"You can be in the struggle of judging yourself for the values you actually have or you can be in the struggle of living the values you actually have -- it's a similar caloric load but only one gives you alignment." In this episode of the podcast, Performance + Leadership Coach, Caryn Gillen talks to us about values alignment and shares some fun stories from her commercial fishing days.
Leaders who have done the work of values alignment know who they are and how they show up in the world. It also keeps things clear for the people around them (employees, families, friends, etc.).
"Your values leave clues all over your life. Just look backwards. They're on your credit card statement, your calendar... and they don't lie."
Doing the work of knowing and living in alignment with your values gives you a foundation that makes hard decisions easier -- even though it doesn't make them easy. It gives you a framework of questions you can run things through that provides confidence and clarity. We talk more about this in the episode.
And ultimately, "if you are in a position of leadership," Caryn says, "we want you to be able to sleep at night. We want you to be well-rested. We want you to lead. We don't want you to hold back. You are there for a reason. And, we want the version of you who is in that role to do what you're here to do -- to define what that is and commit to doing it, your way. We need people to take the lead." And, to know what that looks like for them.
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To learn more about Caryn and her work, visit caryngillen.com. You can also find her on all the social channels by searching her name (@caryngillen). LinkedIn is her platform of choice for all things leadership and business-related.
- I'm Celine Williams, and welcome to the "Leading Through Crisis" podcast, a conversation series exploring resiliency and leadership in challenging times. My guest this week is Caryn Gillen, who's a life and mindset coach for founders and leaders who've gotten so successful they're actually bored. They know they need to shake it up, but are unwilling to blow life up to do so. Thank you for being here today.
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about this.
Well, I'm excited to talk to you in general, 'cause we've known each other a while. So this is always fun when I get to have my friends on, people that I know and love and respect, it's always extra fun. And I love that you help people blow their lives up because we need more of that in the world in general.
Yeah, yeah, truly.
So the first thing I always ask people when they come on the show is the name of the podcast is "Leading through Crisis", so when you hear that phrase, what comes up for you?
There's an opportunity here. This is probably gonna feel hard. That doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. And I hope you started a long time ago because the time to be a leader is not when the crisis starts, but long before it comes.
I love that. And I would be curious, because you work with leaders and founders, how can people, how do you see, it's not even how can, can is not the right word. How do you see people stepping into leadership long before it's actually necessarily, like, what does that look like or how does that show up? Because I think we talk about like everyone can be a leader. Leader, and I'm not saying this flippantly, leadership at all levels, like these things matter, but then people go, how, what, how do I know, what does it look like? Like what is, what is that? And I'm curious from your perspective, what is that?
Yeah, I mean, I was, I got interviewed by a family member who's in college this week for her business class, and one of the things I said, if I would just tell everybody in your business class one thing, it would be to take on like an owner or a leader mindset as opposed to thinking like an employee. Like if you ever want to own anything, be in charge of anything, lead anything, take responsibility for anything, ever you need to be developing that, I'm the kind of person who thinks things through ahead of time, thinks about the outcome for the person walking in, thinks about how this is gonna affect things five years from now, thinks about how I want to be received in my position. So I think that would be the first place to start, is just consider the possibility that you're already one, and if you were, what would that look like, and what might you do differently in any given moment? Not the huge ones that come and force us into it, call us forth into it in a way bigger way, but in all of them.
I love that you included the thinking of, I'm, this is a summary, it's not exactly your exact word, but that thinking of others that considering others and where they're at inside of it. Because I think that can be really hard at the best of times, let alone when there's crisis, and when there's a really challenging moment. It can be that much harder to think through, to be considerate of what other people are going through, and it's building that muscle when you don't have to that, I think, makes a big difference.
And everyone's gonna know if you're faking it when shit hits the fan. But if you're the person who has actually thought through, how do I wanna show up for my people when they have a sick family member, when it's their birthday, when, like what's our company culture around all of these things and how that then will land us so much more securely in any crisis, because we know who we are, we know how we show up in the world.
So you also mentioned that crisis is an opportunity, and yes, I'm just gonna say yes, 100% agree with that. And we all know that in, I'm not even gonna say, in any time of change, the hardest thing in the moment can be to see any potential opportunity, even though in looking back, we're often like, oh, that's what that was. So from your, I'm gonna ask this in a way that you can answer it however you, there's gonna be a lot of possibilities, but is there, are there times in your life where you have learned that lesson and you're like, this is the thing I, this is a touch point I keep going back to where it's like, always remember this? Cause I certainly have those times where it's like, don't forget, this was an opportunity. Keep that in mind when I'm dealing with things.
