In this episode of Career Clarity Unlocked, Theresa White sits down with Tami Reiss, influence-driven leadership expert and CEO of Leader Within, to break down what real leadership is actually made of: clarity, alignment, and trust. Not charisma. Not titles. Not performative confidence.

Tami shares her zig-zag career path, how she built her influence framework, and why the best leaders are not the loudest in the room, they are the clearest. You will also learn how to spot strong company cultures, communicate with more confidence by removing a few sneaky “disqualifier” words, and show your value in interviews without sounding rehearsed.

If you are stepping into leadership, navigating a career pivot, or trying to feel more confident in high-stakes moments, this episode will resonate.

What you will learn in this episode

1. Influence > Authority: Why "command and control" kills joy, while influence inspires teams to bring their best selves.
2. The Clarity Superpower: How clear directions and decisive leadership kill ambiguity and build immediate follower-ship.
3. Spotting Culture Green Flags: What Southwest Airlines can teach us about bringing your whole self to work.
4. Communication Power Moves: Why you must ditch "disqualifiers" like just, kind of, and does that make sense? to instantly boost your executive presence.
5. Leadership in the AI Era: Why AI can replace hard skills but will never replicate empathy, system thinking, and genuine human connection.
6. The "Zig-Zag" Career: How to abstract your skills (like an ER nurse becoming a project manager) to pivot without starting over.

Episode timeline

00:00 Introduction to Career Clarity Unlocked

00:53 Redefining Influence: Clarity, Alignment, and Trust

01:23 Spotting Great Company Cultures

02:33 Meet Tami Reiss: Influence-Driven Leadership

03:17 Tami’s Career Journey: From Physiological Science to Leadership

05:01 The Power of Influence in Leadership

07:35 Building Confidence and Executive Presence

20:43 Effective Communication: Eliminating Disqualifiers

26:28 Consulting and Transferable Skills

27:54 Career Shifts and Finding Fulfillment

29:00 The Role of Soft Skills in the AI Era

29:50 Leadership Qualities in the Age of AI

32:02 The Importance of Decisiveness in Leadership

42:35 Balancing Confidence and Humility

47:03 Company Culture and Leadership

49:32 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

🔗 Next steps:

1. 3 ChatGPT Prompts to Find Career Clarity → https://www.careerbloomcoaching.com/offers/Mr7xm4zG
2. Deepening Your Self-Worth for Career Confidence → https://www.careerbloomcoaching.com/offers/4KENh8tF
3. 35+ Progressive Companies Hiring Now → https://www.careerbloomcoaching.com/offers/xTDHFSpJ
4. 17 Fill-in-the-Blank Templates to Reach Out to Recruiters → https://www.careerbloomcoaching.com/offers/6WK6yxdR
5. Networking and Application Tracker → https://www.careerbloomcoaching.com/offers/XypBhjfU
6. The Complete Industry Alignment Guide → https://www.careerbloomcoaching.com/offers/buGFRSmn

👉 Ready for career clarity in record time? Request a free consultation with Theresa at www.careerbloomcoaching.com/consultation.

Connect with Theresa White:

1. LinkedIn: @Theresa A. White
2. Facebook: Career Bloom Coaching
3. Instagram: @theresa_careerbloom
4. YouTube: CareerBloom
5. TikTok: @career.bloom
6. Website: CareerBloomCoaching.com

Connect with Tami Reiss:

1. Website: tamireiss.com
2. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tamireiss

Special offer for Career Clarity Unlocked listeners

Tami is offering the Career Clarity Unlocked community $450 off her signature course:

Mastering Executive Presence

Regular price: $499

Listener price: $49

Use code: 450OFF

Checkout link: https://learn.myleaderwithin.com/offers/ZoFximGG/checkout?coupon_code=450OFF

About the course:

Mastering Executive Presence is a practical, high-impact course for leaders who have been told to “show up stronger” but were never shown how. You will learn real behaviors across Awareness, Adaptability, Authenticity, and Authority to build trust, increase influence, and lead with confidence in high-stakes moments.

Don’t miss out on future episodes! Follow Career Clarity Unlocked now to stay updated on new insights and strategies for finding a career that truly lights you up.

© Copyright 2024 Spark Endeavors, Inc. All rights reserved. Learn more at www.sparketype.com.

