Creating a positive and purposeful organizational culture is not just a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have for companies to drive sustainable growth, attract and retain top talent, and foster innovation. In this episode, master-certified coach Miriam Meima explores the importance of purposeful and positive organizational culture. In today’s fast-paced and competitive world, companies are increasingly realizing the need to create a culture that promotes growth, innovation, and employee satisfaction. She explains how having that culture can have such huge and long-term positive impacts on organizations. Miriam also dives into the idea of confidence leadership, failing the way to success, and other key elements. Tune in and learn how to create a thriving culture and set the road to your company’s success.
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Purposeful & Positive Organizational Culture
I am super excited about this conversation because if you know anything about me, I love mindset and I love talking about psychology, the mind, and everything. My next guest is Miriam Meima, who has been a coach and facilitator for over twenty years, dedicating her life to studying the overlap between business and psychology.
Miriam has coached founders and executives at hundreds of companies, including a dozen $1 billion-plus in valuation. She often partners with companies from Series B all the way through going public. She works one-on-one with senior leaders, facilitates team offsites, and develops customized leadership development journeys for leaders at all levels.
Her specialty is in helping people unlock the next level of performance while maximizing authenticity. That’s not easy. Miriam’s credentials include a Master’s in Organizational and Management Development and a Bachelor’s in Business and Psychology. She is a master-certified coach with the International Coaching Federation, ICF, a fellow at Harvard Institute of Coaching, and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Welcome to the show, Miriam.
Thank you and thank you for having this show. What you have put together here is such a body of rich information for your readers and so thank you. On behalf of everyone reading, thank you for all effort that you put into this extraordinary show.
I appreciate it. Thank you for being a fan and a guest. I am so thrilled you reached out to guests on this because we have a lot to unpack here. First of all, my first question, we are going to dive right in with this idea of confidence in leadership. A lot of people think, “When I get here, then I will be confident, or when I get this position.” You have extensive experience. Does that ever happen?
No, it doesn’t. I think we all believe that there’s some external and visible finish line that once we cross it, we will therefore be worthy of and feel confident every day, and there will be this sustainable source of confidence. It’s just not true. I work with very senior leaders and name-brand companies, dozens of years of experience, and some of the most seasoned leaders, and it doesn’t evaporate their imposter syndrome. It doesn’t imaginarily amplify their confidence. I think confidence is an inside job that all of us have access to at any point in our careers.
I had this false belief that you were either born with it or you weren’t and there was no way to get it. If you didn’t have it, you were doomed to a life of mediocrity. That was my limiting belief and false belief. Over the years, because I would see people stepping out and doing these incredible things and I was like, “There’s no way I could ever do that.” Then I was like, “That’s not right. The confidence comes in the doing. You have to be able to make that leap of faith and do it and be okay with failing your way to success.” That’s the mind shift I had to make that I need to go out and do it and if it flops, I have learned something, and let’s do it again.
Do you remember what helped you unlock that shift in your belief system?
There were always things that I wanted to do and explore, and I always stole my life much bigger than it was. A frustration of not stepping out and doing it, and one day I thought, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to me? I’m not going to die if I step in front of people and speak because I wanted to be a speaker, but I was petrified.” I had a natural gift for speaking and I could tell my whole story, but I’m not. This is about you.
Over the course of time, I shut myself down, my voice down, and everything else. It was like, “If I stand in front of people and speak, are they going to boo me? Are they going to throw things at me? Am I going to go to the gallows? No. If they do boo me, what’s going to happen to me at that point?” I thought my way through what the fear was and I walked my way through like what’s the worst thing that can happen? I don’t speak anymore. I’m not speaking now, so what’s the big deal?
There was so much wisdom in what you already shared. If I pull on a few pieces there that everyone can relate to, one is starting to tune into our sense of purpose, our soul’s purpose, what we crave, and what we want to be doing. That might be different from purpose, but it’s this sense of, like you said. It sounds like you could see it. You could feel this bigger version of yourself or a slightly bigger one. It feels like maybe we are judging it, but there’s maybe a more visible or expanded version of your life where you were speaking and you could picture it.
At some point, the pain of not living up to our potential becomes greater than fear. Most people wait until they get to that point. Hopefully, they have people in their lives or they are reading this show. In those moments, they can literally walk themselves through the worst-case scenario. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that long ago in human evolution that we were getting sent away from our tribe. Being kicked out or ostracized.
At some point, the pain of not living up to our potential becomes greater than fear. Click To Tweet
If we didn’t fit in and if we didn’t feel a sense of belonging, we’d be kicked out and that did mean we would die. Somewhere in our wiring, we still have this old system. We have to mentally put ourselves through a system update and remind ourselves we are not living in that civilization. We are living in this year, 2023, and we will be safe on the other side. Sometimes we have to surround ourselves with people who will be there to cheer us on for stepping outside of our comfort zone and then we can celebrate the fact that we did something hard and make it about doing the thing and let go of being good at it, feeling good, or being perfect. Let’s start with trying to do the thing that might feel hard.
This idea that failure is bad or wrong or we have to be perfect in everything before we can show it to anyone is something we need to absolutely shed because nobody’s perfect. When you look at a baby walking and trying to walk and they fall down, you don’t say, “Give it up, kid. Forget about it. You are never going to walk. You are horrible at it.” We encourage them.
Inside our own heads, we have a critic and some of us have that cheerleader, the one that says like, “That’s okay. You are new at this. Try again.” As much as possible, I try and work with people to quiet the critic and amplify the part of us that is cheering us on because we need that in our own minds. If we can’t do it for ourselves, then we need people around us who can help us.
That is why coaches are so important.
Coaches, friends, and family. Put yourself out there and surround yourself with people who want to see you succeed. I also love to walk people through mental exercise. Is it all right if I take our readers through a little thing?
Yes.
I like to picture either a person that we project onto them that they are very confident and so common people that are referenced.
JLo is mine.
This resurgence in her career. Yes. She’s about it. Andrew Goldman is one of mine. I’m a big fan. Michelle Obama is another big one that gets mentioned all the time, but it doesn’t matter. It could be a fictional character or political figure. It could be someone you’ve met. It could be JLo, but picturing what it would feel like to be in their skin can help us.
Another way to access it is to think about what it is that we think if we were to accomplish this, we would be so proud of ourselves and we’d be so deserving of confidence. For some people, it’s money, position, or whatever it is. I want people to picture right now and be on the other side of that. A picture where you live the life where you’ve achieved those things and see if your body adjusts.
