Unearth and Unleash Personal Mastery with David Taylor-Klaus

“What I want for leaders and what I invite leaders to do is absolutely to consider what they want for the other person in that conversation before walking into that conversation,” shares David Taylor-Klaus, master certified coach and bestselling author. David works with executives and entrepreneurs to help them live more authentically and better connect with their clients and employees. He joins Mike Horne in conversation to discuss tips for unleashing personal mastery through authenticity.

According to David, the largest issue busy executives face is the inability to slow themselves down and listen to their intuition. They are so busy that they lose track of whether or not they are still in alignment with their core beliefs and desires. High performance leaders often get so caught up in work that they put it first above their personal lives and sabotage their happiness by doing so. David recommends starting by celebrating in the moment rather than only focusing on the long term end goal and going into every conversation thinking about what you want for the other person. When you go into a conversation thinking about your desired outcome for the other person, they will feel respected and listened to; whereas if you go in thinking of what you want for yourself, they may feel dehumanized.

Unearth personal mastery by chipping away at everything in your life that isn’t authentic, isn’t real, and doesn’t reflect who you are at your core. Tune into this week’s episode of the Authentic Change Podcast to learn more about how to get back into alignment with your authentic self and how to be a better leader.

• “The core element was, I became willing to see what I was doing that was out of alignment, that was inauthentic, that was wrong, and do the work in partnering with the universe to get it right.” (5:50-6:12 | David)
• “What's true is that we don't pay enough attention to what we feel, the somatic knowing. The little gray matter inside of your skull is 3% of your body mass, and yet, we spend 90% of our time paying attention to what we think and very little time paying attention to our heart intelligence, or our gut wisdom, our instincts, our intuition, all that somatic knowing. When we pay more attention to that, when we're aligned in that arena, wow. That's when it gets incredibly powerful and very juicy.” (7:03-7:37 | David)
• “Sustained happiness is when we are enjoying and celebrating the moment, and not just the end. We get in trouble with the, “I'll be happy when.” When I graduate, when I get this job, when I get this promotion, when I get this raise. Well, dude, you're missing all the happiness of the moment in between.” (10:02-10:23 | David)
• “The phrase work life balance is a horrific lie. And I don't know whose twisted idea it was to put the word work first. That's what screwed us up. We too often, and for those high performers, uber driven type A or type AAA, we can get too over calibrated towards work. And that mindset is messing us up and preventing us from actually finding the happiness and the fulfillment that we crave.” (12:27-12:56 | David)
• “All of our jobs as adults to get back to our pure authentic self is to chip away everything that isn't real, isn't authentic, isn't true, isn't you.” (14:12-14:23 | David)
• “It's important that I get it real, it's not important that I get it right. Real is right for me. Not right in terms of the world.” (16:54-17:01 | David)
• “Being listened to feels so much like being loved that people can scarcely tell the difference.” (23:02-23:08 | David)
• “When you're clear what you want for the people in your organization, and on your team, and those that you lead, it changes the way you lead. So yes, love them and love them deeply. Because if you don't, you're just treating them as objects, and othering does not serve us well as humans.” (23:25-23:40 | David)
• “I think the word manager is getting in the way. We should never be managing people. We should always be leading people. We can manage assets, we can manage elements. We can manage inanimate things, we can manage processes, but we should never be managing people. Because that's inherently treating them as cogs, or assets, or inanimate.” (29:16-29:35 | David)
• “What I want for leaders and what I invite leaders to do is absolutely to consider what they want for the other person in that conversation before walking into that conversation.” (36:15-36:25 | David)