Mick Unplugged - Dima Ghawi | Transforming Past Struggles into Leadership Lessons and DEI Advocacy

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Welcome back to "Mick Unplugged"! In today's riveting episode, we have the honor of interviewing Dima Ghawi—an inspiring leadership coach, author, and speaker dedicated to global leadership, diversity, and inclusion. Dima shares her incredible journey of resilience, from facing death threats due to cultural norms to becoming a beacon of hope and transformation. She offers profound insights into her work in DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), the challenges leaders face today, and the critical importance of self-discovery and authenticity in leadership. With captivating personal anecdotes and innovative strategies, Dima reveals how investing in oneself can dismantle limiting beliefs and unlock true potential. We also delve into her exciting upcoming projects, including a possible movie adaptation of her life and online leadership development programs. Join us as Mick Hunt and Dima Ghawi explore how to lead with integrity and build inclusive environments that foster growth and creativity. Stay tuned for an episode brimming with inspiration and actionable advice!   The top 5 takeaways from this episode of "Mick Unplugged" featuring Dima Ghawi: The Journey from Survival to Empowerment: Dima Ghawi's personal story of escaping an abusive marriage and facing her father's death threats sheds light on the harrowing realities certain cultural norms enforce. Her journey highlights the transition from merely surviving these threats to thriving through self-discovery, self-love, and eventually, using her experiences to empower others. The Power of DEI in Organizations: Dima's work in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is transformative, both for individuals and organizations. Her efforts with a resistant board of directors illustrate that patience, understanding, and non-judgmental engagement are crucial to achieving buy-in for DEI initiatives. This has resulted in significant changes such as diverse leadership pipelines and DEI certifications within organizations. Constructive Feedback and Leadership Development: Dima stresses the importance of constructive feedback in leadership. Today's leaders often struggle with giving feedback due to fear of confrontation or litigation. However, she emphasizes that honest and constructive conversations can greatly aid in personal and professional growth. Self-Awareness in Leadership: For aspiring leaders, Dima recommends beginning with self-discovery to understand their strengths, communication style, and conflict management abilities. She cautions against being promoted solely based on technical skills without a fundamental understanding of leadership responsibilities. Self-awareness and proactive personal development are vital. Breaking Free from Perfectionism: Drawing from her grandmother's metaphor of a glass vase, Dima encourages individuals to challenge societal and cultural expectations of perfection. She believes in recognizing and questioning these imposed standards, thereby breaking free to pursue personal growth and development. This step is crucial for authentic leadership and forming a genuine connection with others.   Connect and Discover: LinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/dimaghawi Instagram:  Instagram.com/dima.ghawi Facebook:  facebook.com/profile.php?id=10050491089661 Website:  dimaghawi.com Youtube: @DimaGhawi Book: Breaking Vases: Shattering Limitations & Daring to Thrive    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometimes when you're trying to be this perfect vision of yourself, you don't feel like it's okay to just break your own vase. Invest in yourself. Knowledge is light and ignorance is darkness. So we need to challenge the ignorant mindset. And the only way we do that is with knowledge. The main thing that leaders are struggling with today right now is to give feedback. People are afraid of having confrontation. They are afraid of truly telling their employees how they need to get better. That's the number one and two thing that your employees want.

They want transparency and they want authenticity. And if you do those two things, trust me, communication is easy. So Dima, I totally agree with you. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mic Unplugged. And today, our guest is an exceptional leadership coach, author, and speaker with a profound dedication to empowering individuals and organizations to reach their highest potential.