Most people, start to sit up a little bit taller. Their shoulders start to relax a little bit and they start to imagine or embody this version of themselves that has less to prove. They have already made it. If you can start to feel it, then I want you to move through the world with that body posture, mindset, and physicality through everything you do because you can start to integrate it into your life now.
The more you feel at ease, like you don’t have anything to prove. The more people will trust you, the more experiences and successes you’ll have, and you’ll slowly build a track record of success. I feel like that’s sometimes what our rational brain needs in order to feel confident, is to be able to look back and track what we have done well.
Organizational Culture: Sometimes, in order for our rational brain to feel confident, we must look back and track what we have done well.
This feeling and I still feel this. When people look at people who’ve accomplished things and think, “They have got it all together,” I can’t be that. I still have this feeling that everything I do when it’s successful is a fluke like, “There’s no way I can ever do that again. That’s never going to happen again.”
Good for you for noticing that and being willing to say it out loud. There are so many people who can relate to that. Anytime we are willing to share our experience, people be like, “I’m not the only one. Thank you.” Thank you for that level of vulnerability. For everybody reading who feels that, I want you all to start to think about what are the things that you did to set yourself up in those cases and it’s important to take inventory. I know about you from listening to the show that you are very well-read. You have the intention to detail. You spend time preparing. You also spend time to get yourself feeling and looking in a way that represents how you want to be seen in the world. Stop me if any of these things are not true.
No, you are right.
You are doing all of those things and those are things that you are optional and you are doing them and they are allowing you to show up with a certain level of presence, so that is not a fluke.
The preparation that goes behind it. The thought, intention, and everything that shows up is not a fluke. When I look at the success or someone says, “This changed my life.” It’s like, “What did I do? Can I do that again?” There is a lot of preparation that goes in and that’s one of the seven steps to my audacious confidence. My process is preparation. That’s one way to build your confidence in things to make sure that you are prepared for the journey that you are undertaking or what you are about to do. Thank you for sharing that.
Noticing and breaking it down like that. That helps me now also not be like, “Everything that I do is a fluke.” I talk about this sometimes when I made the decision to enter a pageant for the first time in my life at 50. I went and I did this pageant and won. A lot of people don’t enter their first pageant and win and I won. I’m like, “I’m done. I’m not going to do this again.”
You beat pageants. You didn’t need to do it again, but good for you.
I’m not going to put myself through that again, but I have accomplished right. I’m like, “There’s no reason to do this again because I’m like, ‘I did it. I couldn’t believe it.’”
Now you’ll always have that life experience. I like to think about the end of my life when I look back, there are a lot of emails I’m not going to remember sending. There are a lot of interactions I’m not going to remember. There’s a lot of stress I’m going to wish that I had stressed less about. The things I won’t forget were the times I put myself out there and it worked, the times I put myself on a limb for someone I cared about, or the time I spent with the folks that matter most to me. Do the things that are unexpected.
That’s my life. Do the thing that’s unexpected that people are going to be like, “What?” I like to say I live on the edge of overwhelm because you step out and do something so far out of your comfort zone that when you look back after you’ve done it and you look back, it’s like, “Wow.” There’s so much growth that happens in making the decision. A lot of people don’t value it. You making the decision to start a business, to step out and become a leader in an organization to go for that position that’s much higher than where you are right now. Even if you don’t get it, making that decision changes you. It stretches you.
I remember my first coach. My mom had passed away. I was going through a divorce. I was in my late-twenties. I was pretty young to be experiencing these things. I was also in this moment of existential question about what am I doing in my career. Do I stay here? Do I leave? I’m not happy. Is that because of my personal situation? Is that because of work? I was confused. I worked with a coach. She was so helpful to me. One of the things she helped me realize is that if I’m not feeling some level of fear, I’m not living the life that I want to be living.
If you’re not feeling some level of fear, you’re not living the life that you want. Click To Tweet
That’s huge. Fear stops people but they don’t realize that’s what’s supposed to propel you forward.
Yes. It helped me shift the way I related to fear. Now if I feel it, I’m like, “Good. I’m on track.” If I’m not feeling fear, now I’m like, “Is this a moment of integration and I need to practice self-care? It’s not a moment to stretch myself or am I getting complacent?” I can reflect on that. Before that conversation with her, I used to feel that if I was feeling fear I was doing something wrong, and then I need to back off rather than pushing forward.
That is huge, and I love that you articulated it that way because so many of us think fear is something to avoid instead of leaning into, and that builds your confidence. When you lean into it and then look back, it’s like, “It wasn’t that bad.” I didn’t die doing it. I didn’t suffer incredibly like we think we are going to suffer so bad to do it. Thank you for that. That’s amazing.
I hope you guys got that tip that if you are feeling fear stepping into something, that’s the direction you are supposed to be going into. It’s not there to stop you. It’s there to help move you forward and let you know you are going in the right direction. I’m not saying that to go step off a cliff and think that I’m feeling that, but that’s the wrong fear. Let’s be clear. You have to qualify the fear. If it’s a physical danger, then you might not want to think twice about that. You have all the safety precautions around you if you are going to do it. Those internal fear.
Then we can learn how to read our own bodies. For me, if there’s something in my gut, then I’m more likely to pay attention to it. If it’s more like anxiety like I can’t catch my breath, I’m like, “Let’s go,” and I have to talk myself through it.
Learn to qualify the fear. Learn what fear is what. We are not putting a blanket statement on fear. We are like that fear that you feel like, “I shouldn’t do that. What would people think? What are people going to do?” That’s the one that you need to push through. As you said at the beginning, it’s the critic that’s trying to stop you from moving forward.
We have so much we want to talk about. I’m going to shift gears a little bit, and I want to talk into culture and organization or organizational culture when you are scaling because that is something in leadership that can start tripping people up and you can lose your confidence in that too. If you are not careful and not very intentional, you can start losing your culture and those values that you thought were so embedded in your organization. As they are growing and scaling their business or their leadership roles, how can leaders pay attention to keeping that in check?
There are some things that make every organization special in the beginning. It could be a solopreneur. Someone who’s an entrepreneur starting their own business has an idea, aspiration, and personality that creates this unique mix of something special, the special sauce. The same is true for every business.
The founding team had a special idea. There was something unique to how they were approaching their work, what they were aiming to do, or what their mission was. Most of the time, we don’t take the time to articulate it. Maybe we do our values, but we don’t articulate what is something special. Is it that we trust each other? Is it that we push each other? Is it that we celebrate our wins? Is it that we embrace failure?
There are mindsets and ways of being that are almost invisible, but if you take the time to look for them, they are there. If we can articulate them, we can start training people on how to do it. We can start to set expectations. We can be a bit more thoughtful in how we are hiring because some people have opposing personalities and I’m all for diversity of thought and creating diverse experiences in the work environment.
