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Crucial Conversations
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Crucial Conversations
The Art of True Leadership Amidst the Echoes of Imposter Syndrome
Feeling like you're teetering on a house of cards while the world sees a castle of confidence? You're not alone. I've been there alongside countless high achievers and my guest, a seasoned coach - Paul Larsen, who's navigated these choppy waters.
In this episode, we pull back the curtain on imposter syndrome, sharing candid tales from our own lives and the tools we've used to rediscover our personal 'mojo'. From my panic attack during a pivotal professional moment to the coach's transition from corporate heavyweight to purpose-driven guide, we delve into the raw and real emotional landscape of leadership and the quest for authentic connection.
Envisioning a new leadership paradigm, we tackle the ego's complex dance within the realms of authority and influence, contrasting genuine leadership with fear-based management. We explore the necessity of awareness, advocacy, and action in conquering self-doubt and how this led to Paul's book "Find Your Voice as a Leader". As we celebrate the change-makers raising the bar of consciousness in leadership across all walks of life, join us on this journey.
It's a conversation that transcends personal battles and triumphs, reminding us of the shared human experience that binds us all.
ć. Yeah, it's a real pleasure to meet you. I've been looking forward to this discussion. I think that you cover a very important topic that at some stage will be experienced by every human. Maybe I don't know, I never thought it would happen to me. I've managed to go through it and we briefly touched on it before we started the conversation. But, yeah, I'm really looking forward to meeting you in detail on today's chat and understanding how you got to the point that you're at doing the amazing work that you do. So, yeah, maybe a quick introduction for those.
Paul Larsen:Wow, Could you start again? I didn't hear you after hello Actually you'll get you everywhere.
Paul Larsen:Oh, my friend, thank you. Thank you so much. You know, as you say, we go through life, as you mentioned, and all of a sudden something happens to us that we don't didn't expect or we never had before, because really that's what life's about is just all the incredible surprises that can occur. And then what do we do with that? And you have here today in front of you a very confident imposter. So I am somebody who has learned in life that the conventional wisdom to be a leader, to get to move ahead in your career, you have to show confidence, you have to understand what you're saying and how you're saying it, you have to project well. So it's all the science. It's following that algorithm in your mind, and I could do that very well.
Paul Larsen:But what was missing for me is the art of who I really was. And I had that confident shell, but inside it was a house of cards, perhaps even not even any cards, it could be just air. So I felt like I didn't belong or I wasn't good enough. Or what am I doing here with all these incredible people who are so much smarter than me or gosh? At any point they're going to find out that I'm a fraud and I'm faking it. And because I have that confidence, to some degree I can fake it, but at some point somebody's going to come up to me and unmask me.
Paul Larsen:Hence where we get the framework for imposter syndrome and something that's very prevalent in today's world. So that's a little bit not so quick introduction, but I lean into my imposter syndrome. As a coach in today's world and a lifelong learner and somebody who just wants to live an inspired life with a lot of flow and not a lot of friction and just to help people get unstuck, that's what I do. And I'm here today because this is just incredibly magical to kind of be here with you and just to like, wow, we've never had a chance to meet and here we are, so it's meant to be.
LV:Well, thank you, and I do appreciate the time you've taken to come in and share your wisdom for this important topic, because when we were just setting up and having a chat, I mentioned to you that in my short journey here in Singapore, for the first time in my life experienced this term called imposter syndrome, and I had never before even taken it seriously or acknowledged or understood the concept and, by design, I made a conscious life decision to break off into a new path. You know, I was in a comfort zone in South Africa. I was in a job and a startup that we help scale globally. I was in a very comfortable position. I was with a team that I knew. I was with the technology that I had evangelized across the globe. I was really comfortable. I didn't need to do anything different. I could have sat there and been very comfortable with that, that, that laugh and you know as well, looked after and there was something in me that was just not stimulated anymore and I made the conscious decision to step back into the markets and reach that and to my network and was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to come join Huawei, a Chinese company, in Singapore, which resulted in me leaving behind the life I knew in South Africa and coming here and starting a completely new life, a new journey and immersing myself into a new culture, not only the Singaporean culture but even more so, the Chinese culture and different work ethic.
LV:You know, south Africans are known for being hard workers, but different work ethic doing something completely outside of what I had done before and to try and immediately find relevance and validation for my existence.
LV:I honestly started going through this process of do I even deserve to be here? And it played such a big psychological the last, you know, 19 months psychological journey that made me look at myself in ways that I had never looked before, made me insecure in ways that I'd never been before and really I can say with at this point in time, I found my mojo, for lack of a better term. But that was the first experience I've ever had with this concept called imposter syndrome and at first I didn't know what it was. But you know, I eventually realized what I was experiencing through a bit of reading and that's why I'm so excited to have you on this call today, because I've never I've always been a super confident guy. I've never had any problem going into a room presenting to a C suite stepping on stage. Presenting to people on a stage almost too eager to stick on.
LV:And to have gone through this has been quite a humbling experience and has forced me to introspect and to also think about how I manage teams or people going forward. So there's been quite a lot of revelations in this experience. So I'd be keen to really I'm looking forward to going down this path with you and understanding in detail the work that you do, understanding in detail the terminology of imposter syndrome, and hopefully we can provide some golden nuggets that can just help people that are experiencing this to reframe their thinking a bit.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, wow, that's probably my second wow, right, that I said today. So, first of all, congratulations, because you just delineated in your story to me and your listeners and your audience, the insights and learning that you've taken from that to experience something to make, first of all, to make the choices you make. You made and then to experience something. That was my words, not yours necessarily but uncomfortable, different. What is this? I've never felt this before. That was by choice or by design. You use the word comfortable three times in that story, by the way, and hence that has a lot to do with imposter syndrome and the voices that we have in our heads I'll say that for right now, that will come up a little bit later that want to keep us comfortable. They want to keep us in a comfortable mindset, in what we would call a fixed mindset, when we if you've read the book Mindsets by Carol Dweck and she identifies fixed and growth and we can certainly have more than just two mindsets as humans, but those are the predominant ones when imposter syndrome lives in fixed and so when you took the courage, the creativity and the curiosity to do something different in your life, your imposter voices went on, they went on steroids, they went on full alarm, and that's what you experienced then. When you found yourself feeling these feelings of what is this, what am I doing, do I deserve to be here, am I really good enough, or whatever, those feelings are that come into question, you became a creator and not a reactor, and I bring this up because this is very, very key when I'm for myself and also for the folks that I work with. Life is just full of reactions. We react to every situation. Our digital and social technologies are based on reactions. How many snaps, how many likes, how many posts, how many reposts, how many shares, whatever it might be and all we do is react. You, in your story, there and where you are now in your life, you didn't just react, but you created something new for yourself, and when we create something new for ourselves, we are not reacting. We are actually responding to our lives in a very purposeful and deliberate manner.
Paul Larsen:But that also creates, then, the friction that we just talked about from the fixed mindset, the mindset that likes everything to be the same. Think of it as in the corporate world. If you've ever had anyone say to you in business we don't do it that way here. That is not the way we do it. We'll just think of your mind as a corporate mind, with all these little corporate workers up there, and that's what they're saying. When you decided to move to Singapore, you decided to take this new venture, this new organization doing something brand new, you all your little corporate mind workers, just said oh no, no, no, we don't do this, this is not how we work here.
