Ep 07: Think like a CEO to accelerate performance and results: Mindhacks for leaders from thinking expert Ann Herrmann-Nehdi

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The TalentGrow Show Ep 07 with Ann Herrmann Nehdi

Ever feel frustrated because the people you work with don’t seem to be on the same wavelength or speak the same language? Ann Herrmann-Nehdi helps you crack the code of leading in a whole-brain kind of way. She’s a world-renowned author, thought leader, keynoter and researcher whose work specializes in the practical application of neuroscience, learning and ongoing thinking research. Ann talks about why the brain is one of our most important and most overlooked business tools. She describes what she means by “Whole-Brain Thinking” and why we all need to become more deliberate in our thinking. In fact, Ann shows us how we can, and should, think more like a CEO (she has researched more than 9000 of them, so she knows). Ann discusses common thinking errors, offers stories about how to overcome them, and suggests a super actionable and essential mindhack that every one of us must incorporate to improve our leadership skills.

What you’ll learn

Listen to Stitcher

  • What is Whole-Brain Thinking and why you should aim for it

  • How to avoid being blind-sided by your lesser preferred thinking styles

  • Ann’s preference for translating the most salient, relevant brain research insights into practical workplace applications and mindhacks

  • How leaders make common thinking errors because of all the ‘noise’ in the signal, and how one of Ann’s clients was able to correct this mistake with his senior leadership team

  • Why it’s important for leaders to learn to stretch and adapt their own style to those preferred by their team instead of expecting others to adapt to them

  • How Whole Brain Thinking is like a language, and helps you decode what is going on with others around you

  • The essential mindhack Ann urges everyone to apply to ensure we are all improving our leadership skills regularly, not just once a year or haphazardly

  • What does Ann’s data from over 9000 CEOs tell her about the surprising factor they seem to share, and what you can do to think more like a CEO

  • What is thinking agility and why Ann is writing a book about it

  • You’ll even learn how many hours a week we spend on email, according to research, and what Ann suggests we do instead if we take back at least one of those hours

About Ann Herrmann-Nehdi

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi is CEO of Herrmann International, publisher of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI®) which is based on extensive research on thinking and the brain. Multiple applications of Whole Brain Technology®™ include creativity, strategic thinking, problem solving, management and leadership, teaching and learning, self-understanding, communication and team/staff development.  Ann seeks to apply the principles of Whole Brain Technology®™ to her varied responsibilities: from day-to-day operations, to sales, to workshop design and presentations.

Halelly was one of the first to get an autographed copy of Ann Herrmann-Nehdi's new book at the ATD International Conference and Expo in Orlando in May 2015!

Halelly was one of the first to get an autographed copy of Ann Herrmann-Nehdi's new book at the ATD International Conference and Expo in Orlando in May 2015!

Having resided in Europe for 13 years, Ann brings a global perspective to the company. Since joining Herrmann International USA 20 years ago, Ann’s personal goal is to promote a better understanding of how individuals and organizations think and become more effective, as well as enhance learning and communication technologies worldwide through the application and development of the Whole Brain® concept. Herrmann International, with affiliates world-wide, continues to research and develop products and applications in the fields of thinking creativity, and learning.

Resources

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi’s company, Herrmann International

Ann’s new book, The Whole Brain Business Book, Second Edition: Unlocking the Power of Whole Brain Thinking in Organizations, Teams, and Individuals

Connect with Ann on Twitter

Connect with Herrmann International on Twitter

Herrmann International’s YouTube channel (LOTS to watch there!)

The YouTube video Ann mentions on mindhacking tactics

Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine article Ann contributed to about neuro-myths

TRANSCRIPT

Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.

Halelly: Welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist. In this episode I talk with Ann Herrmann-Nehdi. Ann is an author, thought leader, keynoter and researcher who focuses on whole brain thinking, and she describes how she thinks the brain is really one of our most important business tools, but we don’t often treat it that way. She talks about what it means to do whole brain thinking, and why we need to become more deliberate in our thinking. Ann shares one of the common thinking mistakes that a lot of leaders make, and a story about how one of her clients was able to overcome it. Ann also makes a recommendation for a mind hack that is essential for every leader to upgrade their leadership skills and the specifics for how you can incorporate it into your leadership practice. You’re going to find out what 9,000 CEOs in Ann’s research for her latest book have in common, and what you can do to think more like a CEO. And finally, Ann is going to share what she’s really excited about and that is going to be the subject of her next book. Thanks for tuning in; I hope that you’ll enjoy this episode.