Yeah.
And are there, is there any advice or the perspective that you would share with people when they're in those moments going, this is just chaos.
I mean a few things come to mind. We're people who love like an underdog story and the hero's journey and like, oh, they came from below and they rose up and they met the thing. And those are sexy stories for the movies, but in real life, it's like there was a lot of planning that didn't get done. There were a whole bunch of missed opportunities ahead of time that meant this story could have been boring. And in leadership, boring is so good, right? It's predictable. It's like what we want, keeps our nervous systems in check. But I have a story: When I was commercial fishing, I hadn't spent much time on the ocean and we were running out, down around a corner, and like, anytime you go around a corner into the ocean, there's a wave situation that's gonna happen. There's the sea meeting a different waterway and it's gonna be something. And we got out there and it was, of course, bigger and crazier than we had expected, and the captain was way doing, like his father was dying, so like crisis upon crisis sort of. And so here we were the less experienced folks running the boat that we were fairly new to, and I wasn't even that seaworthy at that point, and everything that wasn't tied down was flying around, including like things that weighed a thousand pounds. So it was this like, during this big swell, going into the ocean, coffee pot flying across the galley, like some of the stuff on the back deck needing to be tied down tighter with like metal things, and you know, all the knots, all the tying, all the, whatever, the kayak rack, because we like to have fun too, when we're stuck in a bay for 72 hours, you know. The kayak rack is swinging around and all of that stuff, every single thing had I known or thought it through ahead of time, could've been avoided. It still would've been like, let's like make sure that everything that we did in advance is working, but not, let's do everything that we actually could have done when the seas were steady, like, and we just didn't do it.
And I just, first off, I love that you started with, when I was commercial fishing, like just drop that in, like whatever, like we all just were commercial fisher people at some point, love that. And it's a really poignant example of what you're talking about, that, and I don't, and I'm gonna say this, I'm not saying that you all were avoiding doing the things ahead of time or you were busy or what, but there's always something that is gonna tell us that we will, we have time to do that later.
Yeah, time to do it later. Things are easy out here. I definitely had some rose colored glasses about like what's actually required to be seaworthy versus what's required in the inland passages. These are different things. When in crisis versus out of crisis.
Yes. So I wanna ask a question about a situation like that. 'Cause I don't know, I have never been a commercial fisher-human, so I have no idea how many people are on a boat like that, what that looks like. I assume that there are a fair number of people in that situation.
Yeah, there were two of us. Usually there were three. Sometimes there were four, but we were, we were running with two people. We were a little undermanned, but we did it.
Yeah. But had another person been there, I'm sure it would've looked differently, and that person had experience and perspective and expertise that I didn't have, right.
And that, and I love, that's what I was gonna ask is, and I appreciate that I clearly had the wrong assumption 'cause I would not have guessed two people. I was going to guess maybe more like 10 or more. Two is definitely fewer than I was thinking. And my question was gonna be, was there someone who had that experience and, or was that just not the situation at the time, and it sounds like it just wasn't the situation that you and your crewmate both new enough, green enough that you kind of just didn't know better.
Or the guy with all the experience had to drive the boat, cause I didn't have that. What I can do is muscle my way around and fix things. What I can't do is drive a boat through stuff I don't know how to drive a boat through.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How, so besides the importance of taking the time ahead of time to do some of those things, how has that changed your approach to, or how has that influenced, cause I don't know, I'm not saying, maybe not changed. How has that experience influenced how you approach things on a day to day basis or in a planning, planful way?
I think when you're, when you get to be on a team and I've had on that same boat, so many other experiences that were so fantastic and everybody knows what their role is, it's clearly defined. You know, when to show up to do what you're here to do, you know how to be successful because somebody has told you. You know how all these pieces and parts come together and work together to create the outcome that you wanna create, you know, the outcome you're all trying to create, then it's just so much easier to feel that, I guess, a sense of grace that's, and just cutting it loose. Like I know how to be here and I know how to do what I am here to do, and I know when I have the extra time to step up and help others or to step down and like really just do what I need to do. But that's only because everyone has that role. It's pretty carved out.
