The Power of Vulnerability: Daniel Ludevig's Guide to Authentic Leadership

Keith: 00:01:28

Meet Daniel Ludevig, a facilitator, trainer and professionally certified transformational coach with a passion for impacting transformation in business. His mission is to empower professionals to become someone worth following.

el founded Move Leadership in: 2010

Before starting his consultancy, he studied psychology and economics in Boston and worked with several organizations. Along the way he gained inspiration for a variety of sources.

His work with post genocidal communities in Cambodia taught him the power of the arts in facilitating difficult conversations. When running a hotel in Morocco, he experimented with multidisciplinary methods to developing presence and connection.

As a professional ballroom and swing dancer, he cultivated an understanding of leader and follower. His coach certification brought him life of impact of profound questions and deep listening.

And his work as a facilitator with the Presencing Institute, the Theory you Social Presencing Theory and a handful of mentors demonstrated a value of systematic thinking, mindfulness, masterful facilitation and innovation. We welcome Daniel to the podcast. Well Daniel, welcome to the podcast. How you doing today?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:03:07

Hey Keith, it's great to be here. I'm doing well and I'm excited to talk to you.

Keith: 00:03:11

You say that now. We haven't started yet.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:03:13

We haven't started, but I feel excited. It might be naive.

Keith: 00:03:18

There you go. I love to ask my guest this question, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:03:27

You know, for me, there's an advice that comes to mind from an opera singer named Robert White who gave me a piece of advice when I was thinking about whether to leave New York and start a new life. And I was very scared and I had a lot of reasons not to do it.

And I was very pros and cons list and trying to figure out is this really the right thing to move for a new life, a new career, a new direction, a new kind of way of living? And I was trying to really kind of resolve all my fears to make the decision.

And he said to me, you never will actually let go or get rid of your fears. You just need to learn how to move through them. And that is still unfolding. I think on the levels of depth that is in that advice.

I think at the time, the way I heard it was just to understand it's okay to do things scared and that's fine.

I think what I'm understanding on deeper levels is how Much wisdom and information and insight exists in the things that we are afraid of and why we're afraid of those things and what we have to learn about ourselves and our past and our backgrounds and our stories that is reflected in the things we're afraid of today. So it's a. It's something that resonates quite closely with me because I do a lot of things that I'm scared of.

And if I had to believe that I can only start doing it when the fear is gone, I would pretty much just sit dormant.

Keith: 00:05:04

It's so funny you said that I had another guest on who you talked about almost exact same thing of having to do things when you're scared. And so it's funny, I hadn't heard that till yesterday. And so now you've said it too.

So it must be something in the spear that's saying this is what you.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:05:19

Have to do for you. This is a message for you.

I mean, listen, this is not like, I don't think it's the most brain sciency or kind of like revolutionary thing to know, get over your fears and kind of do stuff. But I think that's exactly the misconception, which is people kind of talk about getting over your fears. Right.

And for me to realize that there's a real sense of courage and bravery and vulnerability and honesty that comes from doing something despite your fears or even alongside your fears instead of waiting until you get over them. Right.

I think this whole idea of kind of like just get over it really misses the deeper insight and wisdom that lies in exactly the things that we're afraid of. And it would be a shame to just look over that. So maybe there's some direct messages coming to you right now for that reason.

Keith: 00:06:16

It could be. But fear, fear keeps us, keeps us in a place where we can never accomplish all we're meant to be if we, like you say, wait for the fear to go away.

Whereas if we just dive into that, almost embrace the fact that, yeah, I'm doing it even though I'm still afraid, that there's a lot of blessings on the other side of that sometimes.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:06:38

Absolutely. And I guess what I'm starting to realize more and more with fear, I mean, there's so many different layers of fear, right.

So when we really talk about fear at an existential level, then we're talking about things that are actually threatening to us, right. Life threatening to us. And luckily for most of us, there's not actually a lot these days that is life threatening.

So the fear that we experience is perceived threats, right? Something that is a perception that we hold that something is really, really dangerous, right?

Either physically dangerous, which then is probably true, right? Like if I feel fear before, I don't know, jumping off a big cliff or bungee jumping or whatever, that's quite realistic.

But a lot of the other fears are just perceptions of threats that may or may not actually exist, right? It might be a threat to our social standing. It might be a threat to our reputation. It might be a threat to our sense of self worth.

It might be a threat to our stability or safety.

And that becomes really interesting to unpack because part of it might be very much true that something is happening around us or something might happen around us that could threaten all of those things.

And other times, those threats are not there at all, but we perceive them as threats because something that is happening now reminds us of an earlier time where there really was a threat like that in our lives. And that is where I think fear starts to get so interesting, because we begin to realize that we're living two simultaneous time zones, so to speak.

There's the present time zone where something's happening right now that may or may not actually be threatening at all.

But then there's the perception that we put onto it, the projection that we put onto it, and where that brings us back to in our own story, in our own lives, that is actually the reality that we're perceiving.

And so that, for me, is how much depth lies in exploring our fears, because it brings us in touch with the whole journey of life that we've been on and what our nervous system and our psyche and our unconscious are trying to protect us from, even when there might not actually be a threat present.

