Narrator:

This episode is brought to you by Sweet River Trading Company. For a cleaner world, try their Chai Mist hand sanitizer spray, and sanitizer wipes. Please visit www.sweetriver.com today for more details.

 

Alicia:

Yeah. Welcome.

 

Eileen:

Welcome, Dr. Alicia, how are you?

 

Alicia:

My partner in crime, Dr. Eileen Timmins.

 

Eileen:

And Dr. Alicia Straughter. Oh my! I cannot believe it’s been a year.

 

Alicia:

I can’t believe it either. A year ago, September, we sat down together. No, let me go back. It was a text message. Got a text message from my dear friend here from college said, “I have an idea.” That’s the extent of the text message. And I said, “Sure, what is this idea?”

 

Eileen:

Well, let me tell you. So it’s so funny. We have a story to tell behind this, and one of our guests is going to help share it, but I have this idea like Dr. Alicia said, and I said, “I have this idea.” And I’m going to say, I know she said, “I’m in.” She didn’t even know what the idea was. So what’s so neat about it is that that tells you the passion and the creativity and the connection that Dr. Alicia and I have, and the trust we have in each other, as we built this, this podcast, this wonderful platform for us-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… a book, consulting, sponsorship, giving back to the community, creating value cards, you name it, right?

 

Alicia:

Yeah. Yeah. And really just to also add to that, it was a passion, I think we both had, and we probably really didn’t know we both come from different industries in the sense of, well, we both have backgrounds in HR and OD, but obviously have a background in leadership. And so you were corporate and non-profit, and I was local government and non-profit, and it’s just this bridge we brought together and then, like you said, we just built something that we had no idea. And literally I did this saying, “Yes, I’m in.”

 

Eileen:

And it’s so great when I received that text, I’m like, “Oh, she believes in it more than I do.”

 

Alicia:

I think another important factor about Soul of a Leader is the people we have met in a year’s time. And we’re growing. We already have the first quarter of 2021 in the books with people, what we call ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things when it comes to leadership and how they lead their businesses. And we excited about that. But when we talk to these individuals, you just have to sometimes when you listen in our facial expressions or our recap meetings and our executive producer meetings, and we’re like, “Wow!” You learn so much or you just get things from people that you really didn’t even have to think about sometimes. And that’s to me what makes this so amazing.

 

Eileen:

It really does. And Dr. Alicia, as we recorded these sessions we started out very slow-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… and it’s almost like a journey because we thought we would focus on the Soul of a Leader more in the business realm, and now we’re like across every industry-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… knowing that people lead with their soul. And as we’ve shared leading with your soul is part of… It’s 100% authentic, 100% spiritual and 100% servant leader.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And what really attracted us to all this last year, all these wonderful people, all their stories is there’s a theme.

 

Alicia:

Yes. It truly was, [crosstalk 00:04:34]. Truly, it was, yeah.

 

Eileen:

And we didn’t come in going with themes, right?

 

Alicia:

No. No, it just evolved like a butterfly or caterpillar. And it just began to evolve right in front of our eyes. In some cases, when you go back and you think about talking with Desmond Clark former Bears, and you see the potential of what the podcast could be or where we was headed and he was like our second guest.

 

Eileen:

Yep.

 

Alicia:

And it was just like we didn’t have themes. We had literally no idea what it was going to become. I think that’s a blessing in that too, though. What do you think?

 

Eileen:

I agree with you. I think we went on… We thought we were on one path and God, which we are very spiritual or whoever you believe in a higher power or Jesus, Abraham, whoever, right? We’ve been flowing towards that.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And the themes that are coming out of this are give back, you gotta work hard, be humble.

 

Alicia:

Oh yes.

 

Eileen:

Being humble and guess what? You’re going to get some scars along the way, right?-

 

Alicia:

Absolutely.

 

Eileen:

… and bruises, and guess what? You’re going to stand up and you’re going to move on. But all in all, everybody believed in the energy of the soul, that there was something inside you that beats your heart, that makes you move forward. And move forward and keep moving to your vision.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And that’s another thing that people had, was a vision.

 

Alicia:

Yes. And one of the things as we start to do the show, like you said, we talked about what was kind of important to us and yeah, we are spiritual women as leaders. We saw a lot, or see a lot in our HR roles as consultants and when we do one-on-one coaching with people it’s that servant leadership and being authentic, and that spirituality as a leader is what’s very important. And we kind of call it the SAS leadership. So when we talk about that SAS, that’s what we mean. We’ve felt that that is a part of your leadership role.

 

Alicia:

And like you said, everyone has some component of it and there’s more qualities, but those kind of stuck out for us. But we had seen it almost close to about 50, we’ve done 50 episodes for season one. And the trend was there, the pattern was there. Like you said, we just saw so much of that. And what about when people were talking about, like you said, they get scars. So much hard work when you are a leader, it’s never easy and it should never look easy, but when you hear the people talk about how hard they had to deal with some issues in business, whether they were working for a company or running their own business, the hard work, the commitment and dedication.