It's so much of everything is about clarity at the end of the day, and that's, you know, clarity in roles, clarity and expectations, clarity of what success looks like, and that takes time that we don't always like to put to things and there's effort in getting clarity, and I think that, what I hear you saying is like, one, it's worth the effort. Let's all spend some time doing these things. And it makes a big difference even in the day to day, let alone in the crisis.
And I think what I'm also remembering is like, you're working on a boat, we're talking about your life, like someone makes a big enough mistake and somebody dies, and I think you take each other's lives pretty seriously out there, but I also think it can help to bring that sense of seriousness about everybody's lived experience everywhere. Like the only reason all this works is because we come together and we bring all of our life experience. I want to be able to honor everybody's life who's putting something into this because the outcomes are affecting me and usually positively.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that? 'Cause I think that's a really important message for people to have.
Yeah, humans matter, right? Our lives matter, and what we do with them is sometimes we choose to show up in your business, in your life, inside of your dream. I give part of my life to your dream and that's what all of our employees are doing, whether they know it or not, whether they're intentional with it or not, it's what's happening. They're trading their life to work on something that matters to you. And hopefully they get to the place where it matters to them too, but they're gonna get their way faster if they know that the fact that they're there matters and that you get it. This is not like, the only currency is not money. We can value people in so many different ways.
So what do you say to leaders or organizations, and full disclosure, I say this thinking of, you know, I see this a lot in sales organizations or insurance or, well, I guess I'd say finance, not only insurance, insurance is a specific piece of that, in finance, in certain industries or parts of the, of organizations where they say, but it really is just about the money cause people only do the sales because they want more money. People are only in finance 'cause they wanna make more. Like it is about the money in those moments. Because I do hear that when I talk to, and I'm sure you've heard that as well when you talk to leaders where they're like, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but it's really all about the money, or I hear what you're saying, and then when they are looking at compensation, any like, whatever change in inclusivity, whatever it is, it still comes back to money.
I hope that if that's the truth, money is the top value, is painted on the wall when all their customers come in, that's what they see. Here at X, so and such company, our top value is money, and after that safety, and after that, like whatever the other values are. But I think money's great, but try to enjoy it without a human being. Like our entire felt experience of our lives happens inside of these human pods we walk around in, and like, no matter how much money you have, like, it doesn't really matter unless I can enjoy it as a human connecting with other humans, typically, feeling the feelings associated with getting the things that I love money for in my body. But I think it is about the values. Like if you have a company that's top values money, that's fantastic, be really clear about it, own it. Love it. Hire people who want that too. If you don't say it that explicitly, then you're probably being kind of shady. But it's okay. Like let it be, let it be what it is.
Yeah. Are you, this is, I promise you there's a point to this. Are you familiar with the Hogan assessment?
I have a friend who talks about it often.
Okay, so I use Hogan assessments quite often, and one of the pieces of a Hogan assessment is like the motives, values, something index, and one of them is commerce, and it is really either people who are very driven by money or are like a lot of finance people who work in money will have commerce as a really high value because that whole economics, that whole world is really interesting to them. And it's really fascinating when you're, when I do a debrief with someone and commerce is a value and they get all, they're either like, yeah, obviously, and they're totally fine. Like what, no, I'm not, that's not-- Exactly. And it's so fascinating 'cause I think you're right. Like there's nothing wrong with it as long as we're being transparent that that is what it is.
Yeah, then it's fantastic. Like I love every value that's actually the truth for someone, whether it's integrity, commerce, fuckloads loads of money, like however they wanna label it. As long as you're being honest about who you are, I love it. Love all of it.
Can I just say, I really hope that on someone's value list, there is fuckloads loads of money.
I'm sure there has to be. There has to be, right.
But I think it's a really, I think that's, I think your point is very important because we judge the values we have, even when there are values.
Yeah.
Like, we've all done, I'm sure I've said this on the podcast before, because I'm a broken record about this, but you know, I've done values lists with people, I've done them for myself, where people come up with their values list and you're like, this is literally a list of aspirational values that you wish you had. Tell me how they show up in your life ever.
You're like, oh are you the CEO of Chevron, cause that sounds really nice. No.
Yeah.
