Kristiana Corona:
Your work is not your worth, and you are worthy just the way you are. And it is not your job to prove to the entire world through your work that you are worth being on this earth, because you already are
Ever feel like everyone else has leadership figured out and you're just making it up as you go? I've been there. I spent two decades leading design and technology teams at Fortune 500 companies, and for years I looked like I had everything pulled together on the outside, but on the inside I felt burned out, overwhelmed, and unworthy of the title leader.
Then a surprise encounter with executive coaching changed my life and dramatically improved my leadership style and my results. Now, I help others make that same shift in their leadership. This podcast is where we do the work, building the mindset, the coaching skills, and the confidence to lead with clarity and authenticity, and to finally feel worthy to lead from the inside out
Hello, and welcome back to the Worthy to Lead podcast. I'm your host, Christiane Corona. For today's episode, I'm gonna be doing something different and a little fun. So I've invited my friend Lori Hall to come back. She was just on one of the previous episodes recently with us, and she is actually going to be interviewing me this time.
So this episode is gonna be about my career journey, and we're going all the way back to the beginning, before I was a leader. How did I become a leader? Where was it challenging for me? What was really the unlock that helped me gain confidence and more effectiveness in that role? And how did I navigate some of those inevitable pivots and rough moments that came along the way?
So I hope you find some encouragement in this episode, especially if you're going through a rough patch of your own, or maybe you're questioning, "What is it that I'm meant to be doing right now?" So this is not just about my story, but this is also about sharing some mindset work and some golden nuggets of things that I've gone through the hard way and hopefully you can learn from.
So I'm excited to share this story with you, and I hope it resonates. Let's dive in to my conversation with Laurie, Miss Laurie Hall, thank you for being here again. You may have seen our previous podcast where I got to interview Lori about her experience, which was really fun, and then she offered to interview me about mine.
So that is what we're gonna do today. So I get to be the guest, and Laurie is gonna take over the host role. And so I hope you enjoy our conversation. This'll be fun.
Laurie Hall:
Excellent. This will be fun. Thank you so much, Kristiana. I'm delighted to have the opportunity, honored to have the opportunity to do this because you've interviewed so many different people at this point, and one thing that really stood out for me when you interviewed me for the podcast was how much it felt like you helped my light shine, you know?
And, um, so thank you for that. And so many of us are like, "And what's your story?" You know, "Tell me more about yourself." So let's dive in. Um, so, so many different things that we wanna learn about you. But, um, the concept worthy to lead, you know, the, this has a lot to do with probably your professional journey and your personal journey altogether.
But going back to the early days, even before you were a leader, what did you wanna be? Tell me more about your young days.
Kristiana Corona:
I grew up in a small town in Minnesota, and so, like very small, I think 1,200 people. So, you know, they, they didn't have roles like the type of roles that I ended up going into. It was very, very much a smaller ecosystem, and so one of the things I knew from the beginning was that I wanted to move into a bigger city, I wanted to explore, I wanted to see the world.
I knew that I wanted to go into design because my parents are both artists, and so there was always that pull towards something creative and something design-related. And so I went to college and graduated and ended up not getting a job right away. Like, in my head I thought, "Oh, well, you know, I have these design skills, and I've been helping my dad with his business growing up, and I have technical skills, and I can do some website design, and clearly everyone will wanna hire me."
And what I learned was I didn't have a portfolio. I didn't have the tools necessary to get hired at the places I wanted to get hired at. And so there was this moment of scramble, right? Like- Oh my gosh, like what do I do? And so I ended up doing all the things I didn't necessarily want to go into, which was, you know, direct sales, selling knives, selling makeup.
I actually had a job that was kind of funny, which was like taking used CDs and buffing the scratches out of them and reselling them on eBay.
Laurie Hall:
Awesome.
