Is your mindset feeling off, but you don’t really know why? In this episode, LaTonya Wilkins shares 8 actionable ways to upgrade your leadership mindset and thrive in today’s rapidly changing world. She dives into the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, exploring how recognizing triggers and managing emotions can guide decisions and improve relationships.

LaTonya also discusses the significance of cultivating a growth mindset and building resilience in the face of uncertainty. By sharing personal stories and practical strategies, she aims to help listeners adapt to change and lead with calm and clarity. Throughout the episode, she emphasizes the importance of trusting oneself and making confident decisions while fostering a sense of purpose and committing to long-term success.

Join LaTonya as she navigates the complexities of leadership in today’s times. Whether you are looking to enhance your well-being or improve your leadership skills, this episode is packed with insights that can transform their mindset. For more resources, visit changecoaches.io or email [email protected].

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Transcript:

00:00:01 – LaTonya Wilkins Are you looking to get a head start on first quarter? Here at Change Coaches, we prepare people to lead in today’s workplace through leadership and organizational coaching. This ranges from one-on-one executive coaching to group coaching related to certain competencies for middle managers. We also offer keynotes based on the Leading Below the Surface book. Our most exciting offering is empathy-based sales training. We will develop and train your sales team to bring in more sales and connections with customers.

00:00:41 – LaTonya Wilkins To learn more, visit changecoaches.io or email [email protected]. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Leading Below the Surface podcast. I’m your host, LaTonya Wilkins, award-winning executive coach and author of Leading Below the Surface. Before we get started, if you enjoy this podcast, please share it with others. Also, like and subscribe.

00:01:10 – LaTonya Wilkins I ask you to do this for a couple of reasons. Number one, we’re the new kids on the block here on YouTube, so we’re trying to connect with more people, especially if the message resonates. Second, who wouldn’t be thrilled if you sent them today’s content, especially about preparing your leadership mindset and bringing it up to date? Today, I’m going to share with you eight ways to bring your mindset up to today’s times. I’m doing this episode and sharing these eight tips because I’ve had so many people ask me how I’m doing.

00:01:52 – LaTonya Wilkins You seem to be doing well, and I want a little bit of that. I always tell them it’s not as easy as you think.

00:02:03 – LaTonya Wilkins I’ve been working on getting my mindset right for today’s times for years. If you listen to today’s episode, congratulations, that’s the first step. But there are many other steps to this process. There’s practice, and there’s doing some.

00:02:25 – LaTonya Wilkins I would do peer coaching with other people to move more towards that. There’s also just taking that step to stop yourself when you are going into old behaviors. I’ll talk a little bit about that today. So, eight steps to upgrade your leadership mindset to today’s times. A couple of things.

00:02:47 – LaTonya Wilkins If you’re new to this podcast and community, know that my tips are deeper and more coachy than others. This podcast is about depth and building real change.

00:03:17 – LaTonya Wilkins It’s about building real change in yourself, your organization, and others. I’m offering eight tips today, starting with embracing self-awareness and reflection. Self-awareness is sometimes used punitively, but when self-directed, it’s one of the best things you can do.

00:04:04 – LaTonya Wilkins It’s uncomfortable, especially if done right, and hard to regulate. Self-regulation goes hand in hand with self-awareness.

00:04:25 – LaTonya Wilkins It’s like a coin: self-awareness on one side and self-regulation on the other. I had awareness of who I was.

00:04:52 – LaTonya Wilkins For example, I knew what triggered me and the types of people I didn’t like. If someone seemed slippery or untruthful, it used to upset me, and I’d try to pull them to my side.

00:05:29 – LaTonya Wilkins I first had to acknowledge that’s what I was doing. That’s the self-awareness piece, and the other side is self-regulation. Self-awareness is a game changer; it’s not just awareness itself.

00:05:50 – LaTonya Wilkins It’s like the other side of the coin that is the regulation. One of the things that I stopped doing last year, I got the awareness that, let’s stay with that example. The types of people like these slippery people, these people that only talk to you because they want something or they’re not really reliable, they don’t really respond to you.

