Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Regina Huber, welcome to the Midlife Fulfill Podcast Day Maximum Episode.
Regina Huber [00:00:06]:
Thank you so much for having me on, Bernie. I am so pleased to be here with you today.
Bernie Borges [00:00:11]:
Well, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate it. I’m excited for our conversation. Let me give you a little introduction for my listener. You are a transformational leadership coach. You’re an inspirational speaker. You’re an author, and you’re in the you’re the founder and CEO of Transform Your Performance, where you drive bold, heart centered leadership. We are both, in the leadership space.
Bernie Borges [00:00:35]:
That’s how we connected. So really looking forward to our conversation. I love your holistic approach. You you’re focused on helping clients become thriving leaders. And you also you have a background on 5 continents. That’s really impressive. And, apparently, you like the number 5 because you have developed 5 proprietary coaching frameworks. Very, very impressive.
Bernie Borges [00:01:01]:
And as an author, you’ve written Speak Up, Stand Out, and Shine. And then more recently, as in very recently, you have released your latest book, which is Living My Frickin’ Amazing Life. I love that title. I’m sure we’ll hear more more about that. And I invited you here for this episode to have a conversation around this topic of self leadership, the power of self leadership. So, Regina, let’s just begin with what is it? What what do we mean by self leadership?
Regina Huber [00:01:31]:
Well, partly, it is actually about living that freaking amazing life. And, you know, leading your own life and, and and leading your self while also, being able to lead others better once we have the self leadership, once we master self leadership. And, you know, self leadership as you well know, Bernie, is based on self awareness. So how do we then gain self awareness? Well, we gain it through self observation, introspection, self discovery, as I like to call it, and also through the feedback of other people because our perception of ourselves, our our behavior, even our words, and of our energy, everything that flows into our leadership presence might be different to the perception that other people have when they see us, when they listen to us, and when they experience us as leaders. Right? So it’s very important, especially as leaders, to also request feedback because, of course, you know, our team might not always give it voluntarily without us, us requesting it and without them having a system or a feedback process in place.
Bernie Borges [00:02:50]:
So, actually, I I wanna unpack that because I understand your point, and and I agree. Requesting feedback is important because to your point, oftentimes, employees are not gonna volunteer the feedback. So you have to kinda make it safe. You have to sort of give them permission and and demonstrate that you really want the feedback. So maybe you can provide some guidance based on what you’ve experienced on how effective leaders actually get feedback from their teams.
Regina Huber [00:03:18]:
When you are great at providing feedback, your team will probably more easily mirror that. So it’s it’s it’s it’s constantly a given back of feedback. It should really be ideally, a a more fluid process and more ongoing and not just, you know, at the end of the year. But of course, yes, sometimes those those mechanisms and those systems are necessary to provide the tool for to for people to to get provide feedback and especially when it’s a big team. Right? Now you talked about you mentioned the the the word safe, the safe environment. What does that mean? Well, we we must build an environment where we have trust. And I like to say, just like feedback, trust is a two way straight. We cannot just expect trust.
Regina Huber [00:04:14]:
So first of all, of course, we wanna build it as leaders, but we also have to give it. And that happens among other things through delegation. So there’s a lot, you know, a lot of topics in this one topic of trust and feedback, of course, and we could go all the way, or we just could leave it there and and talk about other pieces of self leadership and self awareness.
Bernie Borges [00:04:39]:
Well, before we go there, because, I I think to your point, there’s a lot to unpack on this topic of self leadership. But I I also want to address what might be sort of the elephant in this conversation, and what I mean by that. And if you’re familiar with that expression, I think it’s more of an American expression. So I don’t know how familiar you might be with the elephant in the room. Right? But what I’m driving at, Regina, is courage. Like, maybe as a leader, I’m I’m afraid to get feedback if I ask for it. What’s your experience on that?
Regina Huber [00:05:13]:
Well, courage is even a big topic in self awareness without asking other people, I would say. Because when we are truly honest with ourselves and we when we go deep with our self awareness and our self observation, we might also uncover things that we might not like. Right? We might uncover shortcomings or even also character traits that that we again then see mirrored in other people because other people that we interact with are our mirrors, and they serve as our mirrors. We can gain so much awareness through those interactions. So again, you know, through those interactions, we we gain more knowledge about ourselves. And if we are willing to look at what we discover through those interactions and through our own introspection, that requires sometimes courage. Because we, you know, sometimes would like to be perfect, and we are perfect as spiritual beings, of course. Everybody’s perfect as they are.