If we hire too many seasoned leaders who have outsized personalities and have a different way of operating, then all of a sudden, we are diluting our culture. That can be even if we have a team of three or it can be when we have 30,000. Being careful to make sure we are articulating and training for those things that make us so special.
Don’t think about enough businesses. Even in the inception, it dissects what that is until they become bigger. They start with the core values, but they don’t dig deep enough to articulate what makes us special. They lose that as it gets bigger. I see that happening. They lose that and then they don’t know how to get it. It becomes like in the air and it’s like, “How do we grab that back? How do we bring it back into us?”
There are so many little ways that we can do that. Once we articulate it, then we can operationalize it. Then we can build it into our systems, processes, and performance evaluations. We can reward people for the behavior that we want to see more of. We can hold boundaries and have accountability conversations when people are stepping out of it. We can start to snowball and gain strength as we get bigger rather than getting smaller and more diluted.
It’s not this intangible thing. It’s only intangible if we don’t recognize it and then start building the systems around it. It remains intangible and you can’t grasp it. You can’t hold onto it. It’s like, “I don’t know what it is, but we have this thing.” As you start growing, nobody can articulate what the thing is, and so it’s like, “We have a thing, but we don’t know what it is.” Eventually, it dissipates into the atmosphere, and then you are like, “You are not a culture fit.” It’s like, “What is the culture?” “We don’t know. We can’t articulate what the culture is, but we know it when we feel it.”
“I’m good enough for this.” That’s not good enough. You have to be able to sit down and do the work to articulate it. Have someone like Miriam come on board to help your leadership team not to ground it in what it is but then operationalize it. Put it into practice. How do we put it into practice? I love that. Yes. As you are growing, when you are small, do it.
If you’ve already grown to the point and you lost it, get someone in to help you rediscover it. I’m going to segue this into the layoffs because there are so much layoffs happening right now that this affects how you are doing your business. It affects how you are hiring. You mentioned hiring. If you come to this situation where you have to lay off, how do you lay people off when you have this culture that you’ve developed? How do you even start thinking about how you do layoffs then because that also has to be a part that you have to go soup to nuts. You have to think all the way through the process.
We are cutting this whole department. How does that work? You got to talk through all those things, too and put those into your systems and your processes. Let’s talk about that because retention is a big thing, but also, how do you make yourself the one to be retained? That’s what’s happening. How do you feel the value in your position and yourself so much that when massive layoffs of what’s happening, you are the one left and then being the one left? This two-part question. Being the one left having to pick up the slack, how do you now articulate? I’m not going to be a packed meal here.
If I take that from the top, what you were saying is important. It’s not only how do we preserve our culture as we scale but how we preserve it through all of the ups and downs and the ins and outs of a business, which might mean right sizing or laying people off. I work with a lot of tech companies. They happen to be going through a massive series of layoffs. I work with a lot of venture-backed companies. Similarly, they are shifting their mindset. We are trying to increase their runway.
Organizational Culture: It’s not only how do we preserve our culture as we scale, but how we preserve it through all the ups and downs and ins and outs of a business, which might mean right sizing or laying people off.
It’s putting a lot of people in a position where they are needing to make difficult decisions. For the leaders who have been very thoughtful about building their culture, hiring, and building strong relationships with people, they can be heartbreaking. You are looking at your P&L or your finances and you are saying, “We need to cut people.”
You start picturing them and the relationships you have with them and how much heart they have put into the business, and it can be hard to do right by the business and by people. For me, I like to try and decouple those. Try to figure out what we must do to do right by the business. Second, let’s figure out how to do right by those people. Is it, “I’m going above and beyond and helping them figure out what’s next for them? Is it the type of package that I’m offering them? How can I do right by them?”
Usually, people who are earlier in their career try and go maybe too far, but I’d rather you go too far than too short in terms of cutting people off. There’s doing right by folks. If you want to be the person who is retained, I think that all we can do is do our best every day to show up, to do our best to be both authentic and effective, and that means being true to ourselves and bringing the best of our personality.
Most of us don’t give ourselves the grace to be able to set ourselves up to be able to practice self-care in the morning, drink enough water, and take a few breaths so you can show up to your first meeting as the version of you that you want to be known for. Each day all day, can you continually show up as the person that you want to be known for, which is your authentic truest self?
Most of us don't give ourselves the grace to be able to set ourselves up to be able to practice self-care. Click To Tweet
Can you put into the business what you wish to receive back? Can you infuse others with the feelings you wish you felt from colleagues? That’s usually where authenticity comes in. Effectiveness is tracking. What is the business need for me and my role? Looking outside of the scope of my role and making sure that I’m collaborating, I’m partnering with people, and I’m showing up as a good colleague.
If we have done those things, then we have done right by the business, and that’s all we can do. Sometimes we don’t have to personalize it. If we are exited, we don’t have to personalize it. Not every role’s the right fit, and we all have a certain tenure in every organization. The question is, then what’s next? Then people are in a moment of reinvention and they need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what’s next for me. How is this perfect? How can I create this as an opportunity?
I love the idea that you shared that don’t personalize it. I believe when people are laid off, they personalize it. That can be quite destructive to your confidence, your self-esteem, and your self-worth. It’s a spiral that you don’t want to get into. If you look at it as the business is having some growing pains, they are trying to figure some stuff out and I’m not a right fit for it right now. What’s my next opportunity?
I have done all I could do. I was a good employee. What’s my next step here? If the leadership is wanting to do right by you, then give you a glowing letter of recommendation. Helping you when you reach out and say, “I have this other opportunity. If they call you, would you be open to having them?” “Yes. We are open to sharing how great you were and all those things.”
Make good relationships and let them know that, “I’m going to be leading on you for a recommendation for my next job so that you know that you were valued in that position and that you have value moving forward.” For those who are staying, how do they articulate or make sure that they don’t become packed meals, because, clearly, the job still has to be done and multiple jobs have to be done now that some have exited?
How do you now not feel the frustration or the burnout of having to take on all this additional responsibility, and as leaders too? As leaders, leaders do not treat others like a packed meal like, “All this work still has to get done.” What has to happen there for both those who are staying and the leaders who are looking at them and saying, “We got to get all this work done. How do we do it?”
Two main things. One is what most people call boundaries, but it’s about having an honest reflection for ourselves of where I am drawing the lines of what I’m willing to give to this rule right now. You can change your mind any time, but you would need to know for right now, what are you going to draw as your limits?