Paul Larsen:And so it manifests into these feelings that we all of a sudden experience that we may have never experienced before. And it doesn't take away your confidence or your ability to your point to stand up on stage or to just to go into a room and talk to folks, but all of a sudden, inside you might be questioning yourself, you might be thinking different thoughts than you normally would have, and that truly is, truly is the core of imposter syndrome. It actually was classified in the late 1970s I believe 1978 as a thing. It's not an actual. From a medical, clinical definition, it's not an actual syndrome. It's much more of a phenomena, and I love that word because it makes me think oh my gosh, I'm a phenomena, I'm experiencing this imposter phenomena, but it is an actual thing.
Paul Larsen:A couple of tidbits that have helped me finesse myself around imposter syndrome and to lean into it and to learn from it versus avoiding it. Up to 80 or 90% around the world, around our globe, of successful professionals in any industry, in any age group and in any gender have admitted to having experienced the feelings of imposter syndrome at one point in their life or career, if not even more. 80 to 90% keyword there Llewellyn is successful, so we are an excellent company. When I read that and leaned into that more and read the data and there's been some incredible studies done by it from institutions and academic schools and colleges and universities but successful professionals, so number one great company to be in. And I'll tell you, part of my history has been leading human resources for a variety of different organizations and I can tell you the people who, shall I say, are not successful or have performance issues in companies Usually don't have imposter syndrome.
Paul Larsen:They actually feel like they do really well. In fact they're not doing quite well at all. There's a disparity. It's the successful people that begin to question their own worth, their own value. It's one of the leading causes of disengagement in organizations. It's not measured in organizations In human resources. We used to spend thousands, if not even more every year on these big engagement surveys Do you like your manager? Do you like your job? Do you feel fulfilled which are wonderful questions, and so forth.
Paul Larsen:Sometimes we're not getting to the core of what the actual team member, colleague, human, is struggling with, that is, their feeling of self-worth. How does the organization help that or hinder that? It's unsaid, in fact, for many decades it was viewed as, oh, imposter syndrome. Isn't that what women leaders have? Isn't that what it's kind of a female attribute that women have? Women could be further from the truth on that again. Across the board, however, the statistics were showing that females were admitting it more than males. That makes sense, exactly right when we talk about emotional intelligence. Women leaders sometimes can absolutely maybe display a vulnerability or admit to something. Or, as conventional wisdom, at least from the old school or the old style of the male leader, is I can't say anything, I can't show a weakness, I can't be vulnerable, I can't be humble. That's where that statistic came from.
Paul Larsen:80 to 90% of successful professionals around the world, in any kind of capacity or occupation, have felt like an imposter within their lives. It affects new parents who all of a sudden find themselves in these new roles. It affects students. It is rampant in universities I'm blessed to be able to coach at incredible business schools and the MBA students. It perpetuates within the student body. Physicians there's been a lot of studies done within the medical community on imposter syndrome and physicians because they find themselves being educated through an incredible model. And then am I really good enough to become a full-fledged doctor to help people in their lives? And they begin to question themselves along when they look at the comparative piece around all the people they're with. So it is definitely a thing and it does exist with a majority of people, whether people admit it or not.
LV:Yeah, so many points and threads I want to pull out there. So I'm going to put myself on the examination table with my experience, because I think it's making myself vulnerable to what I've gone through, but I believe that, as someone who had never experienced it before, it's a good case study to unpack, because it had all the fuels and I think the first thing I want to make clear is that it completely eroded my confidence. For the first time, I dealt with anxiety and all sorts of symptoms around that, because it was so severe that I started actually having these existential crisis. The right word about what value do I deliver? Am I delivering value? And I try and reflect backwards to understand where and how it was triggered so violently.
LV:Within my experience, and I would say, coming into Singapore was fine. The company I was very well received. The team I was well received. I think that there was some initial role requirements that I had to adjust to. So there was this adjustment period to the cultures, to the role.
LV:I think that there's a high degree of competition within Asia. I've never felt that I've had to prove myself. I've naturally just been able to prove myself through my work ethic and I think a combination of different things started building up to a point where I suppose at some level my team had darted me or I was picking up that there was darts from my team. I think there was a bad actor within the team that would exacerbate the issue and was also influencing the leadership of the team and the leadership was my superfan. There was only reason that I was even here and I think that perceptions become realities. So that's the one interesting component. So confidence, anxiety, complete self-worth doubt, and I'll talk to how I kind of try to mitigate it.
LV:But in that moment I was really leaning on my support structures to help me remember who I am and the value that I have. And I think that I had to go through that process to understand myself better, to re-look at where am I strong, where am I not strong, what value do I actually want to deliver and how do I deliver it. So there was a lot of honest discussions with myself and I suppose at some level there were things that I was not meeting certain expectations and I had to look at that and accept it, even though I might have disagreed with it or felt like I didn't really have enough runway to even acclimatize before the expectations had to be met. So you can come up with all kinds of excuses, but in that moment I, as you mentioned, started distancing myself, completely distancing myself not just from the working environment but from the team, and I started gravitating to where I felt comfortable, which was with the startups and immersing myself into the startups and kind of showing the value that I can bring with the startups by helping to consult to them. So the distancing point that you raised is an interesting one.
LV:And there's this natural feeling that I had where, because I had that feeling I didn't want to be immersed with this nucleus that was making that feeling worse for me. And I remember even going into certain meetings we would have our Monday morning meetings, just a complete trading it just because I knew that I was being judged by, or at least thought I was being judged by every single person in that room. So it was a very difficult time and what advice would you give for someone who's in the eye of the storm? Because I'll pause there and I'll talk to what I did to try and rectify in my own way, without consultation, without. I did try one or two things to fix my confidence because I still had to go on stage, still had to MC and speak on stage, even though I was harboring all of these feelings. So what advice would you give to someone who's experiencing that within their own, through their own lens, whether it's school, university or work?
Paul Larsen:Yeah, that's a question that I've wrestled with because to me it's. There wasn't just an off the shelf answer for me on that in terms of what do I do, and in fact, when I found myself in the situation as well when you just said there about the Monday morning meeting and I'll get to a length, I promise now I do have an answer for that, by the way, Take your time, but when you said Go the long way around, I prefer it.
LV:Okay, here we go.
Paul Larsen:I'm not going to take the off ramp, we're going to stay here on the highway. When you said the Monday morning meeting and you talked about that feeling, you had that tenseness or that tightness or that dread. It's kind of like and I start to get that on Sunday nights like, oh, the weekend's over here, we go Monday, and it's the Sunday night dreads. And it's not just I didn't like my job, I actually like my job, I just felt very inadequate in many areas. And, to your point, we are always being judged. Judge is one of our master kind of what we call the saboteurs. We're human, so we have a level of discernment, which is a strength, but the overuse of discernment is when we judge ourselves and judge others. It happens all the time. So I completely concur with those feelings that you were having and I wrestled with what to do with that.
Paul Larsen:Now, a very common reaction, remember reaction, and we talked about reaction versus response, reaction versus create a very common reaction and one that I would say that I have scribed to, that I had to learn is to completely avoid those situations. Run as fast as you can. Get on your scooter, get in your car, get on the MRT, whatever it is just get out of that situation, quit the job, run away from that relationship, drop out of school. All of those things can be attributed to sort of avoiding the situation. Now, it might be the right thing to do.