Her expertise in global leadership and her passion for promoting diversity and inclusion have transformed countless lives and organizations. Through her inspirational story and impactful coaching, she's helped many break through barriers and achieve their personal dreams. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome the dynamic, the influential, the incomparable, Ms. Dina Gawi. Dima, how are you today, dear? I'm doing great, and I'm so happy to be with you today. I am so honored that you are here, Dima, and here's something that's amazing. You know, I've seen a lot of your speeches. I've seen your TED Talk probably 5,000 times, and it starts out talking about the relation, or not the relationship, but the story of your grandmother

telling you about a girl and a woman and how to become one and, you know, breaking the vase and how that can never be put back together. And the first time that I heard that my mouth dropped because I never thought of that parallel before. And I was like, that is so right. That is so right. So I would love for you to share a little bit of that story and how that sparked you to become who you are today. Yeah, sure. So yeah, it started when I was five years old and I was in my grandmother's home. I always loved to be at my grandmother's home. She always had fun games for us, but that specific day, she was so much more serious than usual. And she got a glass vase. We were arranging flowers and she said, do you see this perfect glass vase? A girl is just like it.

If it gets cracked for any reason, you can't fix it. You can't glue it. No one would want it. And that's the one we throw in the trash. So imagine being five-year-old, being taught this very scary visual and like trying to learn a lesson of what does it even mean,

the perfect glass vase and throwing it in the trash. So that's where the story started. And the story was all about following, obeying, not having an identity, not understanding my purpose, and knowing that if I am not perfect, that there's going to be consequences. And so the journey is about being the perfect glass vase in a way, but it is getting to a point where there was, I could not continue to survive that way. And in order for me to continue to live, I needed to break it. I needed to challenge the norm. I needed to create something new. And of course, there's consequences, but it's so much more worth it. that are in that same scenario, right? Where sometimes when you're trying to be this perfect vision of yourself, and most of the time it's for other people

or it's for another entity, right? That you don't feel like it's okay to just break your own vase. And that's what I loved about that story because I sat there and I was like, someone needs to hear this, that it's okay and not only is it okay, but you should be looking to break that

glass vase that you're in because it's usually someone else's or some other thing's vision of you that you're trying to perfect. And when, as I'm following your work, I hear, I hear you talk about find your because and do like understand your because. How can you understand your because, the foundation, if you are limited as a person, your thoughts, your dreams, your aspirations, you're limited. But the worst part is when we're limited, we don't realize we end up limiting other people around us too. And that is the problem is like, if I kept my glass vase perfect, most likely I would have passed it to the next generation and expected the same thing from them instead of, you know, doing what I'm doing right now and inspiring everybody to shatter their vase

as a result. Yeah. And I'd love for you to tell the listeners and the viewers, that person that's stuck right now, that's like, okay, so I hear Dima and Mick telling me I need to break my glass vase. What's the first two steps that folks need to take in order to do that? Well, the first step is as simple as to discover that we all have a vase and it is normal. It doesn't make us less. It doesn't make us bad or any of that. We all have it. And initially in my journey, I used to think it is just women. But now as I'm coaching men and coaching executives, it's everybody's, every gender, every ethnicity. And the problem is many times we end up judging our own self and we don't need an external person to tell us that we have to be perfect. We start challenging ourselves. So it is mainly to just give ourselves permission to

realize, yeah, we most likely have a vase and that's okay. It doesn't make me worse. It just makes me a human. That's one. The second one is to really to start questioning everything, questioning the norm, questioning what other people told us about ourselves, our story, about our journey, even the people we love and the people that we consider that they have our best interest in mind. So I don't think anybody would love me more than my grandmother and my parents, but imagine all the limitations that I had to live with and continue to live with because of what they told me and what they taught me. I know you asked for two.

I just have to share more. So the second one is to question, question everything. The third one is start observing people that you admire that went on a journey of shattering the norm and challenging the system and start questioning yourself. What do you like about their journey that inspires you? There's a reason we're inspired by them. Maybe they are helping us without even knowing us to go on the last on the journey. And final thing is invest in yourself. And I hear you talk a lot about that

in your podcast, in your videos, invest in yourself. Don't wait for somebody to invest in you. Don't wait for a parent or a spouse or an organization, invest in yourself. There's a phrase in Arabic called and that means knowledge is light and ignorance is darkness. So we need to challenge the ignorant mindset. And the only way we do that is with

knowledge. And knowledge doesn't mean education. It is self-awareness. It is knowledge about how we perceive ourselves, knowledge about our surrounding. I believe when we bring light and knowledge into our life and we're inspired by others and we realize that it is human to have a vase that's going to inspire us to do something in our lives and shatter the whole vase. Dima, we could do this all day. I think we should just have a show that's the Dima and Mick show. I think that's a great idea.

