In this episode, we are talking to certified life coach, creator, and CEO, Kamini Wood about self-awareness in leadership. The strongest leaders are the ones who know and care for themselves well – whose teams benefit as a result.
"We can’t give to [or lead] others when we don’t even have our own self taken care of."
In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, we’re talking about self-aware leadership with certified life coach, the creator of AuthenticMe® and CEO of Live Joy Your Way, Kamini Wood.
We’ve talked about this on the show before... the strongest leaders are the ones with high emotional intelligence who, as a result, propel their teams at a much greater rate than the ones who have a more old-school, top-down mentality and approach.
But, Kamini brings a really big piece of that self-awareness/emotional intelligence puzzle into the conversation today – three of them actually: core values, core beliefs, and core needs.
Listen in for a fantastic description and examples of each, how we can shift old stories or limiting beliefs, and what self-compassion and self-care (the real kind) can do for us.
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Kamini Wood, a certified life coach, helps high-achievers heal their relationships with themselves. She helps people take courageous steps in identifying limiting beliefs, reasons for stagnation and overcoming self-doubt in order to live a full professional and personal life.
She is the creator of AuthenticMe® and CEO of Live Joy Your Way - a coaching company helping high performers and overachievers who have seen success through old-rooted, traditional metrics, reestablish their relational self-awareness. Trained in internal family systems and cognitive behavioral-based coaching, she can help her clients navigate past traumas and toxic relationships and truly live in self-acceptance, self-confidence, and self-leadership.
Kamini is a best-selling author; holding certifications in various modalities including life, wellness, high-performance coaching, teen life, conscious uncoupling, calling in the one, new money story, breath work, meditation and diversity, equity inclusion, and belonging. She is also trained in conscious parenting and coaching for children.
You can learn more about Kamini and grab her free 8-step guide to overcoming limiting beliefs at https://www.kaminiwood.com. You can also find her on LinkedIn (@KaminiWood), Instagram and Facebook (@itsauthenticme).
- I am Celine Williams, and welcome to the "Leading Through Crisis" podcast, a conversation series exploring resiliency and leadership in challenging times. My guest today is Kamini Wood, a certified life coach, creator of Authentic ME and CEO of Live Joy Your Way, a coaching company helping high performers and overachievers who have seen success through old rooted traditional metrics reestablish their relational self-awareness. Welcome, Kamini.
- Thank you, Celine. I'm glad to be here with you.
- I'm excited to talk to you today. But before we get into all the good stuff, or I guess really as a start to all the good stuff, the name of the podcast is "Leading Through Crisis". I always like to ask, what does that mean for you? What comes up when you hear that?
- For me, leading through crisis is about coming home to self, understanding what one's core values and core beliefs and core needs are in order to figure out what steps you want to take to move through whatever crisis or challenge that life has thrown your way.
- I, so, I love that, and I'm gonna ask a question. So we, I think we hear about core values, and we've talked about this on the podcast, core values have come up. I have very specific thoughts I've probably shared too many times on this platform around core values, but I don't think we hear about core beliefs or core needs nearly as much. So, and I, by the way, this is not to say, please go ahead and define core values, however you would like it. You know, my many thoughts on it are not the be all end all by any stretch. But I'm additionally curious about the idea of the core beliefs and core needs. And I wonder if you can, core values as well is fine, but also explain, kind of go into some of that and what that means for you when you're talking about it. 'Cause I think it's overlooked, and I think they're important.
- Yeah, totally. I actually used to only talk about core values when I first started coaching a few, "a few," quote-unquote, years ago. But two things that I will say about core values. I don't do lists with my, with the people that I work with, 'cause I don't believe that you can just look at a list of words and say, "Okay, that's my core value." So we, when I work with somebody, it's all about really understanding what's meaningful, what actually drives you. But you're right, that the two other pillars, 'cause I say it's three pillars, the three stools, or three legs of the stool, are the values, the beliefs, and the needs. And the beliefs are what are those core things that I truly believe for myself. And the needs get overlooked. And I know this as a people-pleaser myself, where we constantly defer to somebody else and we forget that our needs actually help us figure out who we are. And if we're truly gonna be a leader, for instance, I always refer to, "You can't be a leader of others until you're a self leader." And the way that we become a self leader is to really understand capital S Self. And so we have to know what drives us. So yes, values, what's meaningful to us, what do we actually believe, and then what do we need? What are our authentic self needs in order to propel us forward? And those three things can help us become that self leader, which then allows us to be able to show up to lead other people.
