Tuesdays 5:00pm - 6:00pm (EDT)
EPISODE SUMMARY:
How do you live a fulfilling life? It’s not riches, it’s impact and legacy. In this episode, you will learn how you can quantify mentoring, volunteering, and philanthropy so you can better understand how much impact you make every day, how to build and leave a rewarding legacy, and how to create a highly generative life.
We all want to have impact, whether it is at work, at home, or in our communities. And while we are striving to make an impact, we might not even realize the impact we're already making! There is a way to find out about our impact and just how deep our footprint is by understanding mentorship, legacy, and generativity. We'll also unpack the emotional science behind mentorship—and how to give, find, and recognize it when it’s real. If you’ve ever craved guidance but didn’t know how to ask… or if you’ve been called a mentor without knowing what that really meant… this conversation will name what’s been missing.
***
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Dr. Deborah Heiser is an applied developmental psychologist, Founder of My Legacy Tree, and author of The Mentorship Edge. She is a TEDx speaker, member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, Thinkers 50 Radar List, expert contributor to Psychology Today and is also an Adjunct Professor.
***
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE, CAN I ASK A FAVOR?
We do not receive any funding or sponsorship for this podcast. If you learned something and feel others could also benefit, please leave a positive review. Every review helps amplify our work and visibility. This is especially helpful for small women-owned boot-strapped businesses. Simply go to the bottom of the Apple Podcast page to enter a review. Thank you!
***
LINKS:
www.gotowerscope.com
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-hard-skills-dr-mira-brancu-m0QzwsFiBGE/
https://deborahheiser.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-heiser-phd/ https://www.youtube.com/@DebbieHeiser
https://substack.com/@deborahheiserphd
Tune in for this empowering conversation at TalkRadio.nyc
In this episode of The Hard Skills, Dr. Mira Brancu dives into the power and endurance of mentorship with Dr. Deborah Heiser, an expert on the topic. They explore how mentorship spans across all areas of life—not just work—but also culture, family traditions, and personal growth. Heiser highlights the value of lateral and peer mentorship, stressing that impactful connections often come from colleagues and community members, not just hierarchical leaders, and emphasizes the importance of diverse mentoring relationships to foster growth and success.
In this segment, Dr. Deborah Heiser outlines the key ingredients of a healthy mentorship relationship, emphasizing the importance of generativity, intrinsic motivation, trust, and a meaningful connection. She shares how mentorship is not just about being "pulled up" by someone superior, but about a mutual, generative process where both mentor and mentee benefit from a connection rooted in respect and trust. Heiser also highlights the evolving nature of mentorship, explaining how modern mentorship can exist digitally through platforms like podcasts, where a mentor's wisdom still impacts others, even without direct, face-to-face interaction.
In this segment, Dr. Deborah Heiser and Dr. Mira Brancu discuss how to make a lasting impact through mentorship without feeling overwhelmed by the need to change the world. Heiser emphasizes that mentorship isn't about giving grandiose advice, but about offering something meaningful from your values and experiences, whether big or small. She encourages leaders to focus on achievable, digestible goals and highlights the power of creating a legacy tree—a tool to track and quantify the impact of mentorship and connections, similar to tracing a family genealogy.
In this segment, Dr. Deborah Heiser introduces her concept of the "legacy tree," a tool to track the impact of mentorship, volunteerism, and philanthropy throughout a person's life. Unlike traditional genealogy, the legacy tree helps individuals map their influence and see how their actions ripple out into the world, providing a deeper sense of purpose and connection. Heiser emphasizes that even small contributions can make a significant difference, and by tracking one's impact, individuals can better navigate their desire to create a lasting legacy and focus their efforts where they matter most.
00:00:52.260 --> 00:00:54.530 Mira Brancu: How do you live? A fulfilling life?
00:00:54.750 --> 00:00:59.020 Mira Brancu: How do you know what impact you're making on others? And the world?
00:00:59.570 --> 00:01:02.830 Mira Brancu: Is there a way to thoughtfully track and build on that impact.
00:01:03.220 --> 00:01:10.399 Mira Brancu: We're talking about the promise, the power, and the endurance of mentorship.
00:01:11.030 --> 00:01:18.340 Mira Brancu: And we're here with the Guru. The person who literally wrote the book on mentorship.
00:01:19.130 --> 00:01:21.620 Mira Brancu: and I'm going to introduce her in a second.
00:01:21.790 --> 00:01:27.139 Mira Brancu: It is a perfect fit for this season's focus on endurance in leadership.
00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:40.460 Mira Brancu: Welcome back to the hard skills show where we take a deep dive into the most challenging soft skills required to navigate leadership, uncertainty, complexities, and change today and into the future.
00:01:40.700 --> 00:01:46.020 Mira Brancu: I'm your host, Dr. Mira Bronku, psychologist, leadership consultant and founder of Towerscope.
00:01:46.270 --> 00:01:50.839 Mira Brancu: and before I introduce you to my guest I have one big favor to ask you.
00:01:51.160 --> 00:01:55.840 Mira Brancu: we just got nominated for the people's choice podcast awards.
00:01:56.210 --> 00:02:03.869 Mira Brancu: And if you've been enjoying the show, can you please go to podcastawards.com
00:02:04.470 --> 00:02:29.240 Mira Brancu: podcastawards.com sign up to vote. Find my show the hard skills under the business category and vote. By this Thursday, July 31st July 31st is the deadline. And you can vote for other categories that I'm under. And you can vote for other favorites that you have other podcast favorites podcastawards.com. Thank you. Okay.
00:02:29.770 --> 00:02:42.089 Mira Brancu: let me introduce our guest today. Dr. Deborah Heiser. She is an applied developmental psychologist. We'll explore what that means in a second founder of my legacy tree.
00:02:42.210 --> 00:02:45.309 Mira Brancu: an author of the Mentorship Edge.
00:02:45.530 --> 00:02:53.030 Mira Brancu: She's a Tedx speaker, member of Marshall Goldsmith, 100 coaches, thinkers, 50 radar list
00:02:53.250 --> 00:03:12.499 Mira Brancu: and expert contributor to psychology today, and she's also an adjunct professor. And she and I met because she was my former mentor in the forefront program. The forefront is the annual cohort of the next generation of leaders in coaching and talent development. It's powered by Marshall Goldsmith, 100 coaches.
00:03:12.660 --> 00:03:20.550 Mira Brancu: And then eventually she became a mentor to my son when he was exploring psychology as a potential major.
00:03:20.860 --> 00:03:29.086 Mira Brancu: So I wonder, Debbie, does that make you like a grand mentor? Or maybe you don't want to call yourself that. But.
00:03:30.003 --> 00:03:36.356 Deborah Heiser: I'll say mentoring you. I always ask myself who's mentoring who? I don't know.
