Well, my guest today is Liz Murray and with over 25 years in executive leadership, Liz has worked with many exceptional leaders to help them take their success beyond what they dared to think was possible through one to one coaching leadership team programs. And Team workshops. Now this helps leadership teams get in sync with the common mission and inspiring team members to take their productivity and creativity to the next level using strategies that give leaders more time for what's important. Liz is passionate about empowering professionals to get unstuck and find clarity in knowing the steps to take to move from where they are to where they want to be in their career, business relationships and life itself. Increased self awareness and a constant focus on strengthening emotional intelligence. Liz started her business edge of possibilities in 2017 because she saw a gap in the market for professional coaches with experience in the challenges that leaders face now Liz actually started her career or her leadership career as a school principal in a large independent school, which she grew from five staff to over 90 staff across multiple sites and a wide geographic area in the Hunter region. That's where I'm based. And so with firsthand experience in the complexities in growing a thriving team, Liz saw the value of utilizing a coach to support and mentor her while she was in that role. So much to talk to her about today. She's going to be sharing her experiences and the lessons that she has learned. She's also president of the Newcastle Business Club and loves pre sunrise walks and bush walks with her husband on weekends. Liz, thank you so much for coming on to Perfect Public Speaking.
Thank you Jaimie for having me along. I'm really grateful to be here today.
Now you are actually my very first in office podcast guests super exciting. There's been a little bit of trouble to get you set up we've been googling and YouTube searching how to use two USB mics on the one track. It wasn't so easy, but we've done it yeah, I'm really grateful to be here for the first one and you're such a fantastic problem solver. so impressed with how you've got this working. But oh YouTube. It's not easy for those listening. If you know the sound is a little bit off it should be good now though. We'll make up for it with fabulous content during this episode. And speaking of content before I had you on leaves, you sort of said to me, what do you want to talk about like and I said, Well, we can talk about leadership being a great leader, putting yourself out of your comfort zone networking, the list really was endless. So before we get into that, tell me a little bit about what a leadership coach does.
Great question Jaimie and leadership coaching is all about what leadership is about and Leadership isn't about being a role or having a role. Leadership is about who we're being as a human being. So in leadership coaching, we're supporting people to continuously improve becoming the best version of themselves, and reflecting on the things that we feel we're doing well and doing more of that and looking at the areas of our lives in various areas of our lives, not just in work, where we'd like to be a better version of ourselves and show up to be show up being a better version of ourselves and be that so that's what I help people do all the time just reworking the way that things are happening for them to become a better version of themselves all the time.
And that is different to being a business coach. Right? Absolutely. It couldn't be so removed from being a business coach. Business coaching is more about your systems and your finances. Leadership. Coaching is about people skills. It's about who you're being as you show up to become a leader or be a leader in your team, regardless of what your role is. And it's about the messy people stuff which I find really fun.
I couldn't think of anything worse. So when you sit down with a leader or it could be an entrepreneur CEO, I know you work with a lot of lawyers and people running big companies. What do you do with them? So I find out from them what they're loving about what they're doing in their life overall, and what areas of their life they want to push themselves a little bit further in. And there's some for all of us as human beings, there's areas of our life that we're happy with and content with, but there's other areas that we'd like to make improvements in, or things that we want to get out of our comfort zone and be a bit less content within and really feel awesome about rather than just be content with so I sit down with people and work out for them where those things are sitting and what they'd like to work on. And then we work on those things together so I basically become their cheer squad. To help them find where the anchors are that are holding them back, what's pulling them back to undo those and support them to be able to move forward and help them do that confidently so I'm basically their cheer squad helping cheer them along to stretch out of their comfort zone. And the thing is when we're leading ourselves really well with failing forward, and being a great leader means without being willing to make mistakes, you fail forward, learn from those mistakes and then take the next step. And if you sit in your comfort zone, you're not making mistakes and you're just going to keep getting the same results you've always got. So that's what I love about what I do. I'm really passionate about seeing people fail forward and confidently make more and more mistakes because they become a better version of themselves. And we all do that.
