How a Leadership Expert Rebuilds Broken Workplace Cultures

my child that I'm going to send in a school to learn, you are part of the problem.

“Yeah. Because really there are these areas that we need to teach as parents, like finance.”

You do not want a $50,000 a year teacher. That's not who you want to teach your child about finance. That's not who you want to teach your child about their heritage and who they are and where they come from. Yeah. Dr. Shelley Hold is a transformational leadership expert, executive coach and founder and CEO of Leadership Legacy Consulting LLC. She helps leaders build stronger teams, cultures, and lasting impact through her five pillars

of courageous leadership. There's been a lot placed on the education system that it was never

designed to do. Yeah. It was never designed to hold. It was never designed to teach you finance. If you study the history of education and how it's evolved, it was never about help you make the money that the person who gave you the education is already making. Yeah. That's not what this was about. Yeah. It was about training people for the workforce and how to be workers and, you know, to be not necessarily to be free thinkers. Yeah. And so a lot of what

is happening right now is in the education system, is that it's doing exactly what it's designed to do, but nowadays we need a lot more. Hey Apple, is going to reinvent. It's not over. I'm telling our weird. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Hey, welcome everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host,

Jay Slingon, and we are here in the brand new studios of Sonny Miami Beach. And wow, look at this.

We got the whole new podcast set up here for the women in power. And I have my first women in

power hose. Our guest here. Uh, yes. Uh, what's your name? Uh, and what's your business? And yeah, tell us where you're from. So my name is Dr. Shelley Jill's Holt. I'm an executive leadership coach

“from, um, I'm originally from California. So that's a bit of who I am. What part of California?”

Right now I live in Fresno, but I often say I was born in Southern raised in Northern and now I live in Central. So if you know California, I am California. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, uh, it's a California is like the size of of Thailand. I live in Thailand for like 16 years. Exactly. So it's like from north to south to middle. Yeah. That's, uh, that's a big change. It is. It's like moving a whole entire country. Right? It's like massive state, right? We forget how big

the state is, right? So yeah. And it's different. Like there are different parts in California. So being in the Central part now, it's kind of the combination of both worlds and also, you know, kind of being having been around the United States. Um, Fresno is probably the most, um, I would say not not, I don't want to say diverse because it's not that it's not just that simple. It's probably the most reminiscent of the rest of the world because California can be kind of

polarized. Okay. Um, they can go kind of far on each, uh, spectrum, if you will, and Central California is probably where it's probably the most purple, if you will, uh, of the whole state. And, um, it's just a different way of life. It's a little bit slower. That goes off. Uh, Wow. Yeah. So you said, Dr. Shirley. Yes. Uh, what kind of doctor? I'm a doctor of educational leadership. So my degrees are from Berkeley and USC. I studied, um,

not just education, but how, uh, and because I've been a teacher, been a principal and all, and superintendent. Okay. But really studying leadership in general and how to lead, in particular, how to lead people who are different from yourself. Okay. To do things that are

“extraordinary and astronomical by getting to know them and who they are. How do they need them?”

Well, before we get into the leadership bit, right? Okay. I'm interested in the education bit, right? Okay. So yeah, you are California through and through. Yes. All right. Tell us about, you know, because like the education system, there's a lot of people that come in here,

and they're just like, oh man, they, they never teach us about finances, right? They never

teach us about, I mean, uh, you know, my wife says about, you know, kind of like people, um, you know, like the, the Myers-Briggs personality types, right? And, you know, kind of reading personalities, they never teach us that. It's so important, right? Uh, tell us about the education system for someone that's a doctorate in it. Someone that's been a teacher, a principal, and that just advanced

there's been a lot placed on the education system that it was never designed to do and was never

“designed to hold. It was never designed to teach you finance. If you study the history of education”

and how it's evolved, it was never about help you make the money that the person who gave you the education is already making. Yeah. That's not what this was about. Yeah. It was about training people for the workforce and how to be, um, workers and, you know, to be not necessarily to be free thinkers. Yeah. And so a lot of what is happening right now is in the education system is that it's doing exactly what it's designed to do, but nowadays we need a lot more. And so you're

right, absolutely right. We do need to know in finance. We need to learn about people. We need to learn about how different people operate and function. Yeah. And yet you're looking at an education system, which was, you know, taught ABCs and 1, 2, 3s and had different points in it where people were supposed to exit if you weren't smart enough. There's a reason people, you know, you'll hear

older folks say, oh, I have a third grade education. That's because if you did not, if you weren't

smart enough to pass third grade, that was all you got and you went in the fields. Yeah. And then the next point was sixth grade and then the next point was eighth grade and then the next like, it wasn't you were guaranteed to go all the way through. They also were saying, okay, we, we, we need the scientists. We need like the different, you know, kind of trade and seal steam, right? Yes, yes. Yeah. So it was like based on steam, which is what is it? Science, technology, engineering, engineering,

