Nature-Inspired Leadership

Speaker 1: hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in Julie Henry is the president of Finish Line leadership and the author of wisdom from the wild the nine unbreakable laws of leadership learned from the Animal Kingdom a former Zoo and Aquarium senior leader she has presented to over 1 million people across 32 states and six countries in settings ranging from auditoriums to boats beaches forests boardrooms and even underwater while feeding sharks and moay Eels Julie thank you so much for joining us you believe that nature is the perfect teacher for leadership development and can specifically help us to develop As Leaders I cannot wait to chat with you more about this but first tell us more about your early career and who you are yeah thanks Melanie it's so great to be here and I love talking all things leadership and Wildlife and wild places I'm a kid from Chicago grew up in Chicago in Cleveland along the shores of the Great Lakes but I always dreamed of of the sea U my mom was a teacher my dad was in leadership development so I just knew from an early age that I was destined to stitch them all together my dad started his own business when I was 10 so I watched the entrepreneurial side of him and as I got more interested in science I went to work for zoos and Aquariums but at every facility I went to I was always saying to the people I worked for hey there's a lot of companies who would want to come here and do Retreats because we can do leadership differently and so let's reach out and so every place I went we were always reaching out to local companies even like here in Sarasota the tax collector's office came to the aquarium I was working at Etc and so after doing that for about 10 years I thought well I'm ready to do it on my own I love that how do you believe that nature helps us learn to deal with change nature is always dealing with change and that's the very definition of nature right every time you go outside things are different the sunset's different every night the your favorite animal may not be there we overthink change we get afraid of it we feel like it's constant we feel like we have to control it if we look to Nature and just take a breath and go okay yep change is constant it's always happening but nature has evolved to deal with it and not just survive but Thrive look's like at nature and apply them into our organizational lives that helps us relax and look at change in a very quantifiable way that seems doable and not overwhelming so often you're right we are reluctant to do something new and to do something different and do you think being out in nature or studying animals in their environment we can learn from that yeah I I wholeheartly believe that and just because I have studied a lot of science it doesn't mean I know everything when I walk outside and that's restorative and comforting as well because I can walk outside I mean just the other day my daughter and I were walking along and she saw a a bug some sort of moth I have no idea what species it is it was super cool it was black and white but it just she said I don't know what this is I said I don't either but let's watch and observe it we use nature for resilience as far as self-care and and taking a breath but I think we can just as well walk outside and go I need a new way to look at old Challenges Old problems and if I watch nature and maybe think about I wonder why this that question can also then apply to the problem we're trying to deal with in whatever aspect of our life with Co we were all in the house so much and I used to run outside and be outside and I still would go outside during Co but just not nearly as much so just this year every morning I'm going to get out and go for a walk or a run or a hike or something and when I first went outside it seemed odd and I thought okay this is really strange that it seems odd to me to be outside so much every single day but it really does change your perspective when you come back to work for the work day after being out in the morning you've taken in so many different things that you're more creative yeah I love that that I'm so glad that you made that commitment again to yourself you know and it doesn't matter where you live in the world you know you can be downtown Tokyo and you can be out in in the middle of Oklahoma and a huge farm and still see new things from nature how do you think the wild inspires us to more effectively lead our teams nature is built in ecosystems right and to have a healthy ecosystem to have animals surviving in a place you need a healthy habitat you need a healthy culture if you will and then you need animal working together who are by definition different if you look at the ecosystem whether it's a coral reef or whether it's an African Savannah or just the backyard habitat or wherever you live you know the trees are different than the bugs which are different than the squirrels and the Chipmunks and that's on purpose and so when we get into organizations first why are we even debating if we need people with different perspectives on teams I mean it it has to be healthier that way that's how nature is built and then second we make a lot of assumptions around people just kind of know things but they don't nature is based on foundations if we bring our teamwork back to Let's re let's set the foundation first to make sure everybody is recognizing the diversity of this team building a healthy habitat healthy culture around it and then setting foundations in place then you can go on and do what your team is uniquely designed to do you're so right because it really is those different perspectives that makes a company great and that makes a team great I totally agree why do animals in their environments teach us to build our resilience muscles maybe this is something that happens as we get older quite honestly you know I watch my kids and they'll go I'm tired I just I just need to take a break or I'm mentally overloaded I I need to walk outside I mean that they're they're built like that maybe because they're my kids but just because they they know they need a break and so as we get older somehow we just feel like our the pressures increase and our job responsibilities and our family responsibilities increase and we just ignore those builtin limits we have built-in limits but we just do more more is expected of us more is needed of us I mean I understand I'm there as well but we cannot outsmart nature we cannot run forever and expect to keep running either we take ourselves out of the game or nature does I mean that's why I have this lovely picture of the cheetah behind me because she reminds me that cheetahs are built to run at top speed for what a minute maybe and then they rest it's my permission in one way to give my myself and the people around me and then it's also the you know kind of hard knock on my head like hang on hang on why do you think you are cannot smart nature and look how successful nature is dealing with change because they're resilient I love that analogy and you're right today with technology and social media and you know we're all so busy and going at this pace sometimes I have to schedule it in to make myself slow down I have 8-year-old twins so my day starts really early and usually goes pretty late um but I have had to schedule in that time for myself to make sure CU I also love what I do and I you know you love what you do too so it's so easy to be consumed by that and not take that time to rest like you said yeah and then what a great role model you're being for your twins right because you're modeling for other people and then you're teaching people how to