Paul Larsen:It's not for me to sit and judge as I just said, we do if somebody does that, but when somebody does that in a reactive way, because they don't want to feel that way anymore, oh you know what. This isn't right for me. I don't want to do this. You know, I'm just going to avoid the situation. I'm going to avoid that person, I'm going to avoid that group, I'm going to avoid that team.
Paul Larsen:I'm going to, you know whatever that might mean, without really thinking what do I really need to do here? What's the lesson in front of me and that's what I heard inklings from you about you kind of deconstructed some of that. To borrow a term that we use nowadays, you kind of leaned into it. Actually, from leaning back from it With folks I see it with imposter syndrome that I work with Some have reacted by avoiding and have chosen that, and it's very different than being very purposeful, from saying, okay, I don't want to experience this anymore, but I want to learn from it. So, once I realized that I was avoiding these situations, which manifested in my life by going from job to job to job, and guess what?
LV:As I re-emerge.
Paul Larsen:Hello. You know, when we go from job to job to job, relationship to relationship to relationship, friendship to friendship to friendship, and we haven't decluttered our minds of what thoughts have drove us to that decision, it absolutely will re-emerge. That's why, when people leave a job, for whatever reason, it may not be imposter syndrome, it could be. I can't stand the manager. I don't like this. If they haven't sat with themselves and re-grounded, refreshed, rebooted whatever re-word we want to use they will bring that energy with them to the new situation.
LV:Interesting.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, so that's why relationships people can go from relationship to relationship and it's the same relationship, just a different person. So one thing I just heard you say in your story and again I want to give you applause for and appreciation for there's a three-step process that I have found works for me and I help my clients with may or may not work for everybody. The first step was awareness. I heard you have that. I heard that awareness come through with you.
LV:Not initially, to be honest. Initially I was sixes and sevens. I didn't know what was going on. It got so severe at one point that I had physical manifestations of the feeling where I was developing like a rash before I had to go to work. Just this breakout of this weird skin rash that I'd never had before. I was like cheap is okay, like what is going on here. So eventually I had awareness, but initially definitely not, and I wonder if I wasn't in another country and in a comfort zone where I could have easily jumped into another job, if I would have run away to another job, to be honest.
Paul Larsen:Brilliant insight on your part, but you weren't Well well and you weren't in a new country, and there's a reason for that, because you made that choice. And isn't our body, our energy, our spirit amazing? Because if we don't have awareness at different levels, it will try everything to make us aware, and so sometimes it may come out in the physical sense as you just described. You might have had it deep down feeling and you knew things were going on, but it wasn't something that you were just opening up or expanding into. So the body was like okay, dude, you're just not listening to us. Here it is.
LV:Actually not well.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, you're not well here. We're going to show you Sometimes that our bodies can be just magical, even in the most acute kind of situations, for us to become aware. So awareness doesn't oh my word. You know, in today's nanosecond society where you watch a show or you stream a show, everything is wrapped up in a half hour, right, everything you know. They catch the murderer, they catch the serial killer, who's been whatever, and it's all done in like 30 minutes. Everything is wrapped up. These are the arc of a story has shortened in our lives so much. But awareness takes time. Awareness takes our ability to sit with ourselves alone and bridge that distance you talked about and we've mentioned, not just with other situations and people, but with ourselves, and that takes time. We love to talk about self-awareness. It's everywhere, it's on every mindful program and it's incredible, but it's not something that just happens overnight for folks.
LV:I would go so far as to say that most adults don't know how to be aware. Thank you. Thank you Because I'm just reflecting as you speak in and I don't think I was initially fully acknowledging the symptoms. Number one, which is maybe why I had at one point that rash break out when I was peeking. Then I started having anxiety attacks. So I can think of at least three different meetings. I'd never in my life had an anxiety attack before. I actually thought it was. I was flippant about it, I didn't understand it and I was the person that would be like look at someone that's having anxiety attack and be like come on, pull yourself towards yourself, it's not that bad. Exactly, get over it. Get over it. Come on, just focus on the positive.
LV:Meanwhile, here I am in this situation. I mean I'll give you a perfect scenario. So when you have done a certain amount of time in the business, you have to go for a probation defense. I'd never heard of this in my life. Mine happened almost way beyond the time because we realized we had forgotten the formality or so deep into the job. So I had to go do this probation defense and I go into this meeting with a presentation.
LV:What I've achieved super confident, walk in. I think I'm just meeting with the senior leadership, like one person and maybe my boss, because they have to be present. All of a sudden, I've got six people on the call and it's myself and there's three, four people in the room and I think, three people on the call. This feeling starts coming from within, where I'm trying to set up the conferencing facility to be able to present. That's going wrong.
LV:Then the meeting starts and immediately it feels like an interrogation and all of these things that I've been pushing down about this imposter syndrome. Immediately I feel like I'm on trial and I had to get up and leave the room midway through my probation defense because I was having a full blown anxiety attack which I'd never experienced before. I didn't even know how to deal with it. So I was losing composure, got up I'm sharing so much detail here. It's almost embarrassing, but I suppose if there's anything I want to come out of this session is for people to understand that this exists and it's real. I had to get up and walk out, find composure, take some deep breaths, come back in and deal with the situation. But the point being that I found more and more of these situations arising where, because I wasn't aware, because I wasn't addressing it, I was maybe just pushing it down, trying to bulldoze through it. It was completely out of control.
Paul Larsen:Absolutely. So a couple of things I'm hearing you say. First of all, when I hear the name of a meeting called probationary defense, right away I'm just like I'm not even there and already I'm starting to feel tingly. The name is rattling anyway.
LV:And I did say that they should change the name, by the way.
Paul Larsen:It's like the name just has a very clinical name, which then is very industrial but also very, almost punitive in a sense. You have to defend and imagine your probationary time or your probationary tenure, and the whole idea of defending something is friction. Now I do want to say something here which I just noticed with you and, by the way, I really, really appreciate your vulnerability here. I really do appreciate the story that you're providing myself and your audience. There is no book that could replace this. So thank you for your vulnerability on this. But when you got to the point you were telling us the story and you were in the meeting, you thought it was going to be a couple of people and it ended up being about six people. The technology wasn't working, so there's some obstacles there which, of course, can always be rattling. It became much more of an interrogation in that sense, and then you just had a full blown attack and you got up in your lap. Then you had to re-center, re-ground yourself before you came back. When you started talking about that, you speed it up. You sped that up really fast as I was listening To that point. The story had had a certain pace and then you sped that up. That is in itself, right there, a huge win for you. It's an incredible self-care environment, a self-care moment for yourself.
Paul Larsen:Now, in the moment we don't always think that In the moment it's chaotic we're seeing spots in front of our eyes. Is this really happening? Am I really having to do whatever all those things? Losing your breath, losing your voice? Absolutely, we mouth goes dry. Everything just happens. But I want you to understand, though, now that you're retelling the story it is a story of validation, it is a story of recognition, it is a story of acute self-awareness, because you did something you had to do. You recognized in that moment. I would imagine that if I continue to sit here or stand here, I won't be able to do that. I won't be. Whatever's going on. I need to break. There's going to be a full meltdown in front of people. I need to break the algorithm that is occurring in this room. I need to break the energy.
