Revolutionizing Leadership: Emotional Intelligence and Cultural Change with Roberta Fernandez

What if understanding your emotions could revolutionize your leadership style? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Roberta Fernandez, a distinguished personal and professional development consultant, who takes us through her captivating journey from entrepreneurship to corporate training and into sustainability initiatives. Roberta shares her transformative experience of training under Al Gore and how it shifted her focus towards emotional intelligence and cultural change within organizations. Her insights into navigating change and managing emotions like fear, sadness, and loneliness are invaluable, especially in today's uncertain times.

Leaders are often faced with the daunting task of guiding their teams through change. We discuss the importance of emotional intelligence in these scenarios, referencing Stephen Covey's three circles of control. Roberta provides actionable strategies for leaders to help team members who are resistant to change, emphasizing the need for empathy, communication, and fairness. By understanding the emotional roots of resistance and managing their responses, leaders can foster a more harmonious and productive workplace.

Roberta also introduces us to the Ahara process, a year-long course designed to unlock human potential by challenging habitual thinking and aligning conscious desires with subconscious beliefs. Drawing on examples from high-performance athletes and insights from neuroscience, she illustrates the power of positive thinking and the significance of congruence between thoughts and feelings. This episode is a treasure trove of practical advice for anyone looking to embrace change and realize their full potential, all while promoting a more empathetic and effective leadership approach.

Join us for this compelling episode of Catalytic Leadership and take the next

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Roberta Fernandez
• 9:51 Navigating Change With Emotional Intelligence
• 19:52 Unleashing Human Potential Through Awareness
• 29:10 Embracing Change

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I'm so excited today to have Roberta Fernandez on the podcast. Roberta is a personal and professional development consultant. She offers programs for individuals and organizations that develop emotional intelligence and guide them through a change process to awaken their full potential and realize their highest abilities. She has perfected individual personal development and wellness programs, as well as executive, managerial and team corporate training programs in the areas of sustainability, cultural change and emotional intelligence. Roberta has conducted thousands of individual client sessions and more than 85 noteworthy presentations and trainings over the last 15 years. Notable amongst her past clients are Kemp's, sam's Club, jpmorgan, chase, target, optum, pentair and numerous governments, academic and private organizations. Roberta, I'm so glad you are here. Thanks for being on the show.

Roberta Fernandez: 1:00

Thanks, William.

Intro / Outro: 1:03

I'm excited to be here. Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host, author and leadership and executive coach, Dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:22

Roberta, I would love for you to share some of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Roberta Fernandez: 1:33

Oh my gosh. Well, as an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur since my 20s, which is way more years than I really want to admit to at this point and I've had multiple businesses I think seven in total, three of which I'm running now simultaneously, but it really just grew out of a need for knowledge. Quite honestly, I love learning new things. Every business I've ever had was brand new to me. I'm this eternal seeker and and also a creator. I love to create something new. So I've changed careers multiple times, although what I'm doing now is probably my longest stint. I've been in the corporate training sector for since 2007. So for me that's a really long time, because I was on about a six-year cycle for a while.

Roberta Fernandez: 2:30

Yeah, I just love to learn new things.

Dr. William Attaway: 2:35

I imagine you've seen a bit of change in that season too.

Roberta Fernandez: 2:38

I have and I think the biggest change came in 2007. I had founded a Montessori school back in 1996, I believe 95. And I had gotten really sick and it caused me to downsize the school and change and I sold it to one of the teachers at the school and I was kind of in between like what am I going to do now? How am I going to reinvent myself again? And I came across this site, for I went to see a movie, the Inconvenient Truth and I went to their website and looked at it and there was a little application. You know, do you want to be a speaker? And I thought, well, I can talk, I'm good at that. So I applied. Didn I can, I can talk, I'm good at that. So I applied, didn't think anything of it.

Roberta Fernandez: 3:28

And about six or seven weeks later I was contacted by the climate project and was one of the first 50 people trained by Al Gore to do his climate talk. And I stayed on as a senior mentor with that organization and we trained over 1000 people to give that climate talk of all kinds of walks of life and professions. It was a real grassroots movement and it was incredible. It led me into this world of sustainability, and it wasn't just environmental sustainability. I ended up going to a conference. I met people from all over the world, but in particular, this woman who was the head of sustainability for Japan introduced me to a guy from Sweden and he was probably one of the early sustainability consultants out there and it wasn't a thing at the time out there and it wasn't a thing at the time and it just totally changed the trajectory of my life and the way I looked at things.