- So I'm gonna, I wanna talk about beliefs for a second first, and I'm gonna acknowledge that my, I agree with what you're saying about values. I also think picking values off a list is insane. And I also, in the work that I do, and I'm, I'm guessing you have seen this as well, when people first are like, "Here's my values, here's what mattered to me," I will always question it and be like, "Cool. Give me an example of how that is actually showing up in your life, or how that has driven a decision in the past week." 'Cause otherwise you're telling me the aspirational values you have. I don't care about those. That's not how you live your life. So that's my baseline kind of assumption and way of operating with values. And I'm acknowledging that to say, when it comes to, I'm gonna talk about core beliefs, first, core beliefs. I'm curious how much of, and I don't know that it's the work you do necessarily, but how much of the conversation around that is core beliefs about self, which are important, and if you can give some examples of what some of those might be, but also, are core beliefs about the world, or the way the world operates? Are they part of that conversation as well? Because I wouldn't-
- That's a great question. I'm sorry to interrupt you.
- No, no, no.
- Because I think that-
- Please interrupt. Always.
- That that distinction is huge. When I'm referring to those core beliefs, I really am looking at the ones that are of self. Why do I do that? Because so often we're driven by beliefs that are someone else's narrative. The narrative of, for instance, you're not smart enough, or you're not good enough, or you're not lovable, or you're undeserving. So when I'm talking about that self-leadership, it is what do I actually know to be true about myself? What do I believe about myself? Because those core beliefs are what are gonna drive us. And if we've got this operating system of a core belief of, "I don't deserve," or, "I'm not worthy," or, "I'm not enough," that's the one that's gonna drive how we show up, not just for ourselves, but in relationship to others. And if we're talking about things like leadership, if we are not believing that we are smart enough or worthy enough, how are we gonna really show up as a leader for others?
- So how do you, how can someone start to parse out their core beliefs from the things that, like, what they actually believe about themself, from the things that they have been told about themself, or that has been imposed on themself? And this is why I was asking the question, or part of it, around the, "What I believe to be true about the world versus myself." Because I think a lot of the work that I do is on shifting perspectives for people on the truth, the right thing in the world, because that does so much impact what we believe about ourself. So I'm curious, when, for someone who is like, not, it's not obvious. "Here's what I actually know to be true about myself," versus, "Here's what I have a lifetime of believing that other people have imposed on me, or that society has imposed on me," or, you know, whatever. How can people start to parse those things out and get clear on them? 'Cause I imagine that's not an easy thing to do.
- It is not an easy thing to do. It is, and that's when I say to people, "That's the work." That's where we have to be willing to go there, because it's not always fun. It's kind of icky, when we think about it. But really what we're doing is we are understanding and bringing to the awareness what certain experiences and certain messages were that we had, and then asking that question, "What did we make that mean about ourselves?" So, using me as an example, growing up in this predominantly white town, little Indian girl, lots of, lots of people made fun of, we were just talking about this, made fun of my name. "You look different." As a five or six-year old, I took that in and I internalized that and made it mean, "Oh, my goodness, you're not, you are different. You have to prove worthiness," right? My five or six-year old self didn't then go, "Oh, that means that you're turning into..." My adult self can now go back and say, "Wow, that experience was internalized as this." I'm able to understand that that narrative wasn't mine. It was a narrative that came out of the experience, and that, "I'm different, I don't belong," was the belief. And now I can, as my adult self, look at the situation, step back and say, "Well, what's actually true?" Well, in terms of why, I belong in terms of my family, I belong in terms of my children. And you know, you start to really ask yourself what's actually true in your current life, and you can look at it in a different way. And you really start to shift that, that belief, that core belief about self as, "Well, I belong to myself," is really, at the end of the day, what I came to, was, at the end of the day, I only need to belong to me. I don't need to belong to other people. Yes, we're part of a larger group as humans, we're relational beings, but I need to understand my worth from my inside out rather than from the outside in. And that's really the work that I end up doing with people.
