Intro

Scott Raven: Welcome to The Corvus Effect, where we explore what it takes to succeed professionally and truly enhance all parts of your life. I'm Scott Raven, Fractional COO and your host. Each episode we go behind the scenes with leaders who've mastered the delicate harmony of growing their professional endeavors while protecting what matters most. Ready to transform from Chief Everything Officer to achieving integration in all facets of your life? Get ready to soar!

Guest Introduction

Scott Raven: Hello everyone, welcome back to The Corvus Effect. I'm Scott. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Lyndsay Dowd, founder of Heartbeat for Hire and leadership strategist who spent over 20 years at IBM building high-performing sales teams.

She is a Harvard guest lecturer. She has a globally ranked podcast - we're talking the top two and a half percent of all podcasts - and is the author of Top Down Culture. What I find most compelling is how she's transformed her corporate success into helping leaders build cultures that drive results without sacrificing everything else that matters.

She helps founder-led businesses ditch toxic leadership and create teams that thrive while giving leaders their lives back. So, Lyndsay, welcome to the podcast.

Lyndsay Dowd: Thanks for having me, bud. It's nice to be with you.

Scott Raven: The honor and pleasure is mine. I always love having good people around me on the podcast, particularly when they have wonderful stories like yours.

The IBM Legacy and Getting Fired

Scott Raven: Let's just dive right into it, because you spent over 20 years at IBM building high-performing teams, climbing the corporate ladder, and you got to a point where you realized that the traditional leadership playbook just wasn't sustainable. Can you help us understand what that catalyst moment was for you?

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, it was quite a moment. I spent 23 years at IBM and I came from a really big IBM legacy, so there was 105 years my family put in at Big Blue. That included my father, my father-in-law, my husband, and my mother-in-law, and me. So I literally grew up in that culture, and I don't know that I really thought I would ever work there.

I said I was going to work there when I was like six years old, and I did - working in that office in Manhattan. Wild. But after...

Scott Raven: You manifested it at a very young age, before manifest was a big term.

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, after 23 years I was ready for a change and I had a beautiful, decorated career. I got to do amazing first-of-a-kind things, build really great, fabulous teams, and I learned a lot. After 23 years, it was time. So another company sought me out and said, "Would you come and lead a sales team for us?" And I said, "Sure." So I packed up my Big Blue legacy and off I went.

Any reasonable executive knows it takes about six months for a new one to find the bathroom. That was not what happened to me. In fact, at six months they fired me. I was gutted. I thought no one would ever work with me again. I thought I was persona non grata. I thought I was the only executive on earth to be fired. There were so many things going around in my head and none of it was good.

For a month, it was really hard to talk about. I finally asked myself three questions: What am I really good at? What do I love to do? And where can I help people the most? I knew I was a kick-ass leader, and I knew I inspired great teams and got the best out of my people, so I bet on myself.

I started Heartbeat for Hire and began coaching C-suites and individual leaders. I started keynote speaking, I wrote two books actually. Top-Down Culture was one and Voices of Women was a second, which is a leadership anthology. It's a bestseller. I started my podcast, which is now episode 166. That has been just the love of my life building that. Yeah, it's been a wild ride. I got really comfortable being uncomfortable.

Scott Raven: There's so much to unpack in terms of that state of going from where you had tremendous success to new adventure, to "what the hell is going on" to everything that comes after it. But I want to go back a little bit to the tremendous success at Big Blue as you talked about it, because you are not just a high-achieving leader during this time.

Navigating Leadership While Pregnant with Twins

Scott Raven: You got twins.

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah.

Scott Raven: I've got two kids and they're separated far enough apart that I was able to make the transition from "I can take a break" to "okay, we're playing zone defense." You got thrown straight into the fire, and yet you're still in this leadership chase that has different things associated with it in terms of what you can and what you cannot bring to the workplace. So help us understand what that looked like for you and what that felt like for you.

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, I actually remember, I was standing in the parking lot of one of my customers at the time - I think it was L.L. Bean - and I was with one of my technical leaders and I confided in him that I was pregnant. He was like, "Oh my God." I'm like, "I'm not just pregnant, I'm pregnant with twins." And he was like, "Oh, am I the first person who knows?" I'm like, "Yeah, let's just keep it quiet."

