Episode 191 - Denise Cassidy - Leaders On Leadership
Navigating the complexities of leadership has its own challenges and merits. That journey to finding balance in work and life has no one-size-fits-all answer. In this episode, Denise Cassidy, the Director of Strategic Development at DBJ Wealth Management, reveals her approach to finding balance and avoiding burnout. She also shares how she left her comfort zone to transition into a new leadership role and stresses the importance of setting boundaries and prioritizing self-care to avoid burnout. Through the conversation, you will also view delegation as empowerment and see the importance of setting and communicating hard limits. Denise is the torch that brightens the path toward leadership, empowering women in their leadership roles.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Denise Cassidy - Leaders On Leadership
Welcome to another episode, where we pull back the curtain on leadership and we talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to truly pay the price of leadership. I am very excited because my guest is Denise Cassidy. Denise, welcome.
Thank you so much, I'm happy to be here.
Thank you. Let me tell you a little bit about Denise. Denise Cassidy joined her current team in July of 2021 as the Director of Strategic Development. Prior to joining DBJ Wealth Management, she had spent 21 years as a sales executive for Verizon with vast experience in sales strategy, employee development, operational processes, and efficiencies. Denise helps oversee the sales, service, and operations of the firm while also helping with continued efforts to establish and build strong relationships with her clients and businesses. We going to learn a lot today from Denise. Thank you again, Denise, for agreeing to be a part of this podcast.
Thank you. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Denise and I met at the beginning of April and it's May now, the very end of May. Newfound sisters and friends here. Denise had signed up with the American College of Financial Services, their chartered leadership fellow designation. Many of you have heard me talking about that. I love being a part of that. Denise was in our most recent cohort. I always extend the offer. I just so enjoyed her in that scarce five weeks, getting to hear about her vast background and how she spent a lot of time in one industry and transitioned to another, just like a lot of our listeners are out there doing in that. Just like I've done. When she agreed to be on this podcast, I was absolutely thrilled.
Without further ado, we're going to go right into my father's, one of the most often downloaded and requested speeches that he gave called The Price of Leadership. It's very poignant, it's very pragmatic, and it's very real. He talks about if you're going to really, truly be a leader and not just call yourself a leader, here's the price you're going to have to pay. The first price he says, Denise, is loneliness. We've all heard that, it's lonely at the top. They always say when you're a manager, you can have friends, but then you get to be the boss and it's kind of different. What does loneliness mean to you, Denise, in your decades of experience? Maybe for our listeners out there who might be in a season of loneliness, what would you recommend to them?
Be Confident
I thought a lot about this when that question came over. I think loneliness, one thing I would say is that it's reoccurring. You'll go through it multiple times throughout your career. You'll go through it, whether it's loneliness because you're missing your family because you made decisions within your career that are taking you away, or it could be loneliness because you've decided that you were done in a segment. For me, I ran a lot of different sales organizations.
My primary one was the store channel. It was where I grew up, it was where I started, but then I knew I needed to make changes. I decided to jump into a different channel. That's very lonely because those that you built rapport with and you have trust with and knew that they would work extremely hard with you to achieve goals, you had to rebuild all of that. You were starting all over by yourself.
There are so many different stages that you go through in loneliness, but at the end of it, you take the lessons you've learned from each of the different components and what you learned that got you through the stage of loneliness before, and you bring that forth and it takes you through to the next one. Just know and be confident it's temporary. It is a temporary period of time that you will overcome, and you will move past.
There are so many different stages that you go through in loneliness, but at the end of it, you take the lessons you've learned from each of the components.
I love that you said that it's temporary, but also recurring because someone once told me every time you grow or change, something has to die. I think about what you were talking about when you left Verizon and moved over, it's almost like changing high schools. I want to leave my friends, but yet I'm going to find new friends. I have to make this transition. I love that you said it is recurring but it's also temporary, and if you got there once before, you’re going to get through it again. I love that. You've been in your current role how long now? About three years?
About three years.