A, so A is different. It could be agriculture. It could be the arts, it could be, you know, depending on where you are. Okay. When I was in, you know, in more rural areas, it was agriculture. When I was in more suburban or urban areas, it was the arts and then math and math. Of course, right. So it seems like, okay, it was based on steam, but to change it into modernize it, it's kind of running on the steam engines, do. Right. It's like, okay, now we kind of, you know,

where kids are so much smarter these days and they're going to other places to learn and it just seems like it just seems it needs to be kind of shaken up. Right. It does, it doesn't, it does

“frustrating for you. Extremely frustrating. And I think part of what really frustrates me is that”

we put a lot of education and we haven't really looked in the mirror a bit as parents and,

you know, the original educators, the original caregivers, the first teachers of children are parents.

And so if you're raising your child and your family with the mind said that I'm going to parent my child that I'm going to send them to school to learn, you are part of the problem. Yeah. Because really there are these areas that we need to teach as parents like finance. You do not want a $50,000 a year teacher teaching your child about fine. I mean, there's the less, let's, let's really put our minds on that one. Right. That's not who you want to teach your

child about finance. That's not who you want to teach your child about their heritage and who they are and where they come from. Yeah. I mean, imagine if I were teaching your children. Maybe the, the, the foundation of it. Now, it's not their role. Now, their role is to teach them ABCs, one, two, three, they have certain standards. Now, the parents job is to make sure that they have, you know, that personal growth, that they know how to relate to other people, that they understand

money, that they earn standard, turn a house into a home. That's a family's job. And then the school helps. But right now, we kind of have it backwards. We're thinking that it's the school's job to teach them all of that. And it's not. Yeah. It's their job to help supplement what's happening at home. And if we could do things a little bit more differently at home, and I have no problem saying that I'm a mother of eight. Oh, I have six kids that I've earned. And I got two. All right. Okay.

And now we're talking about women in a different kind of power. That part. So I'm not telling you what I heard. I'm telling you what I know to be the case is that I sort of even looking at my own children. What I put in them at home, the school is able to enhance. Yeah. But if it's missing, you know, if my kids don't have an understanding that financial literacy is something that you need to learn, I can't expect them to go to school and be able to put their mathematical knowledge

into the context of business or into the context that's not going to happen automatically.

“And so let's segue into leadership. Does this also kind of deal with your leadership also?”

Yeah. Exactly what it is. I'm connected to that. I see it. I see it. So I started to see as being in this field now going on three years. Yeah. So many parents would come in and the deficits are the fallacies or the problems that existed with their children. They're wanting to blame the school for where you didn't teach them how to get a lot of people. You know, what are my favorites, favorite comments I would get from parents is after they would call me or I'd have to call them

because the child had called somebody a slur. Yeah. And I love making this call because I get one of

going on? I have it. Okay. Okay. Whatever. All right. Get that. Oh, I'm so sorry. You know, what can I do?

“What just right? The right, you know, response. If you were like, let's figure out what to do this.”

Or then I would get the, well, they learn that at school. They're, yeah. Okay. So there was a pattern in the responses where the number of people who would take responsibility for what their child had done had begun to dwindle. It was more of the shame and blame. And it's like, yeah, this is you, your child, and whatever it is happening here, and you want to blame the system as close to saying wait a minute. Where am I parenting? Where in my process of raising my child? Did I not explain to them

either intercultural language, situational appropriateness? Did I allow them to be exposed to something

that they shouldn't have been and then not explain it? Um, and I often say, we all have that one

relative. You know, you got a miso do I. That one that uses language that you know, you don't want your kids to be around. Yeah. But you can't kick the relative off the family or not go as so they're there. And I guilty. Right? And so the cool local out of that. You might be in it person. I might be for some, I mean, I don't know what the language part because I'm usually like, hey, you know, like, whilst with the language around the young ones, but I get what you're saying.

Right. And so that, but you, you all have people that will use certain language to describe people. Or it's okay. And we don't check that at an early age, either right there in front of them, or when you get home, say, look, I know you heard Uncle Phil say, blah, blah, blah, blah, or you heard this language. Let me help you understand why for you. I don't want you to do that. And that's inappropriate. Yeah. We don't do that enough. We'll just explain, like, don't do that. Well,

why shouldn't they do that? When a 10-year-old comes in and now I have to explain that to them. What I often say to parents is, I'm doing your job. That's not my job. Yeah. That has nothing to do with math. A number of the students. Science, technology. That had nothing to do with it. Yeah, that. Now we're expecting teachers to go above and beyond. We're different. Don't blow your steam at us.