Hi, welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. This is Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist and I’m excited today to have with me Ann Herrmann-Nehdi. Ann is the CEO of Herrmann International, the originators and trailblazers of whole-brain thinking and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this tool, but it is so helpful in helping people of all walks of life figure out how to become more effective and enhance the learning, the leadership, the communication approaches in their organization. Ann, I have seen her, she speaks with lots of different conferences, lots of different audiences from Fortune 100 corporations and other global organizations. She consults and speaks all over the world, and I’ve been very lucky to experience her keynotes and sessions twice, actually. The first time I was able to see Ann was when she was on a panel with a couple of other people that are my mentors and actually whom I’ve also interviewed for the podcast – Elaine Biech and Beverly Kaye – and Ann just was stunning in how thoughtful and smart she was, and her ideas really impressed me, and then I was able to see her in her own session at that same conference, which was the international conference for what was then ASTD and is not ATD, the Association for Talent Development. And her session was just so rich and so full of ideas, and actually also with excitement. And when I was planning a conference for all of the chapter leaders for ATD throughout the country, we were looking for the keynote speaker and I knew that Ann would be the perfect one, and so I made a campaign to bring Ann on and thankfully she was available and interested and she wowed our audience. I mean, she just has completely engrossed in everything that she has shared and she’s a very fun presenter – not only just raising good ideas but also very funny. And then I don’t know how many sessions you go to where at the end, the audience is tossing balloons in the air with music, but this is something you will experience when you experience Ann. But anyway, that is my perspective of Ann. Ann, welcome to the TalentGrow Show.

Ann: Thank you so much. I’m delighted to be here.

Halelly: And I gave a little bit of an overview of your bio, but I really want for you to share with the audience in a very short, brief way little bit about your journey. How did you get to where you are now? Where did you start on your professional journey and where have you been?

Ann: Well, once again, thank you for that very thoughtful description of what I do. I’m actually very passionate about learning, which I think in a nutshell says a lot about why I do what I do. And I actually, I grew up with a father who was a brain researcher, but coming at it from a workplace perspective. He was head of management education at Crotonville at GE and from that time, in my early teens, when I was getting wired up to an EEG for testing, I became very interested in learning in the brain, and had several roles early in my career – both in sales and operations, working in the tech industry – and it kept coming back to this passion around learning, and trying to understand what it was that would help people really move the needle in the workplace and ultimately became part of the organization that my father had started after leaving GE and pursuing that research myself now in terms of looking at thinking and learning and how what we can learn about how we think and learn can allow us to significantly not only leverage our own potential, but also drive the results that we’re all looking for in organizations. So I’ve been in the field for over 30 years, but of course I started when I was in my teens. To give some context for that, right?

Halelly: Yes. And that's remarkable. That’s a significant track record that you have and it’s really interesting. I don’t think that very many people get to pick up and walk in the shoes of their parents in terms of the business that they run, so I suppose you’re lucky that you were born to a father who had something that interested you in his business, and he’s lucky that he had a daughter that is interested in continuing what he started.

Ann: Well, it’s always interesting – people say to me, “What was it like?” And I’ll say we had a very weird reputation in the neighborhood because we were doing EEG experiments in the den at home. But I consider myself very, very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with him as a peer and not only have the relationship with him as a father. But also to be able to carry that legacy of providing people with insight and application for what we know about the brain. For me that’s a real gift and my eldest son joined the company last year, so we have a third generation stepping up which is pretty exciting as well.

Halelly: Wow, that is exciting. Fantastic, congratulations. Neat! Well, I know that maybe some of the listeners have been exposed to your work, but I’d like to not assume that everyone has, and I hope that after listening to this they will be exposed a lot more! But tell a little bit of I guess the overview, the key ideas, that are the backbone of the whole brain technology and everything that you do with the whole Brain Dominance Instrument because it’s so helpful. And if you could talk about how you think working with this technology helps leaders in their interactions with others at work?