You took all the things from before and kind of are building them on this?
I did, yeah. You have to really dig deep sometimes because you're stepping into their world, not your world anymore. I had to figure out how to blend my world with them and not vice versa. I think sometimes that's a trap. I sometimes think that people go in and, having 21 years of experience, could walk in and say, “I know everything, but I had to blend into their world in order to be successful.”
It's interesting you said that because a lot of times when leaders come in from the outside, I've done it many times, after a certain number of years, they're still like “They just don't like change” or whatever. And it's like, you say that, but did you realize you stepped into their world? I know you were brought in, but it is still their world, so you have to approach it differently, even if you are the smartest person at the table. That's very interesting because otherwise, you'll alienate them.
That loneliness is self-induced because you come in with that attitude. Excellent points, Denise. Thank you. The next point he talked about was weariness. You wear many hats: a new grandmother, children, business, all these other things that go into school to get your CLF designation. There's a lot on our plates, especially for women. How do you handle weariness and stay in your top form because so many people rely on you?
Self-Care
I'm still trying to figure that out. I think that that's the ideal. You have to know there are going to be times when you are okay to say, “I need a timeout.” We all get vacation days, and we all get personal days, but what we do with those days to self-heal, self-inspire, and self-motivate. Those days sometimes we don't take. We take the days off because we need to do something for somebody else.
We need to take care of a child. We need to take care, but I would recommend, and I have done this, that there are days I need for me. There are even nights that I need for me. At home, I'll tell my husband, “8:00 I'm going upstairs. I might not fall asleep, but I'm done for the evening and I'm going.” Because I need time to self-motivate, self-heal, and take care of some of that weariness that happens.
That's good. I'm sorry, I was even thinking of a summer vacation company. I'm leaving for Greece on Monday and I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to make it because I got so much to do to get ready for this time off supposedly for myself. I love that you're saying that just take the time for yourself. I'm sorry, Denise, go on.
No, that's perfect. Then as far as the business, sometimes weariness comes from how many things get taken on your plate. How do you handle all of it? I would say delegation is key. I've thought a lot about delegation. When you first start out in your career, you think they're just giving me this because they don't want to do it. They don't want to have to do it. They're giving it to me because they don't enjoy it or they want to sit with their feet up.
You get that perception of leaders at times, but when you truly engage with your leader and understand the reasons why delegation is important and what it's doing for the other person than what it's doing for you because a lot of times it's actually easier to just do it yourself. Could we agree? Then that becomes weariness because you're like, “I just have to get this done because I can do it better, faster, more efficiently.”
That's hindering you and that's hindering the people that work for you because you are not giving them the opportunity to excel in their roles, to become your next leader, to become the person that you entrust to handle what they're capable of. You have to get over yourself to think that you are the only one that can do it and be the best at it. It might not be exactly the way you would want to do it, but if it gets done and achieves the result, does it really matter? That helps with weariness.
Boy does it ever. That is such wise, and I love it. You're helping them to become the next leader because that's the whole thing. We're all moving on. I love it, Denise. The next thing you talked about was abandonment. Abandonment, fear of abandonment, abandoning an animal, abandoning a marriage, it kind of has that negative connotation. In the price of leadership, Charles puts a slightly different shift on it.
That we have to abandon what we like and want to think about and do in favor of what we ought and need to do. It's almost this pruning or hyper-focus on what we need to look at. How do you do that, Denise? How do you stay with all the people that obviously will come to you because you're very talented, you're very smart, you're very driven. How do you stay on point? You talked about it's okay to say no and to delegate, but what do you do to abandon the stuff that's not the truth?
Delegation
I'm just kind of going back to my Verizon days, actually. One of the toughest decisions, again, that store channel was so important to me. That's where I started. It's where I got my first leadership, my second leadership position. You feel this kind of sense of obligation and loyalty. For me, and for what I felt I could handle and help the business achieve, I knew I needed to abandon that organization to go to another organization, which was extremely scary because I was dipping my feet into an organization that was not full of women, that was not a believer that leadership equaled lateral moves.