#CareerClarity #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutivePresence #InfluenceWithoutAuthority #WomenInLeadership #CareerGrowth #PersonalBranding #CareerPivot #ProfessionalDevelopment #CommunicationSkills #ConfidenceBuilding #LeadershipSkills #WorkplaceCulture #AIandLeadership #CareerCoaching

 If you've ever found yourself spiraling down a late night rabbit hole of. What am I meant to do and why haven't I found it yet? And let's be honest, who hasn't? Then you're in the right place. I'm Theresa White, career Clarity expert and five times certified career coach, and I'm here to help you navigate the question of how to find a career that truly lights you up on career clarity.

Unlock. We're all about those light bulb moments. I'm talking to people who are still trying to figure out what they're meant to do, coaching them life to reach that magical, yes, this is it moment, and we'll also hear from those who've already found their dream careers and figure out exactly how they did it.

Whether you are looking for inspiration or actionable advice on finding a career you love, I've got you covered time to unlock some career clarity. Let's dive in.

 Welcome back to Career Clarity Unlocked. If you've ever felt like you needed a really fancy title or a big. Fake personality just to lead. I want you to think again because in today's episode we are flipping that idea on its head and diving into what real influence is actually made of clarity, alignment, and trust.

It's not charisma and it's definitely not your job title.

We will also talk about how to spot amazing company cultures and avoid the toxic ones. We'll talk about Southwest Airlines and why they nailed the fun and laugh wipe at work, and how small shifts in your communication, like ditching words like chest or kind of can totally change how confident you sound. Plus, we're gonna uncover the hidden transferrable skills in your own Ziggy Zaggy career. We are gonna talk about what AI can't replace. Recover how to show, not tell your value in interviews and how to strike that magical balance between confidence and humility.

Because yes, your value is constant. Even if your confidence waivers sometimes. Basically, if you're ready to grow into leadership. Find your voice and show up like the powerhouse that you already are. This episode is gonna feel like a big permission slip to do just that, and I am so excited to be joined today by Tammy from Miami, my guest. Tammy Reese is an expert on influence driven leadership. She's a keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and CEO of a leader within who helps leaders master influence and maximize impact. Tammy created easy to use tools like Map Out Your Influence Canvas and the Confident communicated GPT to share her knowledge in accessible ways worldwide.

Her latest passion project is a Rhyming Illustrated book on leadership based in Miami. Tammy brings the heat, so let's dive in. Welcome Tammy to Career Clarity Unlocked.

  I am so excited to have you on the show. I am so excited to be here. Yay. I wanna start with your career journey and your personal journey. Did you always know that you wanted to work in leadership and influence, or did you take a few detours before landing there?

I don't think few is the right number. Like it's a lot of detours. Um, in college I studied physiological science, how the body works. I was supposed to be a physical therapist. Then I went to business school and wanted to be a nonprofit consultant, and I worked in nonprofits for a while. And then I joined an insurance company to be part of their product team and worked in technology and product as a consultant in-house, consultant in-house, consultant in-house consultant back and forth. Uh, you can read my resume. It legitimately looks like that.

It's like a ping pong. Well, and. In my last consulting gig, I was the CPO in residence at Insight Partners, which is a large VC private equity firm that has billions and billions of dollars under management. At the time there were something like 150 companies that were part of their portfolio now that I think that's actually tripled.

Uh, and I got to work with leaders advising them on how to be more awesome than they already were. And most often they already knew how to be awesome. They would just forget it in certain situations. And so while I was doing that, I bought product leader coach.com 'cause I come from product leadership.

And when the chapter was over. Hung up my own shingle and started doing coaching, generally four leaders generally on how to be a better leader. And then over four years that I was doing it, I saw the same things happening over and over again, which were primarily that. The conversations we were having were mainly about interpersonal things and more specifically about influencing others, whether that was influencing their boss, influencing the board, influencing other executives, influencing the people who reported to them.

All of that came down to influence and getting other people to do what they wanted. And so I said to myself, what if we could teach this skill earlier? And I started doing trainings on executive presence and influence without authority, and it's been awesome for the past year or so, and I get lots of great feedback and it makes me happy.

And I was actually just talking to someone earlier, she said, I don't like being on stage. I don't like it when everyone's looking at me. And I was like. That was me at 12 years old. But now I love it. Like I love connecting with audiences. I love not being made fun of for being loud and isn't that the best?

I had this natural talent of being really loud and so I might as well find a way to use it. Love it. That's so good. And you had just talked about influence, um, and I love when I was reading some of your writings, , that you were saying that influence isn't about charisma or titles, which is something a lot of people put in the same bucket.

It's influence and charisma, but you are actually saying it's about clarity, alignment, and trust. Yes, for sure. How does someone leverage that? People love leaders who are clear, clear with directions, clear with decisions, and if we are going to follow someone mm-hmm. We want to know where we're going. Yeah.

