Kris Safarova  00:45

Welcome to the strategy skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and this episode is sponsored by strategy training.com and you will be able to get key insights and action items from this episode at firms consulting.com forward slash action. And we also have some gifts for you. You can get access to Episode One of how to build a consulting practice at firms consulting.com forward slash build. You can download the overall approach Houston well manage strategy studies at firms consulting.com forward slash overall approach, and you can get McKinsey and BCG winning resume example, which is a resume that led to offers from both of those firms. And you can get it at firms consulting.com forward slash resume PDF. And today we have with us Dr Julia Garcia, who is a psychologist and public speaker, and I’m looking forward to having an important discussion today on hope.

Dr. Julia Garcia  01:43

Julia, welcome. Thank you so much for having me

Kris Safarova  01:46

so you recently wrote a book. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Yes. What made you write that particular book on the topic of hope?

Dr. Julia Garcia  01:56

Well, I never thought I would write a book about hope, because I didn’t think it had any substance to it. I didn’t think that it was going to make a significant difference for anyone. And then when I started to realize what happens when leaders don’t have hope, the culture that creates the burnout that leads to the discouragement and defeat, the amount of people leaving jobs and not feeling like they’re making an impact at work, they They trail into a place of hopelessness, and that hopelessness is so detrimental to not just communities, but the people who are leading these communities and these cultures. And so I wrote the book because I was inundated with hundreds of 1000s of stories of people being hopeless, feeling hopeless because of their situation, whether it was at home or in work, and not having a process to process those feelings. And ultimately, hope is a cognitive science, but it’s a habit. It’s a habit because we know that we don’t just wake up one day and want to quit our job. There was a process that happened to get us there. So the book is about keeping us on a process, so that we stay hopeful, so that people can continue to pursue the things they’re passionate about and build the cultures in the communities that they believe in.

Kris Safarova  03:20

And how can leaders recognize when unprotest emotions is what is draining the energy versus it is workload? Yes.

Dr. Julia Garcia  03:28

So what happens is, is if we have a really great work ethic, we’re high performing, we’re super productive, we’re hustle, hustle, hustle, but we’re only focused on outcomes, external things, external goals. What happens if there’s not an alignment and a balance of the internal processes, the outcomes aren’t sustainable, because the emotional self, the internal navigation system, is going to get lost, or it’s going to completely burn out. So we have to find a way to no matter what we’re working on, as much as we focus on the external, we have to match that investment in our internal teams and our internal processes, and that really does begin with emotions, because emotions drive what keeps people inspired to come to work, to give it their Best, to stay with the team, to continue to build and have impact wherever they’re at. If we emotionally feel disconnected, we’re going to start looking elsewhere, or we’re going to end up in a place of hopelessness, where maybe we we completely shut down in our career and now we’re just a robot.

Kris Safarova  04:38

And that is definitely something we don’t want for any of our listeners, what do you think is, I would say the simplest emotional processing habit that everyone can implement to avoid burnout.

Dr. Julia Garcia  04:51

I think a great habit we can do is what I call Habit number five, which is, well, actually I’m going to start with Habit number four, because I think that. This helps, specifically with burnout. I was working with an entire community of people, so I work a lot in education systems, and I was working with every single person who worked within that education system. So there’s hundreds of employees and staff members. And at the end of a full day of training workshops all day long, I pulled the leader up onto the stage with me, and I said, Hey, this is your community. I’m about to leave. This is your community. What is something that your community can help you with to achieve the goals that we’ve talked about today? And they didn’t know what to say, because when we’re in high positions of leadership, we’re very likely to be high performing, independent we will do it all ourselves. And so we’re pouring out, pouring out that we don’t know how to receive support. We don’t know how to identify what would support look like or feel like for me within this team. So we’re not setting the example from the top about how to collaborate and build a culture of collaboration. And so it starts with us identifying and taking the lead with not just task oriented needs, but what do you need, foundationally, fundamentally, for your team to support you with the feeling aspect of being able to lead your team. Because again, if we only focus on external, then there’s going to be a misalignment with the culture internally, people aren’t going to be inspired to work for you or alongside you if they they think you’re robotic. So one thing we can do is identify what would support really look like or feel like me, and how could I model that in my team. And another one I can share is Habit number five is a huge one for me in professional work, because I think we often we get really discouraged if we don’t meet our goals, or we think we failed at something, or we wasted something. And it’s saying that every single thing that we have at our disposal is has a worth and a purpose. So how do we repurpose it. What part of where did we failed? Can we repurpose into the next iteration? And it takes the pressure off of blaming and failure feeling like a failure, because if I feel like a failure, then I’m less likely to show up fully the next time, to take a risk in what I’m innovating and to cross, collaborate creatively my ideas. So if we don’t first step back and say, none of this was a waste, I can repurpose this. I can go back and revisit it. I can figure out the strategic way forward by taking everything and not just saying it’s a failure, stepping away from a bit, using those things to drive your next iteration forward and to be preventative.