LV:It felt palpable the energy felt, palpable, it felt, I mean energy, as it is probably right now as you're retelling it. That does bring up a bit of emotion. I'm not going to lie.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, I can see that. I can feel it as well. We're energetic beings. We sometimes forget that, that we are made up of, as Einstein has said, we are made up of these molecules of just energy. Now, we see the physical of everything, but we are energetic beings. We can walk into a room and feel that energy. We can have you ever walked into a room and you know something. It's like something feels off here.
LV:Yeah, the Monday morning meetings, exactly.
Paul Larsen:Or you walk into a room and it's like there's like frivolity and it's fun, and there's nothing, yeah, and it's not even that people are saying or doing anything, there's just something in the air. And so we are energetic beings and I want to congratulate you for what you did in that moment. That took incredible courage. Now, from your standpoint, it also took. It was a survival skill. It was a survival skill for you to say I have got to recalibrate, I have got to go out and re-center, I have got to go out and re-ground myself in this, out of this energy, and you broke it by doing that and so forth. But that right, there is absolute self-awareness. Again, it's not that we're sitting with ourselves and, you know, writing dear diary. Today I'm feeling this, that, that, that, no, that can be wonderful and journaling can be incredible, but sometimes, if we ignore what's going on with ourselves, the universe, the life energy, will present us situations where we have to become aware.
LV:And what does that mean to become aware? How does one do that? Because, you know, I would prefer if I could go back in time and give myself a little flick on the ear to be more aware sooner I would, just so that I could acknowledge what was actually going on and put some constructive framework in place to be able to deal with it. You know what? How does one become aware? Is it meditation? Is it sitting down? Is it writing in the journal, as you mentioned? Is it actually taking what you're feeling and putting it on paper? What does it mean to become more aware? I don't know.
Paul Larsen:And that sounds like a flippant answer because it can mean anything to anybody. The key is trying, attempting. Meditation works for a lot of one. It can work wonders on people to just sit and and and meditate, visualize. It could be just journaling, it could be, asking yourselves I, I have a very restless complex when we talk about sort of the, the saboteurs in our, in our mind.
Paul Larsen:One of mine is is restless meaning I kind of always want to be doing something, looking for distractions. I have 54 Chrome tabs open, 85, excuse me, 85 Safari tabs open. That doesn't lend to a lot of self-awareness because I'm always looking for something to dive down into. Oh, that program? Oh, look, there's a squirrel, you know, it's like anything.
Paul Larsen:So when I tried meditation as I followed all the kind of prescribed conventional wisdom that all the gurus were saying who can have wonderful solutions it was it was like oh, no, okay, I got to sit here for 15 minutes, I got to do this and it became like a burden for me. It became like another to do. It became my, my, my, my, my fixed mindset was like do you really want to do this? So I thought I need to find something else. So I played around with a lot of different sort of awareness techniques and just ask people what works for you, people that I noticed that have a certain modicum of self-awareness, and I came up with just my, you know, five at five.
Paul Larsen:I spend five minutes every morning. I can commit to five minutes and I ask myself five questions and I take about a minute to answer those questions. Sometimes I might write those questions down, sometimes I might answer and write them down, sometimes I just think of them as thoughts in my head. Questions could be anything from what do I want to accomplish today? How do I want to show up today? What am I grateful for today? What did I? What do I want to learn today? I have a series of questions that have accumulated and you know kind of throughout my experience and I'll pull any five for five.
Paul Larsen:I like that and it's so for me now. Sometimes it goes over five and that's wonderful. That means that I have found that my my inspirational moment for that day and it flows. And sometimes there's days where it's like, okay, I'm at five, I'm just getting there and I'm ready to end this. It's okay, I center myself, I ground myself and that's what works for me. But it gives me a level of self-awareness throughout that day, because the well and all we have is that. All we have is what's in front of us right now, is is, is this moment. I don't. You mentioned the past, right? You mentioned going back and and and wanting to understand a little bit, or wishing you had flicked your ear or flicked your head and and you had self-awareness back then Wasn't meant to be.
LV:You know, maybe I played out the way it should have. You're right, you know, as you're talking again, I'm, I'm. I'm going back in time and thinking about the sequence of events that unfolded and I remember consulting someone back in South Africa before I left. I managed my own team and going through this forced a lot of introspection about myself as a leader and I went back to a team that I was managing before I came literally the the role I had before I came to to Singapore and there was a. It was a really solid team. There was an individual that joined the team but he came from a background where he had kind of been thrown in the deep end and he was in the deep end and I was very he was. He was placed in our team, a really salt of the earth, amazing guy, and I really liked him as an individual.
LV:I drive a high performance team and and work ethic and philosophy and I have softened over time. Okay, because I've taken the feedback loops. You know, people that have worked for me have told me very specific things. Or you know how difficult it can be, or how demanding I can be, or I can be an over perfectionist on certain things or pretty direct and militant, and I I hear all of those things and I think it has more negative than positive but it has some really good positives. And you know, going back and reflecting my time with this team, this one individual jumped out and I was pulling apart the way I made this individual feel because he wouldn't hit the mark.
LV:He was consistently making mistakes that I would get frustrated on in public, with him in front of the team, and I was comparing that to my current circumstance with my current leader and how I felt he was addressing this situation, because parts of it was coming from the team, parts of it was his perception of me, my wanting of validation from them and then also being taken to task for things that I wasn't hitting or marks that they had put in place that they felt like I wasn't, you know, achieving.
LV:And I suppose the awareness that you refer to that was a big part of it. Because the coming out of this experience, you know I'm going to be building a team again. I do know that I will be working with humans again and I will be in a position of leadership again and if there's one takeaway that I can have from this whole experience is how I would do that differently, with more empathy, understanding and to not repeat the mistakes that I've made in the past and because I know that that individual in South Africa that I put him through Hull he's probably a stronger, better person. But maybe that's not how you do that and you know he did rise up to the challenge, he stuck and you know he started delivering and meeting the standard. But I made it very difficult for him and I do regret that at some level now and just because I've gone through the converse, been on the other side of the fence.
Paul Larsen:Did you know what we call that? What you just talked about? You know what we call that? Introspection, yeah, introspection, but I call it the circle of learning, because what you just did there is you just took us on a circle where you gave the story of your former colleague, your former teammate, who you sounds like you treated in a certain way, publicly as well as perhaps privately, and maybe not in the most empathetic way all the time or consistently, and you use the term drive, which is a very hard term, especially for leaders. Managers use the term drive, leaders, don't Managers, and we can talk a little bit difference between managers and leaders in terms of that mindset, because that has a lot to do with imposter syndrome. So you did that, you colored our world brilliantly with that story and then you just took us into where you are today.
Paul Larsen:Oops, and you took us where you are today and about the learning from that and about how you're going to create, co-create, author, a new team with relationships that have a trust and perhaps a credibility, and you're going to enroll people along and you're going to engage people. It's not always going to be tell, tell, tell, do, do, do. So the reason that occurred for you back then is exactly what's in front of you right now, the learning. That's what we call the circle of learning, and that is exactly what awareness is about. As you said, introspection, it's going within and saying, yeah, man, I treated Paul like crap. Man, if I had that to do over again, I wouldn't do that. Whoa, brilliant, brilliant, versus. I'm going to do more of that. That's how I treat people. I'm going to be the leader, the toxic leader, the leader that people fear, the intimidating leader, and da, da, da, da, da da, which is what happens when people do more of that. No, you just took us on a whole circle. That just shows what that learning is.