Ann: Sure. Well, first and foremost, I think we have sort of a foundational assumption and premise, and that is that every organization, especially in today’s world, runs on thinking. It’s the primary driver of how we get things done. So in order to effectively manage and lead, we have to understand how thinking works. And if performance and results – which is clearly the outcome that almost all of us, even in my organization are driving towards – if you’re going to get better performance and results, you need better thinking. And that is, I think it’s something that we kind of take for granted. We come into the office, we bring our brains into work, we get started and we pay attention to a lot of other things besides what’s actually happening in our heads. So whole brain thinking, it gives you a very accessible yet validated way to understand and describe your thinking as well as how others think. We know from our research that everybody has access to their whole brain. This idea that we’re left-brained or right-brained is really an oversimplification. We all have access to our whole brain. Yet, over the course of our lives, we develop very strong preferences for some of our preferred systems over others. Yet, we know that everyone can have access to more analytical data, logical kinds of thinking, and some of the folks listening to the podcast probably are raising their hands as they think about that. Others tend to be much more structured and focused on organization. And I know I’ve got several people in my organization who I’m very delighted thrive on that kind of thinking. Some leaders naturally personalize what it is that they do and the focus is very much oriented towards people and values and culture, and then finally there are amongst all of us, leaders who tend to be more naturally strategic and thinking big-picture and concept.

So what we know is that if you are deliberate in your thinking – and I think that notion of being very deliberate is really important – we all can access all of those modes. We can shine where we tend to thrive and have strongest preferences, but we don’t want to get blind sighted by those areas that may not be as strong a preference for us. And the leaders that we work with around the globe, who begin to understand this, not only begin to truly leverage their own thinking potential, and have a much broader scope of thinking available to them, and sometimes even more importantly figure out how they can truly optimize the thinking that’s available to them and those that they work with, and I think that’s the difference between those who have a competitive advantage and those that don’t in today’s environment. So it’s a very exciting time to be doing this research, because we’ve got so much going on in today’s environment, and our brains are kind of the epicenter of how we process all of that. It’s high time that we thought of it as one of our most important business tools, but I think we’ve overlooked it and we kind of take it for granted. So we’re all about helping people understand it and then leverage it so that they can really get better results.

Halelly: And it sounds like, obviously your business started back with your father’s work, before I would say the hay day of neuroscience and its popularity. And I know that for me, at least, right now, it’s a major topic of interest for me as I’m reading about the different findings that are coming out of various universities that are now available with the advance of SMRI machines and our ability to understand the brain and the neuron connections and the chemical releases and everything that science and biology can tell us now. Do you find that you’re experiencing either a greater interest or readiness to understand and to work with what you’re sharing than in the past because of that?

Ann: We definitely are. I think it’s kind of an interesting time, whereas maybe 30 years ago a manager might ask, “Well, what does the brain have to do with managing?” Which seems kind of like a ridiculous question in today’s environment, and of course the best answer for that is, “Well, in your case …” But I think that if you look at what is happening today, most people are, there’s kind of a double-edged sword here. Most people are curious, interested, recognize the power of what we’re learning. On the other hand, if you get too technical, then some people will push back. I had a story from a manger of a major defense contractor organization say to me that one of his learners came up to him and said, “If one more person talks to me about my amygdule, I’m going to scream!” which is a part of their brain. So I think we have to balance what it is, and translate this research into very practical workplace application. So people are interested, but they don’t really want to have to feel like they’ve got to have a doctoral degree in neuroscience to be able to do anything with it. And I think that one of the things I’m most focused on in my work is I think about what we can do to help leaders is to translate the most salient, relevant insights into what I like to call mind hacks and tools and processes that people can use every single day to improve what it is they’re doing as leaders. Because it’s hard for many people to even know where to start with neuroscience, and there’s even some neuro-skepticism that’s beginning to pop up around, “Well, hey, wait a minute. We can’t try to explain everything on the planet.” Looking at a very small study of five people, five grad students and an SMRI machine.

So I think there’s a healthy balance. I was just recently part of a blog post on CLO, the CLO website, Chief Learning Officer blog, that talks about neuro-myths, and what is it that we need to understand is true and what is it that’s not true? And I think we’ll have a healthy balance of that over the next few years. But for me, what’s most important is, “What do I do with this? How do I use it?” And I think that’s what most people are most interested in.

Halelly: I think you’re right, and that’s a good point, so we have some balance. So, based on what you just said, can you share an example of a way in which you helped a leader or group of leaders make it really practical? What is something that you suggested or that you’ve seen work really well for people that have applied it, that makes the brain research you bring applied in the workplace?