Keith: 00:08:45

I love that. And it kind of really segues into my question for you about what you do in your profession, how you help coach leaders, how you.

What inspired you to focus on that? I'm curious. Especially empowering professionals to become the leaders worth following. I heard that phrase years ago.

Are you a leader worth following versus, you know, what kind of leader are you? But a leader worth following is a little different nuance on that question.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:09:10

Yeah. So are you saying I didn't make up that tagline?

Keith: 00:09:13

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying I heard it years ago and it resonated with me.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:09:19

It wasn't from me, I'll tell you that. But I, I appreciate the, the link to, to your question. So, you know, what is it that. That I do, first of all, so as you, as you summarize right?

I'm a leadership coach, which means that I work a lot with CEOs and founders and leaders one on one on their own development and their own journey and what's next for them that they need to break through.

I do a lot of work with teams with intact teams in large and small organizations, accompanying them over months and years and helping them work better together, handle conflict better together, breakthrough, limiting patterns together, really thrive together and become high functioning teams.

Then I do a lot of leadership training, which is more like standing up in front of groups and working with people and teaching them leadership models and skills. And most recently, I formed a leadership mastermind group, a membership based leadership group that is for anyone from any company to join.

So it's not limited to one company. And that is where this tagline of become someone worth following came up for me.

Because what I started personally realizing in the space of leadership development that I've been working in for over 15 years is that there is a serious gap between the amount of investment that companies put into training people to become leaders and the output. And we see that because there's not a lot of leaders that we can look up to in companies or frankly anywhere, right? There's a handful.

But given how much companies invest into huge flagship programs to fly people from around the world to do leadership training, to bring in the top leadership coaches, to send people on one on one coaching journeys, you would think that there would be many more aspiring leaders for people to look up to. And that's just not the case.

And I'm sitting in this world thinking something that I had heard colleagues who were older than me years ago say, which is after a while, many people who work in the leadership space start to get cynical and kind of negative about the impact they're actually having. Because you have these amazing moments at flagship programs and then nothing happens afterwards.

You have incredible kind of coaching relationships and then you hear that people fall back into old patterns. You work with these massive corporates and yes, you know, you're turning the dial, you know, 1% in a company that can affect billions.

But does it really feel like you're making a difference? And I don't think anyone has really cracked the code on what does it truly take to develop leaders.

And what I found during lockdown and Covid is that a lot of my in person programs shifted to virtual and they shifted from a three day program into a ten week program, right?

So instead of it being three full days in some destination, it was ten weeks, four hours every two weeks, and while the connection piece in those programs suffered a lot, right. People did not come as close to each other as they would have when they were meeting in person.

The implementation and the leadership skill development actually improved massively.

And what I found is that as people were going into the courses that we were doing for four hours, then they would leave, they would have two weeks to practice, to experiment, to fail, to win, to come up with questions. Then they come back two weeks later, we dive into what's come up for them and we add on another layer.

And by the end of those 10 weeks, I saw them having leadership progress on skills that in those in person programs were just not happening at the same level. And it made me start thinking about, okay, so how, how does leadership development really work? How does any behavior change work?

You know, coaching is amazing, one on one coaching, but there's no real program. So you do need some kind of plan and training and program to move people towards.

These in person programs are amazing because they develop huge amounts of connection, but there's no accountability and support.

And then the virtual programs are amazing because they do have content and they have accountability, but there's no community because you don't feel so bonded to these people. And that's where I started looking into, okay, so what does it really take to become someone worth following?

And there's some skills and dimensions of qualities that I've looked at leaders from 15 years of work and said, okay, here are the skills and the qualities that people are drawn to that make you worth my attention and worth my time and worth my energy and as a follower. And here's a process and a plan and an approach that can actually develop leaders into that.

Not something that is just in person or just virtual or just coaching, but is a blend of all three. And that's what I've been experimenting with, with this community and program that I've developed called the Modern Leader.

And it's something I launched in January. It's something I'm doing alongside the other work that I mentioned.

But oh my God, the results that I'm seeing and the progress and the growth in that format versus what I see in other formats that companies are spending so much more to invest into. It has been incredibly inspiring. And so that's, that's, you know, some background around how this program started.

A little bit of background also on, you know, what the other work that I do is and why. This tagline for me of becoming someone worth following rather than just, you know, thinking about, you know, developing the leader themselves.

The focus is really on what is the value add that you are offering to the people who choose to spend time with you and not what is the value of you yourself as a leader. Right. Without followers, your value is nothing.

And I think that's often overlooked in leadership development as we spend so much time developing the person, but very little time thinking about the impact that they're having.

Keith: 00:14:34

I am curious how much your past and your work with post genocidal communities in Cambodia has impacted your view of leadership.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:14:45

Well, yeah, that's a story that has impacted me quite a bit. So I had the chance to work in Cambodia, as you mentioned, on an internship that was looking at the role of using arts to heal genocide pasts.

So Cambodia has had a huge genocide past in the late 70s, killed about a third of the population.

There's still an enormous amount of trauma in that system because many of the people who are survivors of the genocide are living among the very same people who were also part of the murderers. And so that means that it is extremely dangerous and difficult to talk about very sensitive and painful topics.

