Self-Leadership is the key to Transformation with Jean Marie DiGiovanna
In this episode we speak with Jean Marie DiGiovanna about the role of personal transformation in leadership, how being a generalist can positively impact the way we lead, the intersection of emotional intelligence and psychological safety, and the essential innerwork that is required of us if we want to lead with authenticity and alignment.
Jean Marie DiGiovanna is an international keynote speaker, leadership development expert, certified executive coach and best-selling author. With her work on Renaissance Leadership and over 25 years of experience across the globe, she helps leaders and their teams shift the way they think, lead and communicate rapidly creating a culture of increased trust, collaboration and innovation.
Jean Marie speaks from the heart, sharing her direct insights and our conversation was peppered with insights and practical takeaways for both Alexis and I. We’re sure it will be for you too. Let’s delve in.
This conversation was packed with powerful insights about speaking up when something feels off hit home deep - having the courage to listen to our intuition without blaming or attacking. By simply observing what we’re feeling - ‘something doesn’t feel right here’ - we open the dialogue to dig into what’s really happening in the present moment, creating that psychologically safe space to explore, and come to a deeper mutual understanding. We’d love to hear what stood out most about this conversation for you!
You can find and follow Jean Marie’s work at www.jeanmariespeaks.com
Find her Amazon best-selling book 'Stop Talking, Start Asking' here.
Connect with her via LinkedIn here.
If you're ready to be part of Human Leaders and evolve the way you lead in community, join us now at www.wearehumanleaders.com
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Sally, Alexis, Jean Marie
Sally: Welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast. I'm Sally Clarke and today Alexis Zahner and I are speaking with jean Marie DiGiovanna about the role of personal transformation in leadership, how being a generalist can positively impact the way we lead the intersection of emotional intelligence and psychological safety and the essential inner work that is required of all of us. If we want to lead with authenticity and alignment, Jean Marie DiGiovanna is an international keynote speaker, leadership development expert, certified executive coach and bestselling author With her work on Renaissance leadership and over 25 years of experience across the globe. She helps leaders and their teams shift the way they think lead and communicate to rapidly create a culture of trust, collaboration and innovation, january speaks from the heart, sharing her direct insights and our conversation was peppered with practical takeaways for both Alexis and I were sure it will be for you too. Let's delve in welcome jean read that we are human leaders podcast. It's an absolute delight to have you here with us today and before we dive in a little bit more to some of the incredible work that you're doing now. We'd love for you to set the scene for us a little bit and share if you will a little bit about your purpose and what drives you and your incredible work.
Jean Marie: Sure, so thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you both and basically uh boy where to start. So I actually uh I share this piece of my journey because I actually studied computer science. So when you think of you know the people's past it has nothing to do with uh the leadership development work that I do today, however it has shaped and formed everything up until this point and so um you know kind of in a nutshell with my journey is I started out in high tech and I kind of moved up that corporate ladder you know got to be the a senior technical architect and that was sort of like the highest position at this firm I was at um that was an incredible I. T. Consulting firm that I became, I was able to become one of the founding partners when we started with 90 people in Cambridge massachusetts. And then nine years later we became over 4000 worldwide. And so when you think of that growth and the opportunity that I had there, I pretty much moved about three years in realized you know the tech is is good but I was missing working with people, I really started to realize that my passion is working with the people's side and so I had an opportunity to run one of the service lines that required delivering training to the teams, creating methodology, working with clients and presenting the methodology to clients. And then i it was kind of like a dream job, it was combining my desire for process work for training and and helping people see things And for um getting experience and presenting and facilitating teams so through the work I did there um I then moved into a lot of culture because we were growing so rapidly we could not sustain the growth. So if you can recall back in the 90s, you know, high tech was just booming and so I had Had the opportunity along with five other colleagues who had been with the company quite a while to um come off line and do our own change management. So I helped create the core values, that guiding principles, the competencies and then ultimately um design the core curriculum for business problem solving for consultants. So you know, lo and behold in my late 20's I was suddenly training 100 employees a month, thinking that was normal to do on your own. Um So I just, it was an amazing experience that gave me everything I needed to start my business and I was able to work overseas with the company in my last assignment on the regional management team in Stockholm, Sweden. And so it It was sort of um and it's come full circle this year because I got to see those uh that team and and the colleagues back there for the first time in 25 years. So it just goes to show like the connections that were built the the skills and expertise I gained through that organization helped me to start my business in 1998. So I've been in business for two decades and and it sort of has transformed since then.