Paul Larsen:He was there in your life, in that particular capacity in your career, for a reason, and it's not about should I, could I? I needed to have awareness. Back then. It didn't matter. That situation was there to bring you up to present day. So you are now aware of what you want to do. For myself, you want to talk about regrets. My friend, I'm 32 years going on, 33 years sober, wow, congrats, thank you, thank you. I think that's an accomplishment that I do recognize and I kind of never really I don't always publicly talk about it, and I should, because it is an accomplishment as I talk to it On today's society.
LV:That's massive. Yeah, thank you.
Paul Larsen:I think you're right. My vice is now we're peanut butter, cookies and coffee, so it's, like you know, very different than my younger self In that order.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, yeah, usually in that order Cookies, go anywhere in between. It's like that gets me all the time. But when I look at to your point about regrets, when I look at how I was when I was under the influence, managing people drinking on the job, couldn't wait to get home and have my six pack and then that first, as an alcoholic, we call it, that was my drug of choice. By the way, Besides, I've tried everything twice, but alcohol was my drug of choice. You wait for that click when you've had just enough alcohol that you begin to feel that it kind of just takes over your body and it brings a level of relaxation and so forth, and then, instead of stopping at that point, you just do more. So you talk about regrets and I can look back and say how did I treat people when I was not even in my quote unquote right mind, when my mind was clouded by alcohol or wanting that next drink? It wasn't always just the drinking, it was wanting the drink so manipulating my life, my situation, my team, my work to make sure I could always have a drink available. Wow, I stopped.
Paul Larsen:As I said, I stopped drinking 32, 33 years ago when I realized there wasn't one event I just had. I was sitting alone in my apartment in San Francisco, California, where I live, and I just had some type of awareness which had not been part of my DNA before and it just said if you continue doing this, you're not going to have a life that you're going to be proud of and in fact you may not have a life. And it wasn't anybody, it just sort of just came and it was like one of those cartoon characters with the little bubbles about the head. It was like what is going on, but it was so acute and, of course, it came from within and it was a level of awareness and clarity, a vision, and I realized in that moment I think I need to do something. I had a job, I was functioning, I had a good job, I had friends, but my body was shutting down. I would drink and before I knew it I would be passed out at like seven o'clock in the evening.
LV:Every day.
Paul Larsen:It got to a point where it was like at least five days out of the seven day week and my body was just shutting down. It was just saying you can't do more. Thank goodness it was doing that, because I'm actually. I look back on that and I think again the bodies are our mind and spirit and heart and everything is magical, because it was like we're going to protect you. You can't go in to drive a car, even though I would. You can't even go out and walk, even though I would. You can't even. You're going to shut you down.
LV:There will always be signals from the body or the higher self right.
Paul Larsen:It's the higher self, my friend, and you're absolutely right, the body and the higher self and our source, whatever our belief is at that time, which at that time I didn't have a lot, and so I just decided in that point, right there I'm drawing the line. Now, 32, 33 years later, I look back, like you just did, and I look back at some of the folks that I interacted with, that I engaged with, that I yelled at, that I treated somewhat horribly. No excuses, it was me, it's not the alcohol, it was my choice, always my choice. And I think, oh, do I make amends? That's one of the steps.
Paul Larsen:Is to make amends and there's a lot of power in that.
LV:Do you feel like you still need to nowadays? Do you still think about that?
Paul Larsen:Oh, I do and I make amends in the universe. So if I can't make amends necessarily back directly, I make amends by paying it forward.
LV:Which I think you're doing right now. Right, I mean right now. The work that you're doing is really part of that. As I'm listening to you speak, I can't imagine that version of you, because you're the softest, nicest guy I've met Since the moment we first engaged this morning. I just couldn't imagine a version of you yelling at anyone.
Paul Larsen:I appreciate that I appreciate that, because who I am today is a manifestation of the decision and choice I made 32, 33 years ago. And then, of course, every choice I've made since then. Some have been better choices than others, even through all that. But that's why, when I made that decision and then created sort of my life and it wasn't like I had all the answers and it wasn't like I had a roadmap but I thought to myself, well, if I can get through this, I think I can proudly try to do get through most things in life. So when the imposter syndrome piece comes in, for me it was what is this? What's this feeling? I've never felt this way.
Paul Larsen:To your point Now, your reaction to it I'll call it reaction the anxiety, the rash, all those things again, that was your body, like my body was doing something with me to say you've got to stop this. That's your body saying you've got to deal with this, you've got to be aware of what's going on. You've got to figure out what this is and deconstruct it and then reconstruct. And I do believe with imposter syndrome Llewellyn, it's all about we deconstruct our ego and we reconstruct it.
LV:Yeah, the ego, the eternal battle with the ego.
Paul Larsen:Oh, because you had said earlier when we first started how sometimes you would go on stage and maybe a little too much ego or a little bit too much of something.
LV:Overly bullish and confident yeah.
Paul Larsen:And it's wonderful to be assertive and confident and so forth. The ego can. We all know the ego can be on steroids, and we know people. We don't have to look very far anywhere to see people that do that, and so for me that is. It's not about not having ego or being ego less?
LV:Yeah, because I think ego is important, but at a tapered ego, an ego that is self-realized, not an unchecked ego. I think that's the most dangerous type of person.
Paul Larsen:What I like to call it is an aware ego.
LV:There we go.
Paul Larsen:It's like ego aware and there'll be oh my word, llewellyn. There are times where I've been with other colleagues coaches, speakers, leaders and I'll be hearing things about. They'll be talking about themselves or what they're doing. The posturing, the posturing. Thank you very much. And instead of just kind of listening and maybe learning or extracting myself from the situation if I didn't want to listen or whatever, all of a sudden I find myself engaging in the conversation with my ego. Well, I can do that and I can do this as well. I can drive three cars at one time and I'm like and I'm human and this is what I code.
LV:Do you find you catch yourself and then you're like what is going on?
Paul Larsen:I say to myself, oh my God, paul, ego aware. And then I just will sit back and I'll take a deep breath, and then it becomes almost comical for myself, for myself, and I don't want to make it comical for other people. But then I find, look at what you're doing, paul, and this is what you coach. But then it makes me even to me. It makes me a coach from experience.
LV:You're making me think as you speak, because I've had, I suppose, with this event, three deaths of my ego. I like to term it deaths of the ego. The first was when I had my company after five and a half years that imploded. I made some schoolboy errors in running that and it was quite a traumatic experience. The second was a ceremony I went through which completely evaporated my ego. The third was this event at some level was the death of my ego in some respects, as to who I thought I was. However, the ego is something that remanifests and comes back and it plays an important role and I think to do some of the stuff I need to do, I need ego right.
LV:To be able to go on stage and dazzle the audience with a inspiring keynote, or even just to be an emcee. You can't go up there with no ego Because you're just going to be obvious that you just don't have any confidence, maybe, or whatever it is that ego gives you to be able to do those things. It's almost like wearing a mask, but as you speak and you're making me think it's out of one of the Vedanta books or a Buddhist book where it's like sweeping a floor. It's not something you do once, right, it's something that you have to continuously do. So to hear you as five star speaker that is going around the world and educating and providing insights around this important topic. That you even still catching yourself in moments where your ego is triggered and subconsciously, without realizing, you fall into the trap of the ego taken over, just is testament to that right.