And the exploration of the internship was to look at can art play a role in helping people talk about things in a different way?

Can art help people surface topics that are otherwise impossible to talk about with words, but may be possible to experience, process, connect on through other mediums? And I would say that hugely influenced me because first of all, I saw it's massively powerful. There really is a role of arts.

And in the format that we were using there, it was a combination of dance and painting, of arts, allowing people to express themselves, but also communicate and feel and process without having to use words.

And when I started dabbling in leadership development, which after that Cambodia experience started only about 10 years later, it was through my own background as a ballroom dancer that I entered into that space.

Someone who was a dance student of mine, I was living off of dance at the time, said, the way you teach dance is a very interesting metaphor for leadership development. And I thought, that's an interesting idea. Let me play around with it.

And my first step into leadership development was with that concept of let's get people to try to lead and follow each other across the room with a little bit of music, the same way that they lead and follow in the office. And people obviously thought it was hilarious and it was uncomfortable and it was weird and it made people laugh, but they did it.

And within a few minutes they were getting feedback on their leadership style that some of them said was more deep and profound. And on point than any kind of psychometric or 360 that they had done in the business. And that really struck a chord with me.

Like, what is it about getting people to experience things?

And in particular, getting them to experience things not only through their head, but through their heart and through their bodies that allows for sometimes a more accurate conversation, a more powerful conversation, a quicker conversation, sometimes a more transparent and vulnerable conversation. So it's one of the.

When I look at my work today, which has expanded massively from where I started, one of the three pillars of how I still approach my work is embodied experiences that people learn best.

When you have an experience first and then you debrief it with a conversation and some theory and insights and takeaways and not the other way around.

And so the embodied piece that I started in Cambodia was massively informative and shaped a lot of how I think about experiential learning in any context. Right. And I just apply it to leadership development.

Keith: 00:18:11

I love that what you're defining or describing to me sounds like what I would consider authentic leadership, because oftentimes leaders don't get true feedback from the people that they're leading or the people or the followers. But how do you define authentic leadership? And why is that crucial, especially in today's society?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:18:34

For me, authentic leadership is the people that get to see you at the bar get a similar experience to you as they do when they see you leading in front of a room, that the experience that people have of you, the felt experience that they have of you, the values that you stand for, the way in which you treat people, are true inside and out. What you think is what you express, what you feel is what you share, what you do is connected with what you say you believe in.

So for me, there's that coherency, that integrity that is involved in authentic leadership.

Now, I think in the space that we're in today, there is so much inauthentic leadership out there that the sheer difference that it can make in a group or in a company when somebody shows up authentically is just massively palpable. And what I mean by inauthentic leadership is there's so many models, first of all, that people have bought into from earlier leadership.

Decades of leaders need to talk a certain way. Leaders need to present themselves a certain way. When you're scared, you shouldn't let people know.

When you're not sure what the answer is, you should still still tell people that you do know. Right. Lead with an answer first. Right.

All of these models that suggest that Leaders need to stand up there and be confident and be all knowing and be clear in their direction and to not let in on any vulnerabilities that they have and kind of present this shell.

And while I think there is a certain benefit, especially in an earlier part of anyone's career, to try to fit in and to try to understand the culture that they're in and to try to see how they can, you know, find their way in a particular company by copying behaviors of other people and figuring out what works and doesn't work.

I notice in my own work, especially with leaders and CEOs of companies, that at a certain point, people arrive in their careers feeling like the mask that they have so perfectly crafted on the outside does not match anymore who they are on the inside. And there is a sense of disconnection that happens from that. There is a sense of inauthenticity that happens from that.

There is a sense of lack of well being, of stress, of discomfort, of dishonesty, of even an impact on how people sleep.

There's an impact on the feeling of purposefulness that people feel where it's just, there's too much divide now between who I actually am and who I have presented myself to be on the outside. And as people start to take that mask off, what lies behind it is real. Humans.

Humans with emotions, humans with insecurities, humans with doubts, humans with questions, humans with empathy and with compassion and with the ability to listen and to share stories and to just be present. And those are the skills that are so powerful in leaders.

When people actually feel that you take off the mask and you take the risk of taking off the mask, people are drawn to you, people want to be with you. It amplifies their own ability to take off their own mask and show up and be real and be honest and share what they don't know.

And when you as a leader can say, I don't know what the answer is, and we're all in this together and let's figure this out, it empowers people to want to help you and to want to be part of your cause and to also speak up when they're not sure of what they're doing, instead of pretending like everyone has everything altogether. So authentic leadership is a complicated topic because a, if you use it as a tool, it can become very obvious.

And people are very good at sensing when someone is trying to be authentic but isn't.

There's also a risk to authentic leadership because the way in which you use your vulnerability and display your vulnerability can in some situations be incredibly helpful for connection and trust building, and in other situations can actually hurt your credibility. And it's also just very scary because you're putting yourself out there raw.

And all of those reasons are why it's so special and so powerful when it's done right. And that's why I think it's. For me, it's one of the three core qualities of what makes someone worth following.

The other two being having an inspiring vision, and the third being how to know how to strongly influence others. And I think when you have that cocktail of all three, people are just so drawn to you.