So clarity on that can be a really like a superpower in of itself. Mm-hmm. Then the last one, which is trust. Someone's going to give their time, their energy. Their motion towards your idea. Only if they trust you. Yeah. So what are you doing to lead up to that moment? To earn trust. To create that bond.

. Then once you have trust in you, your trust bank is full and you've made a clear decision, it's a matter of helping other people get aligned to it.

Helping them recognize that they will benefit as well, and that there is something in it for them so that when they're putting their energy and their time in, they're going to get something out and it isn't just kudos from you. Right. It doesn't need you to be boisterous and charismatic. It needs you to be strategic with your communication.

It needs you to be strategic with the relationships you're developing. And per what you said, it's not about title. That was like the, like massive learning I had from being an executive coach was that I was working with CEOs and CPOs and CTOs and it didn't make a difference. They still had to use their influence muscles.

Because when we tell someone to do something, when we use command and control and authority, someone does it, but they don't do it with joy and they don't bring their best selves to the work. But when we influence them, when we get them to want to do something, everything is different. They're excited about it.

They think critically about how to make it better or faster. They aren't as upset if they have to spend another half hour at work or come in early because they're excited about this thing because they see the alignment towards the grander vision, towards their own incentives. And when you have many people in an organization.

That have that enthusiasm that are bringing their best selves, the best things get put out, the best service, the best products. And I've been lucky enough to be part of a few companies like that and part of a number of companies that weren't. And I was able to see the difference and to able to attribute it to executive leadership that was really strong in these sorts of influence and excitement and alignment skills that other people didn't work on as hard.

I love that. And especially when we think, and I can picture myself working on both teams, right? Like the one other quiet quitting ones that are like, yeah, I'll do my job, clock in, clock out, clock in, clock out, job done, whatever. Yeah. And the other team is spot in. If you truly, if it's real important for you to wanna work for one of the teams where everyone is bought in.

How do you find those organizations that are really using what you're teaching? The influence, the clarity, the alignment, the trust. Where can people find organizations that are, or how do identify what are some green flags? What are some red flags that there are some culture awards? There are definitely cultural worlds.

There are CEO awards that have to do much more with culture than financial results. Uh, so I would start there. I would also look at companies that have really high, or organizations that have really high customer satisfaction rates because when the customers are happy, chances are the employees are also happy.

Mm-hmm. Like. Think about when you're on a plane for like a discount airline and you know your stewardess probably, or your flight attendant is probably underpaid and like they're not happy to be there and they're not gonna exactly treat you well. Whereas if you're part of other airlines that have better cultures, that have better packages, that they have better incentives towards working as a team.

You feel the difference? Like Southwest used to be known for fun. There were flight attendants that would like have peanut races down the aisle. Right? Like every time I'm on a Southwest flight, like something interesting happens, a flight attendant sings something, they, they like crack funny jokes because that culture is founded on love and is founded on the idea that you should bring your whole self to work.

And that's different than a lot of other airlines. Yes. Oh my god, I love this so much. And those are the teams that people wanna work for. Those are the companies people want to work for. Yeah. I know that a lot of, uh, your crew is people who are looking for new jobs or looking to switch career paths. Also make it be the change agent of sorts on your team.

Mm-hmm. Getting alignment. Talking about how the work you do is attached to the higher order vision or mission. It doesn't need to be your boss. It can be you. You can step up as a leader whenever you want in this capacity, and then you could give it to your boss and say, Hey, we've been talking as a team and we think these are our values, or we think this is how we're connected to the vision.

What adjustments would you make to that? Yeah, and then that might get to be part of orientation. Who knows? But you have more power than you think to start creating better team environments because you're on the team. When you say you have more power than you think, imagine someone senior level and they feel powerless.

Yeah. What's the first thing you would tell? Would tell, suggest for them to do? Well, more often than not, they don't feel powerless. They feel like an imposter. Yes, right. They feel like they shouldn't be there and that they don't know what they're supposed to do. And so for that, I always say to ask yourself why these other people that you respect and you think are so awesome that you don't belong in their group?

Chose you, right? You did something that they liked. You respect them. They respect you. There's something you've done in the past that made them think that you were worth giving this title to, that you were worth giving this responsibility to. And so when that process starts, people can start saying, oh, well, yeah, I, I do know things.

Um, I am accomplished. I have. Been successful. And so, okay. Maybe you'll be successful here too. Maybe if you use similar skills that got you to where you're going, you'll be great. I, uh, I worked when I was an executive coach with a woman named Jennifer Sherman, who like badass is an insult to her 'cause she's so much better than that.