Kristiana Corona:
That was an actual job. And so I had to get scrappy, right? I had to work hard and figure it out. And then someone took a chance on me, and it was someone who went to the same school as me, and they said, "Hey, if you went to St. Olaf, I know Ole's are hard workers. I believe you're capable." And he gave me my first role. And I think that was a really meaningful moment because from then on was a series of design roles, but they pushed me much further than I ever thought possible. So I had this idea I was gonna be a designer, graphic designer, website designer, something like that, and these roles really pushed me into account management and, uh, what did it look like to do front-end coding and, you know, photography and working in trade show booths and this whole broad spectrum of things that we now experience in the workforce that I'd never had exposure to.
And so I just sort of said yes a lot. I, I ended up just moving through that period of my career and growing and saying yes a lot and trying new things to see, do I like this? Do I not like this? And so one of the things I think about a lot for, especially for people who are coming into their career is you may have a specific idea of how you want this to go, and it may go completely the opposite of how you think.
But keep an open mind because there are a lot of times where something better comes along than you had even thought of. And for me, there was a moment when I started working at my first corporate job that I had a big pivot that I didn't expect.
Laurie Hall:
Awesome. I think that must resonate With many people, you know, whether, um, they're fresh out of college or they're somebody that's looking for maybe their second or third, you know, different type of job right now because the economy and the climate isn't quite as conducive, you know, as it has been at different times.
And I think that makes us pull out our grit more, and it sounds like you, you pulled out your grit. Were there any things that you said yes to that you regretted?
Kristiana Corona:
I didn't love sales particularly, um, mostly because it felt a little formulaic, and I like to be creative. And so I hadn't yet made the connection between what does it look like to have something where you're doing the same task over and over and over again, and you're focused on volume and numbers versus being creative, coming up with a new solution, innovating.
You know, that's really where my brain was, and so I had to kind of reconcile some of that because for a long time I said, "This isn't me, and this is," when really all of those things are beneficial. All of those things are gonna help you in life. Like now I'm an entrepreneur. Of course, I need to sell.
That's a very important skill set. So you never wanna downplay the things, even if you're not good at them right away or even if you don't like them because eventually you come to see the value of what those things are, and you can either learn them yourself or you can partner with really amazing people who do those things well, and then that is honestly what helps you excel.
So yeah, I don't know that I regret any of the jobs that I took because each one taught me something important.
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. Even I sometimes if it teaches us we don't like it, it's just as valuable as if we did like it. So when did you first start to notice leadership, whether it was somebody else that was a leader for you or whether, you know, you got thrown into it and, and you were like, "Yeah, I'll figure this out," you know?
Uh, when did leadership start to resonate with you?
Kristiana Corona:
So, uh, funny story. I fast-forward a couple of jobs. I was starting my corporate career at C.H. Robinson, which is a global logistics company. So imagine being a designer at this like super complex global organization, and I had figured out my niche, like this is what I wanna do.
Okay, I'm gonna be a, you know, digital website designer, and I found the holy grail of my career. And of course I was, what? Twenty, twenty-three, twenty-four at the time. It's like, "This is it. This is the path." And then just as soon as I hit that groove, my leader came to me and said, "You know, we have a really small marketing team, and I really wanna see this become a global world-class marketing organization.
And in order to do that, we're gonna have to grow. We're gonna have to grow a lot, and I think you should help me do that. I think you should become a leader. Like help me grow this into a world-class organization." And so of course, in that moment, I thought, "Panic. I have to give up the thing that I really wanna be doing right now?
Like, that sounds kind of awful." And at the same time, he must see something in me, right? Like, there must be something here that is important. And also, what would it be like to grow a world-class marketing organization? So after some, you know, deep thought and a little bit of anxiety, I actually said yes to it, and I went on to, for about seven years, help grow that department out across the world.
And I spent a lot of time traveling in Europe and spent a lot of time developing different marketing functionalities and hiring different teams and learning about leadership. And as I was starting, I assumed I would just know how to do it. And I believe that in your podcast, you talk about, "Well, I just kinda knew what to do.
Like, I like bringing people together, and I knew what to do." That was not me. At all. So I was a very high-performing individual contributor. I was a perfectionist. I wanted to see things done really well. I worked very hard. Transitioning that work ethic into managing other people and then having to somehow have them understand my thoughts and what I thought good looked like and then communicate that in a way that was not irritating to them was much harder than I had anticipated.