Because at the time I had a leader who didn't really like me and wanted to manage me and a number of other women out of the business. I watched him do it one at a time. One thing that people need to understand whenever you're working that kind of tenure, it's not one job for 23 years. I changed jobs every two and a half to three years.

Scott Raven: Right.

Lyndsay Dowd: That allowed me to do a lot of first-of-a-kind things. It allowed me to work for people I would never have normally worked for, and that was really cool. And that in fact did happen where that guy was trying to manage me out of the business.

But another VP of marketing reached out to me and she was like, "I don't care where I'm going to put you, but I am taking you out of that organization because you're far too valuable for us to lose you." So having that leader reach out to me - first of all, I went into her office. I was stressed, pregnant, emotional, and I had coached myself in the car: Do not cry. You are not going to cry. Well, of course, the second I get in there, I'm a blubbering idiot.

She was like, "Listen, I got you. I believe in you, we're going to be fine. I don't know where I'm putting you, but I'm going to do this really fast." Two days later, she was promoted to the worldwide general manager of communication - so a very, very big job. She ended up putting me in a job that I knew not so much about, but was like, "All right, I'll try it." I crushed it. I crushed it. I crushed it. I met so many new people and that just kind of was a launchpad for a ton of other new jobs that were really first-of-a-kind roles.

So yeah, I mean, whenever you can have somebody believe in you and someone who knows that you're worth something, you're going to be loyal to them for life.

Scott Raven: You are. You absolutely are. I think it's a beautiful segue when we get to your core methodology in terms of transforming toxic leadership. But before we get there, I want to go back real quick to the time period just after you had gotten fired from your next stint after IBM. As I understand, there was a lot of self-reflection, not only in terms of what did that cost you for that position, but what your IBM experience had cost you personally behind the scenes.

From Cost to Investment: The IBM Experience

Scott Raven: I'd love for you to elaborate on that a little bit.

Lyndsay Dowd: Cost is an interesting word because when I look back at my IBM career, I don't look at that as a cost. I look at that as I was able to do incredible things that no one had ever done before.

Scott Raven: Would you consider it an investment?

Lyndsay Dowd: Oh, for sure. But it was really a building block. For a lot of folks at Big Blue, there was an incredible pedigree that came out of that company. The way we learned to conduct ourselves, the way we learned to move through the business world - that was the reason why clients always brought us in. So we earned that. That was a real badge of honor. It wasn't until I left IBM that I realized that not every business has that. That was really eye-opening, to see some things that were so normal and so table stakes were completely foreign to other companies.

What I started to really hone in on was, okay, I have this incredible education of being at this company for 23 years, and by the way, we were offered so many opportunities to learn from the best. I'm talking like, go spend five days at Harvard and listen to - I think at the time it was four Harvard professors and there's something called a "quadruple H," which means you're undergrad, MBA, PhD, and a professor. These were the people I got to listen to and learn from. I got to do that a lot. So that education was priceless.

Now shift to the other role where I was only there for six months. I had built this team who loved me, absolutely loved me, and protected me, and was enjoying working for me. But I had a boss who had zero EQ and she told me that - I swear to God, Scott...

Scott Raven: I laugh with you because I have my fair share.

Lyndsay Dowd: It's a horrible situation to work for somebody like that. What was really interesting was the recruiter that brought me in said, "Lyndsay, if you had come in as her peer, she would've learned a lot from you. But she really was threatened by the way you lead." I think her firing me and the way she did it was so personal and was so painful, and it lit such a fire under me that I didn't want other people to experience the same kind of nonsense. That's really what motivated me to make this jump.

Now, there's so many things I didn't know when I was becoming an entrepreneur. So I had all this education, all this experience, and then...

Scott Raven: Entrepreneur is its own skill set and a lot of it you can only learn by doing. I agree.

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, that's right. So it was an eye-opening moment to be like, "Huh, all those skills that I've built aren't going to help me now. Shit."

Scott Raven: I wish in my first entrepreneurial experience that they had sat me down and said, "Congratulations, you are exceptional. And by the way, all of your skills are officially crap at this." I wish they had said that.