00:03:37.405 --> 00:03:52.410 Mira Brancu: And thank you. She she let me know on the side that she voted. You're so kind. Okay, so let's start with Debbie. Let's start with applied developmental psychologists. I'm sure a lot of people don't know what that is. So let's start with there.
00:03:53.350 --> 00:04:10.360 Deborah Heiser: So an applied developmental psychologist is looking at our lifespan from birth all the way to the end of life and those things that we expect. So most people think of psychology and a psychologist as looking at the pathology.
00:04:10.820 --> 00:04:40.269 Deborah Heiser: And I'm looking at everything that we can expect along the way. It could be good, or it could be not so good. But I'm looking at all of that. The normal trajectory of life and everything along the way. So that's where there's the difference. So a clinical psychologist is generally what we think of when we hear of a psychologist, and they're looking to help someone to navigate, maybe a tricky time period. I'm looking at our lifespan trajectory
00:04:40.360 --> 00:04:47.810 Deborah Heiser: and what we should expect, like walking and talking as a baby and then becoming giving individuals as we get older.
00:04:48.000 --> 00:05:04.230 Mira Brancu: Yeah. And you know, you could have, like any psychologist you could have specialized in any area of life right? Like you mentioned, you can look at babies, you can look at all kinds of phases. How did you end up with exploring mentorship?
00:05:05.020 --> 00:05:07.679 Deborah Heiser: So I looked at mentorship because
00:05:07.730 --> 00:05:36.410 Deborah Heiser: I used to study everything. No one wants to have her get so Alzheimer's disease. I'm an aging specialist. So I was looking at the second half of life, and I was a researcher who looked at depression and Alzheimer's disease, and all of those things that scared people in the late nineties and early 2 thousands, and they still do many people. But what happened was, I went to a dinner party, and somebody said, What do we have to look forward to?
00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:38.410 Deborah Heiser: And I didn't have an answer.
00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:44.110 Deborah Heiser: and so I went back to my office and said, Oh, my goodness.
00:05:44.230 --> 00:05:49.230 Deborah Heiser: I need to find out for myself what we have to look forward to, because I didn't have an answer.
00:05:49.410 --> 00:06:05.190 Deborah Heiser: And at that point I looked at what the research was telling us. People just weren't talking about it. There was so much there developmentally that we could look forward to. And right in the middle of our life, and midlife is a stage called Generativity.
00:06:05.320 --> 00:06:16.739 Deborah Heiser: where we're built to want to give back through mentoring, volunteering, and philanthropy. And I said, this mentoring thing that's interesting. It's taking a little piece of us
00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:29.710 Deborah Heiser: and putting it out into the world. And I thought of that as like a form of immortality, or, you know, really quite the legacy that we could do at any time and in any way, no matter who we were. So I said, I want to study that.
00:06:29.840 --> 00:06:43.289 Deborah Heiser: And that's when I really started to take off with interviewing mentors and talking about mentorship back when people really weren't talking about it very much in terms of how we look at it in our lives.
00:06:43.790 --> 00:07:09.743 Mira Brancu: Yeah, I I especially appreciate it right now, when we're surrounded by those deep, existential questions about what do I have to look forward to, and you know, what is the meaning of this point in time, and facing all of the and you know, especially young people like my my kids are are constantly wondering about their future and wondering, will it be okay? And
00:07:10.310 --> 00:07:24.589 Mira Brancu: I just get this sense of positivity when I think about what we do have to offer is something through mentorship you mentioned. There are several areas within mentorship. Can you share more about those.
00:07:25.170 --> 00:07:39.080 Deborah Heiser: So most of us think of mentorship the way that it's been presented to us, which seems to be just in work right? And and a work thing that we should look forward to. That is where someone will pull us up.
00:07:39.240 --> 00:08:07.990 Deborah Heiser: And that person is essentially like a Savior. We just need this one person, and they're going to pull us up, and we'll be good. And it really is not at all like that mentorship, just to give a hint of a little bit about the broadness of it is that it's our culture, it's our values, it's our religion, it's our traditions. It's all of that which is every day part of our life in work and outside of work.
00:08:08.180 --> 00:08:14.029 Deborah Heiser: So mentorship is the grandma who's passing down the recipes.
00:08:14.070 --> 00:08:42.869 Deborah Heiser: and every year when you have a holiday meal or a tradition, it's the elders in your family who've been passing that down and you enter and you go. Don't say, what's happening today at this holiday these things get passed down for centuries, religion for centuries. Now, if you think about it for school or work, or maybe you want to get good at some hobby. Maybe you play pickleball or you do something out there. You may have somebody who guides you through
00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:45.260 Deborah Heiser: through that. So it can be a lateral mentor.
00:08:45.370 --> 00:09:08.050 Deborah Heiser: If you're an entrepreneur, especially someone who likes to start things outside of work, there's no one above you that can pull you up. You have to look to your left, and you have to look to your right for people who are experts in things that you're not. And that's most of the time how it works is that we're looking to our left and to our right, to the connections that we know already.
00:09:08.050 --> 00:09:31.079 Deborah Heiser: and those are the people who say, Hey, yeah, I'll help you. I'd be delighted to do that. And then we say, Oh, great! Thank you. And when we see someone else who we may be able to help, we offer to help them. And that's how mentorship generally works with its most impact. However, if you want to think about it in a hierarchical way that we're most familiar with.
00:09:32.410 --> 00:09:45.650 Deborah Heiser: that is where an expert who is above us. If we're the Mentee has a desire to help us, an innate desire. They say I would love to help this person. They're not getting paid.
00:09:45.650 --> 00:10:08.290 Deborah Heiser: It's intrinsically motivated. They feel meaningfully connected to the person. So if you hear somebody say, I have a toxic mentor, that's not a mentor, you have to actually both be connected with each other and like each other, trust each other. If you feel like the person is going to steal your idea, you're not in a mentoring relationship. If you feel that you can't
00:10:08.290 --> 00:10:30.840 Deborah Heiser: tell the person that you have a vulnerability, that you don't know something because you're afraid that your job will be impacted by it. That's not a mentor, and you need a goal can be ever changing. But there should be a goal. It could be as simple as can you tell me the lay of the land. Can you tell me the rules for this? Can you give me some guidance? And it's as simple as that? So
00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:43.539 Deborah Heiser: mentorship is all around us. We should have as many mentors and mentees as we possibly can. We should never say I have a mentor, we should say, here's 1 of my mentors.
00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:57.920 Mira Brancu: Yeah, yeah, I have a million thoughts going in multiple directions. But I'm gonna focus in one which is just to pull out and highlight a couple of things that I think are really important about what you said. One is
00:10:58.060 --> 00:10:59.490 Mira Brancu: yes.
