TLDR;
For the first 15 years of her career, Dr. Amanda Lynne Smith was always the first to arrive and last to leave. And she expected the same relentless pace from everyone around.
Then COVID arrived, and with it, an unexpected gift: the permission to breathe.
But this isn’t just a story about work-life balance.
It’s the story that led to a groundbreaking realization—you cannot keep pouring if your cup is empty. It’s about the time when Smith realized that personal resilience is an important business strategy, something a lot of organizations overlook.
Welcome to another inspiring episode of the Uncommon Leadership.
I’m Michael Hunter, and today I’m honored to explore what it means to be resilient and courageous with Dr. Smith, who has worked relentlessly for over 25 years to bridge the gap between education and workforce needs.
From “courageous conversations” that build unbreakable teams to a restaurant motto that redefined her leadership, we discuss how leaders can navigate the most challenging business issues by focusing on heart and integrity.
Grab a seat and pay attention if you want to see how resilient your team could be when they finally learn to speak their truth and experience discomfort with grace.
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Podcast Highlights:
- Prioritize filling your own cup (self-care) before you pour into others. When you give permission for self-care, it cascades through teams, families, and communities.
- Investing in culture and employee happiness is a direct financial strategy that saves massive costs on recruitment, onboarding, and boosts customer retention.
- Genuine, heart-led leadership means extending an open door and treating employees like family.
- Uncommon Leadership stems from simple, non-negotiable personal principles: integrity, kindness, speaking your truth, accepting the uncontrollable, and faith.
About the Speakers
Dr. Amanda Lynne Smith
Dr. Amanda Lynne Smith is a dynamic, heart-led C-Suite executive who has spent the last 25 years shaping the future of education and the workforce. She specializes in scaling online education, product development, and building high-performing teams that truly believe in their mission. Smith is focused on using tech-driven solutions to make sure learning directly translates into student success and impactful career outcomes.
Connect with Dr. Amanda Lynne Smith :
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-amanda-lynne-smith
Michael Hunter
Michael specializes in moving leaders “from debugging code to debugging people to helping people debug themselves.” He hosts the popular Uncommon Leadership Podcast, where he explores how vulnerability, self-awareness, and authentic connection transform teams and drive sustainable growth. His work focuses on navigating organizational chaos and turning complex challenges into stepping stones for innovation and resilient leadership impact.
Connect with Micahel Hunter:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/humbugreality/
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Presented By: UncommonChange
Transcript:
Michael Hunter
Whether you want more innovation, more easily, you’re feeling burnt out or overwhelmed, or you simply know that something isn’t quite the way you know it can be, you are not alone. I hear the same from leaders every day. On Uncommon Leadership, we explore aligning personal fulfillment with business success, creating authentic teams, cultivating the resilience, adaptability, and ease necessary to move beyond simply surviving today’s challenges into thriving. I’m Michael Hunter with Uncommon Teams, and today we’ll uncover fresh insights into what it means to lead today.
And joining me is Dr. Amanda Lynne Smith. Amanda is a heart led dynamic and visionary C-Suite executive with 25 years of expertise, expanding education management, operations, and workforce development. A strategic cross-sector leader in online education and higher education innovation, she is passionate about driving student success, improving workforce outcomes, and shaping the future of learning through technology-driven solutions and transformative product developments.
Welcome, Amanda.
Amanda Smith
Thank you, Michael. Happy to be here.
Michael
I am so excited for our conversation today. When did you first recognize that integrating your whole self and bringing that into everything that you do might be a valuable approach?
Amanda
I would like to say that I had this figured out from the very beginning of my career, but I didn’t.
When I look back, in like my early years of primary education, teaching young children, and then moving into higher ed and managing teams, leading organizations, again, like the, I’d say the first 15 years of my career, I was a little bit of a workaholic, right? Like I just, I poured everything I had into it, morning, noon and night.
It was not unusual for me to be to the classroom hours before school started, or, be to the office hours before the day started and burn the midnight oil as well. And I look back on some of that time and I’ll admit that I think I, I held that standard and I held that bar to everyone around me as well.