Are you available 24/7? I would prefer not because I don’t think you can show up as your best self if you are available 24/7. It’s not sustainable. For you to have the life you want to live, where do you draw the line? Is it a certain time of day that you start or end? Do you need a certain amount of time for yourself during the day? Do you need to only check your email after 8:00?
I don’t care. I’m giving examples, but knowing your rules of the road and holding to them. People get mad when they are asked to do something that’s out of bounds of their own boundaries, but no. Other people don’t know if what you are saying is too much or not enough. Try not to get mad at them for having requests.
The hardest part, then is holding to it and doing right by ourselves. If we can hold to it, then honestly, even if those hours that we are devoting to our work are intense, we have been honest with ourselves. That’s what I’m willing to do. Create those rules and stick to them. That’s the first one, and the second one is creating clear agreements with the people that you work with. There needs to be a conversation around prioritization. What comes first and what gets dropped off?
Sometimes you can have that and it’s easy and effective with your manager or your colleagues like, “Let’s get together.” There are fewer of us, so let’s figure out what matters most and how we can get it done in a way that feels good. If you don’t have that manager because not everyone does, sometimes it’s things roll downhill and they keep pushing and delegating down. They don’t know what’s too much is you’ve got to use your voice. You’ve got to say, “I can’t do it all. Let’s have a conversation or what first.”
That creates, again, as we talked about at the beginning of this, the fear of, “If I speak up, I might be next on the chopping block.”
Yes, it does, and that keeps us quiet. This keeps us in this perpetual state of accepting things, which creates resentment and burnout. There are some moments where for people, if you are the only person generating revenue for yourself or your family and you don’t feel like you are perfectly at choice. I almost always feel like we are more in control of our experience than we realize or feel. I usually push people a little bit on that.
We are more in control of our experience than we realize. Click To Tweet
Even at the very top of an organization, there might be this tendency to keep delegating. If we have needed to cut our team, this is a moment of transition and transformation. It is not a status quo and those who try to relate to it as a status quo are missing the opportunity. This is a moment of transformation of saying, “We are a new team. Let’s get clear about how we are relating to the work. What are we shifting? What are we doing differently?” The leaders who think that way cannot only ride out whatever market conditions they are in, but they are the longest-lasting and most successful because they are constantly reinventing and pivoting in a very healthy way.
You are a new team and it can’t be status quo. It just cannot. It’s about communication. It’s about being real and looking at what you can produce with whom you have and being able to prioritize things differently instead of expecting everybody. You get up and you are like, “We all have to pitch in and work harder.” No. We have to be able to pivot, reorg, look at things differently, and think about it differently.
Some of the work that I do with using a lot of the different brain science tools to understand who has what strengths to put them in the position to do what is natural for them, and helps keep things moving forward instead of dumping more work on them. That’s not going to create the culture or sustain the culture that you want to have in your organization if you treat people that way. A lot of times culture is lost too in a layoff because they forget what matters most.
What matters most? How to treat people, go back to the basics, what made us special in the beginning, and how can we reinforce that now? Yes. Exactly right.
I love this conversation that we are having. I don’t want to shut it down, but I do because we are going to jump into this rapid-fire section. I know you’ve read the show, so you know it’s coming. My first question is, what’s the biggest leadership mistake you’ve ever made or were the victim of?
My biggest leadership mistake is probably holding back too much on feedback. Not giving people the information that they needed to be successful thinking I was being kind to them.
Organizational Culture: The biggest mistake a leader can make is holding back too much on feedback. Not giving people the information that they needed to be successful thinking you’re being kind to them.
That also speaks to confidence because if you don’t feel like giving the critique or what is necessary for you to say, you hold back. You don’t feel confident enough that either they are going to take it right. It reflects on you. It’s like, “I’m a horrible person if I say this to them.” That’s huge. What’s the best leadership advice you’ve ever gotten that you still implement?
That maybe lead with my heart is another piece of advice I have received. People, if they can connect to me and what matters most to me if I share my why, usually, people want to be part of the thing that I’m working on. It’s more of a question of, “Is this the right fit for us?”
If you were a castaway on a deserted island, what three things would you hope washed up ashore or was airdropped and one cannot be a cell phone?
I need music. I don’t care if it’s a radio, CD player, or tape player. I need enough variety. I love music. For me, it sets the tone of my day and I listen to ten different types of music throughout the day. I need that. I can’t imagine choosing to live without seeing people smile, without seeing other people and seeing their faces. Either a digital frame or it can’t be a phone, but something that gives me the visual. I’m very visual, so some visual representations of people on the planet smiling.
You got one more thing.
I want a comforter and pillow. To me is cozy. One of my hobbies is sleeping and sleeping well.
If you were a song or a song title that’s out in the world, you said you love music, what would that song be and why?
Lovely Day. That’s what’s coming to mind for me right now. It’s probably because I’m wired as an optimist, but I have also worked hard to maintain that healing trauma and working through internal belief systems. For me, moving through the day, seeing people fully for who they are, and doing my absolute best to be a source of light for them. That matters to me, so I will choose that song.
I love that song sometimes. When I used to run, I haven’t run in a little while and that’s a whole other story, but I would put that on to run to because I love that song. What are you reading now or what are your top three books that you love?
I will grab this right now. I’m starting to read The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, who also wrote The Untethered Soul, which I’m a fan of. This is something that I’m interested in and starting to read. We are both into neuroscience. I’m usually rotating through some brain science book. I do have one in the other room, I don’t even remember the title, but I’m fascinated by neuroscience. I also love young adult fantasy books. I love to read books about people who discover they have magical powers and what they choose to do with them because I’m pretty sure we all do have magical powers, but reading young adult fantasy is a guilty pleasure of mine.
Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for reaching out to us. How can people get ahold of you if they want to work with you and if they want to know more about what you do? Tell us how to best reach you.
I would have them go to LeadersWhoSmile.com and I believe that we all have access to being the type of leader like the most seasoned leaders. They can move through things with a smile on their face, and that’s what I want for more people, so LeadersWhoSmile.com or go to find me on LinkedIn. Miriam Meima.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
With that, I want to encourage you all to lead yourself, lead your teams, and lead your organization with audacious confidence. Until next time, bye for now.
Important Links
About Miriam Meima
Miriam Meima has been a coach & facilitator for over twenty years, dedicating her life to studying the overlap between business and psychology. Miriam has coached founders and executives at hundreds of companies, including a dozen $1B+ valuation. She often partners with companies from Series B all the way through going public. She works 1:1 with senior leaders, facilitates team offsites and develops customized leadership development journeys for leaders at all levels. Her specialty is in helping people unlock the next level of performance while maximizing authenticity.
