2: Leaders With Heart Have Integrity As Their North Star

Employee experience is powered by emotions. Managers and/or leaders within organizations get to choose which emotions they unleash from within the people they lead. Leaders, meaning supervisors or above in an organization, drive much of the positive or negative emotions by their actions or inactions, their words, or what the fail to say. When a manager chooses their words and their actions carefully, they exhibit great emotional intelligence. These managers are often thought of as, "Leaders who care," or I as I like to call them, "Leaders with heart." This special brand of leader drives engagement and loyalty by simply being themselves. Are the leaders perfect? Absolutely not. It is in their awareness and sharing of some of their imperfections that we realize their brilliance. In this podcast I ask you to see yourself in the stories my guests tell about times when they were not the best versions of themselves, but how they used their heart to guide them to a place of deeper connection with their teams and heightened leadership prowess. Today I'm very excited to welcome Andy Books. He is one of these great leaders with heart and he's going to show some interesting stories of the ups and downs of his leadership journey and we will all be able to take it in. Enjoy. Podcast host Heather R. Younger, J.D., speaks with Andy Books of West Corporation, Leader with Heart extraordinaire, about the thing that drives his leadership decisions.  In this episode, Heather speaks to Andy about his leadership style, challenges he faced as a leader and how he came out of it and ways that he connects with his people even during the tough times. He reveals the very foundation of his leadership philosophy as well. It's obvious that he is an emotionally intelligent leader. It was powerful!