The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Unlocked Leader: Dare to Free Your Own Voice, Lead with Empathy, and Shine Your Light in the World by Hortense le Gentil

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

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Today we have an amazing multi-book author on the show. She's joining us for her new book that has just come out, The Unlocked Leader, Dare to Free Your Own Voice, Lead with Empathy, and Shine Your Light on the World. We're joined today by Hortense Le Gentil. Did I get that right? Absolutely right, Chris. I am delighted to be here today.

We've got a great French lesson. Thank you this morning. I can figure that. I need to work on my French if I ever go there and order some espresso. She is a world-renowned executive leadership coach and speaker and author. She guides CEOs and senior executives on the journey from hero leaders to human leaders. She's guided by 30 years in business, working across industries, including media consulting and advertising, and as an entrepreneur. She was a 2021 and 2023 nominee for the center coach and member of MG100 Coaches.

Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm very good. I'm very good. I'm very happy to be here today. We're happy to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs?

So I have a website. It's either my name, HortenseLegendier.com, or I created a shorter one. It's HLGConsulting.org, or of course, LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. There you go. Also, sure. LinkedIn is such a great place. This came out September 26, 2023.

I don't know why Amazon was hiding that from me at the top there. So congratulations on the new book. Give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside. Could you repeat? Sorry. Sure, no problem. Give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your new book. Oh, inside my new book. Okay. So the new book is, it's all about, it's a guide to free yourself from your mind trap. That all just back, you know, to become who we want to be, who we should be.

So because, you know, a lot has been said about, you know, the importance to lead with empathy, but less has been said when it comes to the how. So how do we do that? I think we all agree that we have to do, but where should we start? It's very complicated. There you go. And so you guide people through that process and give them the unlock leader.

I like how there's a birdcage that's open on the front of the book. Dare to free your own voice, lead with empathy, and shine your light on the world, which is what we do here on The Chris Voss Show, or we try to. I think it's a, I don't know, I don't have a joke for that. So give us a little bit of history of your background. How did you grow up? What shaped you into some of the ideas that you put in the book?

Yeah, I was born and raised in France, as my, it's very surprising, I don't have any accent, right? And so I was born there and I raised, I had a lot of lives, a lot of lives. But my first one was surrounded by horses and I was passionate about horses. So horses was absolutely everything. My best friend, my lover, my, I don't know, everything. And also I compete at that time. I was a short jumper competitor. And really, I was passionate about that.

So it was all my life. I was a big dreamer, a hard worker. And I thought that would be my life. And that would be all my life, all the time. But in fact, after doing that for more than a decade, I was very young. I began, I was very young. I started very young. I said, oh, I already have a life.

So I'm not maybe, you know, continue to do the same all the time. And also now that I can look back, you know, looking backward, I can understand that at that time, in fact, if that time shaped me, taught me everything. Taught me everything about leadership, how to communicate, you know, with someone because you communicate with your horse, right? Horse doesn't talk so he yeah so communicates taught me empathy and taught me how to work taught me how to have a good vision because if you don't have the right vision when you go and you want to jump somewhere you know your horse doesn't know where to go and and everything starts with yourself you know be clear who you are and what you want to be. So he taught me that. And then I was around, at that time, I was around 18, 18 years old. I said, okay, I know who I am.

I knew what I wanted to do. But now I feel like that I should, I should change everything. I took that risk and I tried my second passion. So my second passion was US. I was always inspired. The American dream always inspired me. So I studied at that time both in Boston and in Paris. I studied marketing.

And then I came back to Paris. And I worked for large corporations in advertising agency, communication, things like that for more than a decade. And until I felt like I wanted to change and I became an entrepreneur. And I became an entrepreneur in the steel recycling industry. Absolutely nothing to do with what I did before. It's a long story, but, you know, this is a nice story too. But I have a lot of stories.

And so I did that for a decade and I learned a lot, of course. And then after a decade, I think I have something with a decade. It's a cycle or something. And then I thought that, okay, I was done with that also because, you know, I created the thing and it felt like, okay, it was time to move also. But I didn't know what to do. And then a friend of mine asked me if I can help a friend of his. And I said, of course. And he told me, and by the way, you just love, you just love, you know, help others.

You should be a coach. And I told him, oh my goodness, I'm not a coach. I don't know what a coach is and I help others you should be a coach and i told him oh my goodness i'm not a coach i don't know what a coach is and i don't want to be a coach but yes i'm going to help your friend of course of course and then so we had a conversation with that friend but you know my friend put me a little seed in my in my So I said, okay, let's try it. Let's put the hat. Let's imagine that I'm a coach. Because I learned a lot during my life.

And the best thing, the first thing I learned is I had to be myself. If I have to change, it's not for me. And it's okay. But in fact, okay, I put this hat. And in fact, Chris, I don't know, a miracle happened there. And I felt like, you know, in one hour, all my life made sense. It was like a puzzle, you know, and I understood that everything that I was doing, that I did before, that everything I went through, it was just to let me there. Wow.