Roberta Fernandez: 4:30

And so what I learned was because that wasn't a very friendly word at the time there was a lot of resistance to sustainability, a lot of pressure on big companies to do better, and it ended up being really about emotional intelligence and cultural change within an organization.

Roberta Fernandez: 4:50

And what I learned very quickly is that you can't change a culture of an organization by simply dictating from the top down. The people in it have to change. And so, even though I was addressing sustainability economic, environmental, social sustainability it really was about this idea of how people hate change, and so a lot of my work ended up in those two areas of change and emotional intelligence. And so since then I've been training either at the corporate or company level or individually, and the last 12 years I have worked also as a board certified hypnotist and that has really given me a tremendous insight as to how to get people to change, what's required and why it's so difficult for people. So I've taken all of these skills that I've had over my lifetime, but especially the last 20 years, and kind of put them into a new suite of services that I offer people, because really, services that I offer people, because really a lot of the challenges that we have in business relate to this inability or lack of desire or resistance to change.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:19

Why do you think people resist change so much?

Roberta Fernandez: 6:23

Well, it's uncomfortable. You know, it's the old saying better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don't know. And we're just hardwired to be safe. I mean, our brain is hardwired to keep us safe. It's always looking for danger and of course danger lurks in those things that we don't know and that we don't understand. And people will accept being in a situation where maybe they don't feel real good about it but yet there's comfort in it because they know, they know what to expect.

Roberta Fernandez: 6:58

And a lot of times too, the way change is communicated within organizations is not done very well. It is the nature of the conscious mind to have to know why. The conscious mind wants to figure things out and have a reason for things. It's just that natural drive that we have, and in a lot of organizations you find that change is dictated. You know this is the way we're going to do it, and giving employees the reasoning behind and an understanding of why that change is being implemented goes a long way and it's a simple thing. But a lot of companies they don't do it and so it makes that change even more uncomfortable.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:49

When you say that, I think about the return to office mandates, that recently we've gone through a lot of this with corporate America, demanding that everybody return to office three, four or five days a week. Not going to tell you why, just do it.

Roberta Fernandez: 8:03

Right right, not gonna tell you why, just do it right right, especially when you know I mean, the research is there that people, for the by and large, are more productive at home. They feel better. I mean, you know, having some autonomy is really important to everybody. There are those people that that just want to be told what to do and stay in their narrow lane, but we all want to feel like we're being productive and we're doing something of value and we're participating. And so it's really hard when I think especially because with COVID we were forced into that situation where everything in our life was uprooted. That's incredible change and it caused a lot of emotional issues with a lot of people.

Roberta Fernandez: 8:50

You know, many people working at home found themselves in the kitchen half the day looking for things to eat because it's a stress reliever right Food can do that and then to get comfortable in that stage to make all of the changes that had to happen in order to function in that situation, to turn around and be told that's all done again, we're going to uproot you and bring you back.

Roberta Fernandez: 9:17

It is really hard because it was enough time for people to really acclimate and be comfortable with it. So, yeah, change is a fascinating subject to talk to people and there's nuances with each individual, obviously, but there are things that generally apply across the board, and having a reason for change is one of those generalities that typically makes change work a lot easier. And then, being emotionally intelligent, you know understanding what fear is for people or what loneliness is for people or what sadness is for people. You know, and all of those emotions are things that we experience on a regular basis, especially with COVID A lot of fear, a lot of sadness, a lot of loneliness and and it was it's a very challenging time for people to have to come to grips with all those things when they don't really understand what those emotions are.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:25

So, yeah, I think leaders realize intuitively that change is critical, that they are leaders of change, because growth only happens on the other side of change. We know that intellectually, and some people seem to thrive in change. They seem to thrive in that type of an environment. That would be me and I'm similar. I love change. But I will say I love change, that's my idea.

Roberta Fernandez: 10:57

Yes.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:58

And I think that is a distinguishing point that leaders need to be mindful of. You know you often, as the leader, are the ones driving the change. You're the one with your idea. Of course you like it, you like your ideas but you've got to be mindful that not everybody feels that way.

Roberta Fernandez: 11:15

Right, and here's the interesting take about that. That is really all about having some kind of control over our life, over our situation.