 

Eileen:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And the stories. As you said, with a leader it’s not easy. And at many times it’s lonely leading-

 

Alicia:

Oh, yes.

 

Eileen:

… very lonely leading at the top. And the recurrent theme of most, all 50 of them was to listen inside.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

Listen and believe in what your own voice is. And it comes around to this, in the silence, in the peace, that’s when you’re going to hear God, that’s when you’re going to hear the trueness is when you’re in peace. They always say that praying is you talking to God intuition and that silence is God talking to you.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And this was a theme. I can’t tell you how many people said, “Go within, listen. A voice kept saying for me to write this book. A voice kept saying move this way, internally kept saying this.” If you listen to all our podcasts, you’re going to hear everyone, a little snippet about that.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And that’s what this is all about, is growing, stretching and we’re not on this planet to just go through with no scars-

 

Alicia:

Correct.

 

Eileen:

… we’re here to grow and help each other and we are all connected.

 

Alicia:

And it’s so funny that you said that because I was thinking back to one of the episodes and it really made me think about people thinking that everything, because it goes smooth then it’s right. Well, not necessarily. I think I was reading something too, and it is when you find your strength, when you are up against the wall or where there’s a situation that occurred that you think you didn’t have control over, I think you find the best you when you face a challenge. And for us was the pandemic happened and we had the George Floyd happen, this whole Black Lives Matter had kind of evolved to be more in the forefront of discussions, more discussions about D and I. And we found ourselves in the misses in our careers and even on the podcast saying, “Wait a minute, we didn’t shiver.” We began to find within, the purpose.

 

Alicia:

I think we thought more of the purpose of the podcast during the midst of all of the pandemic, doing it remotely. We were very comfortable [inaudible 00:10:55] like, “Oh, wow.” It’s amazing how God had prepared us for something we had no idea that we were going to be able to do remotely. And so we were equipped. So I think another learning point through this entire process of season one is every challenge or trial is not necessarily meant to take you down or be negative, but you can step back a little bit and say, “What do I need to learn? How can I grow?” Or as they say it now, “How can I pivot?” And then, “How can I turn this into something good?” So that’s one of the good steps that I thought or nuggets I felt that was really strong because 2021 has been very, for lack of better word, interesting. I guess that’s the right word to use.

 

Eileen:

It is. It’s a lesson or a blessing, right?

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And we heard that repeatedly. And to just say it on that, Alicia, we started this, we didn’t know where the journey was going to go, but more and more of our subscribers, more and more of our sponsors.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And we want to thank all our sponsors. We want to thank all our subscribers. We want to thank all our listeners. We want to thank everybody who have bought our value cards, our book-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… which is Soul of a Leader Echoes. All this support-

 

Alicia:

It’s amazing for us. Yes.

 

Eileen:

The sprinkling of seeds out there on the fact of where this is going. This was needed more now than ever. We’re getting requests to speak. We’re getting requests to do authentic leader training-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… [crosstalk 00:12:42] Zooms to show people. And we had no idea when we started this, that we were walking into a pandemic that was unprecedented and that we needed this in the world.

 

Alicia:

Yes. Yes.

 

Eileen:

So thank you, Alicia, for believing in this with me.

 

Alicia:

Listen, thank you for texting me that day. I can still remember the day I got the text. I was headed to a client. I was in the parking lot. I kid you not, [inaudible 00:13:12] remember it, and I always check my phone before I go in and get myself. And [inaudible 00:13:18] I could hear it. I said, “Let me check this before…” And like, it was you. And so I thank you for texting me or thinking of me, because sometimes you never know who’s thinking of you until you get a text or a phone call. But I think one of the key things that you said is the support. One of my things I like to do or on my list is to be supportive to people and support means a lot. You have to have the passion and the love to be able to support people, because support means they need your encouragement. They need you, whether it’s a resource for something or connection, it doesn’t matter. Support means everything to someone.

 

Alicia:

So we are extremely appreciative for all those who support us when we call on you or if we’re interviewing because that’s still supporting us. People could say no. We never really had anyone say no-

 

Eileen:

Right.

 

Alicia:

… [crosstalk 00:14:22] longer people, but you’re still supporting us when you take the time out to be on the podcast. So we are so appreciative.

 

Eileen:

And, Alicia to the support, I have to say this because everybody that we named all the touch point, there is a inner team that makes this-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… so successful. We have a wonderful sound engineer, Will Haywood, who does a great job and helps us here. We have a website and our podcast distributor, Creative Courtney, and then Alicia, you can talk about our social media coordinator.

