Andrew Almazan on Pivots and Possibilities: Embracing Change in Leadership

Change can feel daunting, especially in our careers, but it can also lead to incredible opportunities if approached with the right mindset. This episode invites you into a powerful conversation with Andrew Almazan, a seasoned leadership coach who shares his transformative journey from a corporate executive to an empowering mentor in times of uncertainty. Andrew brings a wealth of experience and insights, illustrating how we can thrive through change by embracing gratitude and maintaining the relationships that matter most.

Discover the importance of leaning into tough conversations and learning from transitions, as Andrew emphasizes that our mindset is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal. Fostering a culture of gratitude not only supports individual growth but also enhances workplace dynamics. Andrew's relatable anecdotes and practical advice encourage us to reflect on our strengths and how to better leverage them during challenging times. 

Join us as we dive into the art of navigating change, redefining success, and prioritizing what truly matters in our professional journeys. We're excited to hear your thoughts on gratitude and career transitions! Don't forget to subscribe, share with friends, and leave a review to help others discover these valuable insights.

Chapters

• 6:09 Introduction to Andrew and His Journey
• 25:00 Facing Career Transition Head
• 42:00 Insights on Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
• 4:00:00 The Importance of Relationships in Career Changes
• 9:40:00 Cultivating a Mindset of Gratitude
• 20:29:00 Final Thoughts and Resources to Connect

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with Andrew. Now, andrew, you are a coach. You're a leadership coach, but you have a very interesting story where you were progressing in your career and then you had to pivot and you had to learn a whole new set of skills. So please introduce yourself, andrew, and tell us a little bit about your story.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Absolutely. Thank you so much, nicole, and appreciate you and your audience taking a moment to listen to the story. I hope it offers some value, insights and inspiration for anybody that is listening. As you mentioned, I am a leadership and executive coach. Currently I'm the founder of Brave Leadership Guild.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Previously to that, I was the VP of people operations for a top five media company in the automotive industry and I was at that company for over a decade and it was amazing. It was a great fun time full of I mean awesome learning and development opportunities. For me, it's where I cut my teeth as a professional. I worked my way from the bottom to the top of the organization, starting out as a staff editor, so on the journalism side of the business, working my way to eventually become the VP of people operations, and you know it. Even looking back on it now it I have nothing, no remorse about the situation.

Speaker 2: 1:39

It's just, you know, at a high level, the, like so many, ran into some economic headwinds that finally caught up after COVID and, ironically enough, as the VP of people operations, as much as you know, creating a strategic way to develop company culture and a strong bond cross departmentally bond cross departmentally you also have to be in charge of headcount reduction strategies and that eventually ended with you know, me and the senior leadership team really having to take a tough look at all the existing positions.

Speaker 2: 2:16

And you know my position was one of those positions that ultimately, you know I had to vote on in in terms of what was in the best interest for the longevity of the organization. I was given an opportunity to stay in a different capacity, but I also looked at that as a personal opportunity to double down on what my passion was, what my passion had been over the maybe the last two and a half years prior to that, leading up to that event. And you know, on one end it was a, it was a turning of the chapter, but it was also. It was also a moment where, you know you hear about this a lot where sometimes people end up having to take that leap. There's that point of no return where you have a dream or a passion and you really do have to. I know it's cliche, but you really do have to kind of burn the boat sometimes and you can burn the boats without burning bridges. I will say that that's also something I'm very passionate about.

Speaker 2: 3:19

So I did that I burned the boats on my passion doubled people the partners and my colleagues. We had an intact relationship as we transitioned through that.

Speaker 1: 3:53

That's powerful because that's a scary, scary junction to find yourself in. So I find that to be like just very incredible right and very future focused. Right, because it's very easy for us to get stuck in the moment where you're like, oh my god, I don't have a job anymore. What am I gonna do? Versus this is a stepping stone onto something, and I want to make sure that these relationships I can maintain them, because in our careers that's what we leave with right. We leave with the relationships and the experience that we get, and you never, ever know how one of those relationships you know might come into play later on. You never know who in that past life right, because it feels like a past life right Is watching and you never know what opportunities that can spark. So thank you so much for sharing that with us. Andrew, talk to me a little bit about as a leadership coach, about how we handle those big changes. Like how do you maintain that perspective?

Speaker 2: 5:07

yeah, that's a great question and it's something that I love helping clients with and non-clients, just people I run into. Because outside of the I will add, outside of the executive coaching when I transition, I'm still very much in the middle of building my own practice to a point where you know I can just have that be what I do. So on the side I still I got back into craft brewing and I work at one of Southern California's oldest craft breweries as an assistant GM right now oldest craft breweries as an assistant GM right now and which is which is really awesome, because I get to stay integrated into the aspect of work culture and established teams and working within an environment where you have, you know, top to bottom organizational structure. I'm able to also have a proving ground, so to speak, for some of my training and development philosophies and you know this kind of leads into your question. It's even in my past life as a VP of operations and even into now, the fact that I have this endeavor.