Kris Safarova  07:45

Could you maybe give an example of someone who failed to a point that they felt there’s no hope, and how were they able to repurpose what happened?

Dr. Julia Garcia  07:55

Yes, I can. I can say an example of somebody who who felt like they couldn’t I’m gonna, I’m gonna share an example of someone emotionally first. And so I was working in a community where somebody really struggled with being anxious in social settings, because there’s so much remote work going on that being in a conference style situation made them very anxious to be around their peers, and in the middle of the presentation, they had to leave. Because of this social anxiety, they had to leave, they had a in a meltdown in the bathroom, and then they come back. And I don’t know this is happening, because there’s 1000s of people in the audience, so I don’t know that they left and we went through a couple minute workshop exercises in the keynote. So we did in real time, we practiced what I call prompts. So these are feeling framework prompts, and they we basically asked things like, what it was I struggling with, and why was I not opening up about it? And so them identifying why they weren’t opening up about it started to get the wheels turning, and it started to interrupt their thought process that I have to remove myself from the team and my peers because of this anxiety, and they started to work through it in real time, and within a few minutes, they ended up actually volunteering and coming up on stage, sharing that experience and having a breakthrough in real time in front of everybody. So it was them being able to interrupt the Thought Cycle that could make them feel hopeless like because I have this barrier, this block to hope, that I feel anxious in teamwork settings around my peers, that I have to remove myself by walking through a few steps, a few prompts of, okay, this is what I feel. Why am I staying silent about it? What would support look like or feel like for me, and what are things I am excited about and hopeful for? And then kind of going through those steps in real time allowed them to get to a place where they could not just be a part of the community again, they could contribute. Contribute, and that is a huge thing, is contribution. People are very afraid to contribute, their ideas, their thoughts, their collaborative integrate their anything that they want, because they fear that where they’re at is a place of hopelessness, that nothing’s possible, it doesn’t matter, or that they’re set in their ways, that this is just how I am. I can’t get through this. I can’t get out of this. It won’t be different. So I think it’s really about again, going back to building an emotional process to process what we feel when we’re in the workplace and we fail or when we don’t feel like being a part of the team. And it’s going back to how do we navigate those feelings so we can show up, contribute, collaborate and build a culture we all are proud of,

Kris Safarova  10:46

of course, Julie and for yourself, when you were coming up with those five habits, what happened in your life? What did you learn from your own life that led you to come up with specifically just those five

Dr. Julia Garcia  11:00

these habits have been personally exercised for years, for decades, and what I realized personally is I have failed at a lot of businesses. I have started a lot of businesses. I I am a cultural scientist. So when I when I study things, I like to build solutions as much as possible. So it could be a tech platform. So I built a crisis hotline in the height of the pandemic. I built a social media app for young girls when they were experiencing a lot of challenges when social media first boomed. I built an equity app when things were going on in the world politically. And so there were things that I’ve built over time that maybe didn’t see the kind of success that I had planned for, where I could easily have said I am a failure, and associated that failing with my identity, which would make me feel hopeless in building again and creating again. And so what I had to do is realize that the external things, those come and they go, but if I don’t have an internal process to continue to build what I believe in and build what I want to build, regardless of the outcome, it’s who I’m becoming in the process that I focused on. And so the habits of Hope helped me no matter what the situation is. So now I had an opportunity to write this amazing book, the five habits of hope. And I was ready because Emotionally, I was available to do it. I was ready creatively. I was ready with my experience, and I didn’t give up because I had failed other things. They all were repurposed and served a purpose in what was in front of me next, the next professional opportunity. So I feel like, if you’re listening right now, I hope you know that it’s when we re shift our perspective on failure, and we don’t associate it with our identity, then we leave it open for what’s possible. We can really discover what we’re capable of if we continue to see worth in the things that maybe culture or professionals might see as waste,

Kris Safarova  13:01

if you feel comfortable sharing the moment in your life when you felt you lost hope.