To help others, to help leaders, especially, to unlock themselves, to be themselves, to be the best version of themselves, and to, yeah, to free themselves. And then here I am. And after it was, so I began a decade ago, so now, and I was in Paris. And after everything went very fast, you know, Marshall Goldsmith, you know, the very famous coach, the paper of coaching asked me to give me this honor to be a part of his MG100. So it's a bunch of people that choose and he gave back to us and he told us, you know,

everything that he knew. And I moved to New York. So now I live to New York. And so it was five years ago that I moved to New York. And I wrote this second book and a lot happened in my life. So this is who I am. Also, I have, of course, I have not, of course, but I have two wonderful children of a young adult, unfortunately now. You know, I'm aging. After a decade and a decade and a decade, you know, after a while.

That's how it works. Last time I checked. Yeah. There you go. And then, yeah. And this is who I am now. I think you said this is your second book, correct? Oh, I cannot hear you.

I think you said this is your second book, correct? Oh, I cannot hear you. I think you said this is your second book? Excuse me, because I lost the sound. I made a mistake. Testing one, two, three. I think you said this is your second book. Is that correct? Yes, this is my second book. The first book was Aligned, Connecting Your True Self with the Leader You're Meant to Be.

There you go. I think we can see it behind you there on the shelf. So there you go. Congratulations. So in this new book, what are some techniques that you tell people? And you talk about how to confront your fears and escape those traps. Why do we have mind traps? I guess you really delve into that.

And what's the issue about that? Why do we do that? Okay. The first thing is, if you decide to go to this process of unlocking yourself, to be more human leader, to be ready to meet yourself, to meet your inner voice, it's not about, it has nothing to do with weakness. It is, you need courage because you have to unlearn what you learned. It's really, you know, unlearning and relearning. So you go through this process. The first thing, of course, is you're afraid because we have fears. Of course, you're used to do another way and you've been successful doing that.

So why should I change? And also you're afraid of failure. And sometimes you're afraid also of facing your emotions. It's not easy, Chris, right? To be, okay, let's face my emotion, how I feel, how other feels. This could be hard for some of us. And the third one, I think, the fear of chaos. So the first exercise is just to meet your fear, your fears, be aware of them.

And it's part of being human. So deal with your fear. Okay. And find why you should change. Find the balance between status quo and change. Because change can be, you know, can be hard sometimes. It's hard because we are, we are animal of habits and it's secure,

you know, it's security habits are secure security too. And then, so when you, you do that work conversation with yourself and you, and you're, and you deal, I like to say that you deal with your,

with your fears because fears, you know, they're going to stay for a while, but you know, feel it, do it anyway. And then, and then, you know, they're going to stay for a while, but, you know, feel it, do it anyway. And then, you know, comes the first, the real walk. Okay, so now you are trapped somewhere. If you are in this feeling, and it's happened to all of us, so if you feel like, okay, I should do that,

I want to do that, but I cannot because I'm not used to or because people around me are telling you that I should not or whatever it is. It's because you are locked. So how we feel, we can feel sad, we can feel like we don't fit uh where we are we it's all about that then it's it's a clue it's a clue that you are you are stuck somewhere so now that you have

you you feel it and it's and again it's happened to to everyone and it happened to me you know 15 years ago i was more than that but okay let's say 15 years ago, I was unhappy in my personal life and my professional life. And I felt lost. I felt like, I don't know, I couldn't say who I was. And I didn't like the person that I will become. Nothing bad outside. Everything sounds great. But I didn't, I was not, you know,

I felt it was not the right things for me. But it's hard. And of course, everything went south. And I was stuck in bed for months, very sick. So I had time to think. And at that time, what happened was I had a dream, Chris. I had a dream. And then my grandmother that I just loved, and she passed away that time, but she came in my dream. And she told me, Hortense, you have to find the path of roses. And I was like very surprised. What is that?

And I asked her where it is. And she just smiled at me, Chris. And she just looked at me and she said, you know where it is. And it just disappeared. Okay. Can you imagine? I was absolutely furious because she didn't give me the answer. And there we are.

And of course, that will be later when I will understand that what she meant was very, very important. What she meant was that I had to listen to my inner voice, not the voices outside, but your voice. And then when I felt the courage to do it, I began to free myself. Well, there you go. And my real life, who I was really, began at that time. And so this is a mind trap and this is how you can go through your mind trap. And so when you identify this mind trap, after you have to find the source. So where it's coming from?

And from my experience, it comes from trauma that are not overcome. Childhood trauma and things like that? Yeah, exactly. There you go. and or other voices you know the education parental authority social religion religious whatever so they shaped me they shaped us all of us you know for a while but one point, you have to let go and to listen to your inner voice. And let me share another example. I have, so a long time ago, four years ago, not a long time, but years ago,

there were a CEO who was considered to be the next, no, sorry, a senior executive who was considered to be the next CEO of his company. So it was young, it was smart, everything went good. Then in order to do that, Chris, what he had to do is to be in front of a panel of other leaders, right? They were responsible for the process, so he has to go there. And completely out of the blue, out of the blue out of the blue

he became very talkative and he didn't listen and he was another one

another person and of course you know he didn't get the job he didn't get the job because yeah of course it is not what you're

waiting for from a CEO a a future ceo and then he came to me and we had this conversation and he told me hortense i don't know what happened i don't know and i said okay let's figure out and we revisited his life. And then he remembered, Chris, he remembered he was a student. So a long time ago, right? He was a student at that time. And in order, he had to pass an exam. In order to pass an exam, he had to be in front of a bunch of teachers.

