The Leadership Vision Podcast

Fail Faster, Grow Stronger: Deb Dixson’s Playbook for Teams that Thrive Without You

• Nathan Freeburg, Linda Schubring, Brian Schubring • Season 8 • Episode 37

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Pioneering technology executive and Leadership Vision advisor Deb Dixson joins Nathan to unpack how leaders move teams from dependence on one person to interdependence—through mission clarity (“we sell lettuce”), Strengths-based roles, and a culture where fast, safe learning is encouraged. Drawing on her 30+ years as a CISO, CIO, and executive coach, Deb shares stories of building resilient teams, empowering others to lead, and offering timeless guidance for leaders navigating change.

Deb also wrote the forward to Unfolded, and we are so grateful for her continued investment in our team.

What we discuss

  • From hero to builder: Why great leaders aim to make themselves unnecessary—and how Deb did it.
  • Mission clarity: Connecting daily work to the outcome (“we sell lettuce”) so everyone sees how they serve the customer.
  • Strengths in action: Placing people where they’re wired to excel; using a common language to handle conflict and change.
  • Safe failure → faster learning: Celebrating responsible experiments, shortening feedback loops, and avoiding “death-march” projects.
  • Finding the gaps: Spotting unowned work and empowering people to own it (including Deb’s CISO origin story).

Resources & Links

🎉 Unfolded is a National Bestseller!
#1 in Business & #5 Overall on USA Today
#17 on Publisher’s Weekly Nonfiction
📘 Grab your copy + get the FREE Reflection Guide!

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ABOUT
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in discovering, practicing, and implementing a Strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. Contact us to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's really important to allow people to fail and to celebrate that. The faster you can fail and then figure it out and move forward, the faster you can grow. And the worst thing that can happen in a team is for everybody to know that this is never gonna work out, but no one has permission to say anything, and they're on a death march right up to the end. And it's gonna fail. Just a question of how fast.

SPEAKER_00:

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. To learn more about our work, you can click the link in the show notes or visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and today on the Leadership Vision Podcast, I am so excited to be joined by Deb Dixon. She's a pioneering leader, trusted advisor, and longtime, longtime friend of Leadership Vision. Deb has spent more than 30 years leading teams at the intersection of technology, business, and humanity. She was one of the very first chief information security officers in the retail industry, beginning with her groundbreaking role as Best Buy's first CISO, later serving as Global CISTO and CIO for Delays America, and eventually founded DJ Dixon Consulting, where she continues to coach and advise leaders around the world. Dev also wrote the beautiful forward to unfolded lessons in transformation from an origami crane, Brian and Linda's book, where she reflected on her own leadership journey, learning that building a great team isn't just about hiring talented individuals, but about creating an environment where each person's unique strengths are understood, appreciated, and strategically applied. She credits her work with Linda and Brian as transformative in shaping how she builds cultures of trust, collaboration, and resilience. Deb continues to serve as an advisor to Leadership Vision, much more on that later, but she's truly so much more than that. She's a mentor, she's a teacher, she's a voice of wisdom and reason sometimes, and someone who lives out the principles of growth and transformation that we talk about so often here. In our conversation, we're going to be talking about how she's helped teams evolve from being dependent on a single leader to thriving together in interdependence. We'll explore what it takes to lead through uncertainty, how to build trust across differences, and what it means to continually refold ourselves as leaders and units. This is the Leadership Vision Podcast. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_01:

I am doing well, Nathan. I'm thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

You've given us so much great feedback on the podcast over the years that it's fun to have you actually on the podcast. And I don't know if you'll give yourself feedback later or how the how this will work. I want to just jump right into this. I wanted to talk about your foreword to the book. It's beautiful, it's lovely. But what I want to focus on specifically is one of the things that you learn from Brian and Linda is building teams that could thrive even without you. And I take that to mean empowering those under you so that they're not constantly having to go to the boss, constantly being like, you know, what do we do now, leader? Help us, help us. You talk about kind of a shift in your philosophy like over the years. And so I'm curious if you could give us a brief picture of Deb from 28, 29, 30 years ago. What was that shift like? Where did it start as maybe the leader who those that you were leading couldn't do anything without you to the leader where they could lead without you? Because so often I think this idea of leadership is like, I have to have all the answers. I have to be the one in charge. I have to be someone who is constantly telling other people what to do.

