Join us for a conversation about being flexible with how you connect and lead people. Maria Maldonado Smith is the Chief Empowerment Officer of MMS Consulting and creator of the Executive Vision Imagery program. One of my favorite parts of the interview was when she explained how to adapt to employees’ personalities will help build our relationship with them.

1. Prioritizing goals through self-reflection

Maria stresses regularly reflecting on true desires to avoid distraction, focusing inward to understand motivations before outward actions. How to communicate with people so they meet us where we are and accept us.

2. Reducing things down to make them manageable

Leaders often struggle to take action on the right things because they are overwhelmed.In this section you’ll learn how you can break things down to smaller chunks so they are manageable. You can make improvements by focusing on the things that matter and making small adjustments as you get feedback from the results.

3. Developing others through understanding motivations

It’s important to set standards for leadership and how people need to meet those standards before they are fired. Understanding each person's motivations beyond work, like family needs, informed Maria's leadership style shift to meet people as individuals through listening and notes.

4. The importance of visualization in goal achievement

Maria explains how daily visualization of goals through personal imagery supports focus and reminds us of our priorities, activating brain areas for motivation and driving us forward.

5. Rapid fire questions

She shares who one of her favorite leaders was in her career and what she learned from him. She also shares her most shared book, favorite podcast and most adored toy as a little girl.

You can learn more about Maria Maldonado Smith over at MMS Consulting. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn.

As always, if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing, just reach out to me on the Dig to Fly website, and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you enjoy the interview, please take 30 seconds to rate the Systematic Leader podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!