Alexis: I really love how you are able to now look back and kind of see how all of these pieces of your career are sort of sort of meshing together now to really inform your work, the work you're doing now and was wondering if you could just talk us through a little bit about your transition from that work at Cambridge Tech to what you're doing today and a little bit about the personal transformation that informed that that transition.
Jean Marie: Yes, sure. Um one of the things that is so important to me is a value of growth and development and there was a point in my career where, and when I was in corporate, where I realized what is my purpose, what am I really here for? Um, there's something more and that's when I then hired myself a coach, I went to a lot of growth and development programs and um so if you, if I kind of look back at that time, um what I realized around my own personal transformation is, it wasn't until I got clear on what is it that I'm passionate about? Like my career up until that point had been what other people wanted of me and also I followed where I was good where I was good at what I was good at and you know, and and we can follow that path, but sometimes ever, you know, the things that we're good at are not necessarily the things that we want to continue to do or enjoy doing and then we can get pigeonholed. And so my kind of personal transformation started with the self inquiry like what's next for me, what really brings me joy and I then helped, I worked with a coach to discover my passion which was really to help other people think differently and so as long as I then had avenues for that, it worked out great and um and then as I started my business, I discovered more and more about what are the programs I love to deliver that align my purpose, my skills and gifts and make a difference for for those I serve and when those three kind of started matching up then I was most fulfilled. And to me that's kind of the secret of, of fulfillment is if we can have those three matchup.
Alexis: that's so powerful jean Marie because I think so many of us have this moment in our career where we realize our purpose maybe isn't tied to our skill set, like certainly that was my experience, I think you spend time studying going through university depending the sort of roles you then step into and you assume that what your passionate about should be directly linked to your skill set and I too had a real personal transformation my the beginning of my journey was in marketing and now I'm in organizational psychology and I realized the whole time for me, the underlying key theme was what makes people tick and how can I serve them. But it took me 12 years of discovery to realize like actually wow, it's actually the people that I'm most interested in, it's not necessarily how to market to them or how to sell advertising them or whatever the case is. So I love that you've been on that journey and found that connection between your skills, your experience, what you love doing and how you can serve people and that really sort of manifests into that greater idea of purpose, I think that's so powerful and it leads me to my next question to an extent and that's this idea that you speak a lot about this idea of leaders being sort of more generalist rather than very niche specific and I just want to learn a little bit more about what you mean by this and get an understanding of how being a generalist might positively impact the way that we lead.
Jean Marie: Yes. Um it's interesting because you know, back in my corporate days, the goal was to become an expert, like that's what was valued at that time, you know, for many decades and um what I started discovering is especially in the consulting world is the leaders who were more agile, who could really handle and deal with all different situations, who could manage all different kinds of people, Those were the ones and also who were committed to growth and development, meaning they were open to learning new skills, those are the ones that were more um they were more resilient. Um they could handle a lot more varied leadership positions and I'm not saying that um and I do wanna caveat that that um Experts and and niche specific uh leaders and employees are critical to our organizations. Um but as we look into, you know, moving more into this 21st century and the new really modern leader, um we need someone who's agile who can kind of bounce back and forth and have those abilities and so that's kind of what also informed me of the body of work I created around renaissance leaders because rent to me the renaissance and renaissance leaders of the, of that time had skills that were deep and wide, not just deep. Yeah, I love that. So it's about not just capitalizing or leaning into your expertise but ensuring that you have, I guess we're still calling them soft skills. I'd like to think of them as core competencies but the mindset and the behavioral tendencies that allow you to adjust where you need to, to pivot to iterate to adapt really to the situation to the market, to what the team's calling for.