I expected that if I was doing it, everybody else was gonna do it, and it wasn’t until, it honestly wasn’t until 2020, it was when COVID, happened that, like many people, across the world, I had the opportunity to just take a breath and take a step back and really think about what matters.
And so much of that came from this deep desire to take care of the people that I was responsible for, right? My colleagues, my team members, in the spirit of wanting my team and people that I work with to be able to do. Great work to be able to take care of the things that they’re responsible for and to be able to take care of each other and to be able to take care of our customers or our students.
People needed to take care of themselves first, and it was during COVID, like for the first time in my, maybe in my life, but really in my career, that this idea of ‘You have to take care of yourself first, if you’re gonna pour into other people’. If you’re gonna be a heart led leader and you are gonna pour into other people, you have to make sure your cup is full.
And if you need to fill your cup, then you need to stop and think what’s really important to me? What does that for me? Is it going for a walk with my significant other? Is it spending time with my kids playing outside? Is it taking my dog for a nice walk in the middle of the afternoon?
Is it a yoga class? Is it a run in the morning? What is the thing that helps each person kind of refresh and reset and make sure that their cup is full? And that was for me, Michael, like that was the moment. That was the chapter. And a lot of this evolution happened in my own personal life as well.
I have, I’ve ridden horses competitively, my entire life. Horses have always been a really important part of who I am on a personal and spiritual level for that matter. In 2020, I had the opportunity to move to Kentucky. I was living in Dallas and the company went remote and I had the opportunity to move to Kentucky and I found myself, call it March, April of 2020, living on a 200 acre horse farm in this beautiful tiny little cabin, that looked like something out of a Thomas Kincaid painting overlooking this pond with geese and polo ponies in the background. And, there was this unbelievable integration that started to happen where all of the parts of who I was and who I am started to come together in the most profound way.
And it became like a daily thing that I’d get up in the morning and I’d pour my coffee and I’d sit at the kitchen table and, we’d knock things out. All kinds of incredible transformative work, just knocking things out, call it noon, one o’clock. And I’d take a breath, I’d take a break.
I put on my riding boots. I’d walk across the pasture. I’d go jump on my horse for half an hour, take my boots back off. Sit back down at the kitchen counter, kitchen table and get right back to it till five o’clock, right? And that moment of being able to take that breath and find the thing for me that let me refill my cup, gave me even more momentum, even more desire, even more passion to help my team members and the people I was responsible for.
The people that I was responsible for taking care of. Find that thing for them. And, again, like that chapter and that moment and those experiences will forever change the way that I think about taking care of people, taking care of teams and leading.
Michael
So it was literally COVID that caused slash enabled this because COVID caused a company to go to remote, which just made it easy for you to move across the country and have this massive transformation.
Amanda
Yeah, it was wild. There was like all of these little pieces that were just, they were se serendipity, and at the same time, it’s like the silver lining, the glass is half full.
That was a really challenging time. For everybody, this idea of isolation and, there was a lot of fear, a lot of unknowns. And yet there were, again, there were these, beautiful kind of silver linings and I personally really tried to look for them and I personally really tried to help my team and my colleagues and the people again that I was responsible for the people that I was arm in arm with also find those things. And again, not just in, not just because of the work, but because again, like that this like aha, that I can never unsee again of you have to first take care of yourself. It’s the most important thing. And if you’re doing that, then you really can take care of other people. And at the end of the day, that’s all any of this is about any of the work we do.
It always comes down to taking care of people.
Michael
Absolutely. Some people call this selfish that you putting yourself before anyone else, and I’ve always believed that selfish or any other word, it’s not, it is not a bad thing or a shameful thing.
It’s critical. It’s, I’ve never understood why, when on an airplane, when the flight, the oxygen mask comes down, everyone understands I have to put my oxygen mask on first so I can help everyone else do that. And somehow that doesn’t translate into any other part of the world. For most people feel like, I have to help everyone else before I can help myself.
And it’s, as you say, it’s absolutely critical. It’s, I’m not filled up. I don’t have the energy to do what I’m here to do to help everyone else, then I’m gonna not be able to help them, and then they’re not gonna be able to do their job as well because I’m not doing my part in helping them do that. And it just rolls out and soon no one can do anything very well, and we’re all super struggling where if we just take those moments to do what fills us up at the times that are best to do that, then everything else, like you experienced, half an hour writing during the day, and it took a full bore all the rest of the time.