Keith: 00:22:56

I love that answer.

Because, you know, it's society makes it, and because I think of our social media presence, it's so easy not to be authentic because you can hide behind your social media personality or Persona, and that can be who you perceive yourself to be. But that being authentic requires, like you say, authenticity, courage, and knowing your emotions.

So how do you link all those together as you try to help people become authentic leaders?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:23:26

Yeah, I mean, as you said, right, There's.

There's a piece here around emotions, which is quite important because I think the first thing that gets threatened when we take some of our masks off is that our emotions get exposed. And then there's a second piece, as you talked about, with social media and other things around, how do we present ourselves outwards?

What are the right contexts in which to actually do that?

And by the way, as a tangential note, this is part of why embodied leadership experiences are so powerful, because many people know how to hide behind words. We've been trained how to hide behind words.

So when you take away the common language of words and offer people the chance to communicate in another way, like through art or through music, or through dance or through movement or whatever, they are not trained in hiding themselves.

And so the experience that we get of one another is one of really seeing through someone very quickly in the awkwardness, in the discomfort, in the novelty and the newness of what they're trying to do. Because unless you're, you know, a professionally trained dancer, you really don't know how to use your body to hide your emotions.

And so a lot comes through.

So that's just a side note on why any kind of experiential learning is often a more direct path towards getting people to show up vulnerably and honestly than if you just talk about it theoretically, right, where people can hide much more easily. I think for me, when it comes to authenticity and the path towards authenticity and how you work on it.

There are multiple dimensions of what that's connected to.

There is a piece around exactly what you just mentioned, which is understanding emotions, understanding and developing an emotional literacy around your range of emotions and how they feel and what they look like and what triggers them.

And equally using that emotional literacy to understand other people and understand how they tick and why they're showing up a certain way and what they're even feeling.

And for anyone who's interested in, you know, a book that I just think is the top book on emotional literacy, it's Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart, which is essentially a dictionary of emotions.

And starting to understand why only having the vocabulary of happy, mad and sad to describe your or someone else's emotions is a serious problem, because not only does it limit the variety of input that you can see and take in to understand other people's emotions, right?

If, if somebody's depressed or if somebody's disappointed or if somebody's, you know, feeling hopeless, or if somebody's feeling disengaged and the only word you have to kind of capture that is sad, then you are missing so many ways in which, first of all, to understand what's really going on with them, and you are missing ways as a leader for how you can really support them and what they actually need.

But equally, if you don't have that distinction and variety of words to understand different types of emotions, the research from Brene Brown and others shows that you can't even feel the variety of emotions then within yourself.

If the only word you have for a uncomfortable kind of low energy feeling is sad, then that is how you will label any feeling that comes through that is kind of uncomfortable and low energy. Right? The only feeling that you have to describe anything that is high energy and kind of embittered and sort of frustrated and not happy is mad.

That's your word.

But as you develop emotional literacy and range, you start to understand the different emotions that you are actually experiencing as different kinds of feelings. And that allows you to get in depth with what is really going on for me and where is this coming from and what is this related to?

And then what is it that I actually need right now in order to manage this? So emotional literacy is a huge part of authenticity. You cannot be authentic if you don't actually understand what's happening inside you.

You can't share your emotions if you don't feel them. So that's one piece of the story. Another piece is self awareness and self regulation. So you need to have the Tools to understand, who are you?

What's your background? What's your story? Where did you come from? Why are things affecting you the way they affect you today?

That's what we started talking about around progression, projection onto things that are not necessarily what they seem because we are kind of carrying a filter, which is our past life that influences how we see things and then understanding how we regress to when we were five years old, when that trigger first happened, and why we show up now as a five year old even though we're a totally, you know, supposedly high functioning adult.

So self awareness and then the tools to self regulate, so the tools to actually change that process when it happens that we fall back into our five year old selves and how to actually stay present as an adult and feel resourceful, that's a big piece of being able to be authentic, right?

I cannot open up in front of other people if the moment I open up it triggers an entire outpour of emotions and memories and experiences and reactions that I then can't manage, right? So that's a super risky thing to do if I'm not able to actually manage being vulnerable with people, right?

So that's the second piece there and there's a third piece then really on being able to understand other people, right?

Understanding how to empathize, understanding how to connect with other people, understanding how to be there for other people, understanding the social cues that work with other people. So everything that falls into, you know, emotional intelligence, conversational intelligence, relational intelligence, right?

All of these things that allow me to see how me and you together build a connection and a conversation that is not just one way, but actually allows us to, you know, come closer together and build trust. If those things are not in place, it's very, very hard for me to be authentic and it's very risky for me to be authentic.

But when those things are worked on, oh my God, it's such a flood of richness that comes into our lives.

First of all, from the self awareness perspective and just understanding more why I take the way I do, then from the relational and empathic perspective of understanding what's going on with other people. And then ultimately to your question, right, that I can actually show up as myself. I don't have to pretend to be someone else.

I don't have to worry that I need to fit in all the time. I don't have to be concerned with what everyone else is thinking about me.