“Right. But here we go. We've got a steam. But what do you do if a teacher doesn't know how to do that?”

And they're in the, and so then you have all of these issues. So when, when I got into this work of really helping people balance leadership and helping parents in particular elevate to a level of taking responsibility for some of these areas, it really started to change the game because it's like, oh, well, that is my job. That is my job. People started to write like, and now you're expecting that same teacher who's trying to teach math to kids. I mean, come on. Everybody doesn't love,

I love math. Yeah. Everybody doesn't love that. They're all learning differently. There is, you know, 7500 of them in the room. And now I have to explain to your child why, you know, they can't say this or can't do that in a diverse environment of people. And, and let's fast forward to today. Right. You working with large corporations and you're teaching, you're working with these kind of large corporate leaders, right? Yeah. So yeah, tell us what you're doing with that.

So I, officially I'm executive leadership coach. So I coach them on executive strategy. You go, you go management. I do a certain extent. People management, may your management of people in their egos, especially at the highest levels because what I have to say is, well, got to the job is not going to keep you the job. Yeah. And the courageous leadership we seek is on the other side of the comfort we covet and the discomfort we avoid. So I hope people deal with the

uncomfortable stuff, create a culture where decision making is powerful. It's on point. You can have

“the tough conversations and those executive spaces that you need to have. Yeah. At the same time,”

what many of my clients realize is that by the time we start talking about these biases and things

that are keeping them from those decisions, it's a mindset issue. It's things that they never

learn about people who are different and didn't learn to talk about it. And that's where it starts to translate to home. They go, oh my goodness. Maybe I was worried about the naughty language. Can you give us an example? So I'll give an example. So I had a client who, from the south, so you know, I'm going to say he's an Alabama, one of my CEO clients. And this is before I think he had, I can't remember if he had seen me yet or not. I think we were on the phone at any rate.

He got on the phone and he's talking about various different people that he's working with on his team. And he's like, yeah, I've got an Indian and I've got a black and I have, and this is how he's referring to his team members. I got a black, I got an NFL.

like, whoa. And so he's, and I remember it because at that moment, I didn't have my camera on the

“zoom. We have been talking for a while and then I turned on the camera and he saw that I was a woman”

of African descent. He's like, well, I didn't know you were a color gal. I said, okay. We go have, so after a couple sessions, we started talking and he's like, and he realized that the language he had been raised with, that's language that he had heard all around him. Well, here I was saying, absolutely not. If you are referring to people that you lead in that way, you have some biases that we need to work on. After about a month of working on that, he came to the realization that

not only did he not want, he, first of all, now understood where that language came from,

why was it appropriate? Because he genuinely didn't get it. He's like, this is, how we all talk around here. Yeah. Well, now you want to go global honey. You want to go national. National is bigger than Alabama, so we're going to have to get you out of that. And he realized that his children were using that language. And so, through our work together, we realized, yeah, we got to find some different vocabulary, but also where did it come from?

And when he realized some of the language and things that, you know, hadn't shifted, we talked about, you know, culture and backgrounds. And it wasn't about, you know, saying you were a racist or you were this or you're that, because he was not. He was just raising an

environment where talking about people who were different was something they did not do explicitly.

They had a way to show them like, this is how you do that. Yeah. He was genuinely pointing out, like, I see these differences, but I don't know what to do with them. But he was doing it in a way that was very insulting to anybody else who had heard it. Now he doesn't do that. He and now has language. He and his wife have oh joined our training. They now have language where they're talking to their kids and grandkids about actually this is someone who is different and they're a

“African descent. If you need to ask someone's heritage, this is how you do it. If you're unsure,”

this is how you ask a clarifying question. That's definitely. Do you go through each person individually or there's like a process that you have that you? It depends on the what I'm working with him in. So sometimes I'm working with whole teams of executive leaders. I sound this particular man I was working one on one with because he, I'll be honest with you, he was on the facing a office of civil rights legislation at the time. So he was like, what's going on? He really didn't

get it and he was you know good people but just bad situation and didn't realize it. And other times I end up working with families as groups or individually it all depends on what's best for the person. What is underscoring everything I do is no shame, no blame, no victimization. And how do they see those? And high level executives come to find you because it's almost like, you know, they've they've worked hard. They've gone to almost the top or to the top, right? And

