EPISODE 386: The Grit Factor Author Shannon Huffman Polson on Courage, Resilience and Leadership in the World’s Most Male-Dominated Organization

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Women in Sales Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales on July 8, 2021. It featured “The Grit Factor” author Shannon Huffman Polson was hosted by IES Women in Sales Program Director Gina Stracuzzi. Learn more about Shannon and the Grit Factor here.]

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SHANNON’S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Grit is critical to our success, every single one of our successes. At the same time, understand that it’s not a sustainable operating mode. Remember, we’re talking about our own hearts, and the hearts of others. That means you’ve got to take care of yourself, in order to be able to have the strength to employ that grit. What I would say is the piece that you put into practice today is find ways to really go deep and drill down on those parts of The Grit Factor. You want to give yourself the space to do that work, and then give yourself the space to turn off that computer and turn off the cell phone and go spend time with your family. Go outside and move your body, and drink water and eat your vegetables. It really is about taking care of yourself so that you can not only take care of others, but then also go do that hard work that requires that grit. That is that balance that requires boundaries and thoughtful applications. I think we’re pushing ourselves pretty hard right now and it’s not sustainable unless you put some boundaries on it.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Hi, everybody and welcome to the Women in Sales Webcast. Today’s program is going to be super exciting, and I can’t wait to get to it. Our guest is a woman of firsts, Shannon Huffman Polson. She is one of the first women to fly an Apache combat helicopter for the United States Armed Forces. She’s written her own book, The Grit Factor, which is all about her experiences in the military, along with a number of other women in the military leaders one of which actually went through our forum, Katie Cooks.

I was so excited to find out that she’s in the book too. It just goes to show that there are a lot of women who are in leadership positions, not nearly enough and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Shannon is going to share some stories with us and her tips about using her lessons learned in the military, and transferring them to your leadership quest in the corporate world. I know there’s a lot of parallels. Without any further ado, welcome, Shannon.

Shannon Huffman Polson: Gina, thank you so much and thanks to all of you who are here, whether you’re here in person or whether you’re watching later on. I’m just thrilled to be here to share The Grit Factor with you today.

I want to start by taking you all onto the tarmac, and telling you about the first day that I walked out towards the Apache helicopter, the helicopter that I was going to fly. It was a winter day in Alabama. I had my flight suit zipped up against the cold. As I walked out towards this aircraft, the chills that I had that were going up and down my spine had very little to do with the temperature. I walked out on the tarmac on that winter morning and I saw that aircraft crouching there, looking like an enormous praying mantis lined up with other Apaches also crouching there.

The Apache is 58 feet long. It’s 18 feet wide, 12 feet high. It’s powered by two 1,850 horsepower jet engines. On its nose, hangs three different sight systems that see in day and night and adverse conditions. On its wings, hangs any combination of the 2.75-inch folding scenario rocket, and anti-tank Hellfire missile. Under its belly is slung the 30 millimeter high explosive cannon.

I walked out on the tarmac on that winter morning, and looked at the most technologically advanced helicopter in the world. Now, as I walked out on that tarmac, I had my own doubts. But more than that, I had to face the doubts that I was hearing expressed around me, about why women think they need to fly this thing anyway.

Right there, on that winter morning, I had to make a decision. I had to decide to be better than those doubts. I had to decide that I was going to own my own story and not live somebody else’s version of who it was that I should be, or how it is that I should contribute to the world.

I had to decide on that winter morning that I was going to own my own story and control my own narrative, because who was I not to fly the Apache? I walked up to that aircraft, I put one foot up onto the wheel, the other foot up to the fourth avionics. I opened that whole glass cockpit that opens up and out like a Lamborghini.

I’ve never been in a Lamborghini, but who needs to if you can fly this? [laughs] I loaded myself into the seat, began that run-up procedure I would know so well that I would know it by heart, but I would always use the checklist. Then we taxied out on the runway for takeoff.

If we were together, Gina, I’d ask all the people that are watching which way you take off in the Apache. Do you have any guesses Gina?

Gina Stracuzzi: No.

Shannon Huffman Polson: No. That’s okay too. A lot of people will say up, and that is the end goal of course, but in the Apache, like in any other aircraft, you turn the nose to face the wind. When you use it the right way, that resistance will help you to rise.