00:06:17 – LaTonya Wilkins I don’t like that. I’m a person that likes concrete. If you’re not interested, just tell me, or if you’re not going to operate to your word, just tell me. I started doing self regulation, so with those people, it was fine.

00:06:38 – LaTonya Wilkins I just stopped trying to push, and I realized that that was a tendency, that I would go harder instead of pulling away. Some of you may pull away, some of you may go harder, and maybe for some of you, that’s not an issue that you have. To end this tip in this section, everyone take a minute.

00:06:57 – LaTonya Wilkins I encourage you to take a minute and jot down on a piece of paper. Get out of pen and pad as we’re going through this and jot down on that piece of paper. What are some things that you know about yourself, those things about yourself that are triggering, that make your nervous system go wild? We’ll get into more of those things later with more tips, but what are those things? Just having awareness about it, not judging yourself. For me, I was like, oh, my gosh, I shouldn’t let these people bother me this much.

00:07:26 – LaTonya Wilkins It’s not about that. It’s about knowing that that’s something. I will end this because, in this first tip with, I’m reading this book called Attached that it’s all about attachment styles and romantic relationships. I highly recommend it.

00:07:41 – LaTonya Wilkins It’s great. It’s providing me with so many insights, not just into potential romantic partners, but also into how I respond in friendships and intimate relationships and anything really close. One of the things he talks about in the book is sometimes we judge ourselves and we think, oh, my God, it’s bad to care too much. It’s bad to get your feelings hurt. It’s bad to want to be interdependent.

00:08:12 – LaTonya Wilkins It’s not. It’s just you. It’s just you who you are, it’s bad to be emotional. It’s not. It’s you who you are.

00:08:19 – LaTonya Wilkins Knowing yourself again in that flip of the coin, the self regulation, it’s really just to get you out of that situation. Not’s self preservation. It’s not to discontinue that part of yourself. Number one, embracing self awareness and reflection, remembering that coin, on one side is self awareness, on the other side of that coin is self regulation.

00:08:47 – LaTonya Wilkins Okay, number two, another word we hear a lot. I interviewed Farah Harris on an episode in season two of this podcast. You can listen to my interview with Farah; she wrote a book called the Color of Emotional Intelligence. What do I mean by cultivating emotional intelligence? This goes with number one, self-awareness. These two are intertwined.

00:09:29 – LaTonya Wilkins When I’m practicing emotional intelligence, I’m opening up my intuition and trusting it. Let’s go back to the example I gave you in number one. I talked about people that trigger me. Emotional intelligence tells me that person’s triggering me, and if I’m leaning into that, it tells me what my next step should be.

00:10:00 – LaTonya Wilkins Maybe that step or what the right next step is. For me, that next step might be ending that conversation, stepping out of that conversation, or taking the conversation in a different direction.

00:10:17 – LaTonya Wilkins Some of you are probably thinking, I don’t know how to access EQ. I think the first thing, there’s three ways: empathy, and then listening below the surface. I talk about P2P and P2B listening. If you could step back and do those types of listening, then your brain slows down, and you could connect with other people.

00:10:38 – LaTonya Wilkins You could connect, you could plug into that emotional intelligence, managing your emotions. If you know you’re emotional, like I talked about in number one, just knowing that and then managing that again, that other side of the coin, that is the regulation. With emotional intelligence, if your intuition is telling you that something is the case, that probably is the case. A lot of times with relationships, with jobs, with clients, when I get into conflict or when things go south, it’s because I’m not trusting that intuition. I’m not creating space for that intuition.

00:11:24 – LaTonya Wilkins I’m not creating space for that emotional intelligence to give me the information that I need to use to turn that compass on and be able to effectively navigate that relationship. So number one, self-awareness. Number two, EQ. Those two are related. Number three.

00:11:48 – LaTonya Wilkins I know we get sick of hearing about growth mindsets. When the growth mindset book was out, there’s a fixed mindset, growth mindset. I don’t think it’s necessarily a dichotomy. I think you could be in the middle. Let’s talk a little bit about being in the middle and the actual growth mindset.

00:12:16 – LaTonya Wilkins What I mean by being in the middle of fixed to growth is that you might have a fixed mindset about some things. One example I can use is a client whose kid is going to college in the fall. Her fixed mindset was that her kid had to study a certain field and go to a certain school; otherwise, the kid wouldn’t be successful.

