We need courageous leadership now more than ever.

In today's episode, I'm talking with Mary Lynn Fayoumi, a

nationally respected leader and the president and CEO of HR

source, Mary Lynn brings decades of experience guiding

organizations through change and uncertainty together, we explore

what it really takes to lead with courage when the ground

keeps shifting. How to stay grounded, practice humility and

inspire confidence, even in the toughest moments. If you've ever

wondered how to balance vulnerability with strength and

re engage your teams in today's landscape, this conversation is

for you.

Welcome to the Courage of a Leader podcast. This is where

you hear real life stories of top leaders achieving

extraordinary results, and you get practical advice and

techniques you can immediately apply for your own success. This

is where you will get inspired and take bold, courageous

action. I'm so glad you can join us. I'm your host. Amy Reilly,

now are you ready to step into the full power of your

leadership and achieve the results you care about most.

Let's ignite the courage of a leader.

Mary Lynn, thank you so much for being with me today on the

courage of a leader podcast.

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: It's such a pleasure to be here. Amy, I

always love talking to you,

same, same. And I'm excited about our topic. I think

we are talking about the topic that is critical right now in

the landscape, and that is how can all of us leaders, all US

people leaders really be the courageous leaders that our

teams and our organizations need right now, as there are changing

dynamics, unknowns, divides in our World, so let me start by

asking, What does this courageous leadership look like

right now, when the ground keeps shifting on us, how would you

define or describe it? Mary Lynn,

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: I would describe it as a interesting and

challenging time to dig deep and lean into your experience, your

strengths and your humility in order to lead courageously,

because it's always easier to lead during calm, predictable,

easy, breezy, positive times. But as you mentioned, the

shifting landscape, the uncertainty, the so many changes

happening globally, domestically, locally turn on

the news any given day, many things can impact your business,

impact your life, personally. And how do you maintain a calm

sense of knowing where your true north is, a sense of what your

business requires, what your team requires, but also be open

enough to admit that you don't have all the answers and that

you too may have not prepared adequately for the balls that

are getting thrown at you, left, right and center,

Yes. Oh, Mary Lynn, as you say, that turn on the

news today or the balls that are coming at you. I mean, I'm just

feeling those releases of cortisol in our system every

time we're presented with something new. What are we going

to do about this? What's our response to this? What does this

mean to the business, the team, and you've already said so many

great things about what is needed from leaders in the midst

of that. We need folks to dig deep and bring their experiences

and their skills and their humility, creating that calm,

that calmness being grounded in what do our team members and

what does our organization need from us right now, knowing that

true north and I just feel different as I talk about that,

paraphrasing the things that you just said, rather than here

comes the news, here comes. The balls, right? How do we get

grounded in what's most important when we don't know

everything

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: right? And we are human. All leaders are

human. So again, it is not incumbent upon us or expected

from us as humans, to lack reactions right, to stay so

stoic that we don't show our teams or the world how these

things are impacting us. I feel like leaning into your passion

as it relates to the work you do, the mission of your

organization. The industry you're in is critical, and so

acknowledging the concerns that are facing your organization and

are impacting you personally, I think, is part of authentic

leadership and also helps our teams to not be afraid to open

up about their own concerns, but by the same token, feel

empowered and respected for speaking up and sharing their

ideas as well as their concerns, right? Because we're needing our

talented teams, our partners, our stakeholders, our

constituents, now more than ever, to figure out where we

have alignment to help us work through these tumultuous times,

and so just being surrounded by a bunch of folks who you know

are fearful as well and no scared to speak up is not going

to propel our organizations Forward. No,

no. This points to another dynamic or

characteristic of someone demonstrating the courage of a

leader right now is that authenticity, right showing and

being open to the human ness of it right now, I want to ask you,

Mary Lynn, about the balancing act that I think that this

requires, because we want to say, oh, you know, this was some

frustrating news, or this is some news we need to react to.

Or, you know, I know that this is bringing up emotions and

concerns in me, knowledge it might be in all of you as well,

acknowledging that showing some vulnerability, yet also needing

to be the person that demonstrates confidence right

and is outlining the path forward for folks. What would

you say about striking that right balance.