So at the beginning of that journey, it was a lot of banging my head, right? Banging my head, like, "Ugh, why are people in my office crying? Like, that, that can't be a good thing." And you know, there's a lot of frustration in learning the hard way. And I had some great mentorship along the way, which was really, really helpful to helping me to overcome just some of the basics of management.
But it wasn't until I found coaching that the light bulb really flipped on for me, and I realized, "Oh my gosh, I've been doing this all wrong." Like- Everything about how I've been trying to lead and show confidence and always know the answer, and always, you know, defining things before people get to me, and clearly I wasn't doing a great job 'cause they were frustrated.
That wasn't it. That's not what leadership was. And so it took a fair amount of time to get to that point of doing it the wrong way, but I think the moments where I felt like, "Oh, this is so hard, I don't know if I wanna keep going," I just stuck with it anyway. And I thought, "You know, there's something important we're building here.
Someone needs me to get better at this. Um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna commit, and I'm gonna learn, and I'm gonna dive into this the same way I would have with any of my other jobs and figure it out."
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. Sounds like it. You, maybe when you thought you were done saying yes 'cause you'd found what you were really looking for, you had a opportunity to say yes again.
Kristiana Corona:
With something wildly unknown. Yeah.
Laurie Hall:
It- yeah, they, you kinda got pushed into the deep end. Yeah. You know, 'cause I, I think sometimes it takes us a little while to learn in our careers, you know, some of the, not just the technical, like how do I actually get this job done, but how do I get this job done with other people, too.
So you said the, the light bulb moment was when you ended up having coaching. So tell me more about that. Tell us more about how that made a difference for you.
Kristiana Corona:
So eventually I, I left my logistics job and moved to Target, and I was part of Target's UX design team, and as part of that they had some leadership training.
And we had in-house coaches that taught the training, and there was a moment where I was introduced to it, and she did a demo with this woman who was very upset, and they were really angry about something that had happened with a direct report or whatever, and we were all like, "How is she gonna solve this?
This is really bad. Like, this is a terrible situation." And what ended up happening was 45 minutes later she had gotten that person to think completely differently, come up with their own action plan. They were focused, they were clear, they were steady, they were ready to go, and the coach gave no advice whatsoever.
And that was the moment where I was like, "I need to know how to do this. Like, this is voodoo magic. Like, I need this." Through that training I was, um, given an executive coach who was going back to school to get certified at one of the local colleges, and so he was my executive coach. I was the guinea pig.
And going through that process, all of a sudden some of these things that I realized were beliefs that I held about myself. For example I am a leader who stays behind the scenes. I do my best work helping and supporting people, but not being the center of attention. That was a belief I held. Didn't realize it, and through that executive coaching engagement, I suddenly had this awareness that I am holding myself back, and I'm holding my team back by believing that.
And we put together a plan, and I started changing everything about that because my mindset was just wrong. Like, and once I, once I made that connection and started coaching my own teams, it was like night and day, both in how I showed up, but then also how my team showed up. Like, they showed up with so much more empowerment, so much more confidence.
They brought bold ideas to the table. They didn't wait for me to solve the problem. I got out of the weeds. Everything about how I lead now started back in that moment about 10 years ago, and it was really transformative. Like, I can't express enough how transformative it was 'cause I could go on vacation, and I wasn't worried that everything was gonna fall apart without me.
Laurie Hall:
Ah. Wow. That's awesome. That's a full circle moment. I think some people haven't had coaching before. How would you describe kind of that fundamental shift that showed up for you as a leader once you had this thing called coaching? You know, if you could use different words for it, what was it that really shifted?
Kristiana Corona:
Okay, so I think one of the most tangible examples is going into a one-on-one with your direct report, and they come into your desk or your office, and they say, "I have a problem. This is what's happening. I'm not sure how to solve it. It's causing this and this and this to happen." And then they look at you, and they're like, "What do I do?"