I'm not questioning my sense of value and my sense of contribution and my sense of input. I'M able to actually just tap into my full resourcefulness. And that is so compelling.

And that's part of why I think it is such an important part of becoming someone worth following, because people want to follow people who are deeply tapped into their own authenticity.

Keith: 00:29:45

I love that. As I, as I heard you talking, it kind of made me think about what are some common leadership blind spots that we don't always see.

You kind of listed some of the things that those blind spots can lead to, but what are the things that. Besides limiting the happy, sad, and the other emotion that you mentioned? A lot of times. Yeah, mad.

A lot of times leaders just don't understand that they're lacking something. So how do you help them discover what those blind spots are? And you kind of deal with those blind spots in leadership roles?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:30:20

Yeah, I guess it's an interesting question on blind spots. So I think there's a lot of different blind spots out there, and I'll just name a couple that are coming up to me now as I think about the question.

So I think that one of the big blind spots that, that all humans have is that we are not biased, right. Or that I am not as biased as other people are. Right.

That somehow I, you know, other people are biased, other people are jaded, other people are seeing things in a limited way, but I see the full picture, right? I see the full truth. I see the full reality.

And because the research shows that the majority of people think they see the bigger picture more than others, it's obvious that that can't be true. Right?

And so as long as we walk around believing that we somehow have access to the truth or to a bigger perspective or that we are not influenced by our own limiting beliefs or blind spots or biases, that's a problem, right?

So just in the nature of the very question that you're asking, one of the biggest blind spots is believing that you don't have blind spots and believing that you are not affected by something that all humans are affected by, which is your own unconscious bias, your own limiting beliefs through your own story, your own lens of how you see the world.

As long as you don't believe that there is a lens that is informing, or filter, as I sometimes say, that's informing how you see things and rather you think you see the full picture, you are massively missing out on an opportunity for how to actually engage and connect and bring other people's views on board.

And, you know, when it comes to how to actually think about your impact as a leader, I think one of the biggest blind spots is leaders not realizing that for every quality that they have and every skill that they have and every, you know, asset that they bring to their leadership, there is also a shadow side.

And if you're not aware of that shadow side, and you're not aware of how it's impacting your team, your colleagues, your company, you are engaging and building a culture around you that is only looking at the positive impact you're having and not thinking about the negative impact that you're also having at the same time. And that I can play out, especially when I work with, for example, founders of organizations.

It's such a big piece because founders are inspiring, founders are magnetic, founders are revolutionary, founders are groundbreaking.

Everybody wants to be around a founder because it's exciting to be next to the source of a new idea that really is meant to shake up whatever industry they're playing in.

And what founders so often don't think about is what kind of culture am I creating, not just in terms of all the amazing parts of my being and skillset, but the shadow sides. So, yes, I'm highly ambitious, and I have a big vision, but do I also bring with that a sense of perfectionism that I expect?

Do I bring with that a sense of work hard, play hard, to the point where people are putting in way too many hours because they see me putting in so many hours, and I'm never going to be the one that tells people to go home first, because actually, I think people should work their asses off if they want to work with me.

Am I so focused on the amazing product that we're trying to create that I'm not thinking about having the conversations that matter with people and checking in with how they feel and seeing if people are really on board and seeing if people are actually feeling cared for? Right? Like, these are the typical blind spots.

Am I so connected with how easy it is for me to know what to do next and intuit what the right move is and understand what my clients need, that I'm not educating and upskilling and bringing younger leaders on board so that when I actually am ready to hand over the leadership to another generation of people, there's a population in place that is fully ready to receive it.

And these are the kinds of blind spots that everybody has that we're really great in some things, but if we are not aware of the limiting parts of our skill set, if we're not aware of what is actually a shadow side of our personalities, the traumas that we're bringing in the things that we're afraid of, the issues that we don't want to talk about, the topics that we shy away from and how that also all in an organization that we lead or a team that we're leading, just exponentially booms out, right?

Whatever we have going on in here, your organization, your team, your work with your colleagues, your client project, whatever it is, it's like a, you know, a petri dish that just allows for it to grow into a larger version of what you're bringing into it.

And you want to be aware as a leader, not just of your amazing qualities, but of those shadow sides that are just as much there and important to look at, because otherwise they will. I mean, that's the whole idea of this quote, that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

You can have all this amazing vision and strategy and insight, but if you're not aware of how to influence other people, if you're not aware of how to show up authentically, you can have the best idea on the planet. And all of that other stuff that just seeps into your culture will tear it apart.

Keith: 00:35:22

You mentioned founders, and you talked about their great assets and their great liabilities. How do you coach founders into successfully transition their roles from their companies?

Because I've worked a lot with churches, and I've known a pastor who's been at 30, 40 years, and he's about to retire, and a new guy is coming in, and the other pastor can't let go of the church. And it's got to be. The Christmas tree's always got to be here. You have to do it this way. We've always done that particular thing this time of year.

And I want you to be yourself, but you got to be yourself like I was myself. So how do you work with the founders to transition?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:36:01

Well, yeah, I totally get it. Right. I want you to be uniquely you, and please do everything exactly as I do.

Keith: 00:36:08

Exactly.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:36:10

You know, it depends so much also on where and when I'm in touch with a founder, right?