They believe that you have to start at the bottom and grow up within your own organization. I had to fight all of that. I had to abandon my beliefs in the store channel and the beliefs that you have to follow a certain train and prove to them that I could laterally move, drive that organization, and help the overall success of not just that channel, but the region. I had to make that jump. For the team that I left behind, you don't really leave them. If you're a true leader, I left them with, I'm there.
Finding Balance: You should follow a certain train and prove to them that you can move laterally.
It's a phone call. You've always called me before, you can call me again. I also understood and identified those that also needed a jump. Once I got my feet planted, once I built my brand, and once I created that, I reached back and pulled some of them into the new organization because that's what was best for them. I knew me doing that was bigger than me. You fight that and you choose that abandonment because it's going to help more than just yourself.
I love that you don't ever leave them. It doesn't matter if you go across the planet or jump industries like we did, we're still there. Especially now, I love connecting with people I worked with 40 years ago. It's we're still here. You still impacted me, you're still impacting me now. Absolutely beautiful. Denise, I just think back to the classes we had together, you have such a beautiful understanding of the fluid, intergenerational, collective nature of leadership.
It's not just about us, we have to look, but then we always have to be looking for everybody else and bringing them along the way. Some people like you will have this intrinsic personal agency where you get it and you can, but then there'll be other people that need somebody like you to tap them on the shoulder and say, “Come on, you can do this too.” Just beautiful.
This is the funny part, it's not all without selfishness, because we all have that little bit in us. I don't want to do this forever. Who's going to do it when I'm not here? I don't want it to collapse. I want to leave a legacy. The only way you do that is you invest in other people. There's a piece of it that is self-motivating because I don't want to do this forever.
There are some leaders who are like, “If I step away, the place is going to fall apart.” I'm like, you should not say that. That is incredibly self-serving, and it's a testimony to the fact that you're an anti-leader, you know what I'm saying? I'm in a legacy business, yet Charles is gone, but he had left enough already established that we just somebody passed me the baton, and there was a whole lot of stuff going on besides that, but we kept moving forward. That's really when you abandon your sense of self and understand that it's more than you. We’ve talked about that in our class, there has to be a future to leadership.
Not just right now with me and my retirement, my 401k, but what's going to go on with the entity after I'm gone because sooner or later, we're all going to be gone. I love that abandonment. The last thing he talked about was vision. We heard the verse in Proverbs, where there is no vision to people perish, and also, one of the things we talked about in the CLF was the importance of values and vision. Denise, you're obviously good at this and you move towards where you want to go in the future. What's next? Or what would you recommend for people that maybe don’t think that they're that strong on the vision aspect?
Don’t Be Afraid Of Change
For me, it was creating a whole new vision. You talked a little bit about when I walked away. I want to just kind of start there for a moment because I lost a vision. I planned on being there for a very long time. I planned on retiring from there, but things happened. Decisions in our personal lives took over, what I wanted more, and where that balance came from. Then I went for about a year, almost two years, of not having a vision and not having a purpose, which I thought because I left my purpose. I had my whole life wrapped around this one entity of it.
When you asked me, “Denise, tell me about yourself.” The first thing I said was, “I'm a director for Verizon Wireless.” No, I'm not. I'm a mom. I'm a wife. I'm a community involved and volunteer. All of those things. I was so much more, but it took me a little time. I'll say, I enjoyed some of it. It was summer. I was laying in my pool enjoying like, “I think I could do this.” About six months into it, I was going, “I cannot do this. We have more to give.” I knew my vision again was wrapped back around leadership. Leadership was where I wanted to stay and help.
Again, not leadership for the reasons you were talking, some people want to be a leader because of money. Some people want to be a leader because of power. I truly, my soul, my being is about helping other people achieve their visions and goals. How do I bring out the best in them? That's where I knew I had an opportunity to find that. I happened to meet my current employer through conversations and he talked about the vision and what he wanted to develop and I was like, “I know I can help. I know I can do this.”