Amanda
I couldn’t agree more and I also think, it’s this, it’s like this paradox of again, so this idea of reaching for the oxygen mask, but it’s not as singular as that because I think like the giving permission that like the be the being surrounded by people.
Friends, family, colleagues, loved ones who give you permission to take care of you. And it’s a form of love, really, right? Like it’s literally a form of loving other people. And maybe that feels like a strong word in the workplace, right? But to give permission to say, I want you to take care of you.
I want you to take the time, I want you to find the time. I’m gonna give you the time. I don’t want you to have to ever apologize for finding the time to take care of you, because I know, I trust that if you’re taking care of you, you’re gonna be able to take care of everyone around you. And that’s what heart led leadership is about.
And so it is, it’s this it’s the infinity sign, right? It’s a never ending thing. It’s hard to decide where, it starts and stops. And I think we all play a role in supporting each other in that way.
Michael
Absolutely. What has helped you give yourself and then others that permission where toward 20 years you found it so challenging to do that for yourself?
Let alone, be harder for yourself than even for others?
Amanda
That’s a really good question. I think like the desire that is inside of me to build comradery with teams and and be a part of leaving the world a little better than we found it together. Like the desire to do it together is again, what actually like spurred me or, created the most motivation or, passion for making sure I was taking care of me first so that I could take care of these people, right? And vice versa. Again, I go back to COVID and I remember how many people were struggling, like really struggling and you know how many people I might again, that were a part of, my team, my colleagues, my coworkers, and not just people I was responsible for, like directly like direct reports, right?
But like my peers and the leaders that I worked with, right? Everybody was really struggling and there was a lot of pain and there was a lot of sadness. There was a lot of fear and I just, I couldn’t disconnect these things that we’re talking about. It became more and more clear that I have a major responsibility in this too.
Like I need to take a breath. Like for the first time in 10 or 15 years, like I felt like I could really breathe. I felt like things really slowed down. I felt very present and I was feeling those things. I was having that experience because for the first time in my entire adult life, my entire professional career, I had this ability to live at these intersections of these things that were a part of my essence, like being out in the country and breathing fresh country air and looking out at wide open spaces and it’s finding time, like every day to be in the presence of these incredible soulful animals we call horses. And, I just, it just became its own meditation. Like I thought about it a lot. I thought so much about, I have so much more capacity when I’m doing these things. And for the first time, like again, I had permission, right?
Like the world suddenly shifted and all of a sudden. These pieces of my life started to come together. And like I said, once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it, and it was its own form of like me giving me permission so that I could then give the people that I care about permission so that they could give the people that they care about permission.
And a lot of my colleagues and a lot of my teammates and people I worked closely with would tell me that like they were having these conversations at the kitchen table at dinner. They were having conversations between spouses, like with their children. There was this ripple effect of, because we were having conversations as a professional team about these things, that people were then taking that to their family and their loved ones and having conversations there.
And it just, I don’t know, became a very profound thing. And like I said, it’ll forever be a part of how I think about what really matters.
Michael
That ripple effect is always amazes me when we do it consciously, like you were doing with your team and then they were doing with their families and friends.
It’s incredible just because I talk with you about it and then you talk with your team about it and each of them talks with their parents and family about it. Pretty soon, the entire world is talking about this because everyone has someone else that’s not in that chain yet. And even when we don’t do it this explicitly, the shifts that we make with ourselves radiate out and affect the people around us.
And then they shift a little bit and that radiates out as well. Even if we haven’t given ourselves permission to do this explicitly, just by doing, making these shifts ourselves, we help the entire world shift to be a little more that way.
Amanda
Yeah, I agree.
Michael
So one way to describe it, we’re talking about this is building cultures where people feel safe and empowered to bring their unique talents and their unique way of working and ways to refill into everything that they do. Now that you’ve realized how important this is, how has this shifted and what are you doing now to build and strengthen and help those cultures endure?
Amanda
Yeah. So again, pulling on this thread or this timeline. That I would, that by dates back to COVID like 2020 forward. There were some other interesting things that kind of transpired that has have continued to become a part of, or be a part of how I think about building culture and building strong teams.
