Katie Anderson Podcast Transcript
Katie Anderson joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Katie Anderson. Katie Anderson is an internationally recognized leadership, consultant coach, professional speaker, and learning enthusiast dedicated to helping purpose driven leaders create cultures of learning and accelerate individual and organizational impact.
A skilled change agent and coach, Katie has supported tens of thousands of leaders across a range of industries to create organizational learning cultures that foster innovation, engagement, and continuous improvement. A popular keynote speaker, she is the author of the bestselling book, Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn, which has received multiple international awards, including the Shingo Publication Award and has been translated into over eight languages.
Katie holds a BA with honors from Stanford University and was a Fulbright scholar in Australia, where she received her master’s degree in public health. She has lived in seven countries and regularly leads executive study trips to Japan for leaders looking to deepen their knowledge of people centered leadership, operational excellence, and Japanese culture.
Brian Thomas Well, good afternoon, Katie. Welcome to the show.
Katie Anderson: Thank you so much, Brian. Excited to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And thank you for jumping on. I know you do so much in your day. You speak, you talk, you write, you podcast, and you travel to Japan and all these other things. I don’t know how you do it, but thank you so much again for jumping on, hailing out of the great state of California.
Appreciate you making this time. So, Katie, let’s just jump right into your questions here. You’ve got quite the career in consulting, leadership, research. You were a senior executive and entrepreneur. Now you’re the Founder and Principal Consultant of Katie Anderson Consulting. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
Katie Anderson: Yeah. So, Brent is reflecting on this question and I go back to my Clifton strengths the top two being learner and achiever. And I think that those two really explain a lot through. Both my early careers to where I am now, where I’m always seeking to learn and do something new and challenge myself and then also help other people learn and grow.
And that’s how, I started off my career in academia, moved into then worlds of continuous improvement in healthcare operations. And now for the last 10 years, having my own consulting practice, focusing on how to help leaders of all different industries around the world get better at getting better.
And it’s really been all of this like setting high goals and then learning my way forward and then helping others to do the same. So it’s really what lights me up and gives me.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And, you know, we’ve all taken those like behavioral or self-assessment tests, right? And it tells us who we really are.
And a lot of times that stuff is true but that helps also guide us and understand others as well. So, I like that you’ve shared that with us today. So Katie, you’ve traveled the globe physically and virtually coaching, mentoring leaders and great organizations. In your experience, what is the one thing that’s holding organizations back from becoming something great?
Katie Anderson: Yeah. So, I’ve lived around the world, you know, in Japan and Australia where I got my master’s degree and some other countries as well. And I’ve really found that no matter the, where you are in the world or what industry you’re working in, the thing that really holds us back is this focus on doing and on achievement and on the outcomes.
And even if we have the sense of. Purpose of desire for growth and for improvement and for making like a positive impact on people we get Our habits have gotten so focused on like we got to get stuff done and we got to achieve this goal or this outcome that those other things sometimes fall by the wayside, or we think, you know, so we just sort of forget to create those conditions for learning or for growth and improvement because we’re sort of stuck in this constant like firefighting trap or we just have all these things we got to get done.
And so this trap of doing and performance inhibits our real ability to improve and create conditions for improvement and learning in our organizations, which is what results in innovation and better outcomes as well.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate the tidbits on that. We, you know, we all struggle, no matter if we’re working individually or on a big team and we do lose sight of things sometimes.
So I appreciate you sharing that. And Katie, you’ve been a keynote speaker for many years, spoken to many large audiences. Generally speaking, what is the takeaway message that you deliver to your audiences?
Katie Anderson: Yeah, so it’s really tied to this past, the past comment I made about how, if we want high performing organizations, how, if we want innovation and success, how do we develop the habits as leaders and as team members that really.
create those conditions. And so, you know, we really start with what’s our purpose. And then how do we align our actions with that? And it gets got back to sort of a core concept of mine called intention. And I discovered the sort of deeper meaning of intention when I was living in Japan and the Japanese symbols that make up the word intention come from Heart and then direction.
And so it’s like both, we need to know what’s our purpose and the impact we want to have. And then what are the habits that really align with that to fulfill our intention and our desired impact.
Brian Thomas: I love that. And you kept it very simple, but you’re absolutely right aligning your tasks, right? The things that you do with your purpose in life makes one heck of a difference.
And I love, I just love that. Thank you. Yeah,
Katie Anderson: you’re welcome. And one of the, just one of the things that I find is that like, Most people have this like desire, this heart for a bigger impact. It’s just either the habits we’ve developed through our earlier career success or what we think leadership is about aren’t necessarily aligned in that direction.
So, but with simple adjustments and some intention, we can really have that fulfilled that impact in that purpose. We want, thank you.
Brian Thomas: Appreciate that. And Katie. Last question of the day. We are a technology publication and podcast. I’m a technologist, so we ask everybody it’s okay if you’re not a technologist, but are you leveraging any of that new and emerging technology in your business?
And if not, have you found a cool tool or app you might be able to share with us today?
Katie Anderson: Sure. Well, we’re all, you know, maybe we’re not focused on technology, but technology enables all of us to be more effective and do the things we want to do. And so, the way I am using new technology right now is to help my podcast.
So, I just started a new podcast myself called Chain of Learning. And, I use it to help, like I use like a chat GPT to help figure out what are some good titles, like what are some good synth sync pithy titles? And I find that maybe they you know, the app doesn’t come up with the best title, but it gives me some good synthesis of keywords that, Oh yeah, that was a frame I hadn’t thought of.
So, it’s not doing it for me, but it’s actually helping me think of it. How to frame things up in a different way. So that’s been a huge enabler for just some, like some simple things. Like what are, what’s a good podcast show title and subtitle.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Yes. We all are leveraging chat GPT or Google’s barred right now.
We all do it. I’ve been using it now for over a year chat GPT that is anyway. And it’s been amazing to help me get creative and help supplement or augment. Some of the things that I need to get done as far as this podcast. So that was awesomely a great share. I appreciate that. And Katie, it was such a pleasure having you on today.
And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Katie Anderson: Yeah. Thanks, Brian. I love this format. It’s micro bites of learning and positive energy. So, thanks for having me on here.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Katie Anderson Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