Lyndsay Dowd: Now, I won't say mine were crap. However, the small things like "Lyndsay, you have to book your own travel" and "Lyndsay, you have to do your taxes" and that stuff. Oh, the travel's fine, but the taxes part...

Scott Raven: I hear you. But you know, it's interesting because that's going to segue into this concept of teams, because every entrepreneur learns along the way you can't do it yourself. You need to have a team around you. You talk in terms of transforming toxic leadership and building irresistible cultures with this...

Building Teams and Power Skills

Scott Raven: Team Go versus Team No framework that you have, and I'll leave it to you to elaborate more on that.

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah. I mean, everything I teach is really simple stuff, but stuff that people aren't taught. So when I explain a concept, people are like, "That's it? That's all I have to do?" Yeah. That's it. I mean, I'm basically reminding you of your humanity and I'm giving you a toolbox that will help you understand why the things you say matter so much.

In my book, Top-Down Culture, it's basically like a playbook of "here are the things that you need to be thinking about." Probably the overarching theme of all of it - and there's a big chapter in the book about power skills. Power skills to me are what some people call soft skills. I think they're far too important to be called anything soft.

But these skills are things like communication, collaboration, delegation, which is one of my favorite, favorite favorites. And if we have time, we can dive in on that.

Scott Raven: We're going to get to hero ball in just a bit.

Lyndsay Dowd: So all of these things help you build trust, and trust is your currency. I'm speaking from experience. When I tell you I had to lead some pretty complicated teams - I'm talking teams that were all acquisitions, had no interest in working together. They were like, "I'm here. I've got my job. There's all kinds of chaos going on around me. I'm not interested in any of that. I'm just here to put my head down and do my thing."

I was kind of of the mindset like, "Uh-huh, no, no. Y'all are going to get to know each other. You're going to start to connect and you're going to start to lean on each other. This is what's going to create contagious culture that really makes us thrive."

Can I tell a story? Do we have time?

The Island of Misfit Toys Story

Scott Raven: I have you on to tell stories and impart wisdom. This is my podcast.

Lyndsay Dowd: So I tell this story a lot, but it really is such an impactful story and it was so important to this team that I loved. Now, like I said, this team was the island of misfit toys. Everybody was coming from different parts of the business. People were there for many years. Some people were fresh, like lots of different tenure, tons of different backgrounds. Very, very diverse. And nobody gave a crap about each other. They were not into kumbaya or team building. They just didn't want to do it. But I knew better.

So we had a team meeting and I said to them, "We're going to play a game."

Scott Raven: Okay.

Lyndsay Dowd: So I want everybody to send me a fact about them that nobody else in the team knows.

I collected 40-some odd facts and I created a Kahoot. If you've ever done a Kahoot, it's like a multimedia quiz with music and pictures, and it's all multiple choice. So the multiple choice questions were like "this person loves off-roading in the desert of such and such," whatever.

That one was okay, but then there was one that was, "this person has visited every major ballpark in the US except one." The choices were three men and one woman. The three men, of course, everybody gravitated to and answered that must be the one.

Scott Raven: I bet it was the woman.

Lyndsay Dowd: Marsha all of a sudden went from being quiet and reserved to the most interesting person in the room. So imagine there's 40 of those. Now you know something about someone that's really interesting.

Scott Raven: Right.

Lyndsay Dowd: We had pickleball champs. I had this woman who I love so much, she's still one of my absolute favorite leaders. She was an African American woman, a grandmother, and loved eighties rock, like Aerosmith and stuff. So you just wouldn't pick her for that answer. So it just made it fun. People just started connecting and bonding. If they didn't remember what your fact was, the next team call, they're like, "Hey, hey Jimmy, what was your fact? I forgot." And then it'll be like, "Oh, I'm a pickleball champ." "What? You play pickleball? That's so cool."

So all of a sudden, that was fun and it was small.

Scott Raven: Yes.

Lyndsay Dowd: But it gave people a reason to be interested and to be connected and something to talk about beyond "like, I don't care what you're..."

Scott Raven: True, authentic connection building the psychological safety that is the foundation for future things to come. I told you I was going to come back to hero ball. Right? The other thing I can surmise, and I know this is a big part of your leadership, is stopping people from playing hero ball...

