#145 From Setbacks to Strength: Leading with Vision and Confidence

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode # 145 Dana Weaver

“From Setbacks to Strength: Leading with Vision and Confidence”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing, and I’m here today with Dana Weaver, my new friend. She has a podcast also, and I was on it last week, and so we just get to be continuing our conversation, and partly what happens here on the podcast is that it’s an unscripted conversation, so we don’t actually know.

We do know we want to learn way more about Dana and how she got to be the coach that she is today, but it’s like, we’re sitting down, having coffee, talking to each other, and getting to know this new friend of mine.

(00:38) Dana Weaver: Hi, Doreen. Thank you so much for having me.

(00:41) Doreen Downing: Yes, I’m excited. Well, let me read something that is about you, so that people get a sense right away about what you do as a leadership coach.

Dana Weaver, your go-to leadership coach, partners with professional women to help them find their confidence and influence so that they can break through glass ceilings and make their unique mark in this world.

With over 25 years in senior leadership, Dana has made a positive impact on her field of aging. She has also inspired countless women to believe in their power and realize that they can achieve infinitely more than they originally believed. Oh, this is beautiful.

I love reading it because it reminds me of the words that you’ve used, like the power of who we are as women. Thank you for all you do, all you’ve done, and also for showing up today to help us learn more about how to be powerful women.

(01:52) Dana Weaver: I’m really, really glad to be here. It’s my honor, honestly, to help women find their power and use their voice. One of the things that I love about the conversations that you and I have is where we do similar work and our passion is to help voices rise. It’s nice to be with someone and speak with someone who has a similar passion. Together, hopefully, we’ll help at least one, but hopefully more women will rise today.

(02:21) Doreen Downing: Yes, well, we have quite a few listeners out there. This podcast is ranked in number eight globally of the public speaking podcasts.

(02:31) Dana Weaver: That’s so cool.

(02:32) Doreen Downing: Lots of listeners, lots of exposure today. What I usually do is, because of my psychology background, I’m just really curious about how people become who they are.

So the first is what happened, because you don’t just usually—I mean, you’re a beautiful woman, and you just radiate from your heart, and for those who aren’t watching and are just listening, I think you already got the resonance and hear she’s got lots of heartfulness, but I know histories are histories.

It seems like the journey to find our voice and be who we are meant to be is one that has challenges, and that’s how we get to be stronger, so let’s talk about, first, where you grew up, and is there some story early on about finding your voice or not having one? Just curious about that. Let’s start there.

(03:35) Dana Weaver: I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, so smack dab in the middle of the United States, and it’s the capital city. So there’s a lot that goes on in terms of advocacy and policy and things like that for the state of Kansas, which is cool.

I don’t know about an early story about where I found my voice, but I can tell you an early story about where I decided, or why I decided to go into aging.

And that was, I had a great grandmother that I loved dearly. She’s an amazing woman. And I don’t think that her story really was told to all of us grandchildren in a way that we needed to hear it, but I just knew she was special.

And so, she got to the point where she couldn’t stay in her own home. She needed to go into a nursing home and she lived in Arkansas. My dad brought me there to see her and we walked into this nursing home. I’d never been in one before, and I looked around and I saw all these people in the entryway and around the nurses station, just slumped over in their wheelchairs and it didn’t smell very good in there.

There were just so many bad things there. We visited with my grandmother for a while. Then we left. On my way out, I was holding my dad’s hand, we exited the doors, and I looked up at him and I’m like, “Dad, why is that place so horrible and why would we have her there?”

And he goes, “I don’t know, honey,” because it wasn’t his decision to put her there. “I don’t know, honey, but I hope someday you can change that.” That was my first entree into aging and knowing that I wanted to make a difference.

When I look back over everything that I’ve done in the field of aging, it’s helped me to realize that my voice grew through being part of that industry. I learned how to be a leader and I learned how to teach leadership. I also learned through that field that it’s really, really important that we have good leaders because we’re people caring for people.