And instead of answering, we go through a series of questions, and we reflect back, "Okay, this is what I think I'm hearing. You know, what would be the best outcome here? What are you looking to have happen if this goes well? How... You know, what are some things that you could try? How are you measuring success here?"
You know, like, all of these different questions that you can have in your arsenal to ask, and it's amazing. People already know the answer. They just don't realize that they have that awareness already. And so just practicing what those questions are so that you have them ready to go when someone comes in and they immediately are on fire, or they, you know, they're like, "Solve this.
Fix this. Go have a conversation. Insert yourself in here and defend me," and sometimes that's the right thing to do, and then other times it's a situation they can manage. And giving them the tools to be able to do that is really exciting. And then all of a sudden they don't have to be afraid anymore either.
So I think that's one of the biggest things, is changing how I used one-on-ones so that they were much more powerful tools to get someone else to do the thinking and to come up with a solution rather than providing it myself.
Laurie Hall:
It, it just empowered them, and it freed up you too. So did they stop coming in and asking you for the answers?
Kristiana Corona:
It took a while. So I think you've probably experienced this too, where, uh, once you've conditioned people to expect a certain thing from you, they will continue to expect that thing until, you know, over time you change your behavior, and then the new consistency is, oh, she's gonna ask me a question, so maybe I should have thought about these things before I came in.
And, you know, for some people it's easier to make that shift than others, but when you're kind of starting out on all of that, just showing your own intentions, like, "I wanna be here to help support you and to help you lean into your own wisdom and build your own credibility and build your own authority here.
Like, I want you to be able to tell your own story and show up in a boardroom and then be able to just nail it," right? And so that kind of leaned back into the me helping develop people and being behind the scenes aspect that I really enjoyed, was again positioning people to be in their own spotlight differently.
So- Not that I don't, you know, I'm okay being in the spotlight now, but I think the difference is, is an investment in that other person, and in the growing them and getting them to be able to shine, like you were saying earlier, um, in a different way than they would have.
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So did you feel like you kind of fell in love with leadership once you discovered how to lead in that way?
Kristiana Corona:
I definitely liked it a lot more, yes.
Laurie Hall:
You liked it a lot more. All right. Well, tell us more about your journey.
Kristiana Corona:
Okay. So I was at Target. I, I had a really amazing tribe of people, still really close with a lot of, of people from Target.
Um, and then we decided to move across the country, uh, which was a pretty big change. My husband was working in construction, and as you know, Minnesota is quite cold. Um, and he worked outside every day of the year, and we just thought, I think it's... it would be good to just be somewhere a little bit more temperate.
And so, of course, we picked, like, the opposite extreme, which is very hot. But we visited Austin, Texas, and fell in love and ended up building a house there. And so I had to find a new job In Austin, and I ended up landing at USAA, which is, you know, for military families. Um, and I was in the banking division.
So I ended up being a leader of design there through COVID. So I was in downtown Austin working with the teams in person, and then we all kind of migrated to our homes for COVID. And during that period of time, I actually went back to grad school and got certified in executive coaching at UT Dallas, which was incredible.
So kind of the stars aligned just because I didn't have to commute 12 hours a week anymore, uh, which was beautiful, and I loved that. And then, um, from there I ended up pivoting my role a little bit to start crafting a role that was part coaching and part leadership. So I was still leading design teams remotely during that time, but then also a percentage of my time was doing some leadership development and doing some coaching.
And then eventually I went to Amazon and did the same thing. I negotiated the same role, created my own role essentially, and said, "I think this is really beneficial for your organization to have this type of coaching, this type of development. So what do you think about me spending about 20% of my time doing this while I also lead this team?
And here's the results that I've gotten in the last company where I did that."
Laurie Hall:
Sounds like you're pretty good at sales.
Kristiana Corona:
Well, yeah. I mean, eventually you kind of figure out the right things to say and what, what people care about.
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. The authentic thing.
Kristiana Corona:
And I found that to be true across many roles is often if the role doesn't exist, if you can come up with a compelling business case, then the role will exist and you can make it.