00:12:53 – LaTonya Wilkins That was very fixed, something this person really believed and wanted, as that’s how they were raised. That’s what they thought should happen. But as we were talking and doing coaching, her mindset started moving towards growth. It wasn’t all the way in growth, but it started with realizing the field of study could be different, and maybe there’s a different path.

00:13:30 – LaTonya Wilkins She started realizing that until she finally shifted into growth. The big thing is, don’t think it’s either fixed or growth. It’s not that. The other thing I want to share about growth mindset is what if there’s a lot going on in the USA right now? I’m recording this episode in March of 2025.

00:13:55 – LaTonya Wilkins There’s a lot going on in the US government and around the world. I used to deal with things differently, thinking, “Oh no, this is bad. This is going to affect me. It’s horrible.”

00:14:12 – LaTonya Wilkins But now, with the growth mindset I’m in, it’s funny because I don’t get as nervous anymore. I don’t get as doom and gloom. I’m like, “Wow, what can I use? How can I learn from this situation? How can I create? How could I be a resource to clients? How can I see this challenge as an opportunity? How can I create to step up to today’s time?” So, that’s what I mean by growth mindset. Last year, we launched an assessment.

00:14:52 – LaTonya Wilkins Last year, we launched an assessment as a growth mindset. When it launched, it didn’t do as well as I wanted it to. I thought it was going to be this B to C assessment where individuals would come to us and want to do this assessment on their own, but that never surfaced. I’m just going to be honest.

00:15:16 – LaTonya Wilkins Surface corporations are using the assessment as a cohort tool. It’s also become a big part of change coaches, and we’re using it for our coaching below the Surface program. This required a growth mindset. A couple of years ago, I would have considered it a failure and wouldn’t have used it.

00:15:41 – LaTonya Wilkins We figured out who the actual customer was, and the growth mindset helped me see that the way we set this up wasn’t right. I needed to add psychological safety and belonging to every assessment. We had two different assessments.

00:16:04 – LaTonya Wilkins One was individual, and the other was a 180 assessment. Nobody knew what a 180 assessment was, which upset me. But I used it as a growth opportunity.

00:16:16 – LaTonya Wilkins I used my growth mindset, relaunched it, and it worked really well. Think about a problem you’re having right now. If you’re stuck in a negative mindset, how would a growth mindset help you? Instead of thinking, “I posted this and nobody signed up,” or “I launched this program, and nobody signed up,” or “My business isn’t growing at the rate I want it to,” or “My career isn’t growing at the rate I want,” or “I’ve been looking for a job for two months, and it’s not working,” how can you lean into that growth mindset?

00:16:59 – LaTonya Wilkins I’m not saying pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but the world’s changing. We’re recording this in March 2025, and it will continue to change. How do you grow with that, whether or not you like how it’s changing? This is what we have to adapt to.

00:17:23 – LaTonya Wilkins Number four is building resilience and adaptability. I talk a lot about resilience. I did a podcast on resilience a couple of months ago, so check that one out. I talked about the 10 influencers of resilience. Demographic information, how you were raised, and all these things determine who thrives in uncertainty and who doesn’t.

00:18:00 – LaTonya Wilkins But that doesn’t mean that you can’t cultivate this. It’s interesting because some clients ask why we have to be resilient, questioning why the world can’t just be better. I wish we could have both.

00:18:24 – LaTonya Wilkins I discuss this in keynotes, mentioning animals and bees. I talk about how bees are resilient with climate change and adapt to different roles within their colony. Our colony doesn’t look the same, so how do we adapt to that? How do you get through the world changing? When AI first came out, I was upset because I felt threatened.

00:19:13 – LaTonya Wilkins Then I adapted to it. Today, I use some sort of AI every day. It doesn’t replace my job; it makes me a better coach and CEO. So think about that.