SPEAKER_01:

So well, I think like most people, you start out focusing on what can I do? You know, it's all gotta look like I was the hero, I did the work, I did it. Because most of us start off as individual contributors, and that's how you rise up through the ranks, and then you become a leader. And oftentimes there's not a lot of good coaching or training. 30 years ago, there certainly wasn't, on how do you make that switch from being the one that's solely responsible for the outcome to the one that has a bunch of folks looking at you and trying to figure out what they should do, how they should do it, and what the outcome should be. And so I would say 30 years ago, I was far more command and control isn't quite the right way to describe uh how I led, but I I was far more directive than I am today, or than I that I evolved through. And at some point earlier in my career, two things made a huge difference. I took Dale Carnegie courses, which caused a shift in my thinking initially from what do I need out of this to making it about about the person that I was working with. And if I could help you do this, what would that look like? How can I inspire you that way? So that was probably the first shift. The second one was learning about strengths, and it just made so much sense to me that with so many psychometrics focusing on what you're not good at and trying to make you at best mediocre at what you're not good at, it made so much sense to look at how are people wired, what gives them energy, and how can I help them get better at that. So I actually became quite skilled at figuring out how to put people in roles where they could be successful, how to let them do things that might not be sort of standard job jobs in the workforce. But most of that still hinged on me being at the center of this wheel, and what I realized after being in an organization where I had the opportunity again to build a security team and an IT team literally from scratch, that while I hired wildly talented individuals, and that was awesome, and I got to know them and I mentored them and I coached them and they did great work. They did great independent work. And I didn't realize it until it was my time to move on to uh another role and leave that organization that I had, in my opinion, really done a disservice to those individuals because I hadn't created a team in the true sense of the word, where they understood each other as well as I understood them, and they trusted and relied on each other to pick up the slack. And most of them went on to find different roles after I left, and that had a huge, huge impact on me because many of them had relocated their families to work for me, and so I didn't take that failure lightly. They did great work, they went on to do great, great work again, but I held that, and then at the time I went back to Best Buy for my my third tour tour of duty, and I vowed I wasn't gonna do the same thing there. So every day that I walked in the building, I was trying to figure out how I can work myself out of a job and wasn't quite sure how I was gonna do it, but I got connected to Brian and Linda, and they helped give us a language that we could use to better understand ourselves and better understand each other, and ways to better communicate, deal with conflict, deal with change and uncertainty, and that made a huge difference. And as I look back, I retired from Best Buy in 2018. Many of the people that were there working for me and part of that team are still there. That's cool. I had I was true to my word, I stepped back.

SPEAKER_00:

You worked yourself out of a job.

SPEAKER_01:

I worked myself out of a job. I stayed, I stayed on, Best Buy kept me on for six months. We had created a new enterprise risk organization, and they I stayed for six months coaching and making sure that everything landed.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So it was it that was probably one of the highlights of my career to have been able to go from feeling tremendous sense of guilt about having failed a team to having created a team that didn't need me.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Well, what do you think, if if you can think back, what do you think it is about younger leaders or leaders that are maybe in their first like real significant uh position of influence? Is it like a I don't know, like a self-doubt or a self-confidence thing where like like if you're uh I don't know, in your early 30s, let's say, and you're like the leader of this team, it'd be really hard to have that mindset of I want to work myself out of a job, I want to really empower these people so they don't need me, because like you don't do what I'm asking, like what will I do? Like I'm only you know, so I guess how do how do we help young leaders have that mentality? Because everything you said is absolutely correct and true and like how you build a really good thriving team. But for you know, someone who is like, no, I'm the leader, I ultimately have to be so irreplaceable. You know what I'm asking? Like, how do how do we shift people's mindsets? So talk a little bit about that, because I think that you know, for people listening would be just like, well, I can't, you know, if you're close to retirement, yeah, but not as an early person, I want to like still hold everything so tightly. So, how do you how do you coach younger leaders to have that mentality?