Roberta Fernandez: 11:26

And that starts when we're very, very young. You know, from the moment that we are born, we have very little control over our lives, and all through school, you know, we're told what to do, when to eat, what subject to study, when to turn in the homework. Our parents are telling us all kinds of things, and it is a natural desire for people to feel they have control over their life. That's what stress is. Stress is an emotion, an emotion that is trying to deal with control or lack of, or lack thereof, and so that is a huge reason for uncomfortableness when it comes to change, because usually it's not within our control, and so I think it was Stephen Covey did. The three circles of control Are you familiar with that?

Roberta Fernandez: 12:33

It's wonderful and you know the way I interpret that and for the listeners that don't know what that is, he looks at control from three perspectives. So the biggest circle is the circle of no control, where you cannot influence anything. You just don't have any control over the situation. The next largest circle is that circle of influence. So I can't really control the situation, but I can give some input and maybe influence what's happening. And then the tiniest circle is the circle of total control, and that is what you can control. The problem with people is that they don't always realize the circle they're in. And that's where we lead to anger and frustration and all of these emotions, because we may want to have control and put ourselves in that circle when we're really in the circle of no control, and that is where severe frustration comes into being. And that is often where people find themselves in the change process. They're just not putting themselves in the right circle and just you know they get resistant.

Dr. William Attaway: 13:47

Then so what can a leader do, as they're, if they're looking at a team member or a team and that team is resistant to change and they're pushing back? We've talked about already the importance of talking about why right, explaining the why behind this. But what else can they do to help those team members to navigate through the inevitable waters of change?

Roberta Fernandez: 14:10

Absolutely. I think it goes back to emotional intelligence.

Roberta Fernandez: 14:15

So you know we look at that as just emotions, which it is. It's all. Everything is based on emotions. Emotion drives all behavior.

Roberta Fernandez: 14:24

But it is more complicated than that, because we have to understand, first of all ourselves, what we're feeling, what we're thinking, what we're understanding about whatever the situation is, and how we're regulating that and controlling ourselves self-management. When we can do that effectively, then we can start looking at the person across the table from us. We can start looking at two team members maybe that are clashing and realizing what's happening here. I just got out of a horror class a half an hour ago and we were talking about this very scenario. So when we start looking at the sea of perspectives that we live in constantly, especially today when we're so divided in our thinking and it's just so, either or it gets very challenging. So when we start understanding the basis of emotions and what they're trying to tell us let's say you're in a meeting and you've got a team member that is just angry. They're just mad.

Roberta Fernandez: 15:31

When you understand what anger is, anger is trying to tell you that your perception is, it's unfair. So as that leader, first of all you have to look at yourself and say, okay, is this situation fair? Is this based in reality? And you may look at it again from my perspective as a leader. Yeah, it is, but you have to put yourself in the other shoes to be emotionally intelligent. How are they coming at this? What is it that they perceive as unfair, and is that perception based in their reality, and why? It's only then when you can then try to make it fair, because that's how you resolve that emotion. All emotion is good. It's just trying to tell you there's a need or a desire you have that's not being met and it has to be resolved. That's the point of having emotion. So all emotion is good.

Roberta Fernandez: 16:38

What is bad about emotions is how we express them right and how we act, the behaviors that go around that. So when you're in that conflict with a team member, you really have to be able to understand where you're coming from and how you've responded to it, and then look at that other person and say, okay, I can see their point of view here. How do we make this work?

Roberta Fernandez: 17:00

And I call that both, and so we you know, for eons have lived in either-or perspective of how we problem solve it's right or it's wrong, it's black or it's white. Very little gray right, and that is so limiting it really just rules out any possibility for creativity and expansion of ideas when we can both-and a situation. It doesn't necessarily mean compromise. It means potentially creating something brand new. Does that make sense?

Dr. William Attaway: 17:39

Yeah, totally. I think that's a fantastic perspective because that's something that makes a leader's heart beat fast creating something new. Right, absolutely. Creating something that hasn't existed before.

Roberta Fernandez: 17:53

Right, and that's the difference between change and transformation, and I talk a lot. We were just having this conversation in my AHARA class this morning, talking about this idea of both and and, rather than either or. And the difference between change and transformation. Change is what it sounds like we change a policy or, you know, whatever we make some adjustments. But transformation is when you have change in which you create something new that you didn't have before, and that is what's truly exciting.