00:11:00.200 --> 00:11:10.989 Mira Brancu: anyone can be a mentor. It doesn't have to be a hierarchical. They know better than me. In all areas or whatever. And that
00:11:11.140 --> 00:11:12.650 Mira Brancu: multiple, you
00:11:12.940 --> 00:11:35.699 Mira Brancu: you can and should have multiple mentors because you can't rely on one person to give you all the things that you need, and some might be the work mentor that guides you to a specific area within work, and one might be within your personal life, and another might be where you might want to aim for your next career, and another might be
00:11:36.350 --> 00:11:45.160 Mira Brancu: you know, grandma, who shows you how to do you know, Cook, all the things that you wanted to cook, and all of these things. All of those people
00:11:45.824 --> 00:11:53.445 Mira Brancu: develop us and help us be better. And we often think you know
00:11:54.210 --> 00:12:12.279 Mira Brancu: of all of that applying to just when we're young, right? Like all the people who are helping us grow. But we need that for all of our lives, for the rest of our lives, not just like when we're children to be surrounded by people who could elevate us. And it's reminding me when you describe the lateral, especially
00:12:12.817 --> 00:12:41.382 Mira Brancu: that is a lot of maybe how I felt in the forefront program is we were surrounded by people we could contribute to their success. They could contribute to our success. We weren't, you know. Nobody was like ahead in all the things. Some people were ahead here, and some people were, you know, had mastered this thing, and some people knew more about that thing, and we were able to sort of contribute. And I'm especially curious about something you said related to that. You said
00:12:41.740 --> 00:12:50.439 Mira Brancu: not in these words exactly, but that lateral mentorship might be more powerful than hierarchical. I'd love to hear more about why.
00:12:50.880 --> 00:12:56.559 Deborah Heiser: A 100%. I would say that is super accurate. And here's why every big
00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:01.340 Deborah Heiser: impact that we've seen has been due to lateral mentorship.
00:13:01.761 --> 00:13:09.929 Deborah Heiser: The founding of our country was a bunch of guys who no one was the boss, and they came together and they founded the United States. It's still going.
00:13:10.200 --> 00:13:13.450 Deborah Heiser: And if you look at all of the big tech
00:13:13.720 --> 00:13:27.910 Deborah Heiser: companies that have started, it wasn't 1 guy in a garage, and it wasn't 1 person. It was lateral mentors, people, you know, a hardware engineer and a software engineer who got together. So when we see people who have done things like
00:13:28.700 --> 00:13:48.410 Deborah Heiser: discovered how to create the network firewall. That wasn't 1 guy he needed to wheelie himself down in his office chair to somebody else who had more expertise in him in that area. And that person said, Yeah, I'll help you. So if you look at every big discovery it came from lateral mentoring.
00:13:49.180 --> 00:13:56.149 Mira Brancu: So interesting. I had never thought about it that way. You also talk about reverse
00:13:56.310 --> 00:14:01.939 Mira Brancu: mentoring and peer mentoring. And how do those differ from hierarchical and lateral.
00:14:02.440 --> 00:14:19.530 Deborah Heiser: So if you look at reverse mentoring, that really is hierarchical, it's just in the reverse. But the thing that most people think of with reverse mentoring is that there's a devaluation of it. They almost think of the mentor, which is often in the mentee position, you know, younger
00:14:19.530 --> 00:14:44.480 Deborah Heiser: as being less helpful that they can maybe teach us how to work our phones and do the tech. But in reality, if you're thinking about any company or anything in the world. If you do not understand the culture or values of that younger generation, and you are relying on your own, you will miss the mark whether it's sales, or if it's trying to make a breakthrough or find something new that's happening in the world.
00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:55.660 Deborah Heiser: you know, with that cohort that's really the power of reverse mentoring, and we saw that with Jack Welsh, who really talked about the importance of that in the late nineties.
00:14:56.230 --> 00:14:59.040 Mira Brancu: Very interesting. What about peer mentorship? So.
00:14:59.040 --> 00:14:59.849 Deborah Heiser: Peer, mentors.
00:14:59.850 --> 00:15:00.230 Mira Brancu: No matter.
00:15:00.230 --> 00:15:19.179 Deborah Heiser: It's similar to lateral. But it's it's really where you have the cohort that is already created there. So it might be. Fellow students who are working together. It could be peers that are put together in the workplace. But it's it's less or organic than it is when you're looking at lateral mentoring, where you're just kind of
00:15:19.310 --> 00:15:24.250 Deborah Heiser: seeing who's around you and not looking at their age, or where they are, or anything like that.
00:15:24.470 --> 00:15:25.290 Mira Brancu: Got it.
00:15:25.732 --> 00:15:32.329 Mira Brancu: Really interesting. And I am noticing we're reaching an ad break when we come back.
00:15:32.751 --> 00:15:50.019 Mira Brancu: I want to dig into something else that you started talking about, which is when we think we're being in. We're in a mentoring relationship. But in fact, it's a toxic situation or not actually mentorship. I'd love to hear more about
00:15:50.312 --> 00:16:15.480 Mira Brancu: how to know those versus how to know a healthy mentorship situation. So you're listening to the hard skills with me. Dr. Mira Branku and our guest today, Dr. Deborah Heiser, author of the Mentorship Edge. We air on 5 at 5 Pm. Eastern, and at that time you can find us live streaming. If you're listening to us right now and watching, we're on Linkedin Youtube. Several other locations@talkradio.nyc. And we'll be right back with our guests in just a moment.
00:17:58.360 --> 00:18:08.240 Mira Brancu: Welcome. Welcome back to the hard skills with me. Dr. Mira Branku and our guest today, Dr. Deborah Heiser, who is the author of the mentorship edge, and
00:18:08.890 --> 00:18:28.280 Mira Brancu: I would love to dig in more on. You know you started giving us some examples of what mentorship is, not when we think, oh, that's my mentor. But in fact, it's really unhealthy. So what are some of those signs that we should realize? No, that's not mentorship that's really unhealthy. And what should we we be looking for instead.
00:18:28.870 --> 00:18:45.139 Deborah Heiser: Sure. Let me let me give a definition of mentorship. It's kind of like a recipe, right? So. And I'll explain it so that it hopefully makes sense in the sense that I can relate to brownies. If I bake brownies. I know that there's 5 ingredients that go into it.
00:18:45.490 --> 00:18:48.170 Deborah Heiser: and if I mistake
00:18:48.480 --> 00:18:52.969 Deborah Heiser: putting in sugar, and I don't put it in. It's going to look like the brownies, but it won't taste like it.
00:18:52.970 --> 00:18:53.500 Mira Brancu: Hmm.
00:18:53.500 --> 00:19:18.570 Deborah Heiser: So that I think of kind of like when people say I have a toxic mentor, it might look like mentorship. But it's not so here's what mentorship is. You have to 1st start with somebody feeling generative, and that person is saying, Hey, I have something to give. Mentoring is led by the mentor. We often think I'm just going to go look for somebody who'll give me something right? It's a grab.