Like, like she is just like, like, she's like Michelle Obama. Good. Like, she's just like superstar. And when I worked with her, um, I helped her get a C-suite promotion, like build the case for that. And then she got more responsibility and more responsibility, and now she's a COO for the third time or something.

But when she got this extra responsibility into another part of the organization, she was a little apprehensive about it and she said, I've never ever done. This whole vertical part of an organization, and I said, well, someone trusts you to, and let's talk about why. Why do they trust you to do this?

Because you are gonna spend the time listening to the employees about what's broken Here you are gonna think about the systems, the tools, the organizational changes that need to be in place, which will help those problems go away. And she said, oh yeah. And I said, yeah, you're gonna do that. And because you're not an expert in this, you're gonna rely on other people's expertise and they'll appreciate that too.

And, you know, the rest of the story was many more C-suite titles. Wow. And how did she change in terms of how she feels about the work she's doing? Yeah, in general, she's a lot more confident and she recognizes that it's a bit of a rinse, repeat, right? It's understand the situation, understand the problems, fix the problems that are in line with the larger vision.

Move on, you know, set up structures where people can do what they need to do, that they're actually empowered, that they have the ability and the tools to be successful and they will be. And that it's actually not much more complicated than that. Like we overcomplicate things and it's much more about making sure your team is aligned, they're bought in, they're excited about where you're going, and that you're giving them the tools to make it happen.

Everything else was a bonus. Yes. I was talking to a CEO last week and she said, I think I should be paying my people more than they'd be happier. And I said, there is not a single study in the entire world that agrees with that. And she said, what do you mean people love more money? And I said, yes, people do love more money, but it doesn't actually really contribute to employee happys.

I said, go watch Daniel Pink's autonomy mastery, purpose TED Talk, and you'll learn about what people really strive for, what drives people to show up to work, what drives people to bring their best selves. And that's what you want to be creating as a leader.

You wanna be creating an environment where people cannot be autonomous, right? You're giving them the tools. That they can feel mastery, that they can be advancing and doing more over time. Yeah. And purpose. That's the alignment. That's the connection. Yeah. I agree. I talk to women every day and they all want to be successful and make a certain amount of income, like that's a given.

But what they really strive for is meaning, fulfillment, being respected on their team. Being, being allowed to bring their knowledge and experience, being trusted, feeling they're making an impact. They want to really do good work. And all you have to do as a leader is set them up for success.

Yeah. And all of these women. Probably are worthy of trust and confidence and worthy of being followed. Yes. And when I talk about executive presence and confidence, it starts with you like you have to be confident in your own abilities. You have to be, you have to trust yourself that you are the best person to do this job at this moment.

And when you show up with confidence, not overconfidence, but confidence. You are more likely to raise your hand and volunteer for a project. You're more likely to voice your opinion when you know something to be true. An advocate for what you know to to be right. And it starts with a little bit of self-talk that like, I deserve to be here.

How would someone use that when they're actually making a pivot when they've done lots of things? And I don't care about people who've done lots of things. I've only done one thing my entire, I'm just Yes. Back to this. Yes, yes, yes. So when they've done a ton of things and. There's things that feel really energizing to them and things that feel really draining for them.

The work I do is help them identify, okay, what are the pieces that really energize you, and how can we find roles that revolve around that? Which means a pivot, but not starting over. Right. We are leveraging a piece of their experience, but in a different way. Yeah. We all have experience Exactly that. Can make it much harder to show up as confidence, like, you know, you've done something in a one way, but how do you show up confidently convincing someone, influencing someone, if you're thinking about career, conversation, or job interviews, that you could do those skills in a different environment or in a different in industry.

I'm gonna start with what you don't do. Everyone who's listening, please stop using the phrases kind of, and sort of, you did not kind of graduate from college or sort of major in something, nor did you kind of have any sort of results. Just eliminate them please. They're like nails on a chalkboard to me.

So start there, like make actual statements about what you've done. None of this kind of, sort of just, mm-hmm. There. Kind of, sort of, I'm really it out the window. Just like, yes. Like erase them from your memory. Can we add the chest to that one too? Just, you know, I just, I just, I had a client, she was like, oh well you know, I just let this multi dollar merger.

Do you not know who I am? I am the inventor of just not Sorry. I didn't know that the Gmail plugin, just not, sorry, which every everybody can download. It works on Office 365 now too. It underlines as if it's spell checking. Just, sorry. Trying. I think, I believe like actually all of these phrases that undermine our confidence in our messaging.