00:19:29 – LaTonya Wilkins How do you build resilience? How do you build the staying power to continue doing what you do, and how do you adapt? Going back to that staying power, taking time for yourself, strategizing, and self-care is important. I’ve started adding different trips to my self-care. Thinking about what’s important for you and how you can build that resilience and come back, sometimes it’s mindfulness. Some may do religion, spirituality, or spiritual things; it’s all about that. I just had a session with another coach yesterday, and we went through a bunch of my astrology charts. There are all these different ways to help you be resilient, using those tools to adapt and build staying power in the world.

00:20:46 – LaTonya Wilkins Number five, leading with calm and clarity. This is not easy. I’m not going to lecture you and say you need to be calmer. It’s not about that, but think about what makes you calm and how you do that. I often have my clients do the opposite: think about what makes your nervous system go wild.

00:21:15 – LaTonya Wilkins Getting rid of negative things first is an excellent strategy. People usually remember negative things before positive things, which is why I always ask about positive things first in workshops because negative stuff can fill up due to negativity bias.

00:21:35 – LaTonya Wilkins Leading with calm and clarity, the best way to build calm is to remove things that make your nervous system go wild. For me, I did this exercise last year because I knew 2025 would have stressors. One of those things is social media.

00:22:10 – LaTonya Wilkins Some of you might think I’m good on social media, and I am, but I have boundaries. I’ve changed how I use social media, which has been game-changing for my calmness. I’m mainly on social media for business and Substack.

00:22:34 – LaTonya Wilkins I read blogs and don’t like reading things that evoke my emotions. I’ve curated my feeds to avoid being triggered.

00:22:53 – LaTonya Wilkins I get up early to meditate, journal, or go to yoga. Find your calm and clarity time. I read more books instead of wasting time on social media. It’s funny because I.

00:23:33 – LaTonya Wilkins The first time I joined TikTok was two years ago, and I remember going on there and spending an hour just laughing and watching funny videos. As soon as I did that, I knew it wasn’t for me because I thought about how when something hard happened in the world, it would be the opposite, and there would just be too much for me to look at. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I know I’m triggered by certain energies like anger and violence, and I don’t want to see any of that.

00:24:19 – LaTonya Wilkins There’s enough of that anyway that I’m going to be exposed to, so why would I choose it? Again, find your calm and write that down. If you don’t know, jot down those things that make your nervous system go wild. Let’s move on to the next one.

00:24:41 – LaTonya Wilkins Trusting yourself and your decisions is so hard. This is another game-changing one. I talk about the 80/20 rule, and I think 80% of your results will come from trusting yourself and your decisions.

00:25:03 – LaTonya Wilkins What does that mean? Make a decision and move on. I know it’s hard, and I know when leaning below the surface, I talk about all the feedback I used to get to be decisive and hurry up. I’m not saying make quick decisions. I will tell you that I recently made a big life decision, but I won’t get into that decision.

00:25:29 – LaTonya Wilkins I recently made a big life decision, a relationship decision, that was really hard to make. I made that decision over time, and in order for me to make that decision, I had to trust myself, and I had spent years not trusting myself. So I had to figure out how to build trust with myself around my decision. How did I do that? I started jotting down the decisions that I made in my life that were good decisions, how I made those, and what the process was. I emulated that same process. I think when you’re making a major decision, that’s life-changing.

00:26:30 – LaTonya Wilkins It might require a pros and cons list, conversations with friends, or consulting coaches. The number one thing I was ignoring in my decision was my intuition, which goes back to number one and number two.

00:26:55 – LaTonya Wilkins To trust yourself, trust your gut. First impressions aren’t always correct, but if something keeps coming up, trust your decision to walk away. I’ve done that with clients and newer friendships.

00:27:26 – LaTonya Wilkins Maybe we need some breathing room. I have a friendship that’s also a business partnership, and we’re cultivating a wonderful relationship. I’m glad I didn’t trust my first impression because the first time we had conflict, I was unsure.

00:27:47 – LaTonya Wilkins I worked through it because my gut felt it would be good. I wasn’t happy with how the conflict went, but deep down, I believed it was okay.

00:28:00 – LaTonya Wilkins If you’re having a hard time believing yourself, write down the thought. For example, “I don’t think this friendship will work out,” and journal over a month, noting what supports that thought and what doesn’t.