Sally: I think that's really, really powerful connection between those two. Yeah. And if I could add 11 thing is um It's funny because when you mentioned soft skills, what really comes to mind too, when I really think of the bigger picture is emotional intelligence and what I can say is of the 20 something years I have been now focusing on leaders and leadership development. I've kind of come down to two specific skills that critical and then everything else can build upon them and one is emotional intelligence and one is psychological safe and if we have both of those two things in my mind, honestly anything and everything is possible, I would agree. And I what are your thoughts do you feel? EQ is a precursor to psychological safety? I have the feeling that it is. Yes, I would say so um because without and I think of you know, E. Q. Includes several different um areas, but one of the most critical is self awareness and without self awareness their transformation change cannot happen, it's just not possible. I think that's exactly why the self leadership or self awareness component is such an important part of our work and certainly a part of my own journey. I think it really we have this idea of leadership is this very sort of external concept where we're leading others and um but I think what you're speaking to also with that sense of agility that people have that naturally to be agile and to be able to respond in the present moment to situations as they arise requires that self awareness. You know, we have to be very self aware of our own responses triggers reactions, you know, the way that we might tend to respond to different situations. So I think that's such a key sort of component of it and it also sort of makes me think of something you've also touched on in your work which is about focusing on the being in the human. So you know, you've got this extensive body of working people and culture, I just love to understand a little bit more about what you mean by focusing on that, that being a component of our humanity.
Jean Marie: Sure. Um so kind of going back to that time of you know, the era where productivity was so key and and we valued people for what they did and accomplishments and the results and profits and we still do and it's critical to do that. But what I I mean the still the gift of half of of the pandemic in a way has been that leaders and organizations are now needing to wake up to the fact that we are hiring human beings, we're not hiring human doings and and if we continue to put profit before people, we lose our people and we see that clearly in the great resignation or whatever term people wanna use employees, we as human beings are no longer tolerating the kind of leaders who you know, look at people as cogs in a wheel to you know, increase the stock and and and the Eireann irony of it all and when I think about it is that when we simply treat people as human beings and honor that the humanity that we, that we are, everything will be taking problem, we'll we'll create profit, will create, need, will, will um will be successful. Um and so one of the things that I teach in my programs is you know, when you want to get clear on what results you want to produce, great, get clear on that. And then the next question I always ask is who would you need to be to achieve those results? Because if you simply just focused on practicing that being, the results actually show up, it's like magic, but it's really pretty logical actually. Um so I just and the other piece I would add is I feel like we are moving into an age of you know, we're in a rebirth of humanity really and um and that's why I love, you know, I've been uh I developed this body of work on renaissance leadership five years ago, but it's funny because now it's almost becoming a lot more heard and seen because the renaissance was the rebirth of humanity and we are kind of moving into our next renaissance in a way. Yeah, you're so right and I think you know obviously there's been a big catalyst in the last few years of this quick um and very swift shift, but I loved what you mentioned around this idea of the you need to be the person that's actually capable of driving the organizational change and certainly when we look at change management and organizational consultancy is the biggest sort of field, so many change initiatives fail because the second that a consultant leave an organization, there's no sustaining behavior beneath that because there's been no actual human change, there's been structural change, perhaps strategic change, and unfortunately I've been on the receiving end on the giving end of change management strategies.
Alexis: I've worked in local government and seeing what it's like to have people come in and start shifting everything changing everything. There is perhaps no buy in leaders don't actually overhaul who they are to be the person they need to be to sustain that, so it kind of has this real lackluster feel to it, people are left like uninspired, disenchanted and they're not actually seeing what change looks like and I think that's the key thing that I heard you mention around the role of a leader, in that they have to exemplify being what the change looks like and until they do that we can't inspire and connect teams and create that sense of belonging that we all want to have because we don't really have the role model or the behavioral shift really underpinning that and I'm assuming that's certainly been what you've witnessed in your experience as well.
Jean Marie: Yes, it has and and also the fascinating thing about when we focus on being before the doing the doing actually feels less effort, like it takes less effort, but it's counterintuitive and so, you know, that's why having experiential learning and like you said, if you're doing a change initiative, you've got to put people create an environment where you're putting people in the space of like imagine the changes how happening, who would you need to be, what would that look like? And they start experimenting with it so that when the change happens, it's not the first time they're in it. Um and and so that way they can sustain it more when the consultant leaves, right?