So yes, get rid of the, just to please get rid of the, just to um, just, I'm gonna get this plugin and just delete it because it's not that big of a deal. I'm just checking in. I'm checking in. Huge difference, right. Yes. Yes. And you know what? I'm just wondering. I'm wondering, yeah, and you know what, as you're talking about this, what I'm realizing is it's, when you're talking about communication, it's actually all you need to do is take words out of your communication.

It's not. You don't have to learn a new vocabulary or do something more, you actually need to do less. It's moving of the, the disqualifiers. Yes. So when we launched, just not, sorry, it actually didn't work on my computer because I had an extra Chrome plugin that was competing with it. And so I, when I was literally sending emails to hundreds of press inquiries and companies that were interested in having me come talk.

I had to be hyper conscious as if the app was in my email telling me and underlining, and I recognize that my thing, like my verbal tick is, does that make sense? Oh yeah. And does that make sense? Is self-judgment. It's saying, I'm not really sure if I made sense today. Of course you made sense. You're a logical human being who is reasonable and intelligent and yes, and then people said, but I wanna invite people into the conversation.

And so when I say, does that make sense? It's helping people join. And I say, you know, what else helps people join? What questions do you have? What do you wanna dive deeper into? What challenges do you see with implementing this? All of those welcome someone in Yeah, without saying, I'm not sure I made sense today.

Was that just jibber jabber?

And as you're asking this question, you actually know that you meet sense. You just want confirmation from others, but instead you're asking someone to doubt you. Yes. Does that make sense? I don't know. Does that make sense? I need to figure that out before I say yes or no. Right. So what are the most common words that we need to eliminate?

We have the chest, sorry. Sorry. Am I making sense? Does this make sense? Trying the kind of, sort of the one that actually isn't in the app, but it, it doesn't work well with the app, but it's something I want people to work on. Is when someone asks you to do something and you do it. A lot of us, especially women, we downgrade the work we've done and we say, no problem, no big deal.

It was nothing. No worries, no worries, no worries. It took me like it wasn't nothing. It took me 40 hours, but you know, don't even mention it. It wasn't nothing. If you discredit and just devalue your work, why would somebody else value your work? And I wanna get back to this like transition career thing.

'cause I have strong opinions here. But don't say that and instead say, I'm glad you found it helpful. Love that. Yes, that's it. Yeah. A huge difference or some variation of that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, anyways, so I as noted have had a few dozen career shifts. I'm not even joking, like my parents laugh at the fact that I've probably had 46 employers over my life.

Wow. And that doesn't include the hundreds of companies I've consult. Um, but anyways, because I like you do a lot of like contract work when you do consulting. Yeah. But there are other things like in Insight, which is like a year and a half of your life, but you touched a hundred companies. Mm-hmm. So, uh, it's a, it's a different scale, but there is something about what you have done, which is applicable in other arenas.

Yeah. I'll give you an example. You are an ER nurse. You know what you are, you're calm under pressure. You know how to prioritize what's most important right now, and a variety of other project management associated things. And if you don't wanna go that route, you probably have excellent customer service.

You knew how to talk to patients and their families to help them remain calm. To better understand what was really going on, to gather information so that the right care could be delivered. You were able to talk to doctors and other coordinators and a variety of other things because you're an ER nurse and those skills are transferable if only you take a minute to think about the more abstraction of them.

Yes, exactly. That's it. That's it. And I mean, we mentioned Michelle Obama earlier when we were talking about like career shifts. She came to mind because she was a lawyer and then she worked for this healthcare organization. Mm-hmm. She took her skills of negotiation and leadership and compliance and brought them to a more fulfilling place.

Yeah, exactly. And I wanna, how many lawyers do you know that hate their lives, like at work? I think there's quite a number of them. So what if you could be in compliance for a nonprofit or you could be a lawyer for an employment agency or something else, or artist rights? I don't know. Like I have friends who are labor lawyers for like SAG and aftra, right?

There are so many opportunities and unfortunately they don't always pay as well. But you get to come home and smile. Yes. And there's a value to that. There is a lot of value to that as well. Absolutely. And now that we're already in a day and age where AI is everywhere, I wanna tap into more of the soft skills because what I cannot replace are those soft skills.

Nope. What, what are the skills that you see that make leaders successful in this AI day and age? So I entirely agree with you that AI will replace hard skills, but not soft skills, because no matter what, you're still going to have to sell to a customer or interact with a customer because something's wrong, or talk to an investor or talk to your coworkers.