And through that experience, I just realized how many women in particular just didn’t have a voice. Or they tried to have a voice, and they were pushed back or stamped down or just made to feel like their voice wasn’t quite as important as others, specifically men in the field. I think that’s where it all came from and to, and now I just love helping women both inside that field and outside that field. Right now, I’m doing a lot of work with entrepreneurs and helping them find their voice.

(06:17) Doreen Downing: Well, this first story that you told about a great grandmother, so she must have been somewhat aged by then, where you were—

(06:27) Dana Weaver: She was in her 90s.

(06:28) Doreen Downing: Yes, and what I got was that you have a natural compassion that was already showing up in your nature for you to be so observant and feel like there was something wrong with what was happening, what society was doing, what your family was doing.

But also, I heard something about what your dad said in that message to you, he gave you something like a vision. It’s like he planted a seed in you. “I bet you could do something about this little one.” That’s really, really nice to hear. Did you have brothers and sisters?

(07:11) Dana Weaver: I have one brother and he’s younger than me. He is about five and a half years younger, and his name is Michael.

(07:16) Doreen Downing: What was your relationship like with him, since we are also talking about leadership and an older sister is somebody that has a lot more than a younger brother, five years younger, but what did you learn about leadership with him? Maybe that’s a question we could wonder about here.

(07:35) Dana Weaver: I don’t know if that’s the best, but so when he was born, I had been five and a half years as the only child, and so I was not ready to have someone else come into our world and take some of the spotlight from me because they did keep the spotlight on me as you do with younger kids, so I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

He came into the world and he was just so cute, but my mom didn’t want me to hold him at first because she wasn’t sure if I would drop him or all of that. That gave me a, “I don’t want to have a little brother,” but as time went on, we became really good friends and we probably have one of the best sibling relationships to this day.

In terms of being an older sister as a leader, when my mom passed away about 10 years ago, I know my brother wasn’t quite ready to let go of her, neither was I. I think I stepped into that role a little bit with him to be even more of a better friend, but also that figure that cheered him on like my mom did.

(08:35) Doreen Downing: Oh, beautiful. Thank you. That’s very touching. And you could see that I’m trying to connect the dots between who you are now and what happened to you earlier. My sister is just 11 months younger. So, we’re very close. Yes. I think they call that Irish twins, but mom did dress us alike.

But I get the reason why I picked up on you being the older sister. I know that in terms of leading the way and somebody behind us or, especially, if we are connected to them, we want something for them. That to me feels like part of what leadership is about.

That stepping in, what you said, like with the passing of your mom, a decision to step in, that feels like also a leadership quality.

(09:27) Dana Weaver: With him, I realized that, not that I was leading him per se, I think we lead each other, but just, I felt more of a responsibility to help guide him and keep the essence of my mom and her values and her desire for us to achieve just anything that we wanted to. I wanted to help keep that in front of him as well.

(09:48) Doreen Downing: Well, there you go again. Something about you, what your dad gave you, and what you give people as leaders is a vision. What you just said about your brother is, I don’t want to say, “Keep hope alive,” but it’s like, “Let’s keep something positive alive here.” Possibility. What’s possible. That’s what a leader does.

(10:11) Dana Weaver: I’m glad that you said that because I am one of those people that is probably eternally hopeful and optimistic. I’m a very optimistic person. I’ve had a lot of setbacks in my life or things that would definitely set other people back and I realized, in the midst of all of it, that it wasn’t going to help me to let things overwhelm me and hold me back. It wasn’t going to help me and it wasn’t going to help the people around me.

I was teaching a leadership course. There was this moment where I realized I can’t let any of the negative stuff get into what I’m teaching because there’s too much negative in the world, so I want to put positive into these people, and I want them to feel like there’s something that they can strive for, and back to the vision that you suggested or talked about.