Ann: Well, one of the things that I find is often a challenge for many leaders, especially in today’s world, is that because of the noise factor that we’re experiencing – we’ve just got so much stimulus, so much to do – people kind of go to the shortest route possible in terms of their thinking, and they rely way too much on their mental default. In other words, the patterns that they’ve created throughout the course of their lives. In working recently with a senior leader, what I found is that much of his frustration and where he felt like he was just burning precious energy and time came from the fact that he was hitting a sort of mental wall with some of the members of his team. He really needed the different perspectives that those team members brought to bear, but because they looked at the world so differently than he did, and because he really didn’t feel like he could take the time to stop and think about what it was that they needed to address from a thinking perspective, they just kept running into each other and actually the time that they needed to actually solve the problems and make the decisions actually was getting burned up through all of this wasted energy.

And I know many, many leaders – and this is a leader of a global organization that really didn’t have the time to do this – and so part of what we did was to sit down and first start by identifying how everybody in this senior leadership team preferred to think, and actually talked about some of the challenges that created in their day-to-day problem solving and decision making communication, and worked those through to come together and begin to sort of look at what it was that they needed to be doing to increase the speed of communication, because no one has free time today to sort of waste on communication that’s not working, to reduce what it was they were doing in terms of wasted email time, and to accelerate their ability to be aligned as a first team for that organization. And move out of their functional silos and actually come together as a whole brain team to lead the organization. And they had all the mental assets available, but the leader was struggling with how to bring that group together so that they could really leverage those specialized thinking skills that every brought to bear. And not sort of feel like they were kind of just sort of jerking along, rather than having a smooth, aligned approach. And I think that is available to everybody, and this particular leader realized that he needed to step out and stretch his thinking to meet the needs of those on his team, rather than always expecting them to step up and meet his needs. And that meant he changed some of his communication styles, it meant that he approached people differently, that he thought about their thinking first, to sort of say, “How do I best engage this person on my team so that they can feel like they can contribute the most?” And that was, even though that sounds obvious, he suddenly had a sort of simple way to make that happen, because he could think about, “Okay, let me think about how they think,” and had an easy way to respond to that.

Halelly: That sounds like maybe it gave him almost like a language or a decoding capacity that he could use to figure out what’s going on, what’s not working, and to fix it.

Ann: Absolutely. It’s almost like in some instances learning a foreign language. I was working with an HR exec, and in the world of HR there’s a whole lot of discussion – as there is everywhere else – about big data, and the need to be much more analytics-focused. It’s true for the learning world as well, and he said to me that he had reached out, as he referred to the geeks that he had available to him in the organization, and he said that he felt like he’d traveled to a foreign land because as he started talking to them, he realized, “I don’t even understand the language of this world! I have some homework to do. I actually need to start learning again. I need to stretch my thinking and not just expect others to constantly sort of be able to translate back for me.” And it was a big a-ha and he suddenly actually has now become really excited about analytics and becoming a student and I think all of us, as leaders, need to become students again. And we don’t feel like we have the time, but never has it been more important to be learners and to be modeling that learning for those that we lead. But it takes time and energy and you have to carve out the time to do it. At the end of the day, you’re the only one who can make this decision. No one is going to give you extra time. So you have to really carve out the time and I actually calendar it on my calendar. A very simple mind hack is just to block thinking time and learning time on your calendar and make it so that no one can get at it, and I think it’s an essential for every leader in today’s world.

Halelly: I agree. And that’s a really good specific suggestion. And I think that actually, I receive your newsletter, and I always like the really specific suggestions that you offer up in there. That’s an example of that. So, cool, thank you for that example. So I’m thinking, I know that you have been hard at work updating and upgrading and renewing the book that your dad published 20 years ago, Whole Brain Business Book, and you’ve done – I think, I’ve heard – a lot of research to bring it up to date. Obviously a lot has changed in 20 years. It’s almost like probably a rewritten book on the core foundations. What did you find that was most surprising in the research that you discovered and added to the new addition, about how leaders can tap into whole brain thinking?

