Ep. 163: Stacey Ashley - High-Performance Leadership

Contact Stacey Ashley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceyashley/

About Stacey Ashley: https://ashleycoaching.com.au/about-stacey/

Leading Possibility: https://ashleycoaching.com.au/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is episode 163 of our series. Today's featured guest is Stacey Ashley. Stacey is a high performance leadership and coaching expert. With over 30 years experience, Stacey has helped thousands of individuals develop their leadership, competence, confidence, and credibility. In this episode, she speaks with Adam about creating your own positive mindset, developing resilience, and developing accountability in others to learn more about these leadership skills, among others, keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.

Adam: (00:51)
Stacey, thanks so much for coming on today with us. I really appreciate you joining our Count Me In audience. One of the most important factors of great leadership is having a positive mindset and resilience. So can we talk about how one goes about creating that mindset and developing resilience?

Stacey: (01:09)
Yeah, and isn't it important right now after the last couple of years? I think more than ever. So look, there are so many things that you can do, but for me it's kind of like keep it simple and I think that there's some really straight forward things that everyone can do for themselves. There's some people of course kind of come with a positive mindset, which is great, so just keep going. But for those who need a little bit of help, I think, it's kind of noticing the little things. So noticing, what you do well or something great that happened today. Really you can be quite deliberate. You know, I have a session with my team every week where we actually deliberately go "what were our wins this week?" And we can kind of accumulate them, and we keep track of them.

Stacey: (01:51)
So if we're having a bad week, we can always look back and go, there was some really good stuff that we've been doing. And so let's focus on that and that kind of keeps us buoyant and positive. But I think the other one, that's really important is just to remind yourself of all of the incredible resources you have and the strengths and the great things you've done in the past. And I know a lot of the clients that I work with, I kind of get them to journal it, even if they're not big on journaling, but just to start to keep a little bit of a track again. Once a day or once a week of, you know, things that they have done well or that they have accomplished or, made progress with and sort of creating that evidence of you know what, I can do this, look at this track record that I've created of things that I've been able to do or overcome, or, you know, rise to achieve.

Stacey: (02:42)
Because when we are having those kind of down days and we all have ups and downs, but you know, when you have those down days, you can just open your journal and go, actually, you know what? I can do this. Look, I've done this before and I've done that before, and I've learned all these things. So I think sometimes it's just making sure that we keep balance for ourselves because often as humans, we kind of focus on the things that don't go well, are a bit negative , and those sorts of things. So we want to offer ourselves some balancing out of that. So if you start to, kind of notice the things that do go well, what you are capable of and create that history for yourself, you're balancing your own conversation. I think that alone really allows you to then kind of rise and sort of bounce back.

Stacey: (03:26)
I remember, my kids a couple of years ago, well, a few more actually, when they were little kids, they did a resilience program at school and it was called bounce because it was recognizing that we don't all stay up and positive all the time. We all have ups and downs, but it's the ability to bounce back up that actually creates that resilience opportunity. And so I think if you can do that for yourself, have that evidence of your ability to cope and have great strategies and make progress and that sort of thing. I think that takes you a long way to developing that positive mindset. Because you've got all those reminders right there for you.

Speaker 2: (04:03)
Yeah. Having all those reminders is important because, you know, I was thinking, as you were saying that, you know, we do have lots of ups and downs. Nobody can be positive all the time. So are there other strategies besides, you know, not everybody's good at keeping a journal, are there other strategies that, to deal with those ups and downs as you're working through that?

Stacey: (04:22)
Yeah, I think so. As I said, even just noticing things in a positive way. So just asking yourself questions in the positive, you know, what did I enjoy today? What was good about today? What was one good thing that happened today? So just in the moment you can grasp, you know, that positive element, I think, you know, other things that we can do, certainly what I've noticed in the last couple of years of course, is that goals have not been achieved. Like everyone has goals in different ways, whether they articulate them or not. And organizations certainly had lots of goals and for lots of reasons, we didn't actually make them right? Because the world changed and a lot of it was out of our control. And so for, many people, teams and organizations, they can feel like we sort of failed.

Stacey: (05:07)
We didn't make it and that's not great for your mindset. And so I think a better focus just even every day is to focus on progress. You know, don't focus on, did we hit the goal, but did we make progress? Did we put some effort in, did we move forward a little bit further than we were yesterday or did we actually have to change direction because that's what the circumstances dictated. So again, I think it's just noticing day to day, how you can, you know, contribute and make a difference. And you know, that you have put effort in and all of those sorts of things and recognize yourself for it and your team and you know, all those sorts of things. But I think that's the in the moment stuff is so powerful to support yourself and your mindset.

Stacey: (05:54)
And then I think the other thing Adam, that's really important is, one of the things about resilience I think is not going, Hey, everything's sparkling and amazingly wonderful right now, but, having the ability to go, okay, it might not be great right now, but I do believe that I can do some things that are going to improve it over time. And so I think having that conversation with yourself as well, like, okay, it's not ideal right now, but what can I do to actually help it along a little bit in the future? And, that feeling of doing something, of taking just a little bit of power back in the moment, again, super important for your resilience and positive mindset.

Adam: (06:36)
Yeah, it's almost like you're taking back that power from the down moment. It doesn't have to make it a high moment, but you're kind of bringing yourself out of the hole and you're able to kind of push through in that way. Is that what you're saying?

Stacey: (06:47)
Yeah, absolutely. And so it's not about that. I'll just, you know, be a victim of circumstances and go, ...