Ep. 163: Stacey Ashley - High-Performance Leadership

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


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


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


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Mitch:
(00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch
Roshong and this is episode 163 of our series. Today's featured
guest is Stacey Ashley. Stacey is a high performance leadership
and coaching expert. With over 30 years experience, Stacey has
helped thousands of individuals develop their leadership,
competence, confidence, and credibility. In this episode, she
speaks with Adam about creating your own positive mindset,
developing resilience, and developing accountability in others to
learn more about these leadership skills, among others, keep
listening as we head over to their conversation now.
 
 Adam: (00:51)
 Stacey, thanks so much for coming on today with us. I
really appreciate you joining our Count Me In audience. One of
the most important factors of great leadership is having a
positive mindset and resilience. So can we talk about how one
goes about creating that mindset and developing resilience?
 
 Stacey: (01:09)
 Yeah, and isn't it important right now after the last
couple of years? I think more than ever. So look, there are so
many things that you can do, but for me it's kind of like keep it
simple and I think that there's some really straight forward
things that everyone can do for themselves. There's some people
of course kind of come with a positive mindset, which is great,
so just keep going. But for those who need a little bit of help,
I think, it's kind of noticing the little things. So noticing,
what you do well or something great that happened today. Really
you can be quite deliberate. You know, I have a session with my
team every week where we actually deliberately go "what were our
wins this week?" And we can kind of accumulate them, and we keep
track of them.
 
 Stacey: (01:51)
 So if we're having a bad week, we can always look back and
go, there was some really good stuff that we've been doing. And
so let's focus on that and that kind of keeps us buoyant and
positive. But I think the other one, that's really important is
just to remind yourself of all of the incredible resources you
have and the strengths and the great things you've done in the
past. And I know a lot of the clients that I work with, I kind of
get them to journal it, even if they're not big on journaling,
but just to start to keep a little bit of a track again. Once a
day or once a week of, you know, things that they have done well
or that they have accomplished or, made progress with and sort of
creating that evidence of you know what, I can do this, look at
this track record that I've created of things that I've been able
to do or overcome, or, you know, rise to achieve.
 
 Stacey: (02:42)
 Because when we are having those kind of down days and we
all have ups and downs, but you know, when you have those down
days, you can just open your journal and go, actually, you know
what? I can do this. Look, I've done this before and I've done
that before, and I've learned all these things. So I think
sometimes it's just making sure that we keep balance for
ourselves because often as humans, we kind of focus on the things
that don't go well, are a bit negative , and those sorts of
things. So we want to offer ourselves some balancing out of that.
So if you start to, kind of notice the things that do go well,
what you are capable of and create that history for yourself,
you're balancing your own conversation. I think that alone really
allows you to then kind of rise and sort of bounce back.
 
 Stacey: (03:26)
 I remember, my kids a couple of years ago, well, a few more
actually, when they were little kids, they did a resilience
program at school and it was called bounce because it was
recognizing that we don't all stay up and positive all the time.
We all have ups and downs, but it's the ability to bounce back up
that actually creates that resilience opportunity. And so I think
if you can do that for yourself, have that evidence of your
ability to cope and have great strategies and make progress and
that sort of thing. I think that takes you a long way to
developing that positive mindset. Because you've got all those
reminders right there for you.
 
 Speaker 2: (04:03)
 Yeah. Having all those reminders is important because, you
know, I was thinking, as you were saying that, you know, we do
have lots of ups and downs. Nobody can be positive all the time.
So are there other strategies besides, you know, not everybody's
good at keeping a journal, are there other strategies that, to
deal with those ups and downs as you're working through
that?
 
 Stacey: (04:22)
 Yeah, I think so. As I said, even just noticing things in a
positive way. So just asking yourself questions in the positive,
you know, what did I enjoy today? What was good about today? What
was one good thing that happened today? So just in the moment you
can grasp, you know, that positive element, I think, you know,
other things that we can do, certainly what I've noticed in the
last couple of years of course, is that goals have not been
achieved. Like everyone has goals in different ways, whether they
articulate them or not. And organizations certainly had lots of
goals and for lots of reasons, we didn't actually make them
right? Because the world changed and a lot of it was out of our
control. And so for, many people, teams and organizations, they
can feel like we sort of failed.
 
 Stacey: (05:07)
 We didn't make it and that's not great for your mindset.
And so I think a better focus just even every day is to focus on
progress. You know, don't focus on, did we hit the goal, but did
we make progress? Did we put some effort in, did we move forward
a little bit further than we were yesterday or did we actually
have to change direction because that's what the circumstances
dictated. So again, I think it's just noticing day to day, how
you can, you know, contribute and make a difference. And you
know, that you have put effort in and all of those sorts of
things and recognize yourself for it and your team and you know,
all those sorts of things. But I think that's the in the moment
stuff is so powerful to support yourself and your mindset.
 
 Stacey: (05:54)
 And then I think the other thing Adam, that's really
important is, one of the things about resilience I think is not
going, Hey, everything's sparkling and amazingly wonderful right
now, but, having the ability to go, okay, it might not be great
right now, but I do believe that I can do some things that are
going to improve it over time. And so I think having that
conversation with yourself as well, like, okay, it's not ideal
right now, but what can I do to actually help it along a little
bit in the future? And, that feeling of doing something, of
taking just a little bit of power back in the moment, again,
super important for your resilience and positive mindset.
 
 Adam: (06:36)
 Yeah, it's almost like you're taking back that power from
the down moment. It doesn't have to make it a high moment, but
you're kind of bringing yourself out of the hole and you're able
to kind of push through in that way. Is that what you're
saying?
 
 Stacey: (06:47)
 Yeah, absolutely. And so it's not about that. I'll just,
you know, be a victim of circumstances and go, ...