00:19:18.670 --> 00:19:41.739 Deborah Heiser: and that's really not how it is, if we think of it outside of the workplace, it's easy to see that's the person passing down the culture and the values and the other things in the household nobody's little, and saying, Give me some values and culture. It is being passed down from above to someone below who's younger. So it needs to start with that, it also needs somebody to say, I want what you're giving
00:19:42.460 --> 00:19:49.260 Deborah Heiser: so we need both of those. That's the generativity component. It also needs to be intrinsically motivated.
00:19:49.700 --> 00:20:10.340 Deborah Heiser: Because if I said to somebody, Hey, would you like to go volunteer at a soup kitchen? And you said, Yeah, you know what I'd love to go do that. And if I said, I know you're 5 min away from getting to the soup kitchen to volunteer your time to give food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people. You know what turn left. Go to Starbucks
00:20:10.450 --> 00:20:36.350 Deborah Heiser: and volunteer your time there that feels really different, even though you're giving food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people. So if it's not intrinsically motivated, if somebody at work is saying, you must mentor, or you know what we're going to put mentoring as a checkbox here that's working at Star that's volunteering at Starbucks. It's got that negative connotation to it. And that's what we see. A lot of times. Also.
00:20:36.977 --> 00:20:41.630 Deborah Heiser: You need to have a meaningful connection. You have to like the person.
00:20:41.710 --> 00:21:09.349 Deborah Heiser: This is like friendship, you know. If you you could have a lot of people that come across your path, and you say, fine individuals, but they're not my people. And then suddenly somebody comes up and you're like, there's my person. You have to have that feeling with your mentor where it's a meaningful connection, and you actually feel that connection. So if you're afraid to talk to your mentor, or if you're a mentor, and you're like, I just don't get my mentee. It's not mentorship, that's you know, something else.
00:21:09.610 --> 00:21:26.579 Deborah Heiser: You also need to trust the person. So if I said, Oh, I'm really nervous about telling Mira about all the things that I don't know. She's going to judge me, and you know what she might not give me a promotion, or she might tell all my friends that I don't know this.
00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:38.980 Deborah Heiser: That's not trusting. That's being really worried about vulnerability. And likewise, if the mentor is saying, I'm not going to tell that person something, they're going to steal my idea and run away with it.
00:21:39.210 --> 00:21:58.309 Deborah Heiser: That's another issue. And finally, there has to be a goal. Otherwise, you know your friends, and you're chit chatting. So if you have all of these components. You can see very clearly when it's mentorship, and not so when a person says, Oh, my gosh! I have this mentor who's so toxic. It's not your mentor.
00:21:58.470 --> 00:22:04.239 Deborah Heiser: If somebody says I really dread meeting with my mentor, they're not your mentor.
00:22:04.797 --> 00:22:21.059 Deborah Heiser: If somebody, if there's anything in there that is a hesitation or a feeling of, you know, despair or unease with that person. They're not your mentor, and that's where it makes it really easy. So if a person says to themselves.
00:22:21.370 --> 00:22:30.800 Deborah Heiser: Oh, I thought I had a mentor. But really the person is somebody that I just tolerate. You're you can easily see where that is and isn't.
00:22:31.180 --> 00:22:41.149 Mira Brancu: Yeah, those are great criteria. And it brings up a a couple of thoughts. Couple of questions. One is
00:22:41.670 --> 00:22:42.470 Mira Brancu: I.
00:22:43.450 --> 00:22:52.819 Mira Brancu: I have had experiences both with people who saw me as a mentor, and I didn't know that. And then they claimed me as their mentor, and I was
00:22:52.980 --> 00:23:02.400 Mira Brancu: surprised because I saw it as a mute, you know, just a relationship of a peer to peer and then other situations where
00:23:02.740 --> 00:23:13.030 Mira Brancu: other people claimed to be my mentor, and we've never we never established it, and they sort of claimed me as more of a narcissistic extension of themselves.
00:23:13.566 --> 00:23:25.353 Mira Brancu: To I don't know. Demonstrate how well they're doing through me, and I would love to hear more about like, where does that fall? And
00:23:26.120 --> 00:23:32.620 Mira Brancu: How does somebody sort of manage when it's claimed, but not agreed upon.
00:23:33.120 --> 00:23:53.059 Deborah Heiser: Such a good question, and we're seeing a little bit of a shift in this with more modern mentoring. But look, if somebody thinks that the narcissistic extension, not mentorship. So if somebody's saying you are my mentee, and the person is like, I didn't get anything I wanted from you that's not mentorship. But if you
00:23:53.190 --> 00:24:10.119 Deborah Heiser: found that you gave something to someone and you didn't know it, and that person felt really meaningfully connected to you then that's oftentimes a modern form of mentorship. And let me explain that your podcasting, when mentorship was 1st thought about, there weren't podcasts.
00:24:10.330 --> 00:24:14.339 Deborah Heiser: Now, people who download and listen to what you are giving
00:24:14.670 --> 00:24:24.869 Deborah Heiser: are oftentimes meaningfully connected to what you are saying and what you're giving out. You haven't met them, but all the criteria have met, except that meaningful connection is more one sided.
00:24:25.190 --> 00:24:46.499 Deborah Heiser: but that is, you know, a less. It would be a less strong mentorship, but it still qualifies as more of a modern mentorship. And that's because we're entering more of a digital age. And we're hearing more people who are saying, I have become a changed individual because of this person's podcast because of this person's
00:24:47.630 --> 00:24:51.689 Deborah Heiser: social media presence because of this person's
00:24:52.010 --> 00:25:06.709 Deborah Heiser: wisdom that I'm getting in some way that didn't exist like even 10 years ago. So that is where I'd say that that can exist in that form. And you may never know that you've mentored someone, but they very much feel mentored by you.
00:25:07.080 --> 00:25:14.160 Mira Brancu: That is so interesting. But that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so my other sort of
00:25:15.340 --> 00:25:23.669 Mira Brancu: question is you you 1st mentioned about the generativity? And that it's led by the mentor.
00:25:24.150 --> 00:25:30.740 Mira Brancu: And so the big question, I think, on lots of people's minds is so many people are looking for mentors.
00:25:30.970 --> 00:25:44.289 Mira Brancu: I am always desperate for more mentors in my life. Right? And so if it's led by the Mentor, a lot of people ask, but how do I find one? If I really need a mentor to blah blah to, you know. Help me with certain things.
00:25:44.610 --> 00:25:47.619 Mira Brancu: but it's led by the mentor. What do I do?
00:25:48.460 --> 00:25:49.230 Mira Brancu: What would you say.
00:25:49.950 --> 00:25:56.220 Deborah Heiser: In this case there's several different things. One is, you know, you can. One is an example of
00:25:56.730 --> 00:26:07.219 Deborah Heiser: Irene. This is in the book she went to. She was a person who was part of NASA, worked on the mission to Mercury super competent. She then left and went to Ibm.