SPEAKER_01:

I think it takes a mental shift to decide you don't need to be the one to take credit for everything. So if you can make your if you can make that mental shift on how do I empower the people that I work with that are on my team to be able to shine, the irony of that is if you can get yourself to that place and you can push your people out in front to be visible and to be successful and give them enough space that they can fail safely and learn from it and continue to grow. Your team will do far more as a team like that than they ever could do with you as the one who's there, you know, pushing and leading. The weird part about it is people look at you as a great leader, even though you're not the one necessarily that's always at the front of the stage, you know, leading all the meetings, but you're the one that enabled all of these other folks to be able to rise up. And that that I think is is the is the biggest difference. I realized when I had left the organization that I had really, as much as I thought I was empowering all of the people that worked for me, I was actually holding them back because they were limited by my creativity or my sense of where I thought they could go and be, and not necessarily by not if they came, I mean, if they came to me and said, gee, I really would like to do X, I would certainly help them. But other than that, I ended up to be a limiting factor, I think, in their growth.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

Because I was helping them go where I thought they could go or wanted to go or needed to go. And once I unleash them, you know, amazing things happen. Um, I also have my background is in education. I'm a homec education major. So, like really, I am the least qualified person on the planet to have been a CISO.

SPEAKER_00:

A CISO.

SPEAKER_01:

So for me, I always lived by the motto that I wanted to be the dumbest person in the room. Not because I thought I was stupid, but because that meant I had surrounded myself with people who were far smarter than I could be, because I just hadn't lived that. So for me, it it actually wasn't all that difficult because I didn't have the same strong technical background that all of the people that were on my team did. But what I could do is recognize talent, grow talent, and ask really good questions that cause them to look at a problem differently than they might have done from a textbook perspective. That was my strength.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm curious how you would define leadership then, because if based on what you're saying, it sounds like the role of a leader in the Deb Dixon definition is to get a bunch of really good people and then just get out of their way. Like, how would you uh define leadership or say this is the role of a leader?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I do think the role of a leader is to be very clear on what the mission is.

SPEAKER_00:

Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

What's the mission of the company? How does the team that you lead and everybody on that team fit into that mission? Oftentimes, especially technology teams are like six steps removed, they feel like. One of the things that I've always felt was important is it's hard to be successful if you don't understand what the end goal is. And so with my teams, we actually practiced like what is it that we do? And at delays, it was a chain of grocery retailers, and so standing in front of the group one day, I said, We sell lettuce. That's what we do. We sell lettuce. And every person on my team had to do some soul searching on how did they fit into the process of selling lettuce, getting it to the store faster, so you know, selling it, keeping it fresh, whatever. But by the end of I don't know, maybe six months, if you stopped an engineer in the hallway and said, What did you what do you do? They would say, We sell lettuce. And this is how what I do fits into that process. So I think a role, a leader has to be clear on the why that they and the team are there. I think they have to be good at adapting to change and uncertainty, particularly in this world that we live in today. And and helping people understand um that they have to evolve and change. Um, ironically, unfolded could not have come at a at a more appropriate time. As we're all we're all challenged to um fold and and unfold and refold.

SPEAKER_00:

It's so true.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I think a leader has to be honest with their team, giving feedback that is uh constructive and will help somebody grow is critical. And you know, to a certain extent, getting out of their way to let them try new things, listening to them, understanding who they are, letting them try, letting them fail safely, they have to know you have your back, have their back. But if you can do those things and then get out of the way and listen to their great ideas, you know, people on the ground that are doing it every day, they understand oftentimes better than leaders where the problems are, what's happening, you know, where things could change or should change.

SPEAKER_00:

And yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, we oftentimes don't listen.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So so many parallels there to parenting that I that I won't get into. But I want I want to go back, not maybe not back, but just you brought up strengths, and that was kind of like the big aha. I'm curious to learn if you had an aha moment about yourself personally. Back um when I was doing a lot more teaching and speaking on strengths, I would always say my aha with strengths came when I learned that ideation was a strength and not something that needed to be medicated. Because for so much of my life, I was like, ooh, idea, idea, idea, idea. And then it was like, actually, this is a strength. Here's how you harnessed it. Here's when it's perhaps not a strength. I'm curious if in the process working with Brian and Linda, if you had any moments like that where you're just like, oh my goodness, this they're telling me this thing that I've been doing that I thought was maybe not the best is actually like there's a name for it. Like, did you have any moments like that with your experience just with strengths?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, probably one of the it's funny now, but I have um strategic maximizer, achiever, learner, and relator are my top five.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, yep.

SPEAKER_01:

And early, early on when I was learning about strengths, that's why actually was a strength-based organization. It was part of your onboarding. And I had a strengths coach who told me that the only thing that was it literally his quote the only thing that is keeping you from eating your young is the fact that you have the strength of learning and relator in in the middle. Um, because otherwise it's like we're going here now, this is the best way to do it. We've got to get it done.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I was I actually I mean, he wasn't necessarily far off, but that aha moment about ooh, is that really how I'm coming off? And I'm over-indexing. I was early in my career, wanted to make things happen and be noticed. It caused me to rethink about learner and relater and how to play those up uh in terms of the people that I needed to serve as a leader and how I needed to under better understand them. And so I softened a lot of the like hard driving maximizer.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, in order to actually be human.