And so I've done that at least four times, I think, throughout my career is where things didn't exist, we would just make it. So I landed in the last mile delivery organization, which is basically the delivery from the warehouse all the way to your house or your business in 25 countries around the world.
So the big blue vans and all the cars that come and deliver things, we were working on all the technology for that, and I was able to build a team, pull people from other amazing teams that I've worked on, and it was really a dream scenario. So it was absolutely incredible. I was there for about three years, um, and built that team and that organization out while doing coaching at the same time.
Laurie Hall:
Awesome. Wow, that's so interest... I hear the, you know, how you described yourself from the very beginning. You always liked creativity, and so you wanted to get into things where you could use that creativity more and, and then you clearly have always been a hard worker, and you have grit, and you're, you're like, "How do we make sure that we get the job done, you know, here?"
And then also try to make it this place where people love to come to work, including me . You know, so you've navigated your path with, it sounds like so many of those things that you realized you loved early on, um, like we can really see that. So how did it play out after that? What moved you out of Amazon into where you are now?
Kristiana Corona:
I will admit, I went kicking and screaming I didn't think I wanted to leave corporate. I actually am one of those weird people that thrive in corporate, um, and I enjoy the breadth of it, and the challenge, and, like, connecting with lots of different people, and the complexity of the business. And life happened, and so I have three kids, three school-age kids that were all at the time going to three different schools.
My husband started to have health challenges, and he couldn't navigate things around. He couldn't drive the kids to school for a while. And then my dad had a heart attack, and we were trying to figure out, like, would it make sense for my parents to come and move in with us across the United States to come down to Texas to move in with us?
So there was all these moving pieces, and even though I have a background in logistics, and I love logistics, and I feel like I can move puzzle pieces around quite a bit, it was like it just kept tightening and tightening and tightening. And then as the return to office mandates came in, then all of a sudden I had an extra up to 12 hours a week of commuting again.
And so no matter what I did, we couldn't sequence how that was going to work, and, you know, that was frustrating to me. That was challenging. I always pride myself in being someone who can figure things out, and I felt like I was up against a wall, right? But the good news is Because I had already gone back to school and gotten my practice going on the side for coaching, I had, like, one or two clients that I was working with at the time, and then I had already started this podcast journey because I felt like it was an important thing and I wanted to learn how to do it.
Those things were already moving, and so when I ended up having to make that, that really tough call, which I, I made, you know, at the beginning of 2025, I had some things in, in motion, and that was really, really good. Like, I, I had a safety net. I had some financial runway to, to go with, and so I could lean into my practice and really take care of my family differently.
So that was the pivot that I made at the beginning of 2025, is going full time into my business, which is called Worthy to Lead, and being able to be here from home and navigate, you know, what do the kids need? What does my husband need? Now my parents live with us and, you know, what do they need? How can they help me?
So it's really this multi-generational living scenario that I think a lot of people are starting to encounter. What does that look like and how do we support each other?
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. Yeah, wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think those are the times where, um, w- we're kind of brought to our knees in life, you know, like you called it the wall.
You described that so, so beautifully and so eloquently and, and shared the, the difficulty and, and then the, you know, the decision and the kind of the sunrise that showed up after that. But when you were kind of facing that wall, what were your thoughts? You've had all these coaching sessions, you know, and life experiences and different things along the way, but what were you feeling then?
What was it like?
Kristiana Corona:
Yeah. Uh, you mentioned a lot of coaching support, and it's funny because I have a whole circle of coaches that support me, and so I, I probably had 20, 30 coaching sessions from different people on this topic. Like, have I really thought it through from every perspective? Have I really exhausted my options?
Have I thought of the third option? You know, all of the, all of the things we do, and it was scary. I was a little angry that I couldn't figure it out, angry at myself that I couldn't figure it out. I wasn't sure what it meant. I wasn't sure how I was gonna be as an entrepreneur. My parents are both entrepreneurs, and I saw the struggle.