Speaker 2: 6:23

The most important thing I think we can do as people who are passionate about something and we have a vision that we're currently building is be fully transparent. Take a chance on being fully transparent. I think people will focus and put a lot of pressure on those sorts of situations or conversations going right with stakeholders. I think we need. We can't focus on what's out of our control right, and how people take that news is kind of outside of our control.

Speaker 2: 6:56

But what we can control is how well do we articulate and communicate the importance of this initiative. How well do we block off the time to reflect on why someone might be worried, frustrated, feel like it's a conflict? You know of our time, our potential productivity. You know how much time did we think about integrating that into the conversation which is going to be a tough conversation? But just because you know this is a, this is a life lesson that's important to me too I love sharing with people is just because a conversation or a moment is about to be tough, that's never one of the determining factors of whether we should lean into that conversation or not. Oftentimes the toughest things are the things that promote the most growth for us.

Speaker 1: 7:52

I totally agree with that, and those conversations can be very scary to have. So it's very easy to be like I'll do it later. I'll do it later um but you're still right?

Speaker 1: 8:05

no, no, but you're still right because you know when those come, when those hard conversations happen, you know, um, something happens, right, it's either the thing gets fixed or we move on from the thing. You know whatever, like if it's. You know, like, even if you're a couple and you're having, you know you have to have a tough conversation and either we fix whatever is going on or we're not a couple anymore or at work. Either we fix the issue You're not arriving to work at time, you're not doing productivity or to happen.

Speaker 1: 8:47

And so I know, especially for our neurodivergent listeners, that can be something that's very important to hear, because I know, I know it's really easy to push things off for way too long because it's uncomfortable and and so being able to to go into it with, you know, with a more positive mindset, a more positive framing, right? Sorry, sorry, I just went down like three different tracks in my mind, all right. So I want you to talk to me, though. My book is called Overcome Yourself, also this podcast, and one of my biggest like lessons, one of my biggest takeaways, is gratitude. I had to learn to practice gratitude, so can you tell me what role, if any, gratitude plays in this process of having hard conversations, of changing these seasons of change that we have.

Speaker 2: 9:38

Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's great. I love that you mentioned that, because gratitude to me is really at one of the it's at the core, and it's one of the foundations to what I believe is having a great mindset, one that looks at the world and sees opportunity instead of, you know, circumstances that are either holding us back, and it also creates learning out of challenges and failure, right. So when you have, when you choose, I wanna me personally and how I kind of look at it and share with people. When we talk about gratitude, I do think it's a choice. I mean, maybe some people have a natural proclivity to be more positive. Even then, I think it's still a skill, right, and people can be encouraged by that fact. You can train that, you can adopt that mindset, and it might not feel natural at first, but it's just like a habit, right? You're creating those neural pathways to pay attention to the things that are going to maybe give you that, that dopamine, right, and when you. One thing I used to talk about in terms of still in line with gratitude is when people would fail. You know that's a great place to see what the culture is of a company or of teams is. How do they, how do they handle, how do they meet, how do they deal with failure, messing up mistakes? It can be something super innocuous like a small admin error. You can tell a lot about the dynamic of how people look at failure just by how someone a supervisor or manager reacts breaking a pint glass on accident or pouring the wrong beer. And I think the best leaders are at a point where they've done that exercise enough times to where they can look at hey, this is either me gravitating on, look, you just wasted 16 ounces of beer that we're never going to get back. Or hey, look, this is an opportunity for me to slow down, take a moment with this staff member and I'm going to equip them with the knowledge to pour the best pints of beer for consumers moving forward. Or, hey, that admin mistake.

Speaker 2: 12:12

If you're in human resources resources, there's a lot of admin work, there's a lot of compliance to fill out and I I used to work with my admin team on that on the vp of operation side and you know, and there's a lot of deadlines and and regulations that you get a lot of mail about. Uh, sometimes you have to kind of follow back up and you know, work through some errors, if an auditor comes in and hits you up, but you can either get stressed, frazzled or you can say, look, this is an opportunity. Now we have tremendous insight about what that regulation or what that process wants, wants, and you're going to be such a much more effective HR generalist. Now, uh, and think about this. It's like sometimes these processes are quarterly or annually. You don't ever, you, you rarely get these learning opportunities. So, um, that lesson was just presented to you. Take it and become more effective.