Sally: I love it. I think it makes it makes me think of kind of almost a metaphor at a personal level of something that I went through in my early 20s, which was reading a lot of books about personal change and development and hoping somehow that the books would magically change me and kind of do the work for me. And I wonder if in organizations, we've had the I hope that by restructuring everything again and again and reorganizing and re shifting that somehow that external change would mean that we would never actually have to do the work ourselves because it does take a little bit of personal risk and some discomfort for leaders to actually go through that process. Does that resonate for you.
Jean Marie: Yes. Um and it takes personal transformation, it's like if um you know, one of the things uh and I'm sure it's uh underpinning of of your work too is the skill of coaching. And so if we think of leader as coach, one of the things I I learned in my coach training, which was so powerful is you can only coach someone to the degree to which you are willing to be coached. And so, you know, our transformation, the amount of change we can inspire in others is only to the extent that we are actually changing ourselves. So unless leaders are really willing and open to see what's not working, um you know, we have to confront, God knows, I've, even in the last few years have confronted things that, you know, we're not easy. Um but through doing that, I became stronger. I became a better leader in the work that I do that's so important.
Alexis: Listening to you speak then Jean Marie really almost this flashback to my childhood of my mom saying to me what's good for the goose is good for the Gander. And so often we'll prescribe things to our team and to our organization and we won't be on board as a leader to do them ourselves. And I think that's, as you said, it's just a big, it's a misstep, you know, that has to come before the rest of the change and I want to, you know, you've you've spoken a lot around this idea of bringing the being into the human and I want to shift into this idea of this sort of head heart connection in leadership. I think that to connect to our heart as a leader, it does require some of this uncomfortable work and that shift to being who we need to be, but I'd love for you to share with us, do you have any practical ways or tips where a leader might be able to start on this journey to shifting to being who they need to be to lead in that way?
Jean Marie: Sure. So, um I would definitely say that the one question I mentioned earlier is the first step is, and often when I bring the question into my programs, people will think of an individual, like a person, I will say, who would you need to be? And they'll go, I don't know, let me think, um I might need to be, you know? So and so and I'm like, no, that's actually what I refer. What I mean is the way of being. So I might need to be more patient or more giving or more um uh determined, persistent, um open, right? And so once they, so that's kind of the first step to to move from head to heart is, let's say, you know, I I need to mobilize my team to achieve a specific result. And when I asked that question to myself, who would I need to be, um one of the answers might be I need to be open. I need to be um or open minded because people are going to make mistakes, they're going to go through their change process. And so the first step is that and then the question is how can I get more curious and and tap into people's emotions and also how they're feeling, What bringing the genuine back into connection, right? Because when we're in our head too much, we're basically analyzing, we're judging and we're making decisions and some of those are good and some are bad depending on, you know, the end result. But if we're in our heart, the question I would ask then is what does my heart no, what does my heart want to say in this moment? And so there are definitely questions that can move us from our head to our heart to help us stay there. But like you said, it takes that emotional intelligence to recognize whoa, I am way in my head right now. How can I bring my energy back down to my heart and genuinely connect.
Sally: I'm really curious if this is actually sort of truth. So it's a little bit of a theory that I'm hearing as well. And I know you're sitting in an art studio right now, you are an author, a speaker and a leader in the field of people and culture, but also an artist and many other things. And you're speaking earlier about this concept of being a generalist and about leaders being more than just this kind of limited subset of skills that we can have these different aspects of our personality, which actually which actually don't detract from our capacity to lead, but actually inform it. And so I'm wondering if those creative capacities that you have and that you pour time into you invest in as well as a leader, whether that also helps to build that connection between mind and heart and perhaps some of the emotional intelligence, the curiosity also that is required in order to really genuinely lead effective.
Jean Marie: Yes, I I it's a huge piece. So I'm glad you mentioned that because many of the things we enjoy outside of work, our passions are actually what inform our work. And so one of the things that um I've been working on in the last several years is how can I bring more of me to my work and the more as leaders, we can bring more of ourselves, all the pieces right? Um because what I know I I was a big compartmentalized leader, I would compartmentalize my career and that was, you know, I never really talked about personal things a lot and then I had my personal life and you know, and but once I started realizing like I'm a whole human being and the more that I can honor all the things I enjoy and see how I can bring those into to my work, the better my work becomes. And then as a leader, how can I honor more of the talents and skills and gifts on my team? Because there's so many hidden talents that we know nothing about because we aren't asking, we're not getting curious. So when I do my art, um, and you know, some people may say, oh well that's you know, if you spend two hours during the day, your imp affecting your work. Well, actually know when I do my art, I'm in a whole different space that then opens up new ideas to inform my work and then my work informs my art and so whatever hobbies and things that we enjoy, it's important to do those things and to honor them.