And it’s twofold. One is something we’ll call courageous conversations. The other is a restaurant motto that, that says, we’re all family here. So I’ll tell you about the first one first. So the courageous conversations piece, so as all of us remember during COVID, there was also some really complicated social pieces that were happening right socially in our communities, across the country, across the world. And that conflict, that social conflict and the complexities, the the trauma, the disappointment, the fear, the inequity that came with a lot of what was happening then, could not be separated from the lived experiences of the people that we work with. And I found myself supporting a very diverse team that was really struggling, sometimes very silently and sometimes very loudly, with what was happening in our local community and in communities across the world. And in a conversation that I’m never gonna forget, where I was reminded that I might see things through a particular lens, and let’s just call that lens white privilege that I might see the world through biases, unconscious, right? I felt called to create a space amongst the people that I called friends and colleagues to talk about it. And I draw, I drew from some experience I had during my early teaching years when I was teaching, third grade in Colorado. I was a part of a group of teachers, that helped to facilitate this, these workshops, these faculty workshops called Courageous Conversations About Race.
And it draws from Glenn Singleton’s work. And the intention of the work then, in these school districts were to help primarily white teachers, have heightened awareness, in their teaching practices and in their lived experiences with their students’ lived experiences in very diverse classrooms.
And from that work there are four agreements, and those agreements are to stay engaged, speak your truth, expect and accept non closure, and to experience discomfort. The order of, I got them slightly outta order. It’s stay engaged, speak your truth, experience discomfort, and expect and accept non closure.
And in a moment, I look back and I think wild that we leaned into this together, but there were, I don’t know, let’s call it probably 50 team members, maybe a few less. That might be a little high, right? That were on that were a part of my, like direct kind of like responsibilities under my, under my umbrella.
And, even when we first started talking about doing this, so it was like me with my like direct reports, like the four or five leaders on the team, and I brought this idea, I was like, what if once a month we have, we set aside an hour and we have a conversation. It’s very guided and it’s very facilitated, and we create a space to have conversations about the things that are happening in the world because they’re happening and by pretending like they’re not is not helping anybody, right?
People are highly distracted in their work there. Again, everyone was carrying like the weight of their, the world on their shoulders. And then you expect people to come to work and put a smile on their face and just do the thing. Like it’s, that’s not how it works. And so I raised this with my leaders.
I was like, do you, what do you think if we, we do this? And Mike, I’ll tell you, like literally every direct report I had was like, there’s no way you can do that. You can’t do this. We can’t do this. Does HR know we’re doing this? Is HR gonna be there? Is the whole company doing this?
’cause we can’t do this. We absolutely, this is not gonna be a good idea. And I was like, I’ll tell you what it’s like, I don’t know. We’re riding out into the frontier. I’ll go first, I’ll go first, and if this thing implodes, if this turns out to have been a terrible idea.
It’s my name on the line.
I’m on the line. Nobody else is. It’s me. So I’ll go first. And so we started to do this work once a month. Very guided. Again, there was like, like Glen Single, there’s a whole, there’s a whole framework around this, right? There was plenty to draw from in terms of like, how do you keep these kinds of conversations on the rails?
And we did, And I believe, and if you were to talk to any of my colleagues or teammates who were a part of this work. We did it for three years, I think like three straight years of like once a month committed to the work. The outcomes of that were just beyond your imagination in terms of how the culture of the team was strengthened because when you lean into these kinds of things and you think about those four agreements, you think about staying engaged, speaking your truth, experiencing discomfort, and expecting and accepting non closure, and then you think about any problem that could potentially pop up in the workplace.
Anything where you’re coming at it from two different angles or five different perspectives, and you’re storming and norming and all the things, there is nothing you can’t get through. There’s nothing you can’t solve and that you can’t find common ground on.
If you have strengthened the muscle, if you’ve worked the muscle of those four agreements in a relationship to topics that are really personal, right?
Like where you’re really challenged to have to see the world through somebody else’s lens and have to find compassion. Have to find understanding and have to find, and have to be courageous and brave. And again, like, sticking to or saying this is my lived experience, but I hear your lived experience.