 

Alicia:

Oh, Ms. Merriah Akindele. So you have to know how to bring the team together and allow people to be great at what they do. And I’ve always practiced that as a leader. You have to identify their strengths to help you where we get to make the whole team strong. And so we have strategically kept people around because we know what we need to get us forward or to move us forward in a very efficient and effective and excellent way. And so we are so kind, she does a wonderful job in all our social media outlets for us or keeping us in tune about where social media is going. And we always have to sound good. I come from an area where everything has to look good, but then you have to have quality behind the stuff looking good. And so we have to say that Dr. Eileen, I do work hard on the weeks that we have to do our podcasts.

 

Eileen:

Yeah, we do. And that’s our team, but I do have to tell the story of when we were first starting this out. And we had to think about a website, Dr. Alicia, and I went to go see a photographer. He’s phenomenal. His name is Doug Birkenheuer here in Chicago. And we had quite a fun time doing the photo shoot.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And I think at that time, I knew that it was going to become a reality. So not only with the text, and then we met with a photo shoot and I brought a ton of clothes.

 

Alicia:

Oh my gosh guys. Let me tell the story. I’m waiting in my car. I get there early. About five or 10 minutes later, Dr. Eileen came down the road. I’m like, “Okay, park here.” So I get out, she gets out of the car. I’m thinking, “Where is she gone with all these clothes?” Literally guys, she must have had about 20 outfits. Seriously, it could be more than that. And I’m thinking, “Did she just come from the cleaner or somewhere?” And she said, “I didn’t know what to bring, so I just brought everything.” I’m kind of glad she brought everything, because I only had like three, I just said, “Let me see what I could fit up your stuff.” It was so funny that day, but she literally had a lot of clothes. It really was fun.

 

Eileen:

It was at least two feet high over my arms and-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… we were walking in and we were flying the clothes around saying, “What are we going to wear? Where do we wear? Take a picture here, here and there.” So I had to share that story because I do think-

 

Alicia:

That was a good one. I’m glad you remember that.

 

Eileen:

Yeah, that was really good because that was like, “Oh my gosh, we are getting pictures for our website-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… it’s coming.

 

Alicia:

It’s coming alive, yes.

 

Eileen:

Yeah. So.

 

Alicia:

Yeah. And that was in the winter a time of last year, that wasn’t December-

 

Eileen:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Alicia:

… it was in December. I remember it so well. Again, we were still on a, “This is what we’re going to do.” That was just like the second part of us just creating everything or third or [inaudible 00:18:29] says, “Okay, photo shoot.” And then everything just kept coming together and coming together. And I think a lot of that comes from prayer and being aligned together. We bring out strengths in one another, so we don’t compete. And so one thing to learn about leadership is you have to allow people to be good at what they’re good at. And so she’s good at one thing, I’m good at another. But when it’s together, it makes what we’re doing so much more phenomenal. And that’s great. And I was reading an article today or early about collaborative leadership. And so, and I forward that to you-

 

Eileen:

Yeah.

 

Alicia:

… and I thought, “Wow, this is this is great.” Because it’s okay to be who I am and know what I’m strong at. And it’s also great for what you do and what you’re strong at and that’s how you can be two great leaders together. Because oftentimes when leadership is together, it’s this whole thing we have to suppress someone else. But it’s amazing if you involve everybody and let them shine how much more wonderful the team could be. So, we do well together.

 

Eileen:

That’s greatly said, Dr. Alicia, complementary collaboration.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

I think it is. We’re very complementary in our skill sets and we do, we complement each other and we’re collaborative. So it’s been wonderful, a joy creating this with you. And as we go into season two, I can’t wait to see what-

 

Alicia:

Oh, my God.

 

Eileen:

… a wonderful journey we have. I’m so grateful. This is going to be wonderful.

 

Alicia:

Season two. We get to say season two.

 

Eileen:

Well, and with season two, I’m going to let Alicia talk a little bit about our book. We have the book, Soul of a Leader Echoes, and that was from the first couple of episodes, right? But we have a whole series coming, don’t we, Alicia?

 

Alicia:

Yes. We got a series. The Soul of a Leader Echoes is on Amazon so people can find it. And we have our weekly meetings on Sundays and we meet up and we just start thinking about what else can we do to help people? Some people may not like to listen to podcasts. And so again, that communication side of me, we were thinking, and then we were sitting… Well, we both communicate, let’s put something to gather and so we strategically kind of selected some stories or our interviews that we thought others would benefit from if it’s in writing. But it’s a part of a series.

 

Eileen:

And do you want to share the upcoming series that we’re working on?