Oh, what? Yes. Yes. Anyway, uh, I dive, I diverge. Um, leaders leverage AI to better personalize their message, but the interpersonal skills that they have are building relationships, asking questions to better learn about somebody else, and the ability to empathize and understand the answer beneath the answer.

Mm-hmm. They are able to bring people together towards a common goal and show where there's overlap and find where things are interwoven and stuff. And this is something that AI is really bad at. They're creative. They think about elegant creative solutions that are different than what has come before.

Leaders. Like the best leaders, they challenge the status quo. They say, I don't care if this hasn't been done before. We're gonna still do it. And this is how, because that's how the world gets changed. Yes. In order for there to be changed, you have to believe that whatever has come before is possible to be changed.

Right. That everything we know might be wrong to a certain degree. Or parts of it are right and parts of it are wrong. And if we work together, we can figure out a better path forward. And leaders see those interworkings and interconnections and systems thinking, um, better than ai. Absolutely. And the thinking critically.

'cause we all know JGBT tells you no matter what idea you come up with, you are a genius. Best idea ever. Aside from being, aside from being sympathetic, it's not very good at making decisions. It, it's really good at providing options. Yes. Here are 37 places you could go for dinner, and here I can help you evaluate the pros and cons of all of them.

I can't tell you where to go. Yes. I can say this is the best option based on what you've given me. It still might be Thai food. And you're in the mood for sushi. Yes. Right. And like leaders have to make decisions. I love talking about decisions and I'm a total word nerd. And my favorite thing that I have learned in the past, like I think three years ago is when it happened, is that the word decide comes from the same like Latin source as other things that are side, like herbicide and pesticide.

It's designed to kill something. Oh yeah. And what decide does is it kills ambiguity and uncertainty. It kills bad ideas, and we need leaders to do that. Yes, an indecisive leader will not be followed. I agree with that. And also this, the decisiveness. If you have a leader where your team comes up as 10 amazing ideas.

They just shut it down. Also, not ideal, right, but creating an environment where it's safe to do that, where people are free to share those ideas and experiment and brainstorm and be creative. And make mistakes and make mistakes, and then the leader being able to hold that while deciding on the best path forward.

That's the compound. Yeah. We wanna work for evaluating trade-offs, but also willing to explain why they made the choice. Because when a leader explains their decision making process, do you know what that does? It enables everyone else to copy the process. Yeah. It helps them say, oh, what would Tammy do?

Tammy really values efficiency, Tammy values community, or whatever else. How do efficiency and community impacted here? Yes. How cool is that? So cool. It's called strategy deployment in business terms, but really it's about sharing ideas in a way other people can use them. Yes. Also known as influence. Yeah, absolutely.

And I always imagine if you were to work for ai, imagine your manager is ai, AI system chat, GBT or whatever you wanna use, how would you feel working for them? It's probably very bland like that is, that is the leader you do not want to work for because they're always back and forth. They, they like don't ever stick to their guns.

Yeah. And they have no empathy. They don't understand humans. And as a leader, if you are not bought in and buy in, it's, it's connected to emotions 100%. And you know, like this is where we are going and this is gonna be. Incredible, and I'm gonna bring you all along so we can all accomplish this together.

That can never come from an AI system, and I'm, I feel confident in saying never and you don't know what the future holds, but I just cannot see that a non-human with no emotional capacity, yes, being trained, it can say the right words, but the right words aren't enough. You need so. A few years ago I was at my nieces twin nieces bat mitzvah, and I was sitting next to a cousin of mine who is beyond brilliant, literally PhD physicist.

Brilliant. And he was saying to me that AI is going to eliminate everyone's jobs. And I said, not mine. And he said, what do you mean not yours? Everyone's jobs. And I said, not mine. And he said, why are you so confident in that? And I said, well, my job is to teach people interpersonal skills. Like I get up in front of a stage at like every room of people and I teach them interpersonal skills.

And he was like, well, a hologram can do that. And I was like, A hologram might be able to recite my speech, but they aren't gonna bring my energy to the stage Exactly. And that's something it like a robot can't do. It's cold. Yes. What do you see as the most important skills that leaders develop that cannot be replaced by AI ever?

Well, it's not necessarily a skill, but they have relationships. Right. They have intimate knowledge of the people they work with and the people they have worked with for decades, and that is so much more valuable every day that AI takes over other things, right? The knowledge of how to navigate.

Organizations, the knowledge of understanding. I don't need consensus from everyone. I need a majority and these are the people that are going to be part of my support network for this initiative. And these may be for something else, but it's that sort of connection to other humans That and the ability to connect and the ability to quickly create connection.