And like that it’s complicated and messy and really beautiful. And I watched a group of people, 40, 50, some odd people do this work with such commitment and such love. And then I watched them work together in the coming years on a thousand different things, right? Like just all the day-to-day stuff, the big stuff, the little stuff.
And there there are still ties amongst that group of people that I don’t think will ever be broken because of that work. And when you think about what that does for a culture. Again, like you talk about culture building and team building stuff and like it in the world. The second piece that I mentioned is, the restaurant motto, we’re all family here.
So the story there is that my sister, my younger sister is a senior executive for Olive Garden that is owned by the Darden, parent corporation. And my sister has been an inspiration to me my entire life. She might be the little sister, but like really, she she kinda acts like the older sister.
She’s been such an example to me and in particular her people leadership. So she works for a company whose motto is, we’re all family here, right? And she literally is responsible for thousands and thousands of people. Like I thought I had a big job, with a group of a hundred or 150, like we’re talking thousands and thousands of people that she’s directly responsible for.
And over the years I have watched her in awe. Pick up the phone at all times of the day. We might be driving to go pick up our kids from school, or she’s in the middle of making dinner, she’s got like a kid on one hip and she’s like stirring the pasta with the other and she’s taking the call, whatever.
And it’s a frontline, cook or a dishwasher. Or one of the waiters or waitresses I have, like I’ve lived the experience of witnessing her, I bared witness to her open door policy of we’re all family. Olive Garden, Darden, specifically, Olive Garden has this, a bit of this sentiment of we hire for life.
Now, that doesn’t mean that like people don’t leave. Sometimes because they want to, and sometimes maybe because it’s best for everybody. But there is this sentiment of once you walk through that door, you’re a part of the family and we’re gonna take care of you, like family. If you’re gonna expect your people to take care of your customers like family, if that’s your motto, we’re all family here, which means as a customer, as I walk in, I sit down, I order dinner, I feel like I’m part of the family, then your team better feel like they’re part of it, family, right? Like you can’t give something or create something if you’re not living it. If your teams aren’t living it.
And so this idea of taking care of people like their family, like they are family is, very close to my heart and the way that I lead and the way that I think about building culture and the way I think about building camaraderie. And it all goes back to why do we do these things? What are, what’s the point of doing these things?
Because if you want, whatever the thing is that you’re doing to make a lasting impact on the people and the customers and the communities, and in the case of education, the students that we serve, there better be a whole lot of goodness, a whole lot of warmth and commitment and passion, and I even use the word love amongst the people that are delivering that experience to all those people, right?
And so again, those two things are very close to my heart and how I think about culture building.
Michael
How do you explain the business value of all this squishy people culture building stuff? Which, it’s, yes, when you do the work three years later, you have a super close team that are friends for the rest of their lives, and when you’re starting out on that or you’re convincing your manager, your board of directors, whoever you need to get started, your team to, you’re doing this with, how do you talk about how this is gonna help the company achieve its goals?
Amanda
It’s so easy for me, and it’s funny, I actually had, I had one of my, supervisors.
If he ever listens to this podcast, he’s gonna know exactly who he is. Literally ask me like, what is, the value of, can you describe to me the company value of this work that you’re doing? Like, how does this impact the bottom line? And it’s easy. Look, happy people stay.
When you retain people, tons of cost savings, the cost of recruiting new employees, onboarding them, the cost of that to a company. The cost of losing people, the cost of people leaving, really unhappy, Letitia situations, right? And then there’s the customers. Happy people equal happy customers, right? If you have people that are dedicated and staying are committed, they feel trusted, they feel cared for, they feel valued, they’re gonna make the customer feel cared for and valued.
And the customer retention on that has a monetary value to the top and bottom line, doesn’t it? And you could, we can continue to pull that thread. Teachers, instructors, faculty, right? If they feel cared for, if their day-to-day work experience and professional experience is better for the time that is spent like building comradery and building trust and making sure people feel heard and seen.
Guess what? They’re gonna make sure that the students that they take care of, feel heard and seen, they’re gonna be more patient, they’re gonna give more time, they’re gonna be more present, they’re gonna give more of themselves. And then what does that equate to students being retained? Students completing their programs and graduating, like students, staying like the number one driver of student success, the number one driver of retention on campus or online.