I saw how hard they worked and how late nights they worked, and I thought, "Do I want to take on this lifestyle?" And all of those long-term questions, what is the impact of this decision? And I think what I realized at the end was you're just taking one step. This is literally just a step, and you can decide at any time to change your mind, right?
It's not the end of the world. Like, go try it out, see how you do, see what you like about it, see what you don't like about it, but give it your best shot. Like, be all in, and then if you change your mind, it's okay, and just the idea that I had created all these roles in my life, you know, inside of other companies.
I was like, "Well, why can't I create the role I want outside of that?" You know, why not? So I think that that shift allowed me to get into gear, to say, "What are we gonna do next?" Like, let's... Instead of wrestling with this forever and the re- you know, regret or what am I giving up here, let's focus and double down on what is the value I wanna provide and what kind of life do I wanna build for myself in this next season, and let's make it the best we can, you know?
It's all we can do.
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. Oh, God, that's awesome. I know that is resonating with a lot of people. It's really resonating with a lot of people, and we have such a short time, you know, on the planet to live this life and experience the things we're meant to experience, and hopefully have a just ton of fun along the way, you know, while also having safety and food on the table and a good house and hopefully wonderful relationships with other people and confidence and all that good stuff.
It sounds like that was a pretty pivotal moment for you in your life. Do you feel like when you went through it, now you could see where maybe that happened before along the way, and so you got confidence from previous examples? Or like, "Wow, no, that was by far the biggest drop" Or what was that like if you look back at your whole timeline of, of your life?
Kristiana Corona:
I compare it to the first time I became a leader, where I felt literally like you said, I felt like I was being pushed in the deep end. Like, "Oh my gosh, we're falling, we're falling, we're falling. Boom, we hit the water. Okay, now learn to swim." Oh. And you know, and I am a fairly risk-averse person. I like to have a plan.
I like to know what I'm gonna do and how it's going to work and have projections and forecasts and all of that. And you know, you can do that. That's not how it works. You just have to take steps and learn and do it and stumble and get back up and keep taking steps, right? So I think what I learned is I had a lot of skills that I forgot about.
So full circle moment, all the way back to those early marketing roles. I hadn't been in marketing for a long time, and of course, what do you need as an entrepreneur? You need to know how to market. You need to know how to go on social media and tell your story. You need to know how to reach out to people and what kind of words are gonna be compelling and how to talk about benefits.
And it was like riding a bike. And so getting back onto that track of, oh yeah, I do know how to... I know how to send a good e- I've led email teams before. Like, I can figure this out. And so just reactivating maybe some of those dormant skills that were there and realizing in the portfolio of overall skills, the ones that I don't have are learnable, and I can do this.
And so I think just giving yourself credit, like all the experiences you've had, whether they were good or bad, good bosses, bad bosses, doesn't matter. Along the way, you learn some things, and those things tend to come back again and again in different roles, in different ways, right?
Laurie Hall:
In your story specifically, you said, "I loved corporate life," and so sort of having to leave it and then do this other thing, but why can't I design the thing that I want and ask for the thing that I want and create it, you know, outside of the corporate environment?
How's that been? You're a year and a half into the transition. How's it going?
Kristiana Corona:
Yeah, I think that the understanding of how it feels to be in that environment where the pressure is, when you feel like you're spread too thin, how the conversations go, what the pushback is, really, you know, understanding the pain points viscerally, um, has been so helpful because the people I work with, that's the environment they're coming from.
And so I'm not inside the same way I was, but I'm just about on the outside of it, and I can look in and say, "Oh, yeah, I recognize this. I recognize what you're going through right now. I can relate to that." And I think that common ground has been really powerful. So, uh, I will say a year and a half in I have developed three core tracks which have been great, and they're still emerging.
But one of them is working with large tech teams, corporate teams, leaders, and helping to develop leadership skills, whether that be coaching or influence or communication, leading in innovation during this crazy AI boom. All the things that people are going through, those make for really great workshops, which is fun.