We just kind of carried on conversations for a while, and it's okay to re-identify your vision. It is truly okay. I think sometimes when you give up on one or you abandon one, you have a hard time. My vision didn't change, the place changed. It takes time to realize that. What I would say to people is don't be afraid of the change of a place. It doesn't mean you have to change who you are and what your vision and aspirations are.
Don't be afraid of the change of a place. It doesn't mean you have to change your vision and aspirations and who you are.
Before we started recording, Denise shared with me about her son being in the Navy. I can remember a lot of people, and I was asking, “Is he going to stay in for 20 years?” I remember when I stepped out of uniform, and I know that a lot of my colleagues when they were tired and put the uniform on for the last time, some of them really struggled. I know I did but then I was off to something else so quickly. I filled that but it is really interesting.
Even back on running this business, there are times when something didn't work out and I couldn't do anymore and I'm like, “I killed the business. I killed it I guess.” It's like I love it when you said that re-identify. No, I didn't kill it. The values are unkillable. They're internal. They've been along since the beginning of time and will be long after I'm gone but it is a different place. When I finally embraced that, I stopped looking at, I'm making a good or right or wrong decision. Like you said, a passion to just lead and serve others wherever that place is.
What a profound way to look at vision. I know that's going to touch a lot of people because a lot of us are in seasons of transition or maybe we're empty nesters. Now we think, “What is my point now?” Well, you still have that. You didn't all of a sudden not become a parent anymore. You have to re-identify yourself. Maybe you're more now of a consultant of your adult children versus a coach or a cop. I just love that you said that. That's really profound.
Isn't that great that you get to change that with your children? You just spent so many years, but now you're their confidant. You're the person that they want to share versus forcing them to share. We used to force them to give me your grades.
Let me see your phone.
Let me see your phone. Now it's like, why?
Why are the cops outside?
Now I get, look at this, what do you think of this? How would you say this? I'm like, I love this transition.
Still, it's different. Like we said, you're abandoning one thing, but it's that loneliness that they're not in the house anymore, but they're in your world in a different place and still in your hearts. That was the re-identifying. You're going to become something else. I've worn a lot of different hats. All hats are wonderful. People are like, “Would you miss this? I do, but I love this new hat.
Once you get into that fluidity, you become really kind of more free to serve wherever. Remember, it's not about where I want to lead and serve. In my belief, it's wherever God wants to put me. That's the highest honor or wherever people need you the most, it may not be where you thought about going. Many times it's not, but when you become more big-picture about it, I think that's when you can embrace those changes.
I would say go through the motions. Let the feelings happen. Let it occur. You'll go through many different stages of that abandonment or loss of your identity. That time between Verizon and coming to DBJ, I had the opportunity to spend numerous amount of time with my parents, which I didn't because I traveled a lot. I was in a hotel four nights a week. I mean, my life was away, wasn't here. We ended up losing my mom in October of 2021. That summer before, I could not ever get it back but it was what needed to happen.
Finding Balance: Go through the motions, right? Let the feelings happen.
I believe that God put this situation in front of me at that time because I needed to be with my parents. That vision again was, I want to help, I want to support, I want to guide. I was able to do that for my parents. I was able to be at the doctor's appointments when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. It was very quick, but it was for a reason. I believe that that was part of the vision and part of my time, that's the place that I needed to lead.
For our listeners out there, I know probably quite a few of you are in a place right now or perhaps a door closed that you wanted to get open, but please just know and have faith, there's something else more urgent that's going to require. Just like you said, you had no idea, but all those months prior, and Denise, what a gift to be there in the end. As I was for both my parents. I miss them more than anything, but I was blessed enough to be there for the last few months with both of them. Not many people get that.
No, they don't.
Denise, listen, we talk loneliness, we talk weariness, abandonment, and vision. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our tremendous tribe about leadership?