So very often I am put in touch with founders at exactly the time that you're describing, which is they're now ready to hand over, and they're both realizing that there's nobody ready to take it over at the level of quality and ambition and intuition that they expect and that actually, they themselves are not even actually ready to hand it over. And so there's two pieces there, right?

One piece is the upskilling and the distribution of knowledge between the founder and the rest of the organization or the rest of the team. That they plan on handing over to.

And that kind of work for me, is what a colleague of mine, Peter Koenig, coined as a body of work called Source work.

And it's an understanding that a founder of an organization, a founder even of a team or of a particular department, has a kind of almost sacred knowledge and a sacred feeling and a sacred understanding of what is needed in that role.

By the sheer nature of them being the person who started that role or started that company, they have an almost divine kind of sensing or connection of what needs to happen next.

And that's why it can be so hard when a founder tries to hand things over without the proper handover, to let other people do things in the wrong way or the perceived wrong way, because the founder really does, in their greatest contribution, have access to a kind of knowing and intuition that nobody else in the organization can have. So that doesn't mean that Source and the role of Source and the divinity of Source can't be handed over.

It can be handed over, but it needs to be done so consciously. And that requires, first of all, for the founder to even understand what is it about me that is so unique?

What is it about my view, my perspective, my understanding of the client, my understanding of the customer, my understanding of the product, my understanding of the market that is truly different than anyone else.

What is it that I can sense about where things are going in the future because of the role that I play and the place that I have in the system that is truly my gift and my contribution. And many founders don't know what that is.

If you ask them what that is, they would say, yeah, we just do everything that I need to do and just get everything done. But if you really try to nail them down onto how would you train this skill in someone else? They wouldn't be able to put it into words.

And so that's the first step, is to start having conversations with the founder.

Starting to have conversations that other people in the leadership team or the future leadership team or even the organization can listen in on, can question, can dialogue with, to really begin to understand what is sometimes called the founder's mindset or the founder's mentality. What is it about this particular person that allows them to sense what this team or this organization needs like nobody else can.

And the more you get into that conversation, the more that people are in the presence of that conversation, the more that they hear the founder talking about why they started the company, what the values are, how they make decisions, what are the non negotiables for them, what are the things that would keep them up at night and what are the other things they're absolutely ready to let go of? The more you can start to hand that over and have other people absorb that. But this is not something that happens overnight.

It's something that needs to be created as a process, as structured conversations.

Ideally in younger, you know, organizations that I work with, where people are more intuitive about bringing in this kind of hand over culture sooner, it's about having that future generation around those founders all the time, so they really can absorb that from the very beginning and see why a founder is handling a situation in this way and not that way and have a space to reflect and process on why those decisions were made. So that is a whole piece of it, right?

And at some point when you're ready, there can really be a proper source handover that is done in front of an organization, that is done in front of all the colleagues where in a ritualistic like way, the original source can hand over the responsibility, the rights, the trust and the belief into a new source.

And then if that new source is able to accept it and is able to really allow themselves to sink into it, there is the possibility that they can start to tap in to that same level, or at least an equally meaningful level of sourceiness of that intuition. So that is one big piece of it is empowering the organization to actually hand over the source.

The other big piece that often comes up along the way is that many founders often actually don't want to hand over that responsibility. They say they do.

They say they want to move on, they say they're ready, but their identity is so caught up in that job and in that role that there is an underlying fear which is that when I give this up, who will I then still be?

If I'm not the head of this church, to use your example, if I'm not the head of this organization, if I'm not the successful business person who exited this company for whatever amount of money, then who am I? Because a founder and their organization for the amount of years they put into it is everything to them.

Their organization is their baby, their company is their legacy, their product is their fingerprint, right? Their entire identity. To become a successful founder requires that kind of full on absorption. And that is part of what makes them so successful.

And that is part of what needs to be handed over to the next generation of leadership.

But it also means that in that journey of so much self sacrifice, of so much compromise, of so many other things that were put on the wayside in order to make this thing successful. When you start to let go of that identity and hand it on, a very valid question comes up, which is, who am I if I'm not the founder?

And very practically, as I see many of my clients dealing with, when I then give away this responsibility and I'm no longer connected to the company, and I'm at a social cocktail party and someone asks me, what do you do? What do I answer? What do I say? Do I say I'm a founder? Do I say I'm an entrepreneur? Do I say I'm still the CEO of this company?

Or do I just say I'm unemployed? Or do I say I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing next? Or do I say I'm just me? These are big questions.

And then if you haven't invested a lot of time in friends and family and a social community and another part of your life, then you don't have a lot of other things that you can rest your arms on to hold you up during this transition time.

So for many founders who successfully build a company and hand over and maybe even the company's doing great without them, the biggest struggle becomes an identity struggle.

And that needs to be coached and reflected on and given space to really work through and understand why there's actually something very exciting on the other side of an identity that isn't only this one thing, but is so many other things.

But if you don't explore that and don't unpack that and don't work on it, the fear of not having an identity or the fear of being judged for not having an identity, or the fear of just not knowing how to think of yourself outside of the box you created can be so paralyzing that many founders don't let go of the reins even when they say they want to.