We’re going to come back to this as we talk through The Grit Factor today, but remember that whenever you’re facing resistance, you turn that nose to face the wind. When you use it the right way, the resistance will help you to rise.

Gina Stracuzzi: Brilliant. That is such a great lead into the conversation. Before we get deep into The Grit Factor, just give us a little bit of history about how you got to this point.

Shannon Huffman Polson: I had the opportunity a number of years ago to be one of the first women to fly the Apache helicopter in the United States Army. I led three different line units on three different continents before transitioning through my MBA at the Tuck School at Dartmouth.

Then leading outstanding teams in the corporate world as well in the sales side of things, in the medical device industries like Guidant that later became Boston Scientific. Then working on the business side at Microsoft as well. Now I really come back to this love of learning, this love of words, this love of leadership, and my first book was North of Hope.

We don’t talk about it as much in the context of The Grit Factor, though there’s lots of grit in that book as well. It’s a much more personal memoir. The Grit Factor came about because a young lieutenant reached out to me, it’s seven or eight years now, and asked if I would mentor her as she began the same journey that I had taken this number of years ago through Fort Rucker, Alabama, going to flight school becoming an aviation leader.

I said yes, and then I immediately doubted myself again, because it’d been a number of years since I had worn the uniform. I transitioned into the corporate space, and now I was into the writing and speaking space, and doing some leadership facilitation as well. I wondered how I could scale the advice that I offered her. If I did that work, then scale the people to whom it was available as well.

I began several years of interviewing leaders in the Vanguards of their fields. They happen to be women, and they happen to be military. Every single one of them faced what I think a number of the people who are watching will understand, which is really this double crucible of both having to face the challenges of the job at hand, as well as operate in an environment which was often not supportive of them being there.

These leaders, some of them were in combat, some of them were early general officers across the services. One of the first women Army Rangers, a Coast Guard, Combat Rescue Swimmer, and Navy Submariner and many, many more.

The Grit Factor really is a synthesis, not a compilation but as synthesis of the stories that they shared so candidly and the lessons learned, supported by the most current leadership and management research, as well as very tactical takeaways so that you can apply that into your own life.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s amazing. I’m thinking of the women I have known in the military, one in particular Monica Marusceac. I was telling you briefly about her and everything that you just categorized was her story from start to finish. She was the second only woman to fly the Harrier in combat mission and it was brutal. It was brutal for her. All the terror, and then the ridicule and trying to be part of a club that doesn’t want you there. It’s beyond grit, it’s like grit squared to all of you. Hats off.

Shannon Huffman Polson: That is why these are such important not just stories which we can all then connect ourselves with and say, I’m going through this really tough time and in this particularly difficult way. But then how can I learn from those lessons that they’ve already learned and take those lessons into my own life today?

Gina, the way that these lessons and stories really break out is really what we call the Grit Triad. The Grit Triad breaks out into commit, learn and launch. What this says is, and this is very, very clear in the stories that were shared so candidly and so generously, is that grit is not this discrete thing that we take off the shelf for mile 23 of the marathon, although it’s certainly really helpful then as well.

It’s part of the fabric of our character, and commit, learn and launch corresponds to owning our past, to deep engagement in the present, and then looking towards the future with that grounding in the past with that engagement in the present, and then looking towards the future with audacity, and with authenticity, and with adaptability.

All of that is surrounded by a mindset, what I like to call measured optimism or grounded optimism. We’ll definitely talk more about that as we go forward.

Gina Stracuzzi: I love that, the idea of really capitalizing on your past versus leaving it. We do a little bit when it comes to career, you’re always building on what you’ve learned. Generally speaking, even the trials and tribulations that have tested us and we’ve overcome them and we moved on, we discount them and leave them back there and forget about the lessons they taught us. So I love the idea of the triad.

Shannon Huffman Polson: Gina, it’s so important to start with this commit phase, and I love how you’re bringing out that importance of owning your own story, because there are parts of our own stories that we wouldn’t want to take forward. That we think gosh, this was this really awful thing and how do you get past this?

Doing that work to own your own story recognizes both the opportunity and the responsibility to take this raw material of our lives. Some of which we feel like we’ve earned, some of what we’ve asked for, and some of which we never would have wanted. But we have the opportunity to shape that material into the direction where we can best contribute in this world, and that’s the work of owning our own story.