Roberta Fernandez: 18:32

In Ahara, we talk about something I call the Ahara shift, and that is when we look at the world of possibility. So, if you can imagine a graph, a big square with four squares in it right, a big square with four squares in it right, on the upper left-hand corner, is what we're open to. This information is known to ourselves and it's known to other people, and this is where most people function, period. If we move over to the next quadrant, to the right, on the top, it's what I call our blind area. It's not known to us, but it is known to other people, and that area of blindness creates another 25% of possibilities, but we are not open to them. We're blind If we go down to the bottom right quadrant. That is the unknown. We don't know about it and neither do other people. So a whole huge area for exploration. If we move over to the last quadrant on the lower left, that is hidden and that is known to us but not to other people we haven't shared that information, but not to other people.

Roberta Fernandez: 19:51

We haven't shared that information. So if we look at where we typically function as a team, as a company, as an individual we are really only functioning competently in 25% of what is totally possible. So when we look at potential for both anding for real transformation, there's three quarters of what's out there that is available to us that we don't see as possibilities. And when we look at everything through this either or lens, which we have used for hundreds of years, rather than both and how can we do both and then create something new this is where you have this Ahara shift, because then so much more potential can present itself. And we only do that by looking at the whole sea of perspectives that are out there can you describe what a horror is all about?

Roberta Fernandez: 22:28

yeah, so a horror is a process that I created. It is a year-long course that stands for a higher awareness and realization of your abilities, and what I have come to determine in working with know thousands of people over the last 20 years is that we are not aware as human beings, and this is a result of how our brain functions. You know, we have billions of neurons in our brain and at any given time, one of them is interacting with 5,000 others. So the level of efficiency that our brain has to function in it creates habits, and there was a study done, supposedly. I don't know how good this study is, quite honestly, but it makes sense that 95% of what we do every day is what we did yesterday and the day before. And the day before. We don't think about most of the things that we are thinking, feeling or doing. They just happen because we automate everything as a habit, a habit of action, a habit of thought, whatever it is, and so when we um, we have to become aware as individuals, and here's, here's a little thing, a challenge I like to throw out, and so I would challenge your audience to do this, just to see how really aware you are of yourself. Set an alarm for a random time every hour, so 10.08, 11.15, 12.56, right when the alarm goes off, journal what you're thinking and what you're feeling in that instant. It sounds like an easy thing to do. In reality, it is very challenging and if you do that for a number of days, first of all you're going to be really surprised at how hard it is, how the lack of awareness in any given moment that you have of what you are thinking and feeling, and then you start to notice patterns Are they congruent? And then you start to notice patterns Are they congruent?

Roberta Fernandez: 24:53

You know, as a hypnotist, somebody asked me. I had a marketing person designing my website and saying, okay, why do your clients come to you? And I'm like, oh, that's all over the board, right? People come to me for tons of reasons. And she's like, well, we've got to narrow this down. So I sat and I did an experiment. I got out a bunch of client files. I started looking at all the things, reasons people had come to me for and I realized it was really one reason, and one reason only, that everybody comes to me.

Roberta Fernandez: 25:21

And that is the source of so many problems within people individually and with organizations, and that is, there is a disconnect between what you consciously want and what your subconscious mind believes is possible. There's a conflict. So when you're doing this what I call the alarm clock challenge notice is there congruency between what you're thinking and what you're feeling? Because if there's not, that creates a whole opportunity for potential issues, and I mean in a negative way.

Roberta Fernandez: 26:02

So this idea that we need to become aware before we can really recognize our true potential I mean it is at the basis of everything and, just like that Ahara shift that I talked to you about, you know, 25% of the things are we aware of, and my guess is that a lot of that awareness isn't even conscious. My guess is that a lot of that awareness isn't even conscious. So we have a lot of you know. Some people may look at that and go, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming. I look at it and say look at the potential that we have to grow, to make a difference in the world, to improve our businesses, to improve our relationships on a personal level, to improve our ability to be a great athlete or a leader or whatever it is. There's so much potential there, but it all starts with awareness.

Intro / Outro: 26:59

And.

Roberta Fernandez: 26:59

I mean self-awareness.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:01

Yeah, absolutely, I think that is so powerful and so insightful. That grid, that grid framework, I'm going to be thinking about that for weeks. Yeah, I think that is so powerful.

Roberta Fernandez: 27:14

So I adapted that. There's something. I don't even know where I came across this. I honestly don't even know what the original application is, but you know how things just pop up somewhere in your feed or whatever.