- I'm curious if, and I'm gonna use the example that you just used, and then I will jump to needs in a second. But I'm curious if, in a situation like, you know, what you were saying, that the internalized kind of message is like, "I'm different and I don't belong," some version of that. I'm curious if you find people who, as they're doing this kind of work, that it becomes, instead of, "I'm different," in a bad way, that the belief can change to like, "I'm unique and different in a," like, if that is part of the rewriting of the pattern and belief sometimes.
- Absolutely. And just using me as an example, we were just talking about this too, my name. At first, it was, "Oh my gosh, my name is different. I don't belong. I am, this is awful." And now as an adult, it's, "Yes, my name is different." And now I know when people are actually addressing me, versus having to guess are they talking to me, or are they not talking to me? Or my name is so unique that I don't have to ever feel like I'm exactly the same as somebody else. And that's actually a positive, because, jumping to needs, part of needs as a, like, as one of mine, is to, to be respected and to be seen and to be acknowledged. Well, my name is a great way for me to feel that, because immediately, by it being different, I know that people are taking notice, and they're seeing me as my own individual person, rather than part of, part of the cattle call, so to speak.
- Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's, and I think that's really, I think we often overlook. And look, I mean, I think it's prominent in not only coaching, but I think it happens in psychology and a lot of different spaces where we are like, "Okay, well, I need to rewrite this in this way," right? Like, "I don't belong," is now, "I belong," which, I, great. But I wonder sometimes if we're missing opportunities to see the positive in some of those things, where it's not like, "Let's negate that belief." Again, nothing wrong with that. But sometimes it's like, "Okay, that thing that was 'I am different,'" negative, can now be, "I'm different, but that's a-"
- Positive.
- "I can, how I feel about it has changed," rather than the, like, words of the belief, if that makes sense.
- Which is a great way for you. I love how you just said that, because what that says is the belief is what you think about the thing, right? So, "I'm different," that's what we're shifting up. That's the core belief. So the core belief is, "I'm different, bad," versus, "I'm different, positive." Same core belief, but different, different way of looking at it. And that's what we're talking about is when we come back to self, it's, you know, "Yes, these are my values, these are my beliefs." I can believe I'm different, but I can believe I'm different in a positive way, versus a negative way. And that's where you own it. That's where you get to define and figure out how you want to be your own self leader, is how do you actually talk to yourself about that? How do you, what's the internalized message, essentially-
- Yeah.
- Is what we're breaking down.
- Yeah. It's so. It reminds me of, I had a friend growing up who was, I don't, I mean, we went to school together for years. We were friends for years after this, well into our early twenties. And I don't know a person who met her, ever, who did not immediately after be like, "She's super weird. She's just weird." It was... She heard it, people said it. And having been friends with her from literally the time we were four years old, I remember her at six, seven, eight, when I kind of have some of those... Anytime she heard that, or so, she would just go, "I'm unique." And from a very young age she was like, "I'm not. You're saying weird, and I'm hearing unique, and I'm good with that."
- Yeah.
- And when you were saying that, I was like, it's so interesting. 'Cause I think of her and I'm like, "I wish more people had that confidence, the chutzpah," whatever it was that she had, to just, at six years old, be like, "Thank you for saying I'm weird. I'm unique, and I'm good with that."
- Yeah. I love it. That's so funny that you just said that though, 'cause this morning, as my middle children were getting ready for school, I said something. It was, it was odd, the way that it kind of rolled off my tongue. I happened to call the dogs four-legged friends, and my two teenagers were just like, "Oh my gosh, you're so weird." And I looked at them and I was like, "Thank you." 'Cause to me weird now means, "Oh, I'm making an impression, and I'm making an impression that means something to you, and I feel good about that," versus weird being, "Oh you're different," how my six-year old self would've taken it. I love the fact that your friend was able to do that as a six-year old.