I give several different tactical ways to do that in chapter one, but I would say that’s really where leaders start. They start by knowing that it’s not about beginning with the story of the mission and the vision of the organization. Good companies do that really well, the military does that exceptionally well, where this is the story that you’ve got to live.

You have to first start with your own story, and own that story first. That’s the story where every leader starts, and then connect it to the mission and the vision of the organization. That’s where you get that strengthen and that foundation of grit to be able to move forward.

Gina Stracuzzi: Well said. I keep thinking too, I think your next book should be Grit Squared.

Shannon Huffman Polson: I like it [laughs].

Gina Stracuzzi: Really, the grit and the resilience that it takes to get through things, and I’m thinking about some women that I have met in my journey along the way. They have had significant loss, maybe they’ve lost children, or lost parents while they’re raising their children and they’re still working, and they’re leading organizations and they still discount the journey.

They don’t give themselves the right amount of credit to think about what it takes to get up in the morning when you’ve suffered unbearable loss, and you have other little ones usually looking for your love and support, and you’re going to the office and leading teams. You might be cranky, but it doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job. You’re doing an amazing job.

Shannon Huffman Polson: That is so important to remember as well is that owning of our story is not something we do once. We need to go back and reflect on it again and again. Not only is it important to reconnect to that foundation, but it’s also important to go back and remind ourselves. We’re reconnecting to those things that matter the most.

Again, we’ll talk about how it is at the end of chapter one of The Grit Factor to go over your journey line, or your lifeline multiple times to pull out different pieces that you can really learn from and take forward. It’s also to reconnect to that when you really need that, to remind yourself who you are, where you’ve come from, how it is that you’ve overcome other things.

What the values are that you’ve connected to and identified with, and how it is that you can reconnect to those as you go forward. Gina, the next part of that, really of that commit phase in that foundation of owning your past is drilling down to what I call core purpose. This is something that is again, it’s not an exercise we do once.

We need to do it repeatedly, but we’ve all heard about starting with why. Why is a great place to start, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. I like to remind people that there’s the technique that’s actually a manufacturing technique engineered by Toyota to drill down into the root cause of deficiencies, where we ask why not one time, but five times.

The story that I tell, I was newly qualified in the Apache helicopter after I had been told that I would never fly a combat helicopter. I graduated as an honor grad from flight school, and officer basic course and earned that opportunity once it was opened up to women. Then I reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina and I was at age 23 the only woman pilot of the Apache out of 120 male combat pilots in the regiment. A piece of cake, right?

Gina Stracuzzi: [Laughs] What’s the problem?

Shannon Huffman Polson: What’s the problem? I showed up ready to fly and lead as an aviation leader, and I was put in this back office staff position. The back of the operations office of a windowless hangar typing. Doing a little bit of flying, but mostly typing up not even the operations orders themselves, but the appendices to operations orders.

I went to the captain I was working for and said, “Sir, do you know when a platoon might open up?” because that’s what every young lieutenant needs to be able to learn and hopefully demonstrate leadership. I remember him looking back at me and saying, “Lieutenant, the army doesn’t owe you anything.”

A couple of weeks later, the major that we all worked for had us all come into work on a Saturday for no apparent reason. I always like to say that the army doesn’t have HR in quite the same way as a lot of other places. I remember him looking over at me and saying, “Don’t worry, Lieutenant, you’ll be married by the time you’re 25.”

I wasn’t there to get married, I was there to fly the Apache and to be an aviation leader and so I went to see him the next week. I said, “Sir, I’m going to keep doing the best job I can at the work you’ve given me, and I’m really grateful for the feedback that you’re very pleased with it, but I think I can do more.”

He was surprised and then he gave me one additional duty after the other, and I made sure that I hit them out of the park. Then finally I took that platoon. I tell you that story, all of you who are listening for two reasons. The first is you have to ask for what you want. Never assume anybody knows what it is that you want.

These are words from the Major General Dawn Dunlop of the US Air Force. She’s a test pilot and everything in the inventory, and she tells every young leader that. Ask for what you want, especially women. The second part is, when you’re in this place where you can’t control your situation for some period of time, like I was in an operation shop as a young lieutenant not doing what it was that I thought that I was there to do.

Asking yourself why doesn’t usually go far enough, because if I’d asked myself why am I here? I’d say well, I’m here to fly the Apache, to be an aviation leader. I couldn’t really control a whole lot about that environment, but what if you drill down to your fifth level of why? That core purpose, that heart purpose, and I get into this in chapter two of the Grit Factor.