Giving people hope and giving people the knowledge of the reality or the perspective that the sky’s the limit for any of us, and we don’t have to let our circumstances hold us back.

(11:16) Doreen Downing: Yes. In the bio, you had that idea of the glass ceiling. There’s no ceiling. We just have the sky and it’s unlimited. Just talking to you right now, I feel uplifted. I look up at the sky myself here and think, “Oh, nothing’s stopping me.”

You and I’ve talked before, so I know you have a story about being pushed into a situation where you had to show up as a trainer, a leader, a speaker.

(11:47) Dana Weaver: Yes, I remember that.

(11:50) Doreen Downing: In terms of finding your voice. I’d like to share that with the audience today. But before we do that, I’m going to take a break. I often forget to take this break. Then this leaves listeners wanting to know more. We’re going to hear about a story that was quite amazing and I can’t wait to have you share it. We’ll be back in just a minute.

Hi, we’re back with Dana Weaver, who’s such a heartful, radiant person. We’ve been talking about leadership and we’ve been connecting some dots with what she learned early in life, not only as being the big sister, but some influence, a positive message her father gave to her when she was young and helped her see that the possibility was right in front of us, ahead of us. It may not be right here, right now, but there is a way to make something happen, and that’s partly what leaders do.

She told a personal story about her great grandmother. So, if you are just tuning in, go back and start in the beginning and you’ll get to learn more about Dana. But here we are now. Tell us about what happened at that, I think you were working at a corporation or something. It was a company at least. Right?

(13:06) Dana Weaver: Yes. It was an association and basically, the association I worked for had members that were nonprofit—retirement communities and nursing homes and just the whole spectrum of aging services that are out there. We served the not for profits across the state.

One of the things that we did was we provided learning to all of those people, and we received a grant to do abuse and neglect training in nursing homes across the state. One of the things that I was going to do was speak with my boss and we were going to go to a place and it was a 6 to 8 hour training that we were going to do.

I had all of the notes and all of that. It was all developed for us, so really, you could just read it if you wanted to, but that’s not super engaging. We realized early on that when we play off of each other, people enjoy listening more.

So at the last minute, and I don’t remember the circumstances around that. My boss is like, “I can’t go. You’re on your own.” I had never really taught before. I’ve spoken in front of people but not more than 20 minutes, and this was a n 8-hour training. Even though I had all the notes, I was scared to death because I knew very little about public speaking except for what I took in college and high school.

So, I got up there and I spoke for 8 hours. It was scary, very scary and I did some really good things. I did some not so great things because you wouldn’t expect to be perfect in that situation. And I remember the person who was running the nursing home came up to me and she basically said, nobody wants to listen to you for eight hours and it really made me feel really low and really awful in that moment.

I didn’t let it get me back. Instead, I was like, “Well, if somebody is going to listen to me for eight hours, I’m going to be compelling. I’m going to be somebody that people want to listen to.” That started a path for me to learn how to speak better in front of people and be more mindful about what I was saying and be more mindful about the body language I was sending and different things like that.

So, I feel like I’m a speaker today because that happened. I’ve done several keynotes this year and it all really stemmed from that story. It was very, very scary, and I tease my old boss to this day that she just left me to the wolves. But it was a great learning and growing experience that if I had not had that, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

(15:45) Doreen Downing: Oh, thank you. You learned to dance with the wolves. I’m so glad you did say that because I understood something else about you being challenged. It feels like that’s something that motivates you.

(16:00) Dana Weaver: It does. It does a lot.

(16:03) Doreen Downing: I keep coming back to leadership. One of your messages is to not surrender, not give up, but to stand and dance with the wolves, which is fear. Actually, my business is about how do you have fear and stand up and deliver?

(16:23) Dana Weaver: Absolutely. I’m so glad that you said that, because what I really think about that is that early on when I said, “We’re limitless,” us as human beings, we have limitless opportunity to be amazing, but the society that we’re in, the way that we live our lives, our routines, make us feel like we can only achieve so much, but that’s not necessarily true.