Stopping Hero Ball and Lifting Others Up

Scott Raven: Before it's too late, being able to have the awareness amongst the team saying, "Dude, you're playing hero ball. Come back to the flock a little bit."

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah. I think I am of a belief - and this is another power skill - lifting others up and helping them shine. When you continue to create an environment where you're always recognizing people for the work they're doing, and you're giving them a shout-out and you're saying, "Hey Connor, you did such a great job with that last sales call, will you please tell the team what you did?"

Well, first of all, that makes Connor feel pretty good, but it makes the rest of the team go, "Hey, wait. I want her to call on me. How does that happen?" I'll tell you a cool story. So this was a client - it was really neat. They were in a call center and there was this vice president, and imagine a cubicle, so prairie dogging, heads up, whatever.

She starts this process of every time she hears a good call, she would leave a little sticky note on their desk and it would say, "Great job on that last call," or "I love how you sold that," or whatever. She starts dropping about four or five of these in a day and everybody's noticing like, "Oh my God, she's walking around and I hope I get one. That would be cool. Maybe that means promotion. That means more money. This is cool. This is really cool."

She started doing this for a few weeks and there was a real change in the behavior of the rest of the team, and they started doing it for each other. So they started dropping sticky notes and saying, "Nice job on that last one. Way to go. You had such a good win. That was so cool." They started building some trust and some camaraderie, and it changed the vibe and the tone of the team. Now that is so little and it's so easy, but that made such an impact.

Scott Raven: Mm-hmm.

Lyndsay Dowd: Everything I teach is that simple. It's not "you need to reinvent the wheel," and I'm going to tell you the magic of being a leader. It's just leading with heart. That's really as simple as it gets.

Scott Raven: It sounds so simple. It sounds so basic. I'm sure that as we go into this next session, you say the devil is in the details, right? Because lead with love does have a flip side to it in terms of toxic positivity that can actually derail a team. So there is a necessary balance between...

Leading with Heart vs. Toxic Positivity

Scott Raven: Love and firmness at the end of the day, and you've worked with C-suite executives as a fractional partner. What is the biggest misconception that they have when they build these teams and don't have this balance between love and firmness, thinking they can just manage them themselves?

Lyndsay Dowd: So let's just break this down for a second. Because when you lead with heart and you are constantly demonstrating kindness, showing up for people when they need you, really listening and checking in with them and asking my favorite question, "How can I be the best leader for you?" - you're doing all of those things, you will inevitably have to deliver some tough messages. But...

Scott Raven: Mm-hmm.

Lyndsay Dowd: They know you at your core, and I had to lay people off. It was a horrible, horrible thing and very stressful. I would never sleep the night before. I hated it. It was just the worst feeling.

Scott Raven: Right.

Lyndsay Dowd: Do you know what happened? I go to lay these people off and I would say, "I'm going to read you this script," because you were never allowed to say your own words. You had to read the script. They knew those were not my words. They knew that was something I was never going to say. But they also knew who I was. Do you know what people said? They go, "I'm so sorry you have to do this." I'm laying you off and you're apologizing to me.

That's insane. It really was mind-boggling to me. But they knew I had their back. They knew I wasn't out to get them. They knew the business was making choices that I had to honor. And I'm still close with these people today. I think there is such a difference between "I have to deliver tough news, so I'm going to be a jerk."

Scott Raven: Right.

Lyndsay Dowd: Okay, you can do that. They're going to hate their exit from that company. And what does that do? What does that do? You just ruined a legacy for that person. I mean, I look back with fondness at my time at IBM. I didn't get laid off. I left on my own, but I had a lot of great years there. Did I have some great managers and a lot of terrible ones? Yes. But my memories are good.

So you know this statement - I love to tell people this - the moment you become a manager, you become the topic of dinner conversation. Make it good.

Scott Raven: Yep. Agreed. Agreed. I can completely respect because I was in these shoes in terms of being a people leader and thinking to yourself, "I don't have enough time to focus on the culture. I've got personal shit to get done. I've got people who need to get shit done for me. Right? This is not going..." You know, I have this, that, or the other, which are fires that need to be put out. Right?

Culture First: The Dinner Conversation Test

Scott Raven: Why is it so important to say, "Pause, focus on your culture first"?