Speaker 2: 13:11

So, uh, that's more of a, you know, a kind of a practical example of me sharing some things where I think gratitude has, and a gratitude mindset has come to light in my practice as well as working with people. And, yeah, I think it's just a choice. It's your paradigm and how you choose to look at reality, because that's my last point on that is choice. The idea of choice is so important because all these realities, to me they're real. You know if someone looks at it negatively, if someone looks at their life and says it's not that great, if you say that to yourself, you know a lot of times, you know enough times.

Speaker 1: 13:56

Well, what your mind does is it finds evidence. So if you're saying my life sucks, your mind is going to look for evidence that that's true and be like you're absolutely right because your mind is a yes man. And it's going to be like, yeah, you're right, yeah, you're right, yeah, you're right, and it's going to find evidence for whatever you're focusing on. You're 100 percent correct.

Speaker 2: 14:14

And I love that you mentioned that. I think that's an important point, nicole, because, like you said, then if that's the case, why wouldn't anyone want to create a life where their brain, their yes person, is looking for all the evidence to say you know, I'm going to be super effective, success is just around the corner. I'm going to live a life of impact and provide value to all those I love and care about.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Yes, yes, yes. And then we have to learn, though, because, to focus on those things on a micro scale, right, and it's just like you were talking about when you make a mistake, how do you talk to yourself? When your kids make a mistake, how do you talk to them? Right, are we focused on putting blame? Oh, my God, you're so stupid. I can't believe that you dropped this cup of milk. Like. You wouldn't talk to a four-year-old like that. Like not, if you want them to grow up to be healthy and not hate you, right, You'd be like oh, we dropped the milk. What do we do? We're focusing on the solution. Oh, we got to pick it up. All right, we got to get a rag, let's clean it up. Let's put some soap, because we don't want it to get stinky, right, and we focus on solutions, and so I think that's such a good point, and it's not just in the workplace that that comes out.

Speaker 1: 15:28

You know, like in school, like how are you with yourself? Like, what do you say when you make a mistake? Are you beating yourself up or are you being like okay, how do we fix this? How do we have to build the neural pathways? There's actually a little section of our brain that is dedicated entirely to gratitude and if we don't use it, just like any other muscle, it atrophies like it's not going to function. So the only way that we can build it back up just like if this muscle atrophied right, like if we have it in a cast what do you got to do? You got to work out and you got to get those muscles strong again. Same thing with gratitude. What do you got to do? You got to work out and you got to get those muscles strong again. Same thing with gratitude. Right. And so I think it's such a big deal what you said of the perspective and seeing the opportunities, because that's what, that's what I've noticed has happened in my life and that's the secret that I found, um, and it's what helped me do the things I needed to do to get better. Right, because I had, like a vitamin deficiency.

Speaker 1: 16:33

But it was practicing gratitude that said, hey, I'm worth going to the doctor and telling them that this is happening to me, I'm worth getting better, like it's worth it. I'm worth it, and it was gratitude that got me to that point, right. And so, even in the smallest, tiniest, whatever you can find, even it's just the oxygen in the air that I can breathe. It is the perfect combination of oxygen, right? Um, we can always find something to be grateful for, and it is a choice that we have to make. Even when that little part of our brain is not working like it's supposed to, we still have to choose to say, hey, I'm gonna find three things. And then, little by little, we built it up and, like you said, we build those neural pathways. Um, that's all in my book too. Um, I, I talked about the neural pathways and stuff. So awesome.

Speaker 2: 17:15

stuff like this is just absolutely amazing, andrew yeah, and I, if I could, I just want to add one thing. You inspired a thought there, um, when you said sometimes you just it can be something as small as being grateful for being able to breathe oxygen right, or there being oxygen to breathe right, like sometimes you do have to.

Speaker 2: 17:35

It's like. It's like the metaphor, the age old metaphor that every influencer talks about with getting into fitness or, you know, getting hopping back on that fitness wagon if it's been a while. Sometimes you just need to put your shoes and have your gym clothes folded and they're ready. Some extreme people I know that are trying to get back on the wagon. After a while they'll sleep in their gym clothes and that's just the first step right and all these little ways to gamify, creating a new habit.

Speaker 2: 18:08

It's very interesting and I think it's.

Speaker 2: 18:10

It's awesome that, and I believe in leaning into processes like that that are personally going to help somebody.

