This Q&A is adapted from a podcast episode of Unscripted With Amy Somerville. Listen to the full episode here.
Personal and professional development may feel stale to longtime leaders, but renowned coach and speaker Rocky Garza energizes the field with new tools and a unique perspective on becoming your best self.
SUCCESS® CEO Amy Somerville interviewed Garza about understanding your identity, identifying strengths and the importance of vulnerability.
Amy Somerville: I feel like there’s so much pressure to define our purpose, to define our “why.” How can someone start figuring out who they really are and what’s the first step if you’re feeling a bit lost about your true self?
Rocky Garza: When it comes to defining our purpose, defining our why, like most things in life, we tend to want to be right. So “right” is typically only on one end of the spectrum because the other end of said linear line would be “wrong,” and we don’t want to be wrong.
I think purpose has multiple faces, and in the last decade, what we’re experiencing is that we keep adding layers or faces to what success, purpose and peace looks like. It’s almost like it’s a moving target we can’t quite hit because every Instagram story is like, “If you are not having a 17-hour morning routine, you’re not going to make it.” It’s ever-evolving and changing. To go back a step: The pursuit of understanding our purpose is growing because we have access to more information, allowing us to know more and discover there might be something even more fulfilling that we weren’t even aware of a decade ago.
I’ll use parenting as an example. I have an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old, and the purpose in being a parent today is not the same as it was before my daughter was born and my son was only 3. And the purpose of being a parent before I actually had a kid was vastly different than when I actually held my son for the first time. My daughter actually got a different parent at 2 than my son got when he was 2 because I was different. And so I think similarly, our purpose is not a singular point to go, “There it was. Found it. It was July 10, 2024. That’s the day I found my purpose, and it never went away.” We are ever-evolving. It is not a destination to arrive to, so we can check the box to say, “There it was. We did it.”
AS: Let’s talk about purpose as it relates to strength work, which is something I know we’re both passionate about. What is a good way to figure out what you’re really good at? Knowing that it’s constantly evolving, are there tools that you use? Are you a personality or profile assessment type of guy? How do you help people discover their unique strengths?
RG: If I address the broader sense of self, not just strength, I use a process called identity mapping, and that’s a four-part system we created ourselves over the last decade. Strength is absolutely one of those four components. Part one is we do an exercise where we really understand how your brain works and what you think about it.
I find most individuals are reactive thinkers. What you think about most is typically related to what you fear losing, so most of us spend life playing defense. We’re on our heels.… This leads us to not do what we hope, and we rarely accomplish our dreams.
If your first thought every morning was about the one thing you want most in life and what you hope to accomplish, you’re going to pursue more of what you really, really love doing. That’s a proactive approach.
We then do a core values exercise because it’s the most foundational language. We say identity mapping is about creating a language for self. The third component is strengths–the “how” you do it. It’s your muscles, the muscles you’ve been using your whole life. I’m a huge fan of the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment.
The fourth and final component is called identifiers. These are words like analyzer, strategizer, challenger, lover, caregiver—all actionable words—so we say that’s the language for what we do.
I’ve found it’s really, really hard for an individual to self-assess their strengths because every person knows what they’re terrible at…. I think it’s really hard for us to assess what we’re great at. For strengths in particular, the outside assessment is almost necessary… giving us a language to communicate, clearly as we can, our values or our identifiers.
AS: I want to talk to you about authenticity. It’s a straight-up buzzword these days… I’m curious on your definition of authenticity and why you think it’s so important in leadership today?
RG: I would say authenticity is the personal responsibility to have a clear understanding of self. I think oftentimes it gets used as a mechanism to say whatever I want under the guise of “I’m just being authentic” with no personal responsibility for what that means. We could easily equate that to intention versus impact. I think the intention of authenticity is there. I think the impact of authenticity, especially with leaders, often is, “I’m just being me. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry.”
AS: Yes, I think authenticity is used in a way to almost ask forgiveness for a particular behavior. When I was early in my leadership career, I really had a definition of what I thought leaders looked like, and the vulnerability piece was the most difficult for me to get on the other side of. You need the balance of the two—here’s my authenticity, but also let me be vulnerable with you and tell you where this comes from. Let me tell you that it’s not just from a position of winning all the time. Let me tell you what I’m worried about or what I’m challenged by or where I’m insecure and being honest about that. So then the authenticity shows up as a real connection versus “and that’s just who I am, so deal with it.”
RG: I greatly appreciate you bringing up the word vulnerability. Often leaders are good at disclosure, but we’re not so great at vulnerability. We’re really good at information, and we’re not very good at intimacy. And I know that word has a tinge of “you can’t say that at work.” But vulnerability is intimacy; intimacy is a connection.
The leaders who recognize there’s a gap between where they think they are and where they really are—they know the only way to close it is with their people. But they’re not sure what to do, so why don’t we create an experience that allows us to say, “Hey, let’s do our best to overcome disclosure and step into vulnerability.” Let’s stop sharing the same three stories that we’ve told everybody our whole life that aren’t actually meaningful… Let’s share something that happened last night with our child when we put them to bed that was frustrating, that made us think about how we lead.