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah. So first of all, any leader who says, "I don't have time to talk to my people," you're in the wrong job. You are in service to your people. You are responsible to them. So if you can't find time in your day to check in with your people, you're doing it wrong. And I hope you hear that loud and clear.

When you have a thriving culture, now think about this - someone asks you, "How do you like your job?" What you are answering is how you feel about your boss.

Scott Raven: Yes.

Lyndsay Dowd: So if you are going to be a micromanager, which never inspired anyone...

Scott Raven: Mm-hmm.

Lyndsay Dowd: You are going to have someone who is mostly sitting back, mailing it in, disengaged and not giving you their best, versus, "Hey, my boss is giving me this opportunity to lead on this project. I'm going to present to her whole leadership team, and this is going to be a game changer." The feeling, the tone is totally different. The moment you look forward to seeing your teammates and you look forward to hearing how people are doing, it's a totally different vibe.

So would you rather be a part of a hyper-productive team who values each other? They're connected, they're communicating, they're learning from each other. Or would you rather be, "Yeah, I'm here for the job. I'm doing the job, and move on"? Because that's unfortunately where the majority of people are and it's not inspired. It's not...

Scott Raven: You know, particularly - I'm late Gen X, right? We were brought up in the "do your job, get your paycheck, be able to enjoy your retirement," then some people don't even make it to retirement because God forbid some life situation happens. Right? So taking all that time to not enjoy yourself along the way. I hear you loud and clear as one of the biggest reasons why within the Corvus methodology, we implement CliftonStrengths to be able to say what are the personality traits and strengths of this person that we're working with to what they're trying to accomplish.

This goes to a question I have for you, which is, what are some of the best ways that you have found people integrating their personal values with business success?

Lyndsay Dowd: Hmm.

The Revolutionary Storytelling Framework

Lyndsay Dowd: So my favorite way to sell is through stories and the best sellers are the ones who really got to tell a story that was maybe a little bit personal, but something people could relate to so much. So I created a storytelling program, so that team, that Island of Misfit Toys team - this team, again, not super interested in each other. They're starting to get a little more interested, but again, they don't really understand what each other does. Everybody in sales. Nobody knew what the other person sold.

So I instituted a storytelling program and I said, "Okay, here are the ground rules. Everyone on this team is going to be responsible for telling a story about what it is you sell. You cannot use acronyms and you have to tell the story like you're talking to my retired school teacher mother."

Scott Raven: Nice.

Lyndsay Dowd: They're like, "Oh!" In and of itself is an acronym, so acronyms are such a normal way for people to communicate, but I argued all the time, I'm like, "Your clients do not know that the acronym you are telling them is a different acronym for them, so stop doing that."

So we started telling stories. So I had my first two managers, I had them tell stories. The first one did it, and all these light bulbs go on and that's what that does.

Scott Raven: Mm-hmm.

Lyndsay Dowd: "Oh, wait a minute. I need to bring you into such and such a customer because they've been asking me for this." I mean, we had that. All of a sudden they're teaming, they're connecting, or, "Okay, wait. If you need her over there, I need you over here." So all of a sudden we had cross-selling, we had upselling, we had all of these moments where the clients are - the light bulbs are going on.

What ended up happening with the storytelling program is really cool. So I started making this an open team call. So first it was just my team. Then I started inviting some adjacent teams that supported our team. Then I started inviting some of the reps that covered many, many accounts that ours included. And then I started inviting business partners and we got this call up to 400-500 people every other week.

I had business partners reach out to me to be like, "Lyndsay, I had no idea that that's what that product did. I have changed my entire strategy. This is now the keystone to what I was working on all along." All of this came from the initiative of telling stories. When you think about that, it makes it human, it makes it relatable, and it makes it easy. So everybody can remember a story. Few people will remember statistics or operating system requirements and features and functions that can come later, and that's important.

Scott Raven: People will remember how you made them feel at the end of the day.

Lyndsay Dowd: One hundred percent. When you're thinking of a tech sale, that's hard. Even the clients have been trained, "Okay, we have this in-house. Don't let them sell you on that. Don't get hoodwinked." And so they're groomed to not be interested, but you can tell a story and all of a sudden they go, "Wait, it does that?"