Dr. Julia Garcia  13:08

Yeah, there’s, there’s actually been a lot of moments in my life that I’ve lost hope, and I and I try and share that it’s this book is not about having hope all the time. It’s about having a process back to it, because there are going to be times in in my life where I’m going to feel that hopelessness again. Maybe it will be through loss and grief or or something that is really traumatic, that happens that I can’t prevent or control. So I’m very likely to go back into a place of hopelessness. But the first time I can remember I felt what I call like this hole of hopelessness that I called home was when I was really young. I was very high performing. I was a an athlete, and I just still felt with all the things going on in my home life, I had lost someone very important to me, who was a brother to a drug, drug overdose when they were very young. They were 19, and that really rocked me, and it allowed me to basically say, it made me feel like this was an opportunity to either I was going to just stay in this place of hopelessness, because I felt like I had every excuse to or I had to figure out, how can I still live My life with meaning and purpose, even with this pain. How can I repurpose this pain? And that was when the habits first started forming. So this was many years ago, and then I started to do apply them in my work and see how they were positively impacting hundreds of 1000s of people. And so that my personal and my professional started to really align, and that’s really what led to the heart of the book Judea.

Kris Safarova  14:42

And for someone listening to us right now, if they are in a situation where they feel there is no hope, and you mentioning repurposing pain, and you shared specifically a traumatic example, and then, very sorry you had to go through this. Thank you. What would you tell them in terms of how they actually repurpose pain?

Dr. Julia Garcia  15:00

Wow, that’s a wonderful question and and thank you for sharing that you know, hope doesn’t take pain away. That’s not what it does, but what it does is it gives us, it accepts, accepts the limitation, and it gives us the capacity to move through it, to navigate it, to heal, because hope activates the brain, goal directed circus in our mind that help us emotionally regulate, that help us stay motivated and to plan and to strategize. So hope is a way to help us heal, but it won’t remove the pain. It helps us move through it and navigate it, and it’s so powerful if, if, if you learn anything, it’s hope is so powerful. It helps us in regulating our nervous system. It helps us to fuel the motivation to repair the things that we can control. It is a predictor of the success we have in our performance. It helps us to problem solve, to adapt, to pivot, to recover faster. So it’s not that we can’t ever feel hopeless, but it’s saying, Do we have a process, an emotional process, to get back to that expectation that we can be creative, that we can innovate, that we are supposed to lead, that we can get to know our team better and build an improved culture that makes people want to stay a part of our organization. And you know, hopeful employees are five times more likely to innovate than less hopeful ones. It is a significant tool. It’s not a fluffy thing to just have positive emotions. That is not what hope is. I thought it was at first, but hope is directly correlated to our performance, but because it’s about how we feel, we always have to create that process. And so if there’s something that maybe can help you in this exact moment, I want you to just say this one word with me. You can repeat this word back to me. It’s maybe, maybe. So maybe your next idea is the one that’s going to change the game for you. Maybe if you hang on just a little bit longer, you’ll have the break through you’re looking for. Maybe that failure wasn’t a failure, it was a setup. Maybe you have everything you need right now in this word, maybe what it does is it interrupts our thought cycles that get us into negative land, that start to spiral and build and build and build and build, where we start to feel hopeless. It interrupts it, and it helps us rewire the neural pathways in our mind so that we can build a pathway towards hope.

Kris Safarova  17:42

It basically you’re stating that there is potentially opportunity to actually have a better life, to actually have something good happening in the future. It shifts things. Do you remember during that difficult time you mentioned? When was that moment when you could start shifting away from that place?