Yeah. How do you convey this? Let's say you are in a job interview with a new company. There is no prior relationship with them. They don't know about your work and it's you have to communicate. I talk to so many people that are like, yeah, I'm good at building relationship and building rapport and building trust.

Show me, don't tell me. It feels watered down, then I talk about it. Yeah, it has to be. Show me. Don't tell me. Don't tell me you're relationship driven. Right. Ask me questions. Develop a relationship with me. Find common ground with me and every other person on your interview panel. Invest time in asking questions about the way we work and the way we interact, and how our teams are structured and processes, et cetera.

That's how you show, you can create relationships because the person will walk out saying That person would be nice to work with. They were inquisitive, they were curious. They, they gave me great examples when I said something. They were like, oh yeah, we did that at this, my other company, or that's similar to when I did this.

Right. That finding of common ground, that's where relationships start. So I would say that that is huge. It matters so much more than the hard skills you bring in. Yes, hard skills matter, but these people know hard skills are commoditized. Right. These people know they can, you can learn a hard skill if you made it to that level in your career.

You've learned a ton of things. You can learn this skill, but that kind of, the chances are you already have that skill to have gotten to whatever level of interview round you're in. Like exactly. The, the hard skills get you past the HR recruiter, right? The soft skills that you hired. Yes.

How do the best people demonstrate the best leaders demonstrate these soft skills on a day-to-day basis where it is visible and the company values them for it? What are the small things that you see them doing that others don't do? One of the biggest things is. Not acting special. So there are countless stories of military situations where the highest ranking official gets in line for lunch.

And, um, there's a woman who was running Pampered Chef, who when she took it over, um, Ashley Kools, uh, she said, we're getting rid of executive parking spots. Whoever comes to the office first, they get the closest spot. Simple as that. And the, the leaders who recognize I'm a human who has a certain amount of experience, which, and privilege, which has gotten me to this point.

Anyone else here could be here if they had similar experiences and privilege. And so how do I provide a more level playing field so that everyone's ideas are respected, everyone gets heard, and we teach other people to. Advocate for what they know to be right for them, to advocate for themselves in respectful manners, to respectfully disagree, disagree, without being disagreeable.

All of these things come from leaders who recognize they're not always right. Yes, they're not that special. I think that's honestly like time and time again. That's where it starts. And thus you care to understand people, right? You spend time with people, you have skip levels, you have, you know, you have your ear to the ground about what's going on.

You care to get feedback for yourself, your team, the people who report to you, who have team members, all of these things, they are the recognition that we are human too, and humans are flawed, and humans make mistakes and. The best leaders own that. That's a reality. That's such a beautiful way to look at leadership, and I'm curious to hear about how do we strike that right balance between confidence and humility about being not the one who is boasting.

But still having the confidence, visibility a leader needs to have so that they can influence. I'm giggling because I, for product management, I used to say we have to balance humility and hubris hubris that like we could do something no one else has ever done, and humility that we're probably wrong in figuring that out.

I think that it's less of a general balance and more of a situational balance. I should feel confident that I, I'm a value, I am a value to my company, to my team, to my coworkers. That value is higher. When it's an area of my expertise. It is lower in other areas. It doesn't mean I'm zero. But it's lower. So in other situations I might be more of a wallflower, but if I have experience that turns on a red flag, I should be able to raise my hand and be confident that I had this authentic experience.

And I should figure out how to ask the question, which is, I just heard you say this. I just 'cause it happened a minute ago. Yes. It's a time thing. I just heard you say this. In my experience, this other thing happened. How are we going to prevent that similar thing?

I'm sure you have a plan. I'm sure there's a risk mitigation strategy. What is it? So it's tapping or tell me why that couldn't happen. So it is really tapping into combining you experience a knowledge with a way of approaching it from a curious perspective. Yes. Like, okay, I'm picking up on something here.

Let me draw attention to that, but tap into curiosity instead of criticism and recognizing that yes, there's the area where I'm expertise, and so I should be super confident in that. But the other side, I'm still a human who knows how to listen and evaluate, right? So I'm never at zero. I have a good brain.

I can learn new things, I can evaluate new things. If you give, put me into a new situation, I could probably figure it out. I simply might need more information than you're currently giving me. So I might have to be curious and ask some questions. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I really love the way you talk about that. Confidence can ebb and flow. It doesn't have to be a constant. I do believe when you were saying about the worth that you bring. That is a constant, yes. You know, the value that you bring, you know the value of your skills and experience, and then depending on the the situation you're in, you might be more confident and less confident.