Alexis: I think that's a timely reminder for all of us jean Marie because I think many of us get very caught in the doing as you've said and you know, we're having a huge conversation globally right now, burnout is a word that always comes to mind mental health well being and I think that we've become so myopically focused on work and what work means, it means, you know, we can have status and nice things. But obviously in many ways it detracts from our joy and our connection to self. So what I'm really hearing there is that to have a better connection to self, actually requires us to step away from work, which might feel counterintuitive, but actually is what helps us really step into our own heart space and explore that. And one other question I wanted to ask as well, sally is such a beautiful question and there was one other thing that came up before that when you were speaking about this idea of who we need to be and something that came up for me is, you know, on this journey to realizing, you know, for us to drive this organizational change for us to have a culture of, let's say, psychological safety, who do I need to become in your experience? Is there an element of feedback that needs to happen? There is something I see very often is leaders are filled with brilliant intention, but they're not always consciously aware of their impact on others and sort of, what advice would you have for us to maybe get that feedback in a way that, you know, it doesn't necessarily destroy our confidence or helps us feel open to onboarding that in a way where we can help that inform our behavior.
Jean Marie: Yes. Um so there's absolutely a way that we can look at that and and the fastest way is to ask the people, we work with some targeted questions that gather that feedback and you know, I always say that before you attempt to ask them, you have to be willing and open to hearing what the answers are. Um I have a set of questions um on a sketch note on how to for example how to increase psychological safety. And one of those questions centers around what you just mentioned which is you know it's kind of like um who do I need to be that would help you become more successful? It's something like that. I don't have it right in front of me. But those kinds of questions when we ask people that we work with and get that information is so helpful um You know, what is it that I'm doing that's just detracting from our success, right?
Alexis: It's like when we start asking those deeper questions and like I said we're willing to hear the answers and do something about it. Then transformation happens then that environment becomes a lot more safe because when we can become vulnerable as leaders and we're willing to see our blind spots, the areas that we could improve in. Um and we get that information from our team and then we make that change. It's like gold. It totally is. But gosh, doesn't it feel yucky and uncomfortable in the first instance.
Jean Marie: Yes, it's it's not easy. Um You know I've experienced that I'm a big, I'm a recovering perfectionist and so when so quality. You know I learned in the consulting world how important quality is right? And so I would get obsessed about making sure everything had high impact and quality. And so when I when it didn't or when I disappointed someone, you know, I took it so so personally. But in the end um I mean I chuckle now because I realize like I'm just human, there's no, you know, I can't, I'm not, perfection doesn't exist, it only existed in my mind. Um So if we can just show more of our humanity and and the fact that yeah, we make mistakes, it's okay to make a mistake um then feel people feel safer. Yeah, that really resonates for me as well jean Marie. I think my journey from being a finance lawyer in an environment with perfection, perfectionism is to some extent expected. I've noticed actually that the as I sort of loosened the grip of perfectionism on myself, I've actually become much better at receiving criticism and much more open to feedback because I don't have that tight group of needing everything to be perfect. And it's almost like there's a softening almost in a physical way because I can really genuinely say please give me feedback. I want to learn where as you know, as a finance lawyer feedback meant I'm wrong and I've failed and and that's a really bad thing.
Sally: So I love how you framed that in your own journey as well. Um just sort of think zooming in here, I'd love to hear, you know, you talked about these different sort of almost phases of transformation that you've experienced and this shift towards becoming a more authentic leader or more authentically yourself through your leadership, I'd love you to share with us and our listeners what one major lesson you've had on your journey. And perhaps if you have any advice for someone who's struggling through a phase of transformation or questioning how to step into a more authentic way of leadership, what advice you might have for that person?