And one of the teachers didn't let him talk he was he hurt him all the time so this young guy absolutely didn't understand what happened right and then of course he lost his school and he was shocked he became a trauma? And it's not finished. The same teacher told him at the end, young guy, I don't know what you're going to do in your life, but I can promise you something. You will never be a CEO because I cannot see all your emotions on your face, and it's not possible. Then this poor young guy left school after graduation thinking, you know, with a trauma, one,

and two, thinking with the voice of his teacher, you know, telling him that he would never be a CEO, and he was not aware of that. Wow. And then years later, when time came and then he was considered to be a CEO, in his unconscious, those voices came back.

And, you know, in order to not be cut off and, and, and to be, and in order to, to, to be sure that he can finish, you can finish his conversation, he talked, talked, talked and didn't listen. It was a reaction to his brain. His brain said, oh, now it's red light, red light, red light, so talk, talk, talk, talk.

So it was not appropriate, right? But the unconscious woke up because he rang a bell. And then, okay, so that's why his behavior completely changed because he wanted to overcompensate, compensated. He wanted to be sure that nobody will cut it off. And so that was a voice. So it was not his voice. It was a voice of someone else, a teacher, who made like a commandment. You will never be a voice. So it was not his voice. It was the voice of someone else, the teacher, who made a commandment. You will never

be a CEO. So then just to finish your question, only on the mind trap, not how you unlock yourself. But then, and this happened to all of us. All of us, we grew up with voices,

our parents. It is to help us very often. But at one point, it helped us. It's like, you know, when you are a kid and you learn how to do bicycle, right? How to ride a bicycle. You have your training wheels. And you need it, right? Because when you are small, you need your training wheels but after a

time you know how to ride bicycle so you have to let go your training wheels and those voices that help us you know until now at one point they don't help us anymore and now and now it's time it's time for us to listen to who we really are, because I am a big believer that every one of us, we have a special talent. Something special. And then our mission on life, if you will, is to find this talent and make this talent grow.

There you go. So it's time. There you go. So it's time. There you go. So what's the best way that we can use some strategies to better connect with ourselves? Do we need to go heal those traumas and try and address them before they pop up? Or how do we unlock that?

So I think there is two questions here. So how to deal with the trauma and the other is how to unlock ourself. Okay. So let's finish with unlock after maybe we can go back to the trauma. And so to unlock, so when you're here and you're aware of the source where you're locked, so now, now you challenge the voice. So for example, if I take this as a future CEO, you challenge the voice. So, this is what we did

and I said, okay, is it true? So, there are three powerful questions. So, in that case, it was, you will never be a CEO. The voice said that, right?

And then, the teacher said that. Okay? So, now, you challenge that voice with three questions. So now you challenge that voice with three questions. So is it true?

Is it relevant? And is it helpful today? So is it true that you can abuse you? Is it relevant? And is it helpful today? And the answer was no, no, no.

So now it's time to let go. Ah, there you go. And then you work on how to let go, but Chris, with peace. Not let go like with anger or whatever. Oh my goodness, you know, this one told me that, you know, ruined my life. No, no, no, no. With peace. The secret is peace.

Peace. And then you become, you can start to write your own story. And you can start to listen to your own voice. Because you don't have all those voices around you who tell you, you should do that. You should not. You cannot do that. No.

So silence for a while. There you go. There you not. You cannot do that. Yeah. No. So silence for a while. There you go. There you go. And connect with yourself. So people can utilize your book to help become dare to free their own voices, lead with empathy and shine a light in the world. Give us your final thoughts as we go on the show and tell people where they can pick up the book.

Yeah. So I would say that when you are free and you are author of your life it's you know everything begins so you know what drives you how you want to be remembered how you want to show up think about that and write write write down everything and work on it every day on a daily daily daily basis and every day take at least five minutes to have five minutes of rendezvous with yourself. Because we had a lot of rendezvous in a day. Please take at least five minutes to

check where you are and if you are on the good track, on the right track again, and if you write your own story. And then if you do that, the day after day after day, you really built your story and your life. And this if you do that, day after day after day, you really built your story and

your life. And this is, you know, all about freedom, a dream, and making your dream to come true. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been very insightful having you on the show. Thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming. Thanks to Honest for tuning in. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. The Unlocked Leader. Dare to free your voice, lead with empathy, and shine your light on the world. Thanks to Honest for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, FortressCrispFoss, LinkedIn.com,

FortressCrispFoss, CrispFoss1, the TikTokity, and all those places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.