Keith: 00:43:37

That's powerful. You've coached so many people.

Is there a particular coaching client that you helped transform their organization that really stands out in your mind as something that is a great, shining example of the work that you do?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:43:57

Yeah, I mean, as you said, I have really a lot of different stories that come to mind around this kind of know topic because there's so many different people that have gone through so many journeys. I mean, there, you know, for me, I.

I find that a lot of the journeys that I work on come down to a couple of topics that I really am working on myself and are very present for me. And so I think I also draw. Draw people into them and One of the topics is often around confidence, around understanding that my self worth.

And another one often has to do with, you know, how do I actually manage and deal with people and situations that are so different than me. Right. And how do I not judge that and how do I learn to understand, you know, what's really profoundly deep for me inside there to figure out.

So, you know, when, if I just give you a story around self worth.

There was a client that I was working with, still am working with, and even though she was in an incredibly senior position at a huge international company, you know, at a C suite level, she had an enormous amount of imposter syndrome. Right. And for those who don't know, imposter syndrome, right.

The feeling that you have that people are going to find out that you actually have no idea what you're doing.

And the interesting thing is that this actually is something that the research shows increases with people's experience and status and position in a company. It doesn't decrease.

So the higher up you get in the ranks, the more your imposter syndrome, the more you're afraid you're not worthy of what you have, the more you're worried that people are going to figure stuff out that you actually don't really know what you're doing. And this plagued her. I mean, this really plagued her. And she.

And this is a common topic that I work on because it's something that I am always working on for myself, like what is my self worth and how do I not have it be based on what other people think of me and attach my identity to external validation and all these things.

And it took us a beautiful journey, but a hard working journey to really unpack where that came from and how much was linked to her childhood story, how much was linked to understanding the things that her parents taught her were okay and not okay to think about her value and her contribution and not bragging and not feeling too proud of any achievements and not feeling like she was above anyone.

And it led to a life story of constantly questioning her value in the most senior audiences where she was completely there to talk about and share what she's an expert in. She would spend weeks sweating over every single word of what she's going to say, every single slide.

She would spend so much time agonizing afterwards about what she said and what she didn't say and why did she say it this way and how stupid she was to put it that way and what people must be thinking about her when she was doing this and that and this was paralyzing, right? This was paralyzing to the point where she was thinking of quitting in a company where she had been at for over 20 years.

And the work that we did together started to help her understand, first of all, the patterns of these insecurities, the patterns of what I sometimes call self saboteurs, or that inner negative self talk, or that inner dialogue, or that inner critic that is constantly bringing us down. It involved understanding other parts of herself that she wasn't honoring that can actually be used to talk back to those negative self talk.

So parts of herself that actually are confident around who she is, parts of herself that do know that she's great, parts of herself that are linked to stories where she actually was really feeling in her element and starting to really boil down what are the key voices that those parts are connected to that are also a part of who you are and that we can use to start to combat and talk back to these other more negative parts when they come up.

It also involved understanding more of her purpose and what she's really trying to do and how much these negative self critics inside her head were holding her back from doing that. It helped.

It was starting to understand what conditions allow her to feel more confident and how can we actually actively and proactively create those conditions instead of passively just waiting to see if they're there or not.

And I remember she shared with me in a recent call that this has, like, completely transformed how she speaks with her own team because it has allowed her to be so much more present to that shadow side that she was actually allowing to seep through unknowingly to her. That was making everybody else in her team doubt themselves. Because if this leader was doubting themselves, then how can I also not doubt myself?

So totally changed how she showed up with her team. It changed how she showed up with her peers. Right?

And starting to accept the quality of feedback that she's getting, the quality of resource and knowledge and connection that they all saw in her. Right. Other people see this stuff way sooner often than we do. But she wasn't able to see in herself.

So it allowed her to settle into actually recognizing that she deserves to be where she is.

And that increased her ability to then actually focus on the content that she's delivering and not focus on all of the stuff going on inside her head.

And it completely changed the way she shows up in front of clients, in front of other senior colleagues, in front of other people in the company that she would always get nervous around and actually just enjoy It Right.

Enjoy the fact that she's achieved so much in her career and that she deserves to be able to rest on that level of comfort and of satisfaction and of strong foundation instead of feeling like she's an intern where, you know, she's actually a senior leader. And that's had an enormous impact on obviously everybody that she then touches.

As one of my colleagues says, this type of work catalyzes breakthroughs in the leaders and all the other systems that they touch. And that's exactly what happened with her.

Keith: 00:49:49

I love that. As you think about all the impact you're having in the leadership space, what do you want your legacy to be?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:49:57

Yeah, that's such an interesting question. I have such a allergy myself to like big P purpose, you know, like when people like, what's the purpose of your life?

And I've been through so many programs of my own where I'm trying to help other people discover their purpose. So it's like a double edged sword because I also recognize that it's important.

But I've, you know, when it comes to like big changes, you know, I want to bring about whatever peace, climate change, you know, make everybody happy in the world and distribute resources.

Like I've always felt that these, for me personally, these huge purpose statements and in some ways I cluster legacy statements into that can be so just. It makes me freeze because I don't know what to necessarily say.