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: Well, first of all, I would say it is an

art, not a science. There is no one size fits all, and this is

where showing your authenticity, your humanity, is going to weigh

into the equation. And your unique formula for that

balancing act, you describe it as a balancing act, and that's

exactly what it is for some of us. It includes first going to

our personal board of directors or our inner circle to vent, to

air our frustrations, to admit our concerns, and to kind of

play out various scenarios so that we're not reacting in the

moment and maybe just showing any trepidation with regard to

facing the future. So whatever technique works, some people do

that in solitude. They walk or they run like you, right? They

meditate, they hike, they do yoga. Others do it through

talking like I'm a very vocal I process through sharing, and so

some of us share. I have some colleagues who stay away from

the news. Like consuming the news becomes paralyzing for

them, because they're just consumed with worry. I'm a bit

of a news junkie, and I try to moderate that with not taking in

too much of it or getting too wrapped up in the details. But,

you know, having a general finger on the pulse of what's

happening as it relates to unemployment, tariffs, economic

trends, how it's impacting our member organizations.

Conversations. So the best thing about the way I'm approaching

this question that you've asked Is My way is not going to be

your way. Your way is not going to be my way. There is no right

way. But you know, to take the sting out of this constant cycle

of, oh my, oh, dear, oh, Lord, oh, gosh, yes, you ever going to

get through this is, you know, doing something as a leader, or

some set of things that work for you individually, to help you

then be able to come to your team with confidence, and I'm

going to put humility in there again, humility that you don't

have all the answers and or that we've never been through this

before, or this set of circumstances surely is unique,

extra challenging, confident that we'll get through it. So I

was in a chat with a number of association CEOs recently, and

we came to the conclusion that the current situation we're in

is an odd hybrid blend of the last big recession and the

pandemic, yeah, together, right? Some sort of hybrid of that,

where we're all going through a really tough time together.

We're all facing similar challenges, but that have

specific consequences depending on the markets we serve, the

stability of our organization, the team we have around us the

expectations of our board, and it's taking the experience that

we gained if we were leading through those two time periods

to those are helping inform and know that this too shall pass.

Yeah, we will get through this. We do have the stamina. We do

have the wherewithal. We do have, you know, enough tools in

our belt to survive and thrive through this and at the

hopefully end of this roller coaster we're on right now?

Yeah, the challenge is real, and we and we have

tangible lessons learned from the previous spaces that we've

navigated, and I really like where you went. Mary Lynn, with

the last question, we can feel pressured as leaders to have the

sense of urgency, like I've gotta act, I've gotta respond,

I've gotta and I hear you inviting us to pause and process

however that works for you. Right? New piece of news,

something to respond to, a new dynamic in your landscape.

Pause, process it. Go to your personal board of directors,

spend time in nature, talk about it out loud. Do you do your

processing in the way that it works for you, so that you then

can move forward with that humility and confidence exactly

that we've gotta, oh, we've gotta, like, respond

immediately, right?

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: Because I think many of us were taught,

you know, you have the answers. You gotta be ready at all times

you gotta and yes, you have to be prepared to be responsive.

But you also have the opportunity to pump the brakes a

bit and just we all know, I mean, every single one of us has

gotten an email that sends our heart rate up, our blood

pressure boiling our and we have learned over time, shooting off

a response is usually not presenting our best self. We

usually calm our minds prevail when we take the time to sit on

it a bit cool our jets think about how we want to respond if

we do need to respond and do it more thoughtfully and carefully

and again, frequently, email is not the right answer. Yeah,

right. It's frequently. It's you need to pick up the phone. You

need to meet with someone in person, you and sometimes a non

response is the appropriate response, yeah, in the moment.

But you get to make that selection the same way you do

with all the other issues that are facing us, right? Yeah, take

some time.

I am also hearing, in what you're saying, Mary Lynn,

that there's enough going on these days. I. That we should

have our regular processing practices, that they should just

be built into our days and our weeks, because we know we're

going to need that processing time in today's landscape.