Dr. Julia Garcia  18:02

Yeah, that’s a great question. So when I was in that place, and again, I’ve been in it through different seasons of my life, but during the first time that I mentioned earlier, I started to think things like, there’s no purpose to my life. Doesn’t matter what I do. And those started to be thought cycles that I kept going in my head. And what I had to do is I had to interrupt them with maybe, maybe there is purpose to my life. Maybe I can build the business I dream of. Maybe I can have a career I’m proud of. Maybe I could travel, you know, in these maybe moments started to interrupt those thought cycles, and it started with just that. Maybe I won’t learn to love myself, but maybe I’ll have a healthier relationship with myself. Maybe I’ll enjoy the work that I’m working on so that I can have a life that I’m proud of, maybe, and again, that started to interrupt those thought cycles. And also, I would say a big thing is positioning. So when we think about positioning in an external way, it’s also we have to think about what gets in the way internally of us, what tempts us to want to give up. I used to hang out in bars a lot, okay, so not knocking on people, that’s what you do, but I used to do that. And then I started positioning myself to hang out in bookstores. And it was this external positioning, but it was because of an internal thing. It was an internal thing that I really wanted to work on. So I started with an external shift, and then another thing that was really helpful after positioning is really thinking about what were the values that were non negotiable in how I wanted to live my life. What was non negotiable? Do I want to be hard working? Do I want to be trustworthy? Do I want to be off. Authentic in how I show up and what are non negotiables, because I was really young. I was like 19 years old when I worked with Toyota, when I was like, a keynote speaker for Toyota, I was like 19 years old or 20. I was so young. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no business being there. And I’m always in positions where I technically shouldn’t have any business being there leading people through a keynote, no matter the organization, whether it’s Salesforce or or Toyota or a different company, a school. I have no business being there, but I’ve decided my value, my alignment, I am going to show up fully myself. I’m going to be authentic. I’m going to be passionate. And that doesn’t mean that’s everybody’s style, but you will know who I am by the time I’m done. You will know the kind of person I am. And I had to pre determine that. So no matter if I failed at a business 10 times, no matter if I lost money, lost a team, had to move whatever it was, had to figure out how to be a mom and travel for work and write a book at the same time, while I’m nursing my newborn, I still have to decide who I want to be in that, and that’s because I have a preset alignment of values. So when I feel lost, I come back to my values, and it’s about alignment. So I’m not just building a professional career, I’m building a lifestyle. And that is something I decided very early on, that no matter what my professional life looks like, I am choosing to build a lifestyle that aligns with the values I have

Kris Safarova  21:31

today, and to help our listeners to get to know you more. Can you tell us? How did you end up being a public speaker?

Dr. Julia Garcia  21:39

I never planned on it. I actually was, am still a very private person, but I was so private because I felt like if people knew things about me, they would think less of me. They would think I was weak. And also, as a biracial woman, I looked out into the world and I didn’t see people who looked like me, who were from where I was from, kind of doing the things that I aspired to do. So I was very it wasn’t what we call imposter syndrome. People think it’s imposter syndrome, but for me, it was internal oppression. I had now taken these ideas that I was less than because of who I was or where I was from, and I internalized them, and I believe them, and that’s the difference. It’s not that I just feared not belonging. I internalized these messages, and I oppressed my own ideas, my own voice, because of that. So it was internal oppression, not imposter syndrome, but it because I was so young and I was so bold in doing it when I started speaking, it was really because I saw things in the world that I didn’t see people talking about, and I just was brave enough to do it, and people kept bringing me back. But I was fighting for honestly, to have a voice, even in myself, to give myself permission to have a voice, but it was deciding that I was going to be someone who when I saw something that was wrong, I was going to speak up about it. And that’s really what launched my career, is seeing things in my community and where I’m from, that really put a lot of people in a lot of pain. Disadvantages were unjust, and I spoke up about it, and it continued to happen. And then I realized that people are hurting no matter what community they’re a part of, and what we aren’t having is a process to deal with that so that we can move forward and build the culture and communities that we aspire to. There’s such a disconnect with different communities of people, and a lot of that comes back to us not having that internal process to one get to know ourselves and other people. So it affects us in in our workplaces that we show up to every day, and it affects us in our communities at large, and it affects us even in our own homes. And so when I first started speaking, I was pretty naive and just kind of advocating for some things I believed in in my community. But then I realized this is, this is speaking up about things. It goes it’s about really listening to what my communities are going through, and helping them, coming alongside them, to really advocate for solutions that work for them. And so I was listening, and I just found so many different communities were struggling in ways that they needed someone to hear them and to help them navigate through it.

Kris Safarova  24:31

How did you get your first speaking opportunity?

Dr. Julia Garcia  24:35

My first speaking opportunity? Because this was a different time. There wasn’t really a lot of websites where you saw speakers back then. There was definitely not social media where everyone was a speaker you had. There was no context for me of what that meant, and it was actually someone who had worked at a high school I went to, and I had put together a motivational speaking group at the time. Where we infuse spoken word poetry music. So I’m a spoken word poet, and we did skits and things like that. We were young kids, and we would go in to schools and work with students. And someone got wind that we were doing that. And so my first speaking event outside of a school where I was working with professionals, I was working with detention officers, and they looked at me and were like, Who is this chick? She is so young. What does she thinks she’s gonna teach us? They’re like, three times my age, my experience level, my education. And here I am coming in here, and I’m leading this keynote about hope. And they just by the end of it, I realized, though, that we all had this hunger for authenticity, and by just showing up and being real and getting real about what the community was going through, and by listening to them, by creating a space where I actually listened to them as well, it created This, this opportunity for them to see past my my things that they said like that they felt were blocks to even listen and hear me out, and it helped us all as a community come together in that moment and create a cultural shift right there. People were there was so much breakthrough in that room, and I was so young, but I’ve tried to never lose that. I’ve tried to never lose just being my authentic self, showing up, no matter who the audience is, and letting them know that I’m here to come alongside them. And this is a journey, and as long as we can continue to stay authentic to ourselves, and we can build a beautiful space of hope, and anything is possible when hope is in the room, of course.