Let's do it. Let's do it. So, you know, you know, on the show, we talk about your because and how it should be deeper than your why. I think the audience wants to know what is Dima's because. And I know that it evolves and changes over time and it should. But if I were to say right now, what's DEMA's because right now? Oh, wow. Wow. My because right now is to make a huge difference in the world where it is, where it would allow the pain and the misery and the struggles in my life to have a meaning in other people's lives. So it's so important for me to realize that there was a purpose for the struggles that I had. And it's beyond me. It is the purpose of making other people's lives better. And I agree with you, it evolved. Because when early in my life,

because I've been dealing with death threats from my father for the last 23 years, early in my life, it was about survival, just to survive as a woman, a Middle Eastern woman here in the US dealing with death threats. It's called honor killing. And it was just because I broke the base by leaving an abusive marriage, as simple as that. So it was survival, surviving financially, surviving emotionally, surviving physically, just survival. And then it evolved a little to self-discovery and self-love. So I needed to go through healing, and that was my because. It is, I was doing what I was doing because I was hungry to to to heal and to love who I am and accept who I am. And now it's evolved where I'm

like, OK, I'm there. And now it's a matter of making a difference and showing people the path and helping them discover their because as well. That's amazing. And I want to unpack something that you just talked about if you allow us to go there. So you talked about receiving death threats from your father. And I want all the listeners and viewers to understand the intensity of that because, you know, here in the United States, right, like we have this thing, your daddy's girl. And so to have that type of mentality and then to go to receiving death threats from your father, like what was that like for you? Oh, it was horrible. And I agree with you about the daddy's girl.

And I also heard a lot that the dad is the girl, the daughter's first love. Right. So it is the person the girl would look up to and all of that. And it is feeling judged, feeling that I'm not good enough, that I'm not worthy of living just because I wanted to. I was miserable in my life in that relationship. So it was a choice that I was given either to live, be perfect and be accepted or to challenge the norm. And then I don't deserve to live. So I had to make that choice. And that choice came by me deciding that I want a different life and I deserve a different life. But that resulted in the death threats for the last 23 years. Well, and as you know, you definitely deserve and have earned that better life.

So I'm definitely proud of you for that. Thank you. And now a lot of your work that you do with corporations and businesses is on diversity and inclusion. What sparked that interest for you? Like what specifically said, I'm going to focus on that avenue?

Yeah, well, being excluded, right? I want to give voice to people and help them discover their potential, help them to shatter their vases and limitations. People like me, people that were excluded, people that were told that they're not good enough, that they're not in the right fit because of their skin color, because of their ethnicity, because of all of these things. I wanted to make this difference because I went through the pain. I've been to a place where I felt that I'm not good enough because of external factors and I want to change that. So that's how I got into diversity, equity and inclusion. I was very fortunate that the demand, like people were connecting with my messages, they're connecting with my story.