- And so confidently. And like I, it's, I love, inside of this conversation, I just connected those dots, where I was like, why aren't we teaching every six-year old to be able to do that? Every eight year old to be able to hear that, and rather than run it through the filters of shame and what the world thinks, and whatever, be able to flip it and be like, "I'm not taking that on. I'm unique. You can think whatever you want. I'm unique." Like, I think that's a skill that, that I wish we would impart on children, so, you know, there were less adults out there running with those operating systems that aren't so great.
- Well, it's great that you say that, 'cause I actually work with kids all the way through adults, and that is the one thing that we really do work on, is... Because that's the thing, is things get, they are put through the filter as a six-year old, as a seven-year old, as an eight-year old. That stays in our subconscious. That's the operating system that everything then is filtered through, all the way through adulthood. And we can change it. I mean, that's what we're talking about right here. It's bring it to the awareness, and now we can, we can challenge it, we can shift it, we can look at it differently. It's about the lens that we choose to look at it with. However, to that point, with kids, if we could just get in front of it at an earlier age, it would such a huge difference.
- Yeah. Well, and I think that, not to jump, I'm gonna jump ahead and jump back for a second, but, but I think that kids who have that from a young age, if we could get ahead of it, you would end up in, you'd end up with leaders in organizations who were more confident in a good way. Like, you know, in a, in a not cocky, bullshitty way, but an actual positive, you know, constructive way, who are more empathetic, who are more understanding, who are more accepting, who are more inclusive. All these things that ideally we want, I think would be a natural result of getting ahead of that earlier on.
- Absolutely. Because we're teaching the, we're teaching emotional intelligence. That's really what we would be doing at an earlier age. And I truly believe that those really strong leaders are those with that higher emotional intelligence. They're the empathetic leaders. They're the ones that can listen to somebody and relate to them, understand where their point of view is coming from. Instead of just talking down, they're talking with the people that work underneath them, or that are reporting to them. Those leaders tend to, they propel their teams at a much greater rate than the ones that are this top-down mentality of, you know, the hierarchy, so to speak.
- Yeah. Yes. I am not, I agree with all of that, hundred percent. I do wanna talk about the core needs as kind of one of the legs of the stool here of self-leadership. And I know you mentioned self-compassion as well as part of that. So, you know, that's gonna come from self-leadership. How are you compassionate with yourself if you're not aware of these things? So, what is the, so I'm gonna acknowledge this. I think the idea of core needs is, has been, I'm gonna say, misunderstood maybe, but popularized in a way where people talk about like, "self-care," and then they use all this self... I love that you immediately rolled. That there's this like self-care. Like, "These are the things I need. I need to take a bubble bath at night, and I need to, ," I don't even know, "use a face mask and get a massage once a week," or whatever it is. And I think that, for a lot of people, when they hear something like core needs, they hear that, and they think about that, 'cause that's what social media has popularized, whatever the case may be. So I want to acknowledge that, 'cause I would love to know how you define core needs, 'cause I'm going to guess from the eye roll, it's not like that, which would be, just a guess.
- I definitely wear things on my face.
- Oh. Me too. That's why I was like, I love that I saw that, 'cause I'm like, "Good." But I, my guess is that there's a lot of that perception out there. So what is a core need? What would a core need not be? And how would, like, you know, how can I know that I'm talking about a core need versus, you know, "I need to have a bubble bath once a week in my, with my candles, and read my book."