Speaker 1: there little you don't have a choice because they can't care for themselves and then when they get to a certain age you're like wait a minute I need to take time for myself too I need to make sure that I am scheduling in that self time so that I can be the best they can be yep mine are 12 and4 at this point and they know like oh Mom we can see it we can see it's your cheetah moment I love it cheetah moment that's that's great share with us more about your book and what inspired you to write wisdom from the wild I was a senior in college studying science studying education and I got an assignment which was teach kids about coral reefs and I thought well not everybody's going to be interested in coral reefs but if I relate a coral reef to a business and how the different organizational structures and pressures and how they withstand competition Etc relates directly to the coral reef ecosystem now I can hook two different kids right who have two different interests and that was the hook and so when I thought okay I want to keep building these animal analogies because I think it helps leaders understand how to grow and develop and so every place I went I would tell them animal stories I've been um underground in a mine in Virginia almost 2,000 feet underground in basically the middle of the night working with shift workers telling them stories about animals and so it catches their attention differently I wanted to put that down on paper so that I could share it more broadly with audiences and they could refer back to it but also because I believe so deeply in it that there's something unique about the animals I picked like C cucumbers and naked mle rats and Pelicans that are that are not always equated with leadership and I think there are leaders out there that are may not feel like they're the leaders they can be yet because they don't display the typical leadership qualities and my heart goes out to them because like wait a minute there's something unique about you just because you're not the loudest in the room or the something something when people you know typical leadership qualities you are a leader as well and so for all of those reasons I wanted to put it down on paper and share it more broadly and can you tell us how one of those animals or the coral reef specifically relates to leadership the coral reef I use it in the book about teamwork but as I started that analogy if I were to show you a picture right now of a coral reef chances are you would tell me about all the animals that are familiar like sharks and Barracuda and really pretty angel fish and if I ask you what the most prevalent animal on the reef is you may not know that the coral is actually an animal and the foundation of that ecosystem and without the coral everything else disappears so the very direct analogy from me from the beginning was who are the people in your organization that are literally the foundation but don't always get either the attention or the accolades that the Sharks do and the barracudas do and we need sharks barracudas but the thing about Coral is if you don't respect those animals it's systemic one Coral is like literally connected to the other so as one Coral gets sick they all get sick and that's how corals die off and that's how Coral reuse die off so when I've talked to organizations about this it's the Frontline staff who are overworked and don't always get their due or it's the people who are quiet or the people who put in 20 years that was my coral reef tie and I I built it into teams from there but it's one of my favorites through your path as an author what did that Journey teach you and do you have any tips for current authors or new Authors that you learned going through the writing and Publishing process this is a whole subject into itself and I'm so happy you asked me this I learned so much I thought when I got my proposal accepted and I started working with my company and they asked me okay what do you think how long do you think it's going to take you to write the manuscript so we can start scheduling all the edits and I said ah like four months I was like I've been doing this for a long time oh my gosh it took a year to write the book and then it took a year to go through the five rounds of editing the cover design the titling process everything so um I have such high respect for editors also trusting their gut because they understand readability they said to me we can tell you're a speaker because you write these stories like really long long long form yeah like that story was 11 pages it's also your story you want to tell it and it's meaningful and I'm sure you want the book to come out the way you want it to come out right that is exactly that's hard to let go of so hard but they're like how about if we like just chunk it up and put some information in between so it'll get people to read I'm like well that's a really good idea because they know how people read right I know how people hear the information so right yeah I would say work with a company for me was really important that I could work with a company that I could retain my intellectual property that I could retain the final rights over how my book came out but if you're going to write a book Trust people who know how to edit and title and do the cover design that they know their stuff too and and I think it's been really fruitful on this on the back end that's really good advice and I really like the cover of your book it's great thank you you are always exploring the outdoors why do you think this is important especially For

Speaker 1: at the end of every episode because I believe finding joy in what we do is so important in our everyday lives magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy I love that you asked this question because when I started looking at my company this year coming out of covid or coming to whatever point we're at at Co I thought I need to lead with my values more strongly than I have been and it's joy that comes up for me and so my tip is to lean in strongly that instinctual boldness that you have and lead with what makes you you in every situation we've been putting all these layers on with with the virtual side with interacting with our teams differently with leaving our jobs and we're trying on all these hats and trying to figure out who we are so for me every time I go outside it's my reminder that that brings me joy because like we just talked about about I am who I am uniquely outside and so when I go back into that meeting I speak the way I speak I am who I am and I don't put it on as many layers as I would have if I'm trying to be someone I'm not or someone who I think that client needs me to be they need me to be me and that's how I find my joy thank you so much for joining us today such an interesting perspective and really fun to think about and I'm going to think about it on my next walk and the next time I step outside can you please tell our listeners how and where they can find you yeah so find me Julie C Henry is across all social platforms so on Instagram Twitter and Linkedin Julie C Henry it's also the name of my website reach out there and my email Julie juliec henry.com if you are new to she built it we'd love

Speaker 1: everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us from experiencing the life that We crave