Regina Huber [00:06:21]:
But you know what I mean, Bernie, when I say, you know, we wanna be perfect as leaders in our roles. Right? But that’s not always so easy. And, and and and quite impossible. So really, we wanna look at what is of value and what do we want to address.
Bernie Borges [00:06:40]:
And, of course, as a leader, I have to be cognizant of the fact that once I get the feedback, I’m gonna learn something that can be very valuable to me as a leader. So I’m gonna use that as the way to develop the courage. If I need to develop the courage, I’m just gonna remind myself that that I need that feedback to be effective and to improve, to to to get better. Because I think in everything in life, not just leadership, we always should be striving to be better. You mentioned earlier, so I would do wanna come back to it because I think it’s a it’s an important point that we shouldn’t overlook. The delegation point you made, why don’t you unpack that a little bit? What do you mean by delegation on this topic?
Regina Huber [00:07:21]:
I like to talk about delegation again as a two way street. Right? It helps the leader free up time to be less stressed, to focus more on on what a leader should really be doing, like strategizing, for example. And then it also helps the team or the team members to grow and to be acknowledged in their roles and and in their in their talents, in their gifts, in their in their skills. So, you know, we we talked about delegation, in the beginning, in the context of trust. Now oftentimes, leaders are hesitant to delegate because they do not fully trust the team members to do the job. Now why could that be? Well, maybe you do not know your team members enough or maybe you have not provided sufficient training or mentoring or coaching for them to actually get the job done. Maybe you have not established established that safe environment where they actually feel okay to ask for support when they need it. Right? So there are many different factors that flow into effective delegation.
Regina Huber [00:08:34]:
And I’ve also written a few articles on LinkedIn about delegation because it’s a very complex topic. Also, we we we expect as leaders that, okay, we we want to build this trust. We expect our team team members to trust, but then we do not trust them to do a certain task or job in their own way. And I think that’s a big part of it because we oftentimes want people to do it exactly the same way as we would do it. But is that really necessary? I believe most of the time it isn’t.
Bernie Borges [00:09:10]:
And how does that connect to self leadership? Because to your last point, I’ve experienced that myself. I’ve had many leadership roles throughout my career. And on more than one occasion, Regina, I would meet with someone on my team, and I noticed that they did something not the way that I would have done it. And so I I learned over the years to simply work with them as long as the outcome was the desired outcome that that’s the most important thing. So how does that connect to self leadership?
Regina Huber [00:09:39]:
Well, first of all, you want to make sure that you’re not completely stressed out all the time because you do everything yourself. Right? So if you are not in a good place as a leader, if you’re completely stressed out and overwhelmed and whatnot, then your team will also not be in a good place. A thriving leader is more likely to have a thriving team. So you need to really be able to set priorities for yourself and for your team as a leader. So what what what should be really done by you? What makes sense to be done by you? And what makes more sense to be done by others? Right? Also, another very important aspect of this, I believe, is to recognize as leaders our own, what I call, your unique brilliance. This is part of that distinctive uniqueness that we all have. It’s one of the two sides of the coins of, coin of of distinctive uniqueness. On the one side of it is your unique brilliance, and on the other side are your shortcomings or the things that you might want to enhance or to improve.
Regina Huber [00:10:43]:
And also, it’s important to remember that you don’t need to know it all. You don’t need to know how to do it all, but there are soft skills we ideally should have as leaders, such as emotional intelligence and so on. Now the other things can potentially be done by other people. Whether it’s in your team or outside of your team. And I believe that once a leader really recognizes that uniqueness that they have and they represent in everything, not just in their skills and in their talents, but also in their presence and their personality, they can also then more easily recognize it in their team members. And they can acknowledge that everybody is different for a reason. And it will probably also make them more curious about asking, about, you know, the team members about their talents. Like, oftentimes, we totally underestimate people because just we have never asked.
Regina Huber [00:11:48]:
We have never asked what else is in that person’s in that human being’s potential. We have maybe a job description where they there’s a certain list of things that, this person is supposed to carry out as part of their job, but they might have some gems in that treasure chest of potential that we haven’t even tapped into, and that might actually be very beneficial for the team.
Bernie Borges [00:12:23]:
I wanna come back to the unique brilliance concept because I think that that is, no pun intended, a brilliant concept. I I love that idea. But what if as a leader, what if I don’t know if my quote unquote or my perceived unique brilliance of myself what if I don’t know if my team has the same perception? What what if I don’t know that? So how do you guide leaders to discover if their team recognizes their unique brilliance?