And in a way, it's giving them a different way to hear about DEI from a woman's perspective, a Middle Eastern woman's perspective. And so, yeah, it's a big part of my purpose. And I'm grateful for being part of this. And I'm going to let the listeners and viewers understand, Dima is never going to brag. So I'm going to pull this out of Dima really quick because DEMA is one of the top five business coaches in the world. And that's based on me. But literally, DEMA is one of the top five greatest business coaches that we have in the world. So DEMA, a little bit of bragging that you can do. What are some of the impacts that your efforts have had on organizations? What are some of the things that you've seen in the organizations that you've worked with,

specifically from the DEI perspective? Yes, well, I'll tell you where it started and now where it's ending. One organization, the board of directors were so resisting to anything related to DEI. Like they didn't want to even see me. They didn't want to hear me. They were saying things that made no sense about how implementing DEI is going to make us a socialist country, and we're

going to collapse, just like the, you know, like the countries in Eastern Europe. And they would say things that made no sense, but then working with them, reaching out to them, understanding their own fears, insecurities, understanding where the misinformation they were getting, and continuing to be persistent. Now, four years later, not only did they implement DEI initiatives, some of the board members, they realized their own resistance. So now they're going to become, they are in the process of being DEI certified through Cornell. And we train the entire company. We have a top talent program to ensure that it is, that it's a pipeline that is diverse, that we are grooming the next generation of leaders,

and they're from different ethnicities and genders and all of that. So that's just within four years. But it's a matter of starting with the resistance, understanding where it's coming from, and understanding for me, which is very difficult, not to judge them because of their own biases, instead to work with them and help take them on the journey with me. Little steps at a time.

Now, when I look back, well, after just four years, we've achieved a lot. And it's just like one little step at a time. Amazing. Amazing. You know, we both share a very similar passion with leadership development as well, too. What are some of the challenges that you see leaders facing today? You know, that's such a great question. And the main thing that leaders are struggling with today right now is to give feedback and to give constructive feedback.

People are afraid of having confrontation. They are afraid of truly telling their employees how they need to get better. And as a result, these employees, they think everything is fine and they're doing a great job, but then the leader is not happy with their performance, but nobody gave them the feedback. So it is so shocking to me that I have to work with a C-suite right now and teach them how to have difficult conversations and teach them how to give constructive feedback. You would think this stuff is basic, like maybe it's basic for you and I, but it's not. And everybody is afraid of making other people uncomfortable. Everybody is afraid that they're going to be sued. And we don't need to give a feedback in a afraid that they're going to be sued.

And we don't need to give a feedback in a way where we're going to be sued. But what can we do to be effective and realize that when we give feedback, we're serving our employees. We're helping them to be better instead of just avoiding all of that. No, I totally agree. And, you know, I tell the entities that I coach very similar to you. People want feedback. People actually want to be better. And it's how you communicate it is what's going to separate you from being an average wrong. It's okay to be transparent about the goals that we have and whether I'm hitting them or not. Because, and this is what I tell my entities, most of your employees are leaders in their household and communities.

So they understand. They may not be a leader or a senior leader within your organization, but the moment that they walk out of your doors, they're probably a leader. And so just be very transparent and be authentic because that's the number one and two thing that your employees want. They want transparency and they want authenticity. And if you do those two things, trust me, communication is easy. So Dima, I totally agree with you. Yeah. Like even tomorrow, I have a meeting with the chief operating officer and one of the employees, because the employee has been asking why I am not being promoted.

Everything I'm doing is great. My manager thinks I'm great, but they don't see her as a leader. They don't see her. She's qualified to even be to advance. And as a result, what's going on? We're having this gap in communication where the employee is not happy and the leadership team are not happy too. So I'm glad you and I are on the same page,

but it's like the biggest challenge right now. Totally agree. Totally agree. So for the new leader, right? So someone that's transitioning to leadership within their organization, what advice would you have for that new leader, particularly as it relates to fostering an inclusive culture? Start with self-discovery. It's as simple as that. Get to learn who you are as a person, what are your strengths as a leader, what is the way you communicate, and how you manage conflict.

Many times people get promoted into leadership roles just because they're good at what they do. So maybe they are the best IT professional. Great, let's promote that person. But that person may not know who they are and what is the best way to, how do they communicate? What are their blind spots? They don't know that. So start with self-discovery. Invest in yourself to learn who you are. And when we get to know who we are, then it's going to be easier for us to adapt to others because we appreciate who we are. We get it. And then we can continue to adapt.