And I also recognize it's important because it gives you purpose, it gives you direction, it gives you a sense of boundaries, it helps you say yes and no to different things that are coming your way currently. The way that I define my own value, you know, the becoming someone worth following thing is kind of a tagline for the modern leader.

But what I really see, the value that I offer and that I uniquely am trying to strengthen over and over again, is that I help transform darkness into light with clarity and care.

And I've noticed it's taken me a long time to just be able to say that out loud, but I've got enough feedback from people around kind of what they see is my unique gift that I started to try to believe in it.

And the more you start to believe in it and accept it, the more you start getting data points that it's true and then you can really start to lean into it and actually use it.

And for me, this combination, like if people would remember me not necessarily in those words, but if the impact that I could have is that I transformed darkness into light, which means I transformed fear into Something manageable. I transformed stress into something that felt, you know, even, you know, non affecting.

I was able to take something that feels really serious and bring humor to it. I was able to take something complex and make it clear, bring something that feels hard and make it feel doable.

That, for me, is the transformation piece and the brand around that that I have or the style that I would love for people to remember is that it was this combination of both care and clarity, which are such important attributes for me, that I do it in a way that doesn't feel dismissive of people's pasts or dismissive of people's views or not interested in why people show up, but quite on the contrary, that I am hugely interested in why people get stuck and what the mechanism in place is that keeps them stuck.

And what that stuckness, whether it's on an individual level or a team level or a company level or a systemic level, is actually a brilliant way to keep that group or person safe and to really care about that, and then to help them start to unpack why that protection mechanism, while wise and smart at one time, is no longer needed and how we can start to lean into something else that would be more helpful today. And that's this care piece that is hugely important to me. And the clarity piece is just such a.

Is such a skill that I'm attracted to when I see it in other people. Right?

When people speak with clarity, when they can bring across their ideas in a way that makes sense, when their articulation makes people want to listen, and when ultimately people feel a sense of calm and groundedness and direction as a result of listening to them, I find that very appealing.

I believe strongly that the things we find appealing in others, we find appealing because we have those skills within ourselves, whether active or dormant. And so care and clarity while moving people from darkness to light, I guess that would be a cool legacy.

Keith: 00:53:50

I love that.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:53:52

How does that sound to you?

Keith: 00:53:53

I love it.

I think it's a really aspirational goal, and I think it's important, especially in a world where things aren't clear and things do seem dark and they are stressful. How do we lead people in our own area of influence out of that darkness into a place of light? And so I think it's really cool.

As we wrap this up, though, I'm curious, what key takeaway do you want to leave with my audience, I would.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:54:22

Love them to remember or take away that leadership is not something that just happens in the boardroom or in a company. Every single person Listening to this has the potential to lead and impact whatever part of their life they're in touch with.

And so when people think about leadership, we're not talking about some sort of theoretical skill set that is supposed to help people in their job. Yes, the skill set that we're talking about is extremely helpful for people in their jobs, but it is by no means limited to that.

And I would love for people to question for themselves, where am I already a leader in my life?

Or in other words, you know, where am I impacting other people and have the possibility to impact other people to live their own potential, to contribute fully, to live happier, healthier lives? Or where am I not stepping into a potential for leadership that is actually available in front of me? Right.

Where am I not actively thinking of myself as a leader, even though that's exactly what the situation calls for? And that could be with family, that could be with friends, that could be with community, that could be with your job. Right.

There's so many places where we can be a leader. And the work of leadership development, the work that I do of leadership development is just another way of saying self development. Right.

There's no difference for me between leadership work and self development work. And I don't think there's any greater gift nor any greater skill or power than the power of self awareness. And that comes through self development.

Keith: 00:56:01

Cool. Where can leaders connect with you if they want to have you come and coach them? How can they find you?

Daniel Ludevig: 00:56:08

Yeah, so I'm on Instagram quite actively at Daniel Ludovig, posting lots of different content on there and ideas and thoughts and things that people can find. I'm also on LinkedIn under the same name, Daniel Ludovic.

And if they go to my website, which is moveleadership.com they'll get a bit more of a description there of some of the work as well as some information about the modern leader, specifically, if they're interested in that program. As I said, it's an open program that anyone can join from any company. So those would be all great avenues to connect.

And I would love to hear from your listeners. I would love to hear how this podcast impacted them, what they took away from it. This type of connection is just.

Is such a special way to meet new types of people.

Keith: 00:56:49

Well, Daniel, thanks so much for providing amazing content. Blessings on what you do. I think what you do is important. Bringing darkness, light out of darkness is important.

I think people need that clarity in their life. And I love what you said and I always remind my audience to this, too is we're all leaders.

We may not be leading on a large scale, but we're always influencing someone because leadership is influence. So think about the people that you have impact on their lives. People you're influencing people.

You make a difference for people that need you in their life. And you get a chance to show up to be your very best self for them as you get a chance to lead them. So thank you for what you do.

Daniel Ludevig: 00:57:27

My absolute pleasure. Thank you, Keith, for the questions and the conversation. And thank you for hosting such a beautiful space to share this stuff.

Keith: 00:57:33

Thank you.