Roberta Fernandez: 27:26

Yeah, just pop up somewhere in your feed or whatever. I think I had actually copied this from somewhere. I had made a note of it many years ago, for whatever reason is unknown to me. Now it's called the Jahari Shift and I thought, oh my gosh, I adapted it to a horror. So whoever the creator is of that, I want to give you credit, even though I don't know who you are. But I started thinking about it in context of this course that I've created and how applicable it is to this idea of either or thinking everywhere around us, everywhere around us.

Roberta Fernandez: 28:13

And when we look at how we have grown as a society and how business has changed, even in the last 50 years, I mean look at what the invention of the iPhone has done to change everything. You know. I remember in 1995, when I started building the Montessori school, we had ages 3 to 12-year-olds in the school. I had never used a computer. I mean, I didn't work at a company and they really I mean that was just when desktop computers were coming out, where people had them in their homes, right, and you didn't really even know what to do with them at the time.

Roberta Fernandez: 28:49

For the most part, when you look at that, the fact that that's what 35 years ago. That's nothing. How? That has changed everything in our society, for good or bad, right, I think mostly for good. But we haven't changed how we think. And that has opened up this huge potential for possibilities, what we're blind to, what's unknown and what's hidden. We have to start thinking differently and that's the premise of Ah horror. I founded a horror on Einstein's quote that says we can't change the problems we've created with the same thinking we got us there.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:35

And.

Roberta Fernandez: 29:36

I created a horror because I see we have huge issues in this world. We have huge problems that we've been trying to solve for a long time in the same old, outdated way and is not working, and it's never going to work. I mean, I I talked to a leader the other day and this is. He was in the banking business. This is an old client of mine and I wanted to talk to him about Ahara for his leadership team and he's like oh no, no, we can't do that. You know, we're just going through a tough time. We're getting ready to lay off about 600 people, whatever, and I just I wanted to shake him.

Roberta Fernandez: 30:13

I want to say you're doing the same thing you've always done. You have a good cycle. You things start turning. You decide to lay off a bunch of people. You lose all your good talent right, they're going to go somewhere else. Things will start picking up again. You get a lot of bad press in the meantime and a lot of unsatisfied customers and then you got to go back and hire people again.

Roberta Fernandez: 30:36

This is the same cycle that businesses have been repeating for decades and there's never going to be any change unless you change the way you think, you change the way you problem solve. So, with a horror, we want to stop focusing on where you are and what was and focus on where you want to be. Because until we do that, whether you're an individual or you're a business and really start focusing on the solution I mean, einstein said it's the same level of thinking. It's different when you're and I know this as a hypnotist what you focus on expands. You're just going to get more of the same. So if you continually focus on your problem, there's no way you can find a solution, because it's a whole whole. It's different contextually, energetically, everything. Um, so you, we have to start focusing on what we want, not what we don't want.

Roberta Fernandez: 31:41

And it's pretty hard because if you look at things like this, an issue is a stick. There's two ends of the stick. There's what's wanted on one end and what's not wanted on the other end, and the first thing that happens is that, old you know, don't think about the pink elephant over there. What do we do? We think about the pink elephant. We may think we're focused on the solution, but we're really focused on what we don't have on the solution, but we're really focused on what we don't have. So it's not an easy thing that I'm suggesting because this is hardwired into us as human beings, but it is a possible thing. We just have to really look at how we approach things differently.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:25

I was listening to Colin Henderson the other day talk about this. He coaches high-performance athletes and he says the biggest challenge comes when he's dealing with an athlete and their performance has started to tank and go down. And he said what are you thinking about before you go out on that pitch or on that floor or whatever you're out on? What are you thinking about? Floor or whatever you're out on, what are you thinking about? And almost inevitably it's the same phrase. When their performance does this, he says, you can almost always trace it back to them thinking this don't mess up, Don't mess up, Don't mess up. The brain does not really grab onto that first word, don't. It doesn't treat the negative the same way it treats all the other words. So what your brain is actually hearing is you focusing on messing up.

Roberta Fernandez: 33:16

Oh yeah, that's the first rule as a hypnotist. I mean, I'm an instructor, so I teach people how to do what I do. And so the biggest fear as a hypnotist? Because we know the power of words and the brain doesn't hear negatives, it doesn't hear the don't, it doesn't hear the never, it just, it just doesn't relate to that and the subconscious mind is really literal. So, for example, if, if a new hypnotist is working with a weight loss client, they say you'll never eat pizza again, the brain hears you'll eat pizza again. And you know the huge fear of hypnotists to watch their words. And I tell them it's not rocket science, you just go back in and fix it Right. But you know, even there. But there's other ways and I know this sounds really nitpicky, but words are important. And so the way you say that is you avoid eating pizza again.