Speaker 2: 18:17

But what you said inspired the main point I wanted to share, which was I believe sometimes people just need to start with a floor right, like there's a, there's a ceiling, and then there's a floor of of like what success looks like in terms of when, what we're talking about forming the habit of having more gratitude, showing up with more gratitude, and I think people tend to get a little overwhelmed with the end goal, the end vision. Sometimes it's so audacious and it's like that. I think there's also the part of the brain that wants to protect you from you know a little bit of, you know looming pain and hardship. That's going to come with something like that. That's going to come with something like that. But I think if you can establish a floor and say that hitting the floor is also the same thing as me achieving what the ceiling can foreseeably look like too. So let's start with just I can breathe today, and then you'll be having gratitude for some truly audacious things If you just keep going.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Yes, I mean, I remember a time I was having panic attacks every day. So for me, success was going through a whole day without like not breathing, and for a long time. Then finally it happened. I was like, oh my God, that's success. And then my next success was going through a whole day not crying, and then I was able to do that, and so little by little. So now I talk about like getting your book published and getting your podcast. But that's not where it started. It started with I wasn't sad. Today, for the first time in years, I wasn't sad. I, the smallest denominator, like the tiniest, tiniest thing that you can find, and then just focus on that and be grateful for that, and then it'll grow. It'll grow and you'll start noticing more. So I love that. I love that so much.

Speaker 2: 20:20

That's huge.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Yes, so talk to me about how we can stay in touch with you, andrew.

Speaker 2: 20:29

Yeah, absolutely so. I do have a website where it kind of talks about my backstory, my philosophy, my credentials. You can visit that at wwwbraveleadershipguildcom. I'm also active on Instagram and LinkedIn. Linkedin is going to be under my my personal name, so Andrew Almazan. You can look that up and there's a links to Brave Leadership Guild there.

Speaker 2: 20:58

But outside of that, you know, one thing that is really special to me that I finished recently was I've taken my 15 years of experience in American business so far and what I wanted to do was compile something free, value for people, and it's an ebook. It's a free ebook called the Executive's Playbook for Better Business Execution. It's very intentional in terms of being like a long yarn of a title. I'm in real life.

Speaker 2: 21:29

If you ever meet me or on a Zoom chat, I tend to be very verbose, super talkative and I like my titles to look like it, look and feel like that too, but essentially it's 11 real world business cases that I led and I take people through a step-by-step roadmap and essentially what it is. It's a playbook for people who want to be effective people, operations tacticians and change management leaders. So if you have something and you're working in an organization where you're leading your people through significant change, significant change initiatives that are having an effect on multiple departments. This is sort of a free ebook that I created to kind of provide a little inspiration from a reading standpoint and then as well as an operation standpoint, because we try to make it really simple.

Speaker 1: 22:25

I love that, so you learn about it, but you can also implement it right.

Speaker 2: 22:29

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:30

That is fantastic. Thank you so much, andrew. This has been wonderful. But before we sign off, I want you to think what is like the biggest, best tip that you give to your clients, to your audience? Like what? Is it that one thing that they have to know? Your clients to your audience like what?

Speaker 2: 22:47

is it that one thing that they have to know? I think I think it's the biggest thing that I I tend to tell my clients, people I know is double down on your strengths, focus, focus on giving yourself the time and the space to think about what those things are. I know what, what projects, what project types, what sorts of initiatives in your life tend to bring out like the hungriest version of you, the most passionate, like you've got a fire under you, and start to try to draw a pattern, a through line, of what those things are. Because I think it takes a little bit of work like that, being very introspective but then analytical at the same time, because for the most part, we live such a busy life with, with the modern day, you know, everything's so fast paced. We're going through the sun and it comes up, and the moon comes up just as fast, and it's just this huge cycle. So slowing down and kind of like trying to find that pattern, and then you can start to build a picture for yourself.

Speaker 2: 23:58

If you're somebody who enjoys being a part of an organization, then you can start to lobby that to your supervisors, to your team. Hey, this is how you're going to get the best out of me If there's a way down the line for me to be paired with projects like this. Initiatives like this, leverage my talent. Let's capitalize on what I'm good at, and then, if you're an entrepreneur and then you're having a challenge trying to figure out how you're going to make an impact, you can then apply it that same way too. So I think it starts with that. That's a core. Fundamental is people coming to terms with and reflecting on what are those things that they believe are their passions and their proclivities, and doubling down there.

Speaker 1: 24:44

I love that and I always say look at what you got in trouble for as a kid, because I always got in trouble for talking. I was too talkative, right and um, and that's my superpowers and I get paid to do that and so lean into, um, you know, while you're doing your introspection, what was I getting in trouble for as a kid? For being the class, for being funny, for being too talkative, for, like, always daydreaming like what is that? And there's probably something that you love to do there that you just haven't let yourself do. Maybe it's puzzles and you just haven't let yourself do it because you're like, I'm an adult and adults don't color. Yeah, they do. There's adult coloring books and everything right yeah, that's a great one thanks, and we're just big kids, right like.

Speaker 1: 25:25

We're just kids who grew up and we still like to have fun. So go have fun. I love that. I love that so much. Andrew, thank you so much for being here with us. This has been absolutely fantastic and we will see you guys next time On the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the Podcast. Thanks so much. Bye.

Speaker 2: 25:43

Thank you.