Finding Balance
I think the only other thing that gets presented to me throughout my whole career was how do you balance? How do you find a balance between your personal and professional life? I've always been the believer that that is a very personal decision. When I say that, what fits for one does not fit for anybody else. As leaders, I think it is very important for us to remember that because I've been to so many conferences where they're like, “It's great.
I have a successful family at home and a supportive spouse and I have a nanny and I have,” but we're talking to individuals that are in the audience that may not have that or do not have the funds or the resources to do that because they're not in the same position. I would encourage everyone to take a deep dive and think about how you would respond to that type of question and to understand that I would support you, but it's a personal choice for you. I would also explain that you have to figure out what your hard limits are. What are you willing to do and what are you not willing to do?
When you write your hard limits, you communicate those hard limits. Every time I was up for a promotion or every time I was looking at a new position, I shared those hard limits with my leadership to make sure they were okay. Will this fit or won't this fit? If it does not fit, then this isn't the right time for me to move because I'm not sacrificing these hard limits. Some of those, for example, would be, I would miss a baseball game, but I would not miss the sectional game. I would miss my son's swim meet, but I would not meet when he was competing in the States. You just have to understand what those look like and be supportive of your team to help them set those hard limits.
In 2024, it seems like we're getting way better at that, but we have to know it. First of all, say it, own it. Again, if you don't want to give stuff up for that, I'm not judging. You have to own it, but you have to articulate it. We talked about that in the class. You have to tell your boss, these are my hard stops. They cannot read your mind, but you have to know, I love the hard limits, it's very good. You know what? They want to see you happy too.
They understand that you're not just an entity showing up, that you're a body, mind, heart, and soul, and that's what leadership is all about. It depends, you said that. That was the thing about leadership. How do you lead people? Well, it depends. Depends on the follower. It depends on the context. It depends on the situation. I think that's great that there is no hard how to achieve balance. I mean, if there was a real answer to that, everybody would be in balance.
I'll be doing it. I say that sometimes when somebody figures out, can you let me know too? That would be great.
People say, “How did you get successful?” I go, “When I do, I would be the first to write it down. I'll let you know.” Denise, listen, what is the best way that people can get in touch with you?
I'm on my email. I can give you my email address, which would be great. Also, I'm on social media platforms. My email would be DCassidy75@gmail.com. I'm always looking for connections. I'm on LinkedIn also, you can find me. That would be a great way to communicate and connect. I love talking to others. My hope is to reach out. I would love to have conversations. I love to have conversations about women's leadership and women moving up in organizations and striving for that.
I have a lot of background in that area also. I believe we learn from each other. I'm not in the conversation to teach everything but also gain knowledge. The more I can connect with great people in our country, which there are. There are so many amazing people and amazing leaders out there. It will help me better myself also.
I love it. That's why you were the first one to reach out to me and connect on LinkedIn. I loved it. For listeners out there, if you're jogging or whatever, don't worry. You don't have to find sticks to write this down or whatever. We'll go ahead and put this in the show notes and we'll take care of it. All right, Denise. Again, I cannot thank you. It's been so wonderful to connect again. We're connected on LinkedIn. You guys connect with us. Just thank you again for sharing your thoughts with us. I know our listeners will truly be not only inspired but also informed.
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Nice to see you again.
Likewise, and to our tremendous tribe out there, never forget, that you're going to be the same person five years from now that you are today, except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. Make sure they're both tremendous. If you like our show, please hit the subscribe button and share the conversation that Denise had with me today so you can bless others in their journey on the price of leadership. We'd love the honor of a five-star review and we're so thankful to have you a part of this and you keep on paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of the day. Bye-bye.
Important Links
Denise Cassidy - LinkedIn
About Denise Cassidy
Denise joined the team in July 2021 as the Director of Strategic Development. Prior to joining DBJ Wealth Management, she spent 21 years as a Sales Executive for Verizon, with vast experience in Sales Strategy, Employee Development, Operational Processes, and Efficiency. Denise helps oversee the firm's sales, service, and operations while also helping with continued efforts to establish and build strong relationships with our clients and businesses.