Why was I there? To fly and fight the Apache. Why? Because I was trained to do so. Why? Because I had asked for, I’d earned that opportunity. Why? I wanted to serve my country. That’s pretty good, right? But you force yourself to drill down to that fifth level why, because that fifth level why is that thing that doesn’t depend on the job, it doesn’t depend on the organization. It’s agnostic of all of that.

That fifth level why, is I wanted to serve. Service was at the root of who I was, and what I did and how I worked in the world. How I’d been raised, how I saw myself. When you can connect to that concept of service, you’ve got story now and heart purpose. That’s what matters the most, and what makes you uniquely who you are, and allows you to contribute what you can uniquely contribute to the world. You’ve got to connect to that in the times that are the most difficult, so that you can navigate through whatever turbulence comes your way.

Gina Stracuzzi: This is so powerful, ask for what you want and let people know, that’s such a huge piece of accelerating getting to what you want. Getting to that why. The next why, because you can’t assume and we tell women this in the forum all the time.

The idea of putting your head down, doing your work hard and imagining someone is going to reward you for it, not going to happen. If you hadn’t taken the initiative that you had, we might not be having this conversation.

Shannon Huffman Polson: I think that many of the people, many of the leaders that I interviewed in the Grit Factor would say the same thing. Every single opportunity I had in the military, I had to earn and I had to ask for. Sometimes I had to ask for it multiple times, and that’s not going in with an attitude of entitlement.

I hear that from some companies too, is like we have young college graduates who want to be CEO next year. That’s certainly not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about earning it. You blow it out of the water, your performance is exceptional. There’s nothing anybody can say about it, but then you’ve also got to ask for it. You can’t make that assumption, you’re right, that somebody will take it the next step.

Gina Stracuzzi: We have a couple of comments from Daniella. First is, “Love this. Grit is so important, resilience as well.” Then she added, “The BEST leaders in this world are in service of others.” That is so true, Daniella. You don’t have to be in the military to be in service of others. You can be an exceptional leader in your corporate setting, and be in service of the people who work for you.

Shannon Huffman Polson: In fact, Gina, that’s what I would say and I do say every single time I give the keynote, that leadership and grit, it’s not just for military pilots and big mountain climbers. You can lead from any seat that you sit in, because you’re a leader when you make the decision to be exceptional, and when you understand that it’s not about you, it’s always about taking care of your people.

When you understand that, and your people may or may not report to you. Your people maybe the people that you work with, or that you work for, or that you work around. When you understand that leadership is not about you, it is always about the people around you, you can lead from any seat that you’re sitting in.

The second part of that and this is very, very clear from the research. Grit is not something that is just reserved for military pilots. Grit is innate to every single one of us. Gina, I love how you brought up those examples of these other outstanding women leaders you know that have endured these unbelievable hardships, and are still getting up and still doing it every single day.

Grit is part of who we are, but also if you feel like you’ve lost it, you can locate it again and you can build it. All of the science behind that is very, very clear and so I like to encourage people that feel like, “I’m just not quite sure that’s part of who I am.” It is part of you, you just have to claim it, and build it and own it.

Gina Stracuzzi: I love all this. This is so exciting. I’ve been bouncing around your book just so I was really familiar with your approach prior to the interview, and I cannot wait to really drill down on some of the exercises, because I think it doesn’t matter where we are in our careers or our life. We can learn new tricks, and we can learn things about ourselves and that’s really what women especially need. They need that fuel that says, “I’m good. I’m really good. I deserve this.”

Shannon Huffman Polson: They’ve been taught so often and conditioned so often to be modest, or not to speak up too much, or to fit into another culture. I will say I did plenty of that in my 20s in the military. Actually, one of the reasons that I talk about this commit, learn and launch, again, tied to your past, your deep engagement in the present and then looking towards the future.

One of the launch pieces is this authenticity. I write about it not because I did it well, because I didn’t do it well. I think it was something that I learned from that experience. It’s something that other leaders that I interviewed for The Grit Factor identified either earlier on in their careers, or as they became more senior, but the only way to lead authentically is to just own it.