SPEAKER_00:

How so uh we're gonna get personal therapy session really quick. How so I also have maximizer, and I feel like that like sometimes that that edge uh with my kids, with people at the school, sometimes with Brian and Linda, don't tell them. Uh I volunteered the school, but like that, that no, this has to be the best, this has to be this. Like, how did you learn to sort of what'd you say, soften that edge a little bit? Because sometimes in my mind, I'm like, I'm pushing for the best. And sometimes other people are like, yeah, but we don't need this to be maximized. My mouth was up, my wife is always telling me that. How did you personally kind of soften that edge a little bit? I I would love some tips.

SPEAKER_01:

I do think that um the Carnegie training was helpful when I went and stepped back to look at look at everything through somebody else's eyes. And that had um such an impact. So I would do a lot of what is the outcome I want, what is the maximized outcome I want to have here? And who's the people in the room that I need to make this happen? What what will their take be? And you know, so I'd sort of play this out in my in my head, and then I'm good at asking questions, and so you know, we'd be in a meeting and I would just say, Well, I wonder if you know what would happen if we did this, or how do you think that this could play itself out? And one of the consultants that I worked with when we were trying to build the first security team at Best Buy from scratch would said to me, I watched you go into this room, and there was no way people were going to get to the spot you needed them to be. And you never said where you wanted them to go, but all of a sudden it was somebody else's idea, and here we are. And so he always called it my Jedi mind tricks.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. That's in my notes to talk to you about it. Yeah, the Jedi.

SPEAKER_01:

That's where Brian and Linda, you know, I love me the Jedi because I these these these are not the droids you are looking for. Yes, exactly. That's right. But it was almost frightening when you start to do stuff that you look at things from the lens of the people that you're working with, yeah, and ask them questions to see where they can end up. Now, yeah, like it not sort of black magic, but I think you get you yeah, it's Jedi magic. But you get, I think you get to a better spot. It's not always the spot I thought we should be at because I didn't necessarily have all the information, but people learn that they could share and learn that they could make an impact. And you know, if there was something that I felt really strongly about that maybe they were opposed to, they were oftentimes far more willing to say, if she's this, you know, headstrong on this is where we have to go, there must be a reason. So, how can we do that in you know the best way possible?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. That makes sense. It unfortunately doesn't sound as easy as I was hoping for, but uh I appreciate that. I I want to talk a little bit now with strengths just in teams. And I don't know, just given the amount of time we have left, if we could possibly summarize this. But I I'm I'm let's see, how do I ask this question? I'm gonna combine a couple here from our from our notes. But as you as you worked with Brian and Linda, as you were introduced and understood the philosophy of strengths, how did you then incorporate that into all like what we were talking about earlier with getting people to know and trust and understand each other? And specifically what I'm curious about is kind of in that retail space where in the last many years it's just kind of been turned on its head and like all of that uh stuff. I mean, even back when you were working there. So, how did you, I guess my question in this is how did you help people to understand their strengths, understand the strengths of the person across the cubicle from them or office or whatever, so that when you know the proverbial stuff hit the fan, it just didn't devolve into chaos, but it was like, okay, you're good at that, you're good at that, I'm good at that, we're gonna rally together. Like, what did that actually look like? And is there any sort of takeaways maybe we can give to our listeners? That's like a lot of questions I just try to synthesize into one, but does that make sense? Is that answerable?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know if it's answerable, but I'll give it a shot. I mean, one of one of the things that Brian and Linda do better than anybody I've seen is to help people understand each other and understand how they react in certain ways. Okay, and by helping a team really know the other members of the team, build a trust, and in that trust, you can have the tough conversations in a way that isn't degrading or demoralizing. It just helps have the right conversation so that you can get to the outcome that you need. And as a leader, knowing how each of my team members was wired and who might be better at certain things than others, regardless of what their role was, giving people opportunities to shine in the areas where they're they're just wired to be better. Folks saw that. They saw everybody having an opportunity. And, you know, during the tough times, it was much easier for them to also say, Let me take this part because I can, you know, it's easy for me to do this, it's harder for me to do that. You're really good at it, and you get that sort of, I don't know, cross-training is not the right word, but you you have the trust among the folks that they have each other's, they have each other's back.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And even if it's not my job, but you're slammed, um, which often happens in a security incident, somebody else can come behind and and help out.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm thinking about the back to the book in their chapter on play, and I'm wondering how much of your role as a leader is helping teams to play? And not in a throw a ball around, but just like all of these little things that we're doing, like these are all opportunities to learn and grow. And you made a mistake. All right, we're gonna adjust for the next time. How, how did in your career were you able to do that? And maybe, you know, obviously the book wasn't out, so you didn't have necessary that language, but able to do that and really help leaders, I guess, grow and learn through experience, through mistakes, through knowing, like, all right, you really messed up here. I'm not gonna fire you, but here's how we're gonna change for next time. Because I think too often, you know, maybe leaders or organizations are like everything always has to be perfect. And if you make a mistake, you're out, versus like, what can we learn for next time?