Scott Raven: Yeah. Yeah. Because they're coming in with their logical brain ready to say no. Right? And you're painting an emotional connection to eventually override that logic. And that's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Lyndsay Dowd: Pretty cool. But the reverberation of that action is so big because, you know, it affects the team, it affects the business partners, it affects the clients, it affects the way we talk to each other. It affects how I lead and how I go and talk to the C-suites across these companies. That's where the magic really happens. So if you can train your sellers to speak story, you're always going to be ahead of the game.

Scott Raven: Absolutely. Well, let's - I mean, it's beautiful, you couldn't have set me up better to move towards the community building that you've naturally done all throughout. And now you have your podcast, which is top two and a half percent...

Community Building and The Outlier Project

Scott Raven: Globally in terms of having that as a vehicle for impact to transform leadership cultures, what is the biggest vision you are working towards with all this?

Lyndsay Dowd: I mean, listen, I chose this path because there's not enough great examples of leadership in the world, and that was for sure why I built the podcast and why I wrote the books. My whole vision is to just make this vernacular really commonplace and make people identify with what good leadership looks like.

So, I mean you and I are in the same community...

Scott Raven: We're in The Outlier Project. Hats off, Scott McGregor. We hear you. We see you.

Lyndsay Dowd: But I don't think I fully understood how important community was going to be when I started on this journey and finding Outlier changed a lot for me. Number one, my whole personal board of advisors is made up of Outliers. These are the people that remind me who I am and that I can do really hard things. But out of these relationships also comes incredible opportunities.

When you are building a network in corporate, it's very different. I mean, you're doing it because it's necessity. You're doing it for upward mobility, you're doing it for opportunities. You hope you make some friends along the way. But I never found - I mean, I definitely have some friends that I still consider very, very dear friends to this day. With Outlier, it was really different because I had to build my network intentionally and I had to really stop and listen and start to - I mean, you know, I always ask people, "Tell me your story. I want to know like, what makes you tick? What motivates you? What makes you happy?" That's very much the way I built my show. A lot of Outliers have been on my show, but that community aspect has changed everything.

Your legacy is what people say about you when you're not in the room. And when you can build community and invest in people and show up for them, people talk about you a lot in a good way.

Scott Raven: I think it's so critical and important in today's day and age with the advancement of AI, and I make no bones about it. I use AI a lot behind the scenes in terms of helping with my fractional COO practice. But as you term it, the power skills are what are the differentiators in this very technologically driven society?

Power Skills in an AI-Driven World

Scott Raven: And it sounds like it's the power skills that you've brought day in, day out, that have allowed the development of these communities and armies that have made you successful along the way.

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, I hope so. I think one of the most fun things that I get to see is, you know, when someone tags me on a post and says, "Blah, blah, blah power skills, like Lyndsay says," and I'm like, "Hey, there it is."

Scott Raven: There you go.

Lyndsay Dowd: Or, you know, if someone quotes something on the podcast or they quote something from the book, like, that means that left a mark, it left a memory for someone to use. And you know, I'm in service to this great big world and I'm just trying to put shine on something that we all need. Whether you're a parent or a teacher, or you're in tech, or you're an entrepreneur or you're, you know, whatever you're doing - leadership is universal and that's why I have so many different guests on my show.

So, you know, today we've got a Grammy award-winning producer and composer, and he, you know, the way that he works isn't that different than the business world. It's creative. But you know, one of the things I love about him is everybody has to do the jobs that they're hired for. We forget that in business, we steamroll, we take over. We think people couldn't possibly do it, so I'll do it myself. Just give them some autonomy and watch the magic happen.

Scott Raven: Oh, I agree. I agree. Back when I was in software development before I went to business, right? I had a person who came in with a music degree and she was one of the most phenomenal teammates I ever got to work with because she got creativity and structure from that music background. So, no doubt.

You know, as we begin to wrap this episode up and I always do a tip of the cap to Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture, with its beautiful alley-oop, which he ends - "This book was written for my kids."

Leadership Lessons for Her Kids

Scott Raven: Your kids have now listened to this episode in its totality. What is the biggest thing you want them to take away?