00:26:07.650 --> 00:26:24.370 Deborah Heiser: Super competent, but she was super nervous, totally different place. She didn't know the lay of the land she was like. I don't even know where to go. What I need to do for lunch like it was basic. And she was really feeling vulnerable because of that
00:26:24.550 --> 00:26:34.809 Deborah Heiser: she went to in her 1st day or 2, you know, big meeting, and somebody who was speaking said, You know, if anybody's like a mentor, I'm available. Anything you want, I'm available.
00:26:34.900 --> 00:27:02.260 Deborah Heiser: She reached out to that person and said, I just need a lay of the land that ended up lasting like 4 years, but because she had a small goal. That's 1 thing. Start with a small goal. Don't say I'm looking for somebody to change my life. So the other way that you can do this is if you have a specific small goal. It's very easy to put it out there and say, can anyone help me with this? Anybody able to give guidance? And if it's a digestible bite
00:27:02.470 --> 00:27:07.939 Deborah Heiser: you can have that led by the mentor. Who then says, I have this wisdom is this of interest to you.
00:27:08.360 --> 00:27:16.499 Deborah Heiser: and that's where it's still led by the mentor, but it's based on a need that's presented by the mentee. So in the workplace
00:27:16.780 --> 00:27:25.000 Deborah Heiser: I always suggest that people give a digestible goal. That is easy for somebody to say. This fits in my wheelhouse.
00:27:25.170 --> 00:27:38.179 Deborah Heiser: and then it's still led by that mentor, and the people can decide. Does this match up for me? Do I like this person? Do I trust this person, and you can work on it from there. If it doesn't, it's an easy exit.
00:27:38.683 --> 00:27:47.459 Deborah Heiser: But if you're in it outside of work and you're looking for things, we see this all the time. How many chats are there where people say, does anybody know this?
00:27:47.600 --> 00:28:01.489 Deborah Heiser: How can I get this? That's mentorship? People are asking for a mentor. In many cases it's just not labeled that. And then somebody says, Yeah, here I have that information. It's still led by the mentor. But people are putting the asks out there.
00:28:02.070 --> 00:28:22.440 Mira Brancu: Brilliant, such a practical, easy takeaway. Every single person listening to this right now can easily do this if they're looking for some mentorship in a specific area with a specific thing. Right? Okay, we are going to get to an ad break in just a sec. But I have one question before we go.
00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:25.990 Mira Brancu: which is there's this message in your book
00:28:26.320 --> 00:28:36.519 Mira Brancu: that gives me so much hope, and I just loved it, and I would love to hear just a little bit more about it. You said we are inherently wired to share.
00:28:36.700 --> 00:28:41.260 Mira Brancu: not hoard, our emotional wealth.
00:28:41.830 --> 00:28:52.330 Mira Brancu: We're inherently wired to share, not hoard our emotional wealth from a developmental psychology perspective. Tell me more about what we can take away from that.
00:28:53.020 --> 00:29:03.479 Deborah Heiser: We are built to give, and people will say, That's so, not true. I want more for myself. But by the time we hit midlife, and we've checked all those boxes.
00:29:03.600 --> 00:29:07.440 Deborah Heiser: We take a look at ourselves, and we say, Is this it?
00:29:08.410 --> 00:29:10.859 Deborah Heiser: Is it just more boxes to check?
00:29:11.010 --> 00:29:15.989 Deborah Heiser: Did I mean anything in the world? Do I have a footprint? How deep is it?
00:29:16.200 --> 00:29:18.619 Deborah Heiser: Who am I in this world? And do I matter?
00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:40.049 Deborah Heiser: And what happens is then we want to give, because it's a little piece of us, and when we see somebody takes it, it gives us relevance, value, purpose, usefulness. We get to have our footprint just go a little deeper every time we see that our our wisdom and our expertise and our guidance gets embedded in somebody else.
00:29:40.560 --> 00:29:42.750 Mira Brancu: Yes, yes. So
00:29:42.950 --> 00:29:49.229 Mira Brancu: when we come back from the ad break, I would love to dig in more into.
00:29:49.530 --> 00:30:04.909 Mira Brancu: Let's say I'm now inspired to be that mentor for others to leave that legacy to see how I can make you know an impact in the world. And I'd love to hear more about like.
00:30:04.960 --> 00:30:29.890 Mira Brancu: how do I know if I'm ready to be a mentor? What should I be sort of thinking about? How might I mistake, confuse, create problems in the way that I'm doing it. So that's what I'd love to dig into when we come back. You are listening to the hard skills with me, Dr. Mira Branco and our guest today, Dr. Deborah Heiser, the author of the Mentorship Edge, and we will be right back in just a moment.
00:32:01.090 --> 00:32:24.199 Mira Brancu: All right. Well, I suspect that you have at this point inspired some people to start thinking a little bit more about this. And now, they're like, okay, I want to make a bigger impact. I want to leave a footprint here, you know an impact. How should I be thinking about mentorship in a way that isn't confusing it with
00:32:24.260 --> 00:32:32.860 Mira Brancu: advising, coaching, sponsoring, other roles that I could have in somebody's life. What should I be thinking.
00:32:33.690 --> 00:32:36.280 Deborah Heiser: 1st you should be thinking, have all of those roles
00:32:36.450 --> 00:32:48.500 Deborah Heiser: we should be doing all of those. So I always say, you know I teach at a university, and students will come to me, and they'll say, Oh, my gosh! You're such a good mentor, and I say, no, I'm I'm advising you right now. This is part of my job. I get paid for it.
00:32:48.720 --> 00:33:08.559 Deborah Heiser: I'm doing a good job. Then I feel like, yay, they are getting something out of what I'm doing. That makes me a good teacher. We should be thinking of sponsorship as sponsorship coaching. The goal is for the company. Get you to your goal wherever it is that you're going for the company or for the job, or whatever that is.
00:33:08.790 --> 00:33:24.349 Deborah Heiser: Mentoring is emotional. It's an emotional goal that you have. So what do you want as a mentor to give back of yourself? What is it about you that you want to be known for that? You want people to hold inside themselves.
00:33:24.470 --> 00:33:25.510 Deborah Heiser: is it?
00:33:26.100 --> 00:33:28.449 Deborah Heiser: You know some kind of a
00:33:29.170 --> 00:33:38.939 Deborah Heiser: cultural thing? Is it a value? Is it something from work? I'll tell you. Most people don't think of work as their biggest mentoring impact.
00:33:39.030 --> 00:34:05.590 Deborah Heiser: you know. We will not remember Bob from an accounting department and hit, you know, necessarily. But we will remember those little recipe cards that our grandparents passed down from generation to generation, or whatever it is. That's in our tradition familiarly. So don't put too much thought into. I must make it highbrow or high level, or something like that.
00:34:05.590 --> 00:34:09.260 Deborah Heiser: Think of what it is that you want your lasting impact to be.
00:34:09.310 --> 00:34:21.449 Deborah Heiser: And that's usually something really easy to tap into, because you know what your values are when people have children, they say, here are the things that I want for my children.