SPEAKER_01:

It's interesting. One of the things that um I've made a habit of doing throughout my career is to look for the gaps. So in the work that we're doing, where are there areas that nobody's paying attention to? And at some point someone will pay attention to, and then it will be behind the eight ball. It actually is how I got to be the first CISO at Best Buy. At that time, a million years ago, security was focused either on making sure the data center was locked, or from a IT perspective, the credit card companies were paying retailers to put security measures into their software at point of sale. I was responsible for that POS team, and I kept thinking at some point they're gonna stop paying us to do this. And if something bad happens, it's not gonna turn out well. And Best Buy was a huge organization focused on the customer, and so that would, to me, make it look like we weren't paying attention to protecting our customers' data. I started to work on that proposal for a new a new job and a role and a team, and this is what they would do. And so as an example, I thought it was a big gap. Um and I surrounded myself with the smartest people I could find who could advise me on in retail what would a CISO do and put this proposal together. So that was an example of looking for a gap. I pitched it initially my boss laughed at it. But then you know timing is everything the TJ Maxx breach was announced and the board asked him who is responsible for information security. And he said, well as a matter of fact I have this great idea. And here we are. But in general that's what I call I encourage my teams to look at. Like in the stuff that we're doing day to day, where are the gaps? Nobody's doing them, nobody can say you're doing it right or wrong. So those are great opportunities for people to try something to grow, allowing people to shadow somebody else to do sort of job sharing where they get a chance to see what it might look like to do a role that they think is glamorous or a lot more fun than what they're doing, giving them those opportunities and then you know being conscious of where people's skill levels are. I think it's really important to allow people to fail and to celebrate that. The faster you can fail and then figure it out and move forward the faster you can grow. And the worst thing that can happen in a team is for everybody to know that this is never going to work out but no one has permission to say anything and they're on a death march right up to the end. And it's gonna fail just a question of how fast.

SPEAKER_00:

Right exactly you're like we have we just have to do this and let it fail and then what do we learn for it? Because you don't know until you know it it you know it's interesting you talk about the gaps. That's what you're doing on our team it seems like like what are the gaps like leadership vision needs help with you know with the book release with all this stuff you wrote uh in the like the little document you have I've made a career out of being better than nothing and all you have and I thought that was such a fun quote d do you have more to say about that because I I'm I'm curious how if that's played out in other ways because we're trying to work yourself out of a job, trying to create these new roles, you know, where leadership or the team can kind of flourish without you I'm curious what what we can learn from that because it again it just sort of seems counterintuitive to a lot of the people that we talk to.

SPEAKER_01:

So well I think it's giving yourself permission to dream, to try to play to play all the chapters. And for me it falls so closely into looking for a gap. You know so if if there's something that is clearly not being taken care of then I'm and I'm willing to try it. I'm better than nothing. I'm all you've got I'm smart enough to figure out how do I how do I do things um and it has it has served me well because I think so often we limit ourselves to the title that we have the role that we have and try to just push forward on that. And I think work now life now is more like a jungle gym than a ladder and so to be able to go I'm gonna do this thing maybe it's a you know maybe I'm not gonna get paid for it but I'm gonna try to see if I can make some headway here and people notice they notice when you're taking the initiative they notice when you're doing something and you know it gives your you give yourself in that role sort of permission to not be perfect because there's nobody doing it. I mean I remember asking the consultant that talked about my Jedi mind tricks like what do real companies do when this happens we were making we were making it up as we were going along um and I think we did a pretty good job.