Ann: Well, you know, it was fascinating. There is so much I could share, but one of my most interesting areas of research was looking at CEO data. We had CEO data that was originally done using the HBDI and being able to look at the analytics of that. What we discovered some years ago in that initial foray was that CEOs tend to be more whole-brain thinkers. And now we had access to over 9,000 CEOs in our database from around the globe, and we found that there were many, many, many consistencies across the globe. One of the primary consistencies had to do with the fact that CEOs continued to be more whole brain than practically any other occupation. And I think that’s particularly relevant in today’s world. Why is it that CEOs tend to be more whole brain? By design, their work requires it. They have to be able to understand the technical aspects and the numbers associated with the business and now in today’s world the analytics. They’ve got to be able to think strategically and think out beyond the horizon and, as some people like to say, see around corners. More and more they have to be able to engage those around them and their customers and other stakeholders in a way that’s really effective and be really effective communicators and have empathy in ways that we didn’t fully understand before. And then of course they need to be able to get things done and execute masterfully, both themselves and with their team. So the very design of the work requires it.

What’s changed since then is that almost all of us, now, are in a situation where our work requires it. And what’s interesting with CEOs is irrespective of their culture or their background, they tend to be more whole brain in their thinking. So they’re very deliberate. And I think that this notion of looking at how we can all think like CEOs, we all have access to that, and to think about our work in a way that sort of says, “How do we understand the mental demands of our world? How do we better engage our own thinking? How do we leverage the thinking of those both peers and those that may be reporting into us in ways that can make us either personally more whole brained or at least get better at whole brain results, so that we’re not caught off guard by a blind spot?” And another thing that was really fun for me in doing this research is I was able to reach out to the thousands of practitioners around the globe to ask them how they were using whole brain thinking and learn all sorts of great stories, which we really kind of reorganized the book and made sure to include many of those stories and examples from people all over the globe using whole brain thinking. And a great example of that was one practitioner, Ann McGee-Cooper who is here in the U.S. described how she is kind of revolutionizing the way teams work by having them start by their collective area of least preference when they work as a group, to make sure that that blind spot never, ever catches them off guard. So there’s some very, very practical things that you can do as well as learning all sorts of exciting new concepts and discovering yourself. So it was a really fun project to work on, and it is sort of chalk full of, as you said, all sorts of new insights and we kind of reorganized the book to make it much more contemporary and speak to many of the issues that people are facing today, some of which are the same as 20 years ago but many of them are different as well.

Halelly: Well, I think that those stories will probably be really, really useful for people that are reading about the concept, to help them see the concrete examples of how it can be applied. And that’s nice. That’s exciting.

Ann: Absolutely. We worked hard to make it a whole brained book, as much as we could.

Halelly: Exactly. Good. You’re modeling it. So I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, and there’s three more things that I want to ask you before we wrap up. So, right now, sounds like maybe the book project is behind you – I know that you’re in book marketing, which is a project in and of itself, having marketed a couple of books that are nowhere near as solid as the one that you have coming out – what is another project or something new that you’re doing that’s really exciting you, something on your horizon that you’re working on?

Ann: I’m really focused on this idea of agility. It’s a word that’s bouncing around all over the place. We need to be more agile, and I believe that there is some really interesting neuroscience. What is the neurobiology of agility? How do we understand what it really takes to shift our thinking to become more adapt at learning? I believe that we need to become more comfortable with discomfort, and that is sort of a secret key to becoming more agile. So, I’m working on another book that is going to be focused on thinking agility and giving people very practical tools, translating that into what does that really mean when somebody says, “I need you to be more agile,” and how do I actually do that and how do I understand the science behind it? So really excited about that. The Whole Brain Business Book will be published in late May. We’re launching it at ATD at the international conference, and this book is right on its heels. So I’ve jumped from one book project to another. I’m very excited about it.

Halelly: That does sound exciting. You’ll definitely have to keep me posted on that and we’ll include links to your website and your books in the show notes on the TalentGrow.com website for sure, for people to access. So, I always like to ask guests on the show to leave the listeners with one really specific action that they can take right away, maybe tomorrow or this week, to upgrade their leadership skills. So what do you think is one specific action people can take to become a better leader, based on your experience and expertise?

Ann: I believe that leaders today absolutely must carve out time in their schedules every single week, devoted to their own learning development. And I think we’ve gotten very sort of blasé, especially many leaders are kind of focused on others needing to develop, and that may be a skill that you need to develop as a leader which is helping others develop. But as I mentioned a moment ago, this idea of becoming uncomfortable, if you’re not feeling a little bit uncomfortable in your learning process, then I would challenge you to say, “Is that really learning?” That notion of stretching your thinking on an on-going basis, this is not something that you do once a year. You don’t go off and spend a few days learning. This has got to become ideally a daily habit. But if daily seems overwhelming, start monthly. Maybe weekly. And carve out and block time in your schedule to actually be doing something that is different and makes you a little bit uncomfortable. Most leaders that I know that are very successful in today’s world are doing that on a regular basis. They’re putting themselves into situations that require them to learn, and sometimes that is the mind hack that you need, which is that you step up and take something on that creates the requirement. But make it a daily habit. And you should be devoting time every single day to stretching your thinking, learning something new, and ideally feeling a little bit uncomfortable. Because that’s the sign that you’re actually learning.