Miriam’s credentials include an MA in Organizational & Management Development, a BA in Business & Psychology. She is a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Coaching and a member of Forbes Coaches Council.Mistake: Holding Back too much on feedback to the direct reports, didn’t help them grow.
Advice: Lead with Heart, share your why. Lean into the fear.
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Purposeful & Positive Organizational Culture
I am super excited about this conversation because if you know anything about me, I love mindset and I love talking about psychology, the mind, and everything. My next guest is Miriam Meima, who has been a coach and facilitator for over twenty years, dedicating her life to studying the overlap between business and psychology.
Miriam has coached founders and executives at hundreds of companies, including a dozen $1 billion-plus in valuation. She often partners with companies from Series B all the way through going public. She works one-on-one with senior leaders, facilitates team offsites, and develops customized leadership development journeys for leaders at all levels.
Her specialty is in helping people unlock the next level of performance while maximizing authenticity. That’s not easy. Miriam’s credentials include a Master’s in Organizational and Management Development and a Bachelor’s in Business and Psychology. She is a master-certified coach with the International Coaching Federation, ICF, a fellow at Harvard Institute of Coaching, and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Welcome to the show, Miriam.
Thank you and thank you for having this show. What you have put together here is such a body of rich information for your readers and so thank you. On behalf of everyone reading, thank you for all effort that you put into this extraordinary show.
I appreciate it. Thank you for being a fan and a guest. I am so thrilled you reached out to guests on this because we have a lot to unpack here. First of all, my first question, we are going to dive right in with this idea of confidence in leadership. A lot of people think, “When I get here, then I will be confident, or when I get this position.” You have extensive experience. Does that ever happen?
No, it doesn’t. I think we all believe that there’s some external and visible finish line that once we cross it, we will therefore be worthy of and feel confident every day, and there will be this sustainable source of confidence. It’s just not true. I work with very senior leaders and name-brand companies, dozens of years of experience, and some of the most seasoned leaders, and it doesn’t evaporate their imposter syndrome. It doesn’t imaginarily amplify their confidence. I think confidence is an inside job that all of us have access to at any point in our careers.
I had this false belief that you were either born with it or you weren’t and there was no way to get it. If you didn’t have it, you were doomed to a life of mediocrity. That was my limiting belief and false belief. Over the years, because I would see people stepping out and doing these incredible things and I was like, “There’s no way I could ever do that.” Then I was like, “That’s not right. The confidence comes in the doing. You have to be able to make that leap of faith and do it and be okay with failing your way to success.” That’s the mind shift I had to make that I need to go out and do it and if it flops, I have learned something, and let’s do it again.
Do you remember what helped you unlock that shift in your belief system?
There were always things that I wanted to do and explore, and I always stole my life much bigger than it was. A frustration of not stepping out and doing it, and one day I thought, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to me? I’m not going to die if I step in front of people and speak because I wanted to be a speaker, but I was petrified.” I had a natural gift for speaking and I could tell my whole story, but I’m not. This is about you.
Over the course of time, I shut myself down, my voice down, and everything else. It was like, “If I stand in front of people and speak, are they going to boo me? Are they going to throw things at me? Am I going to go to the gallows? No. If they do boo me, what’s going to happen to me at that point?” I thought my way through what the fear was and I walked my way through like what’s the worst thing that can happen? I don’t speak anymore. I’m not speaking now, so what’s the big deal?
There was so much wisdom in what you already shared. If I pull on a few pieces there that everyone can relate to, one is starting to tune into our sense of purpose, our soul’s purpose, what we crave, and what we want to be doing. That might be different from purpose, but it’s this sense of, like you said. It sounds like you could see it. You could feel this bigger version of yourself or a slightly bigger one. It feels like maybe we are judging it, but there’s maybe a more visible or expanded version of your life where you were speaking and you could picture it.
At some point, the pain of not living up to our potential becomes greater than fear. Most people wait until they get to that point. Hopefully, they have people in their lives or they are reading this show. In those moments, they can literally walk themselves through the worst-case scenario. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that long ago in human evolution that we were getting sent away from our tribe. Being kicked out or ostracized.
At some point, the pain of not living up to our potential becomes greater than fear. Click To Tweet
If we didn’t fit in and if we didn’t feel a sense of belonging, we’d be kicked out and that did mean we would die. Somewhere in our wiring, we still have this old system. We have to mentally put ourselves through a system update and remind ourselves we are not living in that civilization. We are living in this year, 2023, and we will be safe on the other side. Sometimes we have to surround ourselves with people who will be there to cheer us on for stepping outside of our comfort zone and then we can celebrate the fact that we did something hard and make it about doing the thing and let go of being good at it, feeling good, or being perfect. Let’s start with trying to do the thing that might feel hard.
This idea that failure is bad or wrong or we have to be perfect in everything before we can show it to anyone is something we need to absolutely shed because nobody’s perfect. When you look at a baby walking and trying to walk and they fall down, you don’t say, “Give it up, kid. Forget about it. You are never going to walk. You are horrible at it.” We encourage them.
Inside our own heads, we have a critic and some of us have that cheerleader, the one that says like, “That’s okay. You are new at this. Try again.” As much as possible, I try and work with people to quiet the critic and amplify the part of us that is cheering us on because we need that in our own minds. If we can’t do it for ourselves, then we need people around us who can help us.
That is why coaches are so important.
Coaches, friends, and family. Put yourself out there and surround yourself with people who want to see you succeed. I also love to walk people through mental exercise. Is it all right if I take our readers through a little thing?
Yes.
I like to picture either a person that we project onto them that they are very confident and so common people that are referenced.
JLo is mine.
This resurgence in her career. Yes. She’s about it. Andrew Goldman is one of mine. I’m a big fan. Michelle Obama is another big one that gets mentioned all the time, but it doesn’t matter. It could be a fictional character or political figure. It could be someone you’ve met. It could be JLo, but picturing what it would feel like to be in their skin can help us.
Another way to access it is to think about what it is that we think if we were to accomplish this, we would be so proud of ourselves and we’d be so deserving of confidence. For some people, it’s money, position, or whatever it is. I want people to picture right now and be on the other side of that. A picture where you live the life where you’ve achieved those things and see if your body adjusts.
Most people, start to sit up a little bit taller. Their shoulders start to relax a little bit and they start to imagine or embody this version of themselves that has less to prove. They have already made it. If you can start to feel it, then I want you to move through the world with that body posture, mindset, and physicality through everything you do because you can start to integrate it into your life now.