Um, I do a lot of one-on-one coaching. I'm doing a little bit of group coaching, so I get a little bit more of that. I would say it's more than 20% now, but it's a significant portion of being able to help people go deeper and bring awareness. And then the third part is I got to create a membership, which talk about a creative activity starting from scratch and building that up.
It's meant for the same leaders, so serving those same leaders in tech, corporate, but also leaders in the middle who often get under-invested in. And how do we continue to offer resources to them every week, every month, you know, some live engagements, some courses, some community, so you don't feel like you're alone.
That's really the value I took from it was some leaders just feel like so isolated and so alone, and you wanna know that someone else out there knows what you're going through. And so just that value alignment of being able to provide services that are really meeting the needs that people are going through, the pain points they're going through right now, has just been so wonderful.
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. It sounds like you're still, you're still close enough to corporate that you have what you want in the way that you want it, your professional and your personal life blended together. Blended, not, you know, what do we... We're always looking for balance. I love it. It's not balance, it's balancing. You know?
Like we're continuing to like try to adjust things and get the things that we need along the way. So tell me more about the membership. What's that look like? How's that working for folks? 'Cause I think you brought up a really good point on middle managers specifically. I've, I've heard it described as the fishbowl.
You know, 'cause you're kind of squished between two... You're squished between the upper level and then sometimes your individual performers that are like, "You're supposed to give me the answers," like you described at the beginning of this podcast. You know, and so we get triggered all over the place. So the fish can't see out very well 'cause the edges are curved, but everybody can see the fish really good, and micro judge every little motion.
Kristiana Corona:
That is such a good metaphor.
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. Yeah. So how are you helping those folks?
Kristiana Corona:
Yeah. So I think one of the key things is establishing what are the human-centered skills that are really important that maybe got missed when you were developing your leadership journey. You know? Like a lot of people focus on the tactical things, creating systems, figuring out how you're going to prioritize your work.
Those are all really important skills, but a lot of the friction happens around communication and being able to clearly articulate feedback to people who report to you or to your peers or even upwards. How do you communicate feedback effectively in a way that it can be heard? And how do you advocate for the things you care about?
Right? Like, how do you pitch a big idea, or bring an important point to a meeting, or prove that you're promotable inside that environment? There's so many ways that communication impacts whether you're, you're on that path to success or not. And I really struggle with people hitting their head against that glass ceiling, whatever that ceiling is, because I think everyone has a capability to work their way up or to go somewhere where you are valued and work your way up and show that type of leadership.
And so it doesn't matter what your role is, it doesn't matter what your title is. I've seen brilliant people come in who are maybe five years into their career and show incredible leadership. And so it's less focused on the title and much more focused on, you know, what does it look like to be strategic?
What does it look like to set a vision? What does it look like to communicate well and to influence upwards and to promote innovation, uh, in your organization? And we organize it in kind of a flywheel, and so I call it the human-centered flywheel, where the entire premise is you're learning these skills, and then you're learning to scale yourself.
And then all of a sudden, at the next level, you have to do the same thing slightly differently. But the more practice you have adopting those skills and developing those skills at each level, the faster and easier it's gonna get, like a flywheel. Um, and so that's really what we focus on inside the membership, is building those kinds of skills.
And then we do have live events each month where we bring in guest speakers, or I might teach, or we might do a live coaching demo so people can see what that feels like or, or do a hot seat. So it's really fun. We're still architecting what we want it to look like. The premise is really that everyone has the potential and is worthy to lead.
They just sometimes need the unlock and the tools to feel like they can believe that about themselves.
Laurie Hall:
Beautiful. Beautiful. And it, it feels like it's such an authentic testament to, you know, your own story in the sense of you were thrust into this leadership role with essentially no training. Luckily, you were a yes person, you know, so you tried to figure it out along the way.
But... And then your own coaching experience, how that really highlighted so many different things. It sounds like you're almost recreating some of the significant lessons learned that you wish you would've had a little bit earlier on.
Kristiana Corona:
Well, I'm gonna have to have you be my marketing person because that was really well said. It's easy when it feels like that back. You can write a marketing copy.