Roberta Fernandez: 34:10

Right, yeah, because the brain hears that yeah, and the thing about all of this you mentioned athletes. I work with a lot of athletes, a lot of professional athletes too, so very high performing individuals. They put a lot of pressure on themselves. But remember, it goes back to the brain being hardwired for danger, for messing up. We have to start changing that wiring. I mean, the brain's always going to do that because it's what keeps us safe. It's its job. But it doesn't mean that we can't think differently. It just takes a little more effort.

Roberta Fernandez: 34:49

And again, the way you start, that is, becoming aware of your own thoughts and your own feelings and making sure that they're congruent with each other.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:04

Roberta, this has been so fascinating and I could talk to you for another hour. This is so good. Just really quick. A couple of quick questions that I like to ask most of our guests. Is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey that you would highly recommend to leaders that they pick up?

Roberta Fernandez: 35:26

Yeah, brene Brown's Daring Greatly love. I love her research number one. I'm you know people think of me, oh well, you share a hypnotist. You're a real woo woo.

Roberta Fernandez: 35:36

I'm not my daughter's a neuroscientist, I'm very grounded in research and brené's a researcher, first and foremost, and she researched the topic of vulnerability and got over 11 000 people's response to what is vulnerability, and we think of vulnerability as weakness, and she likes to say what she did. What she found in her research is that it is strength, it is courage, it is the home of innovation, the home of change, and you cannot have innovation or change without being vulnerable. So if you are a leader and you need to change in your organization, you have to show that you're vulnerable, and that doesn't mean that you're weak. It means that you're making challenging decisions, it means that you are taking that big step in growth which always involves risk, and that is a part of being vulnerable too. So I think that book goes so far.

Roberta Fernandez: 36:46

She has the man in the arena speech there, which is an amazing, um little speech. I've done whole workshops around vulnerability just from that speech. Um, yeah, it's a. I think it is a really powerful book because it addresses head-on the emotions that we find highly uncomfortable as leaders and as people in general, and really expresses it, gives you another way to look at it. Like she said, some of the feedback she got is when people felt the most vulnerable when I had to tell a parent that their eight-year-old didn't make the team, when I had to go home and tell my family that I have terminal cancer, when I have to fire a good friend in the office. These are moments of strength where you really have to dig deep. They're not weakness.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:44

I love Brene Brown. I love her writing. It's so powerful.

Roberta Fernandez: 37:52

Definitely echo that recommendation. Yeah, her ted talks is too that I love. I I listen every couple of months. I'll go back and watch it because I just find it very, very inspiring. Um, and you know, when she came along, I was already doing what I was doing and researching emotions, but she has a great way of synthesizing emotions and why they're important, and it really helped validate a lot of the work that I was already doing.

Dr. William Attaway: 38:19

So, yeah, I love that. I know people are going to want to stay connected to you, Roberta, and continue to learn from you and about Ahara and all that you're doing with this. What is the best way for them to do that?

Roberta Fernandez: 38:32

Oh, they can reach me at my website, robertafernandezcom. They can email me at roberta, at robertafernandezcom. I like to keep things simple. I like it and just reach out. And you know there is on my website, just like I offered the challenge to your listeners. Right in the header on the first page of my website is a wonderful recording, a guided visualization, called you Are Like a Disco Ball and it's just for confidence and motivation. It's like a four and a half five minutes and it's wonderful and it's free. So I would highly encourage people to go and take advantage of that.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:13

Absolutely. We'll have that link in the show notes. That's outstanding, Roberta. Thank you for your authenticity today, your transparency and your generosity in sharing so much of what you've learned so far. I can't wait to see what's next for you.

Roberta Fernandez: 39:28

Thanks, William. Well, I'll reach out and let you know. There you go. Thanks, William. Well, I'll reach out and let you know, and you can come along for the ride. How's that?

Dr. William Attaway: 39:34

Let's do it.

Roberta Fernandez: 39:36

All right, have a great day. Thanks, william.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:41

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 40:17

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro / Outro: 41:00

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.