The more you feel at ease, like you don’t have anything to prove. The more people will trust you, the more experiences and successes you’ll have, and you’ll slowly build a track record of success. I feel like that’s sometimes what our rational brain needs in order to feel confident, is to be able to look back and track what we have done well.
Organizational Culture: Sometimes, in order for our rational brain to feel confident, we must look back and track what we have done well.
This feeling and I still feel this. When people look at people who’ve accomplished things and think, “They have got it all together,” I can’t be that. I still have this feeling that everything I do when it’s successful is a fluke like, “There’s no way I can ever do that again. That’s never going to happen again.”
Good for you for noticing that and being willing to say it out loud. There are so many people who can relate to that. Anytime we are willing to share our experience, people be like, “I’m not the only one. Thank you.” Thank you for that level of vulnerability. For everybody reading who feels that, I want you all to start to think about what are the things that you did to set yourself up in those cases and it’s important to take inventory. I know about you from listening to the show that you are very well-read. You have the intention to detail. You spend time preparing. You also spend time to get yourself feeling and looking in a way that represents how you want to be seen in the world. Stop me if any of these things are not true.
No, you are right.
You are doing all of those things and those are things that you are optional and you are doing them and they are allowing you to show up with a certain level of presence, so that is not a fluke.
The preparation that goes behind it. The thought, intention, and everything that shows up is not a fluke. When I look at the success or someone says, “This changed my life.” It’s like, “What did I do? Can I do that again?” There is a lot of preparation that goes in and that’s one of the seven steps to my audacious confidence. My process is preparation. That’s one way to build your confidence in things to make sure that you are prepared for the journey that you are undertaking or what you are about to do. Thank you for sharing that.
Noticing and breaking it down like that. That helps me now also not be like, “Everything that I do is a fluke.” I talk about this sometimes when I made the decision to enter a pageant for the first time in my life at 50. I went and I did this pageant and won. A lot of people don’t enter their first pageant and win and I won. I’m like, “I’m done. I’m not going to do this again.”
You beat pageants. You didn’t need to do it again, but good for you.
I’m not going to put myself through that again, but I have accomplished right. I’m like, “There’s no reason to do this again because I’m like, ‘I did it. I couldn’t believe it.’”
Now you’ll always have that life experience. I like to think about the end of my life when I look back, there are a lot of emails I’m not going to remember sending. There are a lot of interactions I’m not going to remember. There’s a lot of stress I’m going to wish that I had stressed less about. The things I won’t forget were the times I put myself out there and it worked, the times I put myself on a limb for someone I cared about, or the time I spent with the folks that matter most to me. Do the things that are unexpected.
That’s my life. Do the thing that’s unexpected that people are going to be like, “What?” I like to say I live on the edge of overwhelm because you step out and do something so far out of your comfort zone that when you look back after you’ve done it and you look back, it’s like, “Wow.” There’s so much growth that happens in making the decision. A lot of people don’t value it. You making the decision to start a business, to step out and become a leader in an organization to go for that position that’s much higher than where you are right now. Even if you don’t get it, making that decision changes you. It stretches you.
I remember my first coach. My mom had passed away. I was going through a divorce. I was in my late-twenties. I was pretty young to be experiencing these things. I was also in this moment of existential question about what am I doing in my career. Do I stay here? Do I leave? I’m not happy. Is that because of my personal situation? Is that because of work? I was confused. I worked with a coach. She was so helpful to me. One of the things she helped me realize is that if I’m not feeling some level of fear, I’m not living the life that I want to be living.
If you’re not feeling some level of fear, you’re not living the life that you want. Click To Tweet
That’s huge. Fear stops people but they don’t realize that’s what’s supposed to propel you forward.
Yes. It helped me shift the way I related to fear. Now if I feel it, I’m like, “Good. I’m on track.” If I’m not feeling fear, now I’m like, “Is this a moment of integration and I need to practice self-care? It’s not a moment to stretch myself or am I getting complacent?” I can reflect on that. Before that conversation with her, I used to feel that if I was feeling fear I was doing something wrong, and then I need to back off rather than pushing forward.
That is huge, and I love that you articulated it that way because so many of us think fear is something to avoid instead of leaning into, and that builds your confidence. When you lean into it and then look back, it’s like, “It wasn’t that bad.” I didn’t die doing it. I didn’t suffer incredibly like we think we are going to suffer so bad to do it. Thank you for that. That’s amazing.
I hope you guys got that tip that if you are feeling fear stepping into something, that’s the direction you are supposed to be going into. It’s not there to stop you. It’s there to help move you forward and let you know you are going in the right direction. I’m not saying that to go step off a cliff and think that I’m feeling that, but that’s the wrong fear. Let’s be clear. You have to qualify the fear. If it’s a physical danger, then you might not want to think twice about that. You have all the safety precautions around you if you are going to do it. Those internal fear.
Then we can learn how to read our own bodies. For me, if there’s something in my gut, then I’m more likely to pay attention to it. If it’s more like anxiety like I can’t catch my breath, I’m like, “Let’s go,” and I have to talk myself through it.
Learn to qualify the fear. Learn what fear is what. We are not putting a blanket statement on fear. We are like that fear that you feel like, “I shouldn’t do that. What would people think? What are people going to do?” That’s the one that you need to push through. As you said at the beginning, it’s the critic that’s trying to stop you from moving forward.
We have so much we want to talk about. I’m going to shift gears a little bit, and I want to talk into culture and organization or organizational culture when you are scaling because that is something in leadership that can start tripping people up and you can lose your confidence in that too. If you are not careful and not very intentional, you can start losing your culture and those values that you thought were so embedded in your organization. As they are growing and scaling their business or their leadership roles, how can leaders pay attention to keeping that in check?
There are some things that make every organization special in the beginning. It could be a solopreneur. Someone who’s an entrepreneur starting their own business has an idea, aspiration, and personality that creates this unique mix of something special, the special sauce. The same is true for every business.
The founding team had a special idea. There was something unique to how they were approaching their work, what they were aiming to do, or what their mission was. Most of the time, we don’t take the time to articulate it. Maybe we do our values, but we don’t articulate what is something special. Is it that we trust each other? Is it that we push each other? Is it that we celebrate our wins? Is it that we embrace failure?
There are mindsets and ways of being that are almost invisible, but if you take the time to look for them, they are there. If we can articulate them, we can start training people on how to do it. We can start to set expectations. We can be a bit more thoughtful in how we are hiring because some people have opposing personalities and I’m all for diversity of thought and creating diverse experiences in the work environment.
If we hire too many seasoned leaders who have outsized personalities and have a different way of operating, then all of a sudden, we are diluting our culture. That can be even if we have a team of three or it can be when we have 30,000. Being careful to make sure we are articulating and training for those things that make us so special.