I love that. And so is it sort of a situation where people need to sort of be experiencing some sort of pain or hitting rock bottom before they get your help or can they seek leadership coaches help if they're on a high that top of their game, and they want to stay there or you know, there's a have to be a problem to be able to seek you out. It doesn't have to be a problem. In fact, a number of my clients have very successful teams. They want to continuously improve on being the best version of themselves so that they can show up for their team and be worthy of their fantastic team as their team continues to improve as well. So I believe in life being all about lifelong learning and continuously improving ourselves. And in doing that, if we're constantly improving who were being, then that will flow on to everyone around us as well in every area of our life. So the energy that we're putting out there as we continue to grow, other people come on board with that energy, as well. So yeah, and your background as a school principal. Is this completely different? Or is it really sort of similar in many ways, but you're now working with adults rather than kids very similar. It's all the best parts of being a school principal without the admin and, you know, the boring politics in education. Being a leader, wherever you are, is always about who you're being. And you know, one of the great things for me in this role as a leadership coach is I've made lots of mistakes in my career in who I'm being and in making those mistakes. I'm a slow learner as well. And so by continuously making mistakes and learning more and more through the mistakes that I've made, I've been able to have been able to really refine my skills in supporting and inspiring people in leadership roles. And you can't really help people with something if you haven't been through that yourself and certainly in leadership, I have had lots of different experiences, and where I've made mistakes and then being able to work on myself and learn the skills that I needed to learn from those mistakes to be able to keep moving forward to the next mistake and the next learning. So being able to do that is the core thing that having been a school principal has allowed me to be able to do this and as a principal, you lead into lots of different people over time. Obviously there's a school executive, all of the admin staff and the teaching staff but also the students and the families and your broader community. So there's lots of different people that you're in a leadership role. For and inspiring people to take action in different things altogether. And I'm being a leadership coach saying I'm working with all kinds of different people in all kinds of different roles in the community as well.
I think that's a really important point where you said you've made lots of mistakes, because I think even as a public speaking coach people seem to resonate with that when I say I haven't had this flawless public speaking career. I've made these mistakes. And I think if you've made those mistakes, that's what people are paying you for to learn what not to do from someone who's already gone down that path and made those mistakes or others won't have to make that mistake. themselves. Would you agree?
Yeah, to some degree and also to have that reassurance that it's okay, we all are human, we all make mistakes. And so if we always worried about not not doing something because we were worried we might make a mistake, or we might get it wrong, we would never do anything. You know, you're my public speaking coach, if I came on here thinking I had to be a perfect public speaker, so I wouldn't let you down. I would never come on here because of the hours and hours and then the rest of it. Yeah. So if you get in your own head worrying about making mistakes, you never make progress in anything in your life.
Yes. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about you've mentioned this a couple of times getting out of your comfort zone, and that's certainly a term which is put out there quite often, but in your space. What does that mean and why should we do it?
Great question. Our comfort zone is the place where we have the same things happen all the time, and there are times in our lives where being in your comfort zone is a good thing to do. Sometimes we need just time to recharge and look after ourselves and our comfort zone is the right place to be doing that. But if we don't want to always experience the same results, we've always gotten, we need to step out of that we need to push ourselves out of that a little. And so people that have the greatest success in life are the people that are more willing to put themselves out of their comfort zone. out of our comfort zone is where we learn the skills in how to be resilient and that it's okay to fail forward in life. So if you're not willing to do that, you're not going to achieve different levels of success to what you're currently experiencing.
And so what would be I mean, for public speaking, I would say put yourself up on stage. What would be another example perhaps that's not public speaking related? That is putting yourself out there out of your comfort zone, it might be giving feedback to your boss or someone that you answer up to. It might be having an important or difficult conversation with someone it might even be your life path where something feels a bit awkward and you don't know how to address it. Having a conversation with a friend about something that's triggering you about them. Anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, and some people are more confident, comfortable than others around a lot of those things. But all of those things come back to our ego. When we have a healthy ego we're comfortable with understanding that having that conversation is more about helping the other person. When we hold back from that we're worried about people pleasing and people not liking us. And the same as you know, in public speaking, we worry about being judged by other people and that's where we get in our head and we're not delivering really well because we're so focused on what other people thinking rather than focusing on the great content that we've got to share that will help and inspire other people toward greatness for themselves.