When you take setbacks like that like if you lost a job, or you lost a family member, a child, which is awful, or anything that you may have lost or any challenge that you’ve gone through, it feels overwhelming in the moment and like you can’t go on, but if you just put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward in the midst of the pain or the fear or whatever it is that you’re feeling in the moment and feel the feels, I think that’s important, but then when you keep going, at some point, you’re going to look back and you’re going to look at that challenge and you’re going to think, “I overcame that.”

And it makes you feel confident and it makes you feel like you can take on the next challenge, which we all can. It’s really important for us to look back and realize that we have overcome 100 percent of the challenges that we’ve gone through in our lives. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here today.

(17:50) Doreen Downing: I feel like, “Go girl.” You are doing what you’re meant to do right here, right now —to deliver that message to the world, and especially, to me today and to the listeners about the challenges, the one step idea, but also what you told us about your story. That eventually someday you get to look back at it and you get to laugh about it and joke about it because that’s what you did with the boss.

You said you still remind her of what that was for you, but it was a learning. That also feels like as a leader, that’s what you’re teaching us. Life is all about learning. We are coming closer to the end, so I want to make sure and talk more about what you’re doing nowadays, and what you offer and how people can find you.

(18:41) Dana Weaver: What I’m doing nowadays is I own my own company Weaver Solutions and what we do through Weaver Solutions is provide leadership training. I do executive coaching. I do leadership coaching for entrepreneurs to help them realize they are leaders, specifically women entrepreneurs, but that you are leaders and that you don’t have to let anything hold you back.

You can see from my story that I don’t let anything hold me back and I can help you get there. I can help you look back and realize, “I have overcome a lot,” and give you the confidence to do that.

I’m also very knowledgeable and have a rich history in workforce development, so if you’re building a business and you want to create a good work culture for your employees so that you can all rise, I do that as well.

You can learn more about me at my website, www.weaversolutionsllc.com. I’m also on almost all social media @weaversolutionsllc.

(19:44) Doreen Downing: We will certainly have those in the show notes so that people can look you up, and you do masterclasses and you offer lots of freebies.

(19:55) Dana Weaver: I do. I love to do the freebies. I love to help people grow.

(19:58) Doreen Downing: When you say that I love to help people grow. It feels like that’s why you’re here in this universe. Growth is possible every moment if you have, I guess they call it the growth mindset. Isn’t that something that we’re learning? How to have a growth mindset? And that’s what you teach.

(20:18) Dana Weaver: It’s not as overt in all of my training, but yes, I try to help people subtly and sometimes overtly whenever the conversation comes up, just know that they can grow and they don’t have to let whatever circumstance they’re in hold them back.

(20:33) Doreen Downing: Well, I’m going to give you another opportunity here to share something that wants to be said as we close together today. Something that is just on the tip of your tongue or the tip of your heart. Your voice matters, Dana, and what would you want to leave us with?

(20:58) Dana Weaver: Well, for all the ladies out there. I have a special place in my heart for women, probably because of my great grandmother, because she persevered through a lot as well, but for all the ladies out there, I just want to say our time is upon us and there’s a lot going on in our world that makes at least me feel proud to be a woman and realize that we can do, like I said earlier, anything that we want to do.

Whatever it is that you have on your heart, whatever it is that you’ve been thinking about wanting to do, starting your own business, starting just whatever it is, tell yourself, “Yes.” Tell yourself, “Yes,” and go for it and just do it and watch how your world is going to blossom.

It might be hard to get there. Anything is a struggle when you decide to do something new because all kinds of things get in your way, but that doesn’t mean that they have to hold you back. Keep at it. Keep going and be proud of you because you are very important.

(21:59) Doreen Downing: Well, I’m inspired. Thank you so much.

(22:04) Dana Weaver: Thank you for having me. It’s been a delight.