Kris Safarova  26:43

And how did you manage to get them to speak during the keynote? Was it because they were asking questions?

Dr. Julia Garcia  26:50

No facilitation is something that I think makes my speaking style very different. My agent will say, I’m kind of in a lane on my own, because I do a lot of facilitation and not as much lecturing and speaking. I do do that, but a lot of is is facilitation, because I believe in experience based learning. So this is having transformation happen in real time. So I’ll do this through a lot of different exercises and activities. I can will play games, even we will do exercises. We can do one right now. Do you want to do one with me? Sure. Let’s do Okay, let’s do it. So if you’re listening and right now, if you can think about a time you were just had a problem in your workplace or personally, and you were struggling and you didn’t open up about it, you got it in your mind. Yes, okay, so what we’re going to do is a representation of that is you’re going to grab both of your hands in front of you, and you’re going to make a fist with both of your hands, and you’re going to squeeze tightly. So if you’re listening, you’re making a fist, if you’re driving, just do one hand, and you’re going to make a fist, and you’re going to think about what you were holding back, and if it was a challenging struggle, if it was like a really hard struggle for you, I want you to squeeze hard. And so if I were to walk up next to you and try to open your fist, like for me right now, you could not open them, people start shaking. Maybe don’t bleed or anything. Don’t squeeze too hard. But if I were to say, keep doing this, I have nails, so I don’t want to keep doing this, but keep doing this. Don’t let go. And if I were to say, now go about your day, go use your cell phone, go drive your car, go eat a sandwich, go go give someone a hug or a high five, you’d probably if you’re listening and you’re high performing, which I believe you are, you’re very high performing, then you’re gonna figure it out. You’re gonna use your nose for your phone. You’re gonna eat your sandwich, maybe with your elbows or lick it. You’re gonna figure out how to function throughout your day by holding in this struggle that you have. Now on the count of three, we’re gonna release 123, release. How does that feel? Very good. Feels very good, better. Okay. So what happens is, when we actually hold things in, it physically can only be held in for so long. It will pop off in other ways. But when we let go, when we let go and release, what we do is we make room for other things. So what we can do is we can function by holding all these things in, emotionally and internally, and we can still show up to work. But what happens is it builds up so much that we are limited in how we show up. We are restrained, we are constrained, we are limited in our capacity. So we might believe we are doing all these high performing things, but we actually aren’t discovering what we’re truly capable of, because we’re not available to do that. We’re not fully available. So that’s one exercise that we do.

Kris Safarova  29:53

It is very helpful. Could you share with us which exercise your listeners during the key? Notes and so on. Enjoy the most based on your experience.

Dr. Julia Garcia  30:04

Oh, wow. So I there’s a few. One I do, a lot of anonymous story, a lot of anonymous activities. One I do, I actually have some with me. They are we go through a writing exercise where it can take two minutes, and what people do is they will write down the answer to the feeling frameworks. So each of my habits of hope are accompanying with a feeling framework. So let’s go through one right now. So somebody says anonymously, I was struggling with pressure to be a teacher, be a better mom, with everything, I was feeling defeated, depressed, less than I was needing help to be put back together. I stayed silent because I am ashamed and broken. I am hopeful because of my family and my daughter. So when we think about that, at the end of this exercise, what I do is I invite people, if they’re ready to let it go, to literally let it go, and they’ll pass it forward. And what I found is that the relief in the room is instantaneous, and even if someone’s not ready to release it right away, what’s beautiful is I hang back and talk to people afterwards, and I almost every single time have someone come up to me with a crumpled up piece of paper, and they said, I can’t I didn’t think I could hand this, let this go before, but I’m ready to do it now. And when I grab the paper, I look at them, and I say, it actually doesn’t matter if I read this. This is about you letting go and making room to receive, to actually contribute to the culture you’re a part of, to actually create things with your ideas and with confidence. It makes room for all of those things because we have hope blocks that will block us from that, and it starts with a belief system. So that’s another exercise that people enjoy.