Number one driver is the relationship between the faculty and the student. It’s the number one. If the student stays or goes, you could build massive retention teams, and institutions do, and they’re helpful, and they’re very helpful. They’re very important, especially when you’re supporting massive bodies of students.
But the day-to-day of the instructor, the faculty, connecting with each and every student that they are responsible for. That’s the number one driver of retention and outcomes. And again, it’s this ripple effect. It’s what we talked about the very beginning, right? Like having a conversation at this level that then somebody has at the kitchen table with their loved ones and then they have at the coffee shop with their friends.
It’s the same if leadership sets that example and takes care of its people in these ways, those people are gonna take care of the work that they’re responsible for, the colleagues that they’re responsible for, the customers they’re responsible for, the students they’re responsible for. It trickles the same way.
So I argue value in it all day long.
Michael
It really shows how the squishy people stuff shows up even in what might seem hard unemotional as technology software systems, that if the people who are building as software and systems, even if you never interact with any of the directly, you’re buying the thing online and everything’s online, you never talk to a person.
The difference between the people building that and providing it to you, being happy and joyful, able to talk, have the tough conversations, versus the teams that are the opposite of that incredible comes through.
Amanda
Yeah, it does. A hundred percent. It makes all the difference.
Michael
So we’ve talked a lot today about helping people find their way through change, uncertainty, overwhelm, all the things that came with COVID and the things going on in the world at that time and now. What else do you do to help people find their way through all this and experience all this crisis and still be able to settle back into the joy that you help them create?
Amanda
All of these things are connected. It’s hard to like pull one piece apart from the other, but I, when I think about like, how do I continue to help people navigate the complexity that is the world that we live in, the complexity of the work that we do, there’s always ambiguity, there’s always uncertainty, there’s always unknowns.
And, again, I think the answer might seem overly simple. It goes back to this holding space, holding space for people. And, then in those conversations. Maybe it is a conversation where somebody respectfully sends me an email or a teams message or a text message saying, Hey, Amanda, when you get a few minutes, can you gimme a call?
And I, I’m like, absolutely. I’m wrapping up the day today at six thirty. I’ll call you at seven, seven thirty, if that’s okay. Whatever grade, whatever the thing is. I’ll make the time. If I had a dollar for every time I’d just like walk circles around this house in the evenings talking to somebody, right?
Like no longer on the computer, no longer on teams, no longer on Zoom. Just good old fashioned phone call there. There should be like trenches like right around the house. From that, from the hours spent over the years of making that time. And, so then what do those conversations sound like?
It’s like Michael, like regardless of what’s happening, whatever the thing is, it could be a, it could be a conflict with a colleague. It could be like they’re, somebody’s struggling to get something done, or they’re coming at it from different places, or there’s been a misunderstanding. Or it could be a frustration, something’s happening with a customer, a client, a student, whatever the thing is it, could be that somebody’s, they’re having, they’re going through major life changes personally, and they’re thinking about making a change and maybe they’re thinking about leaving the company or they’re figuring out what their future looks like at the company, whatever the thing is. I feel like nine times outta ten, the topics, the themes, the mentorship that, at least for me, that I often provide to people.
It comes from a handful of places and it’s really kind of fundamental stuff. Like it’s about staying true to yourself and staying true to your values. It’s being a good person. It’s being kind like going outta your way to take the higher road and to do the right thing, like really operating with integrity and honesty and transparency.
It’s encouraging people to speak up. It’s like, back to the four agreements, like speak your truth. Use your voice, use it respectfully. Use it kindly. Use it transparently. Use it lovingly. Use your voice. There’s a bit of, just remember that like you can only control what you can control and that there is some of this, like sometimes regardless of what your belief system is, you have to give it to God, for lack of a better word.
But like the sentiment of that, that sometimes you have to have faith. You have to know that you can’t control everything, that you won’t always have the answers that you have to lean into what you can control and what you can control. You manage with as much grace and compassion and integrity as possible.
I think in today’s world, like there’s, I mean there’s so much going on all around us. It’s a wild time.