Regina Huber [00:12:54]:
Well, the more authentically you show up, the more they will be able to recognize it. And another piece of it is to have transparent conversations and to invite the team members to share about themselves. That can be done, for example, through story sharing sessions or it can be done in 1 on 1 conversations. You know, it always depends also on how big your team is, how often you get to interact with them directly, and and so on. Right? Of course, if you are in an office setting and you have a small office or if it’s your own company, then you, you know, that contact might be more natural and more constant almost or more frequent at least than in a big organization where you sometimes have to work with people remotely over, you know, across continents. However, I think there’s always a way to to make this work. And I believe authenticity also is conveyed remotely. Right? Because it’s a lot also about your energy, and energy has no borders.
Regina Huber [00:14:05]:
So it’s not
Bernie Borges [00:14:06]:
Right. So by remotely, you mean, like, like, you and I are on a video call, and oftentimes, you know, we work with people remotely, virtually. So and and I like your I like that comment. I like that thought that, you know, your your your energy is is everywhere. Right? No matter how you’re meeting, your your energy and how you show up is everywhere, and that really can shine through on your authenticity. I have a thought. I have a question that that, just comes to mind on this topic, and I wanna run it by you because I know with your experience, I’m sure you’ve had some encounters similar to this. And that is where, let’s say, a leader is not self aware, and the people on their team recognize that that leader is not self aware.
Bernie Borges [00:14:58]:
How do you think that scenario can be addressed when the leader is not initiating, not embracing self awareness?
Regina Huber [00:15:08]:
Well, I mentioned 1 on 1 conversations earlier. They can also go in the other direction, be initiated by a team member. Anything can be or ideally is a two way street in that sense. Right? And and team members sometimes underestimate themselves there too. You know, sometimes leaders are very grateful. I remember I was thrown into my first leadership role without any relevant background. You know, I just learned Spanish. I’d moved to Spain 10 months earlier.
Regina Huber [00:15:40]:
And all of a sudden, I was I was given this opportunity. Yes. I was one of several candidates. I had to go through the interview process, but all of a sudden I found myself here in this in my own office and and and leading a team of very different people, you know, a lot of big team of different people in that office. And and, you know, I I believe that a lot of leaders actually are grateful when they receive feedback because it gives you that opportunity. Also then later on, many years later, I found myself in a situation where I was a leader and a manager in a in a in San Francisco. The culture is completely different. Even between East Coast and West Coast, you know that in the US, the culture is different.
Regina Huber [00:16:26]:
And I had one Asian lady in my team who came up to me once and she said, you talk so loud. I was not aware of that. And for her, it was loud. You know? I mean, it was probably not loud for everybody in that office, but she perceived me talking loud. So well, I I said, okay. Thank you. You know? I was not aware of this. Now sometimes it’s really a good thing for us to have that opportunity.
Bernie Borges [00:16:59]:
Yeah. You know, you remind me of a story that I’ll share in my own experience, something that I became self aware of. And prior to it, I was not aware of this, but I got the feedback. I didn’t ask for it, Regina. It was given to me. I was told that I’m very intense. So I dug deeper. Like, what do you mean by that? And, eventually, what I was able to learn from the feedback was that I just didn’t smile often enough.
Bernie Borges [00:17:32]:
So I constantly had this look on my face. I don’t know about constantly, but I often had this look on my face where I was just, quote, unquote, intense. And so I just became aware of the fact that I just need to smile more often and show people that I’m present, I’m enjoying the conversation. You know, I know we’re at work, and we’re here to get things done. Of course, we all know that. But that feedback gave me that self awareness, Regina, that I did not previously have, and it it really had an impact on me. I mean, it really stuck with me, And I made a conscious effort from that time, that moment forward to sort of not just smile, but just approach my interactions with people in a way that may not be perceived as intense.
Regina Huber [00:18:20]:
That’s interesting. And it all you know, I’m curious now. Did it also make you feel better?
Bernie Borges [00:18:27]:
Well, at first, I didn’t like the feedback because I didn’t think it was a compliment. But I was grateful for the feedback because I became aware of the fact that this is the way I’m perceived, and it gave me the opportunity to do something about it. So I was very, very grateful. I just didn’t like it, But it was still great news because I learned something that was not working in my favor, and I was able to take action to adjust.
Regina Huber [00:18:55]:
And I was also actually referring directly to it smiling more because you know that the gestures also have an impact on your state of mind. Right? So a smile sends a signal to your brain that everything is okay. So I you know, it probably also made you feel better as a consequence. So that’s why I asked also. And, you know, it’s also about the energy. We talk about authenticity. I think it’s such an important topic, but sometimes we don’t really know exactly what we mean by that. To me, authenticity is how you show up in all senses.