And then having the humility to also ask questions when you're not the expert in that space. Yeah. 'cause. No one's perfect. No one knows everything. Yeah. You are human too, and that's okay. You're gonna make mistakes even in the place that you're highly confident and highly confident. Mistakes are made. Yes.

Own them and you'll get a lot of respect. Yeah. And don't say, sorry, what do you say? Instead you say, Hey, we evaluated this. This was the decision we made. We missed this other thing. We'll learn from it. And you can also communicate that we took a risk, we experimented, and because we're willing to do that, we were successful here and here and here.

Part of experimentation is not every experiment is gonna work. This one didn't. Absolutely. Yes. If you've got a culture of experimentation. Yes. What are, if you can, I know there is some confidentiality where you can probably name all the companies, but if you can call out some companies that you would wanna give a shout out to for they are doing the right thing as far as leadership goes.

Uh, so a company I worked for as an employee, so easier to talk about, uh, is Justworks, uh, Justworks. Was a fantastic, wonderful place to work. And for those of you that are unfamiliar with Justworks, 'cause you aren't in the small business space, Justworks provides payroll and benefits for entrepreneurs and payroll and benefits is never sexy.

Nope. Doesn't even sound fun. Nope. But it's one of the best companies I ever worked for because we were strongly aligned on a mission to help small business owners thrive. To grow with confidence, entrepreneurs grow with confidence is the vision and the mission. And I forget if it's the vision or the mission, but we help entrepreneurs grow with confidence.

And the work we did and the way that we talked about the work we did and the lives we covered was correlated with how technology can help small businesses thrive. How it can help make sure everyone can put food on their table, how it can help people go to the ER and not be worried about a medical bill.

And we took that responsibility seriously and we wanted to make it easy so that people could thrive. And it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life was being part of Justworks. So I would say that. Wow. And that is also such a beautiful illustration that it doesn't have to be the sexiest or coolest product or service.

It's the meaning what is behind it? Why is the company doing what they're doing? Yep. When the company is doing what they're doing, only for profits. It is such a different environment than if there is something else. If the North star metric of your company is revenue, something's wrong.

Exactly, exactly. Perfectly said. Yeah. Well, Tammy, I could continue this conversation forever. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. If our listeners wanna connect with you and learn more about your work, where can they find you? So if you spell Tammy Reese correctly, T-A-M-I-R-E-I-S-S, you can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram or Substack or my website tammy reese.com.

And I offer both a mastering executive presence course, which Theresa's gonna be able to share everyone a link to with a massive discount. So check that out. Uh, there's a book I wrote on product management that's illustrated in rhymes. You can find that on Amazon and. Uh, I, I, I really, I mean, I, I said this earlier, but I really, I, it makes me so happy when larger groups of people can tap into my brain and learn things that are from my experience.

And so that's why I do group trainings and that's why I write and I blog and I, I'm on podcasts like this 'cause I am tapping into your audience and hopefully giving them some nugget. I don't expect that everything I've said is earth shattering. I also am aware most things I say are derivative, but I hope that I'm sharing them in a way that resonates with a new group of people that previously weren't reached.

Thank you, Tammy. That is such a beautiful note to leave off this conversation on. I so appreciate you being on the show, and we'll be sure to include those links in the show notes. That's our, so that our audience can connect and find you.

 Woo, what a conversation. If you're anything like me, your brain is probably buzzing with takeaways from why executive presidents starts with trust in yourself to how influence is really just good communication and earned respect. I love that Tammy reminded us that leadership isn't about having the loudest voice or the fanciest title.

It is about making people feel seen, heard, and aligned with a shared vision. And that my friend, is something that you can do today if this episode sparked something for you, if you're feeling fired up to find a career that actually fits who you are, I would love to help. Please go ahead and book a free consultation call with me. The link to that is in the show notes and I will help you gain career clarity in record time. And of course, don't forget to join me again next week for another episode full of insights, inspiration, and actionable advice on finding a career you love because you shouldn't, and you don't have to settle.

Keep chasing what makes you come alive, and I will see you back here next week on Career Clarity Unlocked.

 And that's a wrap for today's episode of Career Clarity Unlocked, if you feeling stuck in that. What's next? Spiral and are ready to finally break free. Let's chat. You can book your free career clarity call where we'll uncover what's really important to you. Tackle any obstacles holding you back and map out your best next step.

Schedule your free 30 minute call today on career bloom coaching.com and before you head out, be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. If today's conversation gave you new insights and inspiration, please leave a review. It really helps us reach more amazing listeners like you.

And don't forget to share this episode with a friend or on social media. Your support truly means the world. Thanks for hanging out with me and I'll see you next time.