Don’t think about enough businesses. Even in the inception, it dissects what that is until they become bigger. They start with the core values, but they don’t dig deep enough to articulate what makes us special. They lose that as it gets bigger. I see that happening. They lose that and then they don’t know how to get it. It becomes like in the air and it’s like, “How do we grab that back? How do we bring it back into us?”
There are so many little ways that we can do that. Once we articulate it, then we can operationalize it. Then we can build it into our systems, processes, and performance evaluations. We can reward people for the behavior that we want to see more of. We can hold boundaries and have accountability conversations when people are stepping out of it. We can start to snowball and gain strength as we get bigger rather than getting smaller and more diluted.
It’s not this intangible thing. It’s only intangible if we don’t recognize it and then start building the systems around it. It remains intangible and you can’t grasp it. You can’t hold onto it. It’s like, “I don’t know what it is, but we have this thing.” As you start growing, nobody can articulate what the thing is, and so it’s like, “We have a thing, but we don’t know what it is.” Eventually, it dissipates into the atmosphere, and then you are like, “You are not a culture fit.” It’s like, “What is the culture?” “We don’t know. We can’t articulate what the culture is, but we know it when we feel it.”
“I’m good enough for this.” That’s not good enough. You have to be able to sit down and do the work to articulate it. Have someone like Miriam come on board to help your leadership team not to ground it in what it is but then operationalize it. Put it into practice. How do we put it into practice? I love that. Yes. As you are growing, when you are small, do it.
If you’ve already grown to the point and you lost it, get someone in to help you rediscover it. I’m going to segue this into the layoffs because there are so much layoffs happening right now that this affects how you are doing your business. It affects how you are hiring. You mentioned hiring. If you come to this situation where you have to lay off, how do you lay people off when you have this culture that you’ve developed? How do you even start thinking about how you do layoffs then because that also has to be a part that you have to go soup to nuts. You have to think all the way through the process.
We are cutting this whole department. How does that work? You got to talk through all those things, too and put those into your systems and your processes. Let’s talk about that because retention is a big thing, but also, how do you make yourself the one to be retained? That’s what’s happening. How do you feel the value in your position and yourself so much that when massive layoffs of what’s happening, you are the one left and then being the one left? This two-part question. Being the one left having to pick up the slack, how do you now articulate? I’m not going to be a packed meal here.
If I take that from the top, what you were saying is important. It’s not only how do we preserve our culture as we scale but how we preserve it through all of the ups and downs and the ins and outs of a business, which might mean right sizing or laying people off. I work with a lot of tech companies. They happen to be going through a massive series of layoffs. I work with a lot of venture-backed companies. Similarly, they are shifting their mindset. We are trying to increase their runway.
Organizational Culture: It’s not only how do we preserve our culture as we scale, but how we preserve it through all the ups and downs and ins and outs of a business, which might mean right sizing or laying people off.
It’s putting a lot of people in a position where they are needing to make difficult decisions. For the leaders who have been very thoughtful about building their culture, hiring, and building strong relationships with people, they can be heartbreaking. You are looking at your P&L or your finances and you are saying, “We need to cut people.”
You start picturing them and the relationships you have with them and how much heart they have put into the business, and it can be hard to do right by the business and by people. For me, I like to try and decouple those. Try to figure out what we must do to do right by the business. Second, let’s figure out how to do right by those people. Is it, “I’m going above and beyond and helping them figure out what’s next for them? Is it the type of package that I’m offering them? How can I do right by them?”
Usually, people who are earlier in their career try and go maybe too far, but I’d rather you go too far than too short in terms of cutting people off. There’s doing right by folks. If you want to be the person who is retained, I think that all we can do is do our best every day to show up, to do our best to be both authentic and effective, and that means being true to ourselves and bringing the best of our personality.
Most of us don’t give ourselves the grace to be able to set ourselves up to be able to practice self-care in the morning, drink enough water, and take a few breaths so you can show up to your first meeting as the version of you that you want to be known for. Each day all day, can you continually show up as the person that you want to be known for, which is your authentic truest self?
Most of us don't give ourselves the grace to be able to set ourselves up to be able to practice self-care. Click To Tweet
Can you put into the business what you wish to receive back? Can you infuse others with the feelings you wish you felt from colleagues? That’s usually where authenticity comes in. Effectiveness is tracking. What is the business need for me and my role? Looking outside of the scope of my role and making sure that I’m collaborating, I’m partnering with people, and I’m showing up as a good colleague.
If we have done those things, then we have done right by the business, and that’s all we can do. Sometimes we don’t have to personalize it. If we are exited, we don’t have to personalize it. Not every role’s the right fit, and we all have a certain tenure in every organization. The question is, then what’s next? Then people are in a moment of reinvention and they need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what’s next for me. How is this perfect? How can I create this as an opportunity?
I love the idea that you shared that don’t personalize it. I believe when people are laid off, they personalize it. That can be quite destructive to your confidence, your self-esteem, and your self-worth. It’s a spiral that you don’t want to get into. If you look at it as the business is having some growing pains, they are trying to figure some stuff out and I’m not a right fit for it right now. What’s my next opportunity?
I have done all I could do. I was a good employee. What’s my next step here? If the leadership is wanting to do right by you, then give you a glowing letter of recommendation. Helping you when you reach out and say, “I have this other opportunity. If they call you, would you be open to having them?” “Yes. We are open to sharing how great you were and all those things.”
Make good relationships and let them know that, “I’m going to be leading on you for a recommendation for my next job so that you know that you were valued in that position and that you have value moving forward.” For those who are staying, how do they articulate or make sure that they don’t become packed meals, because, clearly, the job still has to be done and multiple jobs have to be done now that some have exited?
How do you now not feel the frustration or the burnout of having to take on all this additional responsibility, and as leaders too? As leaders, leaders do not treat others like a packed meal like, “All this work still has to get done.” What has to happen there for both those who are staying and the leaders who are looking at them and saying, “We got to get all this work done. How do we do it?”
Two main things. One is what most people call boundaries, but it’s about having an honest reflection for ourselves of where I am drawing the lines of what I’m willing to give to this rule right now. You can change your mind any time, but you would need to know for right now, what are you going to draw as your limits?
Are you available 24/7? I would prefer not because I don’t think you can show up as your best self if you are available 24/7. It’s not sustainable. For you to have the life you want to live, where do you draw the line? Is it a certain time of day that you start or end? Do you need a certain amount of time for yourself during the day? Do you need to only check your email after 8:00?