but they're seeking out help. Yes. It seems like these part of the kinds of people that don't see go out. And it couldn't be farther from the truth. The most successful ones will seek out help. And you'll hear the Tony Robbins and the Russell Branson and you know, other really big folks of the world say I have a coach. I have a coach for this and a coach for that. And so for the most part, these are I will say in the beginning it was a lot of folks that were had legislation or

were facing lawsuits or their organization if it accused of something you know like the Google's and the other is of the world was originally how it started. Now it comes from a lot of HR departments that are saying, hey, we have some ways that we're not dealing with difference. We need somebody to come and help us build a culture where difference is accepted and seen as an asset. And so they'll

either a lot of my work has been word amount. Believe it or not, this is probably my first

real marketing that's ever done. All right. Ever. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but because people look all hey, go start with a huge jump. Right. I went from here to you know, but it's word amount. People that have had successful experiences. What are often do if somebody calls me a little say, what can we talk to somebody? I'll give them one of my clients next thing, you know, they're

“signing everyone up because word amount is so important. It is. But marketing is also important.”

You're getting the level and up. You're leveling up. Well, hey, you need help with that. Like even us, you know, connecting with inside success. That was me needing my own coaching and my own support. So everybody needs a coach. So it's almost like, okay, for now for this successful CEO, you got your mentors and your business people get your mentors, but also now look at your coaches, right, because you're handling a whole different kind of area that people kind of don't think of.

They put it to the side, okay, it's a business mind. It's right. But then you got the business mind, but then you've kind of got like the mindset, right? Exactly. And that creates your culture. What we know is that effective cultures, business cultures make more money. People are happier. They make more money. People feel accepted. They make more money. You know, they're more successful.

their authentic selves, operate without judgment, you know, feel free to be vulnerable and go, you know what? I am not sure how I should refer to someone who I just left a little person convention. So I'm like, what do you call them? You say little people and do you say any of the other terms that we've heard over the years? Yeah. And be able to say, I don't know what to say. Can somebody help me so that we can continue to be more productive, so that that doesn't

become the barrier that then, you know, gossip and all those negative things start to feel, then you got lawsuits, then you got all because y'all couldn't deal with difference, you know, someone comes with a hijab or someone you hire someone from India or you now are merging with a company from another country and you all have different ways of operating. Those are the folks that typically will call me and go, hey, we're about to have a culture shift. We need somebody

to help us navigate this, starting at the highest levels. All right. Well, real quickly. Yes.

What are you most excited about? I always ask everyone. I'm excited about what's next for all of us.

“I would say in this world that we're in, I think that the differences amongst us are starting to”

become more prevalent and we're realizing more folks are having to deal with difference in different ways and I'm excited to see what comes from those who are successful in navigating their cultures to accept and thrive because of their differences. This is going to be a great age. The AI with the world becoming a bit more connected globally with, you know, companies like inside success and the work that you're doing to bring out voices, we're in for a really good ride.

It's really just realizing the spectrum of life of people and just kind of taking it for what

it is and being like, you know what, like in America we always say, oh, individualism. We celebrate

individualism, right? But then it's almost like, okay, then it's almost like an oxymoron because they fight against people's differences is what makes this kind of battle. It's like, guys,

“just life is crazy. People have a little different kind of views and just take it for that person”

for what is it as long as they're good, right? And successful, celebrating other people's successes. I mean, make money, make memories. Yes, yes, yes. If we could all love on each other, accept people for who they are, let people live their lives and make money and make memories together. Who wouldn't want to be in that kind of an environment? Yeah. I don't want to tell you how to live your life. I don't want anybody to tell me how to live mine, but we also need to make sure we can

truly live and be free and operate together. And that's what coach is a four. That's what coach is four. So yeah, how do people find you? You can reach me at my website www.doctorshellyspeaks.com

“and where you can reach me on, I think it's Instagram. Yes, I am learning the whole social media”

thing at I am Dr. Shelly. We do workshops, keynotes. So I am Dr. I am I am. I am. I am D.R. S.H. E. L. L. E. Y. So I am Dr. Shelly. Easy enough for perfect. On Instagram. Yes, all right. Well, thank you for being my first guest on this beautiful new podcast in the pick you were the pick. We're in the pink group. I got the black. I'm playing as a stand-in-out. Yeah, I call the whiskey room and now we're in the kind of

barbedo room. It's been amazing. Thank you for being my first guest and it's been a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. Thank you guys for joining us here. We're going to have a lot more interesting guests in this studio. But see you next time, guys. Cheers. [BLANK_AUDIO]