00:34:21.650 --> 00:34:38.339 Deborah Heiser: so they don't have to think much about it. They don't have to say, let me go tap into some kind of wisdom book. The things that often make it difficult are when people say I'm going to put together a training to be a good mentor. And I'm going to make sure that people follow a script
00:34:38.580 --> 00:34:49.940 Deborah Heiser: that generally doesn't work. And the reason for that is because if you go to make a friend or you're interacting with somebody that you're meaningfully connected with. You don't have a script.
00:34:50.150 --> 00:35:15.369 Deborah Heiser: You're just doing what you do. Nobody has to tell you. Hey? Listen! When your Mentee talks to you. Think about it. If you're with your friend, if you're not listening, you're not a friend like if you're throwing somebody under the bus, you're not their friend. So it's just as simple as that. So the really important takeaway for somebody who says I want to mentor is.
00:35:15.490 --> 00:35:21.920 Deborah Heiser: look for somebody who needs something that you can give. That's as simple as that.
00:35:22.180 --> 00:35:31.309 Deborah Heiser: and that can be. I'll give an example. I was in graduate school. I happen to know Kappa statistics. Another student didn't.
00:35:31.510 --> 00:35:45.720 Deborah Heiser: And it was in the olden days when it cost a million dollars to call somebody on a cell phone. So when I got a call in my externship. I knew it was an emergency. My fellow student got on and she's whisper talking.
00:35:46.420 --> 00:36:08.939 Deborah Heiser: Can you tell me how to do Kappa statistics. It's I have a project, and it's, you know, an externship is something where they give you a report at the end, and it gets you to the next level of where you need to be in graduate school. And I said, I do. I taught her and walked her through and guided her with Kappa statistics. She did her project, and off she went.
00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:26.509 Deborah Heiser: That was me, saying, I can do this. I know this one small little thing, and I can do that now. Did I ask her a million times for other things? Yes, so think about the little things that we know can do, like like we've done it every day. It feels like breathing to us.
00:36:26.760 --> 00:36:39.859 Deborah Heiser: and that is where you're going to be able to make your impact. Do not think you have to go and give out some kind of a new way of thinking in life. It can just be something pretty basic that moves someone along.
00:36:40.260 --> 00:36:42.803 Mira Brancu: Yeah, I really appreciate that. I wonder.
00:36:43.830 --> 00:36:54.669 Mira Brancu: you know what I'm hearing in this is realistic, achievable. That it just comes naturally. I also the wonder
00:36:55.527 --> 00:37:23.069 Mira Brancu: what you might tell folks. A lot of people who who listen to the show are also social justice advocates, and they they want to make a big difference. And what happens to them is they can easily become overwhelmed and burned out because they want to change the world and rescue everybody, and it can be so big and so overwhelming that
00:37:23.320 --> 00:37:29.199 Mira Brancu: the the very strengths that they have that they can bring to the world become, you know, too much.
00:37:29.340 --> 00:37:52.069 Mira Brancu: And I'm really curious. How do we balance the realistic achievable? You can almost like fall over yourself doing while also feeling like you are achieving the legacy you have in your own mind around the quote, unquote, changing the world, ideas.
00:37:52.770 --> 00:38:15.120 Deborah Heiser: I love that question because most of us think you have to have your name up in lights in order to feel like you've made an impact. But think about that. That is reflection on you. It does not mean there's a reflection out to everybody else. So I had the privilege of talking to Bob Lefkowitz. He was the 2012 chemistry Nobel Prize winner.
00:38:15.230 --> 00:38:17.179 Deborah Heiser: and he said to me.
00:38:17.710 --> 00:38:39.769 Deborah Heiser: I really wanted to know how I became the Nobel Prize winner. I'm like a guy that was from the Bronx. How did this happen? So? He created a legacy tree and like you would see an ancestry.com! And he mapped out all the people who were his mentors, and then he couldn't really figure out how many mentees he had, but he put those that he knew that were in there.
00:38:40.090 --> 00:38:55.690 Deborah Heiser: and he, of course, published it in a peer reviewed journal article, because that's what Nobel Prize winners do. They don't just put it in their desk, and he went to a conference. 2 weeks later, after it was published, and somebody came up to him and he said, Hey, Bob, I'm 6 degrees Lefkowitz.
00:38:56.110 --> 00:39:07.370 Deborah Heiser: and Bob said, What do you mean? And he said, Well, there are 5 people who've worked between you and me. I saw your chart, your like, your legacy tree. And Bob said, Oh, wow! So tell me what you're doing.
00:39:07.540 --> 00:39:08.999 Deborah Heiser: And the guy told him.
00:39:09.250 --> 00:39:23.180 Deborah Heiser: and Bob was so floored. He said it was so impactful right behind, you know, having his wife and children because he got to see how far his impact went 6 degrees, and it didn't stop there.
00:39:23.590 --> 00:39:26.590 Deborah Heiser: So when we think of the impact.
00:39:26.900 --> 00:39:45.020 Deborah Heiser: he didn't put something so huge out. But we know that if we put it out in one. It doesn't stop there. That person then passes it along, and it goes out farther and farther like a ripple. So, while we often think I need to see myself in lights in order to feel like I make impact in the world.
00:39:45.350 --> 00:39:56.910 Deborah Heiser: It's really that you need to see that you have connected meaningfully with at least one person, because that is where that ripple is going to be. So advocates. I get it. I'm 1, too.
00:39:57.000 --> 00:40:15.510 Deborah Heiser: I want to see people mentoring it has to start one person at a time to get that ripple effect. And you are making way more impact than you know when you're in advocacy or social justice, it's just harder to see it while it's out there.
00:40:15.904 --> 00:40:31.285 Mira Brancu: I love so much about this. You know, first, st just from a personal perspective. When I started my company. It's a social impact company. And I had this vision of that ripple effect that you described that
00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:38.860 Mira Brancu: if I could just influence you know, the the people who were getting services from me.
00:40:39.160 --> 00:40:53.679 Mira Brancu: and then influence them to pay it forward. That like that's gonna have a longer, lasting, farther impact greater reach. And most likely I will never know
00:40:53.680 --> 00:41:17.989 Mira Brancu: what that is right. But that was sort of like the the original idea. But I do like the idea of this legacy tree. I went to a retirement party recently for someone who was a faculty member, and he had this tree. He had that tree up, and it showed how his mentorship worked all the way back to
00:41:18.180 --> 00:41:26.867 Mira Brancu: one of the 1st forefathers of psychology, William James, within the United States, which is like mind blowing
00:41:27.550 --> 00:41:40.779 Mira Brancu: and you know, recently, my, my spouse. And I also have had this discussion because he's been curious. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because he's gonna listen to this. I'm going to make him listen to this and see what you say about it.