Jean Marie: Yeah, great question. Um, a big lesson learned for me has been to request what I need to speak up when something feels off, you know, because we all have a level of intuition that some of us tap into. Some of us may not feel it yet, or but it's all there, it's possible to tap into and whether it's in our gut and our audio auditory in our head, whatever it is, if something doesn't feel right, it's not right. And so it's so important to speak it. And you know, the biggest uh tip I can give there is you don't have to make anyone feel wrong. You can just simply say something doesn't feel right here, great, opening, right there you go, something doesn't feel right here and then you open the dialogue. Um, and so uh and to kind of answer your question about, you know, if we're struggling, um I actually just read uh the book radical acceptance and it's a beautiful book. Um and one of the things I've been practicing around that is in struggle is, again, you know, the recovering perfectionist doesn't like to see and even experience the emotion of failure or something's not right. I have found that the more I can just say, I'm feeling angry or I'm frustrated or I'm whatever that emotion is, allow and accept it to be there in the moment and to actually just get curious about it without judgment. And even asking, I often ask myself the questions like what is this, what is this about? And then what is this really about? What's underneath this? That's really important to me. That's either not happening or not happening in the way I would want, what do I most need, What does my body need and what might I need to let go of? Um so it's just that self inquiry and again, it takes a bit of emotional intelligence to to to go there and remember, but um when we're struggling, I think the most powerful thing we can do is honor the struggle, recognize it, acknowledge it and then kind of dive in and explore it a little bit without judgment.
Sally: I think you're really speaking to something that resonates so much for us as human leaders as well as this concept of almost taking radical responsibility for meeting our own needs to the extent that we can really zooming in and that self inquiry about what are my needs and how can I meet those right now rather than getting into the blame game or Externalizing and pushing it out there. And that also I think inherently creates a sense of empowerment, it empowers us because we can then take steps to look after ourselves, take steps to maybe take a moment, take a breather, whatever it is, to step into our own power and to connect with the moment and connect with ourselves. And I have to say I believe radical acceptance is Tara Brach and I'm a massive, massive fan of her work, so glad you mentioned that we'll put the put that in the show notes as well.
Alexis: beautifully put, thank you. Absolutely. And I just really want to acknowledge how much I appreciate, I guess the acknowledgement that leaders are human beings first, that's really what I got from that jane Marie and I really appreciate that because I think so often when we step into leadership roles, we assume there's this level of expectation on our expertise, on our knowledge, but also on who and how we should behave. And I personally know in my very first leadership role, I sort of morphed into this version of myself, who I thought I needed to be to be that role and there's so many moments where I was like this isn't this doesn't feel right, this feels wrong even or this doesn't really, this isn't really how I would authentically do this, but I just didn't have the emotional intelligence or frankly the audacity to stop and say actually this isn't okay for me. So I just want to say thank you for giving leaders permission to actually acknowledge their humanness in that moment.
Jean Marie: I think that's so, so, so critical that we remember that we are people and human beings first and that's actually part of what makes us so powerful as leaders. Yes. And when we do that, what what actually sort of that counterintuitive thing happens where we think if we go into the emotion and recognize our humanness it'll be harder. But actually it helps us move through the struggle faster. And so I I found myself even just acknowledging the emotion suddenly like an hour later I actually feel better. So you know it's our bodies and our and our humanity. There's so much wisdom there. If we just keep listening and honor it.
Sally: I think there's just such beautiful words for us to end with jean Marie. I think that's really honoring that the vulnerability and how that is maybe in the moment, that little bit of discomfort. But then there's this release and this sense of safety and being my whole self and that's what matters most as a human and as a leader. So thank you so much for joining us today on. We are human leaders. It's been a delight to speak with you. You're very welcome. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for joining us in this powerful conversation with jean Marie DiGiovanna for me the insight about speaking up when something feels off really hit home deep having the courage to listen to our intuition without blaming or attacking. By simply observing what we're feeling. Something doesn't feel right here. We open the dialogue to dig into what's really happening in the present moment, creating that psychologically safe space to explore and come to a deeper mutual understanding. We'd love to hear what's without most about this conversation for you. You can find and follow january's work at www dot jean Marie speaks dot com and find details of her book and more in the show notes, it was a delight to have you with us. See you again soon. Thank you so much for sharing this space with us. If you are ready to join us and be part of the human leaders community, find us at www. Dot We are human leaders dot com. Thanks for being on the journey with us and we'll see you next time.