AS: Oh, I love that. With all your traveling around and different roles, responsibilities and positions, who’s a leader that you really look up to? Who’s a leader today who is doing a great job of balancing authenticity with vulnerability?
RG: There’s a gentleman in my life; his name is Mark. He’s in his late 60s and has been a mentor of mine for the last four or five years. Like you, I’ve struggled my whole life to have a mentor… to find someone who wasn’t attempting to put me in the box they thought I should be in. I felt like people didn’t know what to do with me a lot of my life. I value Mark in my life because he tells me often… he always calls me by my name in mid-conversation. He always says, “How are you doing, Rocky? You look happy, Rocky. Are you happy?” He says, “You got a good life, Rocky. Do you feel like you have a good life, Rocky?” His reflective questions often cause me to see myself in a way that I don’t have the capacity to see myself on my own.
When I think about a great leader, it’s not based on their title, it’s not based on their revenue. It’s not based on what they did or accomplished or what their LinkedIn looked like or if they’re a top voice or whatever qualifier we want to give. It’s somebody who is willing to take time in their life, often that’s in our profession, and help you see things in you that you don’t have the capacity to see yourself—good and bad, right and wrong, positive and negative. They allow you to see them as true. You get to make the determination whether or not you believe they’re positive or negative or valuable or not valuable.
I think that quality in and of itself is a common thread—the capacity to help someone see things they can’t on their own. You can radically change someone’s life, drive them toward their purpose and give them a sense of peace that they couldn’t find on their own.
AS: Gosh, I love that. We do have incredible leaders in the world, whether they are people that everybody knows, and we feel like they’re talking to us and see us, or it’s Mark, the person that’s in your life.
Self-awareness is also a piece of the leadership puzzle. How do you address self-awareness? What do you think its importance is?
RG: No. 1, self-awareness is the ability to recognize my present. So where am I right now? I think that’s the literal sense of self-awareness. Now we translate that into personal/professional development in our leadership space. Sometimes an individual is not in the capacity to see themself presently. They are either seeing themself in the future for what they hope they’re able to do or they see themselves for what they believe they used to be. They then act presently based on an old version… That’s the “I’m authentic. Take it or leave it. I’ve done this for 20 years. I’m sorry you don’t like that” blindness. But I think that blindness is not about willingness to do work; it’s the inability to be present. I think it can be a learned trait though. I don’t think everybody defaults to being able to be presently minded.
AS: So how do you do that? How are you present, and how often should you be trying to get present?
RG: Personally, I think you should be attempting to be present as often as you possibly can. I think a long-term business strategy meeting about planning the next quarter and the next three years is irrelevant if you are unaware of what we actually have the capacity to do today. Our strategic planning meeting is just a thoughtful progression of the present moment, stretched out over a timeline.
On a personal level, right now, I have a chance to talk to someone that I have wanted to talk to for a very long time, and I am honored to meet you. That’s what I’m doing right now. That’s what my life is today. And so the next part of that, how do we do that?
I think we have to be willing to sit with ourselves as often as possible. It’s as simple as saying, “Hey, where am I?” I’m about to go to this meeting. I’m about to have some dedicated work time. I’m about to be done for the day. I’m about to put my child to bed.
I remind myself: You are living a life that you could only have dreamt of when you were 12, and you have built and created a life and a family that you never experienced your entire life. Where are you? You are living your dream, my friend. Be there and in the office and with your team and as a leader and as an executive and as an owner and as a parent… I don’t care what title you pick—be there. The rest of it will be there when it’s time.
AS: Gosh, I love that so much because… it came from one very simple tool and one very simple question: “Where are you?” I have one more question for you today: How do you define success?
RG: There’s a wonderful book called The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life. It’s by a guy named Boyd Varty. His family owns a safari, and so at 3 or 4 every morning the lion trackers wake up and their job is to go out and find the lions. They find the lions, and they radio back and give their location, so guests can be taken directly to them. He says lion tracking is a lot like life… every morning when I wake up, I may not know where I am going, but I do know exactly how I’m going to get there—track by track. I think success is the piece in life that allows you to pursue where it is you want to go, even if you don’t know how to get there.
AS: I love that a little trust is involved in that and a little surrender…
RG: And, I think, a little journey. I don’t believe success is a destination, and I don’t think success is a monument. I think success is the peace that you find in the present that allows you to pursue where you want to go, even if you don’t know how to get there… on repeat over and over and over and over.
If you’re ready to become an influential leader, join the SUCCESS® Leadership Lab where Garza presents “Co-Create a High Performance Culture,” a lesson in intentionally influencing culture through values, behavior modeling and peer reinforcement.
Garza is one of 10 experts in this 18-day virtual course for rising leaders who want to lead with clarity, influence and confidence. The hybrid experience combines expert-led lessons with live coaching to provide you with practical tools to build trust with your team, navigate chaos and crises, shape a healthy, driven work culture and more. Click here to register.
Photo courtesy Rocky Garza