00:41:41.290 --> 00:42:05.609 Mira Brancu: you know, he looks online and and tracks. These people who are trying to make a massive statement online on social media right and trying to advocate and make big statements to gather more people around these ideas around areas of concern that they want to see a change in.
00:42:05.840 --> 00:42:09.410 Mira Brancu: And when he sees this he starts wondering to himself.
00:42:09.710 --> 00:42:28.669 Mira Brancu: am I supposed to do this, too, and how much? And do I have the capacity and what? At what level of influence? And you know, I think for him. He gets kind of overwhelmed with, am I making enough impact? And my response was.
00:42:29.086 --> 00:42:41.139 Mira Brancu: You know I I can't. You can't boil the ocean right and so I can only think about my sphere of influence. And I could also curate that I could look
00:42:41.380 --> 00:43:09.079 Mira Brancu: to see you know who's in my sphere of influence online. And do I let these folks in because they're curious and kind and interested in leaning in? Or do I not let them in because they're creating havoc and hurt, and that is influence. And that is something within my control, too. So I'm just curious, like when it comes to the online space.
00:43:09.290 --> 00:43:17.069 Mira Brancu: and that mentorship or influence. What are your thoughts on how people can think about it in a way that's not overwhelming.
00:43:18.020 --> 00:43:37.284 Deborah Heiser: So I tell everyone to look at everything in digestible bites. And I'm glad that you said this, and your husband is like all of us right, you know, when I see something big it's overwhelming, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh! What do I do with this? That's why I always say, put it down to as small as you can, because you can always grow it larger. So
00:43:37.810 --> 00:43:41.619 Deborah Heiser: in terms of us being online and looking at things.
00:43:41.650 --> 00:44:11.100 Deborah Heiser: You know, you can do a little bit of tracking. You know that. How many downloads you have from your podcast that gives you an idea of who's interested in what you're looking at. If you are doing a blog, you'll be able to see, maybe, how many people are reading what you're what you're writing. If you are looking to make you know statements that are out there, you can make those digestible statements that someone can do something with, and then you can maybe see that it's making its way out there.
00:44:11.100 --> 00:44:31.429 Deborah Heiser: That was something that I was really interested in, because we were able to quantify the impact in some levels with the mentor project being able to see how many mentoring hours people had, and to start the quantification process. And that's where I'm going with my legacy tree is to really allow people to quantify
00:44:31.430 --> 00:44:51.020 Deborah Heiser: their legacies similar to like. You can go in and quantify your ancestry, I just think. Gee! I don't know what great Aunt Mary's done for me, but I can see what a mentor has, or someone who's volunteered, or someone who's donated money. Those ways that we give
00:44:51.020 --> 00:45:04.080 Deborah Heiser: that can be quantified. It's tricky. But if you're online, look at the digestible bites, because then you'll be able to follow how they make it look for the hashtags. Look for things like that that you can track.
00:45:04.570 --> 00:45:24.110 Mira Brancu: Super interesting. We are reaching an ad break. I would love to hear a little bit more about this legacy tree and quantifying because my son has started digging into our just, you know, family tree and developing an entire genealogy thing. And you know part of us is like.
00:45:24.300 --> 00:45:31.060 Mira Brancu: Oh, I hope we don't find out something awful that we wanna don't wanna own about our legacy right?
00:45:31.655 --> 00:45:55.110 Mira Brancu: And so this is another way to to say it doesn't have to be bloodlines here that creates a positive influence. It! It can be beyond that. And I would be very curious to hear more about this. When we come back. You're listening to the hard skills with me, Dr. Mayor Branco and our guest today, Dr. Deborah Heiser of the mentorship edge. And we'll be right back.
00:47:41.760 --> 00:47:44.534 Mira Brancu: Welcome. Welcome back. Okay, so
00:47:45.280 --> 00:47:58.648 Mira Brancu: Dr. Heiser is now starting to transition from mentorship to like, what does this mean? And she's the founder of my legacy tree. And so, Debbie, I
00:47:59.480 --> 00:48:01.710 Mira Brancu: would love to hear more about, like.
00:48:02.210 --> 00:48:05.929 Mira Brancu: you know, going beyond the traditional
00:48:06.505 --> 00:48:18.400 Mira Brancu: genealogy tree and into just a legacy tree. What? What is that? And what are you learning that we could apply around tracking that.
00:48:18.950 --> 00:48:34.479 Deborah Heiser: So I had heard from so many people, you know, kind of like you were giving the example of your husband would like to know, like what's happening out there, what impact is there? We're all craving impact, especially in midlife, when we're having the idea that I want to know that
00:48:34.620 --> 00:48:50.729 Deborah Heiser: that I matter. Well, how do you know if you matter if you don't know what impact you've made? So you know one of the ways that we can sort of look at that is to put it out there like my legacy tree. So when I spoke with Bob Lefkowitz.
00:48:50.730 --> 00:49:09.729 Deborah Heiser: he had actually given away to see who his mentees were, and he could sort of track that. So we're looking to be able to do that, not just with mentorship, but volunteering and philanthropy as well, because we all have that desire to know where our impact is, and it's as simple as
00:49:10.010 --> 00:49:14.450 Deborah Heiser: mapping out. You know. You said that you didn't even know that you had mentored people.
00:49:14.540 --> 00:49:41.439 Deborah Heiser: Well, you know. Imagine if you have a the ability to do that, to find that people can say, hey? I'm going to connect with you, Mira, and I'm going to let you know that you mentored me. You're going to find all of this gold out there, you know, we can now find ourselves to be the most precious natural resources that exist. And that's because we'll be able to see our impact in those ways. We do it now pretty well with
00:49:41.911 --> 00:49:53.848 Deborah Heiser: donation and volunteering. But people forget about their donations until tax time, and they're like, Oh, what was my impact this year. What did I donate? But keeping it all close and
00:49:54.590 --> 00:50:06.380 Deborah Heiser: together in in one place, will allow a person to see how they, as a whole person, make impact in many different ways, and then to see how others are impacting as well. Because
00:50:06.400 --> 00:50:33.230 Deborah Heiser: imagine if you say, Oh, I want to connect with that person. They might be able to mentor me, or I didn't know I could volunteer here, or oh, that's a place I didn't know I wanted to support through. You know, financial donation. It allows us to see where that impact can go and makes more of a spider web or the big ancestry.com tree for us to really follow and see our impact.
00:50:33.230 --> 00:50:39.400 Deborah Heiser: So we're lucky that we're in a digital age because it was really hard to do that beforehand, but now we can.
00:50:39.840 --> 00:50:43.910 Mira Brancu: Yeah, it sounds so much like how
00:50:44.240 --> 00:50:59.660 Mira Brancu: my dad also started a genealogy tree on my side on you know of the family. My son started on my husband's side. And now they're they're like connecting online trying to share information. Is that kind of how you're envisioning? Yeah.
00:50:59.660 --> 00:51:00.800 Deborah Heiser: It's similar.