SPEAKER_00:

It it seems like everybody is like the more that I learn about you know big companies or read biographies of famous leaders of companies everyone's kind of making it up as as they go. They they do the best they can with the information that they have and if it's successful then that sort of becomes a template for someone else to try and then that maybe gets gets tweaked or or changed along the way. I'm I'm I want to talk a little bit here as we're sort of closing out but just about the mentorship like the the people that you work with that you mentor that you coach that you you know whatever word you want to use for that I'm I'm curious in 2025, October of 2025 as the world has changed so much from when you retired and even it feels like every few months different AI technologies coming out or different you know global policies that pop up like everything is constantly changing. I'm curious if there's any themes or messages or words of encouragement that you know you have shared over the years that are still timeless, that are still like this is what I would tell a 25 year old you know relatively recent college grad. This is what I would tell a 40 something you know mid-career professional this is what I would tell someone that's looking at retirement in a couple of years. When it comes to leadership when it comes to even some of the themes of the book what are some of those consistent messages that over your career you still share with people you still say do this you still say don't do that. I'm kind of looking for those Carnegie sort of lessons the Deb, the Deb Dixon sort of lessons that are just timeless no matter what crazy chaos is going on in the world.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you have any of those kind of at the top of your head well I think one of the things that people often lose sight of is people work for people. They don't work for companies and you know they will leave their leaders so much hinges I think on the relationships that you're able to form as a leader and the understanding that you have of the you know the team that you have so I think that's one of the things to remember is at the end of the day people work for people. I think probably the bigger thing that no matter where you are in your career because there's so so many people who are you know thought they were going to be somewhere for a long time and you know their job's been eliminated or it's you know there's something that's changed dramatically and I think part of what I loved about the book so much is give yourself and all of the people around you permission to dream. We are our own worst enemies because we're afraid to fail so we don't try. If you never try then you're never you know you're never gonna know and so you know part of what I encourage everybody that I work with is what do you really want what what do you wake up in the morning and what would make you say God I can't wait to get out of bed um and I have people oftentimes create a list of like the components of what they do not you know not like I'm a CFO but like what are the components of your job that you really love what are the components that you really hate if you go back through the history of your work history or life in general what are the things that you love to do and maybe out of that there's some aha moment of wow I'm I'm good at this but I don't enjoy it. And I think there's way too many people who are good at something and that success is such a shackle to keep them from trying something that would really make them happy. To me that's such a huge message and theme of the book is giving yourself and others permission to dream and to to be seen and to to try.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that one of my favorite uh parts of your foreword I highlighted here you can't hear that what might be possible if we gave ourselves permission to never stop growing and I I love that because sometimes I think that we're like oh this is who I am and this is all that I am if I could summarize our entire conversation here like you're you're saying no that's not true. Like keep growing keep changing find that gap find something uh you know to make yourself better than nothing yet all all that you have and you know obviously that's that's the theme of the book. So Deb, is there any other final thoughts that you have or things that um you're hoping we talked about we would talk about that we didn't I want to I want to give you the last word here. Oh or we'll edit all this out if you don't have one.

SPEAKER_01:

Well I actually do have one of my favorite quotes from the book. Ooh okay that I would love to end with the world needs people and leaders with the courage to dream new dreams big enough to reach the world and bright enough to heal it so good.

SPEAKER_00:

She's got it on a note card. I do we did we got to make that into a t-shirt because I think that's that's what it's all about right yeah I love it. It is well Deb, thank you so much I really appreciate you uh taking the time I I maybe we'll have to do a follow-up because I have a lot more questions for you about all kinds of stuff. So thank you. You're welcome thank you for having me and thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast our show helping you build positive team culture. You know we really can't overstate just the impact and influence that Deb has had on our team especially during uh the unfolded process of getting this book published she has been just a fountain of wisdom and knowledge and just helping us think through all of the things that we weren't thinking about. And as she said in the interview there you know becoming absolutely indispensable has been truly her superpower. So Deb, thank you so much for taking the time to chat we just barely even cracked the surface of your career and history and all of the wisdom uh that you have to offer so I don't know listeners maybe we'll have her back for a second third or fourth time but thank you so much for listening to Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture and if you found value from this episode or any of our other resources we would love it if you could follow us on social media, review us wherever you get your podcast join our free email newsletter and of course share this with someone that you think could benefit from this material. You can click the link in the show notes for more information or visit us on the web at leadershipvision consulting dot com. My name is Nathan Freeberg and on behalf of our entire team thanks for listening