I don’t care. I’m giving examples, but knowing your rules of the road and holding to them. People get mad when they are asked to do something that’s out of bounds of their own boundaries, but no. Other people don’t know if what you are saying is too much or not enough. Try not to get mad at them for having requests.
The hardest part, then is holding to it and doing right by ourselves. If we can hold to it, then honestly, even if those hours that we are devoting to our work are intense, we have been honest with ourselves. That’s what I’m willing to do. Create those rules and stick to them. That’s the first one, and the second one is creating clear agreements with the people that you work with. There needs to be a conversation around prioritization. What comes first and what gets dropped off?
Sometimes you can have that and it’s easy and effective with your manager or your colleagues like, “Let’s get together.” There are fewer of us, so let’s figure out what matters most and how we can get it done in a way that feels good. If you don’t have that manager because not everyone does, sometimes it’s things roll downhill and they keep pushing and delegating down. They don’t know what’s too much is you’ve got to use your voice. You’ve got to say, “I can’t do it all. Let’s have a conversation or what first.”
That creates, again, as we talked about at the beginning of this, the fear of, “If I speak up, I might be next on the chopping block.”
Yes, it does, and that keeps us quiet. This keeps us in this perpetual state of accepting things, which creates resentment and burnout. There are some moments where for people, if you are the only person generating revenue for yourself or your family and you don’t feel like you are perfectly at choice. I almost always feel like we are more in control of our experience than we realize or feel. I usually push people a little bit on that.
We are more in control of our experience than we realize. Click To Tweet
Even at the very top of an organization, there might be this tendency to keep delegating. If we have needed to cut our team, this is a moment of transition and transformation. It is not a status quo and those who try to relate to it as a status quo are missing the opportunity. This is a moment of transformation of saying, “We are a new team. Let’s get clear about how we are relating to the work. What are we shifting? What are we doing differently?” The leaders who think that way cannot only ride out whatever market conditions they are in, but they are the longest-lasting and most successful because they are constantly reinventing and pivoting in a very healthy way.
You are a new team and it can’t be status quo. It just cannot. It’s about communication. It’s about being real and looking at what you can produce with whom you have and being able to prioritize things differently instead of expecting everybody. You get up and you are like, “We all have to pitch in and work harder.” No. We have to be able to pivot, reorg, look at things differently, and think about it differently.
Some of the work that I do with using a lot of the different brain science tools to understand who has what strengths to put them in the position to do what is natural for them, and helps keep things moving forward instead of dumping more work on them. That’s not going to create the culture or sustain the culture that you want to have in your organization if you treat people that way. A lot of times culture is lost too in a layoff because they forget what matters most.
What matters most? How to treat people, go back to the basics, what made us special in the beginning, and how can we reinforce that now? Yes. Exactly right.
I love this conversation that we are having. I don’t want to shut it down, but I do because we are going to jump into this rapid-fire section. I know you’ve read the show, so you know it’s coming. My first question is, what’s the biggest leadership mistake you’ve ever made or were the victim of?
My biggest leadership mistake is probably holding back too much on feedback. Not giving people the information that they needed to be successful thinking I was being kind to them.
Organizational Culture: The biggest mistake a leader can make is holding back too much on feedback. Not giving people the information that they needed to be successful thinking you’re being kind to them.
That also speaks to confidence because if you don’t feel like giving the critique or what is necessary for you to say, you hold back. You don’t feel confident enough that either they are going to take it right. It reflects on you. It’s like, “I’m a horrible person if I say this to them.” That’s huge. What’s the best leadership advice you’ve ever gotten that you still implement?
That maybe lead with my heart is another piece of advice I have received. People, if they can connect to me and what matters most to me if I share my why, usually, people want to be part of the thing that I’m working on. It’s more of a question of, “Is this the right fit for us?”
If you were a castaway on a deserted island, what three things would you hope washed up ashore or was airdropped and one cannot be a cell phone?
I need music. I don’t care if it’s a radio, CD player, or tape player. I need enough variety. I love music. For me, it sets the tone of my day and I listen to ten different types of music throughout the day. I need that. I can’t imagine choosing to live without seeing people smile, without seeing other people and seeing their faces. Either a digital frame or it can’t be a phone, but something that gives me the visual. I’m very visual, so some visual representations of people on the planet smiling.
You got one more thing.
I want a comforter and pillow. To me is cozy. One of my hobbies is sleeping and sleeping well.
If you were a song or a song title that’s out in the world, you said you love music, what would that song be and why?
Lovely Day. That’s what’s coming to mind for me right now. It’s probably because I’m wired as an optimist, but I have also worked hard to maintain that healing trauma and working through internal belief systems. For me, moving through the day, seeing people fully for who they are, and doing my absolute best to be a source of light for them. That matters to me, so I will choose that song.
I love that song sometimes. When I used to run, I haven’t run in a little while and that’s a whole other story, but I would put that on to run to because I love that song. What are you reading now or what are your top three books that you love?
I will grab this right now. I’m starting to read The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, who also wrote The Untethered Soul, which I’m a fan of. This is something that I’m interested in and starting to read. We are both into neuroscience. I’m usually rotating through some brain science book. I do have one in the other room, I don’t even remember the title, but I’m fascinated by neuroscience. I also love young adult fantasy books. I love to read books about people who discover they have magical powers and what they choose to do with them because I’m pretty sure we all do have magical powers, but reading young adult fantasy is a guilty pleasure of mine.
Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for reaching out to us. How can people get ahold of you if they want to work with you and if they want to know more about what you do? Tell us how to best reach you.
I would have them go to LeadersWhoSmile.com and I believe that we all have access to being the type of leader like the most seasoned leaders. They can move through things with a smile on their face, and that’s what I want for more people, so LeadersWhoSmile.com or go to find me on LinkedIn. Miriam Meima.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
With that, I want to encourage you all to lead yourself, lead your teams, and lead your organization with audacious confidence. Until next time, bye for now.
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About Miriam Meima
Miriam Meima has been a coach & facilitator for over twenty years, dedicating her life to studying the overlap between business and psychology. Miriam has coached founders and executives at hundreds of companies, including a dozen $1B+ valuation. She often partners with companies from Series B all the way through going public. She works 1:1 with senior leaders, facilitates team offsites and develops customized leadership development journeys for leaders at all levels. Her specialty is in helping people unlock the next level of performance while maximizing authenticity.
Miriam’s credentials include an MA in Organizational & Management Development, a BA in Business & Psychology. She is a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Coaching and a member of Forbes Coaches Council.Mistake: Holding Back too much on feedback to the direct reports, didn’t help them grow.
Advice: Lead with Heart, share your why. Lean into the fear.
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