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: And to me, that was a silver lining of the

pandemic was more time, and we learned how valuable it was,

what a difference it made. Never in my 35 years on the job, more

than 35 pushing 40 now, had never woken up without an alarm

and not jumped directly in the shower until the pandemic,

right? My whole career had been jumping out of bed when the

alarm rang straight to the shower, drinking coffee and

breakfast on the go, you know, yeah, depending on my time of

life, rushing the kids off to school, come to the office by

eight or 830 and then all of a sudden, this, these morning

hours, because I'm a very early riser, okay, to write, read,

think, write, exercise, you know, have My coffee in

solitude, a time of reflection, and that many of us changed our

routines, yeah for the better, yeah and for good. Yeah during

that time. And we also as leaders, I think, talk about it

more openly and encourage others to have practices that work with

their own circuit people's circadian rhythms and to honor

when is your most productive time of the day, not be so rigid

about these are our working hours, and this is exactly what

you should do when, and we're rushing around all the time,

right? That, to me, was one of the Silver Linings or gifts that

that time where the world shut down for a while.

Yes, I love that. I do want to do a pause here and

tell listeners more about you. Mary Lynn, I love that reminder,

that invitation our world has shifted in significant enough

ways recently that there have been times that we have learned

got to experiment with, got insights into the routines that

work best for us. And it's it's amazing we can get into these

and then it's so easy to slip away from them. So that's an

invitation for everyone listening. What are the routines

that you know serve you and give you that head space, give you

that time to regulate your system, not have any more

additional releases of cortisol going off. Give you an

opportunity to metabolize some of that and do some of that

planning, thinking, centering, right Maryland. Want to tell

listeners more about you. Mary Lynn Fayoumi is the president

and CEO of HR Source, a Chicago based Employers Association now

highly respected speaker, trainer and advisor and an

accepted authority on a variety of workplace issues, including

culture, employment trends and HR management. Countless

organizations have benefited from her expertise during her

long tenure at HR source. She is a prolific writer, quoted and

published regularly in a variety of industry publications. She

currently serves as the lead director of the World at Work

board and is past chair of the board of directors for both the

association forum of Chicago land and the employer

associations of America. She's currently on the executive

committee of the Downers Grove Economic Development

Corporation, and she's a board member and treasurer for the

employers associations of America. Mary Lynn was honored

forum. And very recently, she is the recipient of the prestigious

Samuel B Shapiro award. This is the highest honor bestowed on an

association professional by the association forum for

outstanding service and accomplishments in association

management. Congratulations for that recent and well deserved

recognition of your contributions. Mary Lynn,

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: thank you so much, Amy, and I saw you skip a

little. Yes, I'm back on the employer associations of America

board for the third time when you stick around the same

industry for a long. Long, long time you end up, and I just am a

firm believer in servant leadership and just giving back

to the industry that has been so good to me. So

you are doing so in a variety of ways. Thank you

serving. Yeah, our world's organizations, associations, in

the ways that you do. I wanted to come back and ask you talked

about the importance of humility, and I think often as

humans when we're feeling uncertain or exposed or, Oh,

this is risky. I'm not sure that I should take this in the

direction that I'm thinking about taking this. How do we

choose humility and curiosity instead of like, Oh, I've got to

control this.

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: Wow, that is something that requires

practice. Yeah, right. It requires practice, and it

requires surrounding yourself with people who understand the

benefits of honesty, integrity, time, and are open to failing

fast and learning from mistakes. Because I think believing that

you need to react quickly and have all the answers immediately

and always be right comes from a place of fear, and probably was,

you know, hardwired in somewhere in childhood or early career

where people who screwed up got beaten up or got called out or

embarrassed, and so that knee jerk reaction to always, you

know, be argumentative and be, you know, super sure or cocky,

confident right out of the gates usually is some sort of learned

behavior that was reinforced. Again, I know I'm no

psychologist. I you know, but from my many years working with

others, it often comes from a place of wanting to be in

control and fearing what will happen if you're not in control.

So practicing vulnerability, fortunately, has become much

more acceptable and common in the past couple decades, it used

to be seen as a death knell to your leadership career

trajectory, right? It signaled weakness. Yeah, I think that has

changed tremendously for the better in the past 20 years.