Yeah, look, I relate to that so much. It's hard especially, you know, my background in politics, you do put yourself out there and you get hammered. Just purely because of the political policies you may be wearing. And it's hard for people see that on social media or even in person if you're up on stage doing some sort of live debate. And they think well, I'm not going to ever put myself out there and open myself up for ridicule. But in the long run, I now look back on my career, I think well, because I have been in that situation. And I've made mistakes in that situation under pressure. I can now coach others. So it's really interesting to hear you say that.
Yeah, absolutely. And because we worry too often about what other people think and not everyone is our tribe. And sometimes it can take us a little while to unhinge our belief about ourselves from what other people think of us or what we think other people think of us what other people think of us is actually none of our business. And if we just focus on our zone of genius or working our flame of what we were passionate about and what we know a lot about, and we share that from our perspective, it's other people's choice whether they take that on board or not. It's not our job to really worry about what other people think and what we've got to say is so irrelevant. I mean, this is the mastermind with Tracy Harris and Carl Harris called inner circle mastermind. We had our welcome call recently. And Tracy said you aren't too much or that too much this you are welcome here to be too much. And I think so many of my listeners and you know, maybe even yourself I know I have been told I'm too much to tone it down. But those people aren't my people. You know, so and I've just reading Tina Towers booking one life that says the same thing. Those people aren't your people find people who accept you. It's easier said than done, though, right? And I think as you get older you are a case of when you get older you think ah, I don't care so much anymore.
People think yeah, I have so I feel as I'm getting older I worry less about what other people think. And certainly I feel like I'm getting more comfortable with my own perspectives and that what other people take on leave is up to them. But I think also you look at what other people are sharing that you're the people you're learning from. We don't take everything that other people say even if we're looking up to them in a particular area of our life. We don't grab onto everything and think right that's now my new mantra because it's theirs. We've taken leave bits that are relevant to us at the time. And what we take a leave depends on our own mindset at the time. So whatever we're open to we're going to be able to hear and apply it if we're not ready for some things when we made a Maven really reject it quite consciously because we're not ready to hear that lesson in our life.
Let's talk before you go about networking, because you and I were laughing recently about how our hobbies just make comments on times about how all you do is go out and socialize. And you and I know it's more than that. It's about making connections with people and forming relationships in business in life. And what do you say about networking for a business owner for a young professional, an older professional, and entrepreneur, how important is networking in a traditional and also maybe online sense?
Networking is so important and you know, regardless of what your hobbies are, networking is how you just go out for coffee dates and lunches and that kind of thing. Initially, if you're not comfortable with networking, then showing up is the first step. But really if you want to network and get value from those connections, it's all about being more interested than interesting. So getting around and asking people questions about them, so that you get to know them and you showing interest in them when you do that people are going to come back and ask you questions about you. But if you have an unhealthy ego, you might be more inclined to stand in the corner and judge people worrying about what they're thinking of you and and it's not you're not really working at all. You're just going out for coffee or you're just going to an event so if you want it to be networking, you've got to be willing to get out of your comfort zone and ask other people questions and push yourself to go and talk to people that you may not normally talk to. It's always rewarding. You always end up finding out all kinds of things about different people and you never know who you might meet and who they might be able to help in your life. as well. If you get out of your comfort zone and connect with different people, it's not just in person is it it's online as well these days, I mean, online forums and just even following people on Instagram and engaging with their content. So you might see a great post and commenting and giving positive feedback to me. I also think that includes networking.
Yeah, absolutely. And often people aren't confident to comment because they worry that they will overthink their comment and whether or not they are worthy of putting in their own clock and eth or whatever. And you know, putting it out there actually shows other people that you're engaging with what they've got to say and sometimes your perspective might be quite different and that's okay as well.
Yeah, great. Well, Liz, if people have heard this podcast and they want to know more and they want to work with you, find out a bit more about your business, how can people find you?
People can find me through my social media so my business name is Edge of Possibilities. So people can find me on Instagram or Facebook and also on my website, which is also Edge of Possibilities. Fabulous. Liz, thank you for coming on and popping my in person, podcast guests, cherry. It's been great. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Jaimie.
