Are you ready to achieve your ambitious goals and elevate your leadership skills? How do you pursue your big gorgeous goals confidently and clearly and approach life with intention and joy? Achieving personal and professional growth as a female leader involves setting ambitious goals, pushing beyond your comfort zone, embracing creativity, and planning rest.
In this episode of the Inspirational Leadership podcast, I speak with Julie Ellis about her unexpected transition into finance and eventually into the world of entrepreneurship. Julie is a professional speaker, author, and executive coach for corporate leaders and scaling entrepreneurs. She provides unique experience and expertise to her clients, which she gained through working in the corporate world and then as a leading Canadian entrepreneur. Julie co-founded award-winning Mabel’s Labels, one of Canada’s greatest small business success stories. She has developed keynotes and workshops for private companies, corporations, and associations, is the author of Big Gorgeous Goals: How Bold Women Achieve Great Things, and hosts the Figure 8 Podcast.
Listen in to learn how to improve your delegation processes with effective communication and setting clear expectations. You will also learn the importance of creating white space by intentionally clearing out the busywork to make room for dreaming and creativity.
Key Takeaways:
- How to effectively delegate as a leader by getting clear on tasks, setting expectations, and communicating effectively.
- The importance of pushing boundaries and stepping into the unknown to achieve big goals.
- The power of creating white space in your schedule free from busywork and distractions to dream, reflect, and think creatively.
- How to build support systems at work and home to relieve your burdens and free up time and energy for career goals.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- [02:04] Julie’s eclectic career journey, from a degree in dance to finance, founding Mabel’s Labels, and her transition from entrepreneurship to coaching.
- [07:19] The importance of being a generalist and how diverse experiences contribute to unique coaching perspectives.
- [12:08] Understanding the challenges of delegation and how to improve with effective communication and setting clear expectations.
- [16:06] The importance of leaders recognizing tasks that should be delegated and teaching teams’ decision-making to leverage their strengths.
- [19:47] How Julie’s experiences shaped her views on goal setting and achieving big things which led to her book Big Gorgeous Goals.
- [22:15] The importance of creating white space on the calendar for dreaming, stillness, and bigger insights.
- [24:50] The avoidance behavior that keeps us busy to ignore deeper insights and necessary changes in life and work.
- [27:11] How female leaders can overcome skepticism to achieve big goals and the importance of having systems, processes, and supportive people.
- [28:37] The challenge of balancing multiple responsibilities as women and the importance of energy audits.
- [31:21] The need for planned rest and recovery to avoid burnout and prioritize tasks for long-term success.
- [37:56] Julie explains the importance of managing-up effectively and learning the skill of influencing superiors.
Standout Quotes:
- “So often you get to a point in your career where you’ve achieved that level because of the things you have individually done, but to go beyond that, you have to do the next round through other people, and that is a very different way of working than achieving your own personal success.”– Julie [10:03]
- “If you’re constantly in autopilot and constantly doing it in action, there isn’t that space to allow you to tune in and to hear some of those bigger dreams and bigger insights.”– Kristen [23:49]
- “We don’t have to grind it out all the time; if we can learn the right skills that will help us make it feel easier and with them, we can have more fun while we’re on the journey, then that’s what life is about.”– Julie [39:14]
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Resources Mentioned:
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