00:51:00.800 --> 00:51:02.090 Mira Brancu: Yeah, and.
00:51:02.090 --> 00:51:08.500 Deborah Heiser: So we yeah, exactly. You know, we see this out there with the with genealogy like you've mentioned.
00:51:08.680 --> 00:51:19.900 Deborah Heiser: and some people are excited by their genealogy. But it's very superficial in many ways for people, because you get the excitement. And then you're like, I don't even know these people.
00:51:20.110 --> 00:51:34.450 Deborah Heiser: And so it sort of flattens it. But when you see yourself in every single component that's there, it doesn't. It has a longer, it has a never ending, lasting feeling of impact or connection.
00:51:34.730 --> 00:51:42.272 Mira Brancu: And I also appreciate that because, you know, just like thinking about how some people see their mentors.
00:51:43.400 --> 00:51:44.500 Mira Brancu: as
00:51:45.038 --> 00:52:00.980 Mira Brancu: practice, you know. I've heard people say he's like a father, a second father or my professional father right? And same thing, you know. Adding the volunteer work in philanthropy, I mean boy, you know we forget
00:52:01.330 --> 00:52:18.400 Mira Brancu: the you're right. We forget where we put our efforts in that have made a difference, and the way that could bring back meaning to our lives when you know, especially for for people who are searching for
00:52:19.148 --> 00:52:41.519 Mira Brancu: meaning or who have lost it. You know I'm thinking about you know, folks I know in my life that are questioning, you know all of that, and just being able to see you have made an impact. And here's where. And here's how. And here's what's happening with that organization because of your work. And here's what's happening. You know. There, that's very inspirational.
00:52:42.350 --> 00:52:57.030 Deborah Heiser: I'm hoping it is for people, because it. The inspiration for me was, you know, it's a wonderful life, the movie. And he got to see what his impact was. And most of us don't get to see that impact.
00:52:57.150 --> 00:53:00.510 Deborah Heiser: or we see just a tiny part of it. And we're sort of.
00:53:01.110 --> 00:53:07.160 Deborah Heiser: I guess I don't want to say trained, but from an early age it's we are not
00:53:07.180 --> 00:53:19.529 Deborah Heiser: taught to absorb our impact and to remember how important it was that we volunteered. It's a checkbox for us, and then we lose that feeling of impact
00:53:19.530 --> 00:53:38.780 Deborah Heiser: when we mentor someone. Oh, I helped somebody out. We don't say thank you for mentoring me, and when people do that, I bet you felt pretty good when that person was you were shocked. But wow! How nice that I actually impacted someone. And the same with philanthropy. You know, if you round up at a grocery store, you may not think that you're making a difference.
00:53:38.780 --> 00:53:50.399 Deborah Heiser: But when you put your 62 cents into an organization along with thousands of other people, you just got maybe a kid to college, or you got something else to happen. And so
00:53:50.450 --> 00:54:05.899 Deborah Heiser: we're we're never taught to absorb all of that and hold it closely so that we can feel like we are people making our communities richer or our world a closer place.
00:54:06.480 --> 00:54:24.880 Mira Brancu: I also see this as a way to combat the influence of end. Stage capitalism, where it's produce produce. Nothing is ever enough, and we never feel like we're enough. And this is a way to say No. Actually, you have
00:54:24.880 --> 00:54:43.730 Mira Brancu: already put in a lot. And there's other ways to quote unquote produce in the in, you know, through these mentorship, philanthropy, volunteerism ways. And you could you could look at that it's a it's a beautiful way to counteract all of that other messaging.
00:54:44.300 --> 00:54:49.680 Deborah Heiser: Oh, for sure, you know, if you look at the movie, it's a wonderful life. None of his
00:54:49.860 --> 00:55:02.499 Deborah Heiser: life changed. He still had the same family, the same house with the broken like a hand railing, and everything else. But he was able to look at it differently through a different lens. It was a refocus.
00:55:02.500 --> 00:55:02.950 Mira Brancu: And.
00:55:03.020 --> 00:55:10.940 Deborah Heiser: When we see our impact, it's a refocus for us, because we can say, I did this. And usually that means that we want to do more
00:55:11.050 --> 00:55:36.030 Deborah Heiser: that elevates it, and we become much more connected, much more giving and much more, saying, I want to make a bigger impact like. So like your husband was saying, gee! How do I know, or how can I make a bigger impact? You can track it and see it and say, I'm going to go down this rabbit hole, and I'm going to see how far I can go to make more impact. Or you could say, this just isn't what I thought it would be. I'm going to focus now on this, because I can
00:55:36.030 --> 00:55:47.640 Deborah Heiser: see some traction over here, and that's where we can see that we have control over our impact and our control over our giving and our mentorship and our generativity in general.
00:55:47.850 --> 00:55:57.319 Mira Brancu: Incredible. Okay. So if people want to learn more about your work, share more about how they can find you, what they can find.
00:55:58.120 --> 00:56:11.760 Deborah Heiser: You can find me@deborahheiser.com you can find me. I'm on psychology today. You I'm on Linkedin. You can find me now on like Tiktok and all of the other social medias that are out there.
00:56:12.710 --> 00:56:17.360 Deborah Heiser: So wherever, if you type in Deborah Heiser, you'll be able to find me.
00:56:17.760 --> 00:56:44.440 Mira Brancu: Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. Audience, what did you take away from today? And more importantly, what is one small change that you can implement this week based on what you learned from Dr. Heiser. I know she gave you lots of practical nuggets. Share it with us on Linkedin and@talkradio.nyc, so we could share you on this show is also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, twitch, apple.
00:56:44.510 --> 00:56:51.749 Mira Brancu: spotify Amazon Podcasts all over the place. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with a colleague
00:56:51.920 --> 00:57:01.369 Mira Brancu: and leave a review. And also, if you're looking for more personalized support around leadership or team development or career coaching.
00:57:01.560 --> 00:57:26.490 Mira Brancu: You can head to towerscope.com to schedule a consultation with me. The stuff I talk about is part of my interest area in strategic leadership, and I use that for supporting socially conscious organizational misfits on their leadership journeys. You can also look at the millennials, guide to workplace politics or our Leadership Academy. All on gotowerscope.com.
00:57:26.690 --> 00:57:44.940 Mira Brancu: Thank you to talkradio, dot Nyc. For hosting together. We will navigate the complexities of leadership and emerge stronger on the other side. Thank you for joining me and Dr. Deborah Heiser today on this journey. This is Dr. Mira Branco, signing off until next time. Stay, steady.
00:57:45.060 --> 00:57:49.129 Mira Brancu: stay present and keep building those hard skills muscles.
00:57:49.520 --> 00:57:50.810 Mira Brancu: Bye, everybody.
Talking Alternative Broadcasting
392 Central Park West Suite 17R - New York, NY 10025
Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions
Thank You for Visiting TALKRADIO.NYC © 2022.
