shore no matter what it is and that dream.” So to get really clear on what it is that lights you up and so you can start making that impact and smart making choices around that and also start taking responsibility for that. And I think this is where people get really messed up where they think purpose is all about hearts and rainbows and sunshine but it’s all about responsibility. Because if this is the impact that you are here to make you have to hold your feet to the fire. Did I have that impact? What actions am I taking? Where am I getting in my own way of having the impact that I want to have? And from an emotional intelligence perspective am I really clear that I’m having the impact that I want to make in the world on this person, on my team, on my culture? So it forces you to really step into another’s shoes and see from their perspective.

Jim Rembach:   What you are talking about right there that can be painful. 

Kimberly Davis:   You know what? This is exactly what you said earlier, you and I are such kindred spirits around this stuff is that, I tell people look, brave leadership is not going make your life easier it’s going to make your like harder but it’s going to make your life richer and it’s going to make your results better. If we’re looking for the fast way of doing things there is no magic pill there’s going to be a lot of people out there they’re going to tell you follow my five steps and we you will be brilliant and be successful beyond measure. But that that’s not true there is no simple five steps there’s one situation at a time. Did you have the impact you wanted to have yes or no?  If not what action can you take to get yourself closer? How do you grow yourself to be better? 

Jim Rembach:   Exactly right. So, part of that growth is that we have to go through experiences where we’ve made me falling down or had a hump that we couldn’t get over. Is there a time where you’ve gotten over the hump where you actually learned more and you can share with us? 

Kimberly Davis:   Every single day, every single day, Jim. So, let me think of a very specific time. I talked about in my book actually when I went to speak for TEDx. I had a bit of an anxiety attack right before I spoke at TEDx and really it came out of thin air for me because here I teach about connecting and showing up powerfully and being brave and you know when you talk about being brave and you’re not feeling very brave you’re really up against your own stuff. The day before I went in to speak to TEDx I really melted down and I had to teacher teach thy self I had to go back and use my tools. What’s the impact I’m here to have? This is not about me. I focus my attention outside myself, what’s the impact I want to have on these individuals? And I had a suspicion that I might get some kind of emotional push back for myself. 

And so I packed photographs of all of these participants that I have worked with for the last 10 15 years, some of my most beloved people that had I’ve really seen take themselves from not believing in themselves to really risking owning their brave. And I went into my hotel room and I spread these pictures out all over the room and I gave my TED talk by myself to these people in this room but I focused on them—and this is the impact I want to have on you Gary, and this is the impact I want to have on you, and I connected individual to individual based on these amazing human beings that I knew they were and got myself back into recognizing, you know what? If I’m focused on what people think about me and if I’m focused on making a mistake and I’m focused on this going viral and me looking stupid these are the things I’m focusing on I can’t have the impact that I’m there to have . So, I had to find a way to push through all of that. Let it go. I talked about pushing through your lines the messages that you’re bumping up against and focus outside myself to really connect and have an impact.

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing that story. We have to learn how we as individuals can hijack our own anxieties and feelings of pressure so that we can do actually what you ended up doing. 

Kimberly Davis:   So funny people think—I think this is something that the media perpetuates, people think that you’re either brave or you’re not you’ve either figured it out or you haven’t. And brave is not an all-or-nothing thing it’s not like, okay I figured it out I’ve got great tools I’ve got it dialed in and every single time now I feel brave. No, the truth is there are so many times in my life I feel afraid and there are so many times that I don’t trust myself and I’m uncertain and I’m overwhelmed and all of this I feel vulnerable and all of those things because that’s what it means to be human and to think that you’re not going to feel those things is fantasy. But the key is every situation that you face how can you refocus your attention to get back into the game and let your brave unfold one situation at a time.

Jim Rembach:   There was a really good book written called Crunch Time, by one of our guests who’s been on the Fast Leaders show, that talks about that talking about that refocusing piece talking about how you can really reflect upon the fact that you have put in the work you have had some success and how can you bring that to this moment right here right now so that you can accomplish what you’ve set out to do. We talked about a lot of the things that you’re doing.
We talked about—you still do any work in the theater? 

Kimberly Davis:   I’ve got a 13-year old son, so I’m not doing the theater anymore. But I have to tell you the work that I do it lights me up more than the theater did. Although I did see the Greatest Showman the other day and I now am addicted to the soundtrack and so it kind of reignited this passion for theater but—no I’m not doing any theater right now. 

Jim Rembach:   Well you’ve still been on a big stage the main stage been on stage as you said so that’s great. And you also have this new book and you’re promoting it and you have a lot of things going on but if you think about one thing that’s a goal, what would it be?

Kimberly Davis:   A one thing that is a goal…the one thing is that—this brave conversation gets out there in a way that is going to make a difference. My husband wishes I were driven a little bit more by money, I think we’re wired similarly this way, but that doesn’t really show up on my radar at all. What drives me is feeling like that someone in Sacramento, California and someone in Phoenix, Arizona and someone in Kalispell, Montana they can pick up this book and they can find themselves and they can be excited about who they are. And seeing people get excited about who they are and what they can do to me is the most amazing thing in the world so I want that to happen for as many people as can possibly happen.

Jim Rembach:   I can definitely connect with you on that because we talked about that off mic and I would say that getting paid isn’t always a monetary thing. 

Kimberly Davis:   Right, oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Jim Rembach:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Kimberly, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Kimberly Davis, are you ready to hoedown?

Kimberly Davis:   Oh, yes, I think. 

Jim Rembach:   Growing up on a ranch and living in Austin, Texas you have to be ready to hoedown. Alright, what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Kimberly Davis:   What’s holding me back from being an even better leader today is second-guessing myself. 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Kimberly Davis:   The best leadership advice I’ve ever received is to be yourself. 

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Kimberly Davis:   That I connect deeply with people because I care deeply for people.

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of the best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Kimberly Davis:   My super objective being able to focus outside myself and get myself back on track when I need to. 

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners they could be from any genre, of course we’re going to a link to your Show Brave Leadership—Unleash your most Confident Powerful and Authentic Self To Get the Results you Need, on your show notes page as well. 

Kimberly Davis:   Well, thank you but I Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, I been using it in my work for the last ten years. I think it changed the landscape of what it means to be a leader. 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/Kimberly Davis. Okay, Kimberly, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Kimberly Davis:   I would tell myself to trust yourself. I think at 25 I second-guess myself all the time and I stopped myself and so if I could just know, trust yourself you’ve got this move forward anyway move forward even in the face of that not knowing I think that would have changed a lot for me.

Jim Rembach:   Kimberly it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

Kimberly Davis:   So, you can connect me through my website www.braveleadershipbook.com or onstageleadership.com. I’m also very active on Twitter and LinkedIn I’ve got an onstage leadership Facebook, it’s under Kimberly, you look under onstage leadership or Kimberly Davis author. And I hope to connect with you because I love connecting with people. 

Jim Rembach:   Kimberly Davis, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

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