Halelly: That’s an awesome hack. Do you have any kind of a suggestion for the duration of this thing? Like for how long in order to be really effective, or does it not matter?

Ann: Ideally, doing something over time and staggering it is a great way to help your brain continue to learn and that’s why that notion of sort of going off and devoting a week for many people doesn’t work. They get back into the whirlwind and sort of feel like their brain is depleted so soon. So I would start, even if many people say to me, “I don’t have the time.” So realistically, start with something small. If it just means you’re taking out the time, 20 minutes a day, if that’s all you can do, then do that. I think an hour is at least something that gives you at least your brain enough time to wind down. Because for many people they have to unhook from all that they’re doing. If it helps to do it first thing, many people find that helps them, and don’t look at your email before you do that. Go into this with a fresh brain, a fresh awakened brain. If you’re a night person and you feel like you need to do that, then get away from your work long enough that it’s not encumbered. Because the first few minutes of that time will be your brain kind of processing all the stuff that’s going on in it. So if you can get it down to one hour per week, that’s great. If you can get it to one hour a day that’s even better. But hey, start with something small. And I think whatever it is that you can do, I think that 20 minutes is the minimum. But ideally, an hour. And almost everybody has an hour a week. I don’t think that anybody could say they couldn't find an hour a week. You’re probably burning that on email. Some data I saw recently said that most of us are spending 13 hours a week on email. That’s about three months of work time per year. I would think that most of us could carve out and stop, take an hour away from that email, and devote it to learning. Just think of that, how much time we’re wasting.

Halelly: Awesome tip. I love it. Great. Listen, Ann, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you and I think that our listeners are going to gain a lot of valuable insights, and I love that very actionable suggestion to carve out time every day, or at least once a week, or at least once a month – but start somewhere – for your own learning and to push yourself a little bit into the discomfort zone, so that you’re really stretching your brain and your skills. So before we close up, how can people learn more about you and stay in touch?

Ann: Great. Well, www.HerrmannSolutions.com is our website, and that’s double-R, double-N in Herrmann. And you can follow me on Twitter @AnnHerrmann, @HerrmannInternational as well on Twitter. And there’s a new video that just got posted on YouTube on leadership, just over 20 minutes on mind hacking tactics that was part of a leadership conference that might be useful for folks to just kind of get some ideas of specific things that they can do as leaders. So YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, find me on LinkedIn, and of course our website. And you can preorder the Whole Brain Business Book at www.wholebrainbusinessbook.com. Would love to see those orders and you’ll be able to get one of our first copies a little bit later this spring.

Halelly: Great. Oh, great. And I’ll link to all of these things in the show notes when we release the podcast. I really appreciate your time and sharing your expertise with my audience, and I hope that you make it a great day.

Ann: I certainly will, and thanks for the time. This was a great opportunity for me to share some insights with you, so I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Halelly: Fantastic. Take care.

So is your brain overflowing with ideas? I really hope so, but most importantly, not just ideas but take action. Go ahead, figure out what are you going to work on that’s going to push you outside your comfort zone and go put it on your calendar. Start, baby steps, schedule something small, get it started and make it habitual. That’s the only way that you can actually make use of this advice is you have to implement it. Thanks for tuning into this podcast, and I hope that you’ll check out the show notes where we link to Ann’s website and books and the blog post that she mentioned on the CLO magazine and all of the other good stuff. So that’s on www.TalentGrow.com/podcast/episode7.

Just as a quick note, when Ann and I recorded this episode, her book was not out yet, but it has been released since. I have my copy and I hope you’ll get yours. The link is in the show notes. If you like this podcast, I hope you’ll share it with other leaders and future leaders, and I hope that you’ll also consider giving us a rating or a review, because that is something that helps us get found in search results and helps more people benefit from this show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Make it a great day.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TalentGrow Show, where we help you develop your talent to become the kind of leader that people want to follow. For more information, visit TalentGrow.com.