Paul Larsen:Absolutely, and I look at that to your point. I don't beat myself up over that. I think that's a learning. The universe will always provide me a lesson, and whenever those vignettes occur, I feel like I mean, like I mentioned, I feel like, oh okay, this is my comic strip moment for the day and I'm going to learn from this, versus just avoiding it or continually engaging with it and getting even more superpower around the ego. Now you mentioned something that was really, I think, really key just a couple of seconds ago around the death of the ego. Right, or you've had multiple deaths of the ego. The key for me, for you, on that, would be do you bury that then, and then grow and then regrow? It's one thing to death, but you want to bury that so that it doesn't manifest itself in the same way that it did as part of your finessed ego. That comes out Correct.
LV:I would say I'm just trying to think in real time here that I suppose the only concern I would have with the term of burying it is that I don't learn from it. So I definitely I reemerge wiser and more conscious of the ego, because it's trying to understand what that animal is right. So, yes, maybe I bury the older version, but I don't forget the older version because I need to reference it to check myself before I wreck myself.
Paul Larsen:I think that's a beautiful way to put it. The word that comes to mind is reincarnated. So it's like we can reincarnate our ego and we can finesse it, and the ego will evolve with us as we move forward. And, as you and I talked about, it's blending our art and science together. The science is our mind, which has all the data and the numbers and the ROI and the product dashboards and the protocols and the algorithms and the processes and programs and everything that knowledge that we create and knowledge that is given to us and we obtain. And then the art. The art is what do we do with all that? What's that canvas that we are creating in our life? What's that legacy? What's that brand quote unquote that we are propelling forward? Where do we get our inspiration from? How do we create a life that is alignment with what we want to do, not just reacting to numbers and data, but is blending that together?
LV:So beautiful. I love the visual you're giving me because it's not just a meat computer, is it?
Paul Larsen:And so much of today's world is that we're validated probationary defense. We're validated by numbers, we're validated by data, which again is important, but it's a blending of the IQ and the EQ. Together is the way I like to say. That has also been a struggle for me. When I was a new manager, I had like 15, 16 people reporting to me. I thought I got power, I got these people, I can tell them what to do and I did, you do have power.
Paul Larsen:I suppose it's how you leverage your users Exactly, but I didn't empower them, correct?
LV:Because that's the difference between having power and being a leader.
Paul Larsen:Exactly, I was a manager and I had a manager mindset. Now, this is not about managers and leaders in terms of titles, it's a manager mindset to be efficient, operational do, do, do, do, do.
LV:Get the objects of done at all costs.
Paul Larsen:Get it done. Exactly as you said earlier drive Goals. You got to achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. No matter what Well the leader mindset is. You enroll, you engage, you envision. People want to follow you. That don't report to you Managers are all about. I've got this many people on my org chart. I've got this many people in my boxes. I've got this many da, da, da, da, da da. How big is your enterprise? My enterprise is bigger. Size, manage matters. Leaders are like doesn't matter. I'm here to influence, inspire, motivate. I'm still going to be productive. I'm still going to have results. I'm still going to be successful, but I'm going about it with a nuance of the art and science, not just the science.
LV:I mean it's so obvious when you work for, the contrast between the two right? I mean I've always followed leadership and I can say the person that brought me here and that I work for, even though I've had the imposter syndrome, maybe triggered by some of the elements of how things have been perceived or managed he 100% is a good leader and people follow him. I mean it's the reason that I'm here and I think, if I zoom out and look at the world today, there's so few leaders, there's a Holocaust of leadership, if I could put it in any better way. And I look at how we've been pushed to the brink of a new world war because of a lack of leadership, because of a lack of that essence that makes a leader, and these bad actors that are in the system in leadership positions. It's just complete chaos.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, from my perspective, in terms of looking at leadership in the world, we're in sort of a bad case study right now, and that will last for a while. Over time, things will hopefully evolve, but we are in a state of fear and managers operate from a state of fear. Now they'll call themselves leaders and they'll be elected, potentially, as leaders or anointed as leaders, but they are managing by fear. Everything is fear, and fear of losing control, fear of losing the command, fear of losing your livelihood, fear of losing whatever it might be, and instead of including and enrolling, you're excluding and you're keeping people out, and that's what's happening right now. And so they have to show their power and they have to show their strength by using every means available, which is why we are having the world appears on fire right now.
Paul Larsen:The work that we do, the work that you do, the work that I do, the work that our esteemed colleagues do, it can be overwhelming to think about. Well, what can I do, especially when we're dealing with our own imposter syndrome? I've learned, both as an author, as a coach, as a consultant, as a friend, as a human. I talk to one person at a time. That's all I can do, and I might be talking to a room full of people if I'm blessed to be able to do that and or a group, a team of leaders, but it doesn't matter. I'm talking to that one person at a time and learning from that person. Maybe they're learning from me, and then that's how we make, that's how we take those baby steps. I do want to mention the it's from the imposter piece you mentioned, the awareness, right, the other step that you and I have been talking about. There's three steps that I use and they all start with A, so it's three A's. I'm a very simple person and I keep it very street level smart, because that's the only way. Because a lot of times I'll listen to all the gurus and I'm like I have no idea what they're talking about and, more importantly, I have no idea how to apply it right, and I've gone to schools and so forth and but it's like, oh, help me, please Just tell me what I need to do on the street level. Awareness and we've talked a little bit at length around how do we garner that awareness? And if we don't sit with ourselves, our bodies, our minds, will tell us when we need to be aware, as you exemplify.
Paul Larsen:The second step is being our own advocate. So what I've learned with imposter syndrome is it's what other people are thinking of me. That's what I put out there. They think I'm a fraud. They think I'm a fake. They think I don't belong. They, you know it's they, they, they. When in fact it's me, it's coming from my own thoughts. It's coming from my own little team members in my head. So we have to learn to be our own advocate, and that is that practice could be anything from just recognizing who we are, recognizing what we do, recognizing the inspiration that we may bring, recognizing our validation, recognizing that you know what I've made it this far. I think I can get through today. For some that might be, you know, recognizing that that wait a minute and I've said this to myself I do belong here Now.
Paul Larsen:I have to say that sometimes a few times, but in order for it to sort of, for me to feel embodied, to embody that it's not just about saying affirmations and like, oh I'm, you know this or that, we have to really sit with it and really embody it. And it goes back to what I talked about, that five at five, where I kind of think about how do I want to be today?
LV:I mean it definitely resonates right. It's so interesting going through those discussion with you because we've covered the awareness at length and I've reflected on how that happened. The advocate part is interesting because I went through that. I had to go through the point of advocating the value that I bring and the way I did it is I did what I do best, which is dive into innovation. I started innovating within the role and creating things that didn't exist so that we could differentiate within our respective objective. So going and building our consulting tools so that we could understand the startups better, so that we knew how to help them scale up better, because there was a gap in the business there. So applying my mind and building things out that didn't exist and finding the, the, the refinding that confidence that this is who I am. I built things where they're on things, going out and consulting with the startups and leveraging the tool to help them understand their business better and, and you know, adding value, integrating with other departments outside of my core team and helping them find value. Running design thinking workshops and helping them unpack the pain points that exist within a big corporate and then helping them differentiate in their own way.