00:28:27 – LaTonya Wilkins It doesn’t have to be just actions; it could be how you’re feeling inside. Trust yourself and your decisions, especially those scary growth decisions. When we launched the assessment, I made that decision.

00:28:49 – LaTonya Wilkins I had to move forward with it, trusting that’s what I wanted to do and keep. I kept it and moved forward. I didn’t regret the decision; it was a learning experience that I continued to move towards.

00:29:06 – LaTonya Wilkins Okay, two more. Number seven: fostering a vision and sense of purpose. This is a big, existential one.

00:29:19 – LaTonya Wilkins This is harder to do and will take multiple steps to figure out. One of the things I did when I started as a change coach was write down my purpose in the world. One of my coaches would talk about impacting billions of people. One person can’t do that, but the ripple effect can. My purpose was to have an impact on all these people.

00:30:03 – LaTonya Wilkins My purpose wasn’t to climb the corporate ladder, make people happy all the time, people-please, or be a big social media influencer. Some may say I am, but that’s not my purpose. That might be something that’s coming, but my purpose is to help people connect across differences.

00:30:36 – LaTonya Wilkins My purpose is to help people grow, lead in today’s times, bring out their talents, and navigate today’s challenges. That’s my purpose. What’s your purpose, and how do you know?

00:30:53 – LaTonya Wilkins I think you start knowing your purpose when you note every time you have an amazing impact. Jot that down, and over a couple of months, you’ll see a running list.

00:31:20 – LaTonya Wilkins That will tell you your values and give you insight into your purpose. Try that. The second thing is to figure out what your currency is. Some may be money-motivated, but maybe some are meaning-motivated.

00:31:39 – LaTonya Wilkins What’s your currency? If you want to be a social media influencer, maybe your currency is the number of followers, but I advise against that. You want it to be something intrinsic, something that makes you feel connected and shows that you’re having an impact on the world. Okay, let’s get to number eight.

00:32:08 – LaTonya Wilkins If you’ve heard something that you really love, please pass this on to others because don’t we need to create more next-level mindsets to navigate the future? This is the grand finale, another age 21, but commit to long-term success. This is about the long game. This week, I met with my financial advisors, thinking about the world today and if we’re going into a recession. As an economics nerd, I know we’re supposed to go into recession next year, but in America, with all these policies moving so quickly, it might be sooner. One thing they said to me is this is about the long game, and how likely am I to pull out if something bad happens?

00:33:12 – LaTonya Wilkins We’re talking about risk tolerance, which is an excellent metaphor for what we’re doing. Let’s talk about three situations: running a business, trying to get further in your career, or doing something personal. If you run a business, ask yourself, what can I do today?

00:33:41 – LaTonya Wilkins What’s an action I can take today where my future self will thank me in my business? It might be launching a new product, investing money, or taking a trip. Think about what that might be, like investing in something at the right time.

00:34:10 – LaTonya Wilkins Maybe there’s an investment at a lower cost right now that you can buy and get some returns. Maybe it’s making a new connection. Job.

00:34:27 – LaTonya Wilkins What decision can I make in my career right now that my future self will thank me for? Maybe you need to leave a job, get further education, learn a new tool, or learn something.

00:34:44 – LaTonya Wilkins Think about how your future self will thank you. What’s something that I can do today in my social life where my future self will thank me? It’s not going to be instant results, but maybe that is signing up for an arts class, or I just recently did a dance class, or maybe it’s something that’s going to build up to something else.

00:35:16 – LaTonya Wilkins Maybe it’s joining a new gym or a new yoga studio, or just dabbling in those studios. It’s not all or nothing. What is that going to look like today? Maybe I block off every Friday and have creative Fridays, which is something that I’ve recently done, like no client Mondays. What are those things that I can do? Today, I talked about eight different ways to create a next level leadership mindset. I’ll go back through those eight, and then we’ll close out.

00:35:51 – LaTonya Wilkins Embracing self awareness, cultivating emotional intelligence, developing a growth mindset, building resilience and adaptability, leading with calm and clarity, trusting myself and my decisions, fostering a vision and a sense of purpose, and committing to long term success. Thank you, folks, and we’ll see you next time.