Regina Huber [00:19:30]:
Right? And do you show up in alignment? And again, it’s such a term that that we could define in so many ways, alignment. Right? But but that’s why I love talking about them because peep different people understand maybe different things. So for me, it’s really about conveying confidence if we talk about leadership, conveying confidence and vision through your leader presence if that’s something you wanna do. Right? What is your attitude? Is it aligned? Here’s the alignment word. Right? It and this is what authenticity to to me is is everything aligned. Is your is your attitude aligned with your words? Is your behavior aligned with your words? Are you internally aligned? Are you grounded? Are you present? Do you live what you preach? You know?
Bernie Borges [00:20:22]:
Mhmm. Right. And
Regina Huber [00:20:23]:
and is your energy
Bernie Borges [00:20:25]:
That’s the ultimate in authenticity, right, is to, you know, walk the walk as the saying goes. Right? Not just talk
Regina Huber [00:20:31]:
the talk. And you also mentioned we mentioned energy earlier. You know? If your energy contradicts your words, your energy usually wins because it speaks louder than your words and it speaks faster than your words. I don’t know if you knew that it takes only 0.07 seconds for us to figure out whether we can trust someone. And that’s our survival mechanism. And, of course, yes, you can correct that afterward, right, after this very first impression. But a lot of people say it takes 7 seconds to make a first impression. 0.07 seconds is a lot less than 7 seconds.
Regina Huber [00:21:06]:
You know?
Bernie Borges [00:21:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Regina Huber [00:21:09]:
And that’s the impression we make through our energy. It happens over the phone. It happens in any setting. It even happens before you even speak.
Bernie Borges [00:21:22]:
So as we begin to wrap here, I I wanna come back to the title of your book. I love the title of your book. Living my freaking amazing life. How does a leader’s self awareness enable them to live their freaking amazing life?
Regina Huber [00:21:39]:
Yeah. Look. And not everything in the book is perfect. You know? Again, it’s it’s a it’s a life on my terms. And my my goal with this book or my my wish I should actually say with this book was to make it meaningful to the reader. And that’s why I’m sharing my stories, my experiences, lots of little crazy adventures even, and, what I learned from them. But not just that, but how I transformed through those experiences. I share the leadership wisdom that I gained through those experiences and hopefully also some inspiration for people to live their life on on their terms.
Regina Huber [00:22:22]:
And that might look different for everybody. You know, I love moving. I love traveling. I’ve lived on 5 continents. I’ve had very eclectic experience as a business owner in in Argentina and Brazil, now in the US, and currently, I’m in France. But splitting my time traveling quite a bit in Africa in the last few years before I was traveling much more in Latin America, some in Asia. So it’s just been very eclectic, but maybe that’s not your ideal life. That’s not your dream life.
Regina Huber [00:22:55]:
Right. Maybe you want to be in one place and that’s totally fine. The important thing is that you feel like the life you live is the life you want. And if that’s not the case, then I would encourage you to go on a self awareness journey and and figure out what that is and allow yourself to dream a little more. Ask the question, what is it that I really, really want deep inside my heart? That would be something that might be helpful.
Bernie Borges [00:23:28]:
Yeah. I love that. And what I would add to that, Regina, is because as you know, I have my 5 pillar framework. So, you know, what is it that I want in my health? What is it that I want in my fitness? What is it that I want in my career, in my relationships, in my legacy? So that I maximize the self awareness of my own fulfillment, my own, capabilities in each of those pillars. And I love how it all that self awareness thing, I I I could not agree with you more. I mean, 1,000%. And and, frankly, just looking back at my own career, I can certainly remember when I didn’t have the self awareness that I have now. And by the way, it can be improved.
Bernie Borges [00:24:15]:
To your point, it’s not perfect. And I can also say that I’ve experienced leaders that didn’t have self awareness on specific, ways that they led. So this is a huge topic. I love that you’re doing a lot of fine work on it. And so, Regina, where can people learn more about you, your world, your book, just connect with you? Yes.
Regina Huber [00:24:36]:
I also have a podcast. It’s called Rise to Lead, and everything is really united on my on my website, transform your performance.com. There is a web there’s a podcast page on there, a book page. You will find it all there.
Bernie Borges [00:24:53]:
Fantastic. Well, my listener knows that that will be linked up in the show notes for this episode. And, Regina, I just wanna thank you for joining me for this episode, a maximum episode on the Midlife of Phil podcast. We are very much aligned. I love the work that you’re doing, and, I look forward to continuing to following your work and staying connected.
Regina Huber [00:25:14]:
Thank you so much for having me on, Bernie. I’m saying the same.