You own who you are, what your experiences are. Those strengths you have, you know how to overcome your weaknesses or compensate for them. You just own that and you move forward in the way that you’re best meant to contribute, because nobody can contribute in the way that you uniquely can contribute.

So just own that and go out there and knock it out of the park, but that is that past, present, and future. I think each part of that shows that grit is part of the content of our character really. The fabric of who it is that we are, and we’ve got to build it into every single part of those pieces of us.

Gina Stracuzzi: Exactly. You’ve taken us where we drill down and find our core purpose, so now we’re in. We’re all in, so tell us about the learn piece.

Shannon Huffman Polson: Learn is about a deep engagement in the present. This is a helpful thing to remind some leaders of, because those who are super ambitious, there are some people that need that help to be ambitious. There are some that are just like, “I want to be CEO” and they’re looking towards the future.

It’s important to have goals, but you got to be deeply engaged in where you are right now. Tom Peters will say excellence is the next five minutes, and that’s absolutely the case. This deep engagement in the present is about building your team in a really thoughtful way, because none of us do this alone. It feels lonely a lot of times, but none of us do it alone.

Being thoughtful about that, you understand that you have this network of support, and you build that and you provide it for others. That’s part of this relational element that women often are stronger at than some, but it can still feel lonely as you take on leadership roles, or you push yourself more and more out of your comfort zone.

The second part of that is about a skill that really affects those relationships, which is the art and the science of active listening. This is something that was the biggest surprise to me in doing the research for the book, because it came out of every single conversation with a senior officer.

Frankly, it’s something that most of us who are really execution oriented are not very good at doing. I’m speaking for myself, at least. Really developing that skill and understanding it as both an art and a science is a critical part of moving forward in your career, and being able to continue to take the next step, and then the next.

Then finally, the piece and if we have limited time today, this is where I would drill down is the mindset. You saw that Grit Triad had that circle around it, and that circle is that mindset. There’s two parts of it. One is a growth mindset, and then an extension into the stress mindset. The piece that I would really want people to take away from today is this mindset of grounded optimism or measured optimism.

The story that I will tell for this one is from Jim Collins book, Good to Great. It’s about Admiral James Stockdale, who was a Vietnam jet pilot. He was shot down flying over the trees. He was captured, held in the Hanoi Hilton for seven and a half years. He was tortured mercilessly, his legs were broken twice in solitary confinement.

When he was released, he said, “What’s the difference between those who lived and those who died?” Now, he was a stoic, so you have to forgive him this, but he would say that the optimists are the ones who die because they believed, well, surely the war will be over by April. April came and went and nothing changed, or surely we’ll be released by September and September came and went and nothing changed.

He says you can never ever lose faith that you will ultimately prevail in the end, tempered by the realities of what you face in the present. That’s measured optimism or grounded optimism. You can never, ever lose faith that you will ultimately prevail in the end. You may have to adapt or change course, or find another way, continue to push yourself forward but you could never lose faith that you’ll prevail tempered with the realities of what you face in the present.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s really great advice, and I read that book and it was just unbelievable. Talk about resilience, but all of these topics are things that we really talk about a lot in sales, because mindset is everything. It really is, and being able to come at it with a level of optimism, but being prepared because you can’t be of service, which is a large piece of selling. You cannot be of service to your clients if you’re not prepared, and not ready to take them on the journey they need to go on. That whole analogy, it just lines up with everything that we talk about in the IES. It’s just an amazing analogy. I love it.

Shannon Huffman Polson: When you’re selling, and I have done this both in my own life, but also in work as a nonprofit community leader as well, where we’ve been raising close to $6 million to build a new library in our rural community. Which is sales, because what you’re doing is you’re going to people and saying, “Hey, what is it that they need?”

They need to feel the sense of contribution, they need the opportunity to contribute, the opportunity to leave a legacy. You realize you approach one way and it doesn’t work, and until you get a firm no, you haven’t heard no. Then you find another way. You find another way to approach it and you continue to develop the relationship, which is actually a lot of fun.

I’ve met some wonderful people who have really been connected to this mission. In sales you have that opportunity to build those relationships and then say, “Hey, this is what matters to this person, I’m going to take this new tact because I have ultimate faith that I will prevail in the end.” But I’m serving them by giving them what it is that they need to get to where it is that they want to go, and that’s an incredible opportunity.

Gina Stracuzzi: It is. We’ve got just a few minutes left which breaks my heart, because I really want to continue this conversation, which means I’m going to have to have you back and we’ll do part two of this.