- Which, let's be clear, self-care can be those bubble baths. Absolutely, hundred percent. But I also take a little bit of, because it's been so popularized and everybody's talking about self-care, that's also created. And you know, it's, it's our commercialization of it too, right? Businesses need to make money, so we're gonna popularize self-care, and it's the bubble-baths, it's the, you know, face masks, all those things. Candles, great. Those are great. I love 'em. Love 'em. However, when I'm talking about core needs, it's the stuff that makes us, like, that we need in order to feel connected to ourself and to feel like we are, we are able to, how do I put this? So, with values, it's what's meaningful. Beliefs are how I see myself, how I'm interpreting, how I'm kind of internalizing things. And then the needs are what are, like, almost like what's the engine that keeps me running, if I'm gonna kind of break it down that way. So when I'm talking about needs, it's things like to be heard, to be respected. I need to be understood. I need to be connected to other individuals. I need to be, you know, like, I'm trying to think of even some of my clients, 'cause I intentionally make my clients go through the needs, the needs. That's because they're like, "What do you even mean by this?" I need to, you know, have a voice. That's one that comes up a lot. I need to be able to speak what's on my mind. I need to be able to have... A need of mine is emotional safety. Like, I'll just own it. If I don't feel emotionally safe with somebody, we're gonna have a very cordial relationship, but it's not gonna be meaningful. So that's what I'm talking about those core needs. What are the things deep inside that allow you to move forward? And I say that, as a people pleaser, I really struggled with this, because I lost track of what those needs were, because I was constantly deferring to what other people wanted and needed, and are they okay, are they happy? And so when we come back home to self and understand ourselves and take the time to say, okay, these are the things that I actually need. Oftentimes it is in things like relationship or, or, and relationship can be personal relationships, like romantic, it can be familial, friendships, workplace relationships, it's across the board. And I do think that when we're talking about professional worlds and we're setting goals, for instance, so often we set these goals because it's almost like we either hear them as like, good goals, or, like, "I should have this goal." And I always challenge people to go back to their values and their needs when it comes to their professional world, and then set your goals, because that's the thing that's gonna actually propel you forward, because now the goals have some intrinsic meaning behind them. I hope that answers the question that you were asking.
- Yeah. And it's also, there's two things that came to mind as you said that. And the first one is, I imagine that a lot of parents, but women especially, mothers, really struggle with identifying their own needs in a way that is maybe different than, you know, someone who doesn't have kids, or a father, you know, whatever the case may be, a parent, because we societally tend to expect maybe, women to sacrifice in a certain way with motherhood, and they don't have any needs anymore, now it's about the kids. So I imagine that that is a very kind of specific story to unwind to get to the needs. So as you were saying that I was like-
- Yeah.
- Even be, and people pleasers, yes, but I think it, my guess would be that it's even more so in those circumstances.
- Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think people experience it even as they get into a relationship. Sometimes they get into a relationship that might start taking a codependent turn. They lose their needs. They're a new parent, they start to make it about the child. Rightfully so, you're taking care of a human, and also your needs still matter. So it is about unwinding that and making sure that those things are still known to you so that those things are still being met. Because if we're not meeting our own personal needs, we're now trying to operate from pretty much, and I know this is cliche, but an empty cup. We're trying to give to others and we don't even have our own self taken care of.
- Yeah. Yep. So I recognize that we could probably talk about this for the next two hours, 'cause I love these types of conversations, and that would be the world's longest podcast. So rather than do that, I'm gonna ask this question, which is, is there, is there anything, especially around this topic, 'cause I know that I kind of nerded out on this values, beliefs, and needs, and these three core aspects, is there anything that we didn't get to that you want to get into before we wrap this up? Or that you wanna emphasize as part of the conversation? Because we did, I think there's lots of value, and we talked about a lot of these aspects.
- No, I think what we talked about was amazing, and I really do believe in all three of them. The one piece that I would say is self-compassion, right, kindness over judgment. That's a real key element when we're talking about leadership as well. When we're talking about self-leadership or leadership of others, it's how can I approach this situation with kindness rather than judgment? How can I learn from a situation? Crisis, challenge, how can I learn from this instead of judging myself through this?
- Yeah. We could have a whole other conversation about just that. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. This was really valuable. I really appreciate your insights, and, you know, breaking this down and sharing the way that you did. 'Cause I think it's so much easier for people when they hear it and it is broken down in kind of bite-sized people. People. Not bite-sized people, bite-sized pieces. No bite-sized people here. In bite-sized pieces, to kind of understand and do, start thinking about it for themselves. So thank you for breaking it down in that way. I really appreciate your time.
- Thank you for having me.
- [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.