LV:And the advocating part is so interesting as a second day because, if I look over the last few months, what is the one thing I keep saying when I have my re-engagement with my leader, which is form, I say to him for a moment there I really doubted who I am and the value I bring, but I'm okay now I know and I'm confident, and the output that's coming from this journey is I'm sharing things that don't exist, that have never existed. That's adding immense value and changing the game in how we do what we do and, although it maybe wasn't initially received or understood, the broader organization is starting to look at this stuff and be like, wow, we should be charging for this as a consulting product. And I'm, like I said you, starting to find my mojo again and that's the stage. I'm keen to hear what the third day is, but that's kind of exactly the process and the journey that I've gone through in this experience.
Paul Larsen:When I heard you say that earlier on and you took me back to the mojo comment as well, that's what the catalyst was for me to make sure that we cover the advocacy part, because you were exemplifying that. And I just want to also point out to you that Monday morning meeting, or that probationary defense meeting where you got up and you left, that was an advocacy moment. That was a story of advocacy that is stronger than anything I've heard in a long time. So I again understand that that story right there is incredibly powerful. It doesn't mean you have to retell it.
LV:And you know exactly.
Paul Larsen:But to recognize what it is. That was a very it sounds like it was a very pivotal moment.
LV:It was traumatic because at that point I was like what the hell is going on with me? I've never gone through this. I was at a complete loss as to who or what was unfolding here.
Paul Larsen:But you had the awareness and then it led to the advocacy for yourself, without using those words, without using the definitions, to get up and do something about it. So you took care of yourself in that moment. Self-advocacy, advocacy for ourselves. We can do it for teams really well. People can please teams and help teams and be an advocate. But to really like be an advocate for ourselves requires self-care. It requires compassion for ourselves. It requires, dare I say this in today's world self-love.
LV:Right.
Paul Larsen:I mean, can we really truly say that we love each other and that, more importantly, that we love ourselves? And I'm one of these believers again, just based on my own experiences around if we don't practice something ourselves, how can we manifest that for others, how can we inspire that for others? So, if I don't love myself, how can I actually love somebody else purely? I might be able to go through certain motions, I might be able to have certain feelings, but that kinetic energy of loving somebody, supporting somebody, recognizing somebody, validating somebody, how do I do that if I can't do that to myself? That's why that advocacy step is so important, especially when our imposter voices is out on steroids.
Paul Larsen:The third day so we have awareness, we think about awareness, right, all about, like, okay, what do we? That self-awareness, and then that leads to advocacy. And then the third day is the one that we just have to do in life if we want any type of catalyst, if we want any type of change, if we want to take any type of step, if we want any kind of momentum, and that is action. Simple Now. Simple to say we don't take action. We can have all the awareness we have and I can sit here and be the biggest self-advocate, but if I don't start the podcast that people were saying I needed to do, if I don't write the book that people say, gosh, where's your book coming out? You just helped me so much. I don't do that, then I haven't moved forward. Action is so important and it doesn't have to be large scale, transformative change. It can be a simple little step forward, and I deal with this all the time in my life.
LV:Yeah, I'm smiling because, so you know, the manifestation of the Sympostor Syndrome was coming through in my public speaking where, just before I'd go and do an MC gig or a keynote or even a presentation to a customer, I was having these anxiety moments where I just was looking and I wanted to run out of the room. So some of the action I would put in place was, if I was doing a keynote, I'd go and meet every single table just before I started the event and go break the asking, just go introduce myself to everyone how you were you're from. That was one coping mechanism. The funny one for me is, again, I don't think I'm still 100% aware of what was going on or understanding of the imposter syndrome. So I went to go see a voice coach because what was happening was when I was going to speak on stage. I was having these moments and I remember sitting down with this gentleman and his father was a professional on radio and he now coaches people and he was on radio and I remember sitting down and explaining all the symptoms. He was like I think he realized that this was not a bad voice, it was something else and we started that first session and we went through everything, but it was a confidence requirement that was, you know, I think he knew that there was something else at play and you know it was such an interesting first session and I felt like he and I both knew that I was in the wrong room.
LV:But to your point, action. You know I wanted to get ahead of this, I wanted to get a grip on it. I think the other action that I took that maybe we underestimate is my family and friends in South Africa. Just being able to talk to them and help. You know they cared, they were worried and, like, when I opened up and at least shared with some of them, very selected people, what was going on, I have an amazing business partner, yeah, in Singapore, you know, that's sitting outside that helps set up this meeting and the words of affirmation and the reminder of who I am and the build up there, you know, just engaging with her all the time.
LV:So just gave me just enough to face this event in my life and push through and start taking the action. And if I look back now, I'm grateful. I don't want to, I almost want to say I'm grateful for the event and I'm even more grateful that I pushed through because I've grown in new ways. I've had introspection about what I would do differently and I've built new things as part of my action to get out of this validation crisis.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, oh my gosh, that's your diagram. There was just beautiful the voice teacher vignette. There's a reason. Of course you went there and it wasn't quite the match and you both realized it, but of course that was action. There's probably also a little bit of the ego saying oh, that's what you need. You get a good, we're gonna go get you fixed this way.
Paul Larsen:Find your confidence on stage. Exactly, it's gotta be a voice thing, it's not gonna be anything else, and so it was wonderful that you took that action because it became apparent. I think it's very, very important when we are in, as you had mentioned at the very start of our beautiful time together today. You had mentioned comfortable three times and I also wanna be careful of it's not bad to be comfortable. Comfort zones sometimes get kind of a negative meaning but, they can be beautiful, they can be, they can be.
LV:They are necessary.
Paul Larsen:They are necessary, and as long as it's deliberate, as long as it's sort of like I'm gonna stay right here right now and I'm doing it on purpose. For this reason Cause effect, purpose, outcome.
LV:You do need to take a time out in that comfort zone at some point, absolutely.
Paul Larsen:Absolutely. It's like we get pushed and pulled in so many different ways in life that sometimes it's like you know what? I'm staying right here, I'm laying on my couch with a cat on my stomach and I'm gonna watch them or stream something and that's gonna be my comfort zone and that's what I'm doing, Whatever that is for people. So I don't want there to be a negativity associated with comfort zones, but when we purposely want something different, when there's that Louise Hay used to call it the inner ding in us that is saying there's something else you might wanna look at doing that inner ding we have to take a certain step in which to do that the action.
Paul Larsen:I am back in 2009,. I was at Adobe Technology great company, beautiful company, absolutely phenomenal company, Great job, had a great human resources job. I had a team of people and Adobe was a wonderful company and I worked with leaders at all levels there and I wasn't engaged at all. I counted the hours every time I went into work. I couldn't wait for the weekends and it wasn't that the job was bad or the company was bad, I just was. I needed to do something different, but it was comfortable.
LV:Yeah, exactly what I had with the job before. Came here, oh, and did the same.