So I was teaching this with a group of cousins, female cousins a few months ago and I talked to them about one of my values is wholeheartedness. I'm like, if I'm not all in, then I'm all out. And she looked at me with like this look like, I don't trust you. And I was like, what are you thinking? And she's like, that's cheating. Wholeheartedness, that just encapsulates everything. You can't have that be your value. And guess what her top value was. Wholeheartedness
Yeah. She was like, I'm so suspicious of this. That doesn't feel fair, but it's like, it is what it is. And your values leave clues all over your life. Just look backwards. Look on your credit card statement and look in your calendar. Are you at the gym every week? Do you value that? Do you have a date night every week? Is your relationship really important to you? Like it's everywhere. You can see it and they don't lie. But if you post something on the wall that isn't how you live, everyone's gonna feel that, including you, and it's like a very disempowering stance to take.
Yes, I think, I mean, I think that's really important and I think it's running it through that filter of how is this showing up in your life, where has it shown up in my life over and over again? 'Cause it will historically as well. And I mean the language around the value might change, but the theme of it is going to be there. And I think running it through that so it's a lived value, not an aspirational value is really important because it's so easy to judge ourselves on our own values, right? Like, oh, but honesty or integrity. Integrity is, I always get on a bit of a pedestal about it, but like integrity is so important to me. This is definitely my top value. Is it though? Like it can be important to you and not be your top three values. Doesn't mean you don't live without integrity, but we're so quick to be like, this one sounds good, or this one doesn't sound good. So let's move it to reflect that.
Yeah. I had, my top value's actually spaciousness.
Ooh, I like.
Right. And so if I'm really, and this is something that I work on all the time, they're on a sticky note here on my desktop, it's like, okay, if this is my top value, how is that actually playing out in time I spend with my family and in how I book clients on my calendar and in how I leave space for reading, all that stuff. It's confronting, I think. You know, you can be in the struggle of judging yourself for the values you actually have, or you can be in the struggle of actually living the values you actually have. Both of them are gonna take probably a similar caloric load, but one of them gives you alignment and one of them doesn't.
Yeah, I think that's, I'm good about money. That's gonna be one of the quotes from this episode because I think that's really important. And it's so funny, you said spaciousness, and I was like, that is definitely not my value. I look at it now and it's like, it's not, but one of mine is connection. So I have yeah lots of connection points in my calendar. I have lots of, we were talking about like, you know, before we hit record, I was like, all I wanna do is see people again in person, like that is, I'm making time for that. I'm, you know, probably too much. But because that really is, I know how important that is to me. And it's so funny 'cause you said spaciousness, which I love that. I wish it was my value. It is definitely, that would be a, that would be a very aspirational value if I was saying it was mine, but I live into the connection constantly, like that is important to me. And so it's, I say that because I think it's really important that anyone listening hears that it can be perfect for you and not ever be in someone else's life, and there's, that's great. That's great.
And if you tie it back to crisis, if you are someone who is used to living in alignment and knows like, okay, like where are we gonna find wholeheartedness amidst this crisis, where are we gonna, like, where are we in or out of integrity within this crisis, you have a really clear set of kind of filter questions that you can take yourself through when those, in those really tight places where it feels like there is no good answer and maybe there isn't, you can at least be like, okay, well does it honor our company values or my personal values of integrity or of connection if we make this choice? Does it do it just for now? Does it do it long term? Can we make a different choice later? Like you can really meet yourself in the moment in a clearer way, and I find the best part about that is it makes really hard decisions easier, even though it doesn't make them easy.
Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to make them easy, but yes, easier. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think in all getting clarity on, I'm actually gonna ask this question before I say what I was gonna say, 'cause everyone has a different opinion on this: How many values do you have for yourself as, these are my top whatever values.
I say three to five.
Okay.
Because if you have more than five, how can you remember them? Like going through a drive-thru with your cell phone buzzing and like people in the car with you knowing there's a crisis happening two miles down the road. You can't, yeah, what do you say?
I say three to five also. I tend to lean into, get as close to three as possible as my personal thing. But there's people who will say like, here's, you need to know your top 10. For what? And I, for me, yeah, I know your faces, but--
My eyeballs got really big.
Yep, but it's--
I can't remember 10 things at the grocery store. How am I gonna remember, and that's what I wanna eat.