Again, this is industry specific, as well as

organizationally specific in terms of what your culture is,

but showing your vulnerability and weaknesses and admitting

mistakes or even shining a big spotlight on them nice has been

really outlined and studied much more carefully in terms of the

positive end results that can be achieved by doing so,

I like that you started there with the idea of

practice. That's an and I'm hearing active practice, right,

and looking and noticing and accepting, Hey, I've probably

been socialized to have all the answers, have the right answers,

respond right away, right? And practicing, reflecting, how is

this working, vulnerability, right? I mean, we don't mean

showing up and like sharing all of your childhood trauma or

embarrassing moments from your whole life. I mean we mean

admitting mistakes. And I love how you said it, shining a light

on mistakes, like saying I don't know all the answers, yeah, but

we can express confidence in the people in the room. I have the

confidence that we together can figure this out. Yeah, showing

your humanity and surrounding yourself with people that are

willing to take risks, fail fast, learn from them. Yeah, I

feel like we got to talk about. This as a journey of

experimentation and iteration, rather than here's the decision,

here's the path for the next five years, right? But instead,

more

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: and more companies aren't even doing five

year plans, like we switched to quarterly budgets five years

ago, and they are so much more accurate and in tune with the

marketplace conditions. So expectations have changed, and

there is a fluidity that yields higher results.

Yes, so setting up those structures that allow for

that fluidity and language is so important. Talking about

experimenting, talking about iterating. What did we learn?

Okay, we're going to shift this so that it doesn't feel like fat

or flavor of the day, but we're talking about, how is this

evolving? What are we learning? And we might learn something

that causes a sharp right turn, but we're going to be

transparent about that. We thought the direction was x. We

learned it wasn't right. Now we're going in y direction

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: and inviting voices to be heard and really

listening like some of our best ideas are coming from very new

members of our team who are questioning. We're inviting them

to question everything, and they are, and while some of their

input is slightly painful at times, because it's like, Duh,

like, Why were we or do we do things this way? Like, how did

we not? Why did we have such blinders on? And some of it,

again, is an iterative process where they're making just

wonderful suggestions on ways to improve the way we deliver our

services, how we interact with our members, and they're laying

the foundation or relaying it for the future in a way that If

we had stayed standing still and hadn't listened to them after

inviting their feedback, we could have become or could

become stagnant and unresponsive to the needs of today's

consumer. Yeah,

it's interesting. Mary Lynn, and you can correct

me if you would want to paraphrase this a different way,

as I'm listening to you, the art of this, the humanity, the

processing routines that serve us, inviting people to be heard,

listening all of that I'm hearing, slow down, pause, take

a moment to process be the calm eye in the center of the storm

as the chaos is going on around us. Yeah, nodding, instead

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: of like being I think there used to be a, and

there still is, in many organizations, a real sense of

we got to also be in the chaos. Yeah, right. Like, that's part

of our role.

We've got to be reacting. I got to be responding

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: again, right? But just because you're not

being reactive in real time. Doesn't mean you're lacking in

responsiveness, right? It's making a conscious choice to

make the right decisions at the right moments, which usually

come about by your term. Slow down. Slow down. A little.

Think, gather more data, research, there is usually

almost always time. You know, even though there's high

expectations for picking up the pace, you know, in most

instances, we can take a bit of time that can be extremely

beneficial to help us consider the options and choose the right

path on this

journey. Slow down to speed up. Yes, for sure, time

has gone by very quickly. Mary Lynn, a final question. What's

the most important question for courageous leaders to be asking

themselves these days,

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: how can we respond in the most effective

way to stay true to our mission?

Nice,

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: yeah, that will differ by organization.

Industry. And, you know, I always go back to, what is our

true north, what? How do we align ourselves in whatever, no

matter what storm is going on around us? Yes, how do we stay

true? You know, for some organizations, that is, you

know, shareholder return, right? Others, right? It's the safety

of a particular product. For some, it's right. For us, it is

being an invaluable ally to employers. How in this

environment do we stay true to that mission and do our best

work.

I love it. You're inviting us in that question to

respond rather than to react, and to have that North Star,

that mission, that purpose, in mind as we do

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: so. You know our old Simon Sinek, what's the

why? Right? Stick to the why, why and then how,

yeah, and be grounded in that why right now. Mary

Lynn, thank you so much for your time and sharing of your

expertise on the courage of a leader podcast. Thank

Mary Lynn Fayoumi: you for inviting me. Amy, I learned so

much working with you, and hope the listeners enjoy this

episode.

I know they did. Thank you. Mary Lynn,

Thank you for listening to the Courage of a Leader podcast. If

you'd like to further explore this episode's topic, please

reach out to me through the courage of a leader website at

www.courageofaleader.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please

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our reach and get more people fully stepping into their

leadership potential. Until next time, be bold and be brave,

because you've got the courage of a leader.