Shannon Huffman Polson: Absolutely.

Gina Stracuzzi: When you want to launch from what you’ve learned, how would you go? What’s the next piece of this?

Shannon Huffman Polson: Launching is a little bit more amorphous, but the three things that I tell people to make sure that they’re looking forward is with audacity, with authenticity, and adaptability. We’ve addressed two of those, so the one piece I would want people to take away from our conversation today that’s so important is that audacity piece.

Leaders understand that failure is part of the path to success, that you have to take risks. You have to be willing to fail in order to ultimately succeed. That is where grit can be the hardest to find, is in the face of fear, in the face of failure. I would like to show every single one of you a picture of that Apache again, but imagine those two seats and those little teeny cockpits with this big aircraft.

There’s nothing that fits in that cockpit, except for the pilot and a little tiny publications bag and a Diet Coke and a power bar, because I’ve tried everything else. Fear is big and unwieldy. When you fail, the shame that comes from that is big and unwieldy, and so what do you do when you face that?

You do the same thing you do on takeoff. You turn towards it, and you fly directly through it. That’s the only way to face through resistance. Any kind of pushback that you’re feeling is resistance, and you can use it to your advantage by turning towards it and flying directly through it.

So it’s facing fear, facing failure, taking risks, being audacious in the pursuit of your goals. Every leaders got to do that in order to succeed, so there is a little bit of grit required or more than a little bit, but that’s a critical piece of this Grit Triad.

Gina Stracuzzi: The equation that you put together, it just makes such phenomenal sense and it’s so empowering. I think once people use the layout in your book, and really drill down and do those things from Toyota and the five layers.  I started on it, and it’s incredibly empowering. We got really caught up in the why of things but why “why”? Why do you have your why? What does it really mean? It’s the what’s behind the why that I find amazing.

Shannon Huffman Polson: Well, it really is about going deep into our own hearts. It’s our own hearts and other’s hearts. It’s about the relationship. It’s about what matters the most and what matters the most, you can’t just stay up at the strategy level. You’ve got to go deep for that. I know in sales, you do that all the time and that is incredibly empowering work. That’s why we take these stories and these lessons learned, give you the research for it. Then really with each chapter, drill down into those tactical exercises that let you apply it into your own life and your own work. That is really the strength and the power of The Grit Factor.

Gina Stracuzzi: Perfect. I want to have you back seriously, and we’ll talk about all the things that maybe you didn’t cover in the Grit Factor because I’m sure there are things that’ll be the forward to Grit Squared.

Shannon Huffman Polson: [Laughs] That’s great.

Gina Stracuzzi: What piece of advice would you leave our audience with today? One big takeaway, something they can really put into practice today to start thinking about these things, and get moving on this triad of their own?

Shannon Huffman Polson: Besides picking up your copies of The Grit Factor, which I’m sure you’ve already done [laughs].

Gina Stracuzzi: Of course.

Shannon Huffman Polson: The thing that I would say that actually tempers all of this is to understand the criticality of grit. Grit is critical to our success, every single one of our successes. At the same time, understanding that it’s not a sustainable operating mode. Remember, we’re talking about our own hearts, and the hearts of others.

That means you’ve got to take care of yourself, in order to be able to have the strength to employ that grit. What I would say is the piece that you put into practice today is find ways to really go deep and drill down on those parts of The Grit Factor. Again, I’ll give you those exercises to really go deep.

You want to give yourself the space to do that work, and then give yourself the space to turn off that computer and turn off the cell phone and go spend time with your family. Go outside and move your body, and drink water and eat your vegetables. It really is about taking care of yourself so that you can not only take care of others, but then also go do that hard work that requires that grit.

That is that balance that requires boundaries and thoughtful applications. That’s what I would leave people with today, because I think we’re pushing ourselves pretty hard right now and it’s not sustainable unless you put some boundaries on it.

Gina Stracuzzi: Absolutely. I cannot thank you enough, Shannon. This has really been tremendous, and I think of great value to the listeners. We will continue the conversation, because I think now it’s time to extrapolate on that and we’ll walk through how people can really apply it to everyday leadership.

If you’ve got this, what do you want to do with this and how can you apply these things? I will stay in touch with you and everyone else out there, thank you very much for joining us. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

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