Kris Safarova  32:04

Thank you so much for sharing this. Can you talk to us more about hope blocks?

Dr. Julia Garcia  32:09

Yes, so hope blocks are all of the things that can get in the way of us feeling hopeful. Sometimes they’re big traumas or tiny traumas that happen to us growing up, I had a lot of different traumas that were around me. Maybe people I like, people I loved, were struggling in different ways, and that created this sense of worry and fear inside of me, because I was worried about them, and we could be worrying about how we’re going to pay our mortgage and so very real things could block us from realistically having hope, and this comes back to our feelings. So do we have a process when we do have fear to navigate the fear? And one way I like to say that is this perspective shift of widening our perspective and saying I can have fear and courage at the same time, because so often we identify just the fear, and so often we think feelings are all bad, anger is bad, but it’s if feelings are neutral, then it’s what we’re doing with them. It’s how do we have a process to channel them, release them, let them go, create with them, innovate with them, collaborate with them. So anger for me, I was angry that someone who was like a brother to me died from a drug overdose when they were 19 years old. I’m still angry about it, but that anger allowed me to build preventative programming, and I toured the country as a young person with preventative Drug and Alcohol Awareness programming, and I would have never chosen that for myself. I would have never planned that it doesn’t make the pain any less, but it just repurposed it so that I could keep living with it and do it in a way that I could stay passionate in building a life I also believed in. So it’s it’s really realizing that hope blocks are our feelings and how how we feel about what happens to us or around us. So it’s how do we navigate that and have a system to do that?

Kris Safarova  34:11

Julie and going back to our discussion about your speaking journey, once you did this first professional speaking engagement, at what point did you realize this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, or for a long time?

Dr. Julia Garcia  34:27

Okay, so this might not be the answer you’re thinking, but I never wanted to be a speaker. I never planned on it. I I just wanted to speak up, and it just continued to present opportunities to do so. And as I studied culture, I would see more problems happening, like I built my crisis line and would speak about mental health and awareness because of the height of the pandemic, what that was doing to people and how they were not just feeling. Feeling lonely, but they were feeling hopeless. And so it was a response. My speaking programming was a response to what was going on culturally. And so I, you know, I love doing it. I love it now, but I didn’t plan on it. I wasn’t someone who wanted to go and and be judged and stared at and in front of people. I know our culture makes it very flashy, but it’s very it’s very challenging to be a professional speaker, especially I’ve been doing it for a couple of decades almost. And you travel, it’s difficult on your body. I’m a mom, so it has those complexities as a parent that make it challenging being away, but I love it. I absolutely believe that that it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

Kris Safarova  35:48

Since pandemic is more of your engagements now actually online or you still have to travel just as much.

Dr. Julia Garcia  35:56

I still travel. I actually prefer to travel because I do a lot of real time in person interaction. So I really do love to be with communities. I like to get to know the communities go to, even their local cafes and things like that. And I like to spend time with the communities I’m working with,

Kris Safarova  36:16

if any of our listeners now try to think about how they can implement what you were sharing today. Of course, reading your book will help tremendously, but what I want to ask you for them is, where do you think they will stumble, and how you can help them not stumble?

Dr. Julia Garcia  36:36

I think people are really hard on themselves. I and I’m someone who is very, very hard on myself, and when we’re really hard on ourselves, it creates a hope block of because we can’t receive. We can’t receive whatever it is that we need. And so I would say, remember that exercise, put up two fists the next time you’re struggling and ask yourself this question, why am I staying silent about this? Maybe you ask yourself, what could support look like or feel like for me? And it’s then humanizing yourself, because when we’re in high performance, hustle, outcome mode, metrics, metrics, metrics, we forget the humanity that drives the mission of every organization.

Kris Safarova  37:27

Do you know? How do you think the use of AI is impacting people’s ability to feel hopeful about

Dr. Julia Garcia  37:34

the future? Oh, wow. This is such a big this is the deep dive of where I’m at right now, currently with my research and so AI is definitely something that is it is increasing productivity, but it is decreasing the personal, the personal humanity, the people who drive the missions and carry out the company vision. It’s, it’s creating a space where it’s not just about being replaceable. That’s, that’s not, I think the only fear, it’s also creating this sense of mental, emotional atrophy where we aren’t. We aren’t developing the interpersonal skills. There’s a lot of leaders, I’m going to say, in in tech. I was in Silicon Valley for a long time, and there’s a lot of leaders who are in high pressure organizations that do not have the ability to build interpersonal skills within their leadership team. It is lashing out, yelling, firing it. There is no there’s the ability to to hear other people and to collaborate, to receive criticism or feedback, I won’t say criticism, but feedback constructively, and then rebuild from that and continue to build morale even when we don’t hit our metrics. That ability is being lost, that art is being lost, to be able to lead and build morale even if metrics are down, and that’s the sign of a true leader, not to just lead in success, but someone you want to follow, someone who you know can weather a storm, not just someone who can ride the waves. And so I believe it’s really taking away from our ability to personally show up for teams in a way that they want to be led by us.