A million percent. That would be a list in my phone that I'd have to go look at. I'll tell and be like, what are they again? So three to five and I am always like get as close to three as possible. That's my--
And I find if you're at 10, so many of the next five are actually embedded in the first five, and it's like, well for me, community actually lives under connection. I thought community was my top value . It's connection, community's within it. Like you can kinda wiggle them all together and define them for yourself.
Absolutely, absolutely. And it's just, again, it's the time to, to kind of do that and get, get clear, clarity is clearly the theme of this. Clearly, let me say that one more time clearly, but like really get clear on what that is and get specific and be okay with letting go of the language of one thing or the other. So something that I have seen come up a few times is people will, they really need to have community and family separately on a values list. And it's like, okay, if we dig into this, do do they actually have to be separate? Is your community, do you consider it to be your family? Do you consider it the same, or vice versa or whatever, because there's, it's often so overlapping, but it's the language that people get stuck on.
And I was doing this work with a client last week and one we didn't have on his list was family. And so I pulled it up from some other notes, and I said, well, what about family? And you could just see the complete, like complete change in his body and emotion coming up that I'd never seen before with him. And like, clearly this is the top value on the values list. Like it's really interesting. And then I don't have family on my list at all. And there can be people who have tons of kids, lots of family, aunties everywhere. Family does not have to be in your values list. You can be someone who puts family first by living wholeheartedly by creating spaciousness in your calendar, by connecting with people so you feel fueled so when you have to be around the people who you actually love, you can really be there with them.
Yeah. It's an important nuance that we don't often talk about.
And it's confronting sometimes-- Where we're all trying to be all the things for everybody.
Oh my gosh. And then some, and then some. And it's hard to, it can be hard for people to even know where to start with recognizing what to do with how they're feeling with that confrontation. Because we want to be a certain way, we want to be seen a certain way, we want to live a certain way and it doesn't, it's not always easy or obvious or straightforward or whatever.
What's coming to mind for me right now is like, I want you to be able to sleep at night. I want the people who have a lot of power and who have a ton of impact to be able to sleep at night, to be well rested. And I think if you're gonna be the person who's at the front in a crisis, this is gonna be really helpful because even if you had to make a really hard choice, if you're doing it in an aligned way, you can sleep at night.
Yeah. And I mean, values is not the only thing that, I'm not saying it's the only place that we, or list or whatever that we wanna make decisions from. But having some clarity around that lets you have something to make those decisions, to be able to sleep at night, to feel proud, good, whatever of what you're doing, about what you're doing.
Yeah, yeah.
So I wanna ask 85 more questions, because I always do, and I also wanna be very mindful of our time together. So is there anything that I, both or either is fine in what I'm about to say, that you want to emphasize about some of the things that we talked about and/or add to any of the things we talked about? Because I think that it's really, it's a really important conversation. It's really important information takeaways, mindset stuff for leaders and entrepreneurs and business owners and whatever to be thinking about right now.
I think, I mean, what's important for me to, for every person in a leadership position to know is we want you to lead. We do not want you to hold back. You are there for a reason and we want the version of you who is there, who was put in that role to do what you're here to do and to define what that is and commit to what you're here to do and do it your way, because you weren't chosen on accident. And if you were, it'll show quickly and they'll get you out of there and that'll be a relief, and that's okay, like there's a role for you somewhere. But we need people to take the lead. There are so many people who aren't willing to do it, that don't want to. The people who are actually in power with the impact need to do the work of leadership.
Yeah. Yep. I think that is the perfect message for people to walk away from this, to walk away with, from this, there we go, it's an actual sentence that I meant. And I would also add, in my opinion, if you are someone who wants to lead and may not have that power yet, lead anyways.
Lead now, people want to be led.
Yeah. Yeah. I adore you and I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. This has been very interesting and I would like you to come back and we can just talk about commercial fishing and some of the other pictures that you'd had, that you've had, because I am going to tell you right now, I guarantee from this, from this podcast, the email responses I will get will be like, commercial fishing, tell me more about that. Guaranteed. So--
We can have that interview too.
Thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your time.
Yeah, you too. Thank you, thanks for having me. This was fun.
[Celine] Thanks for joining me today on the "Leading Through Crisis" podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a minute to rate and review us on your podcast app. If you're interested in learning more about any of our guests, you can find us online at www.leadingthroughcrisis.ca.