 

Alicia:

Yeah. So the next one would be Soul of a Leader, Your Eyes Are the Windows to Your Soul. And that one is really going to be about… Because it’s a lot of D and I discussions and there’s a lot of Black Lives Matters. And so we are going to strategically look at some of those interviews that we’ve done, what a lot of the African-Americans, the black, the brown leaders that we’ve had on the show and really kind of focus a lot about obviously their servant leadership style and how authentic they are in that role. And also it’s the spiritual side of it. And it’d be more discussions about their values and pull it together in a book to allow to see some of the comparisons and some contrast. But the contrast in a way that shows they all have something in common and that’s leadership.

 

Eileen:

And then we have a couple others in the pipeline, right?

 

Alicia:

Yeah. And then we have Soul of a Leader, Give it to God and then Soul of a Leader, Your Soul At Work, and then Soul of a Leader, The Soul Has No Color. And so you can see the themes obviously it’s going to coincide with the podcast because we have found that we have phenomenal people on the podcast and doing so many extraordinary things and it just amazes us, the type of people that we meet. And so we want to kind of put together those themes in the sentences of those titles for the book to give an opportunity to show the best of what people have done in their roles.

 

Eileen:

Absolutely. And with that, as we shared in the beginning, we’re having a [inaudible 00:23:09] of the different types of people. I think the next titles can be Soul of a Leader, The Creative, right?

 

Alicia:

Yes. It was so creative, yes-

 

Eileen:

We already have… For season two we have Kyle Wolverton, who’s a well-known jazz saxophonist who we interviewed and he is the music on the intro and the extro here. So we have so many different people coming to us, leading in their industry, leading with their passion and leading with their soul. So again, we are so grateful for all of you who have touched us, not only now, but in our lives to get us where we’re at-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

… because Alicia and I, our dads are our big influence here.

 

Alicia:

Oh my God. I see, this is how I know we are friends. I was just thinking about our dads and my mind. We got to say something. And I tell you, sometimes calling my dad to stay, give him an update, turns into a whole lecture, he’s probably going to hear this. And rightfully so, he pushes me and pushes me. And this is what he says though, “You and Eileen keep at it, keep at it.” So of course I have to go back Eileen, we have to keep at it.

 

Eileen:

And we are going to keep at it. And my dad looked at the website and he said, “Eileen, you got to tell Alicia, you have to fix that bio.”

 

Alicia:

Oh, yes.

 

Eileen:

We got to make Alicia’s bio much better. And we did-

 

Alicia:

Yes, we sure did.

 

Eileen:

… we did it. So we’ve got a lot of good backing between the men in our lives, our family in our lives, friends.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And again, we both come from different backgrounds. We went to school at night for every one of our degrees. We are different, but similar and our journeys have brought us here and also have enabled us to touch you.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And we hope this wellspring of love and spirit and living with your soul in an authentic spiritual and servant manner changes the world. We’re out to do.

 

Alicia:

Yes, yes. And I’ll say this before we close. What I start to grasp as we were recording a lot of these episode interviewing the people, and you can hear people say, “Wow, what a time like this to start talking about leadership.” And again, we had no idea what this pandemic was ever going to be. We didn’t know that. And so leadership, I say this, leadership will always be a subject. It will always be a topic. It will always be prevalent. It would never end because for me, I get the best leadership lesson when I spend time with God. That’s how I know I have to improve myself as a leader. And so you never stop learning. As I was reading this article earlier, you have to remain in a constant state of learning. And so if you’re a leader, you have to always remain in a constant place of leading. So I think as we continue to build the podcast and get much support from all those, we want to continue that and grow it, we have to understand leadership would never die.

 

Eileen:

Yeah. I know there’s a definition that I’ve heard a leader never ceases to learn, because you know what, we all can receive feedback and we can all grow. And who’s the best leader? God.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

99.9% of the people on this planet believe there’s a God and follow somebody. So, that’s the best leader. So yeah, as we close, Dr. Alicia, I’m so excited. I’m so excited to do this-

 

Alicia:

I’m excited. And we had to that point as we call it, Chasity from the WNBA, she’s a coach. What does she tell us? And you have to hear the episode. The Bible is the blueprint-

 

Eileen:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). For leadership-

 

Alicia:

… the Bible is the blueprint for everything. Yeah. Leadership, business. That’s why it’s the blueprint. And so to your point, that’s the best leader that I know is to get it from God, to know what to do. And so that’s why we’re excited.

 

Eileen:

Yes. We’re so excited. So thank you all. Thank you Dr. Alicia.

 

Alicia:

Thank you. Thank you all for the support and continued support. And we look forward to you in season two.

 

Eileen:

Thank you for joining us on Soul of a Leader Podcast. We are igniting a new way of leading with your soul and interviewing ordinary people with extraordinary impact. Thank you for listening to the stories of our leaders who will help and guide you on your leadership journey. For more information on our podcast, please visit our website www.soulofaleader.com. Thank you for listening.