How can we be servant leaders? How can we drive inclusion and make a difference for our team if we don't even know who we are? And that's the kind of people I see all around. They don't know who they are, but they're trying to manage and they're just focused on the bottom line. Agree. Completely agree. Here's an interesting question for you. So I'm writing a book and I have a chapter about this in my book. So I want to hear from Dima. What are leaders doing wrong that they think they're doing right? Right. Like what are leaders doing wrong that they think that they're doing right?

And I'll give you an example. So one of my things is, you know, leaders are over delegating, but calling it empowerment. right? It's like, oh, I'm going to give you all these responsibilities, but I'm calling it empowerment. But you're really not empowering anyone. You're just giving people more things to do. Wow. That's like such a wonderful question. What they're doing wrong that they think they're doing right. I'm going to link it to what I answered earlier. They think they're doing wrong that they think they're doing right. I'm going to link it to what I answered earlier. They think they're doing right, which is not having confrontation and not having difficult conversation with their team, which results being wrong because you're not having opportunities to develop your team and to have these meaningful discussions that would make them even better. I used to have a manager. My first management job, my manager, anytime I did something that was not great or I could have done better, he would say,

Dima, let's have a learning moment. So he shifted the mindset to learning. Let's have a learning moment. So that took out a lot of the fear of being judged. And instead, it's created an environment of learning and curiosity and creativity. And that's what a lot of managers are missing out on. They're not giving the learning moments. They think it's fine, but they end up hurting their team. Oh, I love that. I love that. That's amazing. So Dima, I love the last couple of minutes that we have. What's new and exciting in the worlds of Dima? Like, what are you doing? What do you have going on? Yeah, a lot of exciting things. So one huge exciting thing that's going on

is I am in conversation with two producers to turn my story into a movie. And I understand that this is going to take time. I get it. I'm just so happy about it. There's one producer in LA and the other one in Saudi. So the Saudi one will cover the Middle Eastern aspect, even though I've never been to Saudi.

But it is a country that they're investing in the movie industry, and the Middle Eastern part, the Jordan part of the story, would be shot in Saudi. And then the other part would be shot in Louisiana. So this is like the biggest huge project that is in the horizon. So we found a person who to work on the screenplay. And right now we're just in conversation about that. So this is the big thing. The other big thing is online cohorts for leadership development. I realize a lot of organizations, especially the small ones,

they may not be able to afford someone like you or me to come and train everybody. But if they select their top talent, especially if they are from underrepresented groups, I'm putting together these online cohorts for leadership development and their two-year programs all about to get them on the vision to advance to become the future CEO. Oh, that's amazing. Have you started? Is it complete? Do you have your first cohort ready? Yes, we started. So that started, it started two months ago. And it's going so well. And it's all things that you and I enjoy things like coaching and workshops and conversations and initiatives to help them think differently. If we want to advance and continue to advance in leadership, we need to start thinking about how would a CEO do certain

things? And when we start thinking that way, and I'm helping them with that and helping them with their communication, then that's the vision, right? That's the North Star that we're guiding them through. So yes, it started and I absolutely love it. It's just a matter of continuing to grow it. That's awesome. That's awesome. So where can people follow you, find you?

Where do you want people to connect with you? So they can connect with me on my website. It's my name. So D-I-M-A-G-H-A-W-I.com. They can connect with me on social media and I am everywhere on social media. I would love to hear about their story, their journey, their vases, and hopefully to keep inspiring them to shatter these vases and to continue to thrive. Amazing. The incomparable, Ms. Dima Gawi. Dima, it has been an honor to have you on. We're going to have to do this again.

This was too fun to just have one episode of Dima Ghali. Well, let's schedule the next one. We can have as many episodes as you want. We're going to make that happen. Dima, thank you so much. I know how busy you are and you took some special time out of your day to make this happen. So appreciative of that piece. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mick. I love the opportunity. You got it. And for all the listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.

Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.