Kris Safarova  39:47

How do they think people should think about AI and technology advancements?

Dr. Julia Garcia  39:52

I think AI is a tool. It’s a tool. It also should be very feared and understood as much as possible. I think we don’t want to be ignorant. It, we want to use it as a tool. Social Media gave us a glimpse of what happens when things are fabricated and and fake, and when we spend a lot of time consuming things and not contributing to things. Social media was like the preview of what is coming with AI and AI is actually going to be probably even just more than we can ever imagine. And so the more we have to keep the humanity in our organizations, and we have to be preventative of what is going to potentially replace people, because once people start getting replaced, the morale is going to go down. We are going to plug and play, and we are going to lose the heart of what really will carry out a mission, and that’s humanity. And so I think people need to learn to use it for efficiency, but not to the extent of losing their ability to think through problems and problem solve. So it’s not just a plug and play not to I actually have a list of things I’m going to share a few, if that helps. So a few things that I would say to advocate against in AI or to focus on is, if we want efficiency, also have ethics. If we want performance, also have problem solving, if we want just productivity, also have personalization. How can teams add their personal spin and ideas? Because that’s the only way it’ll make you significantly different than the competition, instead of isolated learning only. How do we facilitate interpersonal learning skills instead of just quick answers? How do we have concept learning instead of just auto correct, auto responses? How do we put in collaborative efforts and just instead of thinking of only wins, what is our team really worth, and coming back to that preset value system, the vision of our organization, what does our team really mean to us? What is our worth? Is it just a means to an end is it just being a product because people don’t want to work for someone who thinks they’re dispensable. So reassuring our teams have worth. And it’s not just about the wins.

Kris Safarova  42:33

And a lot of people right now are worried about losing their jobs, and they see some of their colleagues losing their jobs within the organization, it is a challenging time. Anything you want to add for specifically individuals listening right now who are worried about becoming obsolete?

Dr. Julia Garcia  42:51

Yes, first of all, I don’t believe it’s possible that you personally could ever not have a purpose. It might not look or be the way that we want or like. But I think first of all, that feeling of worry, I want you to hopefully, I’m going to invite you to ask yourself, What are you doing with that worry? Where is it? Is it being held in? Is it showing up by you being angry and lashing out at someone and maybe an unhealthy way is the worry causing you to isolate what is the worry doing? Where is it at? And start there and then, what would it look like to find a way to release that worry? Because in the process, I can’t guarantee the outcome of what will happen for you, but I know that when you are courageous with building a process for whatever we feel, worry, fear, when we build the process, we might not get the outcome we want, but we’ll like who we’re becoming, and I believe that will lead us to what’s next for us.

Kris Safarova  43:58

What do you think will happen in in 510, years, in terms of AI and technological, other technology advancements,

Dr. Julia Garcia  44:06

I am afraid answer that, oh, man, that is, it’s a scary It’s a scary thought, because a world with human skills, but without hope, without the humanity is not a world I really want to envision. So what I what I hope for, because I’m going to try and lead us positively. Here is that people recognize right away how much we we need. We need people in our problems solving. We need people in our products. We need people in our solutions. People are what drive our culture, in our world. So I’m hoping that if you are a leader, you learn the AI skills that can help with productivity, but you do not eliminate the whole. Heart of what drives your product, the mission, the people who carry it out, day in and day out. You do not lose the people, and you continue to pour in a culture of hope into them, because hope will help us do what no hardware software could ever do, and that’s to innovate in a way that only we can as a people.

Kris Safarova  45:26

Julie, I want to wrap up with one or two of my favorite questions over the last let’s say, even over your entire lifetime so far, what were two, three aha moments, realizations that you feel comfortable sharing that really changed the way you look at life, or the way you look at business.