Laurie Hall: You're really good at what you do. So anything else that I haven't asked before we start wrapping up today that you feel like is, is really important to share about your own story and your business and your life and anything that you hope could, that could help other people?
Kristiana Corona:
One topic that has been coming up a lot that I think I, I just wanna lean into a little bit is people really identify themselves, their own worth and their own identity with their work And we see it happen all the time, and it can be kind of a tragic situation where someone goes through a layoff, and they lose their job and their role, and then with it they feel like they lose a little bit of their identity.
Like suddenly that thing that I took a lot of pride in is gone, and what do I do now? And how do I prove to people that I still know what I'm doing? And what I've been sitting with a lot and talking to people a lot about is that your work is not your worth, and that you are worthy just the way you are, and it is not your job to prove to the entire world through your work that, that you are worth being on this earth, because you already are.
And so if you operate from that level of confidence that you are enough the way you are, and that our entire goal of work is to find a way to express that worthiness outwards, right? It changes how you communicate, it changes how you show up, it changes how you deal with difficult situations and difficult people, and I think it allows you to look more broadly.
So let's say you have gone through a layoff, understanding what's next for you, you have other options. You can pivot. You've also got a life. You've got things outside of work, right? That are very meaningful, and when we tell our story, we always start with, "Here's my job, here's what I do, here's my role," right?
I'm a VP of sales. I'm a product designer. I'm an engineer, whatever. And if we instead start with, "Here's what's important to me. This is what I really value This is what matters to me in the world, and in my life, and in my work. And starting from there, and grounding from there, not only does it make you feel better because you feel like you own your identity, but it allows you to reinvent that identity as many times as you want.
Laurie Hall:
I think everybody needed to hear that. That was beautiful. Very well said. You spread a lot of, um, love and authenticity out into the world to create connections, and thank you for doing that in such a creative way. Your ripple effect is noticeable.
Kristiana Corona:
Thank you. It's a real pleasure and an honor to be able to do this full-time now.
I think I could do sprinkles of it before, but now really getting to invest full time in, in doing this work feels really meaningful. So I'm grateful that I went through that huge point of friction and was forced out of my comfort zone again. Uh, it just keeps being a pattern, huh?
Laurie Hall:
Yeah. Yeah, some of those worst, like, uh, uh, bring us to our knees moments end up being the best things that happen to us eventually, I know.
Kristiana Corona:
Not when you're going through it, but I think when you get through to the other side, all of a sudden you realize, "Wow, I, I really learned a lot, and this is where I need to be."
Laurie Hall:
Wow, this has been absolutely amazing, Kristiana. Thank you for everything that you do. So where can people go to find more out about how to connect with you?
Kristiana Corona:
Uh, well, everything that you want to find out about my business is at worthytolead.co, and including, uh, becoming a member or finding out about my workshops or my coaching. And then I am on LinkedIn almost every day of the week. That is a core area that I invest, and so you can find out everything about the podcasts that I launch and the content that I have, and that's really the place to follow me to keep up to date on the latest.
Um, and I do have an email list if people want to get notified anytime I have new content, and they can just go to worthytolead.co/subscribe.
Laurie Hall:
Excellent. Go to one of those and, and get, get your, uh, dose of, of courage and authenticity to remember that you're worthy of everything, including being worthy to lead.
Kristiana Corona:
Thank you, Lori. This has been so fun. I hope you enjoyed that episode. It's a little different. It's kind of fun being on the other side of the microphone, to be honest.
Interesting telling your own story and having someone else ask you questions. But I hope you took something away from that conversation and, you know, really especially the point about your work is not your worth, and I really mean that. There is so much more to life, and the sooner that you're able to detach your identity from this role or this job or this company and know that you are worthy as you are, with or without the job that you have, the sooner you're able to build and create and invent the career journey that you want for yourself.
So I hope that was helpful. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe so that you don't miss another one. You can go to WorthyToLead.co/subscribe. Until next time, keep showing up, keep doing the work that matters, and keep leading like you're worthy to lead, because you are. We'll see you next time