Lyndsay Dowd: Well, I mean, they hear this stuff a lot and they get pretty jazzed when I tell them certain guests are coming on the show. I think the biggest lesson that I hope they take away is whether I'm a boss or I'm their mom, I'm trying to be consistent with the way that I lead. I don't always get it right.

But I have so many examples of where I flew off the handle and yelled and screamed about something that, you know, was maybe not that big of a deal, and then I came back and I owned it. And that humility...

Scott Raven: I did that with my 10-year-old last night. You know, she didn't do something I asked her to do. I flew off the handle and this morning I said, "Mea culpa, I'm sorry."

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, I really do feel like humility and, you know, my kids are 17, they're seniors in high school, and now's the time where they're going to screw up. They're going to do dumb things. And how you bounce back from those things is really important. One thing I hope they see is a resilient mom who has bounced back from some pretty terrible crap but I've been smart enough to collect the lessons and to try and make the world a better place.

Scott Raven: And you certainly have. You know, let's let you continue to make the world a better place by allowing you to let people know how they can get in contact with you. Certainly want to talk about your podcast, your two books. Give them the details.

Final Thoughts

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, so the easiest place to find me is heartbeatforhire.com. All of my socials are connected there, but I'm very active on LinkedIn and I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. The podcast is on YouTube and all the audio channels. And just this week the podcast is now available on TV so you can watch through Amazon, Pluto, Freebie and all the FAST networks. So that is a very exciting development. I'm super excited to share.

Scott Raven: Congratulations. You know, one of these days I'm going to actually allow my ugly mug to be seen in the diverse, you know, right now I still have the voice for radio, right? But I promise you, I promise you guys, it is going to happen. I want to close this in terms of the final thought with a quote that you had as we did our preview.

And I love this quote from you. "Leadership doesn't have to be hard, but it does have to be human. Be the leader you wish you always had."

Lyndsay Dowd: Yes. Woo. I've got goosebumps. Yeah, that is the simplest way to say it. So when you think back on your favorite leaders and you think back on the ogres, don't be the ogres. Be the person that you wish you had, and, you know, if you were going to coach somebody on how to be the perfect leader, use those things, use those tools, and I hope you're not one of those leaders that's like, "Oh my God, this is just a job. I just have to do this."

Like you're in the role to inspire, to lift people up, to make them better, and to make an impact. And if none of that appeals to you, please go back to being an individual contributor. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a wonderful, wonderful career path. But if you don't like people, get out of the job. I know so many people that literally got into leadership to climb a ladder and it is so disappointing to watch because they are lousy at what they do.

Scott Raven: Right. Right. And they have to realize that people leader is just one style of leader - thought leader, execution leader, right? There are many, many styles of leaders that don't necessarily involve people.

Lyndsay Dowd: That's right. Everybody can be a leader. You can be an individual contributor and be a leader. You don't have to have direct reports to be a leader. And oh, by the way, you have an opportunity to shape your culture. So if you are going to sit back at the virtual water cooler and bitch and wine and complain, you're part of the problem, but if you are going to start lifting others up and recognizing them, you don't need to be a leader to do that. So do it.

Scott Raven: I agree. Lyndsay, thank you for not only being on the podcast and sharing such incredible wisdom, but thank you for being an incredible leader in all facets of the word and the legacy that you are developing in terms of the leaders you're producing through your work. It's incredible. Thank you so much.

Lyndsay Dowd: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Scott Raven: No worries. To the listening audience, thank you for spending your time, your presence, your energy with us. I hope that you take this wisdom and apply it. Please feel free to subscribe. Leave us comments because we're here to create impact in the way that we lead ourselves professionally to the freedom that we desire.

If you know somebody in your life who could use this wisdom, feel free to share, and until next time, I'm Scott. We'll see you next time on The Corvus Effect. Take care.

Outro

Scott Raven: Thank you for joining me on The Corvus Effect. To access today's show notes, resources, and our free assessment showing you exactly where you're trapped and how to architect your freedom, visit TheCorvusEffect.com. While you're there, check out the Corvus Learning Platform, where we turn insights into implementation. If this episode helped you see a new path forward, please subscribe and share it with others who are ready to pursue their definition of professional freedom. Join me next time as we continue exploring how to enhance your life through what you do professionally. Remember, it's time to soar towards your legacy.