I think there’s a lot to be said for practicing gratitude, lending a helping hand. Like, just where you can, if you can help, if you can just do some small thing, make some person’s day just a little bit better. Just give of yourself a little bit.
There is, it’s what’s the, and again, without sounding like totally, I don’t know, because I, this is so true for me. So I’m gonna use the word cheesy, without sounding cheesy, but because I recognize it could be people that are like, she is so rose colored glasses. There is something to be said for the, be the change that you wanna see in the world, and that applies to every circumstance. If you zoom out and take a look at whatever the thing is.
Like, how would you wanna see that thing handled? What would be the best outcome? And how would you get there? And then be that, right? Be that driver, be that change maker, be that heart led person that leans in with a little bit more grace and a little bit more love, and a little bit more compassion, a little bit more patience, not just for whatever it is you’re dealing with, but for yourself as well.
And again, it’s like I said, Michael, if I had a dollar for every time, over many years that I’ve taken those phone calls the way that I’ve watched my sister take those phone calls, we’re all family here. It’s the sentiment of a lot of what I share as a leader, as a fierce driver, as a fierce operator, as somebody who is also known for getting stuff done.
Like we’ve spent a lot of time talking about all the warm and fuzzy things I’ve said a whole lot of warm and fuzzy things. The two things, you can’t separate the two things. And the reason that I’ve been successful and I’ve been able to get so much done and been able to help support teams through massive transformations while still maintaining that collaboration and comradery and culture is because of these things that I don’t think you can separate at the end of the day.
Michael
I agree. It goes back to what we were to your story at the beginning of discovering how to keep your own cup full so that you can help everyone else keep theirs full. It’s the only way to achieve to execute on the business goals and create the outcomes that the business is there to create for their customers, is to help to keep our own cups full and help all of our people keep their cups full so that they can do all the work to create all of those things, and just as much as all of the operational have to write the code, do the reports, research the customers, whatever it is. All this squishy people stuff is, has to be in there in the right balance as well and all the other things. Remembering to take lunch, remembering to go use the restroom, remembering to stay hydrated during the day. The things that our physical body needs, that our mental bodies need, that our spiritual bodies need, and that our emotional bodies need have to keep all of those healthy and fulfilled in order to keep the business healthy and fulfilled.
Amanda
Absolutely couldn’t have said it better myself.
Michael
Thank you!
For people who’d like to follow up with you on leading those kind of conversations, learning more about how to keep their own cup full in the midst of all the business craziness that they have to deal with day to day. What’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Amanda
I’m definitely very reachable on LinkedIn, so always happy to connect there.
I don’t know if we’ll share contact information as a part of this episode, but again, my email, alsmitheducation@gmail.com is always a good way to reach me, and I really do. I welcome the continued conversations with anyone, anybody who’s inspired by this episode and by the things we’ve been talking about today.
Michael, I would love to. I’d love to continue that, these conversations with others for sure.
Michael
That’s great. And I’ll have those links in our show notes. Is there anything else, Amanda, you’d like to leave our audience with today?
Amanda
I don’t think so. Just that, again, this idea of walking with the dreamers. The people with the head in the clouds and their feet on the ground, people that have a fire in their belly and people who wanna really leave the world just a little better than they found it. That’s what it’s about. It’s about finding those people. It’s finding your tribe and any walk of life taking care of ’em so they can take care of other people taking care of yourself so you can take care of them.
It’s really, I think, at the end of the day, what it’s all about. And I think when those things come together, when these ingredients that we’ve been talking about today, when they come together and they’re present, I think that anything is possible, genuinely, like mountains can be moved.
And again, it all starts with relationships. And again, just doing these things, there’s a saying. The last thing I’ll say is there’s a, a quote, if you will, or a, motto that, one of the teams that I led for years that we’d always say as we signed off every Friday, and that was, take care of yourselves, take care of each other.
And so I’ll leave you with that today, Michael, and I’ll leave our audience with that. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.
Michael
I love it. Thank you, Amanda, for this wonderful conversation today.
Amanda
Thank you. It’s been such an honor to be able to spend some time together, so thank you again.
Michael
You’re welcome.
And thank you audience, for spending time with us today. Amanda, and I would love to know, what helps you keep your cup full? Thanks and have a great day.