Dr. Julia Garcia  45:44

Well, I think becoming a mom was the most significant thing for me, and it it made me have a different type of hustle and a hunger. I’ve always been really motivated and high performing, but becoming a parent was a different kind of hustle. It was, it was one where I knew I needed hope because it was going to be hard, it is hard, and I knew I needed hope in my in my journey as a parent. So that was a real realization. That was a moment I really had to say, it’s not about just being a parent. It’s like, what kind of parent do I want to be? And that’s when I really decided, in a personal way and professional that my children will always know that I am a person who I’m a hard worker, I’m a hustler, but I do it with hope

Kris Safarova  46:39

and any other insight that comes to mind that you feel comfortable sharing

Dr. Julia Garcia  46:44

things that were transformative for me? Yeah, I think failure is a huge thing for me, because it’s always an opportunity to be a hope block when I in the past, I was so I had mentioned I had a an app for young women. We had won some awards, got some seed funding. We had a little team, and we had a runway go in. We had 2000 people signed up. We had about 500 using the beta app, the MVP, and I was traveling the country with this, and I relocated my family. My husband got a job in Silicon Valley, so we relocated. I didn’t have childcare. I was in grad school. I did not know how to run my team. Remote work wasn’t really a thing back then, and it was hard to want to get out of bed, because I felt like I failed my team. I felt people who believed in me. I felt I failed the investors. I failed. The feeling of failure made me literally not want to get out of bed. It was awful. I don’t wish that upon anyone. It was horrible, and it was a significant moment for me, because I had to go back to my value system of who am I going to be, regardless of the outcome, what kind of person am I going to be, and am I a person who continues to have not I didn’t have to have a ton of hope, but can I just have a tiny amount of hope, tiny muster side sees that could interrupt the thoughts that I am a failure because I failed, or I’m a loser, or I’m dumb, or I have bad ideas, or I’m a horrible leader, and all of those identity things I was saying to myself. Can I interrupt it and say maybe I can learn from this. Maybe I can come back stronger, maybe I can forgive myself. Maybe I didn’t do anything horrible, and it just it just happened, and these maybe moments again helped me interrupt that thought cycle that would was leading me down that place of hopelessness. And I’ve done so many incredible and fun thing. Since then, I have traveled all over the world. Since that, I thought everything was over. So wherever you’re at on your journey, even if you’re at a hard stop, it’s not over. It is not over. It could just be beginning. That could be one chapter. It could be a whole nother book. I never thought I would if you would ask me then, at that time, if I’d be where I’m at now, I would have never believed you, because I felt like it wasn’t possible. I was losing hope. But when you interrupt those thought cycles with the maybe, maybe I’ll write again, maybe I’ll have a business again, maybe I’m the person who can be a great leader, and that set me back in a in a motion to build a life that I’m proud of.

Kris Safarova  49:46

Julia. And the last question for today, if you could instill one belief in every listener’s heart, what would that be?

Dr. Julia Garcia  49:54

Hope is a habit. You know when you don’t have it, and you know when you do. And there’s a process to losing it. And. There’s a process to having it back, and you don’t need a ton of it. It’s not false positivity, but hope is a habit. It’s like a muscle, and when you strengthen it, it will significantly improve so many areas of your life, from professional to relational creativity, your creativity. It is a the single greatest predictor of success and in health. So don’t lose hope, and if you do, just keep finding a process. Back to it.

Kris Safarova  50:32

Julia, thank you so much. Such an incredible hour we spent together. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Buy your book, anything you want to share.

Dr. Julia Garcia  50:41

Thank you so much for having me. This has been an amazing chat, and my book is the five habits of hope, stories and strategies to help you find your way. It is a great gift book. I mean, if you see it in person, it is an amazing designed book. It is beautiful. You definitely should gift it if you don’t do it for yourself, and you can find me anywhere at Dr Julia Garcia, on all my socials. And you can also listen to the audiobook wherever audiobooks are listened to, Julia. Thank you again. Thank you so much for having me.

Kris Safarova  51:13

Our guest today, again has been Julia Garcia, a psychologist, public speaker and author of the five habits of hope. And you can also download key insights and action items from this session today at firms consulting.com forward slash action. And you can also download additional gifts from us. You can access episode one of how to build a consulting practice at firms consulting.com forward slash build. You can download the overall approach used in the well managed strategy studies at firms consulting.com forward slash overall approach. You can get a McKinsey and BCG resume example, which is a resume that led to offers from both of those firms at firms consulting.com forward slash resume PDF. And you can also get a copy of one of our books that went to number one bestseller on Amazon and multiple categories. It’s actually was co authored with some of our listeners of this podcast, some of our clients. It is called Nine leaders in action, and you can get it at Friends consulting.com, forward slash gift. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.