Paul Larsen:Same thing. Yeah, I found myself in June of 2009, sitting in a church listening to people talk about my father who had recently passed away, and he was a beautiful man, wonderful man, and they're all standing and they're talking about what he meant to them, which was no surprise. He was, again, an incredible person. And people were coming from 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago and in current and, oh, he did this and he meant this and he and it was so heartfelt and it just filled me up with so much emotion. Then, when I processed the emotion and I became aware of that emotion, I turned to a little advocacy, without knowing all those steps right, and I thought, wow, what are they gonna say about me? You know, it was that proverbial when we transition or when we bury our ego, but we go with it. What are they going to say about me? And I sat there and I was like, literally, paul's a great HR leader. He helps me lay off 400 people. He helped me hire 500 people. He helps me create incentive compensation plans. Paul helps me, you know, restructure my organization. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. That's not what I want to be known for and, of course, I was reading into a lot of that and it was in that moment that I had that awareness, I had advocacy, because I realized I could do much more than what I was beginning to be known for.
Paul Larsen:So what was missing was action. So I left that. How long ago was that? 2009. Okay, so roughly, you know, I, you know. So I left there. I thought what am I going to do with this? What am I going to do with what this experience was that just happened to me? So the paradigm shift kicks in. Eh, Mm-hmm.
Paul Larsen:And I said I've got to go do something. I don't know what it is, but I have to go do something, something of substance something of legacy.
Paul Larsen:Something of legacy, something of messaging, something. So you know, it's wonderful to follow a passion, but we have to eat and we have to pay our bills. So I couldn't just like. I planned my transition from Adobe and I said, you know what? I don't know what that is, I wasn't going to go to another company. It wasn't another company. It wasn't going to a Google or an Intuit or an Autodesk or another software company or a sales for it was. It wasn't that it was. I've got to go find what I'm supposed to do. So I said you know what? I? And imposter syndrome was full on. But I said you know what? What's the worst that can happen? Sometimes that's a great question to ask yourself. Mm-hmm, the worst that can happen is I can fail miserably. And then am I okay with that? Like, okay, yeah, I probably am okay with that. Have I failed in my life before? Sure, you know, and I, I can learn from that and I would go out and get another job then Would I be okay doing that?
Paul Larsen:Sure I go get another job. I can go to Starbucks or Walmart or another company and I could get a job somewhere doing something. If I really needed to work, I'd do nothing. I could. I've sold shoes for a living. I've made slurpees for a living. I grilled hamburgers. I can go do anything if I had to. So I. So if I looked at that and I said, wait a minute, that's the worst that can happen to me, I've got to try this out. So I I long story short, or long story long I left Adobe and I just kind of hung my shingle out as a quote unquote consultant and I recognized to say what am I? You know, let's see what happens. And I got some incredible engagements that told me what I, what I was aligned to do and what I wasn't. And coaching appeared. I didn't leave Adobe thinking I was going to be a coach.
LV:And let's, let's dive into that a little bit. You know, as we, as we come to the end of this, but so, right now, your work, you, you go and you coach corporate companies, smes, entrepreneurs.
Paul Larsen:I coach anyone who wants transformation in their life, who wants to get unstuck. I coach people within organizations. I coach people that are in their in a life situation that just entrepreneurs starting out, they, they, they, they, they kind of just they're. They're in a current situation and they want a different future situation. Coaching is current to future. Current to future, it's not the past.
Paul Larsen:So when I finally sat with myself and brought more awareness into into what I was doing as a coach, later on in in 2014, 2015 and 2016, I wrote a book called find your voice as a leader, and that was that actual tag was given to me by a client of mine who said you know what, paul? You help us find our voice. That's what you do. You help us find who we are. And I just looked at him and I just said that's that's it. Thank you for that.
Paul Larsen:And so I took voice as an acronym, and it's about our values. How do we discover our values? How do we then establish and create outcomes for ourselves that are aligned to our values? How do we demonstrate that influence and credibility around relationships and how do we influence our environment and our leadership? Courage is the sea. How do we take that, that small courageous step, again, action. And then, lastly, I wrap it all up. So values, outcomes, influence, courage. Wrap it all up with the biggie which is your expression in the world who are you? What do you stand for when you stand alone? How do you stand alone, what's your legacy and how do you know that? So I wrapped that all up into this voice, acronym and modality.
Paul Larsen:It's not academic for me, because it's what I lived, it's everything that I've lived. So, again, I coach from experience. I coach my life right From my life experience. I'm not everybody's coach, but the people that I'm attracted to in terms of, in terms of coaching, in terms of helping, are people that are probably or have been in similar situations and can relate to who I am and what I do, whether it be in an organization or outside. So that's what leads me to this beautiful environment that you've created today, and I'm blessed because I get to meet people from all over and learn and I just expand my heart and my mind around. Just sort of, I'm an open book. Let me add pages and let me take some pages out when it gets too cluttered.
LV:Nice Love that Well, I've definitely learned. It's been such a enlightening discussion and therapeutic discussion in many respects for me Just to. I didn't plan to go for the discussions to go the way it has, and it definitely has been a good way to crystallize the journey and to acknowledge the awareness and the need for awareness, the importance of advocacy and how critical action is to get through the journey of being or experiencing imposter syndrome and I think that anyone that's listening to this hopefully we've given them just a slither of insight that can help them understand that this is a real thing, that if you haven't experienced it there's a good chance you probably will at some point. And if you have experienced it, that you should acknowledge it and face it and nine times out of 10 push through, unless it's really severe and you have really bad actors around you that you need to kind of separate yourself from. You've also just got a new book Find your Voice. Do you want to just quickly talk to that?
Paul Larsen:Yeah, it's just Find your Voice as a leader. It basically encapsulates just what I went through in my life. It's not my life story by any stretch of imagination at that, but it's what I've learned as being a leader, not just within organizations but in life, and it takes the voice model and deconstructs it and delineates it out so that it's very workable for people to practice. And it was an homage to my sister who passed away after the loss of my parents, and then my sister, who I was very, very close to, transitioned, and so one of the things that she said to me before she left she said get your book out. And you know what, llewellyn, as I'm saying here, sitting here telling you this, because I thought about I certainly have thought about this in my life, but she helped me get from advocacy because I had the book but I didn't take the action, and so she was that, and so she still does that. She still does that in the spiritual sense. Whenever I feel that little kick, it's like okay, I got you.
LV:Llewellyn, I hear you, I hear you.
Paul Larsen:Yeah, so I appreciate that. I love the book and I just I love working with people, partnering with people, helping people, because that's what's been given to me in my life and to your point, I think we're all connected. We're all connected to think that we aren't in this global sense and anything we can do just to help each other out in any way, shape or form is just, it's golden and the world needs that right now.
LV:Preach, brother, preach, yeah, shout out to your sister. And I love your word of transition. It tells me a lot about your thinking and I think that the work that you do is extremely important at this time. I'm always honored to meet change makers such as yourself that are going out there and just helping to elevate the consciousness, because that's really what it's about, and I think we need more of that. The world needs more leaders, and when I talk about leaders, you don't necessarily have to be the head of a nation, a political party. It could be a leader within your role, within your job, within your family. We need leadership. We need people like yourself that are just helping people elevate their consciousness and become better leaders, because I think all of that grants well together is what the world needs right now to shift the narrative. But thank you, paul. I really appreciate you, I appreciate your work, I appreciate the time you've taken to share your thoughts and I've definitely taken some real pulls of wisdom from you today.
Paul Larsen:Well, thank you, llewelyn, it's been absolutely spectacular. I appreciate everything about you, I appreciate everything about your story, and you've just made this an incredible